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chuckroPeriodically, over the last couple of years, I’ve brought my copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain on vacations with me, and never getting around to doing what I really wanted: Making a full map of the entire game dungeon so that I could tell the optimal (i.e. necessary for winning) path through it. (I posted about the FF books a ways back, which should give you an idea of how long this book has been hopping on and off the shelf.)
I’ll note that when I was growing up, I was never one to do this with Choose Your Own Adventure books. I always kept my thumb on the page I came from (who didn’t?) in case I hit an ending, but I never felt the need to actually trace my path. The fact that this book is presented as a dungeon (and therefore should be mappable) and requires a specific path and specific actions (which are recorded as items on your character sheet) to win are what inspired actually writing everything down.
The game can be considered to have four parts: The first is a straight path, where every branch is basically a “There’s something here! Investigate? Yes/No.” segment. Each of them basically involves fighting a monster to get items that may or may not be useful. The second section splits into two and then four such paths, all of which eventually meet up at the same river crossing, the halfway point of the book. Each of those paths has a different set of things to fight and treasures to find, so there is a specific one you have to take to successfully win the game, even though the others lead to the same place. The third section, after the crossing (which has one easy option and four harder ones), appears to have three branches, but two of them are really the same path (you need to do one to get the key for the other) and the third leads to a series of dead-end choices that eventually force you to meet up with the combined path. Again, there are some different events and treasures on either side, though this set is more about which items you picked up earlier in the dungeon. (If you got the silver arrow, take the side with the wight; if you got the stakes and mallet, take the side with the vampire.) The fourth section is the maze, a set of deliberately-confusing, hard-to-map twisting passages and crossroads, with a few important rooms (fight a monster to find an item) and a lot of dead ends that teleport you around. Eventually, the maze ends with boss fights against a dragon and the warlock himself, both of whom can be instantly killed if you picked up the right items. (The dragon-killing spell is in the third room of the dungeon!)
The very last section is the kicker, though: You need to use three (of the possible 6) keys that you picked up in combination to unlock the final chest. If you only have two keys, or you have the wrong keys, then it’s game over right before you reach the end. This is where the optimal path really matters: When the path splits into four, one way allows you to get two keys—incorrect keys—and one path gives you one of the correct keys and the instant-kill item for the Warlock. If you took the wrong path there, you can't win the game. The other correct keys are in one of the first-section rooms and lost in the maze, which makes it harder to lock yourself out of getting them, but still means they’re totally missable.
It’s pretty obvious that there are different philosophies of game design spread throughout the book. I suspect that if I do this for the other four books I have (two by each of this book’s co-authors) I’ll get a good sense of which parts were written by whom.
This made for a fun use of an afternoon at the beach and part of a bus ride, all told.
I’ll note that when I was growing up, I was never one to do this with Choose Your Own Adventure books. I always kept my thumb on the page I came from (who didn’t?) in case I hit an ending, but I never felt the need to actually trace my path. The fact that this book is presented as a dungeon (and therefore should be mappable) and requires a specific path and specific actions (which are recorded as items on your character sheet) to win are what inspired actually writing everything down.
The game can be considered to have four parts: The first is a straight path, where every branch is basically a “There’s something here! Investigate? Yes/No.” segment. Each of them basically involves fighting a monster to get items that may or may not be useful. The second section splits into two and then four such paths, all of which eventually meet up at the same river crossing, the halfway point of the book. Each of those paths has a different set of things to fight and treasures to find, so there is a specific one you have to take to successfully win the game, even though the others lead to the same place. The third section, after the crossing (which has one easy option and four harder ones), appears to have three branches, but two of them are really the same path (you need to do one to get the key for the other) and the third leads to a series of dead-end choices that eventually force you to meet up with the combined path. Again, there are some different events and treasures on either side, though this set is more about which items you picked up earlier in the dungeon. (If you got the silver arrow, take the side with the wight; if you got the stakes and mallet, take the side with the vampire.) The fourth section is the maze, a set of deliberately-confusing, hard-to-map twisting passages and crossroads, with a few important rooms (fight a monster to find an item) and a lot of dead ends that teleport you around. Eventually, the maze ends with boss fights against a dragon and the warlock himself, both of whom can be instantly killed if you picked up the right items. (The dragon-killing spell is in the third room of the dungeon!)
The very last section is the kicker, though: You need to use three (of the possible 6) keys that you picked up in combination to unlock the final chest. If you only have two keys, or you have the wrong keys, then it’s game over right before you reach the end. This is where the optimal path really matters: When the path splits into four, one way allows you to get two keys—incorrect keys—and one path gives you one of the correct keys and the instant-kill item for the Warlock. If you took the wrong path there, you can't win the game. The other correct keys are in one of the first-section rooms and lost in the maze, which makes it harder to lock yourself out of getting them, but still means they’re totally missable.
It’s pretty obvious that there are different philosophies of game design spread throughout the book. I suspect that if I do this for the other four books I have (two by each of this book’s co-authors) I’ll get a good sense of which parts were written by whom.
This made for a fun use of an afternoon at the beach and part of a bus ride, all told.
