The Forest of Doom!!

For those of you who don't know, The Forest of Doom was the third installment of the brilliant Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks.

This post is a response specifically to comments made by the brilliant Auckland based blogger, Murray, who has been playing his way through the series and posting accounts of his misadventures and opinions on the books.

So be warned; if you have haven't encountered the Fighting Fantasy books, or read Murray's blog (which I hugely recommend) this will probably make no sense to you. And not in an intentional, post modern literature sort of way.

Forest of Doom was always one of my favourites (and one of the few that I finished, though it took me years and I probably stopped playing by the rules to do it) but the opinion of those commenting on it is generally negative. So what I offer here is a defence of Forest of Doom. The criticism of the book by Murray - and on other blogs - shows fatal misunderstanding of what Livingstone was trying to do.

I think FoD was the second game book I bought, after Death Trap Dungeon. Keep in mind that, if flicking through those pages and being perverted gently by all those barely concealed genitalia, was a novelty for me, it was also kinda new for Steve and Iain.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out in 1982, and Citadel of Chaos and Forest in 1983. Like musicians, who get to plunder their whole miserable angsty adolescence for their their first album, and six months of cocaine, constant touring and meaningless sex for the second, Steve and Iain were in a hurry.

Also bear in mind books 3, 5, 6 and 7 were solo efforts by Livingstone. After Citadel, and the co-authored Starship Traveller, Steve Jackson took a holiday from writing the 'core' Fighting Fantasy. So it was pretty much a one man show, with cameo appearances by various people all called Steve Jackson. And Iain managed to knock out five solo books in two years. So maybe we should cut these him some slack, huh?

So, exculpatory pleading aside, what of FoD? Well, as Murray notes, it is set OUTDOORS. Ponder that novelty for a while. The default settling for most adventures is still a fancifully network of tunnels and rooms, populated by random monsters, with no real ecology (What does the DRAGON in Warlock eat?) or purpose.

A good friend of mine, a role-player of considerable vintage, says that it was Forest of Doom that made him realise You Could Take This Shit Outside. Okay, FoD is just a dungeon with trees for walls, but that is still a transition many have to make. What Freud would have made about our reluctance to move from the warm comforting 10x10 tunnels and wombs, sorry, rooms?

Taking the action out of tunnels makes the setting more convincing. Tunnels have to be dug by someone, whereas trees just grow, yeah? And the forest setting immediately creates a viable eco-system. Even if we can't go off the paths, the nasties we encounter can. So the WEREWOLVES, CAT WOMEN, CENTAURS and such like seem more plausible.

Another thing Livingstone did that was really cool was create a detailed story setting. FoD has a decent introduction, outlining how you get involved in the quest. It also gave you a pay off if you managed to complete the quest - a remarkably long 'paragraph' 400, meaning you get some sort of a reward for all the page flicking and dice rolling. I think it was Masks of Mayhem that ended the story with a single sentence 'paragraph' - a pretty crappy ending.  FoD really felt like a story in which you got to be the hero.

The structure of the game book is also innovative and some seem to have misunderestimated Livingstone's purpose. Yeah, sure, you can play it as a psychopath and attack everyone ... Livingstone is giving you that choice. You get to choose how you interact with the population of Darkwood.

Obviously, if you attack them all, they'll all try to kill you right back. If you don't, some of them probably won't; but (clever bit) some will, because the outcome has to be unpredictable. Some times being nice will get you out of a fight, but not always.

If Steve Jackson was a GM, you get the impression he'd be the sort of GM you'd hate - the type that are always out to kill the PCs and who revel in the cunning ways they manage to Seal Their Doom. Whereas Iain would be the sort of GM who would provide a good night's entertainment for all with plenty of beer and chips.  Steve would probably put slow acting poison in the chips, and then giggle evilly as he watched you expire.

The other big innovation was structural. Remember the frustration of bursting into tears on the Warlock's treasure chest because you didn't have the right damn keys? Instead of, you know, doing what a self-respecting Dragon slaying, Warlock disembowelling sword waggler would do, going back into the maze to find the damn things? FoD doesn't do that.

If you get to Stonebridge without the two parts of the hammer, you don't get called a dumbass loser, you get to carry on. You may have found a significant location but not had the magical item needed, like the GHOUL's crypt. So you get to re-visit Yastromo and buy the magic items you now realise you need. Or you can explore new paths - in fact you have to do this, as the two parts of the hammer are located on different routes through the forest, justifying the classic/infamous "You come to a T junction, L/R" opening to EVERY game book in the series.

Obviously, this means you might go through some encounters twice, and it would have been nice if Livingstone had included an "If you have been here before and killed the werewolf, turn straight to ..." option, players with a modicum of intelligence can just skip repeat encounters, unless you really like killing CAT WOMEN. This highlights a profound difference in attitude between Steve Jackson and Iain Livingstone. Iain isn't out to kill you for any wrong choice.

Steve Jackson, on the other hand, certainly is, as Murray discovered in House of Hell. Pretty much any wrong choice in a Steve Jackson book leads to certain death ... and, frustratingly, it may not occur immediately; you may still seem to have options, as in the Kitchen of Death in the House of Hell; but there is no going back once you blunder into one of his 'Kill Zones.' FoD, on the other hand, forgives mistakes, some of the time at least, and doesn't kill you too vindictively too often.

So in terms of innovation, it is something of a high water mark in the series. I don't know if any of the later books had such a complex structure or allowed as much freedom of interaction. Which isn't to say it is perfect, because it isn't. But it is different and, I think, undervalued.