Review: Fighting Fantasy 5: City of Thieves

Everyone loves Port Blacksand.

Apart from people who live there, work there, get preyed on by the pirates who dock there, travel there for any reason, or walk downwind from it.

Port Blacksand is one of the most examined parts of the Fighting Fantasy world, being the setting for at least two adventures that I can think of (this one, plus Midnight Rogue), featuring in several others, was the setting for the main adventure in the Dungeoneer book for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy roleplaying game, and got its own expanded background, and another roleplaying adventure, in Blacksand!. Port Blacksand is one of those archetypal corrupt fantasy cities, similar to early Ankh Morpork from Discworld, but its tyrannical ruler, Lord Azzur, is far less charming and civic-minded than Havelock Vetinari.

In City of Thieves, by Ian Livingstone, you explore this medieval urban hellhole to find the means of defeating, yes, an evil sorcerer who is threatening another peaceable little settlement. This is the third one in five books, if you count Zagor as being a threat to the villagers who sent the protagonist to murder him. Eventually, I swear, the plots to Fighting Fantasy books become less repetitive.

– There are no special rules for this book, just the usual Skill, Stamina, Luck and provisions (plus a potion), and my backstory is that I’m an adventurer who wants to earn some cash. I’m also armed with a sword and wearing leather armour. Very familiar.

– I roll exceptionally well for my stats: Skill 11, Stamina 24, Luck 12, almost the legendary cheater’s stat line of 12/24/12. None of that’ll make any difference if I walk down Street A instead of Street B and miss the shop selling McGuffin C though…

– According to the introduction, adventuring is second nature to me, my reputation has spread far and wide, and my success in a mission is assured. I still haven’t got a single coin to my name though.

– Silverton is a nice middle-class neighbourhood that’s got some lovely architecture. However, the inn, The Old Toad, has six bolts on its door, making it a close second in the home security paranoia ranking to Teri Hatcher’s Lois Lane in Lois and Clark (aka The New Adventures of Superman).

– Owen Carralif, the mayor, turns up after curfew and addresses me twice as ‘Stranger’, drawing attention to the fact that my character, like most Fighting Fantasy protagonists, isn’t named. So much for my fame. It turns out that Silverton’s being plagued by Moon Dogs, sent by Zanbar Bone, aka the Night Prince, aka another evil sorcerer. It turns out that Bone wants to date Owen’s daughter, Mirelle, but he’s an undead monstrosity who lives in a tower in the middle of nowhere, so she wasn’t too keen on the idea.

– Actually, we don’t know Mirelle’s feelings on the matter, because it appears Owen didn’t consult his daughter before rejecting Bone’s overtures. Turns out that Bone’s the bigger misogynist though; rather than politely moving on after his rejection, he sent a pack of undead dogs to murder twenty-three innocent people in Silverton, and they’ve been coming back every night since.

– I will not make crude jokes about Zanbar’s surname.

– Anyway, Owen’s attitude is that his daughter’s worth dozens of dead neighbours, so definitely not giving in to Bone’s demands, but there’s still a limit to the number of voters that can be eaten before he risks defeat at the next election, so he’s come to me with an offer and 30 gold pieces. (Ah, so that’s where my money comes from.)

– “You want me to kill Zanbar Bone?”
“No, don’t be ridiculous. I want you to go and get the great wizard Nicodemus and bring him to us. He’ll do that for us.”
“You could just send him a letter.”
“Medieval society, mate. You’re the postal service.”

– Yeah, I’m going to be the one to kill Zanbar Bone, aren’t I?

– During the introduction, Owen gives you a bag of 30 gold pieces as an advance payment. So, you know, if you ever felt the urge to skip the pre-amble to a Fighting Fantasy book, there’s a good reason not to.

– The adventure begins with me walking 50 miles west (so Silverton presumably gets a lot of its trade through Port Blacksand’s docks). The unpleasantness of Port Blacksand, compared to Silverton, is clear from the start – the walls are decorated with skulls on wooden spikes and starving men locked in cages, as well as black flags everywhere. I’d like to take a moment to point out the illustration accompanying this first paragraph. (It’s by Iain McCaig, who did some of the best Fighting Fantasy illustrations, to my mind.) The guard is grim enough in his full-face visor and chainmail, but it’s the background that really amps up the ‘hive of scum and villainy’ atmosphere of Port Blacksand. There’s a glimpse of a filthy road/open sewer at the bottom, a hanged jester off to one side (must have told a bad joke about Lord Azzur), several citizens just leaning out of their upstairs windows (as opposed to being industriously hard at work), something winged lurking on a rooftop (decorative gargoyle or an actual gargoyle?), and, for reasons never explained, some guy swinging from rooftop to rooftop on a Tarzan rope. Presumably a thief, right behind the city guardsman.

– Speaking of which, I’m given three options when the guard demands to know my business in Port Blacksand. One (aka the too-dumb-to-live option) has me ask to be taken to Nicodemus, the other (the subterfuge option) has me say I’m here to sell some stolen goods, and the third (the dungeon-crawler option) is to pull out my sword and murder the guard in broad daylight. This being Port Blacksand, remember that the guards are as corrupt as the criminals they’re failing to keep under control.

– Once I’m in the city, I’m offered three streets to take. Oh dear. Not again. Once more, a Fighting Fantasy book gives you three tunnels to venture along, with no clue as to which might be the wise or unwise routes to take. To be fair, on this occasion, City of Thieves gives me the street names: Key Street, Market Street and Clock Street. Unfortunately, I’m looking for a wizard, rather than a key, a market or a clock.

– It’s at this point that I realised that City of Thieves doesn’t come with a map of Port Blacksand. I’m not sure why, but I always assumed it did, but maybe that’s because I read Dungeoneer before I read this book, and so I’ve got a picture in my head of the vague layout of the city.

– Fortunately, the Fighting Fantasy wiki has several versions of the map on Port Blacksand’s page, so I’m going to use one of those as a reference.

– Port Blacksand’s smaller than I remember it. Maybe I’m confusing it with Bogenhafen, from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or perhaps some of the other, larger, cities of the Empire.

– Or maybe everything looks smaller now I’m a grown-up, like the chairs when I went back to my old primary school.

– On Key Street, there’s a locksmith. No idea what the other shops on this street are, but who cares? Let’s go and see what ‘J. B. Wraggins, Locksmith’ has to offer.

– Turns out that Mr Wraggins is a dwarf. What exactly are the naming conventions for dwarves in Fighting Fantasy? There’s Gillibran, the lord of Stonebridge in Forest of Doom, and then his loyal servant, Bigleg, and now someone with a first, middle and last name.

– Wraggins is accompanied by another great illustration, with some lovely details, including a completely unnecessary cat.

– All cats, incidentally, are completely unnecessary, but also completely necessary at the same time. It’s quantum science.

– I ask him where to find Nicodemus. He asks why. I say I’m on a quest to save Silverton and need his help to… wait, what? Bloody hell. This perfectly nice-seeming dwarf jumps off his stool, ‘his face full of hatred’ and summons two big black dogs to “Kill the friend of Nicodemus!” Wait, I never said I was his friend, just that I wanted his help. Oh well, time to kill a pair of dogs.

– These wolf dogs, incidentally, have stats equivalent to trolls or orcs in previous books, at Skill 7, Stamina 5 or 7. They’re very big dogs, and I can’t help wondering how that poor cat copes with sharing a home with them.

– Or how I failed to notice these giant creatures under the table when I went into the shop.

– I kill Wraggins’ dogs (getting a nasty bite in the process), but he’s run off. While he’s gone, I loot his shop for 3 gold pieces and a handy little skeleton key. Serves him right for trying to murder his customers. At least the cat doesn’t have to worry about being eaten by the wolf dogs any more.

– That was a great introduction to Port Blacksand. The first shop I go into and the shopkeeper tries to murder me because he’s got a psychotic grudge against another guy that I’ve never met.

– Oh, hello, small child. You have a present for me? A note? Thank you. “Arrows from six bows are pointed at you. Leave 10 Gold Pieces in the middle of the street and keep walking.”

– It turns out Blacksand street thugs are literate. This place isn’t the complete hellhole I thought it was. Anyway, it’s clearly a scam, so… ARGH!

– It’s not a scam. That’ll be 12 Stamina points and 2 Luck points I’ll not be seeing again. Still, I got four arrows out of it.

– Seriously, Port Blacksand. I’ll be writing a strongly-worded letter to the Times about how unwelcoming this place is to tourists.

– I stagger down the street, feeling like a pincushion, and a little girl beckons me to come into her house. Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment, but I go inside.

– It’s not so bad. There’s an old man here who painlessly pulls out the arrows and magically heals my wounds. In return, he wants the sword that Owen Carralif gave me as a down-payment on my quest rewards. It was a really nice sword, actually, from the loving description of it in the introduction, and the replacement the old man gives me leaves me at -1 Skill. Hmm. Oh well, at least no one else tried to rob or murder me.

– Further along the street, there’s a bright red house on a street of hovels, and it has a sign over the door saying ‘Welcome’. I have a bad feeling about this. I go inside.

– There’s a pair of scorpions, one made of gold, the other made of silver, in bowls in this brightly decorated room. Weird, but I pick one of them up. It’s a lucky brooch, which replenishes the Luck I lost to the archers when I wear it. I’m savvy enough not to pick up the other one. I have a feeling that it would probably animate and sting me if I tried. Instead, I go upstairs. I want to know who’s leaving magical brooches out for anyone to take.

– The fire-breathing lizardman (or Lizardine) upstairs is quite upset that I’ve stolen one of his brooches, which is fair enough, I guess, and attacks me. After dodging its first blast of flame, I decide that discretion is the better part of not wanting to kill random people and run away, taking a nasty wound from his claws as I do so.

– Wait… a fire-breathing inhabitant of a medieval city, blasting fire around his own living room? Is he planning on redecorating, or maybe on moving house to a neighbourhood that isn’t on fire?

– Actually, this is a rubbish neighbourhood. I’ve been bitten, shot, and now slashed, and I’ve only been here for about half an hour. I want to burn it down.

– Oh look, some guards. Maybe I ought to report the two separate attempted murders (and not mention the incident with the Lizardine, because I was at fault there, for treating Blacksand like an open-air dungeon). You want to see my what? My merchant’s pass? I’ll pat my pockets and tell you it must be in my other suit of arrow-pierced leather armour. I’m under arrest? No. I’ve had enough of this. I hate this town. I decide to murder two police officers in the middle of a crowded street, in broad daylight.

– Oddly, I wasn’t even given the choice about whether to attack them or to submit to being arrested. Maybe Ian Livingstone figured that the reader would be as fed up with this hellhole as I am.

– For some reason, like the dogs in J. B. Wraggins’ shop, these guards politely fight me one at a time. Fighting Fantasy really needs to put the rules for fighting multiple opponents in the the basic rules, so it can just say ‘fight these guards at the same time’.

– Let’s just pause and work out how badly the City of Thieves has corrupted me. What crimes have I committed since arriving at Port Blacksand? Well, first of all, I entered the city without a pass. Then I stole from J. B. Wraggins (just because he tried to murder me first doesn’t stop what I did being theft). Then I stole from the Lizardine. (It’s a shoplifting, rather than a burglary, as the premises is actually a high-end magic amulet shop, according to the choices I didn’t take.) Then there was resisting arrest for the pass issue, which escalated to two counts of murder. I’ve probably been in town for less than an hour.

– After that, I stop for a snack to heal up a few wounds. This probably looks a bit odd, as each meal restores an impressive 4 Stamina points. I imagine it as a bleeding idiot stuffing his face (or possibly his wounds) with bread and cheese.

– Sorry, maybe it’s an Allansian tradition to leave pairs of magical boots lying around, or maybe an Ian Livingstone in-joke, but it’s a bit weird. Still, they fit quite nicely.

– The linear nature of the adventure rears its head a bit once I finally reach the end of Key Street. (Oh my god… all of the story’s encounters/crimes so far have occurred on a single street!) The two streets adjoining the end of Key Street are Market Street and Clock Street, which were the other two options after I entered the city. Although I am on a deadline for this quest, there’s no real reason not to go back down Market Street (unless the player entered the city by murdering the guards at the gate at the other end of Market Street) or onto Clock Street. However, the book decides that the crowd to the north, up towards Market Square, attracts my attention, so I go and investigate.

– In other words, the book has decided that I will never, under any circumstances, check if Nicodemus lives on Clock Street or Market Street.

– The crowd is throwing vegetables at a guy in the pillory. A friendly old lady offers me a pair of eggs and, not wanting to feel like the outsider, I accept and throw them. Meanwhile, she picks my pocket and somehow manages to remove a single Gold Piece from inside my coin purse. In-character, I’m oblivious to this theft, but out-of-character, I’m struggling to understand how it’s possible to remove one coin from a bag of coins without the wearer noticing.

– This encounter has another fun, busy illustration, of the old lady among a crowd of townsfolk hurling a variety of vegetables at the aforementioned pillory-dweller. McCaig has had a bit of fun here, expanding as an illustrator on what the author’s written in the text. As is traditional, the crime that this man has committed is written on a sign on the pillory. Not ‘Thief’ or even something vague like ‘Malefactor’, but it’s ‘Ye Goody-Two-Shoes’. Welcome to Port Blacksand.

– Incidentally, Iain McCaig is referred to as ‘Iain McCraig’ in the copyright invoices at the start of my copy of this book, though he’s credited correctly on the title page. McCaig’s other work includes the Games Workshop logo, so Ian Livingstone must have liked his work too. There is also, in one of the illustrations in this book, a copy of White Dwarf magazine.

– There’s a strongman in Market Square, challenging people to play catch with a cannonball. The illustration here is less busy than some of the others, but is instead focused firmly on the strongman, a cartoonishly muscled He-Man (in fact, dressed rather like He-Man himself) tossing a cannonball up and down in one hand, while some poor sucker lies on his back behind him, winded by the cannonball he apparently attempted to catch using his stomach.

– Subtly, this scene also makes canon (pun intended) something that hasn’t previously even been hinted at in the still-vestigial Fighting Fantasy setting. It has gunpowder technology, at least at the cannon level, though I don’t think we ever see anything man-portable. I can’t remember much of Magehunter, one of the later Fighting Fantasy books, in which the protagonist is a witch hunter from 18th century Earth, transplanted to Titan by a spell, but if I recall correctly, his flintlock pistol is a device that doesn’t exist on the latter world.

– The game of cannonball catch is mechanically quite simple: roll one die for me and for the strongman, alternating until one of us rolls a 1 and drops it. There’s an implied parity there between me, an adventurer, and this muscle-bound athlete. I didn’t quite picture myself as a 1980’s TV tie-in action figure or a Hero Quest barbarian, but I’ll have it.

– He drops it on the second toss. I go on my merry way with 5 Gold Pieces and a future of chronic shoulder strain.

– Finally, I find a market stall in Market Square. It sells butcher’s hooks, climbing ropes, iron spikes, lanterns, and throwing knives. This is either selling stolen goods, or is selling supplies for people who are intending to soon acquire stolen goods. I’ll have one of each, thanks.

– A clairvoyant. Madame Star. I’m sure she appears in one or other of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventures, so she’s probably not going to attack me the moment I mention the name ‘Nicodemus’. With that meta-gaming out of the way, I enter her tent, cross her palms with gold, and she tells me the guy I’m looking for lives under a bridge to the north. I didn’t even have to say his name. Impressive. Then she gets a bit upset about something she’s seen and asks me to leave. Odd, since all I’m being hired to do is deliver a message to Nicodemus. It’s not like she’s just had a vision of me facing off against a semi-demonic necromancer, is it?

– It’s raining. There’s some derelict houses on Bridge Street that I could take shelter in until the rain stops. I’m going to resist the urge to explore everywhere and use common sense: the rain could go on for hours, and I’ve got a good idea where Nicodemus lives, so I should go there. Maybe he’ll offer me a cup of tea.

– Do they have tea in Allansia?

– I reach the bridge on Bridge Street. Singing Bridge, according to the map from the wiki). That sounds nice. Certainly nicer than the actual sound of the wind blowing through the bridge’s wooden structure, which reminds me of ‘tortured souls, crying out for help’. The bridge is covered in skulls on spikes. The Catfish River isn’t much better either – it stinks and a severed hand just floated by. Welcome to Port Blacksand.

– Nicodemus has ‘Keep Out’ written in big letters outside his house. He’s actually remarkably pleasant to speak to, aside from when he tells me he’s too old to do any adventuring, so it’s (surprise surprise) my responsibility to go and kill Zanbar Bone.

– First, I need to get a very specific tattoo on my forehead, to evade his hypnotic gaze. Wait, what? Really? My forehead? I guess I’m growing my fringe out once Bone gets dusted. Then, I need to shoot him through the heart with a silver arrow. Not one of those regular arrows that I was shot with earlier? Then, when he’s paralysed from having a silver arrow through a major organ, I have to rub a compound of hag’s hair, black pearl and lotus flower into his eyes, which will kill him. Great. He shakes my hand, wishes me luck, and sends me on my way.

– Exactly how did Zanbar Bone develop these very specific weaknesses? Is it some sort of mystical loophole tied into various spells or demonic pacts? You know, ‘live forever, but develop an allergy to having these three substances rubbed into your eyes’, or ‘be immune to everything except for a very specific type of arrow puncturing your aorta.’-

– And how does Nicodemus know about these weaknesses? Bloody wizards. He reminds me of Yaztromo.

– Next stop, Harbour Street. I notice an alleyway running off between two houses. Quite why it catches my attention, I don’t know, but I suspect there’s an encounter to be had if I go down there.

– Two more dogs, not as tough as Wraggins’ wolf-dogs, but they attack simultaneously, which is appropriate, what with dogs being pack hunters. Here’s that idiosyncrasy of Fighting Fantasy again. Rather than just have a single paragraph in the rules about how to fight simultaneous battles, instead the rules are printed alongside every such combat. That’s just inefficient, but it takes a long time, if ever, for the series to notice this.

– Hey, it’s Lord Azzur himself! Maybe I can get an autograph. No, his driver just whipped me for getting too close as his Lordship’s shiny gold carriage rockets by.

– At the docks end of Harbour Street, we’re treated to another of Ian McCaig’s busy street scenes, this time featuring a pair of beautifully done pirate ships, and a far less detailed one some way out to sea. Do I want to climb onto one of these ships? Of course I do, because I’m an adventurer, and this is a dungeon.

– Yet another illustration, this one of sleeping pirates in a triple-decker hammock. Since I’m already a murderer in Port Blacksand, I decide to add cutpurse to my CV as well. Conveniently, a naked man tells me where I can get anything made in silver.

– I become the victim of an attempted robbery again. Attempted. Scratch one dead goblin.

– Shortly afterwards, I pay someone to make me a silver arrow.

– Next, I intervene in a street robbery, and get beaten with iron bars. Best rub some bread and cheese on those wounds.

– The public gardens in Port Blacksand has an automated turnstile. Put in a gold piece and it lets you in. How come no one has smashed this and nicked the money?

– A barrow boy offers me his plums for a gold piece. You can buy anything in this city.

– Two trolls of Lord Azzur’s Imperial Elite Guard approach. Let’s just take a look at that, shall we? Lord Azzur is the dictator of a single city, and yet he has Imperial Elite Guards. Ego, much?

– Do I have a merchant’s pass? No. Well, I guess this means I’m about to murder two more Blacksand city guards. These trolls are called Fatnose and Sourbelly, and at Sourbelly’s insistence, he gets to go first. Finally, a good reason for two opponents to fight me one at a time. Good job too, because they’re tough. Turns out the Imperial Elite Guard aren’t just street thugs with an overblown title.

– A brave citizen smuggles me out of the city after I manage to kill the two trolls – turns out Sourbelly was quite ill-regarded, even for a Blacksand guard. Unfortunately, I haven’t got a facial tattoo or one of the items needed for killing Zanbar Bone, and it’s too dangerous to go back into the city to get them, so I go back to Silverton and admit defeat.

– Or do I?

– Screw it. I’ll cheat. (Just like in Starship Traveller.) It’s a solo game, so it’s not like anyone will ever find out, right?

– I set off to Zanbar Bone’s tower, make myself a bow to fire the silver arrow with, and… get told that everything is wrong. Nicodemus, it turns out, is getting a little doddery with age and forgot that actually it’s only two of the three substances I found (well, should have found to progress this far) that are needed to kill Bone. In other words, in the previous paragraph, when the book asked if I had all three substances, the tattoo and the silver arrow, I could have failed the quest despite actually having everything I needed.

– Narratively, this is flawed, as the discovery that Nicodemus was senile would have occurred as I was walking back to Silverton in the bad ending, since he sent a messenger dove to tell me.

– Worse than that, Nicodemus doesn’t know which of the three substances are needed, but helpfully suggests that I try… any one of the three possible combinations: hag’s hair with black pearl, hag’s hair with lotus flower, or black pearl with lotus flower. In other words, unless some further information comes to light later in the book, even a player who has found all the McGuffins in Port Blacksand (which requires taking an exact route through the city, with very few indications as to which route is the correct one) still only has a one in three chance of successfully defeating the Big Bad.

– This is, to put it mildly, horse crap. As I’ve whinged about in previous books, if you present a player with a choice of directions or actions to take, there should be some context, prior information or even just common sense, that suggests which route is preferable, or that a do-over is available if one route/action doesn’t pan out. If none of those are present at the time of making the decision, then either choice should be equally valid.

– This is a hill I’m willing to die on. (Probably because I took a wrong turn earlier and missed finding an important item.)

– Anyway, back in Allansia, I approach Zanbar Bone’s domain and meet a randomly-determined wandering monster. A bit odd – I’d prefer to be attacked by something specifically characterful to the region – but let’s see. There are results for an orc, a giant snake, a wolf, an apeman, or a cave troll, but I roll a 4. It’s a Pygmy.

– FFS. Really? Did no one point out how racist the portrayal of the Pygmies was in The Forest of Doom? Well, no, they probably didn’t, because it was 1983.

– Anyway, I slaughter this lost tribesperson with barely a broken sweat (he or she is Skill 4, Stamina 4). In the next passage, the book asks if it was the apeman that I fought, and gives me a little amulet for seeing in the dark if I did, and nothing if not. This amulet, a reward from a random event, better not be vital to completing the quest…

– “There is nothing useful to be found on the dead creature, so you decide to press on northwards.” I just killed a human being of below-average height, not a ‘creature’. Christ, it’s bad enough when ‘orc’ is used to dehumanise the enemy. Just call the random encounter ‘your attacker’ instead, or carefully select opponents that can all be described the same way.

– I face a pair of Moon Dogs, the things that Lord of the Incels, Zanbar Bone, sent against Silverton when no one would sleep with him. For some reason, possibly that they have stats through the roof, they attack me one at a time. Lucky really, as the first one makes mincemeat of me.

– I find a use for the skeleton key I stole off J. B. Wraggins in my very first encounter after entering Port Blacksand. That was delayed gratification.

– Once inside the tower, I ascend the stairs. On each floor is a single room. These encounters are optional, as you could just ignore the door and keep climbing the stairs, but you know what adventurers are like… Luckily, I have garlic (I don’t remember where from – a market stall, maybe?) and so don’t get auto-killed by a vampire. The lantern I bought in Market Square comes in real handy too, and I end up with the long-lost Ring of the Golden Eye, which is nice.

– How have I heard of this ring, and what more do I know about it other than it sees through illusions? Why is it long-lost? From where or who?

– Interestingly, Zanbar Bone is not found on the highest room in the tower, unlike Zagor or Balthus Dire. It’s actually possible to miss him until you reach the top floor and get directed back downstairs. I like this for the way it messes with your expectations.

– Less interestingly, but probably unsurprisingly, there’s a very real chance that you will die at this point in the quest, as the curse of the One True Way rears its ugly head again. I’ve already mentioned the lack of any guidance as to which two compounds are the correct ones to rub into Zanbar Bone’s eyes after you paralyse him with the arrow, but Bone resides on a level of the tower that has two doors off the staircase. There is no guidance or hint as to which door you should go through first. If you go into Bone’s room first and take the option to interact with the room, you die. If you go into the other room first, defeat the monster there, and get the Ring of the Golden Eye, then you see through Bone’s illusion just in time to avoid insta-death.

– Statistically, the odds of completing this book without cheating are astronomically low. I’m not even going to try to calculate the odds of taking the One True Way through Port Blacksand, but if you assume the player finds every one of the McGuffins (tattoo, arrow, pearls, lotus and hag’s hair – of which I only found three on this play-through), and win or avoid every battle, you’re left with a 1 in 3 chance of picking the right compound combination to kill Bone, and now a 1 in 2 chance of picking the right door on this floor. That alone is a 1 in 6 chance of making the right decision both times.

– Bone is a skeleton in a robe. He pulls out three of his teeth to summon skeletons to attack me. I hope for his sake that his teeth grow back, because otherwise he’s going to become increasingly gap-toothed over the centuries of his undying existence. Not that he has immortality to worry about now that I’m here, but…

– The skeletons are mildly challenging opponents (averaging Skill 7, Stamina 7), but they attack me one at a time, so I just walk through them. If you’ve seen Jason and the Argonauts, you know how scary skeletons can be as opponents if they swarm you. These guys are too polite to be scary and I smash them to pieces, one by one.

– Actually fighting Zanbar Bone doesn’t involve a combat, or even a Skill test (not that that term is actually a thing in Fighting Fantasy yet). It’s a Luck test, with failure being another instant death experience. If you’re Lucky, you manage to shoot Bone through the heart and paralyse him. Now you get to find out if the choice you made about which two substances to use in the compound was the correct one.

– Disappointingly, the two incorrect choices have literally identical sudden death paragraphs, as Bone recovers from his paralysis and drains the life out of you. I know Jackson and Livingstone were churning these books out as fast as the audience could read them in the early days, but a slight variation wouldn’t take too long to tap into the typewriter, right?

– Pick the correct one and Bone crumbles to dust. It’s almost anti-climactic. After you burn down the tower to make sure no other monster makes use of it, you return to Silverton and get given lots of material rewards by Owen Carralif and his fellow citizens. When do the Fighting Fantasy books start giving you a final page that doesn’t involve a big pile of gold and jewels?

– Oh. It already has. Starship Traveller had you find your way back to Earth. Okay, when do the fantasy books in the series stop just being about winning a wheelbarrow full of gold at the end, and actually start giving you other motivations?

– Since the next book is Deathtrap Dungeon, about a dungeon-crawling competition, with a prize of 10,000 gold pieces, I guess it’s not that one…

– I’ve bitched a lot about the One True Wayism of this book, but how would I do it differently, 40 years of gamebook design later? If I’m going to criticise, I should at least be constructive about it.

– Right, first of all, Zanbar Bone isn’t living in a tower somewhere in the wilderness. The book is about Port Blacksand (it’s right there in the title), and it’s clear from the excellent world-building and the joyfully wild illustrations that both Ian Livingstone and Iain McCaig love the place. Everything after leaving the city, the final part of the book’s three-act structure, feels like an anticlimax. Set the entire story in Port Blacksand. Give Zanbar Bone a walled estate there, where he resides in an uneasy truce with Lord Azzur: “Don’t ask me to pay taxes or inquire too closely into my business and I’ll help defend the city from any threats and won’t turn you into a zombie, does that sound fair to you?”

– The Port Blacksand sequence of the book can be split into two acts: the search for Nicodemus and the search for the McGuffins needed to kill Zanbar Bone. The first act is a neat exploration of just how awful and bizarre the City of Thieves is, although it feels like you’re riding a railroad rather than actually searching for him. Although you occasionally ask people if they know where Nicodemus lives, that hardly feels like the main focus of what you’re actually doing, as the book steers you right to his front door and then there’s no challenge in getting him to reveal Zanbar Bone’s vulnerabilities. Instead, allow the player to visit Key, Market and Clock Street, rather than cutting the player off from the other routes through the city, and have them check several different shops, inns and the like on each road, asking people specifically where I can find Nicodemus, rather than just shopping, looting or getting robbed. Have the protagonist focus on their objective, and let the world build itself around the reader. Finding Nicodemus involves doing side-quests for someone who has heard of a retired wizard living in a particular district, and then someone aware of what street he lives on, and finally someone who knows that he lives in that hut under the Singing Bridge.

– Maybe we’d even find out in the process why J. B. Wraggins hates Nicodemus with such a murderous passion, although I think I might prefer the apparent irrationality of his loathing. Wraggins’ vendetta could even be a part of the plot – he hires you to murder Nicodemus and tells you where to find him, although you’re probably just going to play along, maybe even warn Nicodemus that Wraggins is after him.

– I like the idea that Nicodemus knows already, and finds the monthly assassination attempts to be perfect for keeping him in practice at magecraft.

– And no, Nicodemus has no idea why Wraggins hates him either.

– Act Two, the hunt for the McGuffins, is a hub quest: starting at maybe Nicodemus’s house, you head out to likely areas to find items, or to find someone who can point you towards them, based on Nicodemus’s knowledge of the city in which he lives.

– The actual City of Thieves uses the encounter with Sourbelly and Fatnose to curtail your exploration of Port Blacksand. The murder of one or both of these bullies is such a big event that you’re forced to flee the city. (Or, alternatively, you flee the city rather than risk being bullied by them, a development that always struck me as odd.) I guess there had to be some end-point to your search for the McGuffins. However, in a hub quest variant of the adventure, I’d suggest a Heat score that builds up as you commit crimes or otherwise draw the attention of authorities around Blacksand. When your Heat reaches a certain level, the city guards go on a manhunt for you and you flee the city, automatically failing the mission to kill Bone in his walled estate there. At certain points, if your Heat score is at a particular level, you might have encounters with the guards, or even with Zanbar Bone’s servants.

– I’ve just remembered that Master of Chaos uses a Notoriety score for pretty much the same purpose, with a certain score forcing you to set out, perhaps prematurely, on an expedition across a desert to hunt down the Big Bad.

– Anyway, once you’re ready to face Bone, you break into his estate and murder him in pretty much the way already written, but without the reliance on a hidden One True Way to insta-kill 83% of protagonists. There should almost always be hints as to what the correct choice should be.

– So that’s how I’d do City of Thieves, a book that was written 40 years ago as part of a series that sold nearly 20 million copies and is still in print today. Talk about ego…

– Next up, Deathtrap Dungeon, in which I’ll try and accept that it’s explicitly a dungeon crawler and embrace the tropes thereof.

– Generating an AI cover image for City of Thieves was frustrated by very few of the cities I generated looking anywhere near horrible enough to be Port Blacksand. Still, here’s what I came up with: