Fatemaster

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This short-lived fantasy series was published by Unwin in the mid-eighties. Its most notable characteristic is its mapping system. Many sections of the text are accompanied by chunks of a map, and the reader must copy these chunks onto hex or graph paper as he or she plays, thus easily keeping track of which areas have been explored and which haven't. I really enjoy this sort of thing for some reason, and I think many gamebooks could have benefit from maps this precise. The rest of the system is fairly standard, though it does show a bit of creativity. Rather than using hit points, players lose points from their attributes, thus making their characters weaker in combat as they sustain damage. Spell-casting is also nice, with a lengthy list of possible spells to cast, each costing a certain number of points; it's not as flexible or impressive as the Sorcery system, but it's workable. It appears that only two books were released, with a third never making it past the planning stage. Perhaps the series met its end as the direct result of its flexibility -- there's so much to do in each book, you almost don't need another one. Still, it's always a shame to see a series die prematurely, and while the end of Fatemaster isn't as tragic as the failure of Fabled Lands, it would have been nice to watch the series evolve further.

This page is under construction. If and when I complete these books, I'll add further reviews.

1. Treachery in Drakenwood
Author: Paul Vernon
Illustrator: Barrie Morton
First Published: 1986
ISBN: 0-04-793080-2
Length: 500 sections (plus prologue, epilogue and rules)
Plot Summary: You're an adventurer in search of fame and fortune, and you feel that the best way to achieve this is to rescue the kidnapped Lady Arowen from her evil captors.
Translations: French, Italian
My Thoughts: I've only made a cursory first attempt at playing this book, but for the most part, I like what I see. There's remarkable freedom of movement thanks to the game's mapping system and the multiple approaches to the object of your quest; it almost seems more like a computer-based text adventure than a traditional gamebook due to the tone of the area descriptions and the non-linearity. Still, while I found playing the game quite entertaining, it was also disheartening in a way -- because of the openness of the adventure, there's a certain feeling that you're looking for a needle in a haystack; the frequent random encounters don't help either, since repetitive combat doesn't do much to get me excited about a gamebook. The biggest obstacle for me, though, was the grid-based mapping. The hex-based outdoor mapping works perfectly and is lots of fun for a map addict like myself, but once you get into the dungeons, things don't seem as well-thought-out. The map segments shown in the text don't include a grid, so it's hard to copy them to graph paper with accuracy. Even if you do copy them exactly, they don't always connect (following one passage, for example, leads to a message about twisting and turning passageways and sticks you somewhere completely different on the map). Once my character was killed, I decided that it would be too time-consuming to make a really serious effort to finish the adventure, and I returned it to the shelf. I'll almost certainly play again someday, as this book has a lot going for it; for the moment, though, it's just a little too much for my schedule.

2. Fortress of the Firelord

3. Marauders at Redmarsh
This book was announced at the end of book 2 but does not appear to have ever actually been published.

French Translations

Both published books were translated into French as the "Le Maître du Destin" series and released by Gallimard.

1. La Forêt du Dragon
Translation Of: Treachery in Drakenwood
Literal Translation of French Title: The Forest of the Dragon
Translator: Pascale Hervieux
Cover Illustrator: Donald Grant
First Published: 1989
ISBN: 2-07-033574-7
Length: 500 sections (plus prologue, epilogue and rules)
My Thoughts: I can't say that the new French cover art is an improvement over the original. The French edition also lacks the blank hex and graph paper included in the original British book, and its character sheet is much less fancy-looking.

2. Le Maître du Feu

Italian Translations

The books were translated into Italian under the series title "Unicorno."

1. Tradimento a Drakenwood
Translation Of: Treachery in Drakenwood
This book is not part of my collection.

2. Il signore del fuoco
This book is not part of my collection.