Fighting Fantasy #48 - Moonrunner
Written by Stephen Hand
Illustrated by Martin McKenna
Publisher - Puffin Books 1992
ISBN - 0140349375
Section Count - 400

When I first bought my copy of Moonrunner from a local second-hand shop I was interested more in having it for my collection than spending the time actually reading it. The cover art for Moonrunner did little to pique my interest and for a number of years it has remained tucked away, waiting for the time when I might finally get round to playing it through. That time came recently and as it proved to be a book from which a reader could form a number of very different opinions I thought it would make a good subject for a review.

For this reason I have written, for your consideration, a review of Fighting Fantasy #48 - Moonrunner.

I can say to start that I do not have all the FF books, but I do have most and I have found that the quality of the stories can range from barely pedestrian to excellent. This does not mean that I don't enjoy them all, it is just for different reasons. I am somewhat undecided about where exactly Moonrunner fits within this range however. There are some aspects of its writing and gameplay that are very good, but also there exists an underlying difficulty with how the adventure plays out that detracts greatly from its ability to keep a reader engaged.

The first thing that struck me about the book is the amount of work the author must have put into the planning and design of the adventure. As will be seen later this story is set mostly within one particular location, but manages to tread a path to every corner of it. Having written a few gamebooks in my time I know how challenging it can be, keeping the logic of a story consistent no matter what options the reader may take. In all but a few cases the author was able to provide a solid connection between the sections even when the story paths became quite complex.

You begin this adventure as a Hero of some note, having done many brave and impressive things over the years. Your objective is very straightforward and given to you right from the introduction. An Arch-villain has deposited himself somewhere in the town of Blackhaven and it is your task to find him and bring him to justice. For you there are personal reasons for taking it on, and as an objective it is one that seems relatively straightforward, that is until you actually begin the adventure. What unfolds before you is a convoluted search, one that contains many pitfalls and so many ways to die quickly that it easily becomes quite irritating.

The town of Blackhaven is well represented by its map, and the illustrations are very nicely done, bringing a creepy mood to many of the encounters you face. Of the positive things about the book I must say that the illustrations were at the top of the list. Well drawn and relevant to the storyline I found them better than most, and because of them the book itself proved a little easier to trawl through.

Character generation is simple and a choice of Special Skills gives your hero a number of very useful talents. It proved in the course of the adventure that the skills you choose affect your ability to succeed in the quest considerably. Some skills are relied upon a lot whilst others aren't used at all. It did seem that the possession of some of the skills was essential to finishing the story. In many cases there could be no progress forward unless you did have the skill required and important items or paths in the story were lost if you didn't, leading to an ultimate failure later in the book.

Although the general rules common to most FF books are used, a large number of special rules pertaining to different items or circumstances are introduced in the body of the story. Most of these rules seemed overly complex and I am sure would not have been properly noted or remembered by most players. I know I didn't.

I found the writing style uncluttered and direct although it did have its atmospheric and inventive moments. The general feel of the setting was dark and chaotic and the writer did give a good account of a town lost to villainy and the machinations of an evil power. There were however, many sections where the fortunes of the hero could turn on the span of a few sentences. Abruptly a reader would find themselves imprisoned or about to be killed and then just as abruptly make a miraculous escape, usually without any real explanation. A number of times I found myself re-reading a section just to determine what had happened for I was sure I had missed something important.

Much of the adventure is spent making your way around Blackhaven, trying to find the devices or artifacts that others tell you are important to the quest. Most proved to be so in the end but it was a tedious business, the need to return to the same section over and over a part of the story that could have been treated differently. Ultimately the hero spends the majority of his time finding these items whilst convenient messages and directions fall into his hands as he is doing so. Finding the villain of the piece, Karam Gruul, takes a while, and mostly only after considerable effort has been expended on the finding of the needed items.

Although I will give nothing away on the conclusion to this story I can say that it is satisfactory. The final confrontation is nicely measured to what you have done in your quest and in the end you even find out what a Moonrunner is, something that had me wondering from the beginning of the adventure.

It took me five restarts to find an end to this story. You die very easily along the way but with each time through you begin to see a logic to what you should or shouldn't do in the town. The encounters in the main are very good. There are more than enough demonic, spectral and just plain ugly things to fight, and most do enhance the horror/fantasy style brought to the setting. Once or twice I did find myself up against particularly difficult opponents only to be saved by the most unlikely of circumstances. It is a lesson learnt by one particular adversary that you shouldn't stand on the top of a hill in a thunderstorm if you are made of metal.

The most curious aspect of this book is the tangled path you have to follow to eventually find the villain and then bring him to justice. There is no real logic to it, and mostly your finding of Karam Gruul relies on information fed to you as the book progresses, rather than unearthing it yourself through any process of deduction or discovery. The number of red herrings thrown your way is huge, and many end in a quick and unavoidable death. It is an unnecessary feature of the book that it is very easy to die, and it does leave the reader having to restart the book, or retrace steps far more times than the story should require.

There is a lot to Moonrunner that I found enjoyable. You get to meet a lot of characters, fight a large number of unusual creatures, and have to work out one particularly clever puzzle to obtain one of the items needed to defeat the villain. There were times however, when I could easily have put the book down but in the end I found myself challenged enough to find a way through the maze of options and dead-ends to reach its conclusion.

Moonrunner is not the sort of gamebook that I would read again once completed. In finishing the story you must exhaust almost all the searching, travelling and fighting required to find its end, and in the final confrontation with Karam Gruul it is evident that little of the story remains undiscovered to make a further reading worthwhile.

In conclusion I can say that as a part of the FF series Moonrunner is certainly not the worst, and if you want a story that requires a lot of leg-work on the part of the Hero then this is the one for you.

Ratings: out of 5

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