The Adventures of Average Joe: In Memory of The Punk

This is part 3 of my adventures through Deathtrap Dungeon. There are links to the other parts at the bottom of the page!

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Throm is quick to accept Average Joe as a travelling companion, desperate as he is to fill the void left by The Punk. While he carves a small epitaph, Joe steals the troll’s things. We travel through a dangerous cavern and my character makes a bad joke and feel a little embarrassed for him, though the feeling is probably mutual.

Things look like they’re going to get serious, though, as we encounter a dwarf, a trialmaster of the dungeon. I’ve been warned about them earlier. Uh-oh.

He gives me a test. I have to roll two dice and guess whether the total will be equal to, greater than or less than eight. Obviously I guess less than, but I manage to roll eleven. The dwarf then tells me I’m rubbish at playing the odds and that he has to punish me. This is annoying. Less than is the logical answer, is it my fault that fate isn’t on my side?

The Adventures of Ian ‘Feeling Lucky’ Punk, Part 2: More Death

I continue my journey as Ian ‘Feeling Lucky’ Punk (I swear this joke isn’t getting old for me) and come across another door, which of course I explore. I mean, there isn’t really anything else to do in a dungeon. The door slams shut behind me. I suspect this won’t be the last time that happens in this place. I receive a magic gold ring.

I then come to a column of light containing disembodied faces laughing maniacally.

Sure I’ll walk through it. What could go wrong? Doing so gives me a poem containing advice.

More events transpire and I acquire a dagger, run away from a giant fly, fall down a pit, find a ruby, talk to a nice old man, reach section 100 (nothing special happens) and section 87, which reads only ‘The door opens into a large room. Turn to 381’, making it fairly pointless. I suspect it’s only there to make the total number of sections 400 rather than 399.

In this room there’s a skeleton with a sword and a piece of parchment in its hand. I know what’s going to happen but I can’t resist the temptation. The Punk is feeling lucky (still not old), so he touches the parchment.

The skeleton jumps up and attacks but I somehow manage to defeat it without being too badly mauled. Winning earns me a map and some more bad poetry. This map has a room with a large monster drawn in the middle. I’m sure that will be really useful, thanks. The middle of the room, not the edge.

The Adventures of Ian ‘Feeling Lucky’ Punk, Part 1: The Adventure Begins (and ends twice)

This post is something different to anything I’ve done before, but that doesn’t mean it will be original. It’s a write-up of my progress through Deathtrap Dungeon, a choose-your-own-adventure book. (That’s one of these.) I’ll be playing the part of a character trying to navigate his way through the dungeon to reach fame, glory, wealth and so on. For these kinds of books the reader makes the decisions about what to do.

I stole this idea from a cool blog I came across, but stole it for a reason. A friend and I are writing a choose-your-own-adventure story and I’m doing ‘research’ by playing the old Fighting Fantasy game books I have. I’m going to go through them and decide what I like and dislike about them, which will help me when writing my own, with any luck.

I roll up the stats for my character a discover that luck is in plentiful supply, though nothing else is. Ian ‘Feeling Lucky’ Punk, as my character shall be called, has a pathetic 7 skill and 15 stamina but the maximum of 12 luck. He’s going to have to rely on his wits and charm to get through this alive. Oh, and possibly the old befriend-betray trick if he meets one of the other contestants in the dungeon.

Note 1: I don’t want to use dice or stats in my adventure; it’s supposed to be about making decisions, and the luck undermines that a bit. Well, not always, as when you’re low on stamina you have to play more carefully, which informs the decisions you make, but chance can punish you even if you make the right decisions. That’s not what I want to do with my adventure.