Another day, another gamebook. Specifically, another Fighting Fantasy one. I just can’t resist the call of this legendary gamebook series. I’m weak, I admit it.
We’ve fought not-Dracula and a rad laser skeleton and silly reptilians as Cool Tony (saviour of the human race), and this time around it’s something a little different. This time around we’re playing a ‘loving homage’ (read: shameless rip-off) of a little movie series called Mad Max. This time we’re playing the thirteenth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Freeway Fighter.
I like the Mad Max series as much as the next guy, because what’s not to love? I think it fits the FF aesthetic as well, having plenty of natural decisions that would pop up as you explore around some sort of waste and/or destroyed buildings, like some sort of warrior on the roads. Great atmosphere, solid aesthetic, opportunity for tons of action against leather-clad bandits; it’s the perfect setting for a CYOA book.
This is the first time I’ve previously played the gamebook being covered. Freeway Fighter was one of the first physical FF books I ever played back in my youth. It started with Island of the Lizard King (book number seven for those interested) when I found it on my dad’s bookshelf one day, then I managed to find a few more in my local public library some amount of years later. I can only remember two of the three, with one being Freeway Fighter. The other one I remember? Maybe we’ll get there one day.
I think after this one, I’ll take a little break from FF books. Not because I’m not a fan, as I mean it should be obvious by now how utterly incorrect that is, but just for a little more variety. I’ve got some ideas for the next 'A [Insert Silly Book] Adventure' article, don’t worry. Maybe some adventures starring a man who could be described as an ‘isolated canine’, or maybe even some books that may cause your skin to form bumps like that of the flesh of a goose; or maybe I’ll seek love and romance again, or pull out one of my real wildcard memes from my treasure trove of random books. There’s so many options, and only time will tell what I subject you to.
I have such things to show you.
Luckily it’s been a long time since I played the book, and I only really remember the stuff with the car (oh yeah), a couple of the situations, and some of the unique combat mechanics. So luckily it’ll be practically a first time run-through.
The Mechanics
Here are the simple rules to follow when participating in some nonsense Fighting Fantasy books;- Three stats: Skill; your combat ability; Stamina; your health, Luck; your luckiness. You determine your stats each time you play the book by rolling a d6. Your Skill and Luck stats are rolled with 1d6, while your Endurance is rolled with 2d6. When rolling your stats, you usually add 6 to your roll for your total Skill, 12 to your roll for your total Stamina, and 6 again to the roll for your total Luck but this may change from book to book. In Freeway Fighter, you actually add 24 to your rolled die number to determine your Stamina.
- You will need at least a single d6 die, but it would make things a little easier to have two.
- Sometimes you’ll be called upon to ‘Test’ one of your stats. To do this, roll 2d6; if the total is equal to or lower than your stat, you’ve succeeded. After Testing specifically Luck, you lower it by 1 afterwards regardless of if you succeeded at it or not. Your luck can eventually run out, so be wary.
- In combat, you roll 2d6 and add your Skill to it and do the same for the enemy, adding it to their listed Skill. Whoever has the highest total number deals damage to the other, then you repeat and keep going until it’s settled. You always deal 2 damage to an opponent's Stamina when hitting them, but they may do more to you as listed in their description when you encounter them. If you want you can Test Your Luck when dealing damage to a creature to double your damage on a success, but if you fail you deal only 1. You can also Test Your Luck when being hit by a creature to reduce it to only 1 damage on a success, but if you fail you take double instead. It’s a risky move indeed.
- You can eat a Provision (some books call them Meals) at any time as long as you’re not currently fighting something and you have Provisions left, and it will restore 4 Stamina for each one you eat. You usually start with 10 Provisions/Meals, depending on the book. In Freeway Fighter, meals are instead called ‘med-kits’ and you start with 10.
- Some games also have gold or some money system to track, as you can sometimes spend it at stores at certain points or use it to bribe your way out of things. In Freeway Fighter, you start with 200 ‘creds’ (which I guess still exist in a Mad Max-esque anarchy?)
- Don’t die.
Freeway Fighter has quite a few unique mechanics going on in it, with the biggest one being that you have your own murder machine at your disposal, a Dodge Interceptor. It has its own stats generated the same as yours and filling similar rolls, being ‘Firepower’ (Skill) and ‘Armour’ (Stamina). Once again, you add a whopping 24 points to your rolled number when determining your car’s Armour. It’s also armed to the teeth; you have mounted machine guns with unlimited ammo, four missiles which instantly defeat any foe when used in car combat, three uses of deployable iron spikes to pop some tires, and two uses of oil sprayers to slick some roads.
Outside of the addition of your car, there’s also some changes to the human combat as well. When in melee, you only deal 1 damage to opponents when not using a weapon; but, after dealing 6 damage to someone, you knock them unconscious. This also extends to you, so don’t get knocked out. If you find a melee weapon, your damage may increase so you can really start knocking dudes out quickly. Also added in is ranged gun combat, which works the same way as normal save for the damage it inflicts; whenever you or an opponent is successfully shot, the attack deals 1d6 damage instead of a static number. Brutal.
You also cannot use your Luck in combat to reduce or increase your damage, making it only used for sections calling for you to Test Your Luck. As well, it’s not mentioned in the rules section of the book but whenever you get into a ranged shoot-out, if you get hit more than once in it you’ll have your Skill permanently lowered by 1 afterwards.
With these actually pretty cool sounding unique mechanics out of the way (come on, you have a murder car), let’s get into the Fighting Fantasy article standard; the silly dramatic Octopus intro.
The Intro
The hum of the electric generators drone on, as you stare at the desk in front of you in the dingy tent you’ve come to call your ‘house’. It’s a sound you’ve come to know very well in…you laugh. You can’t even remember how long it’s been anymore. You laugh, and then laugh even more when you realize you can’t even hear yourself over the neverending cacophony of the generators outside. It’s all the better, you think, when your laughter chokes into tears; it’s best no one else in the New Hope compound hears you laughing and crying to yourself. Though, you suppose, what would they even do about it if they did hear you? You knock the papers loose off your desk before you even realize you’re doing it, as your fists punch the hard plastic table. It hurts, you think, but you can’t even really feel it as you wipe the tears away from the table.It’s been hard to think lately, in the middle of the electrical hum, the blazing sun beating down on your face when you stare out at the wastes from on top the perimeter line towers, the rifle in your hands. You see the distant drifting trails of smoke clouds over the horizon, the ruins of cities strangled by wreckage and the gangs of animals fighting over them. You think nothing then, just feeling the occasional breeze of air on you and the sound of the generators. Though, at night, when you stare at your tent ceiling, lying on your military cot, and the whine of the emergency power has been turned off, that’s when you can’t stop them. The thoughts pour off of you like water, bitter as gasoline.
It wasn’t always like this, you think. You weren’t always like this. At one point, you were working on an early warning alarm system for the walled town. Over time, your optimism wore down.
You remember, faintly, as the memories seem so distant now, as if they’ve drifted loose from you. You can dimly see them when you close your eyes, lights dancing in the darkness of your mind, taunting you. Sometimes you can reach them, when the cool night air is silent from the distant cracks of gunfire as the scavengers come out to hunt.
You can faintly recall the news reports. ‘World War III has been averted’. You remember seeing it on the TV screen through the window, standing outside your old front door, the discharge papers still in your hand as you knock. The door opens, and you’re a rubber faced clown in front of them as you immediately break down in tears of relief and happiness. You’re home. In an hour, you’re in the park with them. You can’t remember them anymore, but you can remember the park swings.
It wasn’t long before the news reports started to change. First it was a few isolated cases of sudden death due to ‘an unexplained viral illness’. Then it was a dozen, then a hundred; within hours it was cross-country. Within days, it was worldwide. You remember standing in front of your window overlooking the packed street. A group was kicking your neighbours door in, and it wasn't long before you heard the crack of gunfire in the mass of cars. You ran to the other room, going towards your gun case that held your service weapons. You hear them in the other room. You remember hearing them, but you still can't remember them. They've been eroded away, broken off your memory by time and agony. You think it's probably your own mind doing it.
When the nights get their quietest, you often think of the time before you came to New Hope. The things you saw, the things you did. The time you spent tearing up asphalt in your Dodge Interceptor, lost in the vine choked wreckage of what used to be. Every pull of the trigger took something from you, from who you were before. Memories, and bits of your own sanity, you're beginning to realize.
You're lying in your cot now, and you're not even sure when you got here. The drone of the generators has been silent for some time. Ah; that's why you’ve been thinking again. The grey of the evening light is just starting to give way to the dark of night.
They say 85% of the world’s population died in four days. Some of the remaining 15%, immune to the virus for whatever reason, turned to anarchy. They haunt the concrete graveyards, tearing each other apart over whatever they can. Gas and cars, mainly, two things more valuable than anything else in this new hell. Some have instead tried to hold on to what was lost, walling themselves off into guarded compounds, like the one you're in. New Hope, studying sustainable seeds. Why does it even matter anymore? Especially now that your supply of gasoline to power your generators is going to run out within a week. Once it runs out, New Hope will be just like every other corpse on the road, and it won't be long before the savages come to pick the bones clean.
The footsteps of the two men entering your tent are distant, and muted. It is until they begin to speak that you focus on them. It isn’t until you hear the words “10,000 liters of gasoline” that you actually listen.
By the next afternoon, you’re in front of it; something you haven’t seen in…you can’t remember. The last few days have had you working with the mechanics to prepare it. You laugh again, but this time you can stop. Something about the sight of it pulls something out of you that you haven’t felt in however long it’s been. As you open the armoured, metal door, and get behind the wheel once again, you feel hope.
San Anglo, a reinforced oil refinery to the south, radio contacted New Hope with an offer for a trade; 10,000 liters of gasoline for enough seeds to set them up for years of food production. It was an offer that neither side could go without, and so you were asked to make the journey. The last chance of New Hope. You are to drive to San Anglo with the seeds, then make your way back in an oil rig truck with 10,000 liters of fuel.
Your old Interceptor comes to life around you. Missile pods, machine gun attachments, oil slick canisters, and spike trap strips; not to mention enough armour to actually give you a fighting chance. The journey is going to be harrowing. You check your revolver sights one last time, and slide in six cold steel bullets into the chambers. You know the outside world all too well. Barbaric bandits, scavenger gangs and even the elements themselves. But you’ll make it. Being in your old car awakens something in you, and with that fire comes something else; another memory. Your name.
You rev the engine, feeling it in your chest as it comes to life, a beast shaking off the sleep of a cold winter. The gated door rises up, and you tear out into hell. You’ll get that gasoline. You’ll make it, or your name isn’t Big Bob Riggs.
The Run
I finished Freeway Fighter in 4 attempts, which is about to be expected for an average FF book.The successful version of Big Bob Riggs was a man who had a few things against him, but was too ****ing cool and lucky to let it hold him back. He had a paltry 8 Skill which nearly killed him many times, but finally something that’s never happened before in this series occurred; I rolled 12 Luck, the maximum possible amount. Thank god, because you absolutely need it in this book. He only had 8 Skill, but Big Bob Riggs rolled like a god on his car stats and managed to get a Firepower of 11 and a total Armour of 33. His Dodge Interceptor was an absolute unit.
What am I supposed to do, not jump the bridge in a death defying stunt? Big Bob Rigs is a man of action!
It’s okay, I got this.
****.
Freeway Fighter is a pretty interesting entry in the FF series. It’s one that doesn’t really have much direction going on in it. You of course have your objective to get the petrol and make it back, but 90% of the book is just you kinda wandering around the totally-not-Mad Max wasteland until you find yourself at the end. I’m not complaining about this mind you, as I greatly enjoyed my time with this book; just that it’s rare for a FF book to be this mostly aimless in its passage progression.
Ever wanted to fight an inexplicably appearing mystery cowboy bandit? Freeway Fighter’s got you covered.
Things definitely do go down in this book, that’s for damn sure. From participating in a no holds barred two-man race held by what seem like some kinda just chill people all things considered, to the numerous car fights, snake bites, finding quite a few bizarre characters on the roads, Mexican standoff duels, to battling a dude who’s totally-not-The Humongous; great book, man.
Can anyone other than Big Bob Riggs do anything? I’m sure this Sinclair fellow will be fine.
I have to give a little bit of credit to the writing this time. It’s not high creative fiction of course, but it carries a strong thematic ‘drive’ though-out the book using some solid descriptive sections and carries a feeling of speed. The race in particular has a fantastic feel to it, really selling the action of this brutal car chase/fight/race. There’s also a section right near the end before you get your tanker, when you’re sneaking up on a camp of Doom Dogs and their leader, the Animal (definitely not The Humongous, as previously said) that also stood out to me writing wise. For every one of these standouts of course, there’s plenty of dull passages; but I still have to give it a mention. Plenty of other books are all par-for-the-course descriptions so it’s nice to see some effort every once in a while.
Sorry, for a second there I thought I was watching Initial D.
The unique mechanics going on the book are pretty well designed, and do really make the book feel like a desperate race for survival. My Skill at one point was lowered to 6 as a result of getting into some ranged shoot-outs, which was absolutely oof. I particularly like the fist fight rules where you only need to deal 6 damage to opponents to knock them out, or take 6 yourself to get knocked out; really makes it feel in line with something like, say, Mad Max (just the first thing that popped into my head, no idea why) where the brawls are over quick and dirty. It’s not as big of an element as it should be though, as there’s only two fist fights that you can get into where you can actually get knocked out (there’s a few more against wild dogs, but those are “to the death” and don’t use the knock out rule). The second Big Bob Riggs was in fact defeated in this way by one of the two possible brawls, though, and the game over as a result of being knocked out is pretty sad.
They don’t just beat you up; they steal your car, man. Sad.
Combat is pretty frequent this time around, and I definitely recommend trying for a high Skill when playing through it, and not just for making combat easier (more on that later). I wouldn’t say any of the combat sections are particularly bull**** compared to the ones in Vault of the Vampire; enemies have pretty fair Skill and Stamina values, and you have more than enough opportunities to heal up and find weapons and items to make the combat easier. It’s pretty standard as far as the combat difficulty goes, even accounting for the more swing-y nature of it due to the prevalence of ranged shoot-outs and their random d6 damage.
The real difficulty of Freeway Fighter comes with one of its unique car mechanics, and something that dominates the whole book in thematic influence; fuel. You gotta get that fuel. At least three times per run it will ask you if you’ve managed to find any fuel, and if you haven’t it's an immediate game over. That’s rough, buddy. You can find fuel only through participating in the random nonsense of the book of course, and so it really encourages you to always go for the random nonsense when you encounter it; you really have to be proactive in Freeway Fighter the first time through until you know specifically where you can find fuel.
And so came a close to the life of Big Bob Rigs the Second, defeated by a lack of fuel. Sad.
Of course, this leaves you at the books mercy frequently as you’re forced to engage with the nonsense for that sweet drop of petrol. There are more sadistic ****ing books in the series, even by author (and co-founder of the whole thing) Ian Livingstone, but Freeway Fighter is no slouch. It’s counterbalanced by the fact you have more health than a normal book a little bit, and I didn’t encounter that many real ‘50/50 death’ guessing games, but it liberally wears down your Stamina and even Skill through it’s nonsense. There are also so many Test Your Luck checks in the final stretch that I lost count; this is the first book we’ve covered here that I think a high Luck stat is almost mandatory. But it’s your Skill stat that will literally determine if you beat Freeway Fighter. There is not one, not two, but three separate instances in the homestretch where if you fail a Skill test, you fail. ****. You. Freeway Fighter.
Bull****, ****ing nonsense ****. ****. I’m okay.
The first one isn’t a test technically but if you have 5 or less Skill and didn’t find a bulletproof vest, you’re dead. You may think “5 Skill? Of course you’d fail!” but keep in mind that if you get shot too many times, or get bitten by too many glove compartment rattlesnakes, you’re losing a Skill point. The other two, including the one above in the image, are genuine ‘Test or Fail’ events which are just obscene. At least Vault of the Vampire just had one mandatory Faith test at the end, not two. And don’t even get me started about the rat bite.
The art this time is a mixed bag. There is more than in our previous Rebel Planet, but what’s here is of maybe average quality. At least Rebel Planet had some bangers, if the art was few and far between. I remember reading that the original planned art for Freeway Fighter had to be replaced for some reason or another, and what they were able to fill it with was a rush job to make the deadline. That kind of makes sense. The art just has that ‘rushed’ feel to it, with strange anatomy decisions and just ever so slightly off vibes in general.
Wandering apocalypse cowboy is a hell of a protagonist, but he’s no Big Bob Riggs.
The book describes Mr. Roman Chariot Thirst Trap here as having a ‘double barreled machine gun’. How does that work? Do the barrels spin? Are there two different chambers? Wouldn’t that be really prone to jamming? It’s Fallout 4’s weapon designs all over again.
Overall, I enjoyed more of Freeway Fighter than I didn’t. It pulls of it’s totally-not-Mad Max aesthetic well, has some great events in it (the race in particular), and has some utter bull**** of course but you just have to accept that when you play one of these books. I’d recommend it; it’s more even than Rebel Planet which ultimately disappointed me, and I think a little more exciting than Vault of the Vampire, the final battle against Count Heydrich withstanding. I give it the highest rating yet of an 8/10, and anything that lets me explode motorcycles turned into scythe equipped chariot carts while driving my armoured up Dodge Interceptor is a winner in my book.
Bonus Round
Here’s the usual extra stuff I couldn’t work into the article, with no context.
Where the **** are they getting laser guns from?
I think this artist just likes drawing muscle-y apocalypse men, which I can respect.
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