Flying Buffalo, $8.95, ISBN 0-940244-01-2
Fantasy, 2013
Just like how there is more to tabletop RPG outside of Dungeons & Dragons, there is more to gamebooks than Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy. Amusingly, Tunnels & Trolls fit both categories well. It’s a tabletop system, and it’s also a gamebook or solo adventure. and Buffalo Castle is an updated version of the 1976 original, by the late and legendary Rick Loomis himself.
As everything from tabletop gaming these days is developed by people that are more concerned with being woke than capable, and who knows what is happening with the gamebook scene anymore, thank goodness you can still purchase and enjoy the old school stuff from places such as DriveThruRPG!
Buffalo Castle is for a first level warrior, designed to be played based on the Tunnels & Trolls system. Oh don’t worry about being not familiar with that, as you, being a gamebook player, has the power to warp space and time to overcome any encounter or roll based on a rule that perplexes you. Which to say, you can cheat.
You have been sitting in a tavern in a new town, slaking your thirst, and grumbling to yourself about how bad things have been the last few weeks. You’ve been bragging to the tavern wench (Author’s note: if you are playing a female character, substitute “handsome barkeep” whenever I mention “tavern wench”) about how you are used to the finer things in life, ever since you killed that dragon in ‘06, but lately there just don’t seem to be any good quests available. You think you’ve sparked her interest a bit, and are hoping for more than just some more ale. All of a sudden an important looking man walks into the tavern, and catches the lady’s eye. She points at you, and he walks over.
Yup, this is a campaign that, were it to have a tongue, the tongue is firmly pressed against the cheek. You can tell, surely.
The man is the mayor of the place, and he wants you to help obtain a cure for a sick child. This cure is in the possession of a wizard that is, frankly, bonkers and the wizard naturally lives in a big castle full of traps, doors to opened at random, and twists and turns that you wander off into based on your whim. Actually, you really shouldn’t look at the back, because there is a map of the whole castle there—a map that you should look at only when you wish to adapt this campaign into a multiplayer one and you are going to be the DM. You won’t cheat that way, will you?
Buffalo Castle is, unfortunately, a campaign that remains relevant due to its status as one of the first solo adventures that predated Choose Your Own Adventure, one written by the founder of Flying Buffalo to boot. As a campaign, it is pretty simple, but more unfortunate is how it is just a short and simple adventure of turning here and there, and whacking some monsters. While this may be fun as a momentary diversion on a slow day, it is also forgettable through and through.
The tongue-in-cheek nature of the narrative can keep things interesting for a while, but there aren’t many memorable encounters or scenes here. Things happen just because, such as a monster giving you a special item when you succeed in a Charisma roll. Why would it do that? Well, that’s because you made a lucky roll of the die, that’s why. Rather than letting you escape into a fantasy that allows you to rise from a zero to hero, this one constantly reminds you that you are just pretending to be a fighter, and this campaign has no story; just roll the die and make your next move, in other words.
While this might be fine at a time when there were limited to zero opportunities for a gamebook experience, these days there are far more sophisticated gamebooks that offer a more immersive vicarious experience. Hence, this one may appeal more to collectors, and hunting down a hard copy of this baby, as opposed to merely purchasing the digital copy, may be a more complex and exciting adventure compared to the one within the covers here.
