Can you put an end to Count Heydrich's evil reign of terror?
YOU are a hardy adventurer and have journeyed to the icy mountains of Mauristatia in search of great wealth and fortune ... but what you find there makes your blood run cold.
You discover by chance the terrible secret of the local villagers. Can YOU free them from the evil tyranny of the bloodthirsty Count, or will you too succumb to a horrifying fate?
Two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need. YOU decide which paths to take, which dangers to risk and which foes to fight!
I loved these books as a kid! For the FIGHTING FANTASY series, VAULT OF THE VAMPIRE was a little different: a completely horror-themed adventure, rather than fantasy. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of me!
The story is heavily based on DRACULA: following in the footsteps of Jonathan Harker, you start off in an Eastern European country, entering a vampire-haunted castle and fending off all kinds of foes ranging from werewolves to icy vampiresses, ghouls and bugs and much, much more. The addition of a 'faith' attribute added an extra religious element to the battles, allowing you to fend off zombies and spirits if you were faithful enough! Another fine book that didn't pander to kids - this one gave me nightmares...
NB. We just replayed this adventure a couple of times and I was struck by just how good it is - definitely one of my all-time favourite FIGHTING FANTASY adventures. The author has a PhD in Parapsychology and his expertise comes to light in the way you encounter the various nasties. The spooky atmosphere is second to none and the adventure feels really involved and complex, with loads of lore and back story, although at the same time it's easy to play.
We died early on the first time around after an unwise encounter with a sinister vampiress, but on the second playthrough we did a lot better, making the right (sometimes lucky) decisions and eventually tackling the Count himself! Sadly, he proves to be one of the toughest villains and it all comes down to a couple of dice rolls at the end...we rolled low and, needless to say, paid for it with our life.
I must admit that this is by far the most overall well-working Fighting Fantasy I have read or played. It is perfectly balanced and even if you roll badly for your stats at the beginning there are options for weaker players to balance it out when confronted with challenges. I feel Keith Martin took all the best aspects of Fighting Fantasy and created a book that is significantly superior to many of the other books in the series. A perfect blend of adventure, horror and fun.
Finally, a Fighting Fantasy gamebook that where you can finally make a map. I don't think I have read one since Trial of Champions. Ever since that one they tended to be much more quest based with choices based not so much upon which direction you headed but what action you would take. I did sort of try to make maps of some of them, but found it to be extremely difficult. Mind you there was a website called 'The Outspaced Shrine' which does a map of all of the choices that you can make in the gamebook (but it looks like it has now been taken down), but not only were they very hard to follow, they were also too large to comfortably fit on a computer screen.
While I might give this one points for the fact that we have returned to the good old dungeon crawl that I loved, it loses points for the fact that it deals with vampires, and more points for the fact that it is a gamebook based upon Dracula (you know, the story about the psychotic undead beast that lives in the haunted castle and preys upon the villagers). Okay, Bram Stoker's book was brilliant, as was the movie Nosferatu, but a billion remakes later the story ends up becoming really, really bland (despite the fact that the Doctor Who remake, State of Decay, was pretty good, but then again that period of Doctor Who also had remakes of other stories, such as the one with the minotaurs, The Horns of Nimon).
As for this particular book, well ignoring the fact that it is a remake of Dracula (though this is the first, but not the only, Dracula type Fighting Fantasy Gamebook) I thought it was set up quite well, and the fact that you can make a map from it makes it quite easy to navigate. In fact by making the map I was able to go and locate all of the areas that I needed to visit. Also, some events are based on whether you have encountered a specific person previously, and unless you actually meet them, you will have difficulties completing the book.
The book does have magic in it, though it takes the form of a ring of spell casting which you acquire at the end of the book, and it only has three random spells (and one of the spells is very useful for completing the quest, and another is also very useful for getting past a rather nasty opponent). However, the random nature of the spells makes it difficult to get the ones that you need. It also adds another stat called faith, which is used to deal with undead as well as being able to sense things that are beneficial for you. Fortunately they decided not to include a fear stat, which would have forced me to deduct points, though you can actually lose faith by doing (even inadvertently) bad things.
That one was a read down memory lane, full of nostalgia and surprise. Nostalgia because I used to read gamebooks (also called Fighting Fantasy books) when I was a kid. No, correction, I used to wolf 'em down like a starving dog! I just couldn't get enough! I honestly think that they are the reason for my undying love for books. I read those way before I discovered Tolkien, Dahl, Blyton and the likes, and they used to grip me like nobody's business. Now I (re)read them with a different eye, but (and that's where the element of surprise comes in) I still find them highly enjoyable and not as badly written as some might say. This one is about a vampire in a castle and it's your job to get rid of him; a Dracula rehash if you will, but who cares, it's all good fun. Enjoy!
On my first playthrough I was hypnotized into killing someone I wouldn't have wanted to. It was genuinely gut-punching and almost single-handedly elevated this book among my favourites.
The great writing, the atmosphere, the better-than-average illustrations, the just-right difficulty with many paths to victory, the interesting encounters, and the well-realized Faith mechanic sure don't hurt its odds either.
Just about the only flaw is that one skeleton monster with eye beams. I hate that guy.
Quite a pleasant read. The book has a nice, well depicted atmosphere and there is even a small twist. It seems that there are several ways in which one can reach the end, and that encourages replayability. A detour from the usual true path philosophy of Fighting Fantasy titles. It makes it to my top ten best Fighting Fantasy titles, I'd say.
What a great gamebook. Classic story, great illustrations, well-paced, good flow, and a sense of purpose and progression. The writing quality is also higher than most. There are some crazy tough combats, but, if you find all the magic items, your skill will increase by at least three, and there's plenty of healing. I found myself wanting to explore all the routes, which is a real achievement.
A fun read, with a good amount of choice and an atmospheric location. Yeah, the Vampire is pretty much Dracula but it's a good amount of challenge in terms of the fighting, and some cool opportunities to test your Faith, rather than lots of Luck tests like in other Fighting Fantasy books.
A brilliant book by Keith Martin and wonderfully illustrated by Martin Mckenna, this book AND THE FIGHTING FANTASY series finally get back to a master Vampire not seen since book 9 Caverns of the Snow Witch, The Snow Queen! it is soaked in gothic atmosphere and you feel the evil Count's presence right from the start.Before you even get to meet the Count there is the usual zombie's, vampire bats and the unusual mist and Tigerskin rug! you could come seriously UNSTUCK, when you meet the Minor Thassaloss and the Spectre and try and avoid the major one!! Along the way you must collect the usual items and the author has wrote it in such away that yes getting the chainmail armour is defintely an advantage, but it is not a deal breaker, you can still complete your task, it is just that much harder! On finally meeting the Count, make sure you have plenty of Faith, otherwise the Count will try s and hypnotise you!! If you get this far you then have an opportunity to either throw holy water on him, or cast a spell on him, if you are lucky enough to have the relevant spells! The you will fight him until his stamina is reduced to 4 or less but this fight wont be easy as the Count is a formidable opponent as if you do get him down to 4 or less he will disappear, only to come back with more stamina, if you do it again, he has one last chance using his fangs although his skill is reduced here! if you survive that he still cant be finished off if you dont have the stake or special sword and you will only get a hollow victory! Then there is an unexpected twist and you still have not claimed Victory! A GREAT HORROR ROMP as all the old favourites are here werewolves,doors that can talk, Vampiric weasels, ghostly apparitions,and even a couple of allies, just make sure you get all that is required to destroy the evil Vampire.
#38 of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks is a typical vampire hunt where some hapless villagers are being terrorized by an undead creep and you're recruited to infiltrate his castle and kill him (well, kill him again) with the usual tools like garlic, holy water, a mirror, and of course a stake to drive through his heart. But what Vault lacks in originality it recoups in good writing and balance: the goth-horror setting is suitably foreboding and there aren't many insta-kill traps here. Unlike many other FF gamebooks you can also persevere without stacking your skill and stamina scores to survive otherwise unwinnable battles, though the book does implement a fourth attribute -- Faith, essentially your ability to keep your wits -- that weighs heavily since it's tested constantly. As you proceed you meet the Count's assorted ancestors, employees, and living relatives, and it's fun to unravel the palace intrigue and exploit the differing motives of the characters. There are even a few jokes (whatever you do, don't drink the red wine). All in all, not a bad entry in the series.
A random visit to a village tavern leads to your promise to venture into the nearby castle and defeat the Count, a vampire who has kidnapped a local girl for no doubt nefarious purposes.
The latter half of Fighting Fantasy's 30s is generally much better than the first half, and Vault of the Vampire is at the top of the pack. With a few optional encounters aside, it's basically a fairly linear dungeon crawl, a deep dive into a single location. In that sense, it's a pretty typical book, following a pattern explored from Warlock of Firetop Mountain to Deathtrap Dungeon and beyond. However, it's buoyed by two things. First, it's a very good dungeon crawl. There's no frustrating maze, and no blind "left or right" choices. Generally, as I said, the path is fairly linear, with a series of siderooms, and any need to backtrack is handled by the book. It tends to be reasonably clear when you're leaving a general area, and any choice that's 50/50 tends to at least have some degree of description behind it so you're not making the choice without any foreknowledge.
The combat is greatly varied, from strange jellies to skeletal monstrosities to a seemingly innocuous pair of vampire animals that are actually more of a threat than they appear. There are a lot of items to collect, but most are optional and helpful under specific circumstances; even the most important must-haves have alternatives so that you can complete the book at a somewhat greater difficulty. There are a fair number of interesting characters, which is sometimes hard to do in a dungeon; crafting characters who won't have a plausible reason to attack an intruder on sight can be a challenge. But the Count has a full family and entourage, and each hold an interesting encounter with them--with the possible exceptions of the Sage and Alchemist, who feel a bit similar. The combat arguably scales a little too rough at the big boss fight, but at least there are some collectibles to even the score. Finally, the new statistic, FAITH, is an interesting one--it lets you break from hypnotic control, get an edge on some evil beings, but also draw some beings to you as a force of Good that is out of place. It's still inadvisable to go for an 'evil' build, but there's more nuance than simply More Good = More Better.
The other major benefit of the book is its theming. The series dabbles in horror occasionally, but Vault of the Vampire is the first book since Beneath Nightmare Castle to focus on it so squarely. Beneath Nightmare Castle has a Lovecraftian influence, and House of Hell is drawing from demon worship and cults, but Vault of Vampire's influences are even more on its sleeve. It's taking from traditional vampire films as well as a bit from Stoker's Dracula--there's a nice nod to that in the fact that you have to destroy multiple coffins to really make sure the vampire is gone. Rather than the typical presence of creatures like orcs and trolls and so forth, the monsters of this book are appropriately gothic, drawing heavily from the spooky undead side of things. And there's some great atmospheric elements in the decadent furnishings contrasted with the warped creatures. It's not quite as weird as something like Citadel of Chaos, but the consistency of its theme and its difference from the typical fantasy approach make it stand out as a dungeon crawler, in contrast with earlier books such as Stealer of Souls. All in all, a very strong entry in the series.
Love this one. One of the few straight horror Fighting Fantasy books out there and the genius in it is that it just embraces the tropes and classical Lugosi vampire. Set in a vampire castle, filled with traps and monsters and plenty of faith testing scares it mixed up the formula really well. Keith Martin (real name Dr Carl Sargent) did a few under Livingstone and Jackson and his own expertise in psychology and his love of parapsychology seeps through each one as he loves ghosts and spirits, occult rituals and spells. You would also enjoy learning that his love of vampires extended to Warhammer where would you believe it he was behind a lot of the vampire Counts books. Vault gives you a great evil family of the Heydrichs that rule the land under their vampiric reign and it has all the greats, headless coachmen, black coaches, living tigerskin rugs, zombies and skeletons and of course pounds of garlic and crucifixes. Gets a four because these books are also locked full of absolute puzzling math nerd and puzzle pervert nonsense but you can get through. They really revel in their pulp settings and are massively enjoyable for kids. Problem is scholastic owns them now and they've kind of been robbed of their bite, still very enjoyable and a recomendation for all ages, a kid will get a kick out of the game nature and an adult will enjoy the schlock value.
La colección Tú eres el protagonista suponía una nueva vuelta de tuerca a los librojuegos tipo Elige tu propia aventura -ETPA- (antes de esta serie me encontré con los Lucha ficción, que acabaron culminando en esta colección, donde no solo había que tirar dados sino recordar decisiones pasadas, llevando el nivel de complejidad un paso más allá). En la versión española mezclaron varios volúmenes independientes, como alguno de detectives, con otras series como ésta más orientadas a terror o incluso directamente inspiradas en relatos de Lovecraft. Eran un cajón de sastre pero compartían todas la dificultad de la mecánica. Comparado con los más sencillos Multiaventura o ETPA (CYOA en inglés), no me pareció que estas serie aportara tanta diversión extra comparada con el esfuerzo a adicional de progresar siguiendo las reglas.
This was such a fun adventure! I always enjoy a good vampire story, there's just so much you can do there. My husband always reads these aloud to me and I make all the choices. When there's a battle, he rolls for the creature/person I'm fighting so it's got an element of multiplayer for me (makes a great date night!).
This one in particular had a very cool element which was the edition of a "Faith" mechanic. Unlike "Fear" in House of Hell, it never felt like it was messed up for you in an unavoidable way. You had to make some pretty rank choices to lose Faith and it saves you from a ton of stuff throughout the adventure. This book also gave you multiple opportunities to get the magical thing you need to win (trying to keep spoilers at a minimum), which is so appreciated because some of these books are like "hey, you went right instead of left at that crossroad so you can't win the game now. Oh well."
It was really enjoyable, I liked the side characters a lot, and I only had to play through twice in order to win! This is easily my favorite of all the Fighting Fantasy books and I was ecstatic to find out there's a sequel!
Vault of the Vampire (1989) was the second of seven FF books written by parapsychologist Keith Martin, and the second of many illustrated by series stalwart Martin McKenna. Sadly, both men passed away recently, Keith Martin a couple of years ago and Martin McKenna only this autumn.
Though it’s set in a castle, it’s a proper dungeon crawl and, something I like in a gamebook, you can make a proper map. Though there’s one true path through it, there are lots of side avenues to be explored off of it, and no particular one of those is required in order for you to win. The biggest challenge is simply the Count’s and his sister’s stats at the end.
The horror-themed artwork really is beautiful in this book, the standout for me being the tigerskin rug, which comes alive to attack you.
My eight-year-old and I both loved doing this one over Halloween weekend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Absolute classic - which is why it was one of the few books not written by Jackson or Livingstone to get a direct sequel (Return of the Vampire). Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...