Recent Adventures

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Highway to Hell

November 7, 2020

I just finished playing out Highway to Hell by Max Brallier. Damn, what a good book. An anti-hero. Good writing. Lots of well-done characters. Several different paths to varying degrees of victory. Good stuff.  

Yeah, he got us

November 5, 2020

Following up on my previous post, in our playthrough of Vault of the Vampire. Our 12/24/12 and 14 had us steamroll our way through the castle. We got Siegfried’s shield and armor, holy water and a crucifix, and a silver-tipped stake to finish the job. We killed everything in our path, until Reiner Heydrich himself. […]

Mustela vampiricus

November 3, 2020

For Halloween, the family and I sat down to play Vault of the Vampire, one of my favorite of the Fighting Fantasy series. This comes also, on the same day that I heard of the unfortunate death of Martin McKenna. It’s just coincidence, but it feels like the right way to celebrate Hallow e’en. After […]

Still Dying in the Zombie Apocalypse

September 1, 2020

I’m still reading Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brallier. This is some seriously good stuff. The writing is great, ranging from explicit gore and violence to irreverent snarkiness and mild sexual suggestion. My nameless character has survived a few times and died a lot more, in a variety of ways that I […]

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse… Or Not

August 3, 2020

I’ve been enjoying Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse? for the last few days. It’s well written, only slightly graphic, and a lot of fun. On my second playthrough I found The End where we find out that the whole zombie uprising was caused by … ooh, sorry, no spoilers. 🙂 And it’s been so […]

Countdown to California: Walloped in Wellton

July 13, 2020

And my playthrough of Freeway Warrior 4: California Countdown comes to a tragic end. We got back from a scouting mission with a little bit of food and no water, but with a new person in tow. He’s full of information about the road ahead, though, so that’s great. He also knows about a well […]

Countdown to California: Vision Quest

July 7, 2020

Today I continue Freeway Warrior 4: California Countdown I made my rendezvous with the convoy, and was met with some bad news: Kate is having a cholinergic syndrome from eating some bad mushrooms, I’m guessing Inocybes because they do look a lot like the little edible ones, and not at all A. muscaria because those […]

Countdown to California: Leaving Tucson

July 1, 2020

I am as shocked as can be, that I finished book 3 in a single playthrough. Honest! No cheating, no checking ahead, just fair-n-square. Meaning, it’s time to start California Countdown: Freeway Warrior book 4. We made our way to Tucson, and aren’t at all surprised to find that it is not a peaceful paradise. […]

Sabotage el la Ciudad, parte 4

June 26, 2020

Part 4 of my playthrough of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone. We were closing in on the convoy, but the combined biker-bandit gang was closing in on us. We were forced onto the wrong highway, and we wrecked our car to throw off pursuit. It seemed to work, but there’s a sniper on our […]

Sabotage el la Ciudad, parte 3

June 25, 2020

We continue our playthrough of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone. Yesterday we joined the convoy’s intended route, and found signs that they got here and kept moving as planned. That’s good news all around. Still, they’re several hours ahead of us and we’ve been running on adrenaline for 24 hours now, and we stop […]

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Sabotage el la Ciudad, parte 2

June 22, 2020

In our last episode of Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone, we succeeded in our our guerilla strike against the bandit stronghold at Ciudad Juarez, destroying their heavy weapons shipment while the residents of El Paso escaped in the confusion. We were pursued by several bikers for several miles, until we pulled off at a […]

Sabotage en la Ciudad

June 13, 2020

Today we start the next Cal Phoenix adventure: Freeway Warrior, book 3: The Omega Zone. In book 1 we fled to Big Spring, but brought a gang of angry bandits with us, which ruined Big Spring so we had to flee again. In book 2 the Big Spring / Dallas joint colony made it to […]

Heaven is… El Paso, Texas. Really?

May 30, 2020

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Part Four Surprisingly, Kate and I are somehow still not dead, and somehow we are still in the scorching Texas heat wishing for some gasoline. We’re riding on fumes, and we’ve found our way to Fort Stockton where we’re being held at […]

Escape from San Angelo, Part 3

May 28, 2020

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Part Three Kate and I have escaped from San Angelo, with only one significant fistfight the whole time. I was able to sneak in, mow down my enemies in hails of gunfire, and sneak out through a maintenance shaft with Kate. It’s […]

Return to San Angelo, Continued

May 26, 2020

Freeway Warrior 2: Mountain Run (yes, the American one with the abbreviated name) Into The Stadium In our last adventure, Cal Phoenix (that’s me) made his way into the city of San Angelo in search of his would-be girlfriend, Kate. He/I got there with surprisingly little trouble, and found a lot of loot on the […]

Return to San Angelo

May 20, 2020

After a few weeks on other projects, it’s time to sit down with a game book again. Freeway Warrior, Book 2: Slaughter Mountain Run. In FW1 the Dallas colony made their way to Big Spring, Texas and merged with a larger community. In the process, Kate, my character’s would-be girlfriend, was forcibly abducted by a […]

Rescuing Kate, first attempt

April 27, 2020

Last week I was quite surprised to successfully complete Highway Holocaust, book 1 of the Freeway Warrior series. However, Big Spring is not the safe haven and new life we had hoped for, because we brought a particularly vicious gang, the Detroit Lions, with us. Now Big Spring is under siege, while the Detroit Lions […]

Big Springs, here I come… again

April 20, 2020

I’ve played Freeway Warrior a few more times, and am honestly wondering whether it’s possible to win at all without cheating. The gauntlet of fights and damage at Strawn (the bus depot, the rabid dogs, and the heat stroke) have killed me 3 more times, since last weekend, which was 3 more times. And that’s […]

A Group Nightmare in Wonderland – Part 3

April 9, 2020

We continue our group playthrough via Zoom, of Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. We have someone on dice, someone with the character sheet, and someone with the book reading aloud. So far, Alice has breezed through everything without problem. Even the Royal Executioner and the Hatter-Dormouse-Hare-Golem gave her but a minor scratch. She found the Queen […]

A Group Nightmare in Wonderland – Part 2

April 8, 2020

We continue our group playthrough on Zoom of Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. Again, we have one person on Alice’s dice, one on the nightmares’ dice, one with the character sheet, and two of us with the book switching off reading. We have so far breezed through only one combat with Tik Tok Men, wandered through […]

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A Group Nightmare in Wonderland – Part 1

April 7, 2020

Last night, four of us got together via Zoom to play Alice’s Nightmare in Wonderland. I love these Jonathan Green gamebooks. They’re well-written, thoroughly proofread, beautifully (disturbingly) illustrated, and just enormous with content. For group play, these are our favorites. Four of us got together: one with Alice’s dice, one with the nightmares’ dice, one […]