The Crimson Tide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Fighting Fantasy series |
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 The 'gold dragon' cover |
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| Outline | |
| Location: | Titan |
| Sections: | 400 |
| Publication details | |
| Author(s): | Paul Mason |
| Illustrator(s): | Terry Oakes |
| Year of release: | 1992 |
| Number (Puffin) | 47 |
| Number (Wizard) | Unpublished |
| ISBN: | ISBN 0-14-034555-8 |
| List of FF books | |
The Crimson Tide (0-14-034555-8) is a single player roleplaying gamebook written by Paul Mason, illustrated by Terry Oakes and originally published in 1992. It forms part of Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series, numbered 47 in the original Puffin printing and not yet included in the Wizard reissuing. It is a sort-of sequel of Black Vein Prophecy.
This gamebook is set in the Isles of Dawn, a region on Titan similar to China. The player takes the role of a young boy seeking vengeance on the mercenaries that burned down his village, killed his father and kidnapped his mother. The character goes on to train in martial arts at a monastery and progresses through a series of adventures before finally attaining the Sacred Sword of Tsui and confronting the leader of the mercenaries.
It is unique in that the character ages over the course of the story, beginning as a young boy with statistics much lower than those of a normal Fighting Fantasy character. As the book progresses, the player grows in age, and their statistics grow to reflect this. By the end of the book it is possible to have a character as powerful as any other in the series.
A further significant aspect of the book is that a number of the premature endings obtained in the story do not necessarily involve the character being killed, as opposed to the majority of Fighting Fantasy books. Some of the endings include the character living the rest of his life as a monk, sailor and a basket weaver, without finding his mother or obtaining his revenge. This concept is used by Paul Mason in several of his other Fighting Fantasy books, including Black Vein Prophecy and Magehunter.
The Crimson Tide contains several tie-ins with other Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. The character meets several characters from Black Vein Prophecy, including its protagonist, who is now a king. He also encounters a character who hails from Hachiman, the Japanese-style region in which Sword of the Samurai is set.
This gamebook is one of the harder books in the series ( many fans agree that it is the hardest ) , requiring the player to make exactly the right choice at every juncture. This fact is compounded by the fact that the first enemy encountered, a Mudworm, has a SKILL of 12 - at this stage of the adventure the highest possible SKILL which the player character could have is 6, forcing the player to fight the first battle at a severe disadvantage. This was apparently an editing mistake by Marc Gascoigne; Mason's original intent was for the Mudworm to have a SKILL of 6. This resulted in a long-running enmity between Mason and Gascoigne, with Mason considering the editor to have essentially ruined his book.[citation needed]
