Choose Your Own Adventure 31: Vampire Express

While many books in the Choose Your Own Adventure series utilised horror elements, only a few of the books were explicitly horror-themed.

Vampire Express is one of the more obvious horror entries, but it's also one of my favorite books in the series. The atmosphere, artwork, and plot are well executed, and there are a lot of memorable moments, no matter which path you take.

The book begins with you taking a train into the Carpathian mountains (an area with historic connections to vampires) to meet your uncle, the world's most knowledgeable expert on vampires.  He's planning an expedition that will scientifically prove that vampires actually exist.

The book never bothers to explain what your parents think of sending their kid on a potentially lethal mission like this, but that's par for the course in the CYOA universe.  The artwork depicts a kid that looks maybe 15 or so, so it's reasonable to speculate on the fitness of the parents.

But I digress...

Your uncle has gathered together a group of people to help him on his adventure.  Nina (who is conveniently about your age) is your partner throughout most of the book.  She is accompanying her elderly aunt who has a magic painting and necklace that are thought to be connected to vampires in some way.

The plot kicks off when Nina's aunt goes missing with the pendant. From that point, you've got to find her, keep the painting and necklace safe, and hopefully find a way to kill the vampires.

On your journey you might also encounter Phaino (a flamboyant magician), Professor Hartz, (a skeptic), or friendly gypsies. They're all associates of your uncle, but they're not accessible on every readthrough.

Count Zoltan and his wife Carmilla serve as the primary antagonists, and they're a creepily effective pair.  There are a lot of creatively grisly ways they can kill you, so they come off as credible opponents, especially for a book aimed at kids. 

As far as the adventure paths go, this book avoids any boring paths while still allowing the reader to experience different approaches to solving the problems.  Professor Hartz's path reads more like a mystery, Phaino prefers to try to trap the vampires, while the gypsies employ magic.

My favorite path is the one with your uncle, however.  That one features the party being chased by wolves while trying to find their way through a snowy forest.  And then one of your party is lost in the chase when a heavy fog rolls in... 

This sets up a memorable confrontation at the vampire's castle that leads to some of the best endings in the book (which include some particularly nasty deaths).

The interior artwork by Doug Jaimeson also helps add to the atmosphere (Paul Granger did the cover). While the art is occasionally too dark and sketchy for it's own good, there area lot of great pieces that really capture the mood beautifully.  The most horrifying is probably the one that shows you being swarmed by poisonous spiders while trying to climb the castle walls.

Needless to say, it doesn't go well for you...

Which brings me to the subject of endings.

The earlier books sometimes suffered from having too many endings and not enough story in between, but this book hits the sweet spot at 21 endings which is just about optimal. There are a lot of ways to win, and there are a lot of really horrible things that can happen to you, but on the whole, I feel that this book has some of the best ones in the series.

The necklace and painting figure prominently in most of the stories, and using them effectively is important in defeating the vampires. While the painting can kill the vampires, the necklace protects them from it. Needless to say, the vampires want both items and you've got to keep them from getting them.

While it's possible to defeat the vampires in many different ways, there's only one way to do it without the painting (by using fire).  The traditional methods of beheading and pounding a stake through the heart are not mentioned, perhaps because they were considered too violent for a kids series.  Then again, given the horrible things that happen to the reader in the average CYOA book, it seems a little hypocritical to worry about cruelty to vampires.

Of course, in a book like this, the bad endings are as just as fun as the good endings (and often much more fun!).  In addition to the spider ending posted above, you can be turned into a vampire, crushed in a trap in the vampires castle, drive the train off of a cliff, or abandoned in a village full of hungry zombies. 

There are also a couple of mediocre endings where you survive, but fail to defeat the vampires, and even one where you wake up and it was all a dream (lame).  There are even two gonzo endings that end up with you teleported out of the adventure (in one case to an alien slave planet).

As a gamebook, some might be annoyed by the fact that there is no way to achieve the goal set out in the first page; to scientifically prove that vampires exist. Although one ending implies that such proof might be found, it never gives it to you outright.  

One could also fault it for having too many was to succeed, but I've always viewed the CYOA books as as a story series rather than a game, so that's a minor niggle.  The goal is to have some good spooky fun, and this book does that well.

One of the things I like most about this book is how consistent the plot elements are.  While a lot of CYOA book have plots that change radically depending on which choices you make, the plot in Vampire Express builds up additional layers on each readthrough.

For example, when Professor Hartz tells you that Phaino is useless, it actually turns out to be true.  While Phaino is friendly, he's also dangerously incompetent. If you do actually succeed, it won't be because he did anything useful. 

All of this serves to give Vampire Express a much richer reading experience than the typical CYOA book.  Because the story is better than average, and because of the dark nature of the story, it feels a lot more "adult" than most entries in the series.  While kids should eat this up, adults that didn't grow up with CYOA books may find it a bit thin and unsatisfying without the nostalgia factor to cushion their expectations.

On the other hand, I know a lot of parents that enjoy these as much as their kids do, so your mileage may vary.

Personally, I still get a kick out of it, and I find a lot of inspiration in it as a DM.  This book really gets my creative juices flowing and I have borrowed a lot of great ideas from it.  It could even be modified for use as an actual module for Call of Cthulhu or the Masque of the Red Death setting for Ravenloft.

Why Level Draining Sucks

Yeah, it's Halloween, so I figured it was a prefect opportunity to focus on the undead and their much-feared ability to level drain.

I've always thought that level draining was a particularly unfair game mechanic, since it robs the characters of hard-earned expereince levels in a "cheap" and arbitrary way.  It's entirely possible that a high level character could lose expereince that took years worth of play-time to aquire.  Especially when if that character is fighting creatures that drain multiple levels at a time.

Needless to say, this violates the "Rule of Fun", and leads to player resentment.  It's the sort of thing that could easily cause players to just quit playing altogether.

Yes, a Restoration spell could restore the lost levels, but it's not exactly easy to find clerics with access to level 7 spells... 

A 1st edition cleric doesn't get access to restoration until 16th level, and it will only restore 1 level per casting.  A 2E cleric can cast restoration at level 14, but it ages him two years to do so (although it also restores all lost levels, not just one per casting).

I don't know about your campaign, but in mine top-level clerics are pretty damned rare, and they're not exactly happy to have adventurers bugging them unnecesarily.  Especially if they're asking for something that's going to shave a few years off of their natural lifespan.

Needless to say, getting a restoration spell for your character is a monumental challenge, and he'll be feeble and weak until he can make it happen.

And this is assuming your character survived the encounter in the first place.

Because level draining drains levels, you lose hit points for the attack, AND hit points from the level drain, AND class abilities, AND proficiencies, AND spells every time you get hit, so your combat ability goes down much faster than it does in a typical combat.  God forbid you're up against something that drains multiple levels per hit.

Which brings up one of the WORST things about level draining... the book keeping.  It's a royal pain in the ass to keep track of every level bonus you get when you level up, and then you've got to subtract all of that stuff and recalculate for every single hit. 

And if the DM didn't keep meticulous records, he's going to have to fudge it, which makes players even more unhappy, becuade they stand to lose more than they would have otherwise.

What a fucking pain in the ass!

When a game mechanic kills the fun for player and DM alike, it probably needs to be shitcanned.

It's particularly bizarre that energy draining (ie, experience loss) is not an really an ability that is associated with undead, especially vampires.  Vampires might drain enough blood to leave you feeling crappy, and they might leave you with some side effects, but if the vamp dies, the victims usually recover just fine.  The notion that a vampire would punch you and all of a sudden you've forgotten the last few years of your life is NOT a part of any vampire myth.

As near as I can tell, the energy drain concept comes was inspired by Tolkien's Ringwraiths, who inflict a kinda-sorta similar malady on those who come into contact with them (the Holmes version of the D&D game flat out states that Nazgul would be considered spectres in case you needed a more explicit connection).

And you know what?   I have no problem with them taking some inspiration form Tolkien.

But I do have a problem with the fact that they greatly exaggerated the effects.  Unlike the horrendous energy drain of the D&D game, the Ringwraiths affliction is easily cured by Aragorn using some herbs he found.

And it's worth noting that the Ringwraiths were not random, wandering monster-grade chumps, like D&D spectres.  No, the Nazgul were Sauron's elite death squad.  These guys were incredibly badass by the standards of Middle-Earth.

So the fact that they had a much weaker energy drain is particularly significant.  Yes, the Black Breath was lethal if left untreated, but it least it was a slow death that gave the character's some time to come up with a cure, and it didn't require 14+ level clerics to magic up an antidote.

Likewise, the barrow-wights were not nearly as dangerous as the D&D wights.  They made the hobbits sleep, but they didn't drain levels, or leave them permanently incapacitiated.  In fact, after Tom Bombadil rescues them, they turn out to be completely uninjured.

To make matters worse, though, this dodgy level draining mechanic was applied to all kinds of undead, not just the wights and spectres.  The crowning moment of excess is probably RQ2- Thoughts of Darkness, a module which features vampire Illithids and a boss vampire that drains 5 levels at a time.

Amazingly, the energy drain mechanic survived for 30+ years before it was removed from 4th edition D&D (probably the only thing they did that I agree with).  The current 5E playtests appear to be tinkering with it in a more limited fashion.

I have long been a proponent of ditching the energy drain completely.  Undead can be plenty scary without having to resort to "cheap" special attacks that screw the players over in an unnecessarily ruthless manner.

Vampires, for example have super-speed, super-strength, the abilities to fly, shapechange, charm, spiderclimb, turn into mist, and command creatures of the night.  They also have resistance to normal weapons, special immunities, and regeneration.  And immortality.

That's plenty scary and plenty dangerous without adding a "screw-you" mechanic like energy draining.  All you have to do is treat the vampire as an NPC instead of a stupid grunt-level monster.  Seriously... if you can't scare the player with all of that, you suck as a DM.

Likewise, you can change the abilties of other energy draining undead to make them a little more player-friendly without sacrificing their scariness. 

Wights for example, could inflict wounds that can't be magically healed, and take double the time to heal naturally.  This makes them a serious pain in the ass, but it makes it a more manageable threat and it doesn't kill the mood like the energy drain does.

Or hell, just bump up the wight's damage.  There are a lot of ways a creative DM can tackle the problem.  The important thing is to remember that the game should be FUN.

                                                                  Happy Halloween!