Solitaire: The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon

Your merchantman ship sunk by Imperial German raiders. You captured and held in a cell. There is a chance that you can escape, steal a boat and then… How long will you survive adrift in the ocean waters? Will you row or drift, perhaps you may find yourself coming ashore in the hometown of your ancestors, Kingsport, the mist enshrouded city of dreams or cast ashore in a strange new land where death and madness await. This is opening to The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon, a solo adventure inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, in particular, Dagon, The Festival, and The Hound, as well as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Published by Officina Meningi following a successful Kickstarter campaign, it enables the reader to explore the story from his own point of view and perhaps survive to influence the outcome for a different ending than that suffered by Lovecraft’s protagonist.

As a choose-your own-adventure book, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is short at just eighty entries for the main Earth-bound portion of the story with a further ten entries for the sidestep into The Dreamlands. The player will need just a six-sided die and pen and paper to play and perhaps a couple of hours to play through at most. The Player Character is lightly defined. He has three attributes, Force and Will. Force is his physical strength and ability to fight, whilst Will is his ability to withstand stress and the horrors of the cosmos. Resistance represents his physical skills and tolerance to pain. His mental state is tracked by his Madness, which begins at Well-Balanced. As it goes from Stressed to Delerium via Paranoid and Schizophrenic, the Player Character suffers penalties to die rolls, first in The Dreamlands, but later in the waking world too. He can carry some equipment, such as a medical kit that will restore Resistance and a syringe of morphine that will restore Resistance and prevent him from entering The Dreamlands. Throughout his journey, the Player Character will find money, other items, and weapons.

The combat system is simple. The player rolls the die and adds the character’s Force attribute to the roll as well as any bonus from a weapon. The opponent’s Force value is subtracted from the total and the result compared on the ‘Table of Comparison’ on the solo adventure’s combat table. The worse the result, the less damage the opponent suffers and the more the Player Character suffers, and conversely, the better the result, the more damage the opponent suffers and the less the Player Character suffers. It is possible to inflict damage without the Player Character suffering any, but the chances are low. To defeat an opponent, his or its Resistance must be reduced to zero. Although it is possible to avoid some combat situations, when it does occur, it is simple and brutal.

The story of The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is really one of transition through the three of Lovecraft’s short stories that inspire it. The opening scenes with the Player Character captured are drawn from Dagon, but the scenes in Kingsport are primarily from The Festival with those from The Hound made part of it. What they reveal is the existence of an ancient cult abroad in Kingsport, which at the time of the Player Character’s arrival, is readying to perform an ancient ceremony of Yule, older than Bethlehem. This becomes apparent very quickly if the Player Character visits the home of his ancestors, but he may also learn more from an old friend from college and so play out scenes from The Hound. Unless discovered or he runs away, the story pulls the Player Character into attending the ceremony of The Festival and towards the climax of the adventure book. In the process, the Player Character will learn some of Kingsport’s dark secrets and may be put a stop to the cult’s dread ritual. This will not be easy, for the Player Character will encounter horror after horror and many a deadly encounter, and even though the adventure book runs to less than a hundred entries, there many ways in which he can die or go mad. It will certainly take more than the one attempt to complete The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon.

The majority of the journeys in The Dreamlands are encounters rather than explorations as in the main section of the book, randomly determined by the Player Character’s Madness. The higher the result, the more dangerous and the maddening and unearthly the encounter is, before returning the Player Character to the waking world, likely the worse for the night’s poor sleep. Of course, the Player Character can die in The Dreamlands, but may also return with something that will benefit him in the waking world.

Physically, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is solidly presented and the artwork is good. Devotees of Lovecraft’s fiction will likely spot both the breaks and the inspirations, but the player need not be familiar with any of three short stories that underpin The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon to enjoy it. Overall, The Necronomicon Gamebook: Dagon is a short, but challenging adventure book that exposes the reader to the horrors of the cosmos and secrets lurking in Lovecraft country.