Back from the Scum Quarter!

I was pleased to discover that Garth Nix's 1988 spoof Choose Your Own Adventure Down to the Scum Quarter is available online - albeit via the Wayback Machine. It was also published in the book of short stories Across the Wall, but I don't imagine any of you would care to buy an entire paperback for the sake of one brief adventure. That said, the format it is parodying is a print medium - the experience of your eye drifting across the page to other entries, or keeping your thumb at the last page you turned to are a part of the joke. 

Anyway, the whole thing may be found here. It's a broad parody of Three Musketeers-flavoured swashbuckling (Nix refers to the Richard Lester-directed, George MacDonald Fraser-scripted 1970s film adaptations), rescuing your mistress, the Lady Oiseaux (yes) from kidnappers. Nix has had the wisdom to keep it short (a hundred brief entries in all, which I believe to be shorter than most game-books) - it's possible the broad humour might grate otherwise. 

I still find this quite fun. But it has a few other uses....

Nix had to devise and lay out (fairly rapidly) an Early Modern urban environment and scene. This equipment list:

Choose Five:

Dagger

Pistol (with powder & ball for five shots)

Bag of 20 Gold Bezants

Portrait of Lady Oiseaux (3'6" square)

Scented handkerchief

Halberd

20' rope

Repeater Watch

1 Bottle 'El Superbeau' Cognac

2 Pairs Silk Stockings

A glove puppet of Cyrano de Bergerac

Small Plaster Saint

1 Bottle 'Opossum' perfume

A Five-Pronged Fish-Spear

...begs to be re-used at the tabletop. It has the same sort of highly specific, characterful equipment options as offered in Electric Bastionland or these equipment lists from Gus L's Fallen Empire. These could meet the needs of a Rogue or Fop of some kind very nicely.

Nix also draws out some swiftly-drawn locations: the Boulevard of the Muses, The Carved Heads of Past Emperors, The Street of Fishmongers - as well as the Place of Plaice and the Avenue of Champignons. (Names like Fishgut Alley reek of Lankhmar). Using the link above, you could navigate these pretty quickly and at random, scattering encounters on the way. Again, these are fairly broad pastiche, but if it were needed, an apt way to quickly produce a slice of a dense, riotous city. Perhaps there's only one or two uses in it, but I'd happily use to sprinkle a spot of the Scum Quarter into an Early Modern setting.

Now, I imagine I've made my affection for Down to the Scum Quarter apparent. But could any other game book be used this way? I don't know; I never had any great love for them. I suspect that the length and relative complexity for the Cityport of Traps*, say, means that you might struggle to use it in the same way as Down to the Scum Quarter. You are welcome to prove me wrong.

 

*I have never encountered anything else referred to as a Cityport. Port Cities, yes. Harbour towns, yes. Cityports, no.