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Any game that takes Machiavelli's famous treatise on gaining and keeping power is going to have to be pretty cunning and underhand, but this very well presented four-player adventure certainly does justice to old Niccolo. Each player runs a specific character, each with different attributes; the landowner can provide protection, the cleric grace, the merchant cash and the tipstaff justice. All four are looking to locate an object and a work that constitute the 'tokens' needed to gain the vacant post of Lore master.

The game takes place inside a castle, clearly as large, if not larger, than Gormenghast, which houses seventeen non-player characters, the Prince himself, a banker to handle cast transactions, a dealer in all kinds of useful odds and ends and an assortment of henchmen, who can assault and steal from other players, and spies. Each player can recruit a henchman and a spy.

Players are given codes which are needed to access their characters and have ten inputs at a time. However, apart from grappling with the computer, finding out what you can do, where things are, *what use they are* and all the usual adventure problems, there's a whole other side to the game, the interaction between the players, away from the terminal. Here, as in Diplomacy, there are no rules at all - lies, deception, betrayal, threats, blackmail, bribery and the double-cross, anything goes.

Oh, it's all good, clean fun in Castle Ravenscrag. The big problem of course is getting four people together for long enough, but this could be just the thing for those long winter evenings and miserable weekends. The owner of the game does have a hideous advantage in that playing solo will let you build up a map very quickly. Which is entirely within the spirit of the game.