A 1999 Gamebook by Kim Newman, Life's Lottery is a choose-your-own-adventure-style concerning the course of the main character's life - and all the weird and wonderful permutations it can undergo.
You are Keith Marion, a rather unassuming young man born in the 1950s to middle-class parents, growing up in the small English village of Sedgwater. You enjoy a happy childhood full of pirate fantasies in the company of your big sister Larraine and your baby brother James, and for the most part, there doesn't seem to be anything unusual on the cards for you... up until the age of six, whereupon one of the school bullies asks you a fateful question: who do you prefer - Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin?
Your answer will shape the course of your life, and send you down any number of paths: depending on the choices you make, you might become rich and successful, or you might become a criminal doomed to a life sentence; you may fall in love with any one of a dozen people, or you can spend your days womanizing; you can live an ordinary, unassuming life, or you can become an adventurer and a rebel; you can date Rowena, with her legendary bosom, you can date "Scary Mary", the terror of your school, or you can date Victoria Coyer, the glamorous rockstar-to-be; you can even die young - or find yourself dying unpleasantly after a lifetime of regret - in which case, Go to 0.
And if you're not satisfied, you can always go right back to 4 and try again along a different path until you find the ending you prefer. And so on.
Tropes featured in Life's Lottery include:
- Adventures In Coma Land: Chapters occurring outside the narrative reveal that the story takes place entirely in Keith Marion's comatose dreams; having fallen victim to a mysterious syndrome plaguing the world in the wake of the Spiders' invasion, you're stuck mentally exploring the various possibilities of your life - and possibly the multiverse itself - until you finally awaken.
- Affably Evil: Much like he was in Quorum, Derek Leech is a frighteningly charming individual when he finally reveals himself to you; his Deal with the Devil simply requires you to carry on exploring possibilities... and if you decline his bargain, he's genuinely proud of you.
- Arc Words:
- Dying always concludes a chapter with Go to 0.
- Chapters that serve as a bridge, rather than a divergence, end with Go on.
- Every plotline that doesn't end with your death concludes with And so on.
- Asshole Victim: Robert Hackwill is, not to put too fine a put on it, a rat bastard who will not be missed if and when someone murders him, and his Villain with Good Publicity status can't be sustained unless you really fuck up at the mountain training camp. In the aftermath of one possible murder of Hackwill (pinned on Mary and made to seem like it was revenge for him bullying her when they were kids), you eventually find yourself meeting his now-adult daughter, who tearfully confesses that her father abused her too; as you comfort her, you silently reflect that you've never failed to regret Hackwill's death more than you have in this moment.
- Awful Wedded Life:
- Larraine Marion's marriage to Sean is a disastrous, abusive sham; even when he isn't beating her with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel, he's still treating her like a servant whenever guests are around the house.
- Your marriage to Vanda in the bank plotline is frequently cold and emotionally abusive, to the point that she leaves you for Sean - and actually tries to come crawling back when Sean flees with his ill-gotten gains. If you take her back, it gets even worse.
- Bathos:
- Should you end up going insane and sending your fingers to the overdraft officer as a pound of flesh, the otherwise deadly serious chapter is broken up by the amusing realization that you can't get the package of severed fingers to fit in the mail slot.
- If you and Larraine decide to murder Sean and frame Hackwill for it, you have to steal a shotgun and ammo from his collection... but you also have to cuddle Hackwill's baby daughter Samantha just so she doesn't cry and alert the whole household to the theft. What follows is an incredibly tense yet ridiculously funny scene as the baby finds the shotgun shell you've stashed in your jacket pocket, thinks it's a toy and steals it - leaving you and Larraine paralyzed with horror as baby Samantha starts chewing on the shotgun shell. Thankfully, she doesn't like the taste and throws it away.
- Big First Choice: As has been mentioned, the first real choice in the novel is to decide whether your favourite character in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin. The answer decides whether you end up joining the social in-crowd at your primary school or becoming a misfit, which branches the novel into two entirely separate decision trees, each with their own spectacular divergence points.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- In the event that your suicide attempt goes awry, you are able to recover, reconcile with Rowena, and eventually move on from the grief. The ending acknowledges that there are still shadows haunting you, but you've learned that there is more to life than shadows.
- If you can't bring yourself to kill Mary and preserve the secrets of your corporate success, you find yourself finally free of the spell that Sutton Mallet has had on you all this time; you're still scared, and you've still done questionable things, but you're finally able to move on with your life.
- If you use Mental Time Travel to revisit your past and accidentally overwrite your present-day life in the process, it's possible to use your knowledge to gradually improve things until you're rich, successful, and happy... though, in moments of introspection, you reflect that you've only ended up replicating the life that drove you to start travelling through time in the first place.
- On a similar note, you find yourself once again time-travelling into another unhappy Keith's life, but instead of improving it through the skills you learned in another time, you instead do your best to be a good husband and father. You reflect that your new life is full of struggles and tribulation, but now that your children are flourishing and your wife loves you, you can live with it.
- The mountain training camp plot can end with you or Mary getting away with the murder of Robert Hackwill - only for your relationship with her to fall apart under the weight of horror or suspicion.
- Another training camp ending: Robert Hackwill ends up getting the blame for the murders, but escapes arrest and is killed by a prostitute in Belize before anyone can find out what really happened, leaving the whole thing a massive anticlimax. You and Mary eventually marry and have children, but the mystery of what really happened at the camp gradually eats away at Mary until she dies of cancer at the age of forty-seven, leaving you consumed with doubt and grief.
- Yet another training camp ending: Mary takes the blame for the murders, and is sentenced to life imprisonment, eventually being killed in a prison riot; James is deeply shaken by these events and soon falls out of touch with you; you become a teacher, make a semi-contented life for yourself, and eventually help a now-adult Samantha Hackwill find closure over her father's death - though it requires you to lie and say that Mary was the kid that Robert was bullying.
- If you abandoned James on the playground but choose to confront Sean over his abuse of Larraine, you find yourself being reunited with the ghosts of James and your father on the car-ride home; James finally forgives you for your neglect, and though you admit that Sean will eventually go back to abusing your sister regardless of your warning, you at least know how to deal with him.
- In the "Ilya Kuryakin/Get A Teacher" plotline, you discover your son's financial crimes and - if you survive confronting him - the knowledge will forever sour your relationship... but at least the awful act remains between you and never breaks James' heart.
- If you end up in an affair with Larraine, then decide to kill Sean and frame Hackwill for the crime, you get away with all of it. Hackwill hangs himself in his cell after his crooked financial dealings are discovered, Sean's life insurance allows Larraine a comfortable life, you're able to finish your book and become a successful writer, and your incestuous relationship remains loving. On the downside, Sedgwater undergoes an economic crisis, you're never comfortable around Mary ever again, you're implied to be traumatized by the murder... and the novel ends with you meeting Samantha Hackwill again and tearing up as you realize just how much her life has changed because of you.
- In the "Napoleon Solo" plotline, making a life for yourself in Sutton Mallet - either with Mary or Victoria - leaves you and your sweetheart in a stimulating life that both of you can be contented with... but unfortunately, the town and its shadows has permanently warped you into either a wealthy recluse (if you're with Victoria) or a community-sabotaging psychopath (if you're with Mary) - and unlike your other monstrous incarnations, your crimes aren't likely to be exposed. But hey, at least you can still experience love and happiness.
- Blackmail Backfire: In the event that you end up working for Sean Rye at the bank, you have the opportunity to uncover his "housekeeping" file and bankrupt him with it. While using it to secure a more advantageous position for yourself works out well, demanding money from Sean will end with you being brutally murdered.
- Brother–Sister Incest:
- Empowered by Sutton Mallet, you can become such a lecher that not even your sister Larraine is safe from your advances.
- After discovering Sean's abuse of Larraine, you can carry on an affair with her; though it's way less exploitative than the previous example, you're very much aware that this is in fact a Very Bad Thing and you spend a great deal of time worrying about being found out - which can lead to you attempting to kill Larraine if your paranoia gets the better of you following Sean's inevitable murder. If not, it can lead to Sean murdering you if he manages to beat an answer out of Larraine.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Rowena becomes legendary among her colleagues for her enormous breasts, especially in college.
- The Can Kicked Him: In the event that you call for help to save James from Hackwill in the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline, you and James get revenge on both Hackwill and his sidekick Reg Jessup by beating the living shit out of them in a pub toilet many years later.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive:
- Robert Hackwill, a crooked businessman running Sedgwater from behind the scenes and dipping into the local banks with the aid of Sean Rye. In many plots, he also uses his influence to have people forced out of their homes or even assassinated, and in the Mountain Survival Camp plot, even resorts to outright murder.
- In the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline, should you get a teacher to save James, your son Jasper will eventually grow up to become one of these - not only stealing from his Cool Uncle's business, but also murdering you if you try to blow the whistle on him.
- You yourself can become a ruthless corporate businessman should you have a falling-out with Victoria in the "Napoleon Solo" plot: beginning with work for a "financial institution," you start your own business, profit off market deregulation... and then begin enhancing your life with either brutal sexual encounters or mugging - which usually ends with either a murder conviction or a rape conviction. Either way, you end up going to jail and spending the rest of your life in medicated misery.
- You again if you visited Sutton Mallet alongside Mary: you find yourself blessed with supernatural power and drive, then use it to achieve great success in business - often using that same gift to "fuck and dump" anyone, be they lovers or business partners. For good measure, you spend this particular plot thread planning to kill Mary so she doesn't reveal any of your secrets, even though indications are that she never will.
- Corrupt Politician: Robert Hackwill is often identified as a member of Sedgwater's town council, allowing him additional means of influencing local politics in his crooked financial dealings.
- Dark Action Girl: Mary "Scary Mary" Yatman. Daughter of a police officer, she is infamous for her terrifying rages in childhood, and she's no less formidable as an adult - growing up to become a Killer Cop, a hired assassin working for Robert Hackwill, or even a partner in crime to you in some of the darker plotlines. In fact, the only plotline in which she doesn't end up killing people is when she's a postwoman.
- Destination Defenestration: In the event that Mary uncovers Sean's domestic abuse of Larraine, she helps you take revenge by hurling him out a window - twice - and making it look like a suicide. For added fun, she even refers to it as defenestration, and you congratulate her for actually working the word into a sentence.
- Domestic Abuse:
- In one plotline, Larraine is abused very frequently by her husband, Sean Rye, and most of the story from this point on features your response, including everything from threats to outright murder - which you can get away with if you can pin it on Hackwill.
- Hackwill is revealed to have abused his daughter.
- Downer Ending: Many.
- A violent encounter with Victoria in the "Napoleon Solo" plotline leads you to pursue corporate success while nurturing a dark side that eventually gets the better of you, resulting either in rape or murder. As a result, you go to prison, and upon being paroled, spend the rest of your life miserable, heavily medicated, in crippling debt, and all alone.
- If your relationship with Rowena collapses, you can attempt suicide - either successfully, or failing in a way that leaves you overwhelmed by the pity of others for the rest of your natural life.
- Drawing upon the power you gained at Sutton Mallet to become The Casanova ultimately leaves you alone in your exploitative lifestyle, with Victoria driven away by your behaviour and none of your escapades producing any children. Eventually, you die, wishing you had done something different.
- Fleeing from the darkness in Sutton Mallet in the "Napoleon Solo" plot and committing yourself to a long-term relationship with Rowena results in your life falling to pieces after you buy into Robert Hackwill's financial scheme in another attempt to escape "the shade": you lose all your money with the collapse of the scheme, go insane, and chop off all your fingers.
- If you're in a relationship with Mary and you choose to flee the darkness, the two of you end up as neurotic recluses in Sutton Mallet, gradually succumbing to your demons until the only electrical appliance you have left finally breaks down, plunging your home into darkness. In the final lines of this chapter, you're left paralyzed with fear as you realize that the darkness is inside of you and there will never be any light again.
- Smoking will eventually lead to you being diagnosed with cancer at age 30; from here, your only options are to accept your fate and die with your heartbroken family at your side - or blame someone else for your nicotine addiction and die inflicting pointless revenge on them.
- The option to blackmail Sean can result in some spectacular downers: if you ask for money, you're eventually bumped off when your demands become too trying; if you try to get him to turn himself in, you end up getting killed by whoever you seek support from; if you ask for his job, for a while you prosper as a Morally Bankrupt Banker... only for Black Monday to destroy your fortune and reputation, and in the chaos that follows, your financial crimes are uncovered, sending you to jail; when you get out, you're stuck in a miserable second-rate existence where your only employment doesn't even allow you to touch money.
- Working at the bank, staying legitimate, and taking Vanda back will result in you being plunged back into an emotionally abusive relationship and trapped in a joyless, dead-end job where anyone with the slightest bit of power over you regards you with infinite contempt. All you can do is look back on your failures and reflect that you could have done something worthwhile if you'd tried.
- If you win the lottery but can't get over the fact that someone stole half your winnings to give to charity, the obsession gradually eats away at you until your fortune runs dry and you have to start playing the lottery again - and this time you won't be anywhere near as lucky.
- Using Mental Time Travel to revisit the past can leave you stuck in the present life of a much unhappier Keith Marion, unable to return to the world you knew and unable to change things for the better.
- The mountain training camp plot offers the biggest assortment of downers in the entire story: assuming Hackwill and his cronies don't end up killing you over the course of this plotline, several endings feature you and James in jail, having been blamed for the deaths - and in the event that Hackwill survives this encounter, he's often able to use the opportunity to accrue even greater power and public approval. Even if you don't end up incarcerated, you frequently end up miserable and unable to move on.
- Dumb Muscle: Shane Bush is popular, sporty, and often compared to Napoleon Solo, but eventually falls behind you in class and can only find work at a jam factory; in the "Ilya Kuryakin" he often ends up working for Robert Hackwill as The Brute. In the mountain training camp plot, it's very easy for you to get him to turn on his boss when the pressure's on, and Mary runs rings around him whenever they're teamed up. He's not very good at following safety instructions, either - leaving you to mockingly dub him "The Man From B.U.N.G.L.E."
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Life is hard and plagued with horrors, but if you make the right choices, it's possible to end a plotline with a clear heart and hope for the future.
- In the event that you find yourself working at your father's bank, you face a miserable working life in which success passes you by, your dishonest boss exceeds you, your wife Vanda betrays you, and you're humiliated at every turn... but if you keep your hands clean and refuse to take Vanda back once Sean's financial schemes come crashing down, you build a new life with Candy, become an Honest Corporate Executive at the bank, and achieve the love and respect of everyone in the community.
- After a long period of humiliation at the bank, you miraculously win the lottery... and if you can overcome the doubt of having half of your winnings stolen and given to charity, you can use your money to help rebuild Sedgwater, give your children a start in business, rekindle your marriage, and give yourself a much more fulfilling life in the process.
- The mountain training camp plotline is a brutal, terrifying slog... but if you can navigate the choices carefully, stay alive, keep James and Mary alive, and avoid getting blood on your hands, it's possible to achieve a victory even if Hackwill gets out unharmed: in this case, he might not go to jail for murder, but increased police scrutiny on his business results in him being arrested for white collar crime. Throughout all of this, Mary helps you and James through the collapse of the training camp business, eventually resulting in you starting a family with her.
- If you choose to pursue Thierry to Tibet over the lottery theft, you can finally achieve an epiphany and embrace him as a brother, allowing you to spend the rest of your days in an isolated life of fulfilling toil away from your toxic work at the bank.
- The hidden chapters: after spending entire lifetimes trapped inside your own mind with nothing to do but live your life in all its possible permutations, you finally awake from the coma and can live your life in the real world.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Shadow Spiders. It's hard to say what they are, because they seem to exist only in the abstract sense most of the time, but whatever they are, they infest the darkness around Sutton Mallet, driving the very worst of Keith Marion's fears. They can't be defeated - except in a bizarre Doctor Who-inspired fantasy sequence - and in the "real world" segments, it's implied that they showed up just long enough to cause a worldwide plague of mental illness, before abruptly vanishing without explanation.
- Eldritch Location: There's something distinctly off about the Ghost Town of Sutton Mallet; there's no explanation as to what happened to the residents, there's something terrible and distinctly spidery in the shadows, and somehow, you just keep getting drawn back to the place. In some cases, there's even some form of power here that can be used to improve your life, often in disturbing ways. For good measure, visits often end up leading you to 13, and whoever speaks to you there. In this case, Derek Leech.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In the event that Mary Yatman is sent after your family by Robert Hackwill, she seems genuinely confused if you try to sacrifice yourself to save their lives - and you briefly pity her for it.
- Evil Is Sterile: Should you use the power of Sutton Mallet to become a sex god, you quickly descend into a sybaritic lifestyle in which your sexual partners can be as young as twelve, and you reflect that you might just end up screwing animals and corpses as well in time... but no matter how many times you bed the same woman, she never gets pregnant.
- Family Theme Naming: Regardless of what path you end up taking and who you choose to spend your life with (if anyone), your children will almost always feature names beginning with "J"... unless you refuse to take Vanda back in the bank plotline, whereupon you marry Candy and break the naming theme for the next children.
- Fingore: After losing all your money in a financial crisis, you hack off an entire handful of fingers and send them off to the overdraft officer at the bank. In a twist, you can receive this package in another plotline.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- As has been mentioned, your choice between Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin results in you becoming either a misfit or one of the in-crowd; becoming a misfit sends you on the path towards a devastating vendetta with Robert Hackwill and the members of his clique, while the in-crowd storyline often directs you towards Sutton Mallet and increasingly nightmarish endings to your story.
- There's another one in the "Ilya Kuryakin" path: your little brother James is targeted by the school bully, Robert Hackwill, and you're faced with the choice between chickening out, calling for a teacher, or trying to tackle Hackwill yourself. Your decision will shape the entire plotline - and indeed, the course of James' life: chickening out and abandoning James results in him becoming a bitter, lonely Sociopathic Soldier who eventually gets himself killed in the Falklands, leaving you plagued with regrets and psychological malaise; getting a teacher involved eventually results in James losing a leg in the Falklands - while buying time for a fellow soldier to call for reinforcements - and becoming a successful businessman, while you become a world-famous writer; finally, taking on Hackwill yourself results in a lifelong vendetta ending either in an uprising against his business empire or a murder mystery plot.
- Frame-Up:
- In the "Ilya Kuryakin/mountain training camp" plotline, it's very common for a surviving Hackwill to deflect the blame for the murders onto his subordinates.
- In the "Ilya Kuryakin/abandon James" plot, you and Larraine can opt to murder Sean for his Domestic Abuse and frame Hackwill for the deed - even stealing a gun from his collection for the kill. It goes off without a hitch.
- Funetik Aksent: If you take Mary out on a date in the "Napoleon Solo" plotline, you immediately notice that she has a very distinctive West Country burr that often manifests in the text, most commonly rendering "you're" as "you'm."
- Gainax Ending: Some endings can get... a little confusing:
- After ruining your Rag Night date with Rowena and trying to reconcile with her upon returning to college, you find yourself experiencing every possible outcome of this encounter with no indication of which one actually happened, followed closely by And so on.
- Similar to the previous example, beginning a relationship with Rowena at Sutton Mallet triggers a very bizarre sequence in which the two live out all the wonderful possibilities of your relationship together: becoming immortal, enjoying swashbuckling adventures together, or just getting married, having children, growing old and dying happily together. Once again, there's no clue as to which one is real - and it's indicated that they're all real.
- Becoming an underachiever and deciding to watch Doctor Who inexplicably ends in a sci-fi scenario in which you somehow end up leading a resistance movement consisting of all your friends and significant others against an Alien Invasion by the Shadow Spiders.
- Gamebooks: Life's Lottery uses the CYOA format to take you through a fairly ordinary life (or extraordinary, it depends on you) from birth in the 1970s till death, and the small choices you make may have great impact on your life — in the playground, do you like Illya Kuryakin or Napoleon Solo better? The first choice you have to make is whether or not to draw breath after being born. If not, "go to 0". It can also be read straight through, to reveal a very different story.
- Gambit Pileup: The mountain training camp plot in a nutshell; having lost your house to Robert Hackwill as revenge for you and James publicly humiliating him, the two of you set him up for another round of humiliation at the training course you run... only for your revenge to get tangled up in Hackwill's own efforts to bump off his fellow conspirators, the unhappy relationships between said conspirators, and Mary's own complicated allegiance.
- Golden Ending: Though there are a handful of "happy" endings, there seems to be only one ending that could be said to bring the narrative to a decisive ending - and there's no links between each section of it, so you can only find it by hunting across all 500 pages of the novel for the lone chapters that aren't connected to any other. This plotline reveals that Keith Marion's adventures are just a comatose dream in which he psychically explores all the possible outcomes of his life, ultimately concluding with him finally awakening from the coma so he can live his life for real.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: On Rag Night, Rowena spends a huge chunk of the evening getting very, very drunk and puking her guts out. For good measure, this will happen even if you're not the one dating her, as observed if you arrive solo as "the invisible man."
- Hellhole Prison: The prisons you're sent to in the bad endings of the "mountain training camp" plotline. The crushingly relentless discipline of the place often ends up breaking your spirit, and the prison medicates especially dangerous inmates like you to the point that your mind withers under the influence. For good measure, riots are very common, and secretly encouraged by the wardens as a useful means of eliminating unwanted convicts: you, James, or Mary can end up falling victim to this practice.
- Honest Corporate Executive: If you manage to ascend to a higher office within the bank without committing any dirty dealings, your reign is defined by generosity to those who have been hit hard by the recession. You even intercede on behalf of less honest bankers, earning the loyalty of Warwick when you save his boyfriend from bankruptcy. Eventually, you become the manager of the bank and become beloved throughout Sedgwater.
- Ironic Nursery Rhyme: Mary has a habit of singing "Nellie The Elephant" in ominous situations, most prominently your visit to Sutton Mallet in the "Napoleon Solo" plotline.
- Karma Houdini:
- It's very easy for Hackwill to get away with all his crimes if you make the wrong decisions, often leaving you and James saddled with the lion's share of the blame.
- Similarly, blowing the whistle on Sean allows him to wriggle out of disaster with barely a slap on the wrist, allowing him to liquidate his assets, pay off the bank, and end off even richer than before... all while you're left struggling to cope with an increasingly unforgiving work environment.
- As The Casanova drawing power from Sutton Mallet, you never face any repercussions for your sexual depravity; none of your younger victims ever report you, disease leaves you untouched, and even age doesn't seem to slow you down... but without Victoria or the possibility of starting a family, it all seems so very hollow.
- If you and Mary choose to embrace the darkness in Sutton Mallet, the two of you continuously get away with assault, sabotage, and encouraging violence in the community without anyone suspecting you.
- Karma Houdini Warranty:
- In one ending of the mountain training camp plot, Mary advises you remain silent about the role Hackwill played in the murders lest it ruin your life, and if you agree, one of the corrupt councilor's subordinates is blamed for the crime instead. However, increased police scrutiny results in Hackwill's dirty dealings being brought to light anyway, kicking off a humiliating fall from grace.
- If you avoid bringing the "housekeeping" file to the police in the bank plot, Sean appears to get away with his illegal activities without anyone uncovering the truth... only for Black Monday to annihilate everything he has, driving him to suicide.
- Should you kill Mary to prevent her from revealing the source of your powers, you appear to escape any kind of repercussions: her husband gets the blame, her son (the only witness) is ignored, and your business only gets bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, Mary's son doesn't forget what he saw that night, and once he's old enough to take revenge, he hunts you down and murders you in your bed.
- Killer Cop: As an adult, Mary is often a policewoman and - even in the plotlines where she doesn't moonlight as a killer-for-hire on behalf of Hackwill - has few moral compunctions about murdering people and making it look like suicide.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Beware - your less-than-moral actions have the potential to bite you in the ass:
- Abandon Rowena to puke her guts out? You're promptly glassed in the face by a pissed-off Victoria.
- Become a Corrupt Corporate Executive and kill Mary to cover your tracks? Her son remembers your visit to the house and takes his revenge decades later.
- Become a ruthless businessman who refuses to make friendships? When the financial crisis arrives, there's nobody willing to protect you from the end results.
- Blackmailing Sean into giving you a career and becoming a Morally Bankrupt Banker will eventually result in all your crimes coming to light in the wake of Black Monday, followed closely by a jail sentence. Blackmailing him for money alone ends with you getting bumped off.
- Lemony Narrator: As time goes on, the narrator becomes increasingly snide about your actions, even snapping at you to fuck off if you decide to avoid an adventure at Sutton Mallet.
- Living Emotional Crutch: In the event that Victoria Conyer becomes a rock star following your visit to Sutton Mallet, you end up having to serve as emotional support for her as she grows more and more reluctant to leave the village, which you describe as having to hold her up by the waist so that she doesn't end up being hanged on the noose of her own success.
- Mask of Confidence: At college, you're a high-flying student with a powerful drive to succeed but few social skills. So, if you opt to take neither Rowena or Mary to Rag Night, you decide to show up to the party in an improvised Invisible Man costume... and soon feel yourself becoming curiously empowered by the fact that nobody recognizes you, enjoying the increased confidence you experience as a result - even gaining the nerve to romance the glamorous Victoria. If you keep your disguise, you ultimately find yourself losing your virginity to her and altering the entire course of your life in Sutton Mallet.
- Mask of Sanity: As a child, Mary Yates is infamous for her explosive bad mood, but as an adult she appears to have gotten it under control; however, in heart-to-heart moments with you, she confesses that she's only learned how to hide her "monster" from the public. As such, Mary's "monster" can emerge in other ways in the darker plotlines of the novel, especially if she becomes Hackwill's hitman.
- Mental Time Travel: In certain branches of the story - most commonly the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline - you find yourself possessed by such disappointment about your life that you find yourself drifting backwards through time, either to relive your childhood or teenage years. Be warned: this may result in you returning to a present you may not recognize, or worse still, finding yourself trapped in the past.
- Most Writers Are Writers: In the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline, Keith often ends up becoming a writer; should you abandon James to Hackwill's bullying, you become a journalist writing of about financial and political injustice, eventually being called upon to write a book about James; on the other hand, if you chose to get a teacher to help out, you write historical fiction - drawing upon your childhood fantasies of becoming a swashbuckling pirate to make a success of yourself.
- Multiple Endings: As has been mentioned above, there are dozens of endings to the story, some good, many immensely depressing - or at the very least extremely bittersweet. However, it's indicated that they're not really endings at all, but just possibilities that Keith Marion is exploring in his comatose dreams.
- The Multiverse: It's implied at several points that each choice you make represents a different possible universe; where this gets a bit trippy is where you find yourself unwittingly interacting with people from another dimension - including your own alternate self. In one plotline, you become an overdraft officer at a bank and find yourself receiving a package of severed fingers from an angry client... but another plotline reveals that this client was actually you, having lost all your money in a financial disaster and hacked off all your fingers in a massive bout of Sanity Slippage. In another case, you can fall in love with Mary in the mountain camp plotline - only to get murdered by another version of Mary intruding from another dimension.
- Narrator All Along: Eventually, you find yourself unexpectedly meeting the narrator face to face; as it turns out, he's none other than Derek Leech.
- Never Win the Lottery: The National Lottery is regarded as a pointless distraction for the poor that only grows more elaborate as the UK gets progressively worse and winning rarely makes life any better for the contestants, most of whom blow all their money on unimaginative frivolities or find out that their wealth can't be used to improve anything worthwhile. In one plotline, you end up winning the lottery... only to discover that someone's stolen half your winnings and given them to charity; even though you still have millions, this can fuel an obsession that, if you're not careful, will leave you wasting all your money on a pointless vendetta or gradually descending into impoverished madness with nothing else to do but continue playing the lottery.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The early chapters warn you that saints suffer and villains prosper, and many of your best-intentioned acts have the opportunity to backfire on you.
- Opting to blow the whistle on Sean Rye only results in the banker getting away with minimal punishment and you getting stuck in an even harder job than usual. Plus, your wife hates you for not joining in on Sean's crooked schemes.
- Trying to get Sean to turn himself in ends with you being brutally murdered by whatever "friend" you seek support from.
- Deciding to spare Hackwill from a horrible death often gives him the opportunity to kill you or your friends.
- Patricide: In the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline, should you choose to get a teacher to save James, after a long and successful life you eventually find yourself uncovering evidence that your son Jasper has been committing financial fraud; if you choose to confront him about it and let your guard down, Jasper will kill you.
- Railroading: The narrator freely admits to preventing you from making certain choices that wouldn't be interesting, ensuring that you sooner or later end up at Sutton Mallet regardless of the decisions you make. Not out of character for Derek Leech, of course.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- In the event that you abandon Rowena on Rag Night and assault Victoria when she calls you out on it, you're eventually given a post-coital raking over the coals; over the course of it, Victoria lambasts you for not just being a misogynist, but for being an uncaring sociopath - and ultimately dismisses you as "pathetic."
- Should you refuse the call of an adventure at Sutton Mallet, the narrator loses patience with you and verbally rips you to pieces for cowardice. The whole thing ends with you being told to fuck off.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: If you take the Napoleon Solo option, you become the Blue Oni to Shane Bush's Red - cautious, intelligent, and quiet where Shane is boisterous, slick, and cocky. At times, you reflect that the two of you really are like Solo and Ilya. However, this dynamic doesn't last for long: Shane ultimately can't keep up with you in school and you strike out on your own.
- Rich Recluse's Realm: In the event that Victoria Conyer becomes a rock star and you her manager following the Rag Night visit to Sutton Mallet, the two of you set up permanent residence in the remote Ghost Town, gradually becoming more and more reclusive until the two of you almost never leave except on business.
- Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up:
- Robert Hackwill is a bully at school and changes little as an adult, growing up to become a ruthless Corrupt Corporate Executive and Corrupt Politician who uses his influence to terrorize anyone who gets on his bad side - most prominently James Marion.
- Ditto Hackwill's toadying assistant, Reg Jessup, who gladly joined the brutal humiliation of James when they were children and aids the financial schemes playing out across Sedgwater as an adult.
- Shane Bush, but only if you take the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline: as a child, he's an obnoxious popular kid around school, and as an adult, he's most commonly encountered as The Brute of Hackwill's team.
- Downplayed with Mary Yatman; feared across the playground for her explosively violent temper, she often grows up to become more subtle but no less brutal - even becoming employed as an assassin by Hackwill. Just as often, though, she will switch sides and team up with you instead.
- Shrinking Violet: Keith Marion is a little bit on the shy and retiring side, sometimes even a crybaby; appropriately enough, more violent plot threads have the potential to go horribly wrong, and sometimes the only way to get a happy ending out of them is by following someone else's lead.
- Sickbed Slaying: In the mountain training camp plot, it's possible to end up in a situation in which you end up separated from the rest of the group while the murders play out, eventually leaving Mary as the only survivor - only comatose and dependent on life support. Coming to the conclusion that Mary was the killer, you have the option to unplug her from the machinery... though this will, of course, result in you going to jail as well, though it's mischaracterized as a Mercy Kill by the authorities - and result in you being murdered by a militant anti-euthanasia group.
- So Proud of You: Derek Leech is surprised and pleased if you refuse to accept his Faustian bargain, admitting that he's proud of you as you vanish off into another And So On.
- Tomboy: Mary Yatman is the only girl in Shane Bush's childhood gang, participates in traditionally male sports, and erupts with rage if you even imply that she's a girl.
- Undiscriminating Addict: Upon being introduced to pot in one plotline, you soon end up on a course that leads you getting addicted to almost every drug under the sun, beginning with cocaine in your more prosperous days and ending with heroin and crack upon your fall from grace.
- Unholy Matrimony: In one of the "Napoleon Solo" plotlines, coldhearted high-flying student Keith Marion becomes the romantic partner of Scary Mary Yatman, resulting in a genuinely loving relationship built on disturbing acts of sabotage and sadism.
- The 'Verse:
- It's indicated that Life's Lottery takes place in the same universe as The Quorum, given that "Napoleon Solo" readers end up going to the same school as the members of the Quorum, and also visit Sutton Mallet, the same Ghost Town where the Quorum made their Deal with the Devil with Derek Leech; more successful versions of Keith end up having to deal with Leech's growing empire; in the event that you end up winning the lottery and choose to investigate your missing money, you even call upon the services of Sally Rhodes. Finally, it's revealed that the narrator is none other than Derek Leech himself.
- Robert Hackwill and Reg Jessup originally featured in the short story "Where the Bodies Are Buried", in which they become successful adults as a businessman and politician respectively before coming to a nasty end when one of their other bullying victims enacts a petty revenge that has unforeseen consequences.
- Rowena Marion shows up again as a minor character in An English Ghost Story.
- Keith Marion himself appears in the Diogenes Club verse, where he actually has the power to see into other realities. In the apparent "real world" chapters, it's suggested that Keith is literally doing this via Adventures In Coma Land.
- Villain Protagonist: Keith Marion can, at your discretion, descend into villainy in one form or another. Among other things, you can become a sexual predator; you can get addicted to physical assault and become a murderer; you can seek revenge against the system and try to blow up a TV studio; you can become a Morally Bankrupt Banker or a Corrupt Corporate Executive; you can even team up with Mary to encourage violence between rival factions around Sutton Mallet. However, with the exception of the final choice, most of these options will end with you being discovered and justly punished.
- Villain with Good Publicity:
- As an adult, Robert Hackwill's business enterprises have benefitted Sedgwater immensely, allowing him protection and even preferential treatment from the law. Depending on your actions, he can become even more beloved by the general public - or lose everything once his crimes are dragged into the light.
- Sean Rye is widely respected as a banker and a pillar of the community; behind closed doors, he's a white-collar criminal and a wife-beater.
- You can become this, becoming celebrated for your business successes while secretly using the power you gained from Sutton Mallet to screw everyone over.
- Wham Episode: 13, a chapter only visited when Keith's life takes a very dark turn, most commonly on visits to Sutton Mallet - and it's a point where the narrator addresses you directly, making it clear that he's directly overseeing your life. For good measure, the choices you make from here will almost certainly get progressively more nightmarish, including an outright descent into villainy.
- What the Hell, Player?: The narrator does not take kindly to you chickening out of a potential adventure at Sutton Mallet, and this particular chapter concludes with you being angrily told to fuck off.
- Wild Card: Of all the characters appearing across the plotlines, Mary "Scary Mary" Yatman is easily the most unpredictable, even in threads where her behaviour should be easy to understand. In the "Ilya Kuryakin" plotline, she often ends up working for Robert Hackwill as an enforcer and hired killer, but can also betray Hackwill and his cronies at various points seemingly on a whim - at one point even falling in love with you.
And so on.
