Sagard the Barbarian

"Is SIXTEEN too young to be a WARRIOR?!"

– blurb

The Sagard the Barbarian (or Hero's Challenge) tetralogy was Gary Gygax's aim for a more-mature Endless Quest, written by the man himself with Flint Dille brother of... er. Target age, maybe twelve and (very) male. Baby's First Conan.

The books are set in Greyhawk - or at least start there, at Ratik.

It is not just your personal choices that get you to where you end up. Random chance has a place in this. It's d4-system: in case you don't own a d4, you fight monsters by flipping the pages with your eyes closed and, there's that number between one and four on the top right. So, somewhere between M1: Blizzard Pass and Dungeon of Dread.

Sagard is an adolescent Ratikaan barbarian who looks around his tribe and sees the difference between the real men and the "kwads". Sagard wishes to be a man so goes out on Adventure, (further) into the Ratik wilderness. Thus, The Ice Dragon.

In the second book The Green Hydra, Sagard feels Ratik too confining so travels down the eastern coast of not-Oerik. The map is exactly the same as Ratik's map, in a fit of lazy design. The antagonists here are the Slith, reptilians who, like the Fiend Factory's Russian Doll Monster, lose fighting-ability the more they lose hitpoints. There's a priestess here whom you rescue at the end.

Third book The Crimson Sea: as Sagard and the priestess are lounging in Saint Kitts, a Caribbean-themed island, the priestess is captured. By "Hitaxians". The ol' coot was having trouble with the IRS, it seems... Anyway Sagard ventures further south to find a naval crew who can attack Hitaxia. Different sort of adventure in different islands, depending on if your crew is escaped slaves or pirates. Hitaxia is an Arab-themed empire.

Fourth book, The Fire Demon even further south. The I-Shadi even further south than that, in not-Africa, has obsessively made himself over with the finest body parts of the finest races in the world. Now he needs the heart of a brave man. And, by now, Sagard has become renowned as a very, VERY brave man... although not so brave that he needs to tarry longer in Hitaxia (gee, wonder why). Then he bumbles around the Heart of Darkness until he susses out what the reader already knows. There's another, African love-interest here because, of course there is.

Robert Howard himself certainly would have cringed at all this but, hey - based. Adolescent boys enjoyed it.