Fighting Fantasy

I remember these books fondly. Most of them were a bit rubbish, and you could cheat your way through, but every so often there was one with a plot and everything. I was never really into the whole dungeons and dragons thing though (despite getting horribly hooked to Diablo II on Sunday - yikes), and there were very few sci-fi ones or anyhing like that. Which reminds me, has anyone read 'Life's Lottery'? It's a Choose Your Own Adventure book for grown-ups. It's kinda... odd.

Don't start on the Sorcery series or the fucking Greek one. Harry Potter of their day.

Paul - EVERYTHING YOU MENTION could be found in kids gamebooks except possibly the buggery and even then I wouldn't be so sure (it wasn't called the Greek one for nothing). Getting jailed for murder is the most common thing behind orcfighting. If you have found the Cell Key turn to the number upon it.

James - you could not work out how to use a 12 sided die? A good start is to roll it. Even the Dream Warriors worked that one out despite dice being far from the only things they rolled.

I flipped through it. It was just an average night out for me...

If you want to run away turn to page 235 If you stay and fight turn to 13 If you put the secret stone of Rann in the tiny box in the corner of the room got to page 400.

Hmmmmmm.

www.advancedfightingfantasy.com it rocks

that said, the Sorcery! series had really nice art.

I had been involved in a non-computer role-playing game called Dungeons and Dragons at the time [c. 1975], and also I had been actively exploring in caves : : : Suddenly, I got involved in a divorce, and that left me a bit pulled apart in various ways. In particular I was missing my kids. Also the caving had stopped, because that had become awkward, so I decided I would fool around and write a program that was a re-creation in fantasy of my caving, and also would be a game for the kids : : : My idea was that it would be a computer game that would not be intimidating to non-computer people, and that was one of the reasons why I made it so that the player directs the game with natural language input, instead of more standardized commands.

(Quoted in Dale Peterson, Genesis II: Creation and Recreation with Computers, 1983.) It's hard not to feel a certain sadness that the first adventure game is shaped by these two lost souls, Bishop and Crowther, each like Orpheus unable to draw his wife out of the underworld.

Crowther's program (c. 1975), then, was a simulation of the Bedquilt Cave area, owing its turn-based conversational style to a medieval-fantasy adaptation of tabletop wargaming: E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's Dungeons and Dragons (1973-4). Nor was the program without precedent, either in computing ± `Hunt the Wumpus' (Gregory Yob, 1972) was a textual maze game, while `SHRDLU' (Terry Winograd, 1972) had a recognisably adventure-like parser ± or in literature, where OuLiPo and other ludic literary genres, especially in France, had tried almost every permutation to make physical books more open-ended: Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de po¡emes (1962) cut its pages into strips so that the lines of ten sonnets could be mingled to form 1014 different outcomes.

(And I have decided to stay within parenthesis)

They are slightly off the money, though, as my knowledge of these books is (was?) relatively extensive. One canard to shoot straight down, once and for all: the first book was NOT the best - this is just 'paradigmatic' thinking, ie, a cliché.

(Contenders for best: Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, City of Thieves - but I think Deathtrap Dungeon still wins in the end. I appreciate that these are all early examples - my memory of later ones is not so strong.)

(Other fact: like upthread writer, I too used to buy them in FRENCH. It's almost inexplicable.)

I'm not sure though - there was an atmosphere to Warlock lacking in some of the others, despite its bipartite writing. Forest of Doom and Citadel of Chaos had bags of atmosphere too but were too easy/too hard respectively. Deathtrap Dungeon's Big-Brother style plot was good but the traps and puzzles were very blah.

Sorcery! was really really good though.

Had never made the BB - DD link (no surprise), but it's compelling in a way. How about an ILX pub crawl based on DD, in which everyone actually has to kill each other, or fall into various deadly traps in and around Soho?

Hm.

So what's the best Sorcery!? This is a tricky one. Obvious temptation to count backwards from #4 - but I would tend to go the other way - I really like the hills and Kharé.

(Surely the Vicar has a view on this?)

No spoilers for Sorcery!, please: absurdly I never finished it, and had forgotten till now that I must still vaguely intend to do so, at the back of my mind, having neglected it for c.16 years. (I did have an *inkling* of the final shenanigans.)

So here is another question: who (off ILX) could actually go back to a gamebook and properly read / play it now, without feeling too silly to continue?

or maybe I should just buy the D20 Dungeons & Dragons book and run some proper fantasy role playing games - no more of this pomo gaming for me!

was there only one way through?

All the latest news on the relaunched FF series, amateur gamebooks, AFF 2nd edition rules, exclusives, interviews, encyclopedia and much much more.

It took them a while to figure out that if you can reach an ending by a clever choice rather than a big fight, you shouldn't put the clever choice on paragraph 400.

I think the Gonchong was Island of the Lizard King (my first)

Say what you like, there was a lot of variety in genres and play mechanisms over the series.

Who wanted to borrow Deathtrap Dungeon from me, BTW?

Did anyone really bother with the dice thing though? More importantly, did anyone actually give up and accept they'd lost and put the book away after throwing two ones during a fight?

ACK! This thread has made me use the phrase "ye Gods!" What's going on?

actually playing the books with dice = ultra lamus. tried it with 'House Of Hell' but found it too much effort - also i was crap. i always cheated anyway and backtracked if i chose the wrong number and ended up impaled on a spike in the fiery pits of Karamandia, or decapitated by a minotaur in the tombs of the Allansian demon lords. no i was never slain by an elf (altho the black imp in Deathrap Dungeon was a lil bastard). i'll just re-iterate what i said on another thread - Space Assassin was classic for the Geoff Senior artwork alone. City Of Thieves, Deathtrap Dungeon, Midnight Rogue, Trial Of Champions, Armies Of Death, Star Strider and the Trolltooth Wars novel were my favourites.

The Two Steve Jacksons (from the fightingfantasy.com FAQ)

Not everyone knows that Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games is not the same guy who created Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks with Ian Livingstone. A lot of people still think Steve moved on to set up his company in the States and is involved with GURPS. Actually, Steve Jackson Games is run by a different Steve Jackson. In the good old days of White Dwarf, they used to dub them 'Steve Jackson UK' and 'Steve Jackson US'. Steve Jackson is the working name of US writer Steven Gary Jackson.

One way to tell the difference between the two writers is the formatting of the gamebook. On the books that were written by Steve Jackson UK, only his name appears on the cover. Steve Jackson US books are treated like any other sub-author's: with their name appearing on the copyright page, and "Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone Present" on the cover.

From the Steve Jackson US Biography: "He still writes, when he finds the time. In the 1980s, he tried his hand at interactive books or "game novels" (his first, Scorpion Swamp, was published by Penguin and spent six months on the British children's bestseller list)." The biography says he set up his own company (Steve Jackson Games Inc.), which is responsible for hits like Car Wars and GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System). Steve Jackson US also gained some unwanted fame by having his office raided by the Secret Service.

Steve Jackson US: the GURPS, Secret Service, Illuminati one.

Sorcery titles: The Shamutanti Hills; Khare: Cityport Of Traps; The Seven Serpents; ooh blimey I've forgotten the fourth one.

so, like, the SJ UK & IL series included a SJ US title? that is just mental.

I know someone who wrote a ton of Fighting Fantasy books, I will ask him to resolve this vexed question.

oops, apols for confusing Sorcery with WOTN there - they were both 'advertised' at the back of many FF books of course

FIGHTFOX

SKILL: 7
STAMINA: 6
LUCK: 6

"Did you get the magic slippers of Gazar from the Prince of Caldorn? If so turn to page 133"

Then when you did, it said, THERE ARE NO MAGIC SLIPPERS OF GAZAR AND NO PRINCE OF CALDORN IN THIS BOOK, YOU ARE A CHEAT AND YOUR GAME IS OVER

Jaysus!

http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/assets/images/ff22.jpg

60. Plateau Of The Spectral Legion

Marc Gascoigne to thread

Then, the other day, I had yet another go. It was much like the previous return: I played The Shamutanti Hills 3 times and could not get past the Manticore. But I adored it. I think I have concluded that it is my favourite gamebook of all.

Tom E was proud, upthread, of his analysis of SORCERY!. He could read it again, now.

Tom E also says upthread that no-one likes Scorpion Swamp. This is untrue. I played it the other day and, unlike TSH, I won it first time out, playing cautiously for THE FORCES OF GOOD. I think it was bold in its attempt to remake the textual space of FFGs, ie. backwards / forwards, a sort of 3D world.

(agreed on scorpion swamp, btw; the only one i ws ever moved to make a map 4)

But I am trying Masks of Mayhem for the first time.

Don't spoil it for me!

A curious thing is: oevr the years, when I have seen second-hand FFGs, I have thought: blimey, I wouldn't waste money on them, when I have all those old ones gathering dust somewhere. But now I am thinking: if I see some 2nd-hand ones I don't have, that look good, cheap, I might have to buy them!

Possibles: Freeway Fighter (which I did play a lot way way back, c.1986), Seas of Blood - what else should I look out for?

Vicar, I agree with you. Except it's not only the art.

Now rereading City Of Thieves at last. I think I'm just a little disappointed. It moves a bit like a computer adventure game: one location to the next, knock on the door or carry on walking - somehow the events are too discrete, there isn't quite enough atmospheric flox. Yet I'm surprised to find myself writing this: have always thought it maybe the bext Gamebook (!), and this ought to be a joyous plunge back into its scenery.

It was always queer that Kharé and City of Thieves coexisted. I own both in French.

they are very different. one was a cityport of traps, the other a city of thieves. Very different, but both problematic characteristics for a city to have.

I suppose this is what makes FFGs rich and endlessly renewable, like Kafka and Faulkner?

a) Stay in bed and construct terrifyingly elaborate fantasies of your own violent demise?
TURN TO PAGE 12
b) Scuttle into the dining room where your reppresive ogre of a father is waiting with a bag of rocks to throw at you?
TURN TO PAGE 13
c) Drink the potion marked with a lightning bolt?
TURN TO PAGE 16

They seem to be making the movie for you House of Hell lovers!
http://www.houseofhellmovie.com/#vid

Don't think I ever finished that one. Didn't think that waiting for the movie would be an option.

I don't believe anyone actually bothers to fight the monsters. I always just won automatically.

lolol

iirc house of hell was possibly the hardest non-boring one i ever read, couldnt quite get a grasp of the shape of it even when just cheating

that one and creature of havoc

Very moving thread.

House of Hell was all about finding the Kris knife. Looking at the website now, it strikes me how formulaic the titles are: x of the y z, generally.

(that was an exciting maths-based adventure btw)

read Rings of Kether a lot, and yeah never bothered with the combat most of the time.

House of Hell was the first one I read and loved it, I'm *certain* the movie will be equally as fantastic..

haha the kris knife. yeah it was, but i believe there was only one strict way to do that and solve the book - a great many dead ends otherwise. aslo there was a lot of deduct-this-from-that number crunching to find secret rooms and so forth which i was never much fond of. add 1 fear point.

i love that pf had these in french! how very.

http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/figfan08f.jpg

http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/figfan01ge.jpg

hm. error of judgement from the germans here.

Wow, apparently the Choose Your Own Adventure books are still out there, being published again:

http://www.cyoa.com/public/index.html

Thank you rtc, I still have them, on my shelves now, c.23 years on. And I still have not made much progress in them. I think it may because they're in French.

Le Marais looks familiar (same cover anyway) but that Hexenmeister translation is new to me - complete with meta-gaming cover art.

I did re-attempt Kharé: Cityport of Traps en francais in summer 2006 I think - got a slight distance but also struggled with the language, which doesn't say much for my reading of French. In fact I remember being put in jail from the start, before I'd even made it through the city gate.

I almost posted again about how atmospheric the art is in that book. But in the French edition, is the art all Frenchified? Do they have berets and stripey jumpers in all the pictures?

found a load of these for next to nothing at a car boot yesterday. picked up

city of thieves
house of hell
rings of kether
forest of doom
deathtrap dungeon

House of Hell & Deathtrap Dungeon = AWESOME

I had all those except Rings of Kether

Did anyone manage to solve Creature of Havoc? I even drew a maze going through it and still couldn't figure it out.

OK so Wikipedia explains why I was never able to solve Creature of Havoc, curse you Steve Jackson:

1, In order to escape the underground labyrinth of Zharradan Marr, you're instructed to identify a secret door that leads to the Dungeon Master's room by a text passage in the book starting with a particular combination of words (see reference number 237 or 290). But, when you find it, this text marker is mistakenly left out (see reference number 213), thus not identifying the secret door it hides. This mistake was in the original 1980s Puffin as well as the early 2002 Wizard prints. It is corrected in later Wizard versions (Series 1) but it reappears again in the latest version released in February 2010.

yuk, that sucks

i tried rings of kether last night. it didn't read well to be honest, it involves you being some police investigator looking into space drug smuggling. but it zipped you about locations far too quickly, one moment i was tailing some dude and then the next two choices suddenly it said, you have nothing more to go on FAILED.

but the illustrations in these books are fab

Got a whooole bunch of these but not sure I ever played one all the way through, either properly or even with fingers as multiple placemarkers and every dice roll magically going my way. The problem is that all the decisions are arbitrary and random - "you reach a fork in the road, do you go left or right?" left = YOU DIE. It's pure luck, no skill.

Agreed about the illustrations though.

One of my faves: Robot Commando. Dinosaurs and robots together at last!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/18/Ff22puffinonly.jpg

My friend and I tried to do one together recently that we found while we were hanging out at his mum's house, but didn't get very far as we couldn't stop laughing at the fact there was a river in it called the River Cok.

Got a whooole bunch of these but not sure I ever played one all the way through, either properly or even with fingers as multiple placemarkers and every dice roll magically going my way. The problem is that all the decisions are arbitrary and random - "you reach a fork in the road, do you go left or right?" left = YOU DIE. It's pure luck, no skill.

This was a feature of role-playing games of the time.

the woman at the car boot has Robot Commandos too, i passed because i'd never heard of it before.

had

man how could you pass on that cover. smh.

haha, i was quickly rummaging through the womans box (yay) because she was packing all her stuff up and leaving. It was in fact partly because of that robot on the cover that I passed, but tbh I didn't even notice the dinosaur.

I had about the first 30 of these--I found them in a water-damaged box in the garage recently, and was surprised to see that I'd coloured in most of the illustrations (badly) with what appears to be crayon. And the stats sheet pages are erased to shreds.

arf. i coloured some of the illustrations (amazingly) with pencil crayon in this:

http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/assets/images/ffpit.jpg

also had this one aw yeah

http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/assets/images/fftitan.jpg

Luck / random decision element bigger in FF than in RPGs (with RPGs it really depended on the players and how they wanted to play, lucky needn hardly be involved at all), but 'skill' still present in FF I think. Skill meaning canny decision-making based on eg occasional clues and what you think they think you think.

never heard of this shit. sounds awesome.

Incidentally, I haven't checked upthread, but do you know that these are being converted into IPod apps?

omg!

Love that Pinefox didn't know FF 9 years ago but is down with the programme in the O Ten.

Sorry that reads sarcky, I just mean yeah real love.

I didn't know FF? Confusing.

my knowledge of these books is (was?) relatively extensive. One canard to shoot straight down, once and for all: the first book was NOT the best - this is just 'paradigmatic' thinking, ie, a cliché.

(Contenders for best: Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, City of Thieves - but I think Deathtrap Dungeon still wins in the end. I appreciate that these are all early examples - my memory of later ones is not so strong.)

(Other fact: like upthread writer, I too used to buy them in FRENCH. It's almost inexplicable.)

― the pinefox, Monday, 15 July 2002

sorry PF I misread somebody else's display name.

Anyway, come on. Warlock of Firetop Mountain is easily the best, faults and all.

Seem to recall having had a board game version of Warlock at some point. Ring a bell with anyone else?

I had the bad Spectrum game version which was just a re-tool of Halls of the Things, a game I didn't rate much anyway. Board game rings a vague bell, but was that a re-tool of the Games Workshop D&D-ish board game that I can't remember the name of right now?

What, Heroquest? I think the thing I'm thinking of was some years earlier.

Yeah, it's on Wikipedia.

It was Heroquest I was thinking of. Had a few drunk games of that back in the day.

Me and my mates all scoffed at it when it came out - not for serious gamers, it had TV ADS. We were snotty little nerds.

Yeah but I couldn't persuade the first Mrs V to play proper D&D

I've disparaged Warlock Mountain a lot in the past, but truth is I never made it all the way through. Not sure. Did it have atmosphere, or not?

My views on these things seem never really to change: City of Thieves, D Dungeon and Sorcery! would be the centre of my canon (1984, 2002, 2010). But I hardly made it through those either.

FF also launched its own line of actual roleplaying games, still in standard paperback format. There were at least two adventure/sourcebooks which I had, which I adapted to AD&D rules I think.

Yeah I remember those.

Was Sorcery the 4-parter? It was probably the best thing they did if so.

My view of Warlock is distorted because me and my brother bought it first edition, before FF had become a thing at all, and its atmosphere is coloured by uniqueness for me.

Given that I grew up on Choose Your Own Adventures and progressed to dodgy text-mode dungeon slash computer games (aahh Caverns of Larn), secretly longing to be friends with the D&D/Warhammer boys 'cept they didn't talk to girls, I should've been all over these, but I too could never be bothered to play properly, having imaginary battle-winning dice and a finger in the page at every decision

I had an Asterix game book, it came with its own die with wild boar and stuff on and an assortment of bits of card which I never used because I was cheating again, but I guess the real FF purists didn't like that sort of thing

if this reads as a terrible slight to the aforementioned purists and D&D boys I should probably admit that the ones I knew did a much better, faster job of turning into well-adjusted adults than I did

Oh my god, my friends and I would've been over the moon to have an actual girl who wanted to play with us.

xxp My view of all of them is coloured by the quality of the art (so i don't really rate Warlock, horreur!) Ian McCaig/Deathtrap Dungeon ftw.

Skill meaning canny decision-making based on eg occasional clues and what you think they think you think.

and an ability to go back and do the adventure over and over and over again until you found a way past whatever the impassable barrier in each one was.

Excellent thread! I still have Sorcery! somewhere, maybe I'll dig it out next time I'm at my parents'. All the sci-fi FF I read were dreadful. Temple of Terror is a good one that hasn't been mentioned yet. I thought Lone Wolf was far superior to FF in terms of atmosphere and rereadibility - I had about 15 of them before the series got too ridiculous for even me (in the third series Wolfie becomes the superest superhero that ever lived).

WTF at http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Lone-Wolf-22-Buccaneers-Shadaki-Joe-Dever-PB-VGC-/330460284096?pt=Fiction&hash=item4cf0f7c4c0

There was also Grailquest, which was odd. And Duel Master, a not-at-all-successful attempt to take on video games by having two players read different books at the same time and interact with each other by WAITing a lot. This is the one I remember:

http://www.gamebooks.org/gallery/dm4.jpg

Also, Lone Wolf

http://web.ncf.ca/as300/head.gif

http://web.ncf.ca/as300/head.gif

...was my favourite.

And Duel Master, a not-at-all-successful attempt to take on video games by having two players read different books at the same time and interact with each other by WAITing a lot.

That's right! FF did one too, where you were brothers--one a wizard and one a warrior. Lots of waiting around for the other person to catch up.

Titan and Out of the Pit! I had those, too, though they weren't in the mouldering box. But all this Sourcery talk is seriously making me want to play through those 4 books, at least when my wife isn't around to look incredulously at me.

I loved GrailQuest! I still have all those books.

FF did one too, where you were brothers--one a wizard and one a warrior. Lots of waiting around for the other person to catch up.

Tried to play this properly with a friend recently! And yeah, too much waiting.

Got the Deathtrap Dungeon iphone app, it's actually pretty fun. It's just the book - same text, same pictures (with added colour) - the only innovation is automated stats/inventory/dice rolling but that definitely makes it more playable.

But wait, does that mean you cannot cheat and skip ahead to random pages to see what happens from there?

the only innovation is automated stats/inventory/dice rolling but that definitely makes it more playable.

a welcome inclusion I have to admit

I always wanted to write a BASIC program on my Commodore Plus/4 to deal with the whole pesky dice rolling business but I couldn't face all that typing I'd have to do.

But wait, does that mean you cannot cheat and skip ahead to random pages to see what happens from there?

nope, nor can you pretend to win a luck roll or a battle when you didn't, or turn back when a wrong move means YOUR ADVENTURE ENDS HERE.

and why would anybody want to do any of those bad things?

Contenders for best: Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, City of Thieves - but I think Deathtrap Dungeon still wins in the end

Aside from Citadel of Chaos, I'd go along with this. Though I feel the need to also mention Cavern of the Snow Witch, which felt quite epic to me and is still tied in with memories of Christmas '84, and the final Fighting Fantasy book I really enjoyed, Seas of Blood.

http://www.jammajup.co.uk/otherbooks/FF/cavernsofthesnowwitch.jpghttp://www.jammajup.co.uk/otherbooks/FF/seasofblood.jpg

Looking at this list, I see after Seas I skipped a couple, eventually bowing out with Trial of Champions (missing out on Robot Commando).

My general rule of thumb was: solo Ian Livingston = good, solo Steve Jackson = bad. The exception being Jackson's House of Hell.
Speaking of which, there's, um, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPmDwXjNWTU

My general rule of thumb was: solo Ian Livingston = good, solo Steve Jackson = bad. The exception being Jackson's House of Hell.

Pretty sure I agree with this. My memories of FF are so vague, but they're all in there somewhere!

The House of Hell one introduced me to the whole concept of having port and cheese or brandy and biscuits after dinner. I seem to remember that if you had one of these combos you would die horribly.

the next morning, probably

OK, took the plunge. When my wife was asleep in front of the TV, I dug out the Sorcery books, and went through the first 2, with a palpavble stench of mould coming off the pages. I cheated through the fights, of course, and occasionally backtracked, but got through them,and am looking forward to the from memory) much harder books 3 and 4.

Khare was a bugger, though. TO get out of the city, you have to get 4 lines of a poem from 4 different people. I only found three, but fortunately, they were the three that had the number references you need to turn to to get out, so I figured it was close enough.

so, i never got much into fighting fantasy, but the Lone Wolf books had me by the tail, as they say... and they're all online too!
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books

Did anyone have any of the fantasy/puzzle questbooks? A4 format, full-page picture puzzles and riddles. Originally I had Steve Jackson's Tasks of Tantalon which really is excellent, great artwork, puzzles that are challenging to this day, and a decent framing story.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/ciu/da/7a/cd50c27a02a0fdc1608fa110.L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Recently I discovered Ian Livingstone had also done one, The Casket of Souls. Found a copy of it but it was disappointing; a shitty story and the puzzles were all of the same type, simply looking at the pictures to find objects that had been 'hidden' in them.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080513213108/fightingfantasy/images/thumb/6/6e/CasketofSoulsOxford.jpg/150px-CasketofSoulsOxford.jpg

Then today I found out there were four more in the series! And they're all available (used) on Amazon! Should I push the button...

http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fantasy_Questbook

I had Tasks of Tantalon and Helmquest, really liked em both, mainly for the art.

I am meeting Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone for lunch? It is a thing that happened, I was not expecting it.

I had an idea - I wondered what people would think of it. What if people met in a pub in London, and played Sorcery books? As an all-day thing, say next Saturday? We could talk about how we had been thrown into a prison cell again, and other people could witness that we were rolling the dice properly, not skipping like savages. People could order the books this weekend and they would arrive in time, if they did not have them?

Seems an oddly antisocial way to hang out :)

Is this a silly idea? It seems like a silly idea now.

Tell us about the meeting!

I love Sorcery! and must return to it some time.

I am sick in my stomach with nostalgia after skimming this thread.

had totally forgotten the dual master books & Casket of Souls...

as I mentioned upthread i played a two player FF with a friend recently for lol nostalgia purposes, and it was pretty boring :/

omg Gravel that's ace.

funnily enough i read House of Hell last week, just got completely lost all the time. Pulled one too many hidden switches and got trapped behind a fire place.

Will always love Rings of Kether

yeah, i wanna know about steve jackson!

ok slight embarrassment here -- one second's googling reveals there is both an american and british game designer named steve jackson...

He is often mistaken for a different Steve Jackson, a British gamebook and video game writer who co-founded Games Workshop. The confusion is exacerbated by the fact that while the UK Jackson was co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, the US Jackson also wrote three books in this series (Scorpion Swamp, Demons of the Deep, and Robot Commando), and the books did not even acknowledge that this was a different Steve Jackson.[1]

I haven't met them yet! I'm looking forward to it, though.

I played Sorcery tonight! It's weird how differently I play them now as an adult - I don't cheat now and didn't as a kid either but back then I'd basically take a different route every game and get lost, now I'm much more linear and happier to replay lines that went well the previous time. I guess I'm reading a lot less for the prose?

I actually think that the art is pretty awful.

Khare is so good! I had forgotten how good it was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrOZ1xf7qC8&sns=tw

"Whereabouts in Mexico were you born?"

Gravel, I always want to go back to Sorcery!.

Here is a surprising thing Ian Livingstone said:

"If I could do it again, I'd make them easier and more accesible".

I have returned yet again to MASKS OF MAYHEM - a book I attempted several times, this time in 2005.

I like a lot though it's not one I played or read as a child, only a later retro discovery.

I will try to make time to keep cracking on at it occasionally. Or at other fabulous old gamebooks!

there is a blog called 'fighting dantasy' where a person is playing through all of these. the person's name is dan. there is also a blog called 'fighting fantasist' focuses on these and related hobbies in the 80s nerd line: that one is pretty good.

there also appears to be a wiki. here is the wiki page for one by peter darvill-evans, who i think wrote the best of these, although this was the worst of his three:

http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Beneath_Nightmare_Castle

mainly i like the 'further notes' section:
"This book has a Skeleton with skill 4 stamina 10, which is an unusual stat for a Skeleton"

The book features a blend of the fantasy and horror genres. It also features some particularly disturbing failure references and illustrations.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls650dTXsR1r1g40zo1_400.jpg

teaser announcement from Tinman, the people who create smart phone adventure books. Suggests something to do with FF books:

http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/?p=2280

certainly is

http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/tin-man-games-picks-up-fighting-fantasy-license/096680

are these just smartphoned up versions of the original books with the same text and dicerolling mechanic, like deathtrap dungeon that was released a year or two ago? or something a little more exciting?

I think they are just the same sort of thing as the original books, I'm going to buy and try one this weekend so I'll let you know.

Has there been any mention of You Chose Wrong?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m93yu4RU921rz2qoko1_400.jpg

http://41.media.tumblr.com/b08a99627d35204864439eafb2d51e7a/tumblr_npd3nmKtYA1uorx89o1_1280.jpg

omg, had to look that up... and it gets better. behold the author's amazon bio.

http://i.imgur.com/meAn3Ds.png

No long swords either, apparently.

Space Raptor Butt Invasion -- A Chuck Tingle Thread

Me and a friend made a thing:

Role-playing games, pen and paper, but online...

I replayed/re-read these on the Fighting Fantasy app. "House Of Hell" was terrifying. "Citadel Of Chaos" was the one I replayed and replayed as a kid. I really wanna read "Sky Lord", which apparently is so, so bad