Fighting Fantasy

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Since every other habitual pub conversation has made its way onto ILE this one might as well too (also to serve as an awful warning so it doesn't happen again and thus sparing Kate M, Emma, Isabel, etc. the horror of having to sit through me and John and Magnus banging on about the Gonchong).

Fighting Fantasy books - if you're in your mid-late twenties and British (and generalising not-that-wildly, male) then you almost certainly read them. Sample qn asked in pub: "What was on the cover of the Citadel Of Chaos? No the original one." Purist view is that none of them were as good as the first one. My Dad got mildly obsessed with them and would go through them actually making a map which nobody else ever did.

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I did the usual early-teenage thing of getting obsessed with them and then quickly losing interest. Your Dad is not alone, Tom, I made a map for "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" but it still didn't stop me going round in circles! A problem with trying to make a map for these games is you don't know how long the passages are in relation to each other. Oh and the pages kept getting ripped where I was over- zealous with the eraser after writing down the results of those dice- rolls.....

― MarkH, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Thanks GOD I spent my yoof in NY. Thus I was spared this nonsense.

― masonic boom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I lost interest after Starship Traveller.(Number 5 in the series I believe).

― Jonnie, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wasn't it a big dragon/warlock sort of thing. In orange?

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.

― Paul Strange, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

They were all right, but got a bit boring after a while. There's only so many times you can encounter a slavering orc and get any plaease out of defeating it by rolling a die.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Life's Lottery by Kim Newman? Or is it someone else. I saw this in a bookshop a while ago and was hooked for about five minutes. Looks interesting.

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

― Pete, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Having just stumbled over this it would appear I have not been spared after all. Is this what you were discussing on your so-called Boy's Night Out last week Pete?

― Emma, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's the one - by Kim Newman. I read through it once, got buggered by some weird ex-soldier type woman, exacted revenge against an old school bully, lost my girlfriend then got framed for murder, and jailed. So I gave up. You certainly never got that in Fighting Fantasy though.

― Paul Strange, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I had a few of those books, I was useless at them...I would always end up in some maze that went on for eternity. I had one that had a 12 sided dice, I never worked out to use it though!

― james e l, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Like cannabis to horse, I slipped down the slope from Jackson and Livingstone's FF books to full-on D&D hell. AD&D, Warhammer, Cthulhu, Paranoia, Runequest, running around woods with plastic weapons. I've been through the lot. Thank the lord for the cigarette-smoking girls who saved me at 14, although there have been occasional relapses.

― chris, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Emma - you'd be wanting the 'Catfight Fantasies' thread which because ILE will eventually expand to include Everything will one day exist (whenever Ally gets up given her habit of starting threads I mention). Sorry to disappoint.

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.

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Life's Lottery by Kim Newman

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

― masonic boom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I should really read what I write before I post it! Anyway Tom, what I meant was it had all these strange symbols and numbers on it...I was only 10!

― james e l, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mid-late twenties? Yep. British? Indeed. Fighting Fantasy? What?

― Pinefox for a day, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Note Pinefox-ready "almost certainly" in original question. My market researchers instincts always at the ready to exclude the outliers.

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

early 20s canadian but i had a few. sort of the missing link between choose your own adventure, which i liked all right, and dungeons and dragons, which i never got into. never got really heavily into it -- like chess, seemed to appeal to a variety of geekery different from my own. i imagine live-action role-playing games might be better since you're fighting and killing other people instead of rolling dice. the only one i was aware of though was masquerade, which generally seemed like a creepy scene.

― sundar subramanian, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Roll the die...if you roll a 20, you become Pinefox for a day.

― MarkH, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was a Fighting Fantasy saddo too, but I only liked the sci-fi ones. Or ones with vampires. No silly orcs or goblins or any of that nonsense.

― DG, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I didn't like the Orcish ones much either but the space ones were very cool, wasn't there a detective one of some sort too?

― cabbage, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I used to get them out of the library and not steal them. Easily done cose people would write key numbers on the back page which would be dead handy for cheating.

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.

― Pete, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I used to read them in French, they were really huge around here for a while. One day the library got a bunch of them, but you couldn't borrow more than 2 or 3 at once 'cause there weren't enough of them to go around for all the geek boys. The first one I got, and my favorite, took place in a haunted house (don't remember the title - it was one of the earliest ones) and there was some vague mention in it of a secret path that led out of the castle, and I once read through all 400 paragraphs looking for that damn path - to no avail. Those things were a lot of fun, but the fights and the dice-rolling were a pain in the ass.

― Patrick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

did anyone actually bother with the dice thing? I always assumed I had won the fights or had a lucky roll etc. OK - i cheated but, who wants to play a fantasy game where you just get beaten up or fall in a hole because you rolled a 3 rather than a 6? no room for that in my fantasys.

― Disco Dave, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

WHat the hell are you all talkng about? DUngeons and Dragons?

― Mike Hanle y, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This whole Fighting Fantasy thing confuses me greatly. I got into the Choose series and D&D at the same time, so I think I was spared this other particular element of a potential childhood. Not that that helped me. ;-) Last regular role-playing stuff I did was dear ol' Cthulhu in college, which was actually entertaining because we had the right blend of serious gaming and ridiculous humor. The one time I ever did a live-action equivalent can be found here -- "Groovy 60s Cthulhu"! Years before any damn Austin Powers mummery, I should note.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

nine months pass...

Nothing wrong with Fighting Fantasy, I'm 23 and still have all mine, in fact I'm trying to collect all 60-odd. I'm not the kind of person who thinks unless you're going out drinking/clubbing/football/gigs then you're sad. They were actually pretty scary, especially the horror one, House of Hell ("the girl screams as the sacrificial dagger is plunged into her chest" etc) where you had to kill off satan himself. I've ordered Life's Lottery, which is more of a philosophical grown up thing. Incidentally if you couldn't be bothered rolling dice you could still play the books, just assuming you always won the fights. A lot of stuff about them is at http://www.fightingfantasy.com run by a Canadian, I believe.

― Mark Cordell, Monday, 6 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

two months pass...

check out the 'only'official regular updated ff website

www.advancedfightingfantasy.com it rocks

― mathew, Friday, 12 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

the Gonchong? was that the fire island one?

― Bob Zemko, Saturday, 13 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

FF books - not that good. they were too much like puzzle books (you had to find EXACTLY the right way through or you wouldn't make it) and not enough like RPGs (you couldn't risk just going exploring because then you wouldn't make it through).

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

― DV, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

oh yeah, House Of Hell was pretty good. Blimey.

― DV, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

>whimper< i don't know what you are all talking about. I DON'T. NO no no no. oh alright then, yes i do. *shame* I did the sorcery books too. and may have designed my own player score sheet. and really got into the FF game system book. and written some games for it. oh god in heaven help me.

― Alan Trewartha, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

steve jackson's always had crappy mazes in them. KILL HIM.

― Alan Trewartha, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

which came first - Dungeons and Dragons and the like, or the computer text adventure games (i think the first being the imaginatively titled 'Adventure', started in 1972)?

― michael, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If you can stand the 500MB download, try chapte r 8 of the Inform Designer's Manual (4th ed). Here's an extract:

One of Pat Crowther's caving companions was her husband, Will, who had already used computer plotters to draw the group's maps. He takes up the story:

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 so on.

― Alan T, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

you should have been out in the fresh air Alang, getting some exercise.

― chris, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(I was also a sprinter and a gymnast as a kid. i have medals and everything.)

― Alan T, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes 'medals' in Daley Thompson's Decathlon no doubt.

― Tom, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

come on Tom, be fair. More likely Konami Hypersports.

― chris, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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― 100 Metres Medal, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I see you're using the golfball technique there Tom.

― chris, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

grr. (i remember pirating dt's decathlon for a teacher in my school!)

― Alan T, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(ps. it's 500K (not 500M!) that pdf blue ink link thing)

(And I have decided to stay within parenthesis)

― Alan T, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Never looked at this before. Touched, now, to see year-old mentions of me for the first time.

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.)

― the pinefox, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yus, warlock of firetop mountain was indeed rub. written half and half by jackson and livingstone. and most of jackson's bit was... A CRAP BLUDDY MAZE. fuXoR. there was an incomprehensible game on the speccy of the same name. it was also k-rub.

― Alan Trewartha, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

mmmm the Maze of Zagor.

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.

― Tom, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am glad to agree re. Sorcery! (their ! not mine). I really did like it a lot - and it's probably arguable that it had more atmosphere than any ordinary FF book. I guess what it did was take very standard D&D-type ideas and give them a twist of some kind. I can't quite pin down what the flavour was - but you probably can: something folky about it, was there? Lots of cottages where people were making herby stew.

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.

― the pinefox, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The unique atmosphere of Sorcery! is, I think, down to its into-the- unknown storyline taking standard D&D tropes and putting an increasingly non-Westernized spin on them: the folksy air of the first book, with puzzles and monsters drawn from Greek mythology and the hilly location, into the much more exotic Mediterranean melting- pot city-state of the second book, then the nomadic/gypsy/steppes cultures of the third and finally into the Asian-tinged fortress of the fourth - progressively more original cultures for fantasy gaming, not harmed at all by some neat gameplay tricks (the whole "Analander" thing really reinforcing the player's feelings of foreign-ness) and John Blanche's excellent art.

― Tom, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I agree with all that - had forgotten it (but Greek? how?) - except that I'm not sure re. the artwork.

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?)

― the pinefox, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The wandering around hills fighting monsters is a familiar Greek myth 'thing' - eg Theseus. The manticore fight at the end of a labyrinth refs Theseus too. The landscape feels more European than the landscape in the other books. Um ah thats it (there is also a Procrustes-style nasty innkeeper in Khare IIRC).

― Tom, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There was a big trick/twist to finishing #4 wasn't there? something to do with a resurrection spell, and the mechanism used involved knowing the right point to jump to a special page (by adding 100 to the number or some such)

― Alan Trewartha, Monday, 15 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Skipping 129 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

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.

― ... (James Morrison), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 00:12 (fifteen years ago)

I loved GrailQuest! I still have all those books.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 08:48 (fifteen years ago)

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.

― ledge, Wednesday, 8 September 2010 09:31 (fifteen years ago)

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

― The New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 8 September 2010 09:47 (fifteen years ago)

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

a welcome inclusion I have to admit

― F-Unit (Ste), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 10:36 (fifteen years ago)

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.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 10:41 (fifteen years ago)

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.

― ledge, Wednesday, 8 September 2010 10:46 (fifteen years ago)

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

― Hongro Horace (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 10:51 (fifteen years ago)

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.jpg http://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

― like an ant to a crumb (DavidM), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 11:50 (fifteen years ago)

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!

― seandalai, Wednesday, 8 September 2010 11:51 (fifteen years ago)

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 New Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 8 September 2010 12:14 (fifteen years ago)

the next morning, probably

― k¸ (darraghmac), Wednesday, 8 September 2010 12:27 (fifteen years ago)

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.

― ... (James Morrison), Monday, 13 September 2010 00:23 (fifteen years ago)

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

― not everything is a campfire (ian), Monday, 20 September 2010 06:53 (fifteen years ago)

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

― ledge, Thursday, 30 September 2010 09:23 (fifteen years ago)

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

― rhythm fixated member (chap), Thursday, 30 September 2010 09:36 (fifteen years ago)

four months pass...

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

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Sunday, 13 February 2011 00:14 (fourteen years ago)

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?

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Sunday, 13 February 2011 00:17 (fourteen years ago)

Seems an oddly antisocial way to hang out :)

― Pisle of dogs (seandalai), Sunday, 13 February 2011 00:46 (fourteen years ago)

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

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Sunday, 13 February 2011 14:06 (fourteen years ago)

Tell us about the meeting!

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

― the pinefox, Sunday, 13 February 2011 14:32 (fourteen years ago)

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

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

― my opinionation (Hamildan), Monday, 14 February 2011 13:26 (fourteen years ago)

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

― ledge, Monday, 14 February 2011 14:21 (fourteen years ago)

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

― F-Unit (Ste), Monday, 14 February 2011 15:52 (fourteen years ago)

yeah, i wanna know about steve jackson!

― Jan-Michael Wincest (goole), Monday, 14 February 2011 16:02 (fourteen years ago)

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

― Jan-Michael Wincest (goole), Monday, 14 February 2011 16:05 (fourteen years ago)

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]

― Jan-Michael Wincest (goole), Monday, 14 February 2011 16:07 (fourteen years ago)

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?

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Saturday, 19 February 2011 05:06 (fourteen years ago)

I actually think that the art is pretty awful.

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Saturday, 19 February 2011 05:06 (fourteen years ago)

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

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Sunday, 20 February 2011 17:38 (fourteen years ago)

two months pass...

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

― Alba, Monday, 25 April 2011 08:24 (fourteen years ago)

"Whereabouts in Mexico were you born?"

― A Zed and Two Nults (Noodle Vague), Monday, 25 April 2011 08:29 (fourteen years ago)

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

― the pinefox, Monday, 25 April 2011 09:36 (fourteen years ago)

Here is a surprising thing Ian Livingstone said:

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

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Monday, 25 April 2011 12:45 (fourteen years ago)

five months pass...

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!

― the pinefox, Monday, 26 September 2011 08:26 (fourteen years ago)

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.

― thomp, Monday, 26 September 2011 13:37 (fourteen years ago)

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"

― thomp, Monday, 26 September 2011 13:41 (fourteen years ago)

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

― the pinefox, Monday, 26 September 2011 21:21 (fourteen years ago)

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

― thomp, Tuesday, 27 September 2011 06:48 (fourteen years ago)

seven months pass...

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

― PSOD (Ste), Friday, 25 May 2012 08:18 (thirteen years ago)

certainly is

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

― PSOD (Ste), Friday, 25 May 2012 09:03 (thirteen years ago)

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?

― the fey monster (ledge), Friday, 25 May 2012 09:25 (thirteen years ago)

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.

― PSOD (Ste), Friday, 25 May 2012 10:35 (thirteen years ago)

three months pass...

Has there been any mention of You Chose Wrong?

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

― direct references of (seandalai), Wednesday, 29 August 2012 12:13 (thirteen years ago)

two years pass...

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

― List of people who are ready for woe and how we know this (seandalai), Thursday, 11 June 2015 19:57 (ten years ago)

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

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

― Who M the best? (Will M.), Thursday, 11 June 2015 20:14 (ten years ago)

No long swords either, apparently.

― Tuomas, Thursday, 11 June 2015 20:15 (ten years ago)

Space Raptor Butt Invasion -- A Chuck Tingle Thread

― brimstead, Thursday, 11 June 2015 20:20 (ten years ago)

six years pass...

Me and a friend made a thing:

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

― Keith, Saturday, 28 August 2021 22:09 (four years ago)

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

― what's fgti up to these days? nothing. she's fake (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 28 August 2021 22:29 (four years ago)

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