Fighting Fantasy game books

[Harrison]

Did anyone else buy the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks? in the 80's?

http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/gamebooks.htm

These were created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.

I was a big fan of this series and purchased the first 7 books on their release and religiously played through them all, then purchasing many of the books released throughout the series as it was later continued, totalling 59 books.

Some of my favourite ones included Citadel of Chaos (the first one I completed), Warlock of Firetop Mountain (the first in the series), City of Thieves, Deathtrap Dungeon, Freeway Fighter (Post Apocalyptic road wars style), and StarShip Traveller (Megatraveller inspired). Most of those being from the first of the books.

Steve Jackson also released a 4 book series called Sorcery! that were more complex book based RPGs which also required you to purchase a 5th book "The Sorcery Spell Book" which was required in order to play through the 4 books. This was a great 4 book RPG and I enjoyed that even more than the main range of FF books.

A magazine was also released called Warlock, which was a monthly magazine running for 13 issues and contained a part based FF RPG adventure running throughout the series. It also contained a lot of other great information relating to the series.

An off shoot full RPG was also released, which used the easy to learn RPG rules from the game books, allowing you to create your own paper and disc RPGs. I used to play this around the same time as the original Dungeons and Dragons and had create fun. They even released a book devoted to the city features in the FF gamebook "City of Thieves" so you could set games within the same city, and a bestiary called "Out of the Pit" which detailed all monsters and enemies from the FF series.

You can find a full list of all Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and related books and magazines on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...tasy_gamebooks

I can't believe it is now the 25th anniversary of the original book, Warlock of Firetop Mountain, being released.

[Sharingan]

I've never been into pen-and-paper RPGs myself, but I know people who actually hold regular (sometimes even weekly) sessions with friends. Not having actually seen such a game, I honestly can't even imagine how it is played.

Are these books basically novels, but with elements that require player interaction (such as throwing dice to determine the outcome of an encounter, among other things)? If that's the gist of it, I might actually have a similar book somewhere in my bookcase, except it stars Asterix and Obelix, with Roman legions instead of trolls 'n' goblins

[Tiago]

I played with the first one
"The Warlock of Firetop Mountain" very nice book.
This first book i played by the rules.... after, the other books i just read them, the part where you were suposed to play with dices i just skip and keep reading it like if i won all the battles....

[Harrison]

Are these books basically novels, but with elements that require player interaction (such as throwing dice to determine the outcome of an encounter, among other things)?

Yes. You get a character stats page at the start of the book. You role dice to determine your characters starting statistics, including health, armour, dexterity, luck, charisma etc... These are then used throughout the books to determine the outcome of an event. For example if you enter a room and open a chest, you could then roll a dice and use your character's luck score to work out if the chest has a trap or not. Similarly if you wee jumping a gap you could use dexterity to determine the outcome.

The actual books are like a novel, but at the end of a section you get a number of options and have to turn to the page based on the option you select. Or it could be a dice role or other event that determines which page you have to go to next. So basically you are reading the book like a novel, but in a non-linear way, jumping back and fourth through the book based on the options you choose and the outcome of dice roles.

You also encounter enemies and fight them using your statistics against those given for the enemy in the book, and using the combat system given in the book. Once the battle is complete you then continue reading and might need to pick an option based on the outcome of the battle.

So basically the books work just like a full paper and dice RPG you would play with a group of people and a controlling Dungeon Master, but with the book acting like the Dungeon Master.

And Tiago, just reading it without acting the part and performing the actions is very naughty!!

[Harrison]

These books can also be quite complex. The first book, Warlock of Firetop Mountain, doesn't seem that big as a book, but can take many hours to complete. And at the time, with a friend, we decided to map out the whole of the game's level and used a big A1 sheet of paper. We managed to complete the whole map and the game's dungeon/area structure was quite big and impressed us.

[Tiago]

And Tiago, just reading it without acting the part and performing the actions is very naughty!!

[Sharingan]

Aha. So it's actually possible to get a different ending as well, depending on which choices you made?

I imagine that if there are many branching storylines, it could actually take many, many playthroughs to see everything. Or, you could just cheat and read the book like you would a novel.