Am I Mad or Was Fighting Fantasy Fucking Boss

[turnstyle]

Been revisiting the books with Turnstyle Junior, and having a great time.

Fuckers went for 59 books before they gave it up, then returned with some new ones later on (Assassins of Allansia is especially great).

So many awesome titles. Had fond memories of Robot Commando from my yoof, and it did not disappoint in 2023.

Also love City of Thieves, feels like a video game in a book.

Speaking of, Midnight Rogue is basically the Thief games but in book form.

House of Hell is kicking our arse, and the other day we started Masks of Mayhem and died within 3 choices. LOVE IT.

Share your favourite FF memories, and lament over the intactness of your virginity.

[Pranet]

Years ago on here there was someone who shared a photo of his very impressive collection of FF books.

It's all about the art for me. Love the black and white illustrations.

I got rid of most of mine years ago but now pick them up if I see them cheap in charity shops etc. Which is increasingly rare.

I kept hold of my copies of Out Of the Pit and Titan though. Treasured possessions those.

[Magnum Valentino]

Out of the Pit rules. Still have mine, as well as a copy of House of Hell I kept from the school library and Creature of Havoc which I bought based on a CAB thread but still haven't read. Sold a copy of Deathmoor on eBay a few years ago for a princely sum too, but regret it now. Oh and someone on the board here sent me a copy of the very first book when they were having a clear out.

The OG print of Citadel of Chaos is one of my favourite shit monsters ever.



The newer prints of some of the books have horrific all new illustrations but the old stuff is still the epitome of what fantasy art is supposed to look like to me.

[turnstyle]

Out of the Pit rules. Still have mine, as well as a copy of House of Hell I kept from the school library and Creature of Havoc which I bought based on a CAB thread but still haven't read.

If you have the original House of Hell, it most likely has the illustration of the nudey lady being sacrificed, which was BANNED from future editions for being inappropriate (but the dead guy in a noose hanging from a tree? Yeah that's totally fine).

Creature of Havoc feels genuinely innovative. I love the fact that you start the game not even knowing what you are, and have to slowly decode the language, which is totally alien to you at the start.

I'll post a photo of my collection later. It's far from complete, but we're happy with our treasure trove.

[turnstyle]

Here's our collection. It's not complete, and likely never will be - some of the later books of the original run go for insane money, presumably due to the series falling out of popularity and having much lower print runs.




And we have the Sorcery books too:

[madhair60]

to answer your most obvious, immediate question - yes, i get pussy.

(not pictured: the large format versions of Titan, Out of the Pit and The Tasks of Tantalon)

(also not pictured: Magehunter because it's fucking expensive)

edit: oh yeah, I don't have Allansia either, because it's also fucking expensive, so well met, turnstyle)

[Pranet]

Yeah I'm very envious of anyone who has Allansia.

[turnstyle]

edit: oh yeah, I don't have Allansia either, because it's also fucking expensive, so well met, turnstyle)

Woah, now that's an impressive FF collection! I am in awe. Have you read them all? Besties? Worsties?

Allansia was a charity shop find for me. 50p. Basically skipped all the way home.

[pigamus]

I got given City of Thieves as a prize at junior school in about 1988. Had a proper book plate in it an everything. Wish I still had it.

Real shame about the illustrations - kids reading the reprints aren't getting the proper books really. But I guess it's a rights nightmare.

[Pranet]

Allansia was a charity shop find for me. 50p. Basically skipped all the way home.

I sort of want to kill you now.

[The Culture Bunker]

I had a few FF books as a kid, though from looking through the list, the only ones I remember clearly having are 'Sword of the Samurai' and 'Army of Death'. I'm not sure if it was appropriate for my folks to be giving them to me for my ninth birthday or whatever - I think they took the attitude of "well, he's reading books, and that can't be a bad thing".

The 'Introductory Role Playing Game' one freaked me out for years due to the cover with the Were-Tiger bod on the cover.

[madhair60]

Woah, now that's an impressive FF collection! I am in awe. Have you read them all? Besties? Worsties?

honestly it was a childhood/teen years thing for me and it has been so long that I don't remember if I've read all of them. I love the lovecraftian fucked-up Beneath Nightmare Castle, I'm very fond of the insane Sky Lord mostly for a sequence in which you're stuffed in a spaceship full of inexplicable controls that you have to just fuck around with blindly, I adored Creature of Havoc though the original release was fucked, with a crucial text error making it impossible to finish legitimately, I loved Moonrunner for its Jason Voorhees mid-boss and unconventional ending, but my favourite of all time is Dead of Night, which I loved so much that I incorporated elements of its lore into my own writing as a "homage", which extends all the way up to my current comic series Merry Hell, which has a massive FF reference baked into it (though to be fair you wouldn't know it was one unless you already knew). I also loved Legend of Zagor because it felt like a video game, hahaha.

Allansia was a charity shop find for me. 50p. Basically skipped all the way home.

all of mine were! that or bought new, in the case of Curse of the Mummy (the first book in the series I bought, incidentally). I never bought an FF online in my life. I am tempted to do so with Magehunter at times - just to finish the series, you know? but i'm kinda okay with having one permanently missing from the collection as a sort of monument to the thrill of the hunt.

[Norton Canes]

Had the first dozen or so back in the day, loved them. We'd had a couple of basic 'Choose your own adventure' type books in the school library so to see a more elaborate version with actual monsters to fight was beyond the best thing ever.

My favourite was 'Scorpion Swamp' because while the other books were linear, this incredibly let you go back to places you'd already been, ad infinitum, so the adventure never had to end and I could just play it as long as I liked and never have to go outside and see other children and stay in Fighting Fantasy world for ever and ever and ever

[turnstyle]

My favourite was 'Scorpion Swamp' because while the other books were linear, this incredibly let you go back to places you'd already been, ad infinitum, so the adventure never had to end and I could just play it as long as I liked and never have to go outside and see other children and stay in Fighting Fantasy world for ever and ever and ever

There's a series called Fabled Lands that follows the same premise - they're open world and you can keep going back to places, and it even has a system for branching dialogue if you revisit a place you've been before. There are also neat touches like having a limited inventory, but being able to buy a house in a town and storing your stuff there. Whenever you return to grab something you need to do a dice roll as there's a small chance your house may have been looted in your absence. There's also a leveling up system.

I think it's the closest thing to Skyrim you could ever find in a book.

However, the wildest part is that each book represents its own land, and that you can take your character from one book, hop in a boat, and visit another book in the series, in any order, and carry on your adventure. There's no limit to the movement.

I think if you'd had those growing up you'd have never left the house, Norton.

[Mr_Simnock]

Enjoyed these years ago. I do remember trying to do them properly and getting a long way then dying and having to go back to the start, this always felt like big time theif to play and after a few goes of some I did the odd 'reading ahead' of certain choices to save all that time and not end again by walking through a wrong door for example.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'm not sure if I ever read/played any of the stories, but I remember having a book explaining all the creatures that I enjoyed reading. My favourite was the one with an octopus for a head and a talent for gourmet cooking.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I loved them. I liked House of Hell and Freeway Fighter the most just because I was big into haunted houses and post-apocalyptic stuff (still am, really) although I don't think they were two of the better ones.





And Freeway Fighter had a cool car (converted Lamborghini Countach)

[Pranet]

I'm not sure if I ever read/played any of the stories, but I remember having a book explaining all the creatures that I enjoyed reading. My favourite was the one with an octopus for a head and a talent for gourmet cooking.

That's Out of the Pit. A great favourite of my youth.

[13 schoolyards]

Freeway Fighter! I wasn't all that big on the traditional fantasy ones, but I definitely remember having that one - the Mad Max movies had a lot to answer for (see also the endless weekends my mates and I spent playing Car Wars)

[earl_sleek]

Out of the Pit and Titan were great - kinda generic DnD inspired fantasy lore but enjoyable. As far as the gamebooks went I found the following memorable:

Rebel Planet - liked the setting, probably one of the best SF FF
Rings of Kether - another good SF one
Creature of Havoc - maybe the most mechanically interesting FF as well as an inspired setup
Daggers of Darkness - cool setting
Samurai Warrior - liked the samurai skills mechanic
Black Vein Prophecy - possibly my favourite story
Legend of the Shadow Riders - cool moody setting and story
Night Dragon - ditto
The Sorcery! series

Pretty much always cheated though.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

i loved these. midnight rogue, warlock of firetop mountain, scorpion swamp and demon of the deep were the most memorable. the day my friend brought out of the pit into school, library copy in a damaged plastic cover, and showed us the John Blanch (?) illustration was so exciting. felt we spent hours passing it back and forth, and within a week several of us had our own copies

at a high school fundraiser someone's stall had stacks of them, multiple copies going back years. must have been for a school or youth club library. they were going for 20p each or something ridiculous and i bought as many as i could carry. at the time i was disappointed that many of them were original prints with the old title without the dragon logo. they smelled bad and some were water damaged but i was thrilled. i almost had a full set. riding back on the bus with my sports bag full of FF books.

they all went off to oxfam within weeks of me going to university

[jfjnpxmy]

Freeway Fighter! I wasn't all that big on the traditional fantasy ones, but I definitely remember having that one - the Mad Max movies had a lot to answer for (see also the endless weekends my mates and I spent playing Car Wars)

I remember being really chuffed that you could fight the end boss with your fancy car or just get out and duff him up.

Black Vein Prophecy - possibly my favourite story

Fuck off, really? I remember finding it totally inscrutable as a wean, then hunting it down when I was 25ish and finding it equally inscrutable. Some bollocks about an evil emperor dad and an evil brother and a time loop and pretty much all the spells you could learn just fucked your shit up further?

[earl_sleek]

The inscrutability is what I liked about it! It was very rare to find a game book of any series that you couldn't guess the entire plot of from the blurb on the back cover. You had to work out what was really going on in DVP, rather than the usual cookie cutter 'kill the wizard / demon / dragon, get his treasure / magical artefact, save Allansia / Khul / The Old World' job. (It's also been over 20 years since I read it so I might not feel the same now.)

[earl_sleek]

Any love for Joe Dever's Lone Wolf? I remember the writing and world building in that being a cut above most, probably helped by it being a long-ass series (several serieses, really) set in the same world. Like FF it was rife with stock fantasy cliches and tropes, but also like FF did it in a stylish and entertaining way.

[holyzombiejesus]

Much of this may be misremembered but was there a small boxed/ slipcased set, possibly by Jackson and Livingston outside the FF  series. Have a vivid memory of getting it for Christmas. Possibly had more complex rules?

Anyway, really loved these. Nothing to add except for a memory of a drunk goblin being "in his cups".

[Capt.Midnight]

Forest of Doom is fucking solid.

[Vodkafone]

Forest of Doom is fucking solid.

Yeah, in terms of atmosphere that was my favourite. I bought a copy a few years ago and played it and really loved getting the same feelings back decades later. I bought Warlock of Firetop Mountain when it came out and then the next seven or eight but didn't go further than that.

There is a 3D version of Warlock on Steam, very cheap and a good nostalgic blast.

[bomb_dog]

I've nearly finished graph mapping House Of Hell using Excel and OrientDb, to find the shortest route through the book. Misread a few entries so I've got some rework to do, but it's nearly done.

I'm interested in how many dead-ends and deaths there are, and if you go down one route that can take dozens of entries but you can't actually finish the book once you start down that path.

[Capt.Midnight]

I've nearly finished graph mapping House Of Hell using Excel and OrientDb, to find the shortest route through the book. Misread a few entries so I've got some rework to do, but it's nearly done.

I'm interested in how many dead-ends and deaths there are, and if you go down one route that can take dozens of entries but you can't actually finish the book once you start down that path.

I remember that one being incredibly tough too.

My original print of Deathtrap Dungeon smells amazing. I occasionally pick it up and flick through the smoky, aged yellowed pages for a waft of nostalgia.

[Theoretical Dentist]

Yeah, I was well into these in my early teens. I had most of the ones that were available at the time I was buying them, which probably stopped a few books before the end of the original 59-book run. I think I had/have Allansia but I may be confusing it wish Dungeoneer and/or Blacksand!, which I definitely had. Hopefully my collection is still intact in my parents' loft, possibly along with the maps I made of the ones I played extensively.

A few years ago I had a nostalgia trip discovering there's still a fan community online (of course there is), which was mostly fun but I did get irrationally disturbed by someone doing playthroughs on YouTube who, apart from making various egregious factual errors, would blithely say things like 'I'm meant to roll 2D6 here but I'll just use a D12 instead'. No, fuck you, you can't just use a D12 in place of 2D6, they have completely different probability distributions.

Like @madhair60 my favourite was Dead of Night, mostly for the atmosphere, theme and story, but if I remember correctly it wws also quite interesting gameplay-wise. I think you had fairly free choice over the order you visit locations, which is probably fairly common, but also your character (a demon hunter) had an 'evil' score where you'd gradually get more corrupted by exposure to evil and/or doing evil things yourself, and it would influence how events played out at the different locations, so it wasn't just a case of shuffling the order of the same events happening with each playthough.

When I was buying and playing them I mostly didn't like the ones set outside the main Titan fantasy setting, although if I went back to them now I suspect I'd appreciate them more and they no doubt make the series far more interesting overall. The fantasy setting seems pretty generic from what I remember, although probably at the time I hadn't been exposed to so many similar things. It also strikes me looking back that there wan't much humour as far as I can remember, compared to things like the 80s/early 90s iterations of Warhammer and other (particularly British) RPGs etc from the same period. Again that mostly applies to the fantasy books – I think some of the others were a bit more humorous, like Appointment with FEAR parodying superheroes.

Comedy forum crossover angle: references to Final Fantasy in comedy. Actually I only know of one, but that's still one more than you might expect. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is mentioned twice in There She Goes (excluding the recent special which I haven't seen yet), but in a bit of a weird and unconvincing way. The central couple talk about how they 'spent all those nights drinking and listening to REM and playing Warlock of Firetop Mountain'; later David Tennant's character falsely claims to have seen a copy lying around, suggesting it as a way of recapturing the past and escaping their present stresses. They talk about playing it together as if it's a two-player game – I guess you could play it cooperatively but would their marriage really survive that? And they spent 'all those nights' playing that one book, not any of the others? I don't think it has much replay value, although maybe for the later reference it's understandable they'd want to go back to Warlock for nostalgia value rather than, say, attempting one of the ridiculously hard ones they probably never completed the first time round like Chasms of Malice or Fangs of Fury. It all sounds a bit like a geeky reference to get the point across that they're geeks, by a writer who wasn't into that area of geekery or felt the need to simplify it for the audience. Any other comedy references?