Comments on: Fighting Fantasy – My Monolith

By: jarowdowsky

jarowdowsky — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:03:07 +0000

God I loved Final Fantasy – I remember being astonished when I saw Warlock of Firetop Mountain in WH Smiths in Bolton.

I remember Joe Dever’s Mad Max style books being great though only got round to playing Lone Wolf on the computer (though great fun to pass the time on night shifts a few years back)

I remember the end of Space Traveller being mind-batteringly difficult as well, though as a massive Star Trek geek I thought it was one of the best things I’d ever read.

I still remember starting to play RPG’s (once my Mum was convinced that D&D wouldn’t lead to possession or murder) simply because they were described as ‘Choose your own adventures where anything could happen’

Anyone remember them, or at least maybe one of the creators, putting out an actual RPG in book form which had some kind of 1700s-ish setting. I remember seeing it in ASDA but I’d already spent my money on a 2000ad annual… would love to find that again. Still think it would make an excellent setting, sort of post English Civil War.

Someone really needs to adapt The Devil’s Whore as a Choose Your Own Adventure… if only to watch a marketing team try to figure out how to sell it

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:51:29 +0000

I got into them about the same time (early 1980s) and thought they were great… until I played the Lone Wolf game books I do seem to remember that some of the Fighting Fantasy books were ridiculously hard. Chasms of Malice I believe had a simple mechanic called “one strike combat” to represent a tense swordfight on the edge of something really deep (like a chasm… er… of malice). Basically it involved rolling two dice for yourself and two dice for your opponent (no skill was added to this roll). If you got higher then they died. If they got higher then you died. Sometimes you had to win four such combats in a row to proceed. Sheesh…

Then there was Creature of Havoc; in which you began as a raging monster. In that one you had to randomly determine (by die roll naturally) which direction you bimbled off in whenever you came to a junction in the early part of the game. Go the wrong way and you generally died, but sometimes you wouldn’t realise you had gone the wrong way until a few paragraphs later. Talk about sadistic game design.

By: TheMasher

TheMasher — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:30:21 +0000

Forest of Doom was the first I owned after playing my mate’s Deathtrap Dungeon. I can still remember the new book smell in the shop as I agonisded for what felt like hours over which one to get. I was gutted to finish it on my first go with barely a scratch. Any illusions I had about Fighting Fantasy invincibility were quickly dispelled by House of Hell.

Even though they were like crack for nerds it seemed like everyone was playing them – even tough kids would discuss the pros and cons of the books while beating your lunch money out of you. Of course they never played out the battles for real, they just assumed they won like they knew they would in the playground.

Pen & paper RPGs killed them off for me though, only the Sorcery books were interesting after that.

By: Grumlin

Grumlin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:13:34 +0000

Ahhh. FF books. I am sure I still have these somewhere. Although I got into gaming aged 9, when my Dad brought home a copy of D&D and ran an adventure – the keep on the borderlands – with me.

He was the most straight laced child of the 40’s you could ever have imagined. And yet, he gamed D&D at work with a bunch of statisticians and secretaries and stuff. How cool is that?

By: Zadok13

Zadok13 — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:08:56 +0000

Great article Robert. I have never heard of these books before, I am sorry I missed them when they first came out.

By: liquidindian

liquidindian — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:00:53 +0000

Fighting Fantasy coming to the iPhone – and you can’t cheat.

http://www.vg247.com/2009/08/04/fighting-fantasy-books-heading-to-iphone-later-this-year/

By: Sixtyten

Sixtyten — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:16:32 +0000

Spotted on the b3ta image challenge [careful children, link may contain swears]

http://www.b3ta.com/board/9611893

By: Grapes

Grapes — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:17:54 +0000

I can’t believe this. I was into rpg’s but hated the choose your own adventure books as they were shit. Never ever did i lay my eyes on a single fighting fantasy book or I would have bought a lot of them. I did buy the TSR instant RPG games that actually said “no instruction necessary” but there really was. They were kinda in the same vein. Oh well, no time like the present. I downloaded “City of Thieves” (don’t judge me) and am rolling my way through it. Very interesting and lots of fun. Got somewhat close to Zanbar but those fracking moon dogs killed me! As a kid I would have gone gaga over these. Turns out I can buy them local for a good price. Woot! Sure I’m a 47, but I have loved games all my life. Gamer Pride!#

By: Sixtyten

Sixtyten — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:44:42 +0000

Armies of death was a great one – you got to command any army and take on others throughout the story. The first one I actually owned was Space Traveller which I was never able to complete – to get to the ending you had to warp jump to the right entry using a particular formula which info that you had picked up. I always was missing some info and ended up in the wrong place. Even reading every entry provided no clues – very frustrating.

The Sorcery books were great, and there was another offshoot which were much more like D&D where you had a gamesmaster and then you set a dungeon based on the book. Frustratingly I could never find enough people to make that one worthwhile…

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:59:30 +0000

Jazzer, I played the LOT. If I remember correctly, I was hopeless at remembering the spells because my memory is terrible. So I’m probably remembering incorrectly. Which would mean I was brilliant at remembering them, because my memory’s great. Which would mean–