6 ms·

Steve Jackson Games Is Bringing the Fighting Fantasy Books to the US

105 points by mattl 2y ago

mattl 2y ago
They have a Kickstarter going on right now for reprinting the first 5 books. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/fighting-fantasy-solo-adventure-gamebooks-back-in-print https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/fighting-fantas...
- vr46 2y ago
  This I absolutely do not understand when the publishers in the UK are printing the books for sale already. The vagaries of international licencing, no doubt. There are plenty of complaints about the standard of illustrations in the books, and the covers are certainly lacking, but they are actual books on actual paper: https://amzn.eu/d/0FzZNoX https://amzn.eu/d/0FzZNoX https://amzn.eu/d/4DDoYaY https://amzn.eu/d/4DDoYaY
  - abrookewood 2y ago
    From the article: What makes these versions special? The original art! When possible, we’re using the original black-and-white artwork for the interiors – most of which hasn’t been available in over a decade! Designed for readability! The original Fighting Fantasy books were smaller mass-market paperbacks. They were perfect to sneak into your lunch bag at school, but these new versions are designed to make leaping into a hero’s life easier than ever, with larger print and enhanced formatting that makes reading a joy. Available in the States! No longer do you need to order overseas or via online auction sites. Designed as a set! These editions will look great on your shelf, with a unified design, numbered spines, and evocative art. If you’re a longtime fan, these are the versions you wish you had when you were younger! And if you’re new to Fighting Fantasy excitement, these books will be a gateway to worlds beyond imagination.
    - vr46 2y ago
      Ok, I get it. Kinda makes sense for people who remember the originals and have money to burn, but clearly a different market to the cheaper UK paperbacks. The first 15 books are US$60, versus five via Kickstarter, and more expensive later on. Bittersweet, I’d like to see these books made more accessible to younger readers. Maybe it’ll come soon.
acomjean 2y ago
This seems like those “choose you own adventure” books from the 70s and 80s. “If you cross the bridge turn to page 40…”. My brothers and I had like the first 30 of those.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure These seem more complex.
- abrookewood 2y ago
  They are very similar, but they have dice rolls and some stats. So you might encounter a creature and fight it, then if you win you go to another page, or if you lose you go to one of the 'end' pages.
- 2mlWQbCK 2y ago
  Yes. FF is basically CYOA plus rolling some dice for combat and keeping track of your inventory. The CYOA books were predated by the first Tunnel & Trolls solo adventure(s), that have a more complex rules system than FF (since you are playing using a full RPG system, sometimes even with an entire party of characters), and that are still being made, but was always less well known. https://rpggeek.com/rpgseries/2576/tunnels-and-trolls-solo-dungeons https://rpggeek.com/rpgseries/2576/tunnels-and-trolls-solo-d... TSR also briefly experimented with making solo adventures for early D&D versions, around the same time the first FF books came out. The first one at least was not bad at all and I find the rules much better than FF. Those books are not to be confused with TSR's line of FF-clones that they marketed as AD&D-something, but that did not actually use any D&D rules. https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/44105/ghost-of-lion-castle https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/44105/ghost-of-lion-castle
  - allturtles 2y ago
    FF books also have more complicated graphs connecting their passages than CYOA. CYOA books are generally tree-like with maybe a few extra connections that make them technically DAGs, e.g. https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/CYOA001.svgz https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/CYOA001... Fighting Fantasy book graphs are larger and can have cycles: https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/ff01.svgz https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/ff01.sv... This, combined with inventory tracking, contributes a lot to making them more interesting. You can do things like find a locked door, find the key for it somewhere else, and come back and unlock it, which is not possible in a CYOA.
smcin 2y ago
i.e. reprint the books. You can get them as video games on Steam, with isometric 2D graphics and it automates away the dice-rolling and bookkeeping (and also allows you cheat and reroll any roll up to two more times). For cheaper than this Kickstarter reprint: https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_C... https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8086/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics_Collection/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8086/Fighting_Fantasy_...
- tommica 2y ago
  Neat, would love to have both games and books!
- karlgkk 2y ago
  Before you throw shade at SJ games, you should look into their history. Very interesting :)
  - 2mlWQbCK 2y ago
    Not sure what you are referring to, but many here are probably familiar with the Secret Service raid on SJ Games headquarters in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
- mmooss 2y ago
  Cheapness, efficiency, and a lack of repetitive tasks are not usually goals of art or even entertainment. Somewhere I saw a computer RPG where the UI was just a small window with some stats in it. Much cheaper and more efficient, you would just watch the stats roll up - the gameplay was 'automated away'! :) (I don't remember the name and some searching didn't find it.)
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    That's become a popular genre, called "idle games".
marktam264 2y ago
I loved these books as a kid, probably had the first 10-15 of them, probably more, and I'd always hang out at the bookstore and would check if any new ones came out. They were far, far better than "Choose Your Own Adventure", which I also loved, but FF was probably, I guess, the next level. I loved FF, and I especially loved the Lone Wolf books (different author/publisher), if anybody remembers those. I'd actually put Lone Wolf at a notch above FF. Still, FF has a special place in my heart. I got my daughter into them a couple years back, and she totally loved them, retelling me all the same stories I remember. Brought a tear to my eye. I was a little confused about this because you can order FF books on Amazon today, but it looks like this new reprint will be a larger-size paperback format with the original artwork, which is awesome, because I did notice that the FF books I bought for my daughter had all new artwork, which was kind of disappointing, however the stories are pretty much the same as I remember. My favorites are of course, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, then Deathtrap Dungeon and The Citadel of Chaos. Steve Jackson, I believe, also authored the Sorcery! series, which is another of my all-time favorites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery!
- Neil44 2y ago
  I would get these from the library one after the other, I had to use pencil in the character sheet so I could rub everything out before I returned it. I remember keeping bookmark-fingers in as many pages as I could in case I had taken a wrong turn of inevitable death. Good times.
  - raphman 2y ago
    A friend and me played these books together. We printed our own character sheets so that we wouldn't have to write into the book. As we already had this book-independent character sheet, we decided to re-use it for the next book, carrying over all inventory and stats from the previous book, amassing a huge hoard of useful items during our journey across books. One could call this 'cheating' - but it made the game much more fun and creative for us. What I hated about the books was that you could take a wrong turn at the beginning of the book, only to realize this at the end. "If you have a small silver key and a rope, continue on page 33, if not: you die.". Of course we got the key - we collected a few of them in previous books. And the whip we got in another book should work as a rope, too.
pjmlp 2y ago
These books were the first kind of role playing games I had, kept me enternaint for quite a while as a kid, good to see a new generation might come to appreciate them. And they don't run out of battery charge to play. :)
senkora 2y ago
Fun fact: the "Final Fantasy" series of video games was originally planned to be named "Fighting Fantasy" until they realized the name conflict with these books.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  There was a duo of reasons there. Earlier on its life most of the production/development studio ended up expecting the game to fail. And had it done so Sakaguchi was planning on quitting and returning to university life. So it was somewhat literally his final fantasy at the company, which turned out to come true. Really funny how such things work out. A slightly worse role of the dice and nobody would ever have known of his talent for games, or perhaps our timeline missed out and his real talent was in music, which is what he was initially studying.
vr46 2y ago
Great memories of these, and the Sorcery Series, although I foolishly disposed or donated all of mine, including the Sorcery Spell Book. Ian Livingstone is a lovely man, too - he used to frequent the Square Enix office in London, and occasionally we would exchange tales of searching for a teaspoon while trying to make a cup of tea in the kitchen area, but I refrained from making gags about Testing Your Luck in order to find one.
- vmilner 2y ago
  As he says, his fighting fantasy books were often sniffed at by adults, but they got boys to read and do sums.
ashdnazg 2y ago
I think I only recently learned that there are two different Steve Jacksons. The founder of Steve Jackson Games and creator of Munchkin and GURPS [0] The writer of Fighting Fantasy and founder of Games Workshop and Lionhead Studios [1] I find the fact that the two are in business quite satisfying. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game_designer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_designer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_...
- raphman 2y ago
  FWIW, the American Steve Jackson also wrote three Fighting Fantasy novels (Scorpion Swamp, Demons of the Deep, and Robot Commando): > "As Ian and I couldn't write a book a month, we opened Fighting Fantasy up to new authors. The 'Jackson & Livingstone Presents' series came into being. The first new author was...Steve Jackson!" > "Even to this day, many Fighting Fantasy readers aren't aware that not one but two Steve Jacksons worked on the franchise - the second being the Texas-based founder of Steve Jackson Games." https://www.eurogamer.net/you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-fighting-fantasy https://www.eurogamer.net/you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-figh...
  - shellac 2y ago
    I swear this was done deliberately to cause maximum confusion.
- skrebbel 2y ago
  Yeah wow, this confused the hell out of me. Reading the first paragraph, it seemed that Steve Jackson was finally publishing his own books in the US through a "historic 50-book collaboration" with himself. Thanks for elaborating.
- simonjgreen 2y ago
  Oh! Until now I had actually assumed that these were the same person.
- b800h 2y ago
delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
I have a veritable shelf full of these books, published by Wizard Books. 25th anniversary edition of Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Talisman of Death, Spellbreaker, Howl of the Werewolf (which adds a few more mechanics to the base game stats), Stormslayer, and I recently purchased the entire Sorcery! series on eBay. I once had a book confiscated by a teacher for reading in class, heh. It's good to see these books are still going strong, nearly four decades after they were first published.
nickdothutton 2y ago
As a child I was a voracious consumer of these books, in particular the Sorcery! series, published in 1983. I also found the Talisman of Death particularly good. A feast for the imagination.
2mlWQbCK 2y ago
Later (~1990's) gamebook series like Fable Lands or Critical IF (AKA Virtual Reality) improved on the mechanics so much that I find it difficult to go back to earlier types of books like FF or Lone Wolf except for nostalgia. https://gamebooks.org/Series/145/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/145/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/463/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/463/Show For something more modern, designed to play more like a modern CRPG (including built-in, non-cheating, savescumming) the Destiny Quest books seem good (I bought a few, but got a bit stuck halfway through the first book). https://gamebooks.org/Series/1357/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/1357/Show
chris_wot 2y ago
Oh, these were great! Really fired up the imagination.
autoexec 2y ago
This is great! I had a number of these when I was growing up and really enjoyed them. The last time I picked one up I wrote a program to handle combat, keep track of stats/inventory, saves, etc only to discover later that there are phone apps for that sort of thing already.
AndrewStephens 2y ago
I loved the FF books as a kid. A few months ago someone I follow on Mastodon posted a list of the 20 books that had changed their life which included The Warlock of Firetop Mountain among more conventionally worthy tomes. I was forced to agree - that book and its successors really got me into both reading and game design. Somebody else has mentioned the inkle studios Sorcery! reimagining of the FF series - I can highly recommend them. Tooting my own horn, I released my own homage to FF in general (and Starship Traveller in particular) last year. https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/ https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/
predictsoft 2y ago
Couple of anecdotes. I got in touch with American Steve Jackson for permission to scan his game novel 'Stonekeep'. He didn't give permission. Second, I got a Warlock of Firetop Mountain book off Ebay which was dedicated by Steve Jackson to a scottish landlady 'The best guesthouse in ---'. I got in touch with Steve about the book and he remembered it. I printed out the email to go in my rare WOFM book. Finally, I was going to make an animated film of Rings of Kether but couldn't get the money to make it.
- lordfarcroft 2y ago
  Amazing. The original English Steve or the American one?
thom 2y ago
I continue to love these books all these years later, and my kids have started getting into them (cheating and all). Personal faves are Robot Commando (where you choose from a variety of differently configured robots at the start) and Crimson Tide (which is nearly impossible to win for various reasons, but is really flavourful and quite a departure from most of the books). The Sorcery books took everything one step further and delivered a really epic adventure. Oh, and the Eddie Marsan-narrated Deathrap Dungeon is lots of fun. There's also lots of fun to be had with Dungeoneer, Blacksand, Allansia, Titan and Out of the Pit, if you wanted a break from D&D.
appleorchard46 2y ago
Fun fact: one of these was adapted into a first person action RPG for Nintendo DS. Balance is pretty wonky, but it controls well, and there's something novel about seeing a game that looks somewhere between Daggerfall and Morrowind on such an underpowered system. https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvLxVnWpQhs https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvLxVnWpQhs
mmastrac 2y ago
My relationship with Fighting Fantasy started as a kid and never died I have a bunch of original art from a few of these books I picked up a few years back. I haven't managed to find the time to frame and hang it all, but the quality of the interior illustrations is something else. About ten years ago I worked with one of my friends to license and print a Freeway Fighter comic. It never made it's money back but the process was enjoyable and having a physical paper output of your efforts is wonderful. I still have a crate of unsold issues that I should eventually put on eBay or something... https://www.amazon.ca/Livingstones-Freeway-Fighter-Andi-Ewington/dp/1785861689 https://www.amazon.ca/Livingstones-Freeway-Fighter-Andi-Ewin...
dcow 2y ago
I’ve been exploring the LitRPG genre recently and must say I’m an avid fan. I really like what Soundbooth Theater is doing with their “immersive audio experiences” https://soundbooththeater.com/ https://soundbooththeater.com/
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105 points by mattl 2y ago

They have a Kickstarter going on right now for reprinting the first 5 books. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/fighting-fantasy-solo-adventure-gamebooks-back-in-print https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/fighting-fantas...

vr46 2y ago
This I absolutely do not understand when the publishers in the UK are printing the books for sale already. The vagaries of international licencing, no doubt. There are plenty of complaints about the standard of illustrations in the books, and the covers are certainly lacking, but they are actual books on actual paper: https://amzn.eu/d/0FzZNoX https://amzn.eu/d/0FzZNoX https://amzn.eu/d/4DDoYaY https://amzn.eu/d/4DDoYaY
- abrookewood 2y ago
  From the article: What makes these versions special? The original art! When possible, we’re using the original black-and-white artwork for the interiors – most of which hasn’t been available in over a decade! Designed for readability! The original Fighting Fantasy books were smaller mass-market paperbacks. They were perfect to sneak into your lunch bag at school, but these new versions are designed to make leaping into a hero’s life easier than ever, with larger print and enhanced formatting that makes reading a joy. Available in the States! No longer do you need to order overseas or via online auction sites. Designed as a set! These editions will look great on your shelf, with a unified design, numbered spines, and evocative art. If you’re a longtime fan, these are the versions you wish you had when you were younger! And if you’re new to Fighting Fantasy excitement, these books will be a gateway to worlds beyond imagination.
  - vr46 2y ago
    Ok, I get it. Kinda makes sense for people who remember the originals and have money to burn, but clearly a different market to the cheaper UK paperbacks. The first 15 books are US$60, versus five via Kickstarter, and more expensive later on. Bittersweet, I’d like to see these books made more accessible to younger readers. Maybe it’ll come soon.

acomjean 2y ago

This seems like those “choose you own adventure” books from the 70s and 80s. “If you cross the bridge turn to page 40…”. My brothers and I had like the first 30 of those.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure These seem more complex.

abrookewood 2y ago
They are very similar, but they have dice rolls and some stats. So you might encounter a creature and fight it, then if you win you go to another page, or if you lose you go to one of the 'end' pages.
2mlWQbCK 2y ago
Yes. FF is basically CYOA plus rolling some dice for combat and keeping track of your inventory. The CYOA books were predated by the first Tunnel & Trolls solo adventure(s), that have a more complex rules system than FF (since you are playing using a full RPG system, sometimes even with an entire party of characters), and that are still being made, but was always less well known. https://rpggeek.com/rpgseries/2576/tunnels-and-trolls-solo-dungeons https://rpggeek.com/rpgseries/2576/tunnels-and-trolls-solo-d... TSR also briefly experimented with making solo adventures for early D&D versions, around the same time the first FF books came out. The first one at least was not bad at all and I find the rules much better than FF. Those books are not to be confused with TSR's line of FF-clones that they marketed as AD&D-something, but that did not actually use any D&D rules. https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/44105/ghost-of-lion-castle https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/44105/ghost-of-lion-castle
- allturtles 2y ago
  FF books also have more complicated graphs connecting their passages than CYOA. CYOA books are generally tree-like with maybe a few extra connections that make them technically DAGs, e.g. https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/CYOA001.svgz https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/CYOA001... Fighting Fantasy book graphs are larger and can have cycles: https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/ff01.svgz https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/ff01.sv... This, combined with inventory tracking, contributes a lot to making them more interesting. You can do things like find a locked door, find the key for it somewhere else, and come back and unlock it, which is not possible in a CYOA.

smcin 2y ago

i.e. reprint the books. You can get them as video games on Steam, with isometric 2D graphics and it automates away the dice-rolling and bookkeeping (and also allows you cheat and reroll any roll up to two more times). For cheaper than this Kickstarter reprint: https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_C... https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8086/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics_Collection/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8086/Fighting_Fantasy_...

tommica 2y ago
Neat, would love to have both games and books!
karlgkk 2y ago
Before you throw shade at SJ games, you should look into their history. Very interesting :)
- 2mlWQbCK 2y ago
  Not sure what you are referring to, but many here are probably familiar with the Secret Service raid on SJ Games headquarters in 1990. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._United_States_Secret_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...
mmooss 2y ago
Cheapness, efficiency, and a lack of repetitive tasks are not usually goals of art or even entertainment. Somewhere I saw a computer RPG where the UI was just a small window with some stats in it. Much cheaper and more efficient, you would just watch the stats roll up - the gameplay was 'automated away'! :) (I don't remember the name and some searching didn't find it.)
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  That's become a popular genre, called "idle games".

marktam264 2y ago

I loved these books as a kid, probably had the first 10-15 of them, probably more, and I'd always hang out at the bookstore and would check if any new ones came out. They were far, far better than "Choose Your Own Adventure", which I also loved, but FF was probably, I guess, the next level. I loved FF, and I especially loved the Lone Wolf books (different author/publisher), if anybody remembers those. I'd actually put Lone Wolf at a notch above FF. Still, FF has a special place in my heart. I got my daughter into them a couple years back, and she totally loved them, retelling me all the same stories I remember. Brought a tear to my eye. I was a little confused about this because you can order FF books on Amazon today, but it looks like this new reprint will be a larger-size paperback format with the original artwork, which is awesome, because I did notice that the FF books I bought for my daughter had all new artwork, which was kind of disappointing, however the stories are pretty much the same as I remember. My favorites are of course, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, then Deathtrap Dungeon and The Citadel of Chaos. Steve Jackson, I believe, also authored the Sorcery! series, which is another of my all-time favorites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery!

Neil44 2y ago
I would get these from the library one after the other, I had to use pencil in the character sheet so I could rub everything out before I returned it. I remember keeping bookmark-fingers in as many pages as I could in case I had taken a wrong turn of inevitable death. Good times.
- raphman 2y ago
  A friend and me played these books together. We printed our own character sheets so that we wouldn't have to write into the book. As we already had this book-independent character sheet, we decided to re-use it for the next book, carrying over all inventory and stats from the previous book, amassing a huge hoard of useful items during our journey across books. One could call this 'cheating' - but it made the game much more fun and creative for us. What I hated about the books was that you could take a wrong turn at the beginning of the book, only to realize this at the end. "If you have a small silver key and a rope, continue on page 33, if not: you die.". Of course we got the key - we collected a few of them in previous books. And the whip we got in another book should work as a rope, too.

pjmlp 2y ago

These books were the first kind of role playing games I had, kept me enternaint for quite a while as a kid, good to see a new generation might come to appreciate them. And they don't run out of battery charge to play. :)

senkora 2y ago

Fun fact: the "Final Fantasy" series of video games was originally planned to be named "Fighting Fantasy" until they realized the name conflict with these books.

somenameforme 2y ago
There was a duo of reasons there. Earlier on its life most of the production/development studio ended up expecting the game to fail. And had it done so Sakaguchi was planning on quitting and returning to university life. So it was somewhat literally his final fantasy at the company, which turned out to come true. Really funny how such things work out. A slightly worse role of the dice and nobody would ever have known of his talent for games, or perhaps our timeline missed out and his real talent was in music, which is what he was initially studying.

vr46 2y ago

Great memories of these, and the Sorcery Series, although I foolishly disposed or donated all of mine, including the Sorcery Spell Book. Ian Livingstone is a lovely man, too - he used to frequent the Square Enix office in London, and occasionally we would exchange tales of searching for a teaspoon while trying to make a cup of tea in the kitchen area, but I refrained from making gags about Testing Your Luck in order to find one.

vmilner 2y ago
As he says, his fighting fantasy books were often sniffed at by adults, but they got boys to read and do sums.

ashdnazg 2y ago

I think I only recently learned that there are two different Steve Jacksons. The founder of Steve Jackson Games and creator of Munchkin and GURPS [0] The writer of Fighting Fantasy and founder of Games Workshop and Lionhead Studios [1] I find the fact that the two are in business quite satisfying. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game_designer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_designer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_...

raphman 2y ago
FWIW, the American Steve Jackson also wrote three Fighting Fantasy novels (Scorpion Swamp, Demons of the Deep, and Robot Commando): > "As Ian and I couldn't write a book a month, we opened Fighting Fantasy up to new authors. The 'Jackson & Livingstone Presents' series came into being. The first new author was...Steve Jackson!" > "Even to this day, many Fighting Fantasy readers aren't aware that not one but two Steve Jacksons worked on the franchise - the second being the Texas-based founder of Steve Jackson Games." https://www.eurogamer.net/you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-fighting-fantasy https://www.eurogamer.net/you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-figh...
- shellac 2y ago
  I swear this was done deliberately to cause maximum confusion.
skrebbel 2y ago
Yeah wow, this confused the hell out of me. Reading the first paragraph, it seemed that Steve Jackson was finally publishing his own books in the US through a "historic 50-book collaboration" with himself. Thanks for elaborating.
simonjgreen 2y ago
Oh! Until now I had actually assumed that these were the same person.
b800h 2y ago

delta_p_delta_x 2y ago

I have a veritable shelf full of these books, published by Wizard Books. 25th anniversary edition of Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Talisman of Death, Spellbreaker, Howl of the Werewolf (which adds a few more mechanics to the base game stats), Stormslayer, and I recently purchased the entire Sorcery! series on eBay. I once had a book confiscated by a teacher for reading in class, heh. It's good to see these books are still going strong, nearly four decades after they were first published.

nickdothutton 2y ago

As a child I was a voracious consumer of these books, in particular the Sorcery! series, published in 1983. I also found the Talisman of Death particularly good. A feast for the imagination.

2mlWQbCK 2y ago

Later (~1990's) gamebook series like Fable Lands or Critical IF (AKA Virtual Reality) improved on the mechanics so much that I find it difficult to go back to earlier types of books like FF or Lone Wolf except for nostalgia. https://gamebooks.org/Series/145/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/145/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/463/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/463/Show For something more modern, designed to play more like a modern CRPG (including built-in, non-cheating, savescumming) the Destiny Quest books seem good (I bought a few, but got a bit stuck halfway through the first book). https://gamebooks.org/Series/1357/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/1357/Show

chris_wot 2y ago

Oh, these were great! Really fired up the imagination.

autoexec 2y ago

This is great! I had a number of these when I was growing up and really enjoyed them. The last time I picked one up I wrote a program to handle combat, keep track of stats/inventory, saves, etc only to discover later that there are phone apps for that sort of thing already.

AndrewStephens 2y ago

I loved the FF books as a kid. A few months ago someone I follow on Mastodon posted a list of the 20 books that had changed their life which included The Warlock of Firetop Mountain among more conventionally worthy tomes. I was forced to agree - that book and its successors really got me into both reading and game design. Somebody else has mentioned the inkle studios Sorcery! reimagining of the FF series - I can highly recommend them. Tooting my own horn, I released my own homage to FF in general (and Starship Traveller in particular) last year. https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/ https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/

predictsoft 2y ago

Couple of anecdotes. I got in touch with American Steve Jackson for permission to scan his game novel 'Stonekeep'. He didn't give permission. Second, I got a Warlock of Firetop Mountain book off Ebay which was dedicated by Steve Jackson to a scottish landlady 'The best guesthouse in ---'. I got in touch with Steve about the book and he remembered it. I printed out the email to go in my rare WOFM book. Finally, I was going to make an animated film of Rings of Kether but couldn't get the money to make it.

lordfarcroft 2y ago
Amazing. The original English Steve or the American one?

thom 2y ago

I continue to love these books all these years later, and my kids have started getting into them (cheating and all). Personal faves are Robot Commando (where you choose from a variety of differently configured robots at the start) and Crimson Tide (which is nearly impossible to win for various reasons, but is really flavourful and quite a departure from most of the books). The Sorcery books took everything one step further and delivered a really epic adventure. Oh, and the Eddie Marsan-narrated Deathrap Dungeon is lots of fun. There's also lots of fun to be had with Dungeoneer, Blacksand, Allansia, Titan and Out of the Pit, if you wanted a break from D&D.

appleorchard46 2y ago

Fun fact: one of these was adapted into a first person action RPG for Nintendo DS. Balance is pretty wonky, but it controls well, and there's something novel about seeing a game that looks somewhere between Daggerfall and Morrowind on such an underpowered system. https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvLxVnWpQhs https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvLxVnWpQhs

mmastrac 2y ago

My relationship with Fighting Fantasy started as a kid and never died I have a bunch of original art from a few of these books I picked up a few years back. I haven't managed to find the time to frame and hang it all, but the quality of the interior illustrations is something else. About ten years ago I worked with one of my friends to license and print a Freeway Fighter comic. It never made it's money back but the process was enjoyable and having a physical paper output of your efforts is wonderful. I still have a crate of unsold issues that I should eventually put on eBay or something... https://www.amazon.ca/Livingstones-Freeway-Fighter-Andi-Ewington/dp/1785861689 https://www.amazon.ca/Livingstones-Freeway-Fighter-Andi-Ewin...

dcow 2y ago

I’ve been exploring the LitRPG genre recently and must say I’m an avid fan. I really like what Soundbooth Theater is doing with their “immersive audio experiences” https://soundbooththeater.com/ https://soundbooththeater.com/

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lordfarcroft 2y ago

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