A few eyes will light up at this title. A looong time ago (1982) there was a series of Fighting Fantasy books by the pens of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first that I bought was The Forrest of Doom.
They were essentially paragraph-driven stories / role-playing games. You are on paragraph number 222 and it says something like 'Before you is a closed door and there is a passage to your left, from where you can hear a noise that sounds like a hammer hitting an anvil - do you;
Want to go down the passage towards the noise - Turn to 74
Open the closed door and enter - Turn to 306'
You would then make your option and turn to that paragraph and the adventure continues.
Your interaction with the story comes from the character that you create at the outset. You roll dice and use the scores to determine your skill, stamina and luck. These values are used during 'play' as you fight monsters, pick locks, and find / use equipment / potions etc.
Anyway, I was in a local shop the other day and the first 12 books have been brought back into print. I picked up book 1 (of course) The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - this must be a nostalgic blast for many.
I am going to run with this as a bit of fun, but I will map my way around the place in an effort to have a serious go at this. When I used to play, I would madly dash through the paragraphs having no idea where I was relative to other locations that I had already visited … until I was slain!
Our opening words;
"At last your two-day hike is over. You unsheathe your sword, lay it on the ground and sigh with relief as you lower yourself down on the mossy rocks to sit for a moment's rest. You stretch, rub your eyes and finally look up to Firetop Mountain"
And so it begins!
I roll for my character traits and get extremely good rolls for Stamina and Luck, but not so much for skill. It appears that I might be a stupid but brave warrior perhaps!
Having regard for my traits, the Character that I have generated is ...
Gyrth, son of Godwin (I might have spent too much time with 1066 games recently :-) ).
I am to prove my warrior credentials by entering Warlock Mountain and dealing with all that Warlock Zagor can throw at me. You can see from my traits below, I am very brave and lucky, though perhaps a bit dim. Hopefully, by the sword I shall be up to the task!
Skill = 8
Stamina = 23
Luck = 12
A backpack with provisions (10 meals - which restores stamina)
A sword (surely this is a magnificent two-handed beast of a thing - we shall soon know!)
Leather Armour (hmmn - hopefully I will find something to add to this, perhaps the Warlock has an armoury …. but will I be lucky enough to find it!)
Shield (I feel a bit compelled to design a shield face or perhaps use a Victrix transfer!)
1 Potion of Skill ( you can choose one potion from a selection. I have taken this because my skill level is not great to start with).
Well, here we go. I usually manage to last about an hour with these sort of things, whatever, this is going to be a lot of fun.
What a blast from the past I had some of those
ReplyDeleteHi Nick, it was an irresistible buy and luckily they still had book one on sale, not that it matters too much, but it is considered special ….. by those who know :-)
ReplyDeleteI loved these when they first came out and still do. I have the first four books. What a wonderful way to pass some time.
ReplyDeleteHi Richard, the bloke who sold it to me was an ex teacher and he brought my attention to the ‘scholastic.co.uk’ logo on the back of the book, he explained that this is an approval standard for school use and he did wonder whether that meant that gore etc might have been toned down! He also said the artwork had been changed - so perhaps your originals are well worth hanging onto.
DeleteStrangely enough, Norm. I am a teacher and have used these books with students. Good for English, some maths, organisation, patience and concentration, and for decision making. No allowances made for gore I'm afraid!
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DeleteRichard that is interesting to see how many skill areas can be touched on from a single source.
I'm far too young to know this book!
ReplyDeleteRay, you lucky thing. Would you like an aging potion (Turn to 104) or would you like to climb the 300 stairs to the tower with your young knees (turn to 247) :-)
ReplyDeleteI don't remember those at all, but then by 1982 I was on my Foundation Year at College, so all my old wargaming friends had moved on to other things, so there was a long hiatus, only broken with some board games at Uni. They do sound good and certainly a nostalgic blast for you Norm:)!
ReplyDeleteSteve, they certainly are. Around that time, both Livingstone and Jackson were big names in the industry. I think just having one would be an entertaining thing, especially for things like hospital stays, recuperation and that kind of thing. Every page has a pair of dice show at the bottom, so if you don’t have ‘real’ dice with you, you can flick the book and use the dice of what ever page you end up on …. The ultimate in a travel game!
DeleteIm like Steve, id just packed everything away,well except some figure painting, I knew they were around but never picked one up?
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Hi Iain, I think one of the draws was that it allowed a solo gamer to get involved in a role playing type game. Interestingly, in those days, there were many more game stores open than we are left with today, so there was good exposure to the public who frequented game shops, I’m not sure if they made book shops, I suppose they must have.
DeleteWow! That’s a real trip down memory lane. I also read and loved the Lone Wolf series which were the same sort of books
ReplyDeleteI don’t recall Lone Wolf (will now go and do the Google thing), I always thought the genre was limited to the Fighting Fantasy series, which of course is daft, as surely it would have been a publishing fad. I wonder whether there has been anything similar in say the past decade? Thankfully someone has seen fit to resurrect the series. I will be introducing my two eldest Grandchildren to them.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of them Norm but they do sound like fun.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to be similar to "Choose your own adventure stories" that had similar options and page turning but no dice used.
I hope you make it through without dying this time 😁
Hi Ben, I will try and try and try again! :-)
DeleteEnjoy and have fun!
ReplyDeleteAlan Tradgardland
Thanks Alan, hopefully it gives as much fun as I remember them giving! It’s funny, as long ago as it was, looking at this book I can remember the shop (long gone) where I bought it from in some detail.
ReplyDeleteI had one set in the 17th century, I can’t recall what it was called or what happened to it.
ReplyDeleteHi Phil, interesting, I have not seen one that late, was it in a fantasy setting?
DeleteYes, included majyk and the like if I recall correctly. Akin to Devilry A Foot?
DeleteProbably a collectors item and worth a lot of money :-)
DeleteI did have a few of those solo adventures at the time. The 80s was quite good time for solo games, I had a load of solo dungeons for Tunnels and Trolls, and of course major game companies started churning them out - Pattons Best, Mosbys Raiders etc. I particularly enjoyed the Ambush! series, but they were actual Wargames rather than paragraph adventures. I was mainly playing large and lengthy boardgames by the hen, so the solo games were a nice diversion.
ReplyDeleteEven 2000AD got in one the act with a Slaine solo paragraph game serialised in the comic, that was quite good iirc.
DeleteThe strengths of the books would have been their solo capability when at that time, pretty much all role playing games used an umpire (Game Master). Regardless, as a solo player i still icked up some if the role play games in the hope of being able to do something with them. There was one that I bought (twice!) that was set in 2000, but I don’t think it was part of the 2000AD franchise. I can see the front cover in my minds eye now, with a futuristic armoured vehicle on it!
DeleteSurprisingly, paragraph driven books, seems to be of their time, considering a newly emerging emphasis on solo game systems that one again are starting to emerge.
Norm - was that futuristic AFV game OGRE I wonder??
DeleteHi Steve, no, it definitely wasn’t. I hade both OGRE and GEV. BUt now you make me want to go off searching, because I will instantly know the box art.
Deletedrum roll ……. Twilight 2000 by Games Designer Workshop (GDW).
DeleteLOL.. bought my grandson that about two or three months ago.. with the exact same intentions you have of actually mapping the dungeon this time! We must get down to doing it!
ReplyDeleteYes … I’m pretty sure that is the only way of properly advancing in the game, sort of unravelling the plot line. Plus it gives a greater sense of ‘dungeon crawling’. I wonder whether anyone ever did any tiles for a title?
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