Part story - Part Game …. Fighting Fantasy books.

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.

Operation Sealion the book and the game

 

Operation Sealion was the proposed German invasion of England, intended for September 1940. It didn’t go ahead, but as a subject, it leaves us with a great ‘what if’ to explore.

In 1974 The Daily Telegraph newspaper in association with the Department of War Studies at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, ran a large wargame covering Operation Sealion.

At the table were 6 players, each a significant figure from various branches of the armed forces and so this was no ordinary wargame, but one in which each of the participants had unique insight into the realities of what could and could not be done within this semi-fictitious setting. It would involve the real battle plans and military capability of both sides, but in the game, the invasion actually went ahead. Apparently at the end of the game, those present felt that the outcomes from the game were in fact the most probable.

In 1975 Richard Cox gave us his novel, ‘Operation Sealion’. It drew upon the conduct of that wargame as a narrative framework, giving us an imagined account that starts just a few hours before the invasion, seen through the eyes of both military and civilian experiences.

The first two thirds of the book gives us the story of the invasion and the response of Britain and her allies. The final third of the book provides a number of informative chapters by various authors, giving insight into the various realities of politics, resources, organisation, preparation and the central characters of the time that success or failure of Sealion might hang on.

I will avoid mentioning how the campaign concluded, allowing for the dear reader who may well want to find that out for themselves in the book. I have recently bought an out of print boardgame that covers the subject and I shall bring that to the table and conduct my own ‘Sealion’ to see where that ends up, no doubt the book will enhance the enjoyment and understanding of the game.

Cox opens with dawn, 23rd September 1940 as the first 8000 Fallachirmjägers, 600 Junkers and 52 Transports pass over the Kentish coast at Hythe. Barges and motor boats head for beaches between Folkstone and Seaford, loaded with infantry divisions with the prime aim of capturing most of southern England within 10 days. Their recent victories of France, Holland and Belgium made these young soldiers confident, competent and enthusiastic. 

‘A huge flotilla of German barges stretch across the whole sweep of Dymchurch Bay and planes overhead in their hundreds head towards Hythe and Saltwood’.

‘There were 300 Home Guard in Hythe and not all had rifles yet’.

‘Beaches at Dungeness, cuckmerehaven and Newhave were being assaulted and in the first three days 110,167 men came ashore’

‘It had been predicted that it would take eight days for the Germans to gain Kent and Surrey’.

‘Several of the Junker 52’s were shot down. One crashed on the little golf course by the Imperial Hotel, setting off half a dozen teller Mines’.

“Latest reports show they have taken Dymchurch, Camber and Pevensey, Sir”.

Peter Fleming, brother of the famous Ian Fleming (Bond Writer) worked in intelligence and he was responsible for creating the ‘Stay Behind Parties’, small groups of citizens that would sabotage supply lines and the rear echelon. These groups had a life expectancy of around two weeks.

‘The South Westerly wind had risen to Force 4 and the waves had reached almost the maximum that the Rhine barges could cope with’.

RAF report … September 23rd …. 237 of our Aircraft are out of action from a total strength of 1048 operation aircraft, plus another 192 in store.

Australian and New Zealander formations that had been recently rescued from the Dunkirk beaches were on hand to put in prompt counter-attacks.

The German second echelon totalled 500 guns, 900 tanks, 3,500 vehicles, 7000 horses and 24,000 men. They needed a port and so the capture of Folkstone became a critical German objective.

Within a few days, enough territory had been taken to fly in the Reichsprotektor, an SS officer who represented Hitler on British soil and was tasked with running security. His first proclamation concerning an incident local to his headquarters -   “Unless information leading to the arrest of the saboteurs is received by the authorities, the hostages from the village will be shot”.

I shall leave it there. 

Richard Cox was a pilot and reserve paratrooper major and for some years was a war correspondent. His book was first published in 1975 and the most recent edition was published in 2024 by Silvertail Books. I picked my copy up on the Kindle for a holiday read.

Note, if you do a computer search on ‘Paddy Griffith Operation Sealion’, you will be given an Amazon page that shows a book about the actual Sealion wargame played at Sandhurst.

I will come back to this once I have played the boardgame.

Please note, I also run a small website called COMMANDERS that is a bit more snippet based than here and has more frequent posts;

LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

The Armchair General (book)

The blog rarely covers books, interest and taste being an individual thing, but this is such an unusual and interesting approach that I thought it worth sharing.

The Armchair General by John Buckley and published by Century, covers eight major decision points across World War II and invites the reader to choose the historical path or an alternative path of any one of the given points.

Basically, a chapter with its main theme is laid out with some historical background and then you are posed with a decision to take. 

Choose your path and turn to the appropriate part of the chapter (i.e. you are told to go to page 47 etc), where a viable and soundly given consequence to your decision is given.

There may then be further alternatives. If you have chosen an alternative path, you can of course return to the historical outcome, read that and then compare the two, so as to fully explore the nature of that moment in time.

Taking the example from the rear of the book, our theme here is 7th May 1940. Britain’s Darkest Hour. We will have been given all of the background and are then faced with this;

You are a key power broker in parliament. Britain’s situation in the war against Hitler’s Germany is unravelling rapidly after a disastrous campaign in Norway that has left thousands of Allied troops dead and the Third Reich in the ascendancy.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain will be unseated in a matter of days and his government replaced by a national coalition. But the dilemma facing you, one of the kingmakers in the House of Commons is: who is best suited to lead Britain and its Empire through the rest of the war?

DECISION:

Should you put your support behind Lord Halifax, the popular politician revered by the King?

Or should you back the maverick Winston Churchill, a wild card responsible for the disaster at Gallipoli?

Go to page 34 for Halifax.

Go to page 24 for Churchill.

The inside sleeve says “Written by John Buckley, professor of military history and expert on strategy and war gaming, this book revisits the past in forensic and fascinating detail so that you can learn how every small action (or inaction) can create a whole different history. Will your decisions follow the same course as World War II? Or will you create a new future?”

Each decision part of the book is written in isolation, so for example in the above case, if you chose Halifax as leader, the outcomes would only relate to narrative in that chapter. In a later chapter, discussing a later part of the war, the background information will have returned to true history i.e. Churchill in the next chapter (The Mediterranean Gamble 1941 -42) is Prime Minister, regardless of what you decided in 1940, in effect each decision point gets a historical refresh, so that there isn’t any contamination of the facts from earlier decisions.

I have just completed the first theme, Britain’s Darkest Hour (held in 54 pages) and was immediately stuck by the first decision …. Pick Churchill or Halifax as leader! 

With some pre-knowledge, I knew that Churchill made a success of the job and was generally considered the right man for the moment (or so my pre-conceived bias told me), but when I read the background on both men, I was actually not keen on either - but with no other alternatives, one has to be chosen.

I enjoyed the various sections that I was given to read, each one complete enough to be credible and informative. I found it interesting in this chapter to see the politics of the moment rather fractured along the lines of both appeasement and personality and I could relate it directly to UK politics of very recent years in which this nation has seen similar political fracture along the lines of Brexit (Departure from the European Union) and issue of personality and the shenanigans and rivalry that have fallen from that. 

Anyway, it is all seems rather good, quite different from other approaches and very engaging. I have actually gone back and forth throughout the first chapter to explore all of the alternatives and the real history. 

There are eight major decision point in the book.

What would you do at Midway?

What would you do about ‘the’ bomb? 

435 pages, paperback at £12.99 UK.

Resource Section.

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ is being re-configured to showcase various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com

Operation Barbarossa 1941, games and some reading.

Barbarossa - How Hitler Lost the War, by Jonathan Dimbleby, published by Penguin, soft back, 509 pages, hit the retail shelves at Christmas, having been a big seller last year in the original hardback.

Described as ‘Staggering’ by the Sunday Times, who had it on their bestseller list, the book covers the titanic struggle on the East Front in 1941. Packed with detail, the work draws upon previously unseen archival material, including previously untranslated Russian sources.

Anyway, I picked it up thinking it looked a solid read and it occurred to me that reading the book, hand-in-hand with playing some Barbarossa boardgames would give an experience that would enhance both book and game.

Now my boardgame collection is pretty modest, but I was surprised to find that even so, I had nine titles that would each fit the time frame of the book. These are all strategic type games rather than the tactical scenarios from my collection.

Please use the ‘read more’ tab for a brief synopsis of those games;