Fighting Fantasy

Fighting Fantasy

Designers	Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson
Publishers	Puffin, Wizard Books
Publication	1980
Genres	Fantasy
Systems	Gamebook

Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player fantasy gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, originally published by Puffin and now by Wizard Books. Although not the first book series to use the gamebook format, Fighting Fantasy popularised the format and spawned dozens of imitators. The popularity of the series led to spin-off board games, video games, role-playing game systems, novels and magazines. In a typical Fighting Fantasy book, the reader will take the role of the story's protagonist, making the character's choices and following their own path through the story. The series distinguished itself from similar series with its use of a dice system which added a role-playing element to the books. Most of the Fighting Fantasy books were set in the fantasy world of Titan, although some are set in science fiction, horror and other fantasy settings.

Overview

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were similar to other interactive gamebooks that were being published at the time — most notably the Choose Your Own Adventure series — in that the reader takes control of the story's protagonist, making many choices over the course of the story and turning to different pages in order to learn the outcome of their decisions. The Fighting Fantasy series distinguished itself by the use of a dice system to resolve combat and other situations, not unlike that used in Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games, though far simpler.

British writers Steve Jackson (not to be confused with the US-based game designer of the same name) and Ian Livingstone, co-founders of Games Workshop, authored the first seven books in the series, after which point the writing stable was expanded; in fact, a majority of the gamebooks in the series were written by authors other than Jackson and Livingstone.

There were 59 books in the original core series, beginning with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone, 1982) and concluding with Curse of the Mummy (Jonathan Green, 1995). In addition to this there was the four-part Sorcery! series, by Jackson, and a two book, two-player adventure Clash of the Princes (Andrew Chapman and Martin Allen, 1986) bringing the total up to 65.

Since buying the rights to the Fighting Fantasy series in 2002, Wizard Books has published reprints of older titles and several new books, entitled Eye of the Dragon, the long-lost adventure Bloodbones, Howl of the Werewolf, Stormslayer (published in September 2009) and Night of the necromancer which was published in April 2010

The action in a Fighting Fantasy gamebook is split into small sections, ranging from a paragraph to a page, at the end of each of which the character usually must make a choice or roll a die. Each page features several of these sections, each headed with its number in bold. Where the page number would appear in an ordinary book, a Fighting Fantasy book gives the range of sections appearing on that page, much as some dictionaries do for the words listed on a page. Most of the early books in the series had 400 of these sections, with the optimal ending being number 400. Some books had more or less than the standard 400 sections, and some concealed the optimal ending somewhere in the middle of the book to make it harder for the reader to find.

With the notable exception of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! miniseries, most entries in the series are standalone and do not assume any prior knowledge on the part of the player. That said, many of them take place in a single world known as Titan, and the three books which deal with the wizard Zagor, (namely The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Return to Firetop Mountain and Legend of Zagor), are undoubtedly more rewarding if played in sequence, as are the books Deathtrap Dungeon, Trial of Champions with Armies of Death and Vault of the Vampire with Revenge of the Vampire.

Typically, a Fighting Fantasy gamebook follows the "collect w, x and y to reach z" approach. This means that the player can only reach the end of the book by following the correct path and finding all the items (keys, gems, rings or even pieces of information) that let him or her proceed to the final confrontation. Later books sometimes varied this formula, allowing multiple routes to success.

History

In 1980, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone decided to capitalise on the spreading enthusiasm for Dungeons & Dragons by creating a series of single-player gamebooks. Their first submission, The Magic Quest, was a short adventure intended to demonstrate the style of game that they sought to create. The Magic Quest took over a year to be accepted by Penguin Books, at which point the two creators devoted a further six months to expanding and improving upon their original design, resulting in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook. After several rewrites, the book was accepted and published in 1982 under Penguin's children's imprint, Puffin Books.

Following the success of the first book, Jackson and Livingstone began to produce further gamebooks, writing solo in order to make better use of their time. In 1983, Jackson produced the second Fighting Fantasy adventure, The Citadel of Chaos, and Livingstone the third, titled The Forest of Doom. Jackson then produced the first book in the series with a science-fiction setting, Starship Traveller, and Livingstone the first with an urban setting, City of Thieves, as well as Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King. In 1984, the decision was made to expand the number of writers working on the project, including Andrew Chapman, Carl Sargent (aka Keith Martin), Marc Gascoigne (also the longest-serving Fighting Fantasy editor) and Peter Darvill-Evans.

Three of the books (Scorpion Swamp in 1984, Demons of the Deep and Robot Commando in 1986) were written by the other Steve Jackson, the United States-based founder and owner of Steve Jackson Games. This has led many gamers to mistakenly believe that the two Steve Jacksons were the same person.

The series enjoyed good sales all through the Eighties, but experienced the same difficulties in the early Nineties as the rest of the role-playing industry, brought on primarily by the increasing dominance of video games. The series was slated to conclude with book 50, Return to Firetop Mountain (Livingstone, 1992), but this book was unexpectedly successful, experiencing better sales than any recent gamebook and prompting an increase in demand for the Fighting Fantasy back catalogue. As a result, ten more books were written, but only nine were ever published, and the series came to an end with 1995's Curse of the Mummy. A sixtieth book, Bloodbones, was written but never released, although it was later published by Wizard.

In 2002, Wizard Books bought the rights to the Fighting Fantasy series and has put many of the original titles back into print, making the decision to change the order of the books in order to fit their reduced line-up (initially only the gamebooks by Jackson and Livingstone were published) and to incorporate the Sorcery! miniseries into the core series. The original cover art was also been replaced. The Wizard editions have also been criticized for the extensive errors in the rule section of the reprints. Copying and pasting from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain has introduced errors into the rules, in most cases affecting the rules for Provisions and Potions. These problems have continued in the more recent re-releases as number 24, Talisman of Death.

In 2005, a brand-new Fighting Fantasy book entitled Eye of the Dragon was released by Wizard, written by Ian Livingstone, though derived from the illustrative game found in his Dicing with Dragons. In 2006, Talisman of Death and Sword of the Samurai, both written by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith, were released. This was the first time Wizard had reprinted works by "secondary" authors. Two further new titles followed in 2006 and 2007 (Bloodbones and Howl of the Werewolf respectively.)

In 2007, Fighting Fantasy celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. To commemorate the event, Wizard published a new 25th-anniversary yearbook and a special edition of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain that used the original wrap-around cover image of the 1982 printing and contained extra material in a section at the back of the book. In addition, the book was published in hardback marking a first for the range of traditionally paperbacks.

September 2009 saw the release of the new title Stormslayer. Another new title, Night of the Necromancer, was released in 2010.

Setting

The majority of the Fighting Fantasy books are set in the heroic fantasy world of Titan — 46 of the 59 Puffin books take place there, as does the Sorcery! spin-off. Titan is a typical medieval fantasy setting, consisting of three continents: the one most commonly used in the series is Allansia, followed by the Old World and then Khul. The scattered and somewhat incoherent information gleaned about the world of Titan from the gamebooks is consolidated and greatly supplemented by a reader's guide titled simply Titan (Marc Gascoigne, Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone]], 1986).

Legend of Zagor (Livingstone, 1993) is set in a second fantasy world, Amarillia, as are the first, second and fourth volumes of The Zagor Chronicles (Livingstone, 1993–94).

A third fantasy world called Orb features in book 11, Talisman of Death (Thomson & Smith, 1984). Orb is also the setting of Thompson and Smith's otherwise unrelated series of gamebooks The Way of the Tiger.

In addition to these, a small minority of Fighting Fantasy books employ a science fiction setting. These are, in order of publication, Starship Traveller (Jackson, 1983), Freeway Fighter (Livingstone, 1985), Space Assassin (Chapman, 1985), The Rings of Kether (Chapman, 1985), Rebel Planet, (Waterfield, 1985), Robot Commando (Steve Jackson (US), 1985), Star Strider (Sharp, 1987), and Sky Lord (Allen, 1988). Of these, at least three (Freeway Fighter, Rebel Planet and Star Strider) directly or indirectly refer to our Earth.

Appointment with F.E.A.R. (Jackson, 1985) featured the reader as a superhero in the fictional "Titan City".

Spectral Stalkers (Peter Darvill-Evans, 1991) was set in a variety of interconnected dimensions, some of which conformed to fantasy archetypes and some to those of science fiction.

House of Hell (Jackson, 1984) is the only Fighting Fantasy book set in modern-day Earth.

System

The Fighting Fantasy system, in the majority of books, gives the player-character three statistics, namely skill, stamina and luck, which are determined randomly by dice rolls at the beginning of the adventure.

Whenever the player engages an enemy in combat, the statistics for that enemy are displayed in the text. The player rolls 2d6 (a pair of six sided dice) and adds this number to their skill, then does the same for their opponent. Whichever combatant has scored higher has wounded the other, and the wounded party must subtract 2 points from their stamina. At this point the player has the option to Test Luck, a gamble which either increases or decreases the damage done. This process usually continues until one party's stamina reaches 0, at which point they are dead.

Testing Luck comes into play both by explicit instruction at various points in the narrative, and (at the player's choice) in combat. The player rolls 2d6 and compare the result to their Luck score. If the result is lower or equal than their score they are considered to be Lucky and are informed of their results; conversely, a roll which results in a score higher than the player's Luck will have a different, almost invariably negative, result. In either case, the player's luck score is decreased by 1 each time it is tested and thus subsequent Tests of Luck become increasingly difficult unless the player finds some way to replenish luck. (Sometimes the player is given a choice not to Test Luck and thus to conserve a higher luck score for future occasions.)

Some books employ extra statistics, such as Sword of the Samurai (Thomson & Smith, 1986), in which the character also has an Honour score, or Beneath Nightmare Castle (Darvill-Evans, 1987) which includes a Willpower score, House of Hell has a Fear score, Vault of the Vampire has a Faith score, and Master of Chaos has a Notoriety score. Other books allow the player to select from a number of abilities, such as the spells available in The Citadel of Chaos and Temple of Terror (Livingstone, 1985), the special skills in Moonrunner (Hand, 1992) or the superpowers in Appointment with F.E.A.R. (Jackson, 1985).

Some books use vehicle combat as well as hand to hand (examples include Starship Traveller and Freeway Fighter), and most of the science fiction settings include some form of ranged combat, with a variety of methods of resolution.

The Sorcery! series was the first to feature images of dice at the bottom of each page. These allowed the game to be played without having actual dice to hand, by flicking through the book to a random page. The Fighting Fantasy books published by Wizard use the same device.

Cover formats

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks have had a variety of different cover formats. Three different cover designs were used during the publication of the original series by Puffin. Originally each book had the number of the book printed in a coloured star on the cover. The spine and rear cover were the same colour as the background of the star, the colour varying with the book. This design was used for the first seven books in the series. The second design featured a green stripe across the top of the cover, containing the words 'Adventure Gamebooks' and the number of the book. The Fighting Fantasy logo was also printed on the cover. The spine and rear cover of each book were uniformly coloured a light green. This design was used up to the 24th book in the series. The final design featured a large box with a gold dragon design at the top of the cover containing the cover credit. The spine of each book remained uniformly coloured a light green. The colour of the rear cover varied with each book. This design was used up to the last book in the Puffin series. Reprints of the earlier books featured the subsequent cover designs.

Books with the final Puffin cover design featured the number of the book on the front and spine of each book until a small number of print runs where all numbers were removed from the books. After this the number of the book featured on the spine of each book, but not the cover. The cover credit was printed in bronze-foil until the publication of the 51st book, after which it was printed in black. The first two books, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos were given new cover illustrations when printed with the second and final Puffin cover design.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks republished by Wizard feature a new cover design, a new Fighting Fantasy logo and new cover illustrations (with, so far, the exceptions of Appointment with F.E.A.R and Curse of the Mummy, which retain their original cover illustrations). The covers were changed because the old covers were not considered acceptable for the modern market.

Authors other than the series' co-creators are not credited on the cover, which instead features the phrase 'Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone Present'. These authors are credited on the inside title page.

The Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks published in the U.S. by Dell/Laurel Leaf featured a new cover design and illustrations by Richard Corben.

Interior artwork

All Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are illustrated, including full-page pieces which depict the action taking place in one of the sections on the opposing page and smaller, generic pieces scattered at random throughout the book, often serving as breaks or space fillers between sections. The full-page illustrations are generally used for the most dramatic or spectacular sections of the story, while the generic images usually depict items such as skulls, swords, monsters and treasure. The two sets of illustrations are always drawn by the same artist.

Many artists contributed multiple illustrations to the series: Les Edwards and Terry Oakes created 11 and 12 covers, respectively; Russ Nicholson drew the interior illustrations for 13 books, and Leo Hartas provided the maps included in 18 books. Other notables included Ian Miller, John Blanche and Iain McCaig.

Companion books

Several additional books were published to supplement the core series, the most successful of which was Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series, which was published in from 1983 to 1985 and consists of The Shamutanti Hills, Kharé - Cityport of Traps, The Seven Serpents and The Crown of Kings. Billed as 'Fighting Fantasy for adults', it was the longest and most complex story published in the series and the only one to run over multiple volumes.

Roleplaying games

In 1984 Jackson produced a guide to multiplayer role-playing using the Fighting Fantasy system and world, a volume simply titled Fighting Fantasy. In 1985 a complete Fighting Fantasy bestiary was released, Out of the Pit (by Gascoigne, though credited to Livingstone and Jackson), and in 1986 it was followed by an adventure for the multiplayer system, The Riddling Reaver as well as a then-complete encyclopedia of the Fighting Fantasy world, entitled Titan. The gaming system was designed to be fast-moving and easy to understand, with very simple rules for combat and only a pair of six-sided dice required as opposed to the multitude of complex dice required for many of the game's competitors. It was also relatively affordable - the core rulebook and all the supplemental material could be purchased for around the same price as a starter kit for many of the era's other RPGs. Ultimately Fighting Fantasy can be seen as an attempt to create a truly 'entry-level' RPG, simple enough to be understood by almost anyone yet flexible enough to allow GMs to create engaging adventures.

In 1989 a second Fighting Fantasy multiplayer system was released, referred to as Advanced Fighting Fantasy. Three books were produced using this system: Dungeoneer, Blacksand! and Allansia, all by Marc Gascoigne and Pete Tamlyn; "Out of the Pit" and "Titan" were subsumed into the range as sourcebooks and reissued in reformatted, companion editions.

Spin-offs

Seven Fighting Fantasy novels have also been published. These began with three standalone books, titled The Trolltooth Wars (Jackson, 1989), Demonstealer (Gascoigne, 1991) and Shadowmaster (Livingstone & Gascoigne, 1992). In 1993 Ian Livingstone and Carl Sargent began a four volume series entitled The Zagor Chronicles, reprising the popular villain of Warlock of Firetop Mountain and its sequels.

Clash of the Princes was a pair of books designed to be played or read by two players simultaneously as opponents (although either book could also be read on its own). In the two-player game each of the readers would from time to time be instructed by the book to make a note on a shared piece of paper as they made decisions, which could influence what happened to the other player as his book instructed him to respond accordingly.

Other Fighting Fantasy spin-offs have include an oversized poster book, the Fighting Fantasy 10th Anniversary Yearbook (a diary with articles, trivia and a gamebook spread across the days), and a boxed set of dice and character sheets. Games Workshop's Citadel Miniatures produced a small range of 54 mm plastic warriors. The associated magazine Warlock first produced by Puffin Books and later Games Workshop, ran for 13 issues. It featured a gamebook in every issue, as well as new monsters, rules, reviews and comic strips. Editors were variously Ian Livingstone, Steve Williams and Marc Gascoigne. Unusually, the magazine was licensed for a Japanese edition, which continued with original material from issue 14 onwards and continued to publish until recently.

Other media

In 1984 a number of Fighting Fantasy video games were released for the Commodore 64, Amstrad, BBC, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Each game was based on a specific gamebook, namely The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos, The Forest of Doom, Temple of Terror, Seas of Blood, Appointment with F.E.A.R. and Rebel Planet.

In 1985, Steve Jackson wrote a picture gamebook with the title Tasks of Tantalon, in which the player was required to solve a series of puzzles set by the wizard Tantalon, which were presented as large, full colour pictures containing hidden clues to be located and assembled.

1986 saw the release of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain board game from Games Workshop. This was followed in 1993 by the Legend of Zagor board game, based on the Legend of Zagor gamebook.

In 1998, Eidos Interactive published the Deathtrap Dungeon video game for the PC and PlayStation.

On December 5, 2006, it was announced that Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were planning to release a new series of video games based on Fighting Fantasy for Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP. The first of these, Fighting Fantasy: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, was released for the DS in the United States on November 25, 2009, and for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch in early January 2010.

Importance

The Fighting Fantasy series popularised the use of a dice mechanic in gamebooks, a random element which contributed hugely to the suspense and the enjoyment of the play experience. Many series would attempt to emulate the Fighting Fantasy style, with varying degrees of success: Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series enjoyed success nearly equal to that of Fighting Fantasy. Other series included GrailQuest, Sagas of the Demonspawn, Fabled Lands and The Way of the Tiger. The phrase 'Fighting Fantasy' is sometimes used to refer to all single player role-playing gamebooks, most notably in item descriptions on eBay, where such gamebooks are regularly sold. Fighting Fantasy and other gamebooks are seen as a primer or gateway to the RPG hobby for younger enthusiasts.

Fighting Fantasy was not the very first series of gamebooks. The gamebook format used in Fighting Fantasy was previously seen in a series of solitaire adventures released for the Tunnels and Trolls role-playing game, the first of which was Buffalo Castle.

Technically, the format was first seen in the 1969 Penguin political thriller State of Emergency, by Dennis Guerrier and Joan Richards. However, the title's simulation of a country interacting with the UN failed to catch on, and it became a forgotten curiosity.

Similarly, Douglas Hill's 1983 book "Have Your Own Extraterrestrial Adventure" in which the reader plays the part of an Instellar "Gun for Hire", although the structure of the book resembles the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series rather than Fighting Fantasy.

See also

• The Cretan Chronicles
• Legends of Skyfall
• Wizards Warriors & You
• Les Edwards
• Russ Nicholson
• Ian Miller
• Iain McCaig
• John Blanche
• List of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

External links

• Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks - the official website
• Wizard Books Homepage - current publisher of the range
• Titannica - the Fighting Fantasy Wikia
• Warlock - a Fighting Fantasy game authoring system