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Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Whether its Choose your own Adventure, The Way of the Tiger or Fighting Fantasy...

Do you play?

Whats your favourite adventure book?

Any criminally overlooked books that you want to give a shout out to?

Do they give you a nostalgia trip?

What books would you like to see made and by whom?

Discuss!

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in gb
Dakka Veteran





I used to love the Fighting Fantasy books as a kid. I had several dozen of the things and loved going through them. I wasn't really interested in the faff of actually rolling dice and fighting things though so I just cheated

After I had been through a book a few times I would have a lot of fun trying to deconstruct the whole system, going through every possible branch to find out exactly what made the whole thing tick.

The series was also my first real introduction to fantasy literature (and art!). Geek culture wasn't really a thing where I grew up and I had a small friend group so the usual routes like D&D or Warhammer were not available to me. Instead I had the Fighting Fantasy books, and they were awesome. They even had their own RPG rule book, lore compendium and manual of cool and gruesome monsters.

Particularly memorable titles (spoilers for some):

Curse of the Mummy: My first ever Fighting Fantasy book. Cool settings, awesome monsters and an exciting story.
Return to Firetop Mountain: Possibly the best example of a classic fantasy adventure. Stock up on supplies, travel to a far-off landmark, traverse a twisting dungeon and kill the big bad evil guy.
Knights of Doom: Features the most bad-ass fantasy monster ever conceived: the assassin's dagger. It is a deadly blade wielded by an intangible and indestructible spectral hand. You can keep trapping it but it never stops coming and will harass you at various points throughout the book. If you don't work out a way to banish it for good then it finally catches up with you right after you defeat the final boss
Legend of Zagor: This one actually lets you choose from four different classes, with each one being able to approach problems in different ways.
Revenge of the Vampire: hilariously impossible to complete due to a 'bug'. To beat it you need to steal the codex from the vampire's entourage whilst he stays at the inn. However, you cannot enter the inn without coin and the only way to reach it on time is to pay every last gold piece you own to an opportunistic horse merchant.
Creature of Havoc: You play a mindless beast with no way to communicate and no will of its own. At the start your actions are entirely controlled by random dice rolls. As you blunder through you slowly regain your faculties and try to restore your former self. An awesome concept, although quite annoying to actually play
Magehunter: A crazy book involving the titular magehunter, his young apprentice and a body-swapping wizard. The path to the true ending is ridiculously narrow, requiring that you learn to body-swap yourself and then get everyone back into the right bodies by the end. You can make a decision right at the start that will damn you to failure, but it still lets you continue through hundreds of useless pages before you find that out
Appointment with F.E.A.R.: A modern superhero setting rather than fantasy. You get to pick your powers and then have relatively free-reign to target the villains that you think you have the best chance of taking down. One of the power sets involves both super strength AND flying and so is ridiculously overpowered compared to the alternatives.
The Rings of Kether: A sci-fi setting. My only real memory of this one is that it is the only one that I failed to properly map. Everything branched off like crazy. It also didn't help that there was a lengthy section that involved you piloting a spacecraft by deciding, basically at random, whether to adjust the roll, yaw or pitch in order to avoid enemy fire.

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Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Some of those I hadn't played before and so thanks for a quick summery of each, Bilge Rat. Will have to have a look at those.

I had written a CYOA-style game for Android two years ago but while it had 350 entries and enjoyed the process, I didn't feel it was up to professional standards of writting. Might revisit it and get it on the digital shop...

I miss the days of walking into a book shop - as a youngster - and purchasing a copy of one of these books. I was in Waterstones today with the intention of purchasing Rhianna Prachett's Fighting Fantasy book "Crystal of Storms", but sadly they didn't have it. Another trip to Amazon I guess...

Current favourite of the FF series is Night of the Necromancer, where you play a ghost who fights other spectural creatures and communicates with the living. I quite the feature where when you perish, you have a chance to return to the game as you exist in the realm between the living and the dead. Its ideal for those who like undead adventures similar to D&D's Curse of Strahd.


Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in gb
Mighty Vampire Count






UK

Ohh Fighting Fantasy - still have some - big fan of Deathtrap Dungeon.

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Made in gb
Dakka Veteran





SamusDrake wrote:
I miss the days of walking into a book shop - as a youngster - and purchasing a copy of one of these books. I was in Waterstones today with the intention of purchasing Rhianna Prachett's Fighting Fantasy book "Crystal of Storms", but sadly they didn't have it. Another trip to Amazon I guess...

That was part of the fun as well. There were so many books, so I was always glad when I got to look in a shop that I hadn't visited before or in another part of the country to see if they had any of the titles that I had not encountered before

8930 points 6800 points 75 points 600 points
2810 points 4090 points 2650 points 3275 points
55 points 640 points 1840 points 435 points
2990 points 700 points 2235 points 1935 points
3460 points 1595 points 2480 points 2895 points
 
   
Made in gb
Pious Warrior Priest




UK

Huge fan of these and have a collection of around 200 of various series, mostly Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf.

Lone Wolf remains my favourite, excellent setting, writing, permanence (you carry your character and items from book to book) and a distinct lack of overly cruel/impossible gameplay that makes reading Fighting Fantasy quite frustrating at times.

All the Lone Wolf books are getting reprinted very soon, Joe Dever's son has done fantastic work with both completing and reviving the franchise: https://magnamund.com/

Sorcery! was probably the pinnacle of Fighting Fantasy, I read it over and over as a child and it has a lot of depth to it and drips atmosphere since the whole thing is illustrated by John Blanche. I'd recommend it as an entry point to gamebooks in general. Do not buy a goldspine modern paperback release of it though, no Blanche artwork ruins it, get the wizard books release from the 2000's, cheaper than the original release and still has the interior art.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2021/06/04 00:45:06


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut






I am very frustrated right now, because the name I thought the series of books had - which I thought was Adventure Quest - is not the name they had.

The books were kind of like an exquisitely drawn "where's waldo" style book, where you had to find various items on the page and solve the riddles to move forward. The pages were very busy, and some of the details I can remember from my childhood were:

• A wizards workshop where the wizard had turned off gravity, and there were all sorts of weird things floating around - clockwork walking cupcakes, crab apples (which had crab legs and claws), and all manner of other stuff.
• a page called "Glebelands" in which you had to find and trap the Glebes (farmers) under giant flower pots on sticks
• a very busy market in which you had to find (amongst a lot of other things) animals called Cloth-ears which were like goats with elephant ears and small trunks.
• gargoyles which came to life, and you had to find & throw all the gems into the gargoyles mouths to turn them back to stone.
• a set of 3 bridges, guarded by 3 "statues", one of which was stone and the other 2 were warriors who would slay you. You had to notice the missing hand of one of them to identify the stone one.

I just remember the artwork being amazing but for the life of me I can't find the books! they would be 90's books, by any account!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I got it!

The book was called "Sword Quest", and it was one of the Usborne Fantasy Puzzle Books.

I also had King arthurs Knight Quest.

I got the "Quest" part right, at least!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/06/04 08:05:29


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Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





I shall have to look into those series.

I remember a zx spectrum game of Lone Wolf but sadly never got to play it. I guess the first book is the best place to start, I take it?

"Cloth-ears"...that definitely sounds like a British author at work there!

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Had a trip into Cambridge today and by chance Heffers book shop had a copy of Crystal of Storms, signed by Rhianna Practchett herself. Well chuffed with that!

Also there was three other books; The Shamutani Hills, Khare: Cityport of Traps and Assassins of Allansia. Bagged'em!

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
 
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