Fighting Fantasy is a series of single player roleplaying gamebooks published by Puffin. There are 59 books in the series, beginning with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in 1982 and concluding with Curse of the Mummy in 1995. The series was created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, who authored the first ten books in the series before the writing stable was expanded. Note that Jackson should not be confused with the American game designer of the same name, who presently runs Steve Jackson Games and himself authored three Fighting Fantasy books - Scorpion Swamp, Demons of the Deep and Robot Commando.
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are similar to other interactive gamebooks which were being published at the time, most notably the Choose Your Own Adventure series, in that the player is required to make many choices over the course of the story, 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 mechanic used to resolve combat and other situations, not dissimilar to that used in Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games, though far simpler.
With the notable exception of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! miniseries, all 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 (The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Return to Firetop Mountain and Legend of Zagor) are undoubtedly more rewarding if played in sequence.
History
In 1980 Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were employed by Games Workshop, and decided to capitalise on the spreading enthusiasm for Dungeons and 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 which 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.
Following on from the success of the first book, Jackson and Livingstone began to write solo adventures in order to better utilise their time. In 1983 Jackson produced the second Fighting Fantasy adventure, The Citadel of Chaos, and Livingstone the third: The Forest of Doom. After the seventh installment in the series, Island of the Lizard King ([[Ian Livingstone|Livingstone, 1984), the decision was made to expand the number of writers working on the project. The second Steve Jackson (henceforth referred to as 'Steve Jackson(2)') was added to the roster, and his Scorpion Swamp was published that year. From that point on many more authors began to contribute to the series, including Andrew Chapman, Carl Sargent, Marc Gascoigne and Peter Darvill-Evans.
The series enjoyed good sales all through the eighties, but these began to slacken in the early nineties and the series was slated to conclude with book 50, Return to Firetop Mountain (Livingstone, 1992). This book was unexpectedly successful, selling better than any recent book and prompting an increase in demand for the Fighting Fantasy back catalogue. As a result of this ten more books were commissioned but only nine of these were published, leaving book 60, Bloodbones, unpublished.
In 2002 Wizard Books purchased the rights to the Fighting Fantasy series and has begun publishing many of the original titles, making the controversial decision to change the order of the books in order to fit their reduced lineup (thus far only books by Jackson and Livingstone have been published) and to incorporate the Sorcery! miniseries into the core series. The original cover art has also been replaced. Ian Livingstone has written a new Fighting Fantasy book for the Wizard series, Eye of the Dragon, with more expected to follow. The official Wizard website mentions the final book in the original series, the as yet unpublished Bloodbones, as a possible future release.
Setting
The majority of the Fighting Fantasy books are set in the heroic fantasy world of Titan - 46 of the 59 core books take place there, plus the Sorcery! spinoff. Like many fantasy settings, Titan corresponds roughly to medievil Europe, with the addition of magic, monsters and several sentient non-human races. Titan consists of three continents; they are, from most commonly visited to least, Allansia, The Old World and Khul. The scattered and somewhat incoherent information gleaned about the world of Titan from the central gamebooks is consolidated and supplemented by a guide titled simply Titan (Gascoigne, Jackson and Livingstone, 1986).
Legend of Zagor (Livingstone, 1993) is set in a second fantasy world, Amarilla, as are the third and fourth volumes of The Zagor Chronicles (Livingstone, 1993-94). As characters are able to travel between Titan and Amarilla it cannot be considered a truly seperate world, but rather an expansion of the Titan setting.
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 Way of the Tiger.
In addition to these, a small minority of Fighting Fantasy books employ a science fiction setting. It is never specified whether or not these books are intended to be set in the same world, but the lack of consistency between them or mention of common locations indicate that they are not. The science fiction books, in order of publication, are Starship Traveller (Jackson, 1983), Space Assassin (Chapman, 1985), The Rings of Kether (Chapman, 1985), Rebel Planet, (Waterfield, 1985), Robot Commando (Jackson(2), 1985), Star Strider (Sharp, 1987), Sky Lord (Allen, 1988) and Spectral Stalkers (Darvill-Evans, 1991).
Finally, House of Hell (Jackson, 1984) is the only Fighting Fantasy book set in modern-day Earth.
System
The Fighting Fantasy system, in comparison with the mechanics employed in Dungeons and Dragons or even the similar Lone Wolf series, is extremly simple. The player character, in the majority of books, has only three statistics - Skill, Stamina and Luck, which are determined by random die 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 point from their Stamina. This process usually continues until one party's Stamina reaches 0, at which point they are dead.
Luck comes into play at various points in the narrative, at which point the player will be instructed to roll 2d6 and compare the result to their Luck score. If the result is lower 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 players Luck will have a different, invariably negative, result.
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 employs a Willpower score. Other books allow the player to select from a number of abilities, such as the spells available in The Citadel of Chaos or the heroic abilities in Master of Chaos (Martin, 1990). In addition to this 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 ranged combat, with a variety of methods of resolution.
Covers
The original Puffin publication of the Fighting Fantasy series went through three distinct editions, characterised by differing cover layouts and spines, often referred to among fans as the 'original', 'green line' and 'gold dragon' editions. Despite these changes the artwork was unaffected throughout, with the exception of the first two books, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and The Citadel of Chaos, both of which recieved new cover illustrations upon release in 'gold dragon' format. The recent Wizard reprint features completely new cover artwork.
The 'original' covers feature simple titles and bear the book's number in a large star in either of the bottom corners of the page, with the colour of the book's spine varying depending on the dominant colour of the cover art. The author's name is discretely placed at the top, due to Jackson and Livingstone's lack of celebrity at the time of publication. This layout was used from book 1 through 7, though these have also been published in the subsequent formats as well.
The 'green line' or 'zigzag' format features a jagged green line across the top of the cover, bearing the phrase 'Adventure Gamebook' and the book's number, and is the first edition to employ the distinctive Fighting Fantasy logo and green spine. As with the 'original' editions, the author's name is not highlighted in any way, though it is worth noting that those books written by authors other than Jackson and Livingstone do not feature the author's name on the cover; rahter, the books are billed as 'Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone present...', a reflection upon Jackson and Livinstone's growing fanbase. This style was introduced to coincide with the release book 8, Scorpion Swamp (Jackson(2), 1984), and all previous books were reissued in this format. The style continued to be used on all new books up to book 24, Creature of Havoc (Jackson, 1986).
The 'gold dragon' format features a gold dragon crouched on a large text box displaying the phrase 'Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone present' in bronze-foil print, in many cases in larger type than the title of the book itself; the only exceptions to this rule were those books which were actually written by either Jackson or Livingstone, in which case only the individual in question would be named. This format carried on the green spine from the previous edition, though the second printing did not feature the numbered spine; this was corrected for the third printing. This format was introduced with book 25, Beneath Nightmare Castle (Darvill-Evans, 1987) and maintained right up until the series concluded with book 59, Curse of the Mummy (Green, 1995) and once again all previous books were reissued in this format. The bronze-foil print was discontinued after book 51, Island of the Undead (Martin, 1992).
When Wizard began to publish Fighting Fantasy in 2002, they completely redesigned both the cover art and the logo. The new art is glossier and considered to be more professional, though many nostalgic fans of the original series find it to be less satisfying. As only books written by either Jackson or Livingstone have been printed in this format it remains to be seen whether the actual author's name will feature on the cover or not.
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, Khare - 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.
In 1984 Jackson produced a guide to muliplayer roleplaying 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, 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. 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.
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 Sargent began a four volume series entitled The Zagor Chronicles, reprising the popular villain of Warlock of Firetop Mountain and its sequels.
Other media
In 1984 a number of Fighting Fantasy videogames were released for the Commodore 64, Amstrad, BBC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K and possible others. They were based directly on specific Fighting Fantasy novels - specifically 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.
1986 saw the release of the Warlock of Firetop Mountain boardgame, followed in 1993 by a second game based on the Legend of Zagor novels.
In 1998 Eidos Interactive published the Deathtrap Dungeon videogame for the PC and PlayStation.
See also
External links
References
"Fighting Fantasy Web Companion", URL accessed on 2nd August 2005.
"Fighting Fantasy Official Site". URL accessed on 2nd August, 2005.