Fighting Fantasy - A Mini History

This episode we don't take a look at an RPG - instead Iain waxes lyrical about the "gateway drug" that got him into RPGs in the first place - the phenemonon that is Fighting Fantasy.

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HOST: Iain Wilson
VOICE OVER LADY: Keeley Wilson
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to Roll to Save, the RPG history podcast, fighting fantasy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

I can still fondly remember that day back in 1985 when Greg McKinnon rushed across the school playground, that's recess yard or something similar for my North American listeners, and in an excited frenzy thrust a book into my hands. You have got to read this. It's like a story, but you're the hero in it. The book looked amazing. It was called The Temple of Terror and had a cover featuring some kind of armed and armoured snake guy barring the entrance into a desert city. The blurb on the back began, The dark, twisted power of the young Malbordus is reaching its zenith. All he needs now is to retrieve the five dragon artefacts, which have been hidden for centuries in the lost city of Vatos, somewhere in the Desert of Skulls. I had no idea what a zenith was, but this guy sounded like he needs stopped, and given that the blurb also said parts story, part game. This is a book in which you become the hero. It sounded like I was very much the person to stop him. Needless to say, I devoured the book. Actually, I still have my original copy. I think I swapped Greg some comics for it, and it does sort of look like it's been physically consumed and regurgitated. After reading this, I needed more. Temple of Terror was book 14 in a series, so there were at least 13 other ones I hadn't read. I'd I badgered my mum to take me to the library and I scoured the shelves for those telltale green spines. Any pocket money I had went on new game books. In other words, I was hooked. This started my love affair with a series that went on for over 50 titles, spawned numerous spin-off media and which drew me, like the tractor beam and the Death Star, towards the wider hobby of role-playing and really grew my love of the fantasy genre. The series I refer to is, of course, the Fighting Fantasy Game Books, brainchild of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston, the co-founders of Games Workshop. The books will open with an introduction that explains the background to the main tale. The story is then split across numerous numbered paragraphs. Traditionally, Fighting Fantasy books have 400, but there are exceptions, which will make zero sense if read in order. Instead, as the reader finishes a paragraph, we will be given a series of choices which allow them to influence the direction the narrative is taking. These are represented by other numbered paragraphs the reader can turn to. This continues until the story concludes, either successfully, the words turn to 400 were the sweetest words a fighting fantasy fan could ever read, or less successfully, usually in some hideous, gory fashion. Seriously, the number of times my eyes would widen in horror as I read some horrible description of my failure followed by the words, your adventure ends here. Of course, this concept of branching narrative, you are the hero type stories wasn't new. Choose your own adventure books had been around since the late 1970s. What made fighting fantasy new and exciting when it first hit the shelves in 1982 was the inclusion of the game element. According to the blurb in each game book, two dice, a pencil and an eraser are all you need to make your journey. Yes, you'd be keeping score on a character sheet, or adventure sheet, as fighting fantasy called it. Of course, compared to most RPGs, fighting fantasy was really simple. For starters, there were only three statistics to keep track of. Skill, reflecting your swordsmanship and general knack for all things heroic. Stamina, health or hit points. If this ever got to zero, you were dead, regardless of where you were in the story. And luck, which was, well, you know, how lucky you were. Simple as these were, they combined beautifully as the engine that ran the crunchy bits of your adventure. When something was in doubt, you tested your luck. If you were lucky, then something good or something not bad happened. If you were unlucky, the consequences could vary from losing a couple of points of stamina to missing out on an important item. to death. When a battle occurred, skill and stamina scores were given for the creature you were fighting and this was resolved using a simple but effective combat system. There was some interplay between the stats. You could use luck in combat to influence how much damage you did or took and various potions and provisions were available to raise your stamina. Occasionally, some magic objects or adventuring gear would be on hand to raise your skill or make you more effective in combat, but on the whole, the system remained elegant and simple. Of course, I'm reading this with the hindsight of an adult. Nowadays, when I pull out a fighting fantasy book for a read-through, I'm scrupulously honest. I roll my stats and stick with them no matter how bad. Every combat is fought fairly and if I die to a monster, I shrug, roll up a new hero and start again. Should my luck plummet to absurdly low levels and I end up succumbing to Murphy's Law, so be it. I can hope to be luckier on my next adventure. Did I do this as a kid though? Yeah, right. Ian Livingston, one of the original authors, has made reference before to the five-fingered bookmark, an allusion to the fact that most discerning schoolchildren would keep their fingers wedged firmly between the various paragraph choices they came to, being able to quickly rewind if the room they had blundered into contained a hungry monster rather than the treasure they expected. In addition to this, most schools didn't really approve of clattering dice during reading time. Naturally, being the good boy I am, I didn't want to break these rules. No, far better to assume that my hero bossed his way through every combat and shrugged off all damage like a champ than risk behaving like some kind of anarchist. Later series of the books actually came with dice printed at the bottom of the right hand pages so that players could flick through these to simulate a dice roll. However Even this wasn't a cure to rampant cheating. I'm pretty sure when I did this, the amount of double 60s I rolled was... uncanny, and the particular page that they sat at the bottom of looked suspiciously worn. Later entries in the series were much more clever in how they dealt with cheaters. Rather than let them get to the end and ask things like, do you have item X? Which, of course, I always did. They would have entries like, if you have a key, it will have a number on it. Subtract that number from the paragraph you're on just now, and turn to the new reference number. There were even a couple that had mechanisms designed specifically to catch cheaters and punish them. I remember the first time I got to the end of The Trial of the Champions and got caught out by a rather nasty surprise waiting for cheaters. So, we've got a series of books where you are the hero with a basic role-playing system bolted on. That's all well and good and potentially gimmicky, but how did they read? Simply put, they were extremely immersive. This was especially true once a series built up ahead of Steam. Sure, the first few followed some fairly basic fantasy tropes along the lines of go and kill the big bad over there or go and collect the magic item over here, but once these had been established, the authors actually started world building and the results were wonderful. Every new book felt like a return to a setting that the reader was familiar with and which was exciting for that familiarity. When new books explored as of yet unseen corners of Titan, as the fighting fantasy world was named, the excitement grew further. Over the years, the series explored other settings, notably sci-fi, but also including post-apocalyptic, superhero and horror. But because none of these settings were anchored in the familiar and fascinating world of Titan, none of them really stuck. And this goes a long way to explain why the series was named Fighting Fantasy and not fighting fantasy and associated trades. Aiding and abetting the world building were a wonderful cast of artists. Fighting fantasy books were lovingly illustrated by a whole host of talented people and the paintings that adorn their covers put today's computer generated images to shame. Every single piece of art from the aforementioned covers to the illustrations accompanying the main text to the little individual pieces that split up the paragraphs to the maps on the inside of the covers helped drag you, the reader, deeper and deeper into the world that was being created. I had a particular soft spot for the maps, they just fostered a wonderful sense of you are here. Fun fact, Ian McCaig, who provided many of the illustrations for Fighting Fantasy, was also the chap who created Darth Maul. Take a look at the cover of City of Thieves, created way back in 1983, and you can see his genesis right here. I mentioned the world building earlier as the thing that had really captured my imagination and dragged me headlong into the fighting fantasy phenomenon, but a special mention must be given to the Sorcery spin-off series written by Steve Jackson. Originally conceived as a product for Penguin Books, Puffin's grown-up brother, Sorcery was advertised as a more advanced variant of fighting fantasy, and an early advert boldly touted, why should kids have all the fun. I'm not sure how much success the For Adults concept had. The editions I have are all from Puffin, but the Sorcery series was fantastic. Spread across four books and published between 1983 and 1985, the Sorcery series was truly epic in scale. It covered a single story and saw the main protagonist journeying from their home kingdom of Analand to the distant Mampyne fortress, home to the evil Archmage who had I was obsessed with this series as a child, but I approached it in a rather weird manner. Sorcery No. 2, Carrie, Cityport of Traps, was actually the second fighting fantasy book I ever read, and boy was it difficult. I eventually struggled my way through, but my first few reads were really confusing. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing or where I was. My fault, I guess, was starting in the middle of a four book series. That being said, my nine-year-old self was enraptured with Sorcery's flagship feature, its magic system. Each Sorcery title included a spell book with over 40 spells. For the serious collector, you could even buy this separately in a book beautifully illustrated by the legendary John Blanche. Each of these spells had a cost and stamina and was identified by a three-letter code that gave you a clue as to the spell's function. For example, the Zaps spell through lightning bolts, whilst the wall spell created an invisible wall. The more powerful spells cost more stamina, whereas the cheaper spells generally needed some kind of physical component to cast successfully. The tech suggested you didn't consult the spellbook during play. After all, would a real mage have time to start flipping through the spellbook when the baddies were beating down on them? Instead, you were meant to spend time actually learning the spells. I don't know if it's a testament to my Turian stubbornness, but I did exactly that, and even today I can tell you what each spell does, how much they cost, and what artefacts they need to cast. Yes, my wife is a lucky lady. Of course, I still didn't play properly with any of that dice rolling malarkey, but I was scrupulously honest with the spells we're concerned. There was the option to play a simpler game mode where you were a warrior with no spells, and instead got a skill bump But to be honest, where's the fun in playing a series called Sorcery where there's no actual sorcery involved? As well as being part of one larger story where your character progressed from each one as you went, each of the sorcery books was longer than your average fighting fantasy one. The first three books had 456, 511 and 498 references each, whilst the final one clocked in at a massive 800 All in all, this means that the Sorcery series is about the length of five and a half normal fighting fantasy books. I've mentioned previously that John Blanche illustrated the spellbook. He also provided all the artwork for the series, from the covers, to the internal illustrations, to the maps, to the little separator images between the sections. This consistency, combined with Jackson's vivid descriptions, most paragraphs were longer than was usual for a fighting fantasy book, helped conjure up a unique, interesting, and there's that word again, immersive world. Sure, there were standard fantasy creatures like Manticores, Goblins and Giants. But what about the Sphin, Red-Eyes, Elvins and Mucalyctics? Each and every one a unique Jacksonian creation. What is particularly fascinating about the Sorcery series is its internal consistency. Things you did in one book could go on to affect something in a later book. For example, in book one, spoilers here obviously, you meet an assassin who tries to rob and kill you. If you fight him, you can kill him. or you can choose to spare him. If you do, there's a chance you can meet him in a later book. Likewise, an artefact found in book two can give you powers over something you encounter in book three. Most importantly, if you defeat the Archmage's spies in book three, the Archmage's minions in book four will respond differently to you because they don't actually know of your mission to steal back the crown. Oh, and then there's that whole thing about time travel, but I won't spoil that. In our modern day video games with cloud saves and multi-million dollar budgets this probably doesn't seem significant but back in the 80s this was huge. Bear in mind that most video games back then still came on tape and their level of sophistication was such that they could run on 64k of RAM. When I first started playing Sorcery only three of the books had been released. It's a testament to how obsessed I was about this series that When the fourth book was released, it went straight on my Christmas list, and I was more excited about getting it than the computer I got that same year. As the series grew and expanded, and as the demand for the books surged, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston moved from being sole authors to overseeing the growth of the series and the worlds being created. Writing was taken over by others that they commissioned, and the books now bore the tagline of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston Present. Here the series really went into overdrive. While there were seven books in the main series published between 1982 and 1984, 1984 to 1986 saw a further 17 added to the catalogue. The series went on to see a total of 59 books being published between 1982 and 1995, alongside the four books making up the Sorcery Epic. In addition to this, Fighting Fantasy spawned two lines of role-playing games. The first series, and I'm using this term loosely based upon when they were released, I'm not aware there were an official series as such, was composed of Fighting Fantasy, the introductory role-playing game, The Riddling Reaver, a campaign dealing with the titular villain, Out of the Pit, Fighting Fantasy's equivalent of a monster manual, and Titan, the guide to the fighting fantasy world. The idea for Fighting Fantasy as a role-playing game was the brainchild of Steve Jackson. He and Ian Livingston were both D&D players. Indeed, their early business had been based off importing and selling D&D to the British market. But But Jackson wanted to create a really simple RPG, something as simple as a multiplayer fighting fantasy. The book was small and thin, but it contained enough goodness for a prospective GM to run a nice, simple campaign, provided they were willing to put the legwork into writing one. It also had a somewhat weird cover with a tiger person busting out of a massive D6. If they couldn't be bothered writing their own campaign, that's where the Riddling Reaver came in. This campaign saw the adventurers pursue, said Reaver, an agent of the trickster gods of luck and chance, an attempt to stop his unhinged schemes. I had run this for my friends as a kid, and I remember being so determined to prepare it properly that I was caught reading it in class when I should have been paying attention to something else. My campaign went on hold for a month after the teacher confiscated it, and no amount of protestations to my parents about the injustice of it all would give convince them to march down to the school and demand it back. I really can't believe it spent a whole month in Miss Lindsay's cupboard of confiscation along with various footballs, sticks of chewing gum and pencil toppers. The Riddling Reaver is split into several chapters and the story follows the characters as they pursue the Reaver for the murder of a local nobleman. It's not exactly taxing in the brain nor will you find enormously detailed Dungeon 4 plans but the feeling of it is very fighting fantasy. I've yet to re-read it but I recall my players enjoying it enormously back in the day. Out of the Pit and Titan are in effect the setting books for a fighting fantasy campaign but they're also great reads in their own right. I remember buying Out of the Pit from a bookshop in Paisley and reading a large portion of it on the bus on the way home, my attention gripped by all the foul monsters that populated its pages as well as the fantastic artwork within. Titan gives a great view of the history and setting of the fighting fantasy world and is full of great little nuggets of information that could be used for expanding into larger adventures or campaigns. In fact, I'd wager that the setting of Titan is more fully realised than some quote-unquote grown-up role-playing settings you find nowadays. Also, you'd be hard pushed to find a role-playing setting this detailed for the price that these books came in at back in the day. Interestingly, both Titan and Out of the Pit were both originally published in a format larger than the usual A5. These books came with beautiful colour plates that I remember some philistines ripping out to use as posters in their bedrooms. The second series were the advanced fighting fantasy books. These originally came in three volumes, Dungeoneer, Black Sand and Alansia, covering dungeon, city and wilderness adventures respectively. As well as containing rules for playing more complex fighting fantasy RPGs, each volume also included sample adventures. Alantia was probably my favourite as it came packed with detail about the world of Titan, as well as additional rules, including those for massed combat, which I absolutely loved for some reason. Years later, these books were re-released by Aryan Games in one large volume as Advanced Fighting Fantasy Deluxe, given that it came with all the AFF information, as well as that from Titan and Out of the Pit, this is probably as complete a fighting fantasy RPG as you could ever want. Although the original fighting fantasy series ended in 1995 with the publication of the 59th book, the series has been resurrected a couple of times since and is currently published by Scholastic Books. There have been additions to the line-up of books published since the first run and the most recent book, Assassins of Valencia, is a particular toughie. Even though the newer books don't have the traditional green spine, these ones are all fancy and shiny, the writing is still pure fighting fantasy. At the beginning of every Round Table episode, I usually ask guests, what got you involved in RPGs? Most say Dungeons and Dragons, but for me, Fighting Fantasy was the gateway into the wider world of fantasy role-playing games. There was a little role-playing game called Maelstrom, now also republished by Ariane Games, that was published under the Adventure Game Books imprint, the same label that published Fighting Fantasy. And I picked this up by mistake thinking that it was a fighting fantasy game book. Instead, I found a fully realised role-playing game and that introduced me to the wider role-playing game genre. In addition, Fighting Fantasy had its own magazine, Warlock, which ran for 13 issues. This magazine covered all sorts of things fighting fantasy related. There were guides to painting miniatures, but there were also mini fighting fantasy adventures Indeed, this was where House of Hell and Caverns of the Snow Witch got their first outing. Curiously, Warlock was massive in Japan. Unlike the UK, where it ended after 13 issues, Warlock ran for well over 60 issues in Japan. However, the thing that really sticks in my mind about Warlock isn't the minigames, it isn't the slightly irreverent humour or the cartoons, but it's the fact that at the end of one of the issues, there was an advert for a boxed set of miniatures called the Skeleton Horde, along with rules for using them in some game called Warhammer. I thought the models looked really cool, bought them, painted them, but then I was really interested in this game. And that, my friends, as they say, is where it all really began. So, when people ask me how I get involved in roleplaying games, I always direct them back to Fighting Fantasy A series that promised me that you decide which route to follow, which dangers to risk and which monsters to fight. And believe me, fighting those monsters was always easier when you had a five-fingered bookmark.

SPEAKER_02: 24:01

Turn to 400.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

that was our very brief history of fighting fantasy we hope you enjoyed it now a couple of shout outs before we conclude the episode I already mentioned Arion Games on the podcast they publish advanced fighting fantasy and Maelstrom amongst other things you can find them on Twitter at Arion that's A-R-I-O-N games and their website is arion-games.com I fully recommend checking them out. Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Maelstrom are both fantastic. You can also follow the official Fighting Fantasy Twitter account which, surprise surprise, is at Fighting Fantasy. If you fancy something a little bit different I recommend following Gamebook Journey at Gamebook Journey on Twitter. This is a chap who is playing through all the Fighting Fantasy books in sequence and live tweeting as he does. Now the great thing is he's not always successful so you do get to see some of the grisly endings that await unfortunate adventurers. You should also check out Scholastic Books. You can find these guys at Scholastic on Twitter or also at Scholastic UK and their websites are scholastic.co.uk and also scholastic.com Now I mistakenly said in the podcast that the latest book was Assassins of Alansia. It's actually not. The latest book is by Ria Pratchett and it called Crystal of Storms. So that's the latest fighting fantasy book. Go and check that out. Lastly, I recommend following Ian Livingston, one of the original authors. I'd recommend Steve Jackson too, but he doesn't really seem to post a lot on Twitter. Anyway, Ian Livingston is at Ian underscore Livingston. That's Ian spelled I-A-N, which I'd like to point out is the incorrect way. All proper Ians have two I's in their names, but he's very active on Twitter and the guy's a complete legend. obviously started off this series and wrote some of the best books in it. He also seems to be a genuinely nice guy to boot, so there's that. We're a monthly podcast on the history of role-playing games. If you want to get in touch with us, please follow us on Twitter at Save Podcast, or you can find us on Facebook by searching for Role to Save. Please join our Facebook group. You can also mail us at role.to.save.pod at gmail.com and if you're feeling kind please leave us a review on your podcast directory of choice we love reading the reviews and it really helps us with visibility of the podcast thanks again for listening and we'll see you on the next episode

SPEAKER_01: 27:02

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