Gamebooks

[Dark Jimbo]

Despite my general aversion to the sci-fi books, I always intended to give F.E.A.R a punt at some point.

[Barrington Boots]

I'm honestly unable to say if it's worth a go or not, given I have a heavy dose of nostalgia for it. I suspect the lack of overall plot and narrow path to success is detrimental, so I reckon it depends how much you enjoy the Superhero-y setting really.

[Barrington Boots]

Also, now that I'm mapping it out, something to avoid is trying to do do much.

For example, in the Super Strength path, part of the clue is held by The Mummy. To confront him though, you need to ignore the murders committed by the Ringmaster. I think this also negates stopping the Serpent, which means you can't get the clue to stop the president being assassinated, unless it's viable to carry over clues from one playthrough to the next (I doubt it is)
It's simply not the case where you can solve everything, which is a bit against the heroism concept.

[Blue Cactus]

Appointment with FEAR can be tough but has some fun elements. The superhero spin is quite novel for FF of course and I quite enjoy the way you have to try and not infuriate your work boss, so there is a sense of trying to maintain your secret identity as well as investigating everything else. Some of the character names that are clearing err... lets say homages to well known Marvel and DC characters are kind of fun too, while also being a bit rubbish! It's definitely a book where it's hard to get a sense of what the 'correct' path to take is though. Choosing between which crimes to pursue etc often feels wrong. As is par for the course, I have never completed it.

[Barrington Boots]

Two days till Fighting Fantasy Fest!

This is probably the geekiest thing I will ever attend. Hoping to pick up some missing titles from my collection, and I'm aiming to pick up the two new books - I've decided against taking a load of stuff to get signed, but I will bring my ancient copy of Out of the Pit along..

[Blue Cactus]

Two days till Fighting Fantasy Fest!

This is probably the geekiest thing I will ever attend. Hoping to pick up some missing titles from my collection, and I'm aiming to pick up the two new books - I've decided against taking a load of stuff to get signed, but I will bring my ancient copy of Out of the Pit along..

Wowsers, have a great time Boots! Look forward to hearing about it. And thanks again for posting me those three spares you had, you generous person you.

[Barrington Boots]

Cheers dude! Your parcel is due today btw.

FFF was cool. Some really interesting panel discussions from the various authors and artists in attendance: I think it's all on Youtube for anyone interested*. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone did seperate talks: Ian Livingstone confirmed he had pushed for a return to old school artwork going forward. Steve Jackson revealed he has been living with Parkinsons hence his low profile for a while, but he was very enthusiastic about his new book.

I had my 1985 copy of Out of the Pit signed by Steve and Ian, plus Alan Langford and Duncan Smith, and I got my ancient, beloved copies of Forest of Doom and Appointment with FEAR signed also. Poor old Steve and Ian were signing up to five items each and I think would have easily signed 1,000 - 1,500 items: they looked exhausted and in no mood to really chat but I had a lovely chat to Duncan Smith about FF art, and what he'd been doing since. He had some artwork with him and I picked up an original piece from  Fighting Fantasy (the introductory rpg book). I didn't stay for the auction or the film at the end as we had to get back to Worcestershire.

I have the two new books - Steve Jackson's sold out - and the artwork in each is awesome. Tazio Bettin's looked incredible on the big screen. I've had a go at Shadow of the Giants and met my end in classic Livingstone fashion: failed to have a crucial item and couldn't open a door resulting in game over. Enjoyed it so far, it's quite cheerful, still lethal, with plenty of callbacks to earlier books, especially Warlock.

Atmosphere was nice, only downside was a serious lack of secondhand FF books - I was hoping to pick up a couple of Puffins but no joy. The crowd was, as you'd expect, heavily weighted towards men in their 40s but nice to see a few children there, excited to meet authors and the like.

* They're not, it was a livestream. Can summarise interesting bits if anyones interested.

[Dark Jimbo]

I've had a go at Shadow of the Giants and met my end in classic Livingstone fashion: failed to have a crucial item and couldn't open a door resulting in game over.

But of course!

[Richard]

That sounds great! My copy of Jackson's new book arrives tomorrow, so I'll be getting straight on that.

Can summarise interesting bits if anyones interested.

Yes please!

Way of the Tiger 5: WARBRINGER!

Mr Boots has already given a very detailed and comprehensive description of this book on page 26 of this thread (which I didn't read until I finished the book, to avoid spoilers), so I'll just give an overview of my own experience and impressions.

We must have different editions, because Boots mentions that the rules at the start of his book say that his endurance, inner force and shuriken are restored to their initial values. I have the Knight Books first edition, and unlike the previous books the rules are omitted! At first I tried to play on with the same scores and equipment I carried over from the last book, but this made it literally impossible to complete the book as I kept getting killed by the poisonous spiders (you need to use several shuriken to get past them). So since the text said that several days had passed before I left Irsmuncast again, I unilaterally decided that it would be legitimate to replenish my missing shuriken -- I'm glad to see that this is what I was supposed to do!

Incidentally, there appears to be another error in this edition -- it uses the same map from the last book, and this map is completely useless! A big chunk of this book consists of choosing which of five possible cities you will visit to recruit allies for the coming battle, and then travelling to them. The choice is influenced in part by how far away they are. Only one of these cities appears on my map, which leads me to suspect that there was supposed to be a new map, or at the very least the map that was used for book 3. I wonder if this has anything to do with why the authors fell out with the publishers, with the result that book 6 was the last?

This edition also had some errors, and came with a last-minute Errata card:



_{(The preview function won't show me this image, so in case it didn't work the link is https://imgur.com/a/2NygJGP )}

Anyway. This book carries on from the last book's cliffhanger ending, with my city occupied by an army of orcs and dark elves and no idea whether anyone has survived. This is a very dramatic and atmospheric bit of the book, and reminds me of the "what the hell is happening?" feel of the opening paragraphs of FF's Beneath Nightmare Castle. For some reason the book asks me if I want to put an emerald (collected in the last book) in my empty eye socket (I lost an eye in the last book), which doesn't seem to be a very obvious thing to do but it's a gamebook so naturally I decide that yes, I do want to try that very implausible solution, and it gives me spectral vision. (This comes in very handy in a later encounter with a supernatural beastie which is otherwise not survivable.)

I then have to fight a troll, and the fight reduces my already depleted endurance to 3! But then I manage to find some friendly faces, including Greystaff the wizard from the last book who magically heals me and restores my endurance to 20! I lead the surviving defending forces to victory and kill the enemy general in single combat. (There is a much more exciting way to do this bit than the way I did it. If you have one of the special skills which I didn't have, and if you find a magic shape-shifter potion which I didn't manage to find, you can literally transform into a fucking dragon and attack her! She then magically transforms herself into a giant vulture-type monster, and you fight an aerial duel in the sky with both your armies watching! It's a really cool bit of the book, and it's a real shame that it's literally impossible to get to if you didn't start the book with the necessary special skill -- but well worth reading through anyway.)

The enemy forces abandon the city and I have saved the day! My elite samurai bodyguards decide to go home. I then receive word that Honoric, my archenemy from books 1 and 3, is marching his own army to take Irsmuncast! The consensus is that we don't have enough troops to stop him, so I must go to another city to form an alliance and build a bigger army. My five advisors suggest five different cities, and the book warns me that the choice I must now make is of vital importance so I absolutely must not fuck this up. So I spend a good deal of time reading and re-reading all the information the book offers me about the five cities and the people who live there, pondering all the pros and cons, and finally make a reasoned and considered decision. I follow Solstice's advice, which leads immediately to an instant death paragraph.

Solstice really sucks.

He certainly does!

My second choice is to follow Gwyneth's advice, which I suppose I should have done in the first place since she is almost always right. She turns out to be right this time too. I travel to Serakub, getting killed three times by the spiders but I only count two of those since the first time I was playing without all the new shuriken I was supposed to start with. My new eye saves my life here too, in what turns out to be a very challenging fight with some powerful monster that can inflict massive damage and I can't block its attacks. There aren't actually many fights in this book, as it is mostly about making the right choices as a king, diplomat and general, but this fight is, frankly, quite enough! Somehow I manage to win anyway.

It takes me two goes to persuade the leaders of Serakub to commit their troops to my cause. I return to Irsmuncast, where I meet my friend Glaivas from books 1 and 3, who brings reinforcements of his own, and also the Paladin who helped me in book 3. I then have a strategy meeting with my war council, where I am presented with three choices: stay in the city and await a siege, ride out and attack the enemy's smaller army, or attack the enemy's larger army. My confidence in my own judgement is rather low as a result of following Solstice's advice earlier, but this time I make the right choice (surprisingly, this time Gwyneth's advice is way, way off) and I wipe out the smaller force of 600 with ease. At a second strategy meeting, Gwyneth gives me exactly the same advice again, and I recognise that it even leads to the same paragraph number as last time, so this looks like a trap and I dismiss that option out of hand (after finishing the book I looked back and found that it leads to instant death!). But instead I choose another path that leads to instant death, when one of my generals betrays me and joins the other side! My second choice proves to be the right one, and my merry band of warriors sets out to confront Honoric's massive army.

Leaving my army to make camp at the site of the coming battle, I scout ahead and infiltrate the enemy camp. I get killed, but on the second try I learn essential information and escape back to my camp.

The next morning, I awake on the day of the battle, and there is a cool map of the battlefield. At this point I learn whether I made the right choice about which city to recruit to my cause, and fortunately Serakub turns out to have been the best choice. (One of the other choices leads to instant death here, when they betray you; another choice is still capable of leading to victory but results in Honoric starting the battle with an extra 2,000 men, and the other choices led to instant death immediately after making them.)

I am given three choices about how to deploy my troops around the battlefield, and I follow Gwyneth's advice. I am then taken to another map which shows my army and the enemy army in their respective positions around the battlefield. If I had chosen different allies, I would have been given three other options, and so the book has six different maps of the battlefield with the different armies in their different positions. Clearly the authors have put an absolutely immense amount of thought and planning into this section of the book, and it's simply unique (as far as I know). I haven't yet mapped it all out to see how much difference the various options make to the outcome and difficulty, but my first impression is that it is all very impressive.

When the battle is just about to begin, Honoric challenges me to single combat, in a scene which reminds me of the Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones. Since so much of the gamebook has gone into setting up this battle, I assume that the proposed duel is just a trap laid by the authors, since they could not possibly have intended that the battle won't go ahead after all, so I decline, with the result that my troops are demoralised and falter at a critical point, losing the battle.

I go back to Honoric's challenge and this time I accept. He's a difficult opponent, and I'm starting with 6 endurance points, which is simply not enough. So I decide that this must be another error in the book, because since returning from Serakub I have spend several days in Irsmuncast before setting off to the battlefield, and Greystaff the wizard should surely have healed me again like last time? So I decide it's only logical to start this fight with 20 endurance, and in this way I survive the fight. When Honoric's officers see that he is losing, they interrupt the fight and rescue him. I flee back to my lines, but my soldiers are invigorated by my moral victory and this time during the battle they manage to hold the line.

There are a number of tactical choices to make during the battle, and at one point I find myself in single combat with some magic dude who I previously encountered in book 3, but eventually I win the battle without being killed again. As Honoric retreats, he conjures up a gigantic super-sized alter ego of himself, which Barrington Boots wisely avoided fighting, but not having read that yet I decide to engage it myself (having learned my lesson from declining single combat with him earlier). That turns out to be a mistake. I still win the battle and reach paragraph 420, completing the book -- but I miss out on the opportunity to kill Honoric, and he flees the field, living to fight another day (although not for a few years yet I am reassuringly told). So presumably he comes back in book 6.

I enjoyed this book very much. It killed me seven times. It didn't end on a cliffhanger, so I might just stop the series here, as I don't much like the idea of it either ending on a cliffhanger (Inferno! or being finished off by another author (Redeemer!). But I don't have to decide yet, as Secrets of Salamonis is next!

[Barrington Boots]

Such a good writeup dude!

My edition is Knight Books 4th printing so looks like it's a bit more forgiving that yours....

That bit with the spiders ranks up there with the fight at the end of Usurper! as the hardest bit in the entire series. At one point I thought it was legitimately game over for me because I didn't have the poisons skill - absolutely horrible. I had no idea about the transforming into a dragon bit, that sounds fucking amazing! I love the bit where you jam the orb into your eyesocket for literally no reason and it gives you magic powers.

I think this and Avenger are my favourite of the series and had loads of fun playing this book. I think pausing the series here would be a legitimate decision, as Inferno is pretty bad, but Redeemer does do a good job of wrapping up dangling plot threads and give some closure with regards characters like Honoric, Foxglove & Lackland, as well as Cassandra and her mates.

Incidentally in Redeemer! It's also possible to kill Solstice. Although it's not helpful in any way (quite the opposite) it's satisfying because he is soooo rubbish.

Looking forward to hearing what Salamonis is like!

[Richard]

So I have just looked at You Are the Hero, Jonathan Green's 2014 book about the Fighting Fantasy franchise, and on page 106 there is a brief interview with the authors of Way of the Tiger in which they explain why and how the series ended.

"Our publishers Hodder and Stoughton originally had signed for seven books but they cancelled the last in a fit of pique, which is why Inferno! ends so unsatisfactorily -- they re-wrote the end themselves to kill the series. The story here is that the then CEO of Hodder, Eddie Bell, left to become CEO of Harper Collins ... He took us with him so that we could write the DuelMaster series for Harper Collins and Hodder revoked the contract for Book #7 in revenge. They said it was for commercial reasons, but the series was still successful and reprinting."

What fuckers!

[Barrington Boots]

Bastard Hodder & Stoughton!
I managed to get hold of a Knight version of Inferno and when compared to the new revised edition you can see there's issues there. At one point you have to roll against Tyutchev defense against 'Way of the Tiger' which implies author fatigue or running out of steam to me, compared to how rich in detail the previous books are... in the new edition the text was slightly reworked so you deliver a specific punch of kick and he is defending against that.

Is You Are The Hero worth getting btw? It's out of print I think, but back on kickstarter this year, updated for the 40th anniversary.

From FF-Fest talks - a lot of it was anecdotes and chat but some interesting bits I remember:

Peter Darvill-Evans said he deliberately made Nightmare Castle as horrible and gruesome as possible.  The start, with the reader chained up in the dungeon, was backlash because he was told by the editors his original opening was too boring.

Keith Phillips, Peter Darvill-Evans and Paul Mason said if they could make a change to their books, they'd remove the 'one true path' aspect and incorporate several paths to the finish, and they all said their books were too hard in retrospect. Keith Phillips and Peter Darvill-Evans said they would jump at a chance to do another, but Paul Mason said he wouldn't because he felt an author should retain copyright of his own work (which was interesting).

Rhianna Pratchett wasn't allowed to use the word 'sandwich' in her book.

Ian Livingstone said there'd been backlash against the scholastic artwork: he heavily implied he didn't like it either, and he himself had pushed for a return to the older style. He has the original cover artwork for all his FF books on his wall, but couldn't with the new one because it's digital art.

He also said 'RIP Mungo' at one point so I'm glad everyone still feels the sting of poor Mungo's bitter demise.

[Richard]

Thanks for the summary!

...but Paul Mason said he wouldn't because he felt an author should retain copyright of his own work

I thought they did. Maybe Scholastic Books does things differently, but every FF book I've seen gives the writers and artists copyright over their own work.

[Dark Jimbo]

Thanks for the summary!

...but Paul Mason said he wouldn't because he felt an author should retain copyright of his own work

I thought they did. Maybe Scholastic Books does things differently, but every FF book I've seen gives the writers and artists copyright over their own work.

Yes... I thought that was why both Wizard series, and the Scholastic reprints, focussed mainly on Steve and Ian's work.

[Barrington Boots]

I've only got Crystal of Storms handy, but it says all the text and art is copyright Ian and Steve despite not being written by them.