Steve Jackson Games Is Bringing the Fighting Fantasy Books to the US | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jackson Games Is Bringing the Fighting Fantasy Books to the US

sjgames.com

105 pointsmattl63 comments

I loved these books as a kid, probably had the first 10-15 of them, probably more, and I'd always hang out at the bookstore and would check if any new ones came out. They were far, far better than "Choose Your Own Adventure", which I also loved, but FF was probably, I guess, the next level. I loved FF, and I especially loved the Lone Wolf books (different author/publisher), if anybody remembers those. I'd actually put Lone Wolf at a notch above FF. Still, FF has a special place in my heart. I got my daughter into them a couple years back, and she totally loved them, retelling me all the same stories I remember. Brought a tear to my eye. I was a little confused about this because you can order FF books on Amazon today, but it looks like this new reprint will be a larger-size paperback format with the original artwork, which is awesome, because I did notice that the FF books I bought for my daughter had all new artwork, which was kind of disappointing, however the stories are pretty much the same as I remember. My favorites are of course, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, then Deathtrap Dungeon and The Citadel of Chaos. Steve Jackson, I believe, also authored the Sorcery! series, which is another of my all-time favorites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson%27s_Sorcery!

If you haven't read and/or prefer an app format, the "Sorcery!" series was made into a wonderful set of games by Inkle in 2013: https://www.inklestudios.com/sorcery/

I strongly recommend the Sorcery games for anyone looking for any kind of rich gameplay experience on mobile.

In an ecosystem that's been almost entirely consumed by upgrade treadmills and habit loops, it's a perfect counterpoint that is about storytelling and gameplay that's all about emphasizing craft.

I can wholeheartedly recommend them. Excellent introduction to the format, at least it was for me.

The map art reminds me of that used in Elden Ring, I wonder if that's been influenced by this. I wouldn't be surprised as the director of the Souls games was an avid adventure book player.

From what I’ve heard, his story is rather interesting. He had books with knights and medieval imagery, but couldn’t read or speak English, so he’d make up his own stories.

I think that’s part of why the Souls games (and later Elden Ring) have such a fascinating fusion of East and West. Isolation necessitates imagination.

Online versions of Lone Wolf books (1999, with author's permission): https://projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

The context is too appropriate for me to not plug this really old project of mine:

https://projectaon.org/staff/christian/gamebook.js/

which was, admittedly, a strange idea (an experimental mix between a gamebook and interactive fiction), which I explained there:

http://cjauvin.blogspot.com/2013/03/suspension-of-parser-dis...

Nowadays I would use an LLM for that, of course.

Someone wrote some excellent software to play the books based on this open material, though it’s fiddly to get running - but worth it if you’re a fan.

https://projectaon.org/staff/david/

For people who like LW for more than just nostalgia, Joe Dever's son is republishing all the LW books in a unified format, including a greatly expanded edition of Flight From the Dark using Joe's notes. They're also pursuing new projects, last year they published three new books set in the same world and a (non-game) anthology, and some other games through various partners.

I would get these from the library one after the other, I had to use pencil in the character sheet so I could rub everything out before I returned it. I remember keeping bookmark-fingers in as many pages as I could in case I had taken a wrong turn of inevitable death. Good times.

A friend and me played these books together. We printed our own character sheets so that we wouldn't have to write into the book.

As we already had this book-independent character sheet, we decided to re-use it for the next book, carrying over all inventory and stats from the previous book, amassing a huge hoard of useful items during our journey across books.

One could call this 'cheating' - but it made the game much more fun and creative for us. What I hated about the books was that you could take a wrong turn at the beginning of the book, only to realize this at the end. "If you have a small silver key and a rope, continue on page 33, if not: you die.". Of course we got the key - we collected a few of them in previous books. And the whip we got in another book should work as a rope, too.

I loved the Lone Wolf books so much and still remember the randomness grid in the back that I would use when I didn’t have dice in class. A lot of 7th grade loneliness was helped by these books.

Only thing that annoyed me was that the “combat ratio” involved addition and subtraction rather than dividing! Otherwise great :-)

I found a few of these recently at a Half Priced Books. Had to get them for my kids for nostalgia reasons. Unfortunately the ungrateful shits won't put their manga down long enough to experience the greatness of Lone Wolf.

Woah, I had these too, totally forgot about them!

Does anyone remember the similar Narnia books? They were sort of in between CYOA and something like FF which are almost like a solo RPG

I think I only recently learned that there are two different Steve Jacksons.

The founder of Steve Jackson Games and creator of Munchkin and GURPS [0]

The writer of Fighting Fantasy and founder of Games Workshop and Lionhead Studios [1]

I find the fact that the two are in business quite satisfying.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(American_game...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_...

FWIW, the American Steve Jackson also wrote three Fighting Fantasy novels (Scorpion Swamp, Demons of the Deep, and Robot Commando):

> "As Ian and I couldn't write a book a month, we opened Fighting Fantasy up to new authors. The 'Jackson & Livingstone Presents' series came into being. The first new author was...Steve Jackson!"

> "Even to this day, many Fighting Fantasy readers aren't aware that not one but two Steve Jacksons worked on the franchise - the second being the Texas-based founder of Steve Jackson Games."

https://www.eurogamer.net/you-are-the-hero-a-history-of-figh...

I swear this was done deliberately to cause maximum confusion.

Hopefully there will be a page somewhere in these reprints that explains the difference between Steve Jackson and Steve Jackson.

I assume it was the American one who was raided by the Feds for cybercrime as a result of releasing a cyberpunk roleplaying game supplement.

He’s the one (his company) re-releasing them in the US and running the Kickstarter.

Intresting, i did not know that. I always found it anoying that "Steve" did so many unconnected things :)

Oh! Until now I had actually assumed that these were the same person.

Yeah wow, this confused the hell out of me. Reading the first paragraph, it seemed that Steve Jackson was finally publishing his own books in the US through a "historic 50-book collaboration" with himself. Thanks for elaborating.

Couple of anecdotes.

I got in touch with American Steve Jackson for permission to scan his game novel 'Stonekeep'. He didn't give permission.

Second, I got a Warlock of Firetop Mountain book off Ebay which was dedicated by Steve Jackson to a scottish landlady 'The best guesthouse in ---'. I got in touch with Steve about the book and he remembered it. I printed out the email to go in my rare WOFM book.

Finally, I was going to make an animated film of Rings of Kether but couldn't get the money to make it.

Amazing. The original English Steve or the American one?

Later (~1990's) gamebook series like Fable Lands or Critical IF (AKA Virtual Reality) improved on the mechanics so much that I find it difficult to go back to earlier types of books like FF or Lone Wolf except for nostalgia.

https://gamebooks.org/Series/145/Show https://gamebooks.org/Series/463/Show

For something more modern, designed to play more like a modern CRPG (including built-in, non-cheating, savescumming) the Destiny Quest books seem good (I bought a few, but got a bit stuck halfway through the first book).

https://gamebooks.org/Series/1357/Show

i.e. reprint the books.

You can get them as video games on Steam, with isometric 2D graphics and it automates away the dice-rolling and bookkeeping (and also allows you cheat and reroll any roll up to two more times). For cheaper than this Kickstarter reprint:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_C...

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8086/Fighting_Fantasy_...

Cheapness, efficiency, and a lack of repetitive tasks are not usually goals of art or even entertainment.

Somewhere I saw a computer RPG where the UI was just a small window with some stats in it. Much cheaper and more efficient, you would just watch the stats roll up - the gameplay was 'automated away'! :) (I don't remember the name and some searching didn't find it.)

Noone suggested cheapness, efficiency, and a lack of repetitive tasks were goals, this is a bad-faith take on what I wrote. I said if you want to play those titles a) right now without all the months of wait and uncertainty of a Kickstarter campaign, b) you get them as Steam license-key games not books, c) the artwork is at least in color and d) as a bonus, it happens to be cheaper; e) s a downside, Steam license keys are not ideal since Steam recently tried to claim keys were revocable when it retires a title for a large group of people (e.g. all subscribers resident in a specific country, or on a specific platform).

Choose-your-own-adventure and idle-incremental games are two very different genres (and the latter can only exist with lots of compute power, which was not available to the choose-your-own-adventure genres in the 1980s, which is why they have simplified mechanics compared to D&D and RPGs).

You might be thinking of Progress Quest!

Yes! Thank you.

That's become a popular genre, called "idle games".

>with isometric 2D graphics

I got excited because I thought I had missed something, but these are the same apps I've had for years. They're not isometric games, though some of the illustrations have a similar perspective.

Steam did in fact did remake a isometric 2D of "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain":

https://store.steampowered.com/app/324740/The_Warlock_of_Fir...

alongside the classic (static HTML images) book version:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/856960/The_Warlock_of_Fir...

Steam's marketing was seriously confusing; they bundled a lot of the SJG titles together ('Fighting Fantasy MEGA Bundle') and frontloaded the bundle listing with a 2D screenshot of Warlock so a casual read might assume all the titles had gotten that treatment. (Probably if they;d gotten more sales on the remade Warlock, they would have remade other titles too.)

Neat, would love to have both games and books!

Before you throw shade at SJ games, you should look into their history. Very interesting :)

Not sure what you are referring to, but many here are probably familiar with the Secret Service raid on SJ Games headquarters in 1990.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_Games,_Inc._v._U...

This seems like those “choose you own adventure” books from the 70s and 80s. “If you cross the bridge turn to page 40…”. My brothers and I had like the first 30 of those..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

These seem more complex.

Anything more complex might be a little too complex really. The Wizards, Warriors and You books were kind of a happy medium between them, since they could be played without the need for dice, character sheets/scrap paper, and writing utensils, but they still let you choose things like characters and equipment at the start which would impact the story.

They are very similar, but they have dice rolls and some stats. So you might encounter a creature and fight it, then if you win you go to another page, or if you lose you go to one of the 'end' pages.

Yes. FF is basically CYOA plus rolling some dice for combat and keeping track of your inventory.

The CYOA books were predated by the first Tunnel & Trolls solo adventure(s), that have a more complex rules system than FF (since you are playing using a full RPG system, sometimes even with an entire party of characters), and that are still being made, but was always less well known.

https://rpggeek.com/rpgseries/2576/tunnels-and-trolls-solo-d...

TSR also briefly experimented with making solo adventures for early D&D versions, around the same time the first FF books came out. The first one at least was not bad at all and I find the rules much better than FF. Those books are not to be confused with TSR's line of FF-clones that they marketed as AD&D-something, but that did not actually use any D&D rules.

https://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/44105/ghost-of-lion-castle

FF books also have more complicated graphs connecting their passages than CYOA. CYOA books are generally tree-like with maybe a few extra connections that make them technically DAGs, e.g. https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/CYOA001...

Fighting Fantasy book graphs are larger and can have cycles: https://outspaced.fightingfantasy.net/SVG_Flowcharts/ff01.sv... This, combined with inventory tracking, contributes a lot to making them more interesting. You can do things like find a locked door, find the key for it somewhere else, and come back and unlock it, which is not possible in a CYOA.

Loved that use of data visualization.

Thinking about it, it makes sense to cut the loops out of the CYOA as you want the story to never be infinite and because they’re for young readers never be too long.

The charts remind be of “puzzle dependency charts” used to design adventure games: https://grumpygamer.com/rtmi_pdc/

They have a Kickstarter going on right now for reprinting the first 5 books.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/fighting-fantas...

This I absolutely do not understand when the publishers in the UK are printing the books for sale already. The vagaries of international licencing, no doubt. There are plenty of complaints about the standard of illustrations in the books, and the covers are certainly lacking, but they are actual books on actual paper:

https://amzn.eu/d/0FzZNoX

https://amzn.eu/d/4DDoYaY

From the article: What makes these versions special?

    The original art! When possible, we’re using the original black-and-white artwork for the interiors – most of which hasn’t been available in over a decade!
    Designed for readability! The original Fighting Fantasy books were smaller mass-market paperbacks. They were perfect to sneak into your lunch bag at school, but these new versions are designed to make leaping into a hero’s life easier than ever, with larger print and enhanced formatting that makes reading a joy.
    Available in the States! No longer do you need to order overseas or via online auction sites.
    Designed as a set! These editions will look great on your shelf, with a unified design, numbered spines, and evocative art. If you’re a longtime fan, these are the versions you wish you had when you were younger! And if you’re new to Fighting Fantasy excitement, these books will be a gateway to worlds beyond imagination.

Ok, I get it.

Kinda makes sense for people who remember the originals and have money to burn, but clearly a different market to the cheaper UK paperbacks. The first 15 books are US$60, versus five via Kickstarter, and more expensive later on. Bittersweet, I’d like to see these books made more accessible to younger readers. Maybe it’ll come soon.

I continue to love these books all these years later, and my kids have started getting into them (cheating and all). Personal faves are Robot Commando (where you choose from a variety of differently configured robots at the start) and Crimson Tide (which is nearly impossible to win for various reasons, but is really flavourful and quite a departure from most of the books). The Sorcery books took everything one step further and delivered a really epic adventure. Oh, and the Eddie Marsan-narrated Deathrap Dungeon is lots of fun.

There's also lots of fun to be had with Dungeoneer, Blacksand, Allansia, Titan and Out of the Pit, if you wanted a break from D&D.

I loved the FF books as a kid. A few months ago someone I follow on Mastodon posted a list of the 20 books that had changed their life which included The Warlock of Firetop Mountain among more conventionally worthy tomes. I was forced to agree - that book and its successors really got me into both reading and game design.

Somebody else has mentioned the inkle studios Sorcery! reimagining of the FF series - I can highly recommend them.

Tooting my own horn, I released my own homage to FF in general (and Starship Traveller in particular) last year.

https://sheep.horse/voyage_of_the_marigold/

I have a veritable shelf full of these books, published by Wizard Books. 25th anniversary edition of Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Talisman of Death, Spellbreaker, Howl of the Werewolf (which adds a few more mechanics to the base game stats), Stormslayer, and I recently purchased the entire Sorcery! series on eBay. I once had a book confiscated by a teacher for reading in class, heh.

It's good to see these books are still going strong, nearly four decades after they were first published.

Great memories of these, and the Sorcery Series, although I foolishly disposed or donated all of mine, including the Sorcery Spell Book.

Ian Livingstone is a lovely man, too - he used to frequent the Square Enix office in London, and occasionally we would exchange tales of searching for a teaspoon while trying to make a cup of tea in the kitchen area, but I refrained from making gags about Testing Your Luck in order to find one.

As he says, his fighting fantasy books were often sniffed at by adults, but they got boys to read and do sums.

My relationship with Fighting Fantasy started as a kid and never died

I have a bunch of original art from a few of these books I picked up a few years back. I haven't managed to find the time to frame and hang it all, but the quality of the interior illustrations is something else.

About ten years ago I worked with one of my friends to license and print a Freeway Fighter comic. It never made it's money back but the process was enjoyable and having a physical paper output of your efforts is wonderful. I still have a crate of unsold issues that I should eventually put on eBay or something...

https://www.amazon.ca/Livingstones-Freeway-Fighter-Andi-Ewin...

Fun fact: one of these was adapted into a first person action RPG for Nintendo DS. Balance is pretty wonky, but it controls well, and there's something novel about seeing a game that looks somewhere between Daggerfall and Morrowind on such an underpowered system.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvLxVnWpQhs

I’ve been exploring the LitRPG genre recently and must say I’m an avid fan. I really like what Soundbooth Theater is doing with their “immersive audio experiences” https://soundbooththeater.com/

This is great! I had a number of these when I was growing up and really enjoyed them. The last time I picked one up I wrote a program to handle combat, keep track of stats/inventory, saves, etc only to discover later that there are phone apps for that sort of thing already.

These books were the first kind of role playing games I had, kept me enternaint for quite a while as a kid, good to see a new generation might come to appreciate them.

And they don't run out of battery charge to play. :)

As a child I was a voracious consumer of these books, in particular the Sorcery! series, published in 1983. I also found the Talisman of Death particularly good. A feast for the imagination.

Fun fact: the "Final Fantasy" series of video games was originally planned to be named "Fighting Fantasy" until they realized the name conflict with these books.

There was a duo of reasons there. Earlier on its life most of the production/development studio ended up expecting the game to fail. And had it done so Sakaguchi was planning on quitting and returning to university life. So it was somewhat literally his final fantasy at the company, which turned out to come true.

Really funny how such things work out. A slightly worse role of the dice and nobody would ever have known of his talent for games, or perhaps our timeline missed out and his real talent was in music, which is what he was initially studying.

Oh, these were great! Really fired up the imagination.

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