Fighting Fantasy Books

As a kid growing up in the seventies come eighties, most of our fun was had outdoors. I’m not going to go one of those desperately dull diatribes about how the kids of today have no imagination and are permanently plugged into their playstations (or what-have-you), because I don’t subscribe to it. I’m just saying that we used to play outside a lot because a lot of the toys/ games we had were quite dull and the computers of the time were crap. Seriously crap. If you’re the same age as me then you will remember loading computer games from cassettes that had monstrously huge load times and they were mostly not that good. Quality distractions that could be enjoyed indoors outside were few and far between.

The fighting fantasy books were the real Tabasco. For those not in the know they are a combination of book and role playing game (a blog on Star Trek and then a Dungeons and Dragons-esque book – could this guy get any cooler you ask?). The series began with the title ‘The warlock of firetop mountain’ (originally the brain child of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson), required the reader to employ a pencil, eraser and two dice in order to play. Throughout the story there are numerous decisions to be made which required turning to a particular entry in the book. Every so often monsters would appear that had to be fought using a simple but ingenious system that pivoted around the rolls of the two dice.

Each book only had one correct solution and it usually took several attempts to work it out.

I loved these books because they offered all the things the computers of the day couldn’t supply. They were fast, exciting, and the graphics were super cool. Best of all, my mother would happily furnish me with books from the series because they were well, books, and books had to be good for young minds. Some of the titles were superbly written and offered a taxing but achievable challenge, others were insanely hard and cheating had to be employed. I don’t know of anyone who played these books who didn’t use their finger as a bookmark on the previous entry whilst exploring the options available to them at some time or another.

By the end they had over fifty titles but by this time I had grown up and moved on to greener pastures. I mention this because I recently bought a set of these books on e-Bay for a ridiculously low price and I have to say it was grand to revisit my youth. The level of imagination and creativity in some of these books is highly impressive, and some of the book art is amazing. If you have as much as a passing interest in the fantasy genre and ever get the chance to have a goosey at the early books I would recommend it.