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[thebitterguy]

Fighting Fantasy, 20 years later.

IN THE EARLY 1980s A dangerous craze was sweeping Britain’s playgrounds. Critics scorned it as dumb and regressive. Child psychologists fretted that its wanton violence would derail youthful morals. A distressed Christian “young wives group” in Berkshire claimed that “all kinds of exterior evil things had been happening to their children” since they’d taken up the hobby. One mum claimed that, after partaking in this dark art, her son had actually levitated.

Man, I loved those. The SF and post apoc ones were fun too.

I still wish I could get to read those darn Heartquest books TSR published.

Via james_nicoll

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Cool link. The article even mentioned the fanzine that was eventually turned into White Dwarf.

I have a bunch of these still, but I never heard of (but would have loved to play) in that Biggle's interactive fantasy book.

::B::

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I used to have one, but i don't know where it went : (

[thebitterguy]

They're fun. And served as a good substitute for a group.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

The one I had was actually a full-fledged RPG. There were rules for making characters at the beginning, and then two dungeons for you to run people through.

[srhall79.livejournal.com]

I had about a half-dozen of the Fighting Fantasy series (and probably still do, hidden somewhere in my parents' basement) including Space Assassin, the sci-fi adventure. They were fun, but the endings always seemed so... hrm, I'm going to use fiddly here.

How many gold rings did you pick up the dungeon? 3? 5? 7? 11? The correct answer might be 7, but I always seemed to end up with 6. And then you needed to have found the right scraps of paper so you could put them in the right order.

So I prefered Lone Wolf- I could win at those.

[mouseferatu.livejournal.com]

How many gold rings did you pick up the dungeon? 3? 5? 7? 11? The correct answer might be 7, but I always seemed to end up with 6. And then you needed to have found the right scraps of paper so you could put them in the right order.

Yep. I still have the Sorcery! four-part series. I remember going through the whole thing multiple times. I could never get through the books without cheating. I could not kill all seven serpents in book three. I could not find my way to certain sections of book four.

My problem with those books was always that there was pretty much one correct way to do things, and if you didn't make every choice exactly right, you were screwed (or at least couldn't get the "best" ending.) I'd be okay with that if there was any way to know which choices were right, but in some cases, it was purely guesswork.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine used to complain how in some of the pick your own adventure books, events that appeared unrelated to the character would be caused by the desire of the writer to force the character in a certain direction. His example was one where if you went right, nothing happened but if you went left, a volcano erupted and forced you to go right.

[thebitterguy]

My favourites were Time Travller and Interplanetary Spy, myself. Little more logic, little less luck.

[tymen.livejournal.com]

I love these, I have about half of the collection and I want them all.

[thebitterguy]

Wow, that's pretty good. Wish I could find some these days.

[tymen.livejournal.com]

I believe they are being re-released by Wizard Books.

Checkout http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/wizard/wff.cfm
and www.fightingfantasy.com

[crashing-angel.livejournal.com]

I must research these books, maybe a half price book store will have them?

[thebitterguy]

They must, although most people prefer to keep them.