Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks (and similar)

[BFG10K]

I’ve never seen a topic about this so I thought I’d start one. For those not familiar, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are basically “choose your own adventure” with combat mechanics, inventory items, and logic puzzles. Most are based on Western RPG troupes but there are also futuristic and other culture titles.

They started back in the 1980s and have been reprinted three times, of which the original series have the most books: https://www.goodreads.com/series/42345-fighting-fantasy

I used to borrow them from the local library as a kid. Pre-internet so I couldn’t look them up, and it was always a nice surprise to find a new book I hadn’t seen before. I liked the books by Keith Martin (e.g. Vault of the Vampire), Stephen Hand (e.g. Legend of the Shadow Warriors), and Jonathan Green (e.g. Spell Breaker).

These are the current third edition reprints picked up by Scholastic, and there are three new books so far: https://www.fightingfantasy.com/ff-gamebooks

Also there are digital board game and gamebook versons on Steam by Tin Man games, though I find the book versions to be quite buggy: https://store.steampowered.com/app/856880/Fighting_Fantasy_Classics/

 

[DeathReborn]

I used to read/play them in the school library, 5 of us used to spend a free period in there reading them and seeing who could beat the books. When the library was being renovated they sold off lots of books and I managed to snag a few of them (money was limited back then, lousy paper route). My favourite was Talisman of Death but I didn't know about the new ones so I will definitely look into them, cheers for the heads up.

 

[nakedfrog]

That's funny, I thought "whoa, Steve Jackson did these?" but it turns out to be the British Steve Jackson, not the American one, who I was thinking of.

 

[BFG10K]

That's funny, I thought "whoa, Steve Jackson did these?" but it turns out to be the British Steve Jackson, not the American one, who I was thinking of.

He did. The American Steve Jackson did some of the earlier books like Demons of the Deep and Scorpion Swamp.

 

[nakedfrog]

He did. The American Steve Jackson did some of the earlier books like Demons of the Deep and Scorpion Swamp.

Well, that's mildly amusing.