Fighting Fantasy books?

[Danikat]

Discovering the first role-play I ever wrote (See The Dragons Den in The Wilds) made me actually think about the big pile of Fighting Fantasy game books in a box by my feet for the first time in ages.

They were probably my first introduction to structured role-playing ((being kids in the playground pretending you're Power Rangers doesn't count)) in any format where I actually knew what I was doing. I'd played what I found out many years later was called Eye of the Beholder before that but I'd never had any idea what I was doing and never even got beyond the first level.

So now I'm wondering if anyone else ever read/played (I was never quite sure which one it was) any of them and if so which ones?

My brother went through a phase of collecting them (my collection are all stolen from him when he went into his selling them to buy computer games phase) so I've played several but my two favourites were always City of Thieves and Forest of Doom. Mainly because on a good day I could finish them.

[Cirrial]

Funny you should mention that. An amount of years I can't remember but is anywhere between 2 to 6 ago I got a boxset of the first 10 books. I never finished any of them start to finish but I liked to flick to random pages and continue from there.

It's probably related to the fact whenever I see a piece of text, I skim-read it over first, then go back and actually read the whole thing. As opposed to just going start-middle-end, as reading is SUPPOSED to be.

I never really thought of them as RP, though. At the time they were essentially gamebooks, and looking back I consider them to be a little too linear. Sure, you play a role, but in my mind RP involves a little more freedom of choice than "option 1, 2, 3 or maybe 4". I've always had in my mind a distinct difference between RP and RPG, and while both are entertaining, they're entertaining for different, some subtle, reasons.

The first 10 books are, apparently:

1. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
   
2. The Citadel of Chaos
   
3. Deathtrap Dungeon
   
4. Creature of Havoc
   
5. City of Thieves
   
6. Crypt of the Sorceror
   
7. House of Hell
   
8. Forest of Doom
   
9. Sorcery! 1 (actually is apparently an offshoot series, it's... interesting. You have a spellbook at the back consisting of a bunch of three-letter codes corresponding to the spells. You then have to memorize as many as you can, because most of the choices in the adventure are these spell codes. If you can remember the right spells, you can make life easier. If you cast a spell without knowing what it was, uh oh...)
   
10. Caverns of the Snow Witch
    

[Intyalle]

I don't have book ones, but I do have computer RPs of that type. I agree they can be limiting, but I find them enjoyable nonetheless.

The ones I have or have played are:

Torment
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale 2
Baldur's Gate 2

That is, of course, not counting the more run-of-the-mill type, such as Diablo or the various Morrowinds.

[Swix]

I've played them before, ages ago. I've still got a few, Forest of Doom and the Haunted House ones are all the names I can remember though. I read a Star Wars one and a fantasy one from the library before. But, these were verging on RPG's as you had to actually roll a dice and see what happened whenever you got into a fight with anyone. (Turned out you were supposed to get captured by Boba Fett in the Star Wars one or you wouldn't get the proper ending ).

The fantasy one I can't remember the name of, but it had something to do with a black dragon and an evil wizard. Except, they weren't connected with each other (as far as I could tell, anyway)

[Danikat]

Yeah you had to roll dice with the Fighting Fantasy ones as well. It wasn't anything like as complicated as DnD or anything like that, which is probably why I preffered them at first, but you had a few stats like health and abilities with diffrent items and you had to roll dice for each persons attacks each turn and see if they hit or if it was blocked.

I have to admit I think one other thing I liked was that you could always keep your finger in the page you had been on and check the answers to see which one was best before carrying on!

Intyalle I loved those games as well. I never played Icewind Dale more than once but I was obsessed with Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate 2, which for some reason I left until after I got Neverwinter Nights.

I also played Dark Sun which is one of the older DnD computer games. It was cool but just like Eye of the Beholder I had no idea what I was doing most the time.