Fighting Fantasy turns 30 years old

These books are one of the major reasons I fell in love with gaming and in particular Games Workshop board games back in the 80's.

I remember buying the three box set of Warlock on Firetop Mountain, Forest of Doom & The Citadel of Chaos, and playing them to death. I never wrote in them but I had a binder full of my character sheets.

For me, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone existed on the same level of awesomeness as Stan Lee and George Lucas.

Over time I either sold or gave my collection away but now 30 years later, I think I owe it to Steve and Ian to go out and rediscover their books again.

There are torrents out there. I have the entire collection on pdf now. And they are still fun.

Freeway Warrior was my first.

My beginning into gaming too. Love these books, though when I went back to them 5 years ago they were disappointing.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: ... though when I went back to them 5 years ago they were disappointing.

Gotta agree here. They don't hold up well at all to adult eyes.

I have the app for firetop. It doesn't allow me to cheat

Looking forward to tracking down the various levels of choose your own adventure (I loved the TSR ones and the time traveller ones) for the boy as he learns to read. Fucker will probably just want to play on the iPad though...

I still remember the first time I read Warlock of Firetop Mountain at a friend's house 25 years ago. I was only able to get numbers 14 through 20, and there were a few stinkers in them. I remember one where you were trying to get a special code based off clues on various planet (Space Rebel, I think it was called). If you couldn't solve the puzzle at the end of the book, you automatically lost. Once you found it out, though, it pretty much ruined the book from that point on.

I still have my copy of Appointment with F.E.A.R. that I was able to rescue from the fire at my friend's house. My other ones were not so lucky.

One question for the group: were the American versions abridged at all? They seemed like it some times.

Hmmmm, I had never heard of these so I wandered over to Amazon.com to check them out. It turns out that these books have been re-crafted to work on Kindle devices. Some of them are really cheap too (I saw one that was only $1.99).

From what I can tell its the original book, using the same story and artwork. However, it appears that certain things are automatically done via the kindle device (I think dice rolling).

These seem kind of interesting and for $2 I'll certainly give one a try just for shits and giggles!

I dont know if theyve been updated but on the iPhone they're fucking painful, you cant skip or fast combat, so every dice roll is thrown on screen, with the resulting text telling you what happens, I was looking for a bit of nostalgia too but theres no way I could be bothered with that, after the first combat involving a monster which only took 4 rounds of combat I knew there was no way I'd be slogging through that

I highly recommend DestinyQuest for a modern, more streamlined type of gamebook. Sort of like Diablo in book form; all your stats and special abilities are updated through gear and there's a ton of gear. It's awesome.

Shit. It's so annoying that Amazon UK sells this as a Kindle book but not Amazon US.

As I have an Amazon US account, I am a bit stuffed unless I want to ship a heavy book all the way to TKWIL.

I hate these stupid region locks for Kindle books.

On a related note, is it possible to gift Kindle books? As this might be a way round it...