So this came up in the video thread and I liked the idea a lot so i thought i'd make a quick placeholder thread (which i'll update properly when i get home) for those of us who LOVE playing "Choose Your Own Adventure (tm)" style Solo RPG books (So...Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, Blood Sword, etc).
I still have all my physical Fighting Fantasy books close at hand (as well as the Bloodsword series - one of my favourite multi-book campaigns) and the Lone Wolf books are all available online for free at Project Aeon. So I was thinking we could have a thread where we play through some of the classics and potentially compare notes?
This thread can also cover online interactive fiction (such as the digital versions of the FF books, a bunch of which are available on Steam, Inkle's adaptation of the Sorcery series, etc)
Basically this is an excuse for me to revisit my FF books
Relevant Links
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FIghting Fantasy
Fighting Fantasy official website
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks on Steam
Inkle's Sorcery Adaptation (parts 1 and 2)
Lone Wolf
Project Aeon
Destiny Quest
Official Website
Fabled Lands / Blood Sword
Official Website
Tag!
Don't make me dig out my complete set* of Zork™ Books!
* (all four of them)
I WISH I still had all of my gamebooks. I had so damn many: Endless Quest, Crystal Quest, Wizards, Warriors and You...
Thankfully I'm slowly been rebuilding what I've lost and this thread might be a great excuse to finally play Gnomes-100, Dragons-0.
Don't make me dig out my complete set* of Zork™ Books!
Holy crap, I thought I was the only one left in the world with all of those. (I can't overstate the significance of Zork on my young life. As a child I wrote fan mail to Infocom.)
I've gotten rid of most of my gamebooks, but I used to have a lot back when I had access to a Waldenbooks but not a computer or video game console. I got pretty into Lone Wolf and the humorous "Grailquest" series in particular, but haven't revisited them; I don't know how they might have aged...
Good idea, I need some motivation to actually pull these off the shelf.
Anybody into the Way of the Tiger series, or the modern Destiny Quest books?
Oh fun! GrailQuest and Endless Quest were my jam, my best friend in grade/middle school was into Lone Wolf, and we used to share back and forth.
I don’t have any of my old collection any more but did get Pillars of Pentegarn and Return to Brookmere from a library sale a few years ago.
I had (Owned? Borrowed? I really don't remember...) a lot of the Fighting Fantasies back when I was a kid, kicking off from Forest of Doom. It'd be interesting to hear people's opinions on some of them, see how they match my murky recollections.
I also had the second (I think...) Lone Wolf book, but was never able to finish it; kept betting murdered by that blasted Helghast. And they're all free now on Project Aeon? Hmm...
Now Inkle's remake of Sorcery! is something I've been meaning to get back to. I had the first two parts on Android for my phone, and I really liked them, but since I basically only played them during my commute when my bike was busted back when I was living in Amsterdam, I never finished part two and moved on. And now I have a shiny iPad to play on, the temptation is there to rebuy both parts and start again. Hmm, again.
(Wrestling with temptation and an overload of games.)
I haven't completed Part 3 yet. I found it very challenging and wasn't quite as into the plot as I was previously and thus lost momentum. I quite liked the city-based adventure of Part 2, in spite of the linear connections sometimes making little sense (in fairness that's a holdover from the books).
Also anyone into Sorcery! should also check out 80 Days. Inkle continued to tinker and add content for years after it was released, and have even ported it to Switch.
I love these books. Owned most of the original early Fighting Fantasy ones (though I stopped seeing them in bookstores after 24 or so?). Had all the Lone Wolf, and a fair number of the Endless Quest and Super Endless Quest books.
There were.... 6? of the GrailQuest books, I think? Those were fun (tho the Poetic Fiend... Argh).
I never read the Sorcery! books. Worth getting into now?
I also recall the Hark series being hard to complete, but I was a kid!
There's a Java program for the Fabled Lands books that's really excellent: http://flapp.sourceforge.net/
I never read the Sorcery! books. Worth getting into now?
Do you mean the game? I think so, but of course my opinion is tinged with nostalgia.
Tag!
Don't make me dig out my complete set* of Zork™ Books!
Pretty sure I still have book 3.
Yeah had to ask my mother about where the others all went to. Apparently she lent them to my aunt who then lost them. Had all the Zork and D&D adventure books and a large collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books back in the day.
All I have now are the Lone Wolf books and that lone volume of Zork.
Tyrian wrote:I never read the Sorcery! books. Worth getting into now?
Do you mean the game? I think so, but of course my opinion is tinged with nostalgia.
Nah, i was thinking of the book version -
I love these books. Owned most of the original early Fighting Fantasy ones (though I stopped seeing them in bookstores after 24 or so?). Had all the Lone Wolf, and a fair number of the Endless Quest and Super Endless Quest books.
There were.... 6? of the GrailQuest books, I think? Those were fun (tho the Poetic Fiend... Argh).
I never read the Sorcery! books. Worth getting into now?
I also recall the Hark series being hard to complete, but I was a kid!
There's actually 8 GQ books but the last two are next to impossible to find for a reasonable price.
Oh wow, I had n
Tyrian wrote:There were.... 6? of the GrailQuest books, I think? Those were fun (tho the Poetic Fiend... Argh).
There's actually 8 GQ books but the last two are next to impossible to find for a reasonable price.
Oh wow, I had no idea!
Ah, of course - "While there were eight total books published in the series, books seven and eight were never published in the United States. " -- Wikipedia
And wow, you aren't kidding about that. I wonder if any of our UK brethren could find a copy of either in a used bookstore for cheaper? Probably not, given the rise of the internet.
Quintin_Stone wrote:Tyrian wrote:I never read the Sorcery! books. Worth getting into now?
Do you mean the game? I think so, but of course my opinion is tinged with nostalgia.
Nah, i was thinking of the book version -
GWJ broke your link. :/
If you really like Fighting Fantasy books, you should play them. But it's probably going to cost a lot to find the books these days. So much cheaper to get the electronic version off of Steam or play on iOS like I did.
Or the next time you're in the Cary area, I can loan you my copies.
Could have a look in my local used book store but the owner is a bit of a snob about his books and I seem to recall from past experience he doesn't consider gamebooks "real books".
We had one local big used book store that was great for finding old D&D books in good condition. I was bummed when they closed the local branch.
Anyone tried Legacy of Dragonholt? From what I see of it, it's effectively a set of gamebooks so I figure it fits under this topic. Looks interesting, but I'm not sure if it's worth $48 relative to other books, like buying the whole Blood Sword series. (which Pyxistyx makes sound fascinating :))
Do you find the world to be interesting? The Fantasy Flight 'Terrinoth' stuff has long felt like a po-faced, off-brand Azeroth. (To be fair I know we're talking fantasy gamebooks here, where the world building can't usually be described as awe-inspiring).
If I have a bit of energy left this weekend I'll crack open the first Blood Sword.
Interesting, thanks. I've seen Dragonholt as cheap as $28 in an Amazon board game sale, so I'm sitting on the wishlist until it gets cheap again. It's also available as a Tabletop Simulator module, but even for free that's not really the right way to play that kind of game. Seems like something that would work well as a tablet app though.
I have to admit one thing that made me look at it was a couple of bad reviews from clowns on Amazon whinging about "marxists and feminists".
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