Fighting Fantasy and Tin Man Games | INFJ Forum

Fighting Fantasy and Tin Man Games

Lark

Rothchildian Agent
May 9, 2011
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I think that perhaps the game books phenomenon reached the US in the form of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, at least I saw them lampooned on Cracked.com, but here in the UK they had these great versions called Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, they were mainly Tolkeinesque adventures but there were a few sci fi variations on the theme, a superhero one which was based upon comics, a road warrior one which had a tie in board game at one stage which was inspired by Mad Max.

The biggest creative difference emerged in Prisoners of the Abyss in which the hero was more eastern that western and perished in order to rescue the aforementioned prisoners at the finish rather than making off with more treasure than they could carry baddies defeated and whole world grateful.

The authors were Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, I used to like Ian Livingstone the best but they collaborated on more than they did seperately in the end I think, Steve Jackson created a complex system of spell casting in a series of books called Sorcery.

There were pretenders with the whole Knighthood of Ki, Bloodsword, Classic Monsters Gamebooks, the like of it. I had an assortment of them all and loved them long after they went out of vogue with the rise of the Games Workshop for the table top players and consoles for pretty much everyone else.

Anyway, recently they had a huge convention style conference in the UK for fans which was to all accounts a huge success and Tin Man Games has relaunched some of the most popular or most original gamebooks on creative animated apps on mobile phones. I'd recommend all this to anyone who has a spare dime and a minute. I particularly like the Hell House or House of Hell one, in which your car breaks down and you knock on the door of some mad devil worshipping mad bastards. Although I liked Appointment with FEAR, the superhero comic one, when I was a kid.

Is anyone a fan already or do you know what I'm on about?