1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
There were of course, ‘choose your adventure path’ style books available before the Fighting Fantasy series began with The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. There was the Tracker series published in seventies, plus the ‘Choose Your Adventure Path’ books and various solo scenarios for Tunnels & Trolls, the roleplaying game from Flying Buffalo, Inc. There were computer games, such as The Hobbit for the ZX Spectrum, also published in 1982. None of these had the advantages or the impact of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The ‘Choose Your Adventure Path’ books presented simple choices with nothing else for the reader to do to influence what happened from one paragraph to the next. The Tracker series—such as Mission to Planet L—had the advantage of using illustrations to present the reader with choices, but the stories were quite short. The solo adventures for Tunnels & Trolls required the reader to own and understand how to play Tunnels & Trolls before even attempting to play through them. Computer games such as The Hobbit required a player to own the computer and have ready access to a television, as well the knowledge to install the game. Then for both the Tunnels & Trolls solo scenarios and computer games like The Hobbit, they were not as readily available.
In comparison, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain required
nothing more than the ability to read, understand some simple rules, a pair of
six-sided dice—easily found in any board game, let alone a toy shop, and pencil
and paper. Even if the reader lacked dice, numbers were printed on the book’s
pages that he could flip through to generate the required numbers. With or
without dice, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was easily portable. Plus it was
a book, which meant that the player was reading—usually a good thing as a far
as most parents were concerned. It was also a book which could be found on the
shelves of your local bookshop, meaning that its market presence and penetration
had the potential to be huge. So it proved. This only increased as sales rose,
again and again, so that Fighting Fantasy titles became bestsellers. Obviously
advertised in the pages of White Dwarf magazine, because Livingstone was the
editor, its sales reached out beyond those of the hobby, with many readers
being introduced to interactive fiction, roleplaying, and fantasy through their
reading and playing of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and other Fighting Fantasy series titles.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain began by asking the reader
if he was brave to take on the monsters and magic of Firetop Mountain? The treasures
within lay ripe for the taking, but in order to do that the powerful warlock
Zagor must be slain! To face him, the mighty hero must navigate the tunnels and
caverns that form the maze of his mountain stronghold, often facing the warlock’s
horrid minions and monsters who would kill you as much as look at you. Even if
the hero can find his way through every twist and turn of Zagor’s maze, defeat
every monster and minion encountered, and even Zagor himself, he still must
have both keys to unlock the chest containing the warlock’s mightiest treasures!
Only then will he have survived the perils of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain!
There is little fanfare to the instruction of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. It very quickly into the explanation of what it is and what
the reader will need before getting to roll up his character, who has Skill,
Stamina, and Luck. Skill is primarily used in combat—added in opposed rolls
against the monsters, Stamina is the character’s life force and health, and
Luck covers everything else. Actually, Luck mostly covers running away,
although other instances of its use are explained in individual paragraphs.
Combat works by the player rolling for his character and adding his Skill and
then doing the same for the monsters. The highest result each round wins and
inflicts damage on the other. Anyone reduced to zero Stamina is dead. In comparison
to most monsters, the character does start play with a lot. In addition, the
reader’s character has a sword and leather armour and a potion, which will
restore one of his three stats.
Then onto page one and the labyrinthine cavern complex inside Firetop Mountain.
It is a brutal journey. Very quickly the reader encounters Goblins, some asleep,
some in a murderous mood, then Orcs, traps, a box with a snake which will try
and bite him, a ferryman to bargain to take him across the river into the
second part of the adventure. Besides sneaking past Goblins and killing Orcs, the
reader might find himself gambling with Dwarves, getting lost in a maze—the non-linear
nature of the book manages to make a maze even more annoying, distracting Ogres,
and much more. To be fair, there is very little story to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and arguably the character who the reader is controlling is morally
suspect given his attitude towards torture in one scene and the fact that he
wants to take Zagor’s treasure when the warlock is merely minding his own business
and not oppressing the nearby populace. That said, the story is one that the reader
is creating in reading and playing through The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. As
much as it is ‘dungeon bash’, the authors are really setting a template for the
other Fighting Fantasy titles to come which would be more sophisticated and
mature in their storytelling.
Of course, throughout The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the
reader and his character is in constant peril and danger of dying. Combat is
not the only way that the reader can die in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. This
increased sense of peril and the possibility of death is arguably the solo game
book’s innovation, making survival and its play uncertain. Whatever way in
which he does die, the reader has to start again, this time with new stats
rolled up for a new character. Where the new character will have an advantage
is in having access to a map showing the progress of the previous character or characters.
This is because the reader is encouraged to draw a map as he reads through and
explores the tunnels and caverns of Firetop Mountain. In this way he maps out
the routes explored and looks for untried ones, again and again each time his
character dies and he begins anew. Here then, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is working like a Rogue-style computer game in which death is permanent and the
player has to start again. Of course, the new character has the advantage of
the map and hopefully learning from previous wrong choices. It is notable that
in many cases that map would be replicated again and again as new players read
through the solo game book for the first time.
Physically, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain looks and feels
like a novel. It is not of course, but the standard of presentation is
excellent, with the artwork of Russ Nicholson—sadly lacking in later printings
of the book—really standing out and giving the book its signature look.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was reviewed in White Dwarf No. 36 (December 1982) in Open Box by Nicholas J R Dougan. He opened with, “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, is, in gaming terms, a fairly simple programmed dungeon. Its uniqueness, however, as a may be guessed for the publisher’s name and the its paperpack format, is that it is designed to sit on the children’s shelves of a bookshop as much as in a gaming shop.” Before awarding it ten out of ten, he concluded that, “The book would make an ideal present for anyone who has expressed an interest in role-playing games, or indeed any young brother (or sister!). I imagine that the minimum age would be about ten, but I would recommend it to novice and veteran players alike for quite a few hours of entertainment. I imagine that the minimum age would be about ten, but I would recommend it to novice and veteran players alike for a few hours of entertainment. The authors, Steve Jackson (UK not USA) and Ian Livingstone (there’s only one), are to be congratulated on the successful development of an original idea that should benefit the hobby.”
More recently, author and publisher, Chris Pramas, chose The Warlock of Firetop Mountain as his entry in Hobby Games: The 100 Best, published by Green Ronin Publishing in 2007, also the year of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’s twenty-fifth anniversary. He described The Warlock of Firetop Mountain as, “…[A] pioneering release that popularized the solo gamebook and successfully brought the roleplaying game experience to a wider audience. This book alone sold over two million copies and it was only the first of the Fighting Fantasy series. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain spawned 58 more Fighting Fantasy books in the original series, a support magazine, a board game, an ambitious spinoff series, several computer games, two traditional roleplaying games, and a series of fantasy novels. Then there was the legion of imitators, another sure sign of success. Not bad for a slim paperback less than 200 pages long.”
—oOo—
The influence and reach of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is undeniable. Millions of copies sold, reprinted again and again, and adapted
to other formats, it started the Fighting Fantasy series and led to numerous
other publishers their own lines of game books too. Yet it also introduced many
readers to the concept of interactive fiction and many readers to the concepts
behind roleplaying as well, and for gamers, it gave them something to play away
from the game table and something that was very much game related that they
could buy at their local bookshop. This combination of accessibility and availability
helped increase the understanding of what roleplaying was and what its kind of
play was like in a way that computer roleplaying games would later do, and in
the process, it helped make both more acceptable.
For all of its influence and reach, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain remains still a nasty little dungeon, perhaps just a little grim and a
little perilous with a dash or two of humour, where there is the real chance of
the reader’s character dying at the hands of some monster or by some mishap. For
the teenager starved of gaming it enabled gaming again and again until the
cavern complex was fully explored and mapped out, and ultimately The Warlock of Firetop Mountain defeated and his treasure taken. Coming back to it as adult,
it feels familiar, evoking memories of the first few times it was played and of
the first few steps taken into all too many dungeon.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain did not invent the form of interactive fantasy fiction,
but it made it popular and made it accessible. It is also made it fun.
Happy International Gamebook Day 2022 and happy fortieth birthday Zagor!
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