Picturing Solo History

There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Vampire the Masquerade that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1990s. There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Dungeons & Dragons that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1970s and of course, ever since... There are many gamers who will tell you that it was another phenomenon, of the 1980s, that got them into gaming, certainly if they are British, that of the Fighting Fantasy™ solo roleplaying books. Created in 1982 by Sir Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson with the publication of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in the thirty years since, some sixty or so titles have published in the series and some seventeen million copies have been sold. In their time, the Fighting Fantasy™ series has produced bestsellers, computer games, board games, and of course, a dedicated fan base. In 2014, the series finally received the history book it deserved with the publication of You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks and now, a decade on, there is a follow-up.

Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is a celebration and exploration of the pictorial presentation of the Fighting Fantasy series, for it was not famed for its accessibility and innovative format—and of course, its fantastic stories, but also its art and illustrations. Beginning with Peter Andrew Jones’ cover for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which stood out on the bookshelves for its then radical composition, and the internal illustrations by the late Russ Nicholson, the series introduced readers to a wide array of artists and illustrators, styles, and striking images, across the many genres that the series would encompass. In particular, the pen and inks of Nicholson would create the look of the series’ titular character, Zagor the Warlock, as well as others, but in particular, his artwork added so much to the look and feel of the series. Not just horror and fear, but the idea that monsters could be doing something other facing the brave adventurer as his player leafed through the pages of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Dwarves playing cards and drinking into their cups, bored Goblins waiting for something to happen, a man having fallen asleep and being guarded by his dog. Yet the horror comes to the fore with images like the decomposing ghoul reaching to grab and rend the skin of the adventurer or the partially unwrapped mummy climbing over its saprophagous to attack the adventurer. Though the Fighting Fantasy series was aimed at a young teenage audience, its artwork was not. It never infantilised its fantasy, but instead, it was grim and gritty, savage and scary, enticing and exciting, and it remains so today. All of these pieces of artwork—and more—are given space in Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, which highlights the work of over forty artists in its pages.

Published by Unbound, and written by Sir Ian Livingstone and Jonathan Green—who previously collaborated on You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks, what Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy does is bring together the work of some thirty or artists who worked on the Fighting Fantasy series and more. Sir Ian Livingstone provides a foreword in which discusses his pleasure of working with so many great artists, Iain McCaig in particular, and also highlights out how artwork and artists in the series crossed over from other genres. For example, Jim Burns with his cover for both Freeway Fighter and the Games Workshop board game, Battlecars, and comic book artist Brian Bolland with his cover for Appointment with F.E.A.R. and for the Games Workshop board game, Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One (recently republished by Rebellion), as well as, of course, as his work on 2000 AD. This fostered a degree of synergy between the different genres and media, and the Fighting Fantasy series and Games Workshop beyond what was already there. Jonathan Green provides a more straightforward introduction.

Then from Chris Achilléos, Robert Ball, and Krisztián Balla to Duncan Smith, Greg Staples, and Gary Ward and Edward Crosby, Magic Realms presents the art of some thirty artists. Every artist gets to talk bout their involvement in the series and working with the commissioning editor, or many cases, the author, and the fantastic pieces they contributed. Some of the write-ups about the artists are more overviews, drawing retrospectively on older interviews, such as with Brian Bolland and Martin McKenna. Each is accompanied by the illustrations themselves. In fact, several pages of them, and typically longer than the interview. These begin with the artist’s most well-known pieces, such as Chris Achilléos’ wraparound cover to Titan: The Fighting Fantasy World, Robert Ball’s cover to the Scholastic Books’ version of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, John Blanche’s cover to The Shamutani Hills, the cover to The Caverns of the Snow Witch, and the cover to Scorpion Swamp and Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-Playing Game by Duncan Smith. This is followed by a gallery of smaller images, a mixture of colour and black and white, depending on the artist. None of the art here is straight reproduction of Fighting Fantasy covers—that comes later in Magic Realms—but the art sans the titles, author names, and trade dress. Thus, artwork here can be seen in all of its glory.

Almost three quarters of Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is devoted to these artists, but they are not the only ones. The contributions of another twenty-artists, such as Dave Carson, Maggie Keen, Steven Lavis, and Brian Williams are acknowledged, as the artists on the overseas editions of the series. The latter highlights art that is unlikely to be familiar to most readers, unless that is, they are ardent fans or collectors of the Fighting Fantasy series, so it often brings a fresh perspective upon books with covers have long associations and are firmly cemented in the imagination of the English-speaking fan of the Fighting Fantasy series. This includes artwork from Brazil, Denmark, and France. All of covers are reproduced for the series, including those published by Puffin Books, Wizard Books, Scholastic Books, and overseas editions. There is a gallery of every cover of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in every language, too, but that is not all. Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy comes to a close with galleries for Warlock: The Fighting Fantasy Magazine—surely due a reprint anthology, the Fighting Fantasy graphic novels, and the miniature figures. These are lovingly presented here, stunningly painted and superbly bringing the art to life in three dimensions and making the reader wish they could bring them to the gaming table.

Physically, Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is exactly what you want it to be. The perfect reproduction of art accompanied by some interesting words.

There can be no doubt that Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy is an absolute must for any fan of the Fighting Fantasy series. It shines a spotlight on both the many great artists who brought to life the words of the Fighting Fantasy authors and the great choices made by authors and editors in selecting the artists, whilst for the reader there is the thrill of being able to see all of the Fighting Fantasy all in one place and the frisson of excitement at the memory of seeing it for the first time.

Magazine Madness 29: Senet Issue 9

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game, Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.

Senet Issue 9 was published in the winter of 2022. As an issue, it does something different. This is to spread its wings away from its usual subject, that is, board games, into roleplaying—though only a little! This is in the issue’s interviews with designers and publishers who have both had a big influence on the games hobby and industry, one more recently, one over the course of decades. Never fear though, for outside of these articles, Senet Issue 9 is very much a board games magazine. This does not stop the editor highlighting one of the issue’s interviews in his editorial, which is perfectly reasonable, since it is with a designer and publisher who is a very big name in both the board game and the roleplaying hobbies—and other hobbies—here in the United Kingdom.

‘Behold’ is the regular preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As expected, ‘Behold’ showcases its previewed titles to intriguing effect, a combination of simple write-ups with artwork and depictions of the board games. Notable titles previewed include Pandasaurus Games’ The Fox Experiment, co-designed by Elizabeth Hargrave of Wingspan fame, which is a ‘roll-and-write’ design about the Belyaev-Trut experiment into fox domestication, in which the players attempt to draft friendly foxes and use them to breed even friendlier foxes, whilst Moon, the third and final part in a trilogy of card-drafting games from Sinister Fish Games which began with Villagers, takes the series off planet to colonise the Moon as well as increase the player interaction with this style of game.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters is only as thematic as to be all from readers praising the magazine, so is a whole lot less interesting than in previous issues. ‘For Love of the Game’, continues the journey of the designer Tristian Hall towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. In this entry in the series, he addresses the issue of  acknowledging your inspirations when it comes to your game, both in terms of other game designs and other sources. He cites Donald X. Vaccarino being inspired by the deck-building aspect of Magic: The Gathering for his Spiel des Jahres award-winning Dominion, but actually lists other sources for his inspiration for his own Gloom of Kilforth, such as the Fighting Fantasy books, Dungeons & Dragons, and J.R.R. Tolkien, so although this represents another nod to roleplaying in the issue, it does feel one-sided.

Senet follows a standard format of articles and article types and Senet Issue 9 is no exception. One explores a theme found in board games, its history, and the games that showcase it to best effect, whilst another looks at a particular mechanic. In addition, there are two interviews, one with a designer, the other with an artist. The particular mechanic in the issue is the engine-building game. In ‘Rise of the Machine’, Alexandra Sonechkina examines the history and state of the mechanic, starting by making an interesting suggestion that Monopoly, a fairly poorly regarded game, is actually an engine-building game—although not one in the modern sense. That, though, is really as far as the history goes in the article, as it looks what makes a good engine-building game. The article is an interesting look at what the mechanic can do, but it could have benefited from boxed sections highlighting particular designs and used them to track some of the mechanic’s development to give more context. Although interesting, the article does not feel complete.

The theme article in the issue is pirates! Matt Thrower’s ‘Pirates on Board’ is a far thorough look at the history of its subject, whose more recent surge in popularity as a theme can be traced back to 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean, and before that with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Along the way, it notes the historical nature of the subject means that it has long been a popular subject for wargames, such as Wooden Ships & Iron Men and Blackbeard, both from Avalon Hill, but the fantasy element of pirates means that it is seen as a suitable subject for lighter board game designs too. Examples include Cartagena and Pirate’s Cove, yet as the hobby has matured, there has been an acknowledgement the fantasy of pirates does not always equate to the actual history, since they are both villainous and violent, though less so with other board game themes and history. Thus pirate-themed board games tend to romanticise the history and make it palatable for a wider audience. It does, though, come up to date with a look at the issue of actual piracy and counterfeiting in the board gaming industry, but does not come to any more conclusion than that it is an ongoing issue. ‘Pirates on Board’ is an entertaining piece that nicely continues the magazine’s thread of examining the themes common to modern and not so modern board games.

The much-heralded highlight of the issue is ‘The Games Master’. This is the first of the two interviews in the issue, and is with Sir Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy series, as well as designer of board games like Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One. The lengthy interview, which starts with Livingstone’s first experiences with board games and takes the reader through the founding of Games Workshop, the games he designed, the creation of the Fighting Fantasy series—the primary roleplaying focus in the interview, and beyond to what he plays today. It is a good, solid interview, interesting and informative, liberally illustrated, though more so if you have not read other interviews with Livingstone. The interview is, of course, timed ahead of the release of Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop, which expands upon the various subjects explored in the piece and more.

The second interview in Senet Issue 9 is with Johan Nohr, the co-creator and illustrator of Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone, and its Cyberpunk counterpart, CY_BORG. As with previous issues of the magazine, this does a very nice job of showcasing his artwork, although it is not necessarily a style that would be seen in board game design.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section actually includes a review of Apothecaria: Solo Potion Making RPG, so continuing the issue’s flirtation with roleplaying games, although solo journalling games are typically the magazine’s only flirtation with roleplaying games. Otherwise, a wide range of games is reviewed, from family titles such as Dodo and its egg-rolling down a mountain mechanic to big, brutal storytelling designs such as Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood. The latter is the issue’s game of choice, but there are a surprising number of disappointments reviewed too, like Rear Window and Cellulose: A Plant Cell Biology Game. In between, there is a good mix of interesting games reviewed that should drove the reader to go and find out more.

Rounding out Senet Issue 9 are the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘How to Play’, Mx Tiffany Leigh addresses the issue of ‘Playing with Alphas’, and how the over abundance of advice from an Alpha Player can negate player agency, involvement, and fun, before giving straightforward advice. In fact, the advice might be called too straightforward, even obvious, but this does not make it bad advice. Tom Brewster of Shut Up & Shutdown takes Pax Pamir, a wargame of nineteenth century politics in Afghanistan, off his and ‘Shelf of Shame’ and explains why it is not getting to his table to play more often. Unlike a lot of entries in this series, it is not because it got forgotten or bypassed in favour of other titles, but because it is actually not a game that others want to play because of its complexity and capacity. This highlights an issue with a lot of board games, that of finding the right audience.

Physically, Senet Issue 9 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.

It has almost become a cliché to state that as with previous issues, Senet Issue 9 offers a good mix of articles, interviews, and reviews, but it does. Yet where the interviews both look great and are very accessible, the articles on the issue’s theme and mechanic are not. This is not to say that they are unreadable, as they are, but they are no longer highlighting particular games appropriate to either theme or mechanic, so unlike in previous issues with these articles, there are no examples to stand out effectively and catch the reader’s attention. The issue also has an odd feel to it because of its emphasis on roleplaying in its two big articles, but this change is refreshing, widening the scope of the magazine, if only a little. It also highlights how a magazine of similar quality devoted to roleplaying could be just as good. Overall, Senet Issue 9 is still good, but just a little bit different—and that is not a bad thing.

1982: Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One

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.

—oOo—

Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is back! Originally designed by Sir Ian Livingstone and published by Games Workshop in 1982, it was the very first board game to be inspired by the Judge Dredd comic strip from the pages of 2000 AD. In the original game, the players control Judges patrolling the streets of Mega-City One, the vast twenty-second century metropolis on the Atlantic coast of North America, home to eight hundred million citizens and all of them potential lawbreakers. Every Judge is trained from the age of five to arrest criminals, pass sentence, and carry out the sentence—even if that means a death sentence!—all in the name of keeping the city and its inhabitants safe. Every turn a player sends his Judge to the scene of a reported crime, perhaps the Palais De Boing—the only place in the city where it is legal to go Boinging, Otto Sump’s Ugly Clinic for the very best in uglification surgery, or the Alien Zoo where wonders and weird creatures from across the universe can be seen— and attempts to arrest the perpetrator. Perhaps Joseph ‘Mad Tooth’ McKill for Tobacco Smoking, Ma Jong for Stookie Glanding, or Dobey Queeg for Robot Smashing. Notoriously, this is the board game where you could be arresting Judge Death for Littering, or Ma ‘Green Fingers’ Mahaffy for Murder. Unfortunately, only one Judge gets be top dog in Mega-City One, and that is Judge Dredd. Which means the player with greatest total strength of Crime and Perp cards in his score pile at the end of the game is the winner and thus next top dog.

Much like the later Block Mania, the good news is that Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One has returned to the fold of 2000 AD and is now published by Rebellion Unplugged. Like Block Mania, it has undergone a redesign and makeover, but not by very much, and the game play remains very much the same. What has been added are clearer rules for ending the game and a simple expansion to make play a little more interesting and worth revisiting. Everything else remains the same. Same game rules, same art style, same set of perps and crimes, and same take that style of play. So, although a classic, Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is still a game from 1982. What that means is that the game is easy to learn and easy to play, has bags and bags of theme—even if that theme dates back between 1977 and 1982, a degree of players acting against each other, and a high degree of luck. Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is by any definition, an ‘Ameritrash’ board game. That by no means is necessarily a bad thing as the game can also be funny and silly, and it is playable by anyone—not just those who played it first time around in 1982 and are noshing down on the nostalgia.

Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is designed to be played by two to six players aged fourteen plus and has a playing time of between an hour and an hour-and-a-half. The board depicts twenty-eight locations in Mega-City One. Over the course of the game, each sector will be seeded with a reported Crime and Perp. The Judges will proceed to the Sectors where these Crimes and Perps have been reported, reveal them, and attempt to arrest the Perp. Failing that, they may be able to stop the Crime in progress. At the end of the game, the player who has scored the most points from Perps arrested and Crimes stopped, wins the game.

Set-up first requires the group to choose a game length—‘Hotdog Run’, ‘Day Shift’, or ‘Night Shift’—and decide whether or not to use the Specialist Judges expansion. Each player receives six Action cards, and the Crime, Perp, and Sector cards are shuffled. Sector cards are drawn and these indicate where reports of crimes have been made, Perp cards and Crime cards being drawn and placed face down in the indicated Sectors. Each round consists of three phases. In the Movement Phase, the Judges move two Sectors in a direction, taking accounting of bridges to cross the river, but primarily to the nearest Sector containing Perp and Crime cards. When a Judge moves into a Sector Perp and Crime cards, both are turned over and revealed. In the Arrest Phase, a Judge attempts to bring a Perp and his Crime to justice. To do this, his player rolls the game’s black Judge die and adds his Judge’s Strength. Another player roll’s the game red Perp die and adds the result to Perp’s Strength, a total of the value on the Perp card plus the value on the Crime card. Highest total wins. If the Judge’s result is higher, he arrests the Perp and his player takes both Perp and Crime cards and adds it to his score pile. If the Judge’s result is lower, the Judge has failed, is knocked out, and has to discard and refresh his hand of Action cards. If the result is a draw, the crime is stopped and the Crime is added to the player’s score pile, but the Perp runs away, ready to be arrested by another Judge! In the third Refill Phase, new Sector cards and Crime and Perp cards are drawn to bring the number in play back up to six, any Judges knocked out go to the Justice Department Hospital, and each player receives a new Action card, more if their Judge is in certain sectors.

Of course, it is not always possible for a Judge to beat a Perp and a Crime on a singe roll. For example, if Fink Angel And Ratty with a Strength of eight was Body Sharking, which has a value of five, the total Strength the player has to roll higher than is thirteen. Which is not possible with the addition of a Judge’s Strength of six plus a die roll. Fortunately, a Judge has access to Action cards. Most are Support cards, which add a bonus to the arresting Judge’s Strength. For example, ‘Judge Hershey is with you today’ adds three and ‘The Perp is Kill Crazy. You send in the Sonic Cannon.’ adds five. Others though, are Sabotage cards, and can be used by a player to make an arrest attempt by another player’s Judge even harder. For example, ‘Your breakfast of plasti-flakes and synthi-lix is giving you chronic indigestion. You are not in tip-top fighting condition’ levies a -2 penalty or ‘The Perp you are fighting is secretly an East-Meg spy. Add an Extra Die to their Strength’. The worst of these cards, of course, the Escape card, which reveals the Perp to be the notorious Edwin Parsey, notorious confessor of other people’s crimes, which forces all Support cards used in the arrest attempt to be discarded and the attempt be treated as a tie. Other Action cards allow extra movement, send the Judge to a particular Sector, grants on the spot healing, and so on.

Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One adds one expansion—Specialist Judges. There are six of these—or seven if the Judge Fish from ‘The Day the Law Died’ storyline promo is included—and each Judge has a different ability. They include Chief Judge, SJS Judge, Psi-Judge, Wally Squad, Cadet, and Mechanismo. For example, the Cadet Judge only has a Strength of four, but begins play with and can hold seven Action cards, and draws an extra card; the SJS Judge can look at another player’s Actions each turn and wins ties in combat; and the Wally Squad Judge can move through Sectors containing revealed Perps, but does not have to arrest them. All six are nicely thematic and give a player a good little edge in play. The mix means that the players can come back to the game, try another Specialist Judge and a slightly style of play.

Physically, Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is well presented. The artwork on the board is in colour, whilst the cards is black and white, but also is sharply and crisply handled. The rulebook is clearly written, easy to read, and supported with examples of the rules. In addition, the rulebook includes all of the UMPTY CANDY CARDs from the Jack Caldwell’s Old-fashioned Umpty Candy packs. All three series—‘SECTORS of Mega-City One’, ‘CRIMES of Mega-City One’, and ‘PERPS of Mega-City One’ explain the three sets of cards in the game, giving background for each of them.

Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is not a perfect game by modern standards. It is too luck driven, the game allows one player to directly hamper another with the Sabotage cards, and towards the end of play, players can congregate around the remaining Sectors that have not yet been drawn if they have been keeping an eye on the cards that have been drawn to date. That said, they were part of the game’s design in 1982 and they should be there also in 2022 because the new edition is intended as a nostalgia piece and to change the game’s design too radically would break from that. Another issue is that the game only draws from the first five or so years of the Judge Dredd strips in 2000 AD—1977 to 1982—so that means forty-year-old stories which may not be as familiar to younger players. Perhaps yet, there is room for further expansions involving the more recent stories and thus more Crimes and Perp cards?

Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One is a fun game, easy to play and all the more enjoyable if the players know the lore, know the crimes, and know the Perps. Rebellion Unplugged have done a fantastic job of updating the quality of the game whilst both retaining the same game play and adding an expansion for more varied play. Judge Dredd: The Game of Crime-Fighting in Mega-City One marks the welcome return of a beloved classic, British in both design and inspiration, in turns funny, frustrating, and evocative of our gaming youth and another age.

1982: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

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.

—oOo—

Today is ‘International Gamebook Day’, a celebration of interactive fiction. Which also means that in 2022, it is also Zagor’s birthday. Zagor of course, is the ‘Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ whose labyrinth will be explored by the reader of the eponymous game book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone and published by Puffin, it was the first of some fifty-nine entries in the Fighting Fantasy series which would encompass numerous genres—horror, Science Fiction, superheroes, and more—but would always, always come back to fantasy. The series would sell millions of copies, have its own magazines, and get its own history with YouAre The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks, and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain would receive sequels, be adapted into board games and computer games and a roleplaying scenario for Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition and even an audio adventure.

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.

—oOo—

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!

Friday Filler: Board Games in 100 Moves

Another year and another bumper crop of board games as 2019 continues the trend of seeing the release of ever more board game titles and playing board games becomes firmly cemented as a hobby that everyone can enjoy. 2019 was also a good year for books about boardgames too, including The Board Game Book: The essential guide to the best new games, a retrospective of the last two years’ worth of games and Meeples Together: How and Why Cooperative Board Games Work, a detailed examination of board games in which the players work together to defeat the game. Joining them is a much broader examination of the board game, an examination which takes in eight thousand years of playing games from the ancient world to today’s golden age of meeples, co-operation, legacy change through play, thematic play, superb production values, and fantastic designs—all of which have come about in the last three decades. That book is Board Games in 100 Moves.

Published by Dorling Kindersley—a publisher known for the quality of its illustrated reference works, so the quality of the book is certain to be good, Board Games in 100 Moves is written by two stalwarts of the British hobby games industry, James Wallis, designer of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Alas Vegas and Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop and co-creator of the Fighting Fantasy series amongst many other things. Both are avid board game players and collectors and in their time have played thousands of games. Together they take the reader through eight thousand years of games and six ages of game design, all in exactly one hundred games.

From the start, almost like the rules to every good board game should, Board Games in 100 Moves explains its set-up. Both authors introduce their love of board games and explain the book’s premise, how it is organised, preparing the reader for the grand tour that is come. It sets out what the one hundred board games of its title are—from Senet in 3100 BCE, the Royal Game of Ur in 2600 BCE, and Hounds and Jackals in 2000 BCE to Beasts of Balance and Sushi Go Party! in 2016, and The Mind in 2019. Along the way it lists classics like Chess and Backgammon, playing cards and Pachisi, surprises such as Kriegsspiel and Suffragetto, stalwarts such as Scrabble and Monopoly, children’s designs like Mouse Trap! and Connect 4, it touches upon roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons, before coming up to date with modern designs like Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, and Codenames.

The first four ages of Board Games in 100 Moves are ages of materials—wood and stone, paper and print, cardboard, and plastic—and examine how those materials changed the look and feel of the games as much as it examines the games themselves. In ‘Wood and Stone’ it looks at the oldest game that we know of, Senet, noting that the Pharaohs were fans of the Egyptian game of passing and that the game had spiritual significance in that passing also referred to moving into the afterlife and then it looks at the first game that we have rules for, the Royal Game of Ur. What is fascinating here is how the rules were rediscovered. Other games examined in this period are ones that we would recognise today—Go, Pachisi (better known by its modern variants, Ludo and Parcheesi), the many variants of Men’s Morris (originally a game spread by the Romans across their empire), Backgammon, and of course, Chess.

A common feature of these games is that often being made from stone or wooden, there is a certain permanence to them, but in the age of paper and print, games became colourful and complex, yet easy to transport and teach. This is when playing cards evolved from tarot cards and the first printed board games appear, such as the Royal Game of the Goose. The nature of games changed again towards the end of this period when they set out to be instructional and educational, as with A Journey Through Europe, before the age of cardboard heralded the arrival of games about campaign, first military battles, but then political ones two. So this examines Kriegsspiel, the wargame designed to teach Prussian officers military tactics and The Game of Suffragette, published to promote the cause for female emancipation, before mentioning some of the actual games as propaganda published before and during World War 2. Here it does not shy away from some of the more reprehensible and unpleasant game designs of the period. 

Unsurprisingly, Monopoly and its origins as a game completely counter to its big business theme, is highlighted before we come to the age of plastic. This period is likely to be the one that the older board game player—and certainly the authors—will be most familiar with as it is when they first played games. So Mouse Trap!, Scrabble, Connect 4, Twister, and both Risk and Diplomacy, but as Board Games in 100 Moves into the age of imagination with publication of Dungeons & Dragons and the rise of the Eurogame, there is a sense of the foundations being laid for where we are now, in an age of imagination, of Eurogames like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan, and exploring a future of co-operation, of a global hobby with board games from Japan like Machi Koro and from the Czech Republic like Codenames, and digitalisation. Although one hundred games might lie at the heart of Board Games in 100 Moves, along the way, the book looks at more than that single hundred, not necessarily in the depth and detail accorded its singular hundred, but enough to intrigue and wonder about finding out more (or in some cases, rejecting out of hand).

This being a book from Dorling Kindersley, is very nicely laid out with hundreds of illustrations which showcase the changing look and design of board games throughout history as much as the words explore their impact and design. It even comes with an excellent index and buried deep in the back of the book there is a bibliography for the reader who wants to explore the hobby a little more as well as play the many games listed within the pages of Board Games in 100 Moves.

It should be no surprise that Board Games in 100 Moves gives a somewhat Anglocentric history of its subject matter. After all, the format that it is inspired by—A History of the World in 100 Objects—and its authors are all British. This in part also explains the attention paid to Games Workshop and Warhammer, although their inclusion in this history is certainly warranted and certainly does not detract from the inclusion of games from all over the world. Where Board Games in 100 Moves differs from A History of the World in 100 Objects is that it is not a look at a hundred specific games or objects—anyone wanting that should be directed to Green Ronin Publishing’s Hobby Games: The 100 Best or Family Games: The 100 Best—for many of the games listed at the book’s start are never mentioned again. (Which possibly means that there is a scope for a book which examines each title on that list in turn.) Instead Board Games in 100 Moves is a hundred moves through history of organised play, an examination of the importance and impact, the enjoyment and effect, of board games.

Board Games in 100 Moves is an interesting and informative introduction to the history of board games, an examination a hundred—and more—board games you may or have not heard of, and might want to play. For the board game fan, this book is a must, whilst for the roleplayer, this book is still of interest because of the many ways in which the two hobbies overlap each other, but either way, Board Games in 100 Moves is an attractive and enjoyable read from start to finish. One that fans of tabletop games of all types will find interesting.

Solo History

There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Vampire the Masquerade that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1990s. There are many gamers who will tell you that it was Dungeons & Dragons that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1970s and of course, ever since... There are many gamers who will tell you that it was another phenomenon, of the 1980s, that got them into gaming, certainly if they are British, that of the Fighting Fantasy™ solo roleplaying books. Created in 1982 by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson with the publication of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, in the thirty years since, some sixty or so titles have published in the series and some seventeen million copies have been sold. In their time, the Fighting Fantasy™ series has produced bestsellers, computer games, board games, and of course, a dedicated fan base. Now it has its own history book.

You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks is that history book. Funded via Kickstarter, this is the definitive guide to the series and the phenomenon; a ‘coffee table’ style book lavishly illustrated with artwork that has both graced the insides and the outs of titles in the Fighting Fantasy™ series, from first—The Warlock of Firetop Mountain—to the last, Blood of the Zombies. This includes the book covers by the likes of Peter Andrew Jones, Ian Miller, Ian McCaig, as well as the internal illustrations of Russ Nicholson, Martin McKenna, Alan Langford—and more!

That more includes the original map for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain; original notes for The Forest of Doom; details about cameo appearances made by Livingstone and Jackson in Fighting Fantasy artwork; maps of the worlds and locations of the Fighting Fantasy series; plus the input of not just the artists and authors involved in every Fighting Fantasy title, but the fans too. The array of opinions given here are surprisingly frank. Most of them are as positive, even as gushing, as you would expect, but some are bluntly critical, in some cases by authors and artists of their own work. This gives the book a refreshingly engaging feel. Also explored are the other media where Fighting Fantasy appears—board games, computer games, phone games, magazines, and more. The book is thus thoroughly comprehensive, all but exhaustive in its coverage of all things Fighting Fantasy. Along the way it throws in fact after fact about the books, their creators, and the Fighting Fantasy phenomenon, all before bringing right up to date with the publication of Ian Livingstone’s Blood of the Zombies and the adaptations of the Fighting Fantasy series into titles that be played on tablets and mobile telephones.

To an extent, You Are The Hero is not just a history of the Fighting Fantasy series. It should be no surprise to the reader given that Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson created the series, that this volume also sketches a biography of the two men’s careers, and thus of Games Workshop and the games and computer industries in the UK over the last forty or so years. If there is an issue with You Are The Hero it is that it feels slightly rushed. It needs an edit in places and the layout is clumsy in places. Perhaps the book’s biggest weakness is its lack of an index, which is disappointing given that the subtitle of the book is ‘A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks’—and that suggests that the book is intended to be reference work. The lack of an index is only a hindrance to that purpose.

There were ‘choose your adventure path’ style books available before the Fighting Fantasy™ series, whether that is the solo adventures for the Tunnels & Trolls RPG or my first experience with the genre, Mission to Planet L, part of the Tracker book series in 1975. Similarly there were various books and titles that appeared alongside the Fighting Fantasy™ series. Of course, they are not the subject of You Are The Hero, so there remains to be written a definitive history of the ‘choose your adventure path’ style book. Jonathan Green, the author of You Are The Hero and himself the author of four Fighting Fantasy adventures, is perhaps the man to write such a history… After all, he has already written the Fighting Fantasy chapter right here. As much a trip down memory lane as an informative and fascinating exploration of gaming before the digital age brought into said digital age, You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks is the definitive guide and history to the phenomenon that introduced reading, interactive fiction, and fantasy roleplaying to a wider audience than ever before.

Fighting Fantasy Undead

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, especially if the things that you love can be brought back. When it comes to being a British gamer of a certain age, there is nothing to be more nostalgic about than the Fighting Fantasy series. Launched in 1982 with the release by Puffin Books of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, co-authored by the founders of Games Workshop, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, this series of “choose your own adventure” books holds a special place in the hearts of British gamers — The Warlock of Firetop Mountain in particular. It would run to some fifty-nine titles in the initial line-up, and in the process, sell millions of copies and popularise the concept of roleplaying, spearheading its presence in bookshops everywhere.

Since 2002, the Fighting Fantasy series has been published by Wizard Books under whose aegis two anniversaries have been celebrated. The first was series’ twenty-fifth anniversary, for which a special hardcover edition of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was published; the second was the thirtieth anniversary, in 2012, for which Blood of the Zombies was released. This is the first Fighting Fantasy title by Ian Livingstone since 2005’s Eye of the Dragon. It brings the series up to date, not just in terms of mechanics, but also terms of subject matter. After all, no threat is as contemporary and in vogue as zombies were in 2012 – and still are in 2013.

In Blood of the Zombies, the hero – as controlled by the reader – can be best described as “field researcher” with an interest in myths and legends, or at least a student of beasts mythological. As this hero, travelling across Europe in search of one beast after another, you find yourself taken captive in Transylvania and imprisoned in Goraya Castle. Its owner, Gingrich Yurr, is an insane megalomaniac who has plans for both you and the others he holds prisoner – that is, to turn you and everyone held captive into a zombie and then unleash the undead horde on the world. Being the resourceful type you have managed to escape, so all that stands between you and the end of the world are four hundred paragraphs of exploring, gathering the weapons and resources necessary to defeat Gingrich Yurr, and holding off one wave of the corpse cortege after another…

To handle the action, Blood of the Zombies presents a stripped set of rules. In the original Fighting Fantasy titles each hero had three statistics – Skill, Stamina, and Luck. The first of these represented a hero’s fighting ability, the second his health, and the last, his good fortune or otherwise as he proceeded through each adventure. In Blood of the Zombies, the hero has a single statistic – Stamina, essentially the number of attacks the hero can withstand before being overcome and killed. Combat is kept simple with the hero always being able to attack first – zombies after all, are notoriously slow; the hero always hitting and inflicting damage, each hit putting down a zombie, so the better the weapon the more zombies it destroys; and when it is the zombies’ turn to attack, the hero loses a point of Stamina for each zombie he faces – so it is a good idea to find the biggest weapon possible as quickly as possible! The reader will also need to note exactly how many zombies he kills in his escape attempt, otherwise the undead are still a threat to both himself and the world.

Creating a character is simply a matter of rolling two six-sided dice – which is all that a player will need along with a pencil – or flicking through the page and randomly stopping on a page, each of which has dice symbols marked between one and six and adding the result to twelve. This is the hero’s beginning Stamina. Besides the dice and pencil, a player will also need scrap paper, although the book does come with a character sheet.

As much as the adventure has a contemporary setting, in true “Grand Guignol” style, Blood of the Zombies takes place in a castle. Well of course, it is set in Transylvania! As the hero, the reader will find himself working his up from the depths – or the dungeons – of the castle to its living areas to face his gaoler, Gingrich Yurr himself! Along the way, he will encounter members of Yurr’s staff, strangeness and oddities, death-traps, and of course, members of the cadaver cavalcade.

Playing Blood of the Zombies is tough! It is not just a matter of collecting the gear necessary to defeat the zombie threat, but one of collecting the right equipment – though of course, the reader never knows ahead of time what exactly he will need. Beyond the decisions as to what to pick up or leave behind, which door to open and which to ignore, and so on, Blood of the Zombies is all about making the right dice rolls. For combat these are primarily high rolls – the higher the roll, the more zombies are wiped out – but the adventure’s design mixes the rolls up so that the reader never knows the outcome ahead of time. The likelihood is that if the reader manages to survive the rigours of escaping from Goraya Castle and its undead hordes, then it will be by the skin of his teeth.

The downside is that if the reader fails on his first time, then having to play through again is more time consuming than challenging. It does not help that there are moments in the adventure where its linear nature becomes apparent – the preponderance of long corridors makes this unavoidable. Thankfully once the reader towards the end, the various scenes and locations seem to come crashing down onto the reader, one after the other, leading to cinematic ending. The character of the hero is something of an 'everyman', an ordinary fellow, who is driven to undertake extraordinary feats in saving the world and more. He is not necessarily a capable fighter as the human opponents he may well face during the course of Blood of the Zombies are more capable than he is. This should be seen as a reflection of his weakened state as much as it is the fact that he is an ordinary man and not the trained fighter that would instead be treading the caves and passageways of Warlock of Firetop Mountain. He can of course, blast zombies away with the best of them… that is, unless his dice rolls let him down.

Throughout, the design and writing in Blood of the Zombies is decent. It is not overly descriptive, but the tension is kept high at the right points, and the few personalities that the hero meets are more than mere bodies waiting for death at the hands of said hero. In addition there are numerous in-jokes scattered throughout the halls of Goraya Castle, though some of them might be a little obscure to younger readers.

Blood of the Zombies is an enjoyably nostalgic trip back both an older style of game and and older style of adventure. It updates the format to provide a contemporary cinematic blast of an adventure and a few tense hours alone...