House of Hell and other game-books - The Bear and Badger

EvilRedEye

The Fighting Fantasy books are being re-released by Scolastic at the moment and a new one by Fast Show guy Charlie Higson is coming out this year.

fullspectrum

Liveinadive wrote:

I used to get the Ian Livingstone Penguin ones out of the library, I was a bit young to ever get very far but I used to love staring at the artwork.

Downloading House of Hell now.

Nice! I’ve found I’ve put a surprising amount of time in, many a death has been had. Playing on hardcore mode is good for that permadeath feeling, but there is a trial and error randomness to it. Let me know what you think.

[Deleted User]

Yeah I just ended my first run.

Spoiler:

It is good fun though, will have another crack at it this evening.

WorKid

Higson is a heck of a writer.

Unlikely

Grail Quest and Lone Wolf series were better than most of the FF ones. That said, I seem to remember Trial of the Champions (?) being superb.

Yossarian

I think that Trial of the Champions was my very first FF book.

Yossarian

Rawr!

Tempy

I remember the Deathtrap Dungeon game on the PSone being utterly nightmarish

Unlikely

Memories!

EvilRedEye

They're Kickstarting Fighting Fantasy audio dramas at the moment because heaven forfend anything not be a multimedia franchise in this day and age.

EvilRedEye

Twitter has just informed me that I should have bagged my Fighting Fantasy books for preservation, news that is 20-30 years too late for most of my collection.

cindemon

Deathtrap Dungeon, Caverns of the Snow Witch, Sorcery Series, Citadel of Chaos & Forest of Doom were particular faves.

I collected, & still own every book they did that was connected to their Fantasy world of Titan. Including most, if not all, the complimentary shit like Out of the pit, Titan & some of their basic rpg books. Wasn't so much interested in the Sci-fi stuff they did.

As a young'un, I loved Titan, but my fav adventures were the Stories that were based in the continent Allsania, with the main hook being anything to do with the 3 star pupils of the grand wizard of Yore, Yaztromo, Nicodemus & Ty Kora & the 3 Demonic pupils Zagor, Balthus Dire(fav) & Zharradan Marr.

The FF Novel, The Trolltooth Wars, is still to this day, my most read book ever! Not read it in over 30ish years, but absolutely cained that book as a teen.

So, yeah, I was a massive fan.

Also have the Sorcery series on my moby, A 1st print boxed version of Warlock of Firetop mountain & Firetop mountain is on my DS game hunt list.

EvilRedEye

They did a graphic novel of The Trolltooth Wars recently.

cindemon

Oh my days, I'm on that shit if it's not stupid money.

cindemon

...& it's purchased, legend ERE.

davyK

I always thought the Kindle to be a natural match for these. No-one else seemed to think that.

I also thought it a great platform for text based adventures. I sent away for an eval dev kit with that idea (you needed to submit an idea to get a dev kit) and that didn't seem to fire up Amazon's enthusiasm either.

EvilRedEye

My memory is Kindle had that capability but they never rolled it out to the UK or something. It was all a bit weird.

davyK

Reading the blurb and conditions around the dev kit, I guessed that Amazon were nervous about games that overtaxed the display, drained the battery too much and/or abused the built in "free" 3G capability.

I'm thinking they were also probably more interested in getting apps developed for the Fire.

A pity - I still think it's a viable thing. What I had in mind was a perfect fit for the platform.

Brooks

A thread is here.

These jobbies had cool drawings and covers. Ian Miller did House of Hell, for instance.

Brooks

Played the iThing versions of the Sorcery series, that was quite entertaining. I savescummed and cheated as much as I could.

Wariospeedwagon

tin_robot wrote:

I really liked Creature of Havoc as a kid, but was really frustrated by my inability to complete it. I've subsequently discovered that the first print had a typo that made it impossible to complete if played to the letter of the rules, so I might have to try it again some day. (There's apparently a debate about whether it was a mistake, or a test of lateral thinking.) It's a weird one, because initially it doesn't even allow you to make your own choices as you start out as a wild chaotic monster. Decisions are made initially with dice rolls, then eventually you can become self determining, and then later still able to read and understand some of the initial gibberish. Or at least, that's how I remember it...

That's my favourite book as well. Still remember getting the solution to the gibberish dialogue, on a long and very boring car trip to a camping site as a kid. My little mind was blown when I read something like "If you can understand this, go to 235" or something. Think there was also something about, if the last number of a paragraph was a particular number, you would add 20 to that number, then go to that paragraph instead to progress, if that makes sense.

Loved the book as it had a bit of fun changing up the FF formula in ways like that. Also had really long (for FF) sections of text, which I was really into. It had a massive prologue about the history of the region, which was catnip to early teens me.

I didn't know about the typo, that's hilarious. I either owned a later edition or cheated my way to the end! Like to think I played fair; either way I'm keen to find the book and have a read tonight.

EvilRedEye

New Dungeon & Dragons Endless Quest books have been announced. They're just Choose Your Own Adventure-style stuff though, no dice-rolling or gameplay elements.

[Deleted User]

Yossarian wrote:

I think that Trial of the Champions was my very first FF book.

Yossarian wrote:

Rawr!

Pretty sure it was one of my first, too. It was certainly one of my favourites. I liked the spinning pole during training at the start, with a blade at ankle and neck height; jump, duck, jump, duck, jump as it gets faster and faster...

I also loved Armies of Death, it was my other favourite.

Owing to some slightly tipsy bidding last time we discussed this, I have eight copies of Deathtrap Dungeon, and two of Armies of Death, plus various others (including Trial of Champions).

Skerret

I'm playing House of Hell and died of fright two rooms in. What a pissweak cunt.

[Deleted User]

Which room Skeeter?

poprock

I must be older than some of you guys because I remember the first FF books coming out. I started with book two (never was a true early adopter, was I?) Started on Citadel of Chaos then went back and bought The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

Skerret

Liveinadive wrote:

Which room Skeeter?

Umm can't remember the name but it was

Spoiler:

Lord_Griff

I make choices and turn to various pages in every book I read. Made Rousseau's social contract interesting yet incomprehensible.

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