Gateway to Another World

Fighting Fantasy and other adventure books offer the reader a chance to have a gaming experience much like role playing while reading a book (and rolling some dice), no friends required. The first in a series of the Fighting Fantasy logo books, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, was written and published by Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson back in 1982 (it's still in print). The Fighting Fantasy books are a fun introduction to the concept of fantasy adventure gaming, or a nice diversion from gaming with a group and they have once again become an entertaining solo gaming experience for an old adventurer such as myself.

I recently re-visited The Warlock... and found this book still offers a fun challenge. The book is not an adventure that one is likely to complete on our first try/read and the author of the book warns us to expect to lose a few characters before we learn all the secrets of success. Yes, some might call this "metagaming" but the idea is to use what we learn from the last delve to help make wiser choices in the next attempt, even though it is with a fresh character.

Warlock is a classic fantasy setting complete with underground corridors inhabited by orcs and an evil warlock/mastermind to defeat. The game system is mechanically fairly simple, but it still offers all that is necessary to get the imagination going. The reader starts by "rolling up a character/adventurer" who is your imaginary self as you make choices and suffer the consequences of failure through damage to the character's stats. This should sound familiar to anyone who has played any tabletop roleplaying game. The Fighting Fantasy books use three stat scores, Skill, Stamina and Luck. Magic in the book is found in the form of potions and items and in the fantastic elements of the setting.

Skill is a generic ability score that represents combat prowess, sneaking about, tinkering with locks and traps and opening doors (and anything else that "skill" might cover). You test Skill by rolling two six sided dice and adding your Skill number for a total which is often compared to a monster's total (generated in the same manner) in combat or to a target number for a non-combat task.

Stamina is health or hit points and an adventurer loses Stamina when they take damage. Lost Stamina can be restored by taking time-out and eating a ration or by quaffing a "magic" potion.

Luck is tested in a manner similar to saving throws found in some other games and success can get you out of a bad situation or outcome. Luck diminishes as it is used/tested however and the Luck score is lowered by one each time it is rolled against. The player can also choose to test luck in an effort to inflict more damage on a on a monster as part of a successful attack or to reduce the amount of damage your character takes when the monster has won a round of combat. Luck is replenished by drinking a fortune potion or as a reward for accomplishing some task as instructed to do so in the text.

The adventure presented in The Warlock... book recently entertained me for most of a day as I worked my way through the tunnels, lost a few adventurers along the way and defeated the boss warlock. Revisiting the Fighting Fantasy system also inspired some ideas regarding modifying it for further solo or group play using some adventures of my own design involving some random dice roll tables. 

The idea of moving the FF game out of the book and onto the table is an obvious outgrowth of the system. The authors would publish their own Fighting Fantasy tabletop role-playing game doing just that in 1984. 

This book is no longer in print and therefore is a little harder to come by these days. Fortunately, the mechanics of the FF game system lend itself easily to adding homebrew innovations - and who doesn't enjoy making things up!