Retrospective: Steve Jackson's Sorcery!

I've opined before that the Fighting Fantasy series of solitaire gamebooks must have been very successful for both Penguin/Puffin Books and creators Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. Between 1982 and 1995, fifty-nine FF books appeared, penned by many different authors (including a few, as it turns out, by Jackson's American namesake). I read and enjoyed several of them upon their initial release; they were a great way to pass the time when I was unable to get together with my gaming buddies in person. Consequently, I generally looked on the series as a "diversion" rather than a "real" game (something that it arguably didn't become until the publication of Advanced Fighting Fantasy in 1989).

That said, the publication of the first book of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! in 1983 certainly got my attention. Though not explicitly marketed as part of the Fighting Fantasy series, it nevertheless used the same basic game mechanics and format. This made it very easy for readers already familiar with the main FF line to make use of it without too much trouble. However, Sorcery! introduces a number of innovations that set it apart from its predecessors and convinced me that I should give it a go.

To begin with, the story Sorcery! is presented in four different books. Each volume is theoretically playable without reference to the others, but, taken together, the four books forms a continuous narrative that builds on what came before. Rather than rolling up a new character for each book, as one did in other Fighting Fantasy books, the reader of Sorcery! can use the same character from book to book – assuming he survives, of course. This continuity of character might not seem like a big deal, but, at the time, it certainly was. I don't believe any other Fighting Fantasy book did this and the Lone Wolf series, which was quite similar to Sorcery! in this respect, would not appear until 1984.

Another innovation of this series was the capacity to play either a warrior or a wizard. A warrior character was in no way different from the character one typically played in FF books. A wizard, meanwhile, was a rather different experience, thanks in no small part to The Sorcery Spell Book companion volume. The Spell Book describes forty-eight different spells for use with the gamebooks. Each spell had a three-letter name, such as ZAP, which created a lightning bolt or SIX, which created a mirror image of the caster. Spells cost Stamina to cast, limiting the number a wizard could use in the course of a book, since Stamina doubles as your character's hit points. 

More interestingly, the player of a wizard is expected to study the spell book and commit as many of its three-letter spell codes to memory as possible before playing through any of the other books. Referring to the book during play or writing down any of the codes is tantamount to cheating. It's an interesting and immersive way of balancing the use of magic in Sorcery! and I must say I thought it was quite clever when I first encountered it (though I will sheepishly admit to having peaked at the Spell Book occasionally in my initial playthroughs). 

In addition to the Spell Book, Sorcery! consists of four gamebooks: The Shamutanti Hills, Kharé – Cityport of Traps, The Seven Serpents, and The Crown of Kings. Together, they present the situation in which the reader's character finds himself. An evil archmage has stolen an ancient magical artifact known as the Crown of Kings. The Crown grants its wearer supernatural charisma. The archmage intends to make use of it to unite a lawless region under his control and then launch an attack against the civilized nations of the Old World. The reader's character sets out to stop him; his journey takes place over the course of the four books of the series, with each one presenting another portion of it before he finally confronts the archmage in his home territory. 

In terms of its story, Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is nothing special – a salmagundi of fantasy tropes and clichés that we've all seen many times before. However, their presentation is strangely evocative, helped in no small part by the moody artwork of John Blanche, who'd later go on to define much of the world of Warhammer for Games Workshop. Indeed, there are places here and there in Sorcery! where you can catch glimpses of Warhammer before the fact, so the series is of lasting interest from a historical point of view as well. Of course, it's also fun as a gamebook, too. Almost forty years on, I still look back on it very fondly.