From issue #80 of Dragon (December 1983):
Fond though I am of
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I'm having a hard time understanding the sense in which the
Fighting Fantasy gamebooks are "a step beyond
Dungeons & Dragons." I had a lot of fun with these books. They were a great diversion when I wasn't able to get together with my friends for one reason or another. However, much like the
Choose Your Own Adventure books that preceded them, there were inherent limitations to the range of choices available in
any gamebook, no matter how well written. For what it's worth, I feel the same way about computer roleplaying games, which are vastly more sophisticated than gamebooks. Even at their best, they cannot compare to the freedom available to players in traditional tabletop RPGs.
Aside from just being somewhat meaningless advertising copy, I always understood these ads to be saying that the fighting fantasy books were a step beyond in that they were written by people who knew what they were doing, and could tell a more detailed story than would be possible in a table top session. And while this is true to an extent (I still have almost visceral memories of parts of Firetop Mountain), I agree entirely with your take. So...advertising copy.
ReplyDeleteFighting Fantasy Classics is available for free on the iPhone store, although I haven’t played yet. Sorcery! Is also available, albeit for $4.99.
ReplyDeleteSorcery! was great. I enjoyed it even more than the FF series books.
DeleteCorrection - FFC is $3.99 each to actually play, after downloading the initial app. Sorcery! is $4.99 for just the first book, $4.99 for each of the 3 others or $16.99 for the bundle.
DeleteThe Sorcery! apps are excellent, featuring a lot of QoL improvements etc. They're very much not just transcriptions of the game books. I recommend them.
DeleteI agree. The Sorcery! Ipad apps are great. I really enjoyed them.
Delete..uh...Marketing?
ReplyDeleteCorrection - FFC is $3.99 per book after downloading the initial app. Sorcery! Is $4.99 for each of the 4 books, or $16.99 for the bundle.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's called marketing. By the time FF and WoFM hit the USA, about 15 months or so after debuting in the UK, and before this ad appeared in Dragon, WoFM was close to having sold a million copies on its own (or maybe it had by then), and FF was on its way to becoming a publishing phenomenon. They were great, fantastic absolutely, and obviously struck a chord with gamers and non-gamers alike.
ReplyDeleteBut if it's freedom of choice you want then no, no gamebook will be able to compete with a in-the-flesh DM. Playing devil's advocate, I would argue that freedom of choice and seemingly unlimited choices for a player is not what makes a RPG adventure great, or even one that produces memorable encounters. It's story. Story. Story. Story. Story, first through ten. Somewhere around eleven we can start talking about everything else, like having a multitude of choices.
I've had many memorable moments in gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and a few in the Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures. I would say they do outnumber memorable encounters around a tabletop with other people by quite a large number. Storytelling!
Are you seriously saying "story" is what makes a tabletop module great? I'm guessing you have a fairly permissive definition of the word, possibly one that goes beyond what is useful.
DeleteI'm imagine you mean something like "user story" - which is very often tied to multitude of choices. That's certainly something required in the great user stories that emerge from something like Caverns of Thracia, for example, which most would criticize for its lack of traditional story elements.
While the copy is very much puff, there was an area where the FF gamebooks were a step beyond D&D: you could take one with you and play it on the bus, or waiting for a music lesson, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteIt was the only way to get a gaming fix without an opponent.
That is certainly true.
Delete