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contributions to what would become The
Warlock Of Firetop Mountain separately. “We decided to try and do half the book each, and the middle would be designated by the river that you come across in the middle of the story,” says Jackson. “So ian was writing everything up to the river and i was writing everything past the river. When we handed in the manuscript, the editor in charge at the time said, ‘well, it’s a great idea but it’s completely unreadable as when you get to the river, the style changes completely.’ So we had to go back, rewrite it and change the style, and that time we got it right, and they accepted it.”
as livingstone recently rediscovered while working on The Port Of Peril – his first new
Fighting Fantasy title in more than two decades – penning such an adventure is not a straightforward process. “to begin with, you have the overarching storyline and what the mission is going to be in your head, and then the story evolves as you go,” he explains. “You’re writing several storylines that come together at various pinch points. But at the same time, you have to go back and forth because you suddenly realise further on in the adventure that you need a key, so you have to go back and place the key in a chest or in a room somewhere to allow the player to then discover it. at the same time, you also have to balance the economy, so there’s not too much or too little gold.”
Most importantly, the author has to ensure that they tread that fine line between making the task at hand too easy or too difficult. “You’ve got to make sure that it’s achievable,” continues livingstone. “that there is one true way through it, and that there aren’t any loops where you can end up just going around in a circle. So there’s a lot of game playing and testing as well as checking that the narrative is fine and, of course, that the story is enjoyable, which can be a bit of a nightmare as there are a lot of component parts.”
With the success of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain quickly followed by The Citadel Of Chaos and The Forest Of Doom in 1983, Jackson at least was determined to bring some diversity to the range by exploring other genres. “the system that we’d designed with skill, stamina and luck was fine but i was interested in what else we could do to make each book a little different than the last,” Jackson says. “the first one we did was Starship Traveller, which was basically our version of Star Trek. from there, we went into horror with House Of Hell. the last gamebook that i did was Creature Of Havoc in 1986, where instead of you going out and killing the monsters, you were a monster who killed humans and dwarves.”
Written by livingstone, Freeway Fighter was reminiscent of Mad Max, whose third instalment Beyond Thunderdome was also released in 1985. “everyone is influenced by the culture around them at the time, and i clearly enjoyed watching Mad Max,” says livingstone. “But Freeway Fighter was more about the car and the person driving it as opposed to being about the world of Mad Max.”
With Freeway Fighter representing a rare foray into other genre territory, livingstone preferred to concentrate on the traditional fantasy of titles like Deathtop Dungeon and
City Of Thieves. “that’s my sweet spot,” he says. “Just like how Jrr tolkien built up the world of Middle-earth in The Lord Of The
Rings, i built up the world of allansia, which is the mythical land where most of my adventures take place. i wanted it to be consistent and coherent, so that the different books could coexist and link together.”
With Fighting Fantasy growing in popularity over the early 1980s, the decision was made to bring in other authors to alleviate the workload. “puffin wanted a book a month to feed this hungry monster,” recalls Jackson. “But there was no way that ian and i could do that as we had Games Workshop duties as well.”
the first new scribe to make it into print was another Steve Jackson, the texan founder of Steve Jackson Games, this created some confusion when Scorpion Swamp was published in 1984. “We’d already decided that we’d put the books by other writers out under the banner ‘ian livingstone and Steve Jackson presents…’ so when it came out, it was ‘ian livingstone and Steve Jackson presents
Scorpion Swamp by Steve Jackson’,” laughs Jackson, who met with his namesake at Games
I was interested in what we could do to make each book different than the last
Workshop’s london headquarters. “after we’d finished our business, we asked Steve if he’d like to go to the tower of london, Stonehenge or some other tourist attraction. But he said, ‘no, but lend me a typewriter and i’ll have a go at one of those books for you,’ and sure enough, he did. in the three days he was here, he wrote about a third of Scorpion Swamp.”
With the rising popularity of videogames eventually impacting upon Fighting Fantasy’s sales, livingstone and Jackson departed the company after selling their shares in 1992. “Fighting Fantasy was essentially analogue hypertext, and in many ways it was a prequel to the videogames that came along, especially the adventure games,” reasons livingstone, whose final gamebook – at least until the publication of The Port Of Peril – was 1992’s Return To Firetop Mountain. “Fighting Fantasy eventually went out of print from puffin in 1995, but we had a pretty good run for 13 years. nothing lasts forever and as people migrated to videogames, so did we. But then in 2002, Wizard Books made an offer to republish the books and we were delighted for that. and now we’re seeing a huge resurgence in the genre, as it moves from one generation to the next.”
coinciding with Fighting Fantasy’s 35th anniversary, the past 12 months have not only seen a Freeway Fighter mini-series from titan comics, and nomad Games’s Fighting Fantasy Legends digital card game, but also the publication of The Port Of Peril and the reissuing of five classic titles from Scholastic uK. “Fighting Fantasy has survived the test of time,” says livingstone, admitting that there is one significant spin-off that has so far proved elusive. “We’re surprised that there hasn’t been a major motion picture such is the awareness of Fighting Fantasy. it’s such a rich world with its own geography, climate, economics, culture and society. anything you want to know about it is there already, so it’s just a matter of somebody using this great font of information to create something really compelling.”
The Port Of Peril and rejacketed new editions of the book series are out now from Scholastic. Fighting Fantasy Legends is also out now.