Sir Ian Livingstone will be attending UK Games Expo 2024 as a Special Guest, from Friday 31 May - Sunday 2 June.
You will find him at Stand 2-T21 where you will be able to get your Fighting Fantasy gamebooks signed.
Sir Ian Livingstone will be attending UK Games Expo 2024 as a Special Guest, from Friday 31 May - Sunday 2 June.
You will find him at Stand 2-T21 where you will be able to get your Fighting Fantasy gamebooks signed.
Four weeks today, Sir Ian Livingstone will be attending UK Games Expo 2024.
You will find him at Stand 2-T21 where you will be able to get your Fighting Fantasy gamebooks signed.
Fighting Fantasy author and historian Jonathan Green will also be in attendance, and will be sharing Sir Ian's stand for the weekend.
You will also be able to catch both of them at Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 in September.
Solo RPGs are proving very popular in this day and age. However, Advanced Fighting Fantasy Second Edition relies on having a Director to run your gaming sessions. But very soon, you will be able to run your AFF adventures without the need for a Director, thanks to the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Solo Guide.
To find out more, watch the video below by Graham Bottley, the man behind Arion Games, the current holder of the AFF licence.
The Advanced Fighting Fantasy Solo Guide launches on Kickstarter on Tuesday 30 April 2024.
With excitement building regarding the return of Steve Jackson's F.I.S.T. to audio, courtesy of Sound Realms, gaming historian Jordan Sorcery has published a YouTube video that is an in-depth take on the history of Fantasy Interactive Scenarios by Telephone, and you can watch it below.
Tickets are now on sale for the fourth dedicated Fighting Fantasy pub quiz - Draught Tap Dungeon - which will be taking place at The Forester in West Ealing, on 6th September 2024, the night before Fighting Fantasy Fest 5.
We will be raising money for two charities in memory of FF art legend Russ Nicholson, who sadly passed away in 2023. Those two charities are Smile Train and Sight Savers.
This year there will be a new Fans Question Round. If you want to submit a question to this round, you need to purchase a Draught Tap Dungeon - Submit a Question Ticket, but you will need to hurry. These Early Bird tickets are limited to 10 in total and will only be on sale for one month.
If you haven't bought your ticket for Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 yet, you can do so here. See you in September!
Tickets are now on sale for Fighting Fantasy Fest 5.
But numbers are limited so don't delay and buy your ticket today!
We have some exciting news for you to start the week. Iain McCaig - Fighting Fantasy gamebook cover artist, City of Thieves illustrator, and award-winning character designer for many a Hollywood blockbuster - will be attending Fighting Fantasy Fest 5... in person!
Iain McCaig will be joining Sir Ian Livingstone to celebrate 40 years of Deathtrap Dungeon.
Also in attendance at FFF5 will be writers Marc Gascoigne and Paul Mason, along with artists Malcolm Barter and Tony Hough.
Expect more announcements regarding who else willl be joining us at the University of West London on Saturday 7 September 2024 soon.
Tickets for Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 go on sale on Friday 12 April 2024.
Deathtrap Dungeon was the No.1 bestselling children’s book in the UK in 1984, and the 8th bestselling book overall in the UK, even including adult titles.
The Dungeon on Blood Island is a long-awaited sequel.
Sir Ian Livingstone will be attending the Belgian games convention Trolls & Légendes as a Guest of Honour on 30th and 31st March 2024. He will be signing copies of Dice Men, as well as Fighting Fantasy gamebbooks.
Inspired by a holiday Livingstone had taken to Thailand the year before, the plot of the adventure sees the hero taking up the challenge of the Trial of Champions, devised by the fiendish mind of Baron Sukumvit, entering the eponymous dungeon, braving the labyrinth’s fiendish traps and monstrous denizens, in the pursuit of fame and fortune.
"The trek made a big impression on me, enough for me to want to reference the people and places in Deathtrap Dungeon which I began writing in late 1983. But the dungeon plot itself was a product of the dungeons I’d designed during the years I’d been playing D&D. When Penguin Books told us they wanted a sequel to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I thought I’d write a classic dungeon-bash next, but I put it on hold and wrote The Forest of Doom and City of Thieves before Deathtrap Dungeon.”
As well as the River Kok and Fang, the names of several other places Livingstone visited on that fortuitous trip made it into the book, including Chiang Mai. Baron Sukumvit himself was named after Sukumvit Road in Bangkok.
The marriage of both eastern and western influences in the adventure created something entirely new, helping to give the world of Fighting Fantasy a truly unique flavour.
Deathtrap Dungeon was a phenomenal success, selling over 350,000 copies in its first year alone. It was the best-selling
children’s book in April 1984 and was ranked eighth out of all books sold that month,
coming just behind Dick Francis in seventh place and ahead of Stephen King’s Christine in ninth. (Three of the top one hundred
books sold that year were Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.) Deathtrap Dungeon was so successful
that Livingstone’s eighth gamebook was a sequel, Trial of Champions (FF21, published
in 1986).
The book was illustrated inside and out by Livingstone's favourite FF artist, Iain McCaig.
“My favourite black and white illustration is the image of the inscrutable Trialmaster on his dragon-hide throne,” muses McCaig. “It was the height of my love affair with croquill pens, and the quintessential riddle picture that would lead to Casket of Souls.”
Deathtrap Dungeon has been translated and published in multiple foreign language editions over the last 40 years, including the recent Danish version from Faraos Cigarer. It has also inspired RPG adaptations and numerous video game versions, for PlayStation, tablet and PC, and one narrated by Hollywood actor Eddie Marsan.
But what many fans have been wondering over the years is will they ever be invited to undertake the Walk one more time and re-enter Deathtrap Dungeon? Only time will tell...
Fans of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and beautifully sculpted miniatures take note. Blue Giant Studios (a.k.a. Atlantis Miniatures) are currently running a free giveaway competition.
To be in with a chance of winning a Shape Changer and a Bloodbeast miniature* from the Fighting Fantasy Legends range, simply Repost and Like this tweet.
The competition ends on 7 April 2024, and the winner will be announced on 8 April 2024. So why not Test your Luck today?
* All miniatures are supplied unpainted.
Steve Jackson was recently interviewed by Jordan Sorcery for his YouTube channel.
In case you missed it, Sir Ian Livingstone was also interviewed for the same channel back in January.
The Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy Collection 40th Anniversary boxset is released today in Japan, having been delayed from the end of last year.
Available now from Arion Games is Issue #11 of The Warlock Returns, the Advanced Fighting Fantasy fanzine.
It is not an exaggeration to say that without Dungeons & Dragons there would be no Fighting Fantasy gamebooks either.
Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were sharing a flat in Shepherd’s Bush with another friend, John Peake, when the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974, and their lives changed for ever.
They had heard about D&D through fanzines, although they did not actually get hold of a copy of their own until 1975. Jackson once described the arrival of D&D as “manna from heaven”. It was the game they had been waiting for.
Overwhelmed by the possibilities such role-playing games offered imaginative individuals, Jackson, Livingstone and Peake decided to start their own business. In February 1975 Games Workshop was established. Later that year they secured the exclusive European distribution rights for Dungeons & Dragons. Games Workshop started slowly but became a huge success over time, expanding from a bedroom mail order company to become a major retailer and publisher of wargames and RPGs.
You can read about those early years of the company in Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop, by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.
Meanwhile, Geraldine Cooke has taken over Penguin Books' ailing science fiction, fantasy and horror list. Cooke’s best friend Geoff John, an avid Dungeons & Dragons player of several years' standing, told her all about Games Workshop. He told her to ring Jackson and Livingstone and see if they could turn the game, or something like it, into a book.
As a direct result of Cooke’s interest in Games Workshop, Penguin Books took a stand at Games Day 1979 (Games Day being the annual retail and gaming event established by Jackson and Livingstone in the same year they co-founded Games Workshop) ostensibly to promote a new book called Playing Politics.Fired by a combination of entrepreneurial bravado and youthful enthusiasm, Jackson and Livingstone agreed to work up a proposal and outline for a book about the growing fantasy role-playing hobby. The book was intended to be a 'How to' manual of role-playing, but the synopsis they submitted was for a simple solo RPG, presented within the pages of a book. A gamebook. The rest, as they say, is history...