Sir Ian Livingstone will be in Santa Maria da Feira on 25th April, to attend Comic Con Portugarl 2026. To find out more, follow this link.
Portuguese publisher Porto Editora reissued the Fighting Fantasy collection in Portugal in 2025, where it is historically known as Aventuras Fantásticas. The first reissued titles, O Feiticeiro da Montanha de Fogo and A Masmorra Inferna, are already available in bookstores, with A Cidade dos Ladrões joining them this year.
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Available in Finnish for the first time are The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Return to Firetop Mountain, and Deathtrap Dungeon.
Published by Epic Ermine, the three Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were launched at the Helsinki Book Fair, on 23rd October 2025.
Finnish fans and hardcore collectors can buy the books here.
Exciting news from Steve Jackson Games in America... they have recently taken delivery of the new US editions of the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
Watch this space for more news soon!
Sir Ian Livingstone will be attending the Lisbon Book Fair on Saturday 7th June 2025 as part of the relaunch of Fighting Fantasy in Portugal by Porto Editora.
Sir Ian will be signing copies of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Deathtrap Dungeon at 6:00pm at the Porto Editora/Bertrand Editora booth.
Tu Es O Heroi!
Talking of events, it was great to see so many FF fans at the UK Games Expo last weekend. Click here to see some photos taken at the Fighting Fantasy stand during the course of the three-day event.
Scott Mackay produces fully-licensed, hand-painted maps of your favourite Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.
His latest map is of Fire Island, the notorious Island of the Lizard King. But be warned - as well as mapping the location, Scott's maps also show the route through the adventure.
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To date, Scott has produced eight such maps, including ones for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Deathtrap Dungeon, and House of Hell.
You will find them all here, on Scott's Etsy shop.
Sir Ian Livingstone's brand-new gamebook, The Dungeon on Blood Island, written to mark 40 years since the publication of the seminal Deathtrap Dungeon, will launch at Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 on Saturday 7 September 2024.
The official merchandise for Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 is now on sale, via Zazzle. You can pick up T-shirts, in three different designs, hoodies, magnets, headwear, and even a tote bag.
If you are planning to attend Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 you are bound to want to pick up a T-shirt to wear on the day and even if you aren't able to attend the event, you're sure to want to add an item to your FF collection to mark 40 years of Deathtrap Dungeon.
As anyone who attended Fighting Fantasy Fest 3 back in 2019 will tell you, one of the highlights of the day was a special performance of John Robertson's The Dark Room.
Well, we are delighted to be able to announce that The Dark Room will be making a return appearance at Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 this September.
If you're new to The Dark Room, check out the video below to find out more about this award-winning interactive show.
As well as being known for its marauding monsters and epic adventures, fans of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks have long held a great love for the maps that featured in some of the books from time to time.
But now Qatlas has starting producing a range of licensed maps based on the individual adventures which at the same time work as a walkthrough of your favourite FF titles.
Bearing this in mind, you should be aware that there will be spoilers ahead!
So far, there are 15 maps in the series that includes some classic titles - such as Caverns of the Snow Witch and Seas of Blood - as well as some of the newer adventures, such as Shadow of the Giants and Secrets of Salamonis.
Some of the maps are even available as a bundle of five, in the Fighting Fantasy Map Collection #1.
2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Deathtrap Dungeon and the Qatlas collection contains the three linked adventures in the Deathtrap Dungeon 'trilogy'.
There are many more maps to see on Qatlas's store, which you can access here. And rest assured, more maps are on their way.
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.
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.
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...
