40 years of House of Hell

For almost thirty years following its initial release back in 1984, House of Hell remained unique; it was the only FF adventure to have a wholly ‘contemporary’ setting. It was not a futuristic, superhero sci-fi yarn, or a post-apocalyptic adventure, but was Fighting Fantasy’s one and only specifically horror-themed adventure, until Blood of the Zombies was published in 2012.

The setting for House of Hell is the sort of nightmare you could imagine yourself ending up in if your car broke down on a lonely country road in a thunderstorm only for you to discover that you were in a mobile phone dead spot.

Other than the fact that there’s no mention of mobile phones, the plot of the book hasn’t dated in the intervening decades. As a result of the aforementioned breakdown and thunderstorm, the hero takes refuge in an old house, but it’s a decision that turns out to be the worst mistake of his life, since the house is home to a cult of devil-worshippers and their demonic Master.

House of Hell first appeared in a shortened form in Warlock magazine. A significant number of references were modified for the paperback version, with rooms being moved around and secret passageways added.

Although his artwork later appeared on the cover for The Citadel of Chaos, Houseof Hell was Ian Miller’s first work for the Fighting Fantasy series. Steve Jackson was so impressed by Miller’s work on House of Hell that he purchased the original painting.

The book was illustrated internally by Tim Sell. However, one of his illustrations - depicting a naked woman on an altar dripping with blood, with her modesty protected by a convenient cultist’s sleeve - was removed from subsequent printings after a number of complaints were received by Puffin Books.

“That did give us a problem,” recalls editor Philippa Dickinson. “We had a lot of complaints. The media suddenly got hold of, ‘was this suitable for children?’ We had various, no doubt very well-meaning, people claiming that we were encouraging children to believe in Satan and Satanism... But we had a lot of very bonkers letters. Some were genuinely concerned about whether this was suitable, and you could be respectful of their views, and we had a few who quoted Revelations at us.

“It was of that time, and it was because the books were so successful, and boys were getting so obsessed, so what were we doing? They were being obsessed by something, so this can’t be healthy, because they’re obsessed. But they’re reading! What are you complaining about?

“At that time our office in New York was at 666 Fifth Avenue… Every so often, they’d get people saying that the company was clearly run by an agent of evil because we operated out of the offices at 666 Fifth Avenue.”

However, attitudes can and do change, and recently an article in The Guardian newspaper recommended House of Hell as a good title for getting disillusioned children enthused about reading again.

The dedication written by Steve Jackson for the Wizard Books edition of House of Hell reads:

Games Night —
to Clive, Ian, Mark, Peter and Skye.
May their Dinner Winnerships be few.
But always more than mine...

The list of names are the members of an exclusive gaming group that’s been running since the mid-1990s, and which includes Peter Molyneux of Populous and Lionhead fame (and more recently with 22 Cans and Godus) among its membership. Games Night is still a regular event, and at the end of each season a cup is awarded.

If you are struggling to complete House of Hell, you can buy a solution map from Qatlas, and there is also one on the way from Scott Mackay.

House of Hell is now available as an app from Tin Man Games, either as a standalone adventure, or as part of the Fighting Fantasy Classics library.

To read more about the history of the Fighting Fantasy series, pick up a copy of YOU ARE THE HERO: An Interactive History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks today.

Blast from the Past! Creature of Havoc

Written by Steve Jackson, co-creator of Fighting Fantasy, and first published in 1986, Creature of Havoc has quite rightly gone on to achieve legendary status and remains a firm favourite with many FF fans today, despite the fact that it is so complex and challenging.

Utilizing a device that has been imitated in numerous gamebooks many times since (and not just Fighting Fantasy ones), the story begins with the hero waking up with no memory of where he is, how he came to be there, who he is or even what he is. The hero is the havoc-creating Creature of the title.

The book even goes so far as to initially give the beast no concept of language or reason. The hero attempts to make choices but is often thwarted in the early stages of the adventure, when the beast all too often resorts to acting on instinct alone. Slowly, however, the greater plot unfolds as the hero begins to discover what exactly has happened to him and who is responsible.

Featuring a flying ship, an undead Half-Elf and Zharradan Marr, an evil witch-born sorcerer, it is a truly memorable adventure with some wonderful set pieces. And no doubt many readers raised a snigger when they discovered that the Creature’s snack food of choice is Hobbits.

The Galleykeep, made by Steve Beale.

The book took Steve Jackson five months to write and contains the longest background section of any FF adventure (running to nineteen pages and containing information on everything from Elven birthing practices to the sorcerer Volgera Darkstorm).

Jackson: “With Sorcery! I’d written each adventure longer than the previous one. I didn’t have the same 400-reference limit which had kind of become a standard like the main FF series. Always looking for new angles, I’d decided that Creature of Havoc would set the reader as a monster. That was a new feature. And that I wouldn’t be bound by the 400-reference adventure. I was particularly pleased with the reader having to learn a language."

But how was Jackson able to include Hobbits in the book? “I can remember there being some debate at the time as to whether Hobbits were copyrighted or not. Someone somewhere came up with a reference to Hobbits in medieval literature.”

The book featured a cover by Ian Miller. The green-skinned figure that is the focus of the image was originally supposed to be Darramouss the undead Half-Elf. However, when Jackson saw the finished painting, he was so impressed he went back and changed the text so that the figure on the front became the Creature’s vile nemesis, the black-hearted, half-demon sorcerer Zharradan Marr.

Zharradan Marr, by Alan Langford.

“In truth I did not know this,” Miller told Alex Ballingall, when he was interviewed for the FF fanzine Fighting Fantazine, “but it’s nice to think the image resonated so. Maybe that comes of reading the book and meeting the author.”

Alan Langford produced the internal illustrations for the book, including such fondly-remembered monsters as the Clawbeast, the Toadmen, and the disturbing undead Master of Hellfire.

“I enjoyed doing that one,” says Langford. “I didn’t like the murder of Hobbits though; I’m quite fond of them.”

Master of Hellfire, by Alan Langford.

So which is the artist’s favourite image from the book?

“I think it’s one with the shadow of the monster in the foreground and a Dwarf cowering in the background. That one stays in my mind in particular, not because it was my favourite, because it… sort of turned the situation around in a visual way. You got that experience all the way through the written part that Steve did, but my illustration… that was the one that sort of brought it together. The rest could have been just an ordinary Fighting Fantasy book, but that’s the one that stays in my mind.”

Cowering Dwarf, by Alan Langford.

Creature of Havoc was the last FF title to bear the green zigzag banner across the top of its cover and is also the last Fighting Fantasy gamebook Jackson has written to date.

The book remains a fan-favourite to this day. “It was full of great details and ingenious puzzles,” says Jon Ingold of Inkle Studios, the people behind the app versions of Jackson’s Sorcery! series, “and really pushed the boundaries of how these books could work.”

Creature of Havoc is back for a new generation in a a new edition, available now from Scholastic UK.

The French edition of the adventure is also available in a new edition, from Gallimard.

Blast from the Past! House of Hell

For almost thirty years following its initial release back in 1984, House of Hell remained unique; it was the only FF adventure to have a wholly ‘contemporary’ setting. It was not a futuristic, superhero sci-fi yarn, or a post-apocalyptic adventure, but was Fighting Fantasy’s one and only specifically horror-themed adventure. That was until Blood of the Zombies was published in 2012.

There have been other FF adventures that play with familiar horror tropes – notably books like Vault of the Vampire, Moonrunner and Howl of the Werewolf – but all of these are primarily fantasy adventures with a good dose of horror thrown in. House of Hell , on the other hand, is the sort of nightmare you could imagine yourself ending up in if your car broke down on a lonely country road in a thunderstorm only for you to discover that you were in a mobile phone dead spot.

Other than the fact that there’s no mention of mobile phones, the plot of the book hasn’t dated in the intervening decades. As a result of the aforementioned breakdown and thunderstorm, the hero takes refuge in an old house, but it’s a decision that turns out to be the worst mistake of his life, since the house is home to a cult of devil-worshippers and their demonic Master.

House of Hell first appeared in a shortened form (only 185 references this time) in Warlock magazine. A significant number of references were modified for the paperback version, with rooms being moved around and secret passageways added.

Although his artwork later appeared on the cover for The Citadel of Chaos, House of Hell was Ian Miller’s first work for the Fighting Fantasy series.

“I got the job through the art agency Young Artists, which is now known as Arena,” Miller told Alex Ballingall when he was interviewed for the Fighting Fantazine in 2012. “I did a series of roughs, four I think, and Steve chose the version he liked best. It was an easy process.

“When I did cover work (I’m not often asked these days), I worked maybe one or two up on the published book size. The image would be penciled in, then inked and coloured. I used Illustration board for the most part… I always read the books I did covers for. It made sense in my opinion… I think the first, House of Hell, was the best of the bunch.”

Steve Jackson was so impressed by Miller’s work on House of Hell that he purchased the original painting.

The book was illustrated internally by Tim Sell. However, one of his illustrations was removed from subsequent printings after a number of complaints were received by Puffin Books.

The illustration in question accompanied paragraph 264 and depicted a naked woman on an altar dripping with blood (although her modesty was protected by a convenient cultist’s sleeve). The result of the removal of the illustration was that paragraphs 255 through to 263 had to be moved about and spaced out with additional filler pictures.

“That did give us a problem,” recalls editor Philippa Dickinson. “We had a lot of complaints. The media suddenly got hold of, ‘was this suitable for children?’ We had various, no doubt very well-meaning people, claiming that we were encouraging children to believe in Satan and Satanism... I do remember one of the people who was interviewed for television said that her child had come out with the mark of the Devil on his body and when she threw the book into the fire the marks on his body disappeared.

“It was of that time, and it was because the books were so successful, and boys were getting so obsessed, so what were we doing? They were being obsessed by something, so this can’t be healthy, because they’re obsessed. But they’re reading! What are you complaining about?"

When House of Hell was released in the US it was renamed as House of Hades, since ‘Hell’ was a more common swear-word with religious connotations in America than it was in the UK.

“In the middle of all of this craze, and all of the people saying that we were corrupting children, we also had as many, if not more people saying, ‘Thank God! My son is finally reading.’" says Dickinson. "Boys were reading because they saw it as a game, not a book. They were reading because everybody else was doing it.”

This wasn’t the only time that Fighting Fantasy courted controversy. The FF series has had its fair share of vehemently outspoken enemies in the UK.

“The Evangelical Alliance published an eight page warning guide about the potential danger of reading Fighting Fantasy leading to devil worship!” says a clearly stunned Livingstone. “And a worried housewife in deepest suburbia reportedly said on radio that after having read one of my books, her son levitated. Kids thought, ‘Great – for £1.25 I can fly!’ This was all wonderful PR for Fighting Fantasy.”

Did you know...?

The dedication written by Steve Jackson for the Wizard Books edition of House of Hell reads:

Games Night —
to Clive, Ian, Mark, Peter and Skye.
May their Dinner Winnerships be few.
But always more than mine...

The list of names are the members of an exclusive gaming group that’s been running since the mid-1990s, and which includes Peter Molyneux of  Lionhead Studios fame among its membership. Games Night is still a regular event, and at the end of each season a cup is awarded.

House of Hell LIVE is coming to Fighting Fantasy Fest 3!

On Friday we revealed that Ian Miller will be one of the guests attending Fighting Fantasy Fest 3, and today we can reveal another one-off event that will be taking place on the day to mark 35 years since the publication of Steve Jackson's seminal House of Hell.

House of Hell LIVE is an interactive theatre show, based on the classic gamebook by Steve Jackson, and adapted by The World of Legend. The World of Legend has fast gained a reputation for putting on amazing interactive adventures, since its founding only a few years ago, and the group's The School of Witches and Wizards show is even rated #2 on Trip Advisor's list of things to do in Rye!

Please note that due to the nature of the show there are a limited number of places available for House of Hell LIVE, and it does incur an additional charge. However, it will not take place at the same time as John Robertson's The Dark Room, so you will be able to attend both, if you so desire.

So don't delay, secure you ticket for Fighting Fantasy Fest 3 today, and your ticket for House of Hell LIVE here.

House of Hell cover artist Ian Miller to attend Fighting Fantasy Fest 3!

Good news for fans of the gothic and the macabre - Ian Miller, who produced the cover art for Steve Jackson's House of Hell, is coming to Fighting Fantasy Fest 3!

Ian is a highly regarded artist, and actually produced the cover art for six of the original Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, including Creature of Havoc and a revised cover for The Citadel of Chaos. He also drew the black and white internal illustrations for Phantoms of Fear.

So if you've always wanted to meet the mastermind behind such masterpieces as the definitive portraits of Zharradan Marr and the Demon Prince Ishtra, then grab your ticket for Fighting Fantasy Fest 3 today!

Zharradan Marr in all his gothic glory!

The Demon Prince Ishtra!

Classic Cover! House of Hell

2019 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of a number of classic, and ever-popular, Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, including Steve Jackson's House of Hell.

For almost thirty years following its initial release back in 1984, House of Hell remained unique; it was the only FF adventure to have a wholly ‘contemporary’ setting. It was not a futuristic, superhero sci-fi yarn, or a post-apocalyptic adventure, but was Fighting Fantasy’s one and only specifically horror-themed adventure. That was until Blood of the Zombies was published in 2012.

House of Hell is the sort of nightmare you could imagine yourself ending up in if your car broke down on a lonely country road in a thunderstorm only for you to discover that you were in a mobile phone dead spot.

Other than the fact that there’s no mention of mobile phones, the plot of the book hasn’t dated in the intervening decades. As a result of the aforementioned breakdown and thunderstorm, the hero takes refuge in an old house, but it’s a decision that turns out to be the worst mistake of his life, since the house is home to a cult of devil-worshippers and their demonic Master.

The late games designer Alan Bligh was interviewed about the influence of the gamebook back in 2013: “Speaking as a kid who stayed up late to watch old Hammer movies, which I loved, I was absolutely there in my imagination, and that strange Ian Miller cover? Fantastic.”

Although his artwork later appeared on the cover for The Citadel of Chaos, House of Hell was Ian Miller’s first work for the Fighting Fantasy series.

“I got the job through the art agency Young Artists, which is now known as Arena,” Miller told Alex Ballingall when he was interviewed for the Fighting Fantazine in 2012. “I did a series of roughs, four I think, and Steve chose the version he liked best. It was an easy process.

“When I did cover work (I’m not often asked these days), I worked maybe one or two up on the published book size. The image would be pencilled in, then inked and coloured. I used illustration board for the most part… I always read the books I did covers for. It made sense in my opinion… I think the first, House of Hell, was the best of the bunch.”

Steve Jackson was so impressed by Miller’s work on House of Hell that he purchased the original painting.

House of Hell is available again, in a new edition, courtesy of Scholastic Books, with cover art by Rob Ball, and can be picked up here.

The Imaginarium of Ian Miller

Anyone who played Warhammer back in the 1980s and '90s will doubtless have experienced the wonder, and maybe a little fear, at coming across the incredibly detailed, dream-like work of Ian Miller.

Terror of the Lichemaster, by Ian Miller.

And of course Fighting Fantasy fans remember him fondly for his gamebook covers, including The Citadel of Chaos, House of Hell, Creature of Havoc, Phantoms of Fear, for which he also produced the internal illustrations, Spectral Stalkers, and Magehunter.

        

     

If you are interested in owning one of Ian's original FF illustrations then simply follow this link.

The Second Swordsman – 'We’re not on Titan anymore (Toto)'

This week it's time for the sixth in Malcolm Garcia's Second Swordsman series. Enjoy!

The Second Swordsman – 'We’re not on Titan anymore (Toto)'

By Malcolm Garcia

After coming so very close to succeeding in my first FIGHTING FANTASY adventure by arbitrarily choosing every second option (in Battleblade Warrior) I decided to attempt a trio of adventures which, while starting on the familiar world of Titan, soon cast the adventurer far away into places hitherto unknown.

In Spectral Stalkers, Portal of Evil and Phantoms of Fear YOU start as an adventurer on the continent of Khul. I’d previously only visited Khul when attempting Seas of Blood and was looking forward to exploring more of the land-based perils. Spectral and Portal start off in the south-west of the continent, near the town of Neuburg and were both written by Peter Darvill-Evans (his other addition to the FIGHTING FANTASY range being Beneath Nightmare Castle, which is actually set in Neuburg). Phantoms is set in north-east Khul and was written by Robin Waterfield, who also penned Masks of Mayhem and Deathmoor (which I’ll attempt if I can ever get my hands on a copy without having to sell a kidney).

In Spectral I started off with impressive SKILL and LUCK scores, but my STAMINA was not so great and I had only two meals and a small amount of gold. But none of this would be of any consequence as choosing every second option proved to be a particularly foolish process to use in this adventure. At the very start YOU are whisked away from Khul after coming into possession of a magical artifact that is being sought by the eponymous Spectral Stalkers. But from the very beginning of Spectral I had no idea about what I should be doing or where I should be going. While this was initially intriguing, it soon gave way to a feeling of helplessness.

I bumbled through the Library of Limbo (ignoring advice from a dragon librarian) and, despite several opportunities to do otherwise, failed to learn anything useful about the world I was in or my quest. I managed to ignore so many things in Spectral that I didn’t even have a single battle in the whole adventure. (The only other time this happened was in Island of the Lizard King – where I died within four choices of the start). I also never once got to Test my Luck. I got the feeling in Spectral that I made a poor choice near the start which would have otherwise led to me gathering some important knowledge and objects. What killed me in the end was suitably anticlimactic – it wasn’t a horrible trap or a fiendish beast, but a moat of acid. Even Deathtrap Dungeon provided some imaginative expanding fungus to finish me off.

Giving southwestern Khul (and Peter Darvill-Evans) the benefit of the doubt, I returned there to explore the mystery of the Portal of Evil. This adventure is set in the wilderness between the cities of Zagoula and Neuburg, but the eponymous portal promised to whisk me far away from all of this, if I could survive long enough to find it. Which I didn’t. It all started so very well, with decent SKILL and STAMINA scores (and a joke in the introduction about lawyers being akin to thieves). But then I adopted a passive approach that is all-too-familiar when choosing every second option. While I did get to fight my first ever FIGHTING FANTASY dinosaur, the battle was over before I could kill it, I also failed to help a talking dinosaur, didn’t search a body of a foe I’d killed, and even ignored a shiny thing hidden in a tree. Surely everybody knows that on Titan adventures can succeed based solely on the possession of shiny things!

I also, in a manner similar to Spectral, had the feeling that I made a poor choice early in Portal. There were several times at relatively early stages of my quest where I was asked if I had certain specific objects I’d yet to come across – a ring of zombie warding, a warrant from the Margrave, and even some gold coins. This happened often enough to make me believe I had missed out on an important chunk of the adventure by following the Second Swordsman process. In another disappointment, my failure in Portal was brought about by being captured by a group of soldiers. While this isn’t my biggest failure, I’d put it on par with my fate in Trial of Champions.

And so then I travelled far, to the north-east of Khul and the Affen Forest to become a Forest Elf and learn from a dream that I needed to defeat a Demon Prince. In Phantoms dreams are an important part of the adventure; you learn things through them, and at later stages of your quest you can alternate between the real world and the dream world. The illustrations by Ian Miller (who did the covers for several FIGHTING FANTASY novels but only did the internals once) enrich the nightmarish atmosphere of the adventure which, for the most part, gave me a sense of being worn down by despair.

My initial SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK scores were reasonable (but not great), and Phantoms added a POWER score which gave the ability to cast spells. Unlike Spectral, from the beginning of my adventure I knew where I needed to go, and I fought plenty of creatures along the way – sixteen in total. Several of these battles were made more difficult by imposed losses of SKILL (I’m looking at you Fog Devil and everything I faced after breathing in the evil mist). I also had several battles where there were a few too many unlucky rolls of the dice (against the Wolves – who almost killed me – and a Komodo Lizard). But I was saved from an early defeat in Phantoms by my own food scavenging skills, and choosing the potion of strength at the start of the adventure. What didn’t help me was anyone at all. There were no friendly witches, merchants or fellow adventurers to give me any advice or special objects; I was on my own from the very beginning.

After making my way through the depressing part of the forest, that had been blighted by the evil of the Demon Prince, I finally entered their underground lair and gained the ability to control my shifting between the real and dream worlds. Rather than do this at every opportunity I made the decision to do it every second time it was offered. The two worlds are parallel to each other – a path you take in one will move you forward in the other. But soon after my first attempt at changing into the dream world, my real world body was attacked and I had to change again to complete the fight. Then, on my second opportunity to enter the dream world, I had to fight a mirror image of myself, a fight that somewhat arbitrarily took the shape of a series of random dice rolls, of which I lost way too many and was killed.

All in all these three adventures were a rather unsuccessful attempt to find success away from the familiar world of Titan. I never reached the portal in Portal, I entered the dream world only fleetingly in Phantoms and, while I went far away in Spectral, I never knew what I was trying to do when I got there. But I was intrigued by the world I visited in Spectral, and the depressing atmosphere of Phantoms meant I’d visit both of these FIGHTING FANTASY adventures again one day.

Thank you, once agin, to Malcolm, for another Second Swordsman blog post. If you have any suggestions for items for the official Fighting Fantasy blog don't forget to get in touch via mail@fightingfantasy.com.