Fighting Fantasy Solo Gamebooks

[JellyPooga]

My sister randomly asked me today whether I still had my adventure gamebooks from way back when, so I gots to thinking about them again for the first time in only the gods know how long. Anyways, I thought it might produce some interesting conversation, so fire away with whatever you got on these low-tech CRPGs.

I thought I'd start with a spoiler request. One particular book I enjoyed more than any other for style, description and general gameplay, but could never complete. The Crimson Tide (No. 47). After playing through too many times without success, I began cheating; first by doing the "keep a finger in the page and turning back if you don't like the outcome of the page you chose" method, then by auto-successing any dice-rolling and finally by literally reading each and every paragraph from 1 to 400 in the hope that I might stumble across the solution...as it happened, I found the required paragraph I needed to complete the game, but not how to get there.
Without giving anything away, you get to a point where one of the options is "unless you know of something else". Now, unless you know from reading it out of sequence that you're supposed to turn to paragraph 198, as far as I can tell, there is nothing in any other paragraph that hints at getting to that paragraph. The only thing I could potentially think of is by converting some phrase into numerics (A=1, B=2 etc.) to arrive at the paragraph numberm but there's no indication that you should do so and no hint at what that phrase could be!
Can someone please tell me how you're supposed to complete this gamebook!

[Comet]

Sorry, can't help you with anything specific, since it's been so long since I read one of these.

I just need to hop on the thread to say that these solo RPG-lite books are all kinds of ace. I especially liked one that had you controlling an entire strarship crew on crazy Star Trek-esque adventures. Each crew member had distinct roles, plus there were of course red shirts to sacrifice. It had everything from ship-to-ship battles to gladiator deathmatches on alien planets. It was glorious.

I also remember my first experience with actual Fighting Fantasy books. I can't remember the name of it, but my experience with it ended with me falling off a wall and dying. Just like that. I gave up then but later I realised that dying of silly accidents is almost the entire point of these epic "games". :smalltongue:

[MrChris]

Having never read the book in question, I can't offer much help, but I just wanted to say that every single Fighting Fantasy book I ever saw had a similar "puzzle" that needed to be solved to finish the game. Back in the day, I got annoyed with those books when I realized that there was essentially one path through each book that would give you the information you needed to complete it, and that most of the paths you could take were red herrings which made it impossible to win. So they were really less like gamebooks, and more like disguised mazes. That kind of killed the whole series for me, which is a shame, because some of them had interesting gimmicks, like Starship Traveller (which I believe is the one Conjob was referring to), or another one where you were a superhero, and had to pick out one of six superpowers at the beginning.

That said, there was a pretty good (and much shorter) spinoff series called Sorcery or something to that effect. There was an ongoing plotline between the books, and you had access to a variety of spells which you could use. I seem to recall that there was even a separate "spellbook" which detailed the different spells you could use. A cynical money-making ploy, no doubt, but it seemed pretty cool when I was in elementary school.

And since this is a Fighting Fantasy thread, I won't even get started on the Lone Wolf or Blood Sword books.

[hamishspence]

I liked them (up to a point) Not all require "add up numbers you should know and turn to the page with that number" but a high proportion do.

One I found particularly memorable was Night Dragon (pic of it looks positively Gigeresque)

[chiasaur11]

I've heard Robot Commando is pretty awesome.
Anyone read that one? Heard it has multiple success routes, even.

[Zorg]

I had around 10-15 of them (they're what got me into RPGs with Dungeoneer and Blacksand).

Robot Commmando is indeed awesome, as is Space Assassin and Keep of the Litch King. Almost all of them have multiple success routes.

Funnily Robot Commando (at least i think it was) was written by the American Steve Jackson, not the Steve Jackson from the UK who appears on the cover of them all, but it was never really mentioned.

[JellyPooga]

One I found particularly memorable was Night Dragon (pic of it looks positively Gigeresque)

Night Dragon was one of my favourites too. I tended to prefer the harder ones like Night Dragon and Deathtrap Dungeon because it meant they had replayability factor. The simple ones like Knights of Doom or Sword of the Samurai (which were almost impossible to not lose, given you don't botch your fights) were disappointing both for the lack of replayability and that you managed to nail it in one go.

I also liked the ones where there was some extra factor like spells (Citadel of Chaos) or special skills (Midnight Rogue) or something peculiar like Age and Ferocity (The Crimson Tide) or a time limit (Daggers of Darkness, Night Dragon).

[Zorg]

Seas of Blood is a really fun (and very hard) one - you have to loot and pillage your way around and gather the most loot in a limited time.

Fangs of Fury is also another timed adventure and quite replayable (And has some of the best pictures IMO.

[garysoh]

Hi there, I am not sure whether you will receive my reply, but I found your query and I registered just to reply you!

The Crimson Tide is definitely not an easy gamebook.

Were you noting down the keywords in the book?

If you were taking the correct path, you should receive the following keywords:
'when', 'king', 'offers', 'sword', 'turn', 'to', '198'
= When king offers sword, turn to 198.

There is ONLY one solution to that book, in which you receive the keywords in order. Hope that helps!

[TheDarkOne]

(they're what got me into RPGs with Dungeoneer and Blacksand)

Me too, I only had a few of the "single player" books though. I've thought a couple times of using the fighting fantasy world in a D&D game, or something similar. With the book "Titan", which collects a lot of the info on the world in one place, it wouldn't be too hard...

[JellyPooga]

Hi there, I am not sure whether you will receive my reply, but I found your query and I registered just to reply you!

The Crimson Tide is definitely not an easy gamebook.

Were you noting down the keywords in the book?

If you were taking the correct path, you should receive the following keywords:
'when', 'king', 'offers', 'sword', 'turn', 'to', '198'
= When king offers sword, turn to 198.

There is ONLY one solution to that book, in which you receive the keywords in order. Hope that helps!

I don't have the book with me now but, of those, the only keywords I recall are 'offers', 'sword' and 'to'...'when', 'king' and 'turn' are possibles that I just don't recall, but I'm almost certain I never saw '198' as a keyword in there. Were those the only keywords you could get, or were there redundant ones as well?

Thanks for the tip anyway! When I get it back off of my sister, I'll have another look...