speaking of original ff, does anyone know how to get hold of wizard or who is currently publishing the books?

Myself, I always wanted to play ff, but along with the majority of computer games produced after the release of the ps1, as well as reading standard fantasy books, lack of ability to read print rather got in the way until! htmlified or other text copies of books got online, which also means the majority of books I've played have been produced by ameter authors, ---- not that that's a bad thing.

Thus, I never played lone wolf back until 2005 on the project.aon site.

I've been trying to get hold of wizard to point out selling html, or even pdf versions of the original books would make them accessible to people who weren't able to play them as book form, but this has had no luck thus far sinse they refuse to answer my E-mails.

While I'm pleased generally more people are interested in gamebooks, I do have to admit to being quite frustrated that when we now have the technology to make those books playable by print impared people, the money grabbing publishing houses reffuse to do so.

I freely admit I'm a litle irritated by this, sinse where as making computer games accessible is a lengthy process, making gamebooks that way requires nothing but producing in a text friendly format, yet it doesn't happen.

If anyone has a suggestion for whome I could contact, I'd appreciate hereing it.

Robert Douglas
Tue Sep 6 14:56:47 2011

Hi Dark,

I'm not really on expert on the subject, but it seems a Kindle type of digital publication is the future. The problem with physical books (much as we enjoy collecting them) is limited in the amount they print, and it's no longer cost effective to keep printing with a lack of demand. In the beginning, millions of copies were printed and sold, then sadly, demand plummeted for both FF and Lone Wolf titles in the mid-90's. Who knows? Perhaps we'll see commissioned gamebooks under Wizard? Until then, it's a shame younger generations are missing out on memorable titles such as Legend of the Shadow Warriors, Vault of the Vampire, Moonrunner, etc.

Last I heard, Joe Dever decided to post his Lone Wolf adventures online - for free, I assume. However, FF's commisioned authors may be tied down by legal reasons; Wizard probably has the last word and may be holding back their adventures for the right moment. In other words, a money-making moment. It's a shame that we live in world driven by money, but on the other hand the author's finances would see that much better.

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with Wizard Books replying - but it's a truly optimistic person who expects a positive result. Many businesses operate through ruthless, cut-throat methods. Bernard Cornwell (one of my fave authors outside FF) was turned down time and again by publishers. Can you guess what it was...? Sharpe. Now, loads of books published, most of which adapted for television. Right. My point: don't always take a publisher's opinion/response as gospel. Sometimes they're right, sometimes not - and often, good ideas get trampled on. It's sad to think how many never get through.

I've read some gamebooks on here - and the Official FF site run by Jamie Fry - written by people with real potential. Sadly, Wizard Books won't offer a contract to new gamebooks designers while most commissioned authors from Puffin FF have gone out of print. It may seem unfair for online contributors who put in just as much work and effort in - but obviously, we 'amateur' authors all share a common trait called ego. It's not a bad thing and can be uplifting to both parties; I get a buzz whenever somebody reads my writing, and hope they have a good experience.

Okay, I may not be getting paid for my writing, but this is certainly the next best thing. Authors like myself have made a conscious decision to put their hard work online for free. I've done four adventures so far, and quite happy to show it off for all to see, for free, with others planned for the future. The choice is always there for us to approach publishers (however daunting!) or post it online. As long as author's copyright is not violated. There is a chance publishers may like what they see and offer a deal (it would have to be a new project) but I wouldn't hold my breath. Still, we live in hope.

Perhaps - as you're probably suggesting - digital, online versions of books are the future. When people download these, they pay a certain amount, and established authors can enjoy a continued trickle of royalties. Meanwhile, the reader suddenly receives an extensive choice of FF (nearly seventy titles, I think) without worrying how long they'll be 'in print'! Such a phrase will soon become obsolete, I hope.

You certainly do have a point about availability of titles in various formats. And my Green side always guilted about how much rainforest we're chopping down to sate our literary appetites!

dark
Wed Sep 7 18:25:22 2011

Hi Robbert.

Just a miner correction, accessible online versions does not equal free, heck check out www.podiobooks.com for a lot of podcast books that are donation by choice only (I'd highly recommend the corridor and the secret world chronicle series).

Even though i generally prefer to read with a human reader if possible, I recently bought pdf copies of the falcon banner series by Christopher Lydan from www.lulu.com, a fantastic sf series, and one published as pdfs where you pay for the download. It was this sort of thing I was thinking of for gamebooks.

that way not only those defficient in the eyeball department, but also a lot of future generations as you pointed out will be able to enjoy the ff classics, and can fit all 70 on a cd.

I actually find it surprising gamebook publishers aren't doing more online, especially sinse now things like tabletop game rules are being produced as pdfs.

Myself, I've been lucky enough to have a friend who's an ff fan and who read me three of the books, valt of the vampire, creature of chaos, and Warlock of firetop mountain, ---- we finished valt of the vampire, but couldn't get very far at all in creature of chaos.

We did get to one of the major bosses in warlock of firetop mountain (I forget it's name, but it was huge and very destructive and took a magical flight to get there), but sadly ended up dead. I can't however presume on my friend constantly, especially when it comes to retrying books many times, nor do I have the cash to actually pay someone full time, ---- I get a student assistant grant to have someone read articals for my phd, but this doesn't really cover ff ;D.

At least though there are sites like this one, project aon and the chronicles of arborell of which I'm a huge fan, and people who have their work in a form which is equally accessible.

Btw, I've just made it to the ranks of authordom myself, and would be happy if people read my stuff and enjoy it. I've submitted my comedy dungeons adventure for the windhammer competition, and am at the moment working on my first serious gamebook with the darkgrue program.

On another subject entirely, any hints for rongway go back? I really want to try the others in the series, but I'd like to complete the first book first.

I keep getting to the ship in the cargo hold and ending up dead. I think there is something I need to do with the parent bot's pannel, but though I've found a screwdriver it's got no power.

I usually try and work things out myself, and have got through several books on this site including alabar's toomb, but wrongway seems to have me completely stumped!

asgardian
Fri Sep 9 01:03:20 2011

It is nice to see a few new faces here. Yes, many of us have happy memories of playing the FF books in the 80's. I remember playing City of Thieves while it was raining outside -it provided the perfect atmosphere...

asgardian
Fri Sep 9 01:06:26 2011

On another note, I know there have been some tentative efforts to bring some of the FF titles such as Sorcery! and Creature of Havoc to the "isystems", but I would like to see the entire series placed on disc as a set available for purchase. It would make things much simpler. Of course, there has to be a market for this.

Robert Douglas
Fri Sep 9 10:46:56 2011

Hi Dark,

Did you mean 'Citadel of Chaos' or 'Creature of Havoc'? Both gamebooks (being written by Steve Jackson) are quite complex in design, and the true path is often a knife-edge. 'Creature of Havoc' proved more ambitious;

SPOILER

END SPOILER

. I made an article some years ago, explaining how to do this for those struggling (like myself, until one day I sat down and did it properly). If you want me to put on here for you, please say - but it'll be under the spoiler block!

I'll try to read your comedy adventure if I have time; at the moment I'm consumed with writing the second Sean Calibre mission, and 'Prison of Pestilence' will become part of a trilogy. In the meantime, good luck with the Windhammer competition!

Jordan Sat Sep 10 13:42:40 2011	Hey, all. Hope everyone's well. I was curious about Ulysses's gamebooks. Planet of the spiders, and Golden Crate aren't on the gamebooks page anymore, or maybe I'm overlooking them. At any rate, my screen reader says they're not there. *Grins. Let me know what's up. Maybe they're being editted or whatever. Thanks.
	They are definitely there.

Robert Douglas
Fri Sep 16 15:29:54 2011

I don't know if it's worth my time posting any more gamebooks on the net. I've just sent Jamie (Official FF site) a mail, explaining how annoying it is having to spend £100 or more just to install latest version of Word. I wrote both my gamebooks using Wordperfect, which could easily be copied on to my trial version of Word. However, this version ran out months ago; I can't edit documents, only open and save, etc.

I've just tried sending Jamie POP and SS under the format described above. However, for some reason, his software can't open them.

I'm also concerned about my downloaded adventures on this site. Has anybody experienced difficulty when trying to open these?

Writing is the only thing I'm good at. It's bad enough I live in country that doesn't encourage potential, and frowns on those blowing their own trumpet (we've been taught that's a bad thing). Just for once, it would be nice to have something go right, smoothly - without constant obstacles being thrown up. It all makes me so low.

Even with a relatively old version of Word (2000), I wasn't able to read them. Somehow, I converted them into Word format. It is the converted versions that are on the downloads page, so hopefully nobody has had any difficulty opening them.

If you don't want to pay for Word, you could try Open Office (http://openoffice.org).

SCC
Sat Sep 17 03:26:00 2011

Robert, are you Australian? Sounds familiar...

Robert Douglas
Sun Sep 18 15:34:24 2011

@ SCC,

Hi, no I'm not. I'm from England, Britain. I'm not really a people person, nor really sociable face to face. Been let down too many times by all the two-faced attitude and backstabbing. If it was practical for me to become a hermit, I would.

Books, writing, nature, and games have become my life. For me, three good things about Britain: 1) the countryside (nature), 2) influence on the arts over the last fifty years, 3) damn good selection of comedy since 1960's.

For me, all the above are worthy of time and energy. I pick up the most interesting of stories - there was an aristocrat who couldn't stand being spoken to, even by his servants. If they encountered each other, he stood to one side, while they had to ignore him completely!

Yeah, I think I know where he's coming from....

john
Mon Sep 19 12:21:30 2011

I've just come on and saw the posts on word compatability issues. As far as opening and/or converting word documents goes, you may want to install the microsoft compatability pack, (run a search for it on www.microsoft.com) or you could install the free document converter from www.nchsoftware.com.

Robert Douglas
Sat Sep 24 10:30:23 2011

Hi, thanks for all the advice. I've downloaded the Open Office suite. However, when saving a file, what should I save it as? .PDF doesn't come up in the drop-down menu - although there's a dozen other file types to select from. Open Office is '.ODF (or something like that), so would that be okay?

Personally, I would choose "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)", I think that's probably the most widely understood format you have on offer. RTF is another good one. Currently I wouldn't use the Open Office format for anything that I wanted to distribute.

As for .PDF, the orthodox way is to buy the software from Adobe. As this costs more than you didn't want to spend on Word, that's not really an option. However, if you search online for free PDF creation software you should be able to find something usable if necessary.

EmpireOfTheSun
Wed Nov 2 05:33:32 2011

Hi, I am a fan and have read the majority of gamebooks here, as well as being a huge fan of the Fighting Fantasy Series. Havent been on in a while, and just wanted to chirp in with my continued thanks and support. Gonna check out the new gamebooks posted now!

Ibrahim
Fri Nov 4 02:10:12 2011

@Phil. Oh yes, you've got hard playing down to an art. I never did complete Riders of the storm or hellfire, they were too hard to keep me interested, also I wasn't taken with the settings of the stories but whatever floats your boat.

Jezza
Sun Nov 6 15:47:12 2011

Just found this website. Never really got in to roleplaying games other than through the books that Livingstne and Jackson produced in the 80s.

Loving these games. Thanks to everyone involved.

Phil Sadler
Mon Nov 7 11:18:06 2011

Hey all, I just went to http://uk.akinator.com (a page that guesses famous people or characters) and found that it did not seem to know too much about Fighting Fantasy! It even had the audacity to not know what a Bloodbeast is. I soon corrected that fault of course, and now advise all FF fans to go there and spread the word.

Dark
Wed Nov 9 08:08:26 2011

Ah, thanks for that. I didn't bother talking to the computer after I found it unhelpful sinse I wanted to save as much time as possible. I tried using garry's id at a couple of points, like when on the bridge but obviously i didn't use it at the right stage, nice to get the hint now.

Actually on the use item thing, this is something which has stumped me in a couple of other books on this site, sinse where as in the printed book you'd have a "if you have item x and wish to use it" choice, here you don't and sometimes just have to guess when.

Hopefully i can make it through this time though.

Sylas
Wed Nov 9 18:36:30 2011

has anyone read From the Shadows in the downloads section yet? i realise it's a bit long but please give it a go. could do with a few short reviews or even criticism.

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