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Saturday, August 23, 2025

Fight Fantasy - top 4+ books, and yt w/ history; B&W ART EMERGENCY on new prints; Fabled Lands; GameBooks

First, we'll have a nice freaky cover. Click on the full size one, this has some nice details. What is up with that freaky 4-way-forked tongue... cool idea. And the spikes poking through the hood are a nice touch:


****BUT BE CAREFUL BUYING NEW COPIES of these books in year 2025... they replace the good B&W art with trash B&W art (at least in Book1 and some others, not sure how many yet, probably most). Ruined the damn books for me... not buying any more new ones. ****

This is supposed to be a goblin. I am disgusted. 

The undead in the new version, left, is nothing compared to the artist's work on the right where anatomy and weapons are taken seriously. Plus it's the whole flat, corporate, computer paint, boring, low detail construction paper cutout vs. detailed ink lines that just drives me nuts


More original art here for 'Firetophttps://thehobbyheroes.blogspot.com/2018/06/fighting-fantasy-warlock-of-firetop.html

OK, Russ Nicholson the good artist 

is on Twitter, and he did art for the original The Warlock on Firetop Mountain, the Fiend Folio (I knew that had to have been him), The Fabled Lands (similar to Fighting Fantasy), and  more: https://x.com/RussNicholson and https://russnicholson.blogspot.com/2010/08/news.html

Fabled Lands: https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/ <--this is the very similar to Fighting Fantasy books. 


 UPDATE on the B&W art emergency, look at this yt at this 14:19 time for some ... I will say for now, I see decent art in Shadow of the Giants, which is a book among these "later books" 40th Anniversary(?) edition. https://youtu.be/miZmihgUQfA?t=861 but the reviewer Michael Bartlett (like the Bartlett pear... I love running into interesting British names on folks) conspicuously does not seem to show much art from any of these other books in the vid, which worries me. OK, I just found a B&W from Howl of the Werewolf, it looks good. Port of Peril has terrible art, dang, looks just like the junk I found in my brand new The Warlock of Firetop Mountain




UPDATE HUGE list of GameBooks, including some free by author on internet ones:


I. The top 4 books according to some are

  1. The Forest of Doom
  2. Deathtrap Dungeon
  3. Scorpion Swamp
  4. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Spoiler map, but nice and fun to look at if you've already played. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1699703/



Keep in mind Warlock of FTM spawned two sequels, and that 3rd book had some monster main badguy who spawned boardgames and stuff.  

Other Notable
  • Crypt of the Sorcerer - necromancer
  • Creature of Havoc - u r the monster… looks kinda like that 2e adnd monster that is half human and 1 in 10 is neutral or good. 
  • Midnight Rogue - is this the one Spellsinger reviewed? One of those rogue ones was popular. 
  • *House of Hell* - modern horror fun. 
  • Chasms of Malic
  • Armies of Death
  • Keep of the Lich Lord
  • Black Vein Prophecy 
  • Legend of the Shadow Warriors- has scarecrow cover
  • Return to Firetop Mountain - to finish it up… but sales were too good. 
  • Legend of Zagor (the monster bbeg from Firetop we spoke of earlier)
  • Deathmoor
  • Island of the Undead
  • Magehunter
BTW, The Steve Jackson’s Sorcery set of 4 books/games were aimed at and a big hit with adults. Had a Magic System!

BTW Goldhawk series was simpler and aimed at kids. Only 21 scenes instead of 400, and only one dice stat, Skill, not several. 

The Trolltooth Wars and Demonstealer and Shadowmaster were straight novels in the world of Titan. 

See Jordan Sorcery on yt “ complete history of fighting fantasy linear edition“ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oHlNlzxahw

Sidenote: Seems like what we called "ChooseYourOwnAdventure" books are called "GameBooks" by people around England. 

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