Sleeping Gods, boo to Gary Gygax, and nostlagia for Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

Actually I bought book 7 independently (Amazon, I’m sorry to say) after it was quite clear most backers wouldn’t receive their copies; I certainly never have. Not sure if that was a POD demand from the PDF, as it’s not up to the production quality of the originals, but they were exceptionally good.

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Wait, what @Lordof1 ?

Errrr there’s a Fabled Lands book 7… its called The Serpent King’s Domain

Speaking of Fabled Lands, I was curious if the Java app I played with had been updated to book 7 content (I’m not really super interested in doing it the manual way) and discovered Fabled Lands on Steam
Should be releasing into early access this week. Hell of a coincidence.

Look what I turned up : )


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Huh. I did not know R.L. Stine had done a gamebook.

Everybody who wanted a paycheque was writing gamebooks back then. I keep discovering new books on ebay or people boasting about their finds on social media.

The most annoying one was I went into a bookshop and looked around for history books. Two weeks later, a vague acquaintance went in and found all six car wars gamebooks in mint condition, and the owner gives him 50% off to get rid of them. Gaaah.

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I’d completely forgotten about that “Be An Interplanetary Spy” book. It’s the only one I had, and now I really wish that I’d had more of them (apparently there were twelve in total). For starters I’m pretty sure that “Interplanetary Spy” was about the coolest job description I could imagine at that age; but moreover this was quite different to the other gamebooks I had. Unfortunately I just ditched everything else when I discovered Fighting Fantasy. Wikipedia’s description reads:

Adult me thinks that it’s really neat that people were using the game book format to get kids to exercise their brains solving logic puzzles.

Speaking of logic, adult me is also laughing at the name of that planet : )

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I’ve been meaning to take a new photo of these for a while. Not as impressive as some collections, but it still fills a table : )

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Omg, +100 points for having a) the original 1-7, and b) Way of the Tiger :slight_smile:

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Oh lovely! You have the combat heroes! I have one of the later ones but missed out on the first two. Also, not so great me only having one of them, although there is a solo mode as I recall. It’s rubs though.

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Those books were a really neat concept. I played them with a school friend; I had one pair, and he had the other. I’d actually forgotten all about the Scarlet Sorcerer and the Emerald Enchanter until I looked at your shelf photo, though!

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While we’re here, RIP about a month ago Chris Achilleos who did the Temple of Terror cover, and also the Titan cover (which I got signed at a convention in 2019)

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Ah man, this brings back fond memories!

I got a print of this many many years ago, knowing absolutely nothing about it other than I was about 10 and it had a dragon.

He also did covers for a lot of the Target Doctor Who books, which I have a fair amount of. Some of which are recent reprints that are signed by Chris (I didn’t get to meet him, just ordered them from Forbidden Planet).

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Yes, I think he was much better known for his Doctor Who stuff and attended a lot of conventions.

I don’t know if this is real, but someone on twitter claimed this was his funeral:

And they do seem to be the same as these photos:

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While we’re on FF nostalgia, congratulations to Sir Ian Livingstone for his knighthood. All that work with education and developing training for the game industry paid off.

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Had a little boost to my happy shelf thanks to some very kind donations from @RogerBW, very gratefully recieved. There’s a few that don’t fit on the shelf too…

Also out of shot are Titan, Out of the Pit (signed twice, 20 years apart) and Alone Against the Dark.


There’s a gap on the top shelf because my 7-year old has borrowed one of my Deathtrap Dungeons and has become a little obsessed with it.

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Daaaaamn that’s an amazing collection. Grailquest! Way of the Tiger! Sorcery! Original FF 1-7!

I might need to go on a hunt for the Grailquest 7, which I never read.

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I found GrailQuest 8, which I didn’t know existed, in a charity shop on Jersey. That was a good day!

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