Fighting Fantasy Books: My Gateway into Tabletop RPGs

As you can probably tell, I'm an avid tabletop RPG player. While most pen and paper players were exposed to the hobby through Dungeons and Dragons or some other full-fledged RPGs, my first experience was a little different. The first time I was exposed to role-playing games in any form was at my elementary school library. Thanks to Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings movie and a chance reading of Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, I was already fascinated with the fantasy genre and I was looking for a book to read for school. As I was browsing the section, I stumbled upon a book called The Forest of Doom, part of a series called Fighting Fantasy. The cover bore the image of a lizard-like creature with a forked tongue growling menacingly. This immediately appealed to me and I went straight up to the librarian and checked the book out. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that this wasn't your average piece of fiction.

It turns out that the book wasn't a novel, but it was actually a game of sorts. It essentially functioned like a Choose Your Own Adventure book (anybody remember those), where the reader would take on the role of the protagonist as he or she moved through the story. The reader could make certain decisions based on how the story progressed and would need to flip to different sections of the book to find out what the outcome of their decision was. The difference between this book and the standard Choose Your Own Adventure book was that this one needed dice. Before you started reading, you rolled a pair of D6 (that's six-sided dice for the uninitiated) to determine a value for three characteristics: Skill, Stamina and Luck, which you would use to determine the outcome of any battles or other actions that took place during the story.

I had previously read through a number of Choose Your Own Adventure books and while I thought they were neat, I always felt somewhat helpless as the protagonist since the wrong choice often lead to instant death and I always thought it sucked that I could never defend myself. But this, this was different. This book allowed me to not just read a story about an adventurer who braves the evils of The Darkwood to return a lost magical warhammer to a village of dwarves, but to actually BE that adventurer and that was amazing to me. I was able to fight off goblins, ogres and even a terrible wyvren. I soon found out that there were many books in the series and I made it my mission to seek them out. Soon, I was up to my armpits in more game books including Creature of Havoc, Phantoms of Fear, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Sword of the Samurai and many more. There was even a couple books published that described in more detail the world in which the books are set, with maps and everything.

I didn't realize at the time, but the imagery used in the books was fairly...adult. Now by "adult," I don't mean that they were full of cleavage and naughty bits, but they were full of violence and had some rather scary and disturbing artwork (at least scary and disturbing for an 11-year old). The themes covered in the books were also fairly advanced for the average 80s kid. One book, Phantoms of Fear, followed the tale of an elf price who sought to defeat a demon prince in both the real world and in the dream world. Another, Creature of Havoc, puts the player in the roll of a mindless monster that operates purely on instinct, with very little free will. We're not exactly dealing with deep philosophical issues here but you have to understand that these books were primarily marketed towards children. One of the great things about growing up in the 80s was that media directed at children didn't always sugar-coat stuff and sometimes it was designed to flat-out terrify us.

So, how exactly did I make the leap to D&D and other tabletop games from these comparatively basic game books? Good question, let me tell you. While I loved those game books, I couldn't help but think that I wanted more. I always thought it would be cool if I could play these books with a group of my friends. It was around that time, when my mother came to me on a quite Saturday afternoon with a troubled look on her face. She was clearly very concerned as she asked me "Do you play Dungeons & Dragons?" At the time, I had never heard of it, so I honestly answered in the negative. This may seem like an odd question for younger readers, so let me provide some context. Back in the 80s there was something called The Satanic Panic, which was a group of well-meaning but totally misinformed parents who believed that D&D and other similar things were leading kids into things like satanism and the occult. It was nonsense, of course, and won't go into too much detail here but it stemmed from one or two high-profile suicides where the victims were known to have played D&D. Anyway, my mom heard about this and wanted to make sure that I wasn't exposed to such "evil."

The funny thing is, the next day at school I asked buddy of mine if he'd ever heard of Dungeons & Dragons. Of course he had and he proceeded to tell me about it. Sure enough, it was exactly what I was looking for but better. I could play with my friends, plus I wouldn't be limited to a small selection of canned options. I could do whatever I could imagine. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to play and the rest is history. Tabletop games have been a hobby of mine for more than 30 years now and that might not have been the case had I not picked up that copy of The Forest of Doom all those years ago.

One final note, there was an attempt around 10 or 15 years ago to reboot the series and as far as I know the books are still available for purchase today. While they may not appeal much to the modern gamer they are a delightful burst of nostalgia for old grognards like myself.