It is one of life's little ironies that the hobby of fantasy roleplaying requires a group of likeminded friends in order to make it work.
So what to do when you're a geeky teenage roleplayer with very few of these almost mythical friends?
All hail the solo adventure gamebook genre!
Sunday 18th December
The Fighting Fantasy gamebook series was launched in 1982 by Games Workshop co-founders Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, and whilst not the first ever gamebooks to hit the shelves, they were certainly some of the most influential.
While one of the beauties of the series was the standalone nature of each book, other series took a more epic approach. Joe Dever's "Lone Wolf" is a notable example that worked exceptionally well, but my personal favourite was Steve Jackson's "Sorcery!" quartet, an FF offshoot that used the same combat system with an ingenius concept for magic use as an optional extra.
Looking at them wearing my adult-head, I admire the more well-written examples for the simple moral lessons they can give. That actions have consequences and rewarding "right" choices and punishing "bad" ones is a rather simplistic way of looking at it, but an essentially correct one.
Hang on, though... These damn things have scarred me for life!
Why else would I have entered adult life unable to make firm decisions unless able to flick ahead for a sneaky peek at a forthcoming paragraph?
Damn that solo adventure gamebook genre!
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