Friday, 22 November 2013

Other Fighting Fantasy sub-series

There have been a number of other sub-series within the Fighting Fantasy range over the years. By sub-series, I don't just mean books by the same author(s) or adventures which take place in the same setting. Something else significant (and particular) must feature within the gamebooks themselves, connecting them into a series. The following is a list of some possible sub-series, with the features that connect them highlighted:

  • The 'Astragal' trilogy: Chasms of Malice, Daggers of Darkness and Fangs of Fury (by Luke Sharp). All set in southwest Khul, with different heroes, but with the recurrent character Astragal the Wizard who appears to be trying to keep a lid on chaos in this turbulent part of Titan (another recurrent character is Alkis Fearslicer).
  • The 'Mandrake trilogy': Legend of the Shadow Warriors, Moonrunner and the unfortunately never written/published Blood of the Mandrake (by Stephen Hand). Set in and around Gallantaria in the Old World, featuring several recurrent sub-plots (e.g. the Mandrakes and the Kauderwelsches). It's not clear that the hero of LotSW and MR are the same individual, but they could be interpreted as such I think.
  • The 'Vampire' saga: Vault of the Vampire and Revenge of the Vampire (by Keith Martin). These two books involve attempting to destroy the vampire Count Reiner Heydrich. It's not clear that the hero is the same in the two books (otherwise we'd expect to see more obvious links). Tempting though it is, there isn't really anything much to connect these two books with Jon Green's Howl of the Werewolf other than VotV and HotW being set very close to each other geographically and featuring the same kind of adventurer.
  • The 'Isles of the Dawn' or 'Maior' duology: Black Vein Prophecy and The Crimson Tide, both written (at least in part) by Paul Mason, set in the Isles of the Dawn, and featuring recurrent characters, including Maior and Poo Ta. The hero cannot be the same individual in the two books (and indeed the heroes from the two books may meet).
  • The 'Riddling Reaver' or 'Kallamehr' series: The Dreaming Sands (Warlock 13), The Riddling Reaver, Slaves of the Abyss and Magehunter, all written, in part at least, by Paul Mason. Warlock 13 tells us that The Dreaming Sands was written as a prelude to The Riddling Reaver. Slaves of the Abyss could conceivably follow on from TRR, but there's no sure evidence that the hero is the same; it does follow on in terms of the history of Kallamehr though (Baron Bluestone is dead and the Lady Carolina rules the city). Magehunter has an entirely different hero, but follows on chronologically (in terms of the history of Kallamehr) from SotA. All of the adventures except The Dreaming Sands feature the city Kallamehr, two of the adventures include encounters with the nightmarish Maijem-Nosoth, and all have appearances by the Riddling Reaver.
  • And then of course there's Zagor. It used to be relatively simple; there was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and then a while later Return to Firetop Mountain came along. The adventures are set 10 years apart, but both involve you entering Firetop Mountain and confronting Zagor. Titan - The Fighting Fantasy World gave us a bit of backstory, and The Trolltooth Wars complicated things slightly. But then Legend of Zagor and the Zagor Chronicles were published (and were tied in with Casket of Souls), and I no longer have a clue what the deal is with Zagor, where he came from or how old he is. I think I'll return to that problem in another post!

So I think that's the obvious sub-series within Fighting Fantasy (Sorcery!, the novels and Advanced Fighting Fantasy adventures aside of course); have I missed anything obvious?

10 comments:

  1. Not an obvious one, but Night of the Necromancer can be played as if the hero is the same person as the hero from Knights of Doom.

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    1. Yes, I did think of adding that one. Thanks!

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  2. It's not clear that the hero of LotSW and MR are the same individual, but they could be interpreted as such I think.

    That seems a bit of a stretch. The hero of LotSW is an ordinary down-on-his-luck sword-for-hire who accepts what he believes to be a Scooby-Doo-type 'expose the fake ghost' mission because he's desperate for funds. The hero of Moonrunner is a driven man on account of his wartime experiences, a renowned bounty hunter with a zeal for justice, a mildly fanatical obsession with tracking down certain villains, and a wide range of special skills.

    A tenuous case could almost be made for having the hero of Moonrunner go into decline after achieving the goal he'd sought for so long, neglecting his special skills to the extent that he stopped being able to use them, and being saved from the gutter when the events of LotSW force him to clean up his act and become a hero again. But Moonrunner features the reanimated corpse of the Kauderwelsch who dies in LotSW, so it can't be another FoD/CotSW 'the later book actually happens first' set-up, and we're stuck with irreconcilable character differences.

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    1. Good points, which make it less likely that the two heroes are the same. I don't think the hero of LotSW is quite so desperate as you suggest though, and the fact they are both veterans of the War of the Four Kingdoms is an interesting detail (although I suppose many warriors in this period would have been). And, yes, MR comes after LotSW as the Kauderwelsch story indicates.

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    2. You're right about the desperation thing - I should have checked the book rather than relying on memory. But now that I have compared the texts, there's an even more obvious difference. At the end of the War, the hero of LotSW was a captain, and had gained some degree of renown (p. 23). Ther hero of Moonrunner was still under Gruul's influence, and not even fully human, at the time the war ended (section 30).

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    3. Nice comparison. Those sound fairly mutually exclusive, but I suppose you could, if you wanted to, argue that they can still be combined and the condensed nature of the texts doesn't tell the full story (e.g. you are a captain who earns fame and reward towards the end of the war; shortly before it finishes you are captured and turned into a Moonrunner; as soon as the war ends, you get your life back, but you spurn fame as you don't feel comfortable with it, especially as you unwillingly betrayed your comrades). Bit of a stretch, I admit, but I wouldn't be surprised if Hand left things ambiguous on purpose.

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    4. Spurning fame while at the same time becoming a respected bounty hunter who specialises in tracking down notorious war criminals is a bigger stretch than you'd get on Naggamanteh's rack.

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  3. At last! A good blog about FF. Very well written articles. Keep on.

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    1. Thank you! I can't promise an article every day, but I'll try my best to keep them coming regularly.

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  4. Late to the party on this one, but has anyone come up with a long, extended sequence for an FF campaign? I guess it would have to be Allansia based. Also there are problems with having the necessary stat levels to even have a chance of victory in certain books. But I think some kind of campaign of around 10 adventures could be attempted, using stonebridge, blacksand and your other ideas! There would need to be some kind of mechanic to allow improvements to SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK, perhaps after each completed book a statistic can be increased... I really need to post my own ideas in a blog and do it...

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