The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it...

Hang on, it's only the postman. Phew! They shall not find me after all. But what's that on the hall floor? A brown padded A4 envelope with an Arion Games label. Aaaaggghhhh! Yes, they are come. The nightmare creatures from Beyond the Pit have escaped and have found a way into our dimension - through the letter box. The letter box!

As I blogged about before, Beyond the Pit, by Andy Wright, is the first major brand-new Fighting Fantasy publication in a long time. And what a publication it is. Two-hundred-and-fifty FF monsters described in detail, complete with an illustration of each, from the original gamebooks or an excellent new one by Jason Lennox. The text is brilliantly written and full of details not only about the monsters themselves but about the world which they live in. We also get a (newish) map of Titan and treasure and encounters tables.

I haven't had a chance to read through the book yet but my favourite thing in it so far comes in the very first entry, AMAZON. Here we read that Amazons:

dwell in the mountainous wild east of the city-state of Kalamdar and other lonely places across Khul ... The identity of the Amazon Queen is a closely guarded secret, though there is a price on her head across the northern kingdoms of Kalamdar, Arion and Peleus.

Kalamdar, from the two-player FF adventure Clash of the Princes, is also listed alongside Fallow Dale and Arion as home to TRIBESMEN in northern Khul. Not only that, but Gundobad itself, where Clash of the Princes starts, is mentioned in the entries for FAIRY, SCUTTLIE and SHADE. At last we have an official FF publication which locates the lands of Clash of the Princes within Titan, indeed in northern Khul. This is something I argued for at length in my article in the very first issue of Fighting Fantazine; Andy was enthusiastic about the idea at the time and it's great to see Gundobad, Kalamdar and the lands around them finally brought properly into the FF fold.

I'll be reading Beyond the Pit properly when I get five minutes and I'll report on any other interesting things about the world of Fighting Fantasy that I find in there.

The Pit has been reopened!

Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time - pledge a small amount of money in the hope that a new Fighting Fantasy project could come to fruition. Little did you know what you were unleashing, but ignorance is no excuse for those who dabble in things beyond their ken. The Pit has been reopened, and once more from the darkest corners, from the deepest pools and from dungeons thought only to exist in nightmares come the Fighting Fantasy monsters. May the gods of Titan save us all from destruction!

Yes - The Beyond the Pit Kickstarter has been a runaway success and has gone beyond the level required for its production. Brilliant news. In fact, this is a hugely significant publication for Fighting Fantasy - the first completely new product in the Arion Games line (of course some of their previous books have contained new stuff, but this is completely new), and the first major new FF fantasy publication since Night of the Necromancer. Let's hope it is only the start and that there's more stuff in the pipeline.

 
So what are we going to get? Well, there will be descriptions and stats (normal and Advanced Fighting Fantasy) for 250 creatures and monsters from the FF books, along with the original illustrations from the gamebooks (no bestiary would be complete without them), and an all-new text by FF master, Andy Wright (greyarea13). In case you are not familiar with Andy's work on creatures from Fighting Fantasy, see the Out of the Pit articles in issues 1, 3, 6 and 7 of Fighting Fantazine, which I suspect give a mouth-watering taste of what's to come.

According to the Kickstarter page for Beyond the Pit, copies should be sent out in December, so that should make for an excellent Christmas present (it's 26 years since I got the last one for Xmas, so it has been a long wait!). Once I get hold of my copy, expect a full review here.

Out of the Pit II - Beyond the Pit!

A cornerstone of the early days of Fighting Fantasy was Out of the Pit (OOTP), by Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone and Marc Gacoigne, a vast compendium of 250 monsters from the fantasy gamebooks written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson up to that point (i.e. up to and including Temple of Terror and The Crown of Kings). It included almost all the monsters encountered in the gamebooks plus a good selection of new ones, and each monster was accompanied by an illustration, either from a gamebook or a newly commisioned one. In addition, OOTP included maps of northwest Allansia and Kakhabad, treasure and encounter tables, and eight full colour, full page illustrations of a selection of the creatures described in the volume.

I first got a copy of OOTP at Christmas, 1987 (the original A4 size edition; there have since been a smaller B-format edition in 1989 and a reissue of the A4 size in 2011 by Arion Games as part of their Advanced Fighting Fantasy second edition range, neither of which included the colour illustrations). Amazing as it was, I was disappointed to discover that it didn't contain the monsters from Scorpion Swamp or Seas of Blood, nor of the gamebooks which had been released in 1986-7. As the years went on, and as many more gamebooks, novels and multi-player scenarios appeared, OOTP became more and more dated, and I (along with many other FF fans it turned out) wanted a second (and third, fourth...) volume describing all those new creatures too.

It was beginning to look like this would never happen though, despite the resurgence of FF between 2002 and 2012 with the publication of some of the old gamebooks and six new ones by Wizard Books. But I hadn't reckoned on the energy and drive of Arion Games and one of our long time online FF buddies, Andy Wright (also known in FF circles as Greyarea13), who have teamed up to bring us what we've all been waiting years for - Out of the Pit II, or, as it is officially going to be known, Beyond the Pit. Hurray! I'll talk more about Andy's amazing work on documenting the monsters, creatures, villains and even plants of Titan in a later post, but all I can say right now is that the prospect of a book of FF monsters written by him is extremely exciting, as no-one knows more about them and the world of Titan than he does. There is just one tiny little hurdle to jump before we can get our hands on Beyond the Pit, and that's some up front cash to pay the illustrators for the wonderful pictures which need to accompany each monster description (we can't expect them to do it for nothing, and I think you'll agree that the illustrations are a must have). So Arion Games have launched a (very modest) Kickstarter to allow this to happen, with a minimum pledge of £1, and £22 for a soft cover version delivered to your door.

It looks amazing! So if you want to see this published, you know what to do - the goal of £3000 is very reasonable, and they're getting there, but every pledge will help. I can't wait to explore the darkest corners, deepest pools and nightmarish dungeons of FF once again!