Fighting Fantasy

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I borrowed and played a few Fighting Fantasy titles back in the day and enjoyed them (although not as much as HeroQuest obviously). I recently played the HeroQuest Adventure Game at the back of the Dave Morris’s Fellowship of Four HeroQuest Book and inadvertently rekindled the memories of Fighting Fantasy so a quick purchase later and I had a shiny new copy of “Sorcery! The Shamutanti Hills” in my hands.

Having played through the adventure a couple of times and enjoyed it thoroughly, a couple of niggles did present themselves.

1. Provisions – if you aren’t aware, you start these adventures with sufficient provisions for a couple of meals, that you can consume at fixed points within the text, in addition you have gold and get opportunities at fixed points to buy a meal or buy additional provisions. Generally, these restore 1 STAMINA if you have already eaten that day, 2 STAMINA if you haven’t, and not eating for a day reduces STAMINA by 3 again this is driven by the text). I found that more often than not when presented with the option to eat, my STAMINA was already at the maximum so I had the choice between wasting GOLD, wasting PROVISIONS, or taking a -3 STAMINA deduction the next day if no other opportunity presented itself (and you have no real way of telling whether it will). The following day you would get the message, if you didn’t eat yesterday lose 3 STAMINA – but most of the time I couldn’t remember whether I had eaten in the previous day, there is no way to tell, not a major flaw but an irritant.

2. Combat (damage) – a successful hit causes a fixed damage of 2 STAMINA (or you can use LUCK but that adds another dice roll and an amendment to your sheet, which makes combat a little lengthy if used too often), some opponents have high stamina and you’ll be there all day. I also found that COMBAT, at least as a warrior was generally too easy, but occasionally very hard (like the Boss as you would expect – no spoilers) but nothing much in between.

3. Stamina used for limiting number of spells cast - results in Wizards needing high stamina like a Warrior so less differentiation is possible

Any thoughts, reflection, tips and tricks, from others on Fighting Fantasy, either back in the day, or more recently?

[cornixt]

Sorcery was pretty fun. In the second one I got stuck. I remember that I was supposed to defeat the plot before leaving town, but I kept accidentally ending up on the road out. I never managed to actually get to the main villain no matter how many times I tried (maybe 5 or 6 times), so I gave up in the end. It shouldn't be that hard to get to the main objective. It felt like I was randomly missing the way there every time, my intentionality didn't seem to matter.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I've just bought the second and third books, so I'll see how I get on. That said the blurb suggests the second book is just a pass-thru quest, so maybe you did complete it all along...