Steve Jackson's Sorcery! Game book series had 4 connected adventure books and a spell book, but the spell book was added to the 3rd and 4th book! All the spells had 3 letter names, 6 were "basic" but cost 4 stamina, while the other spells were usually cheaper, but it was harder to remember which was which, while the 6 basic spells were mostly easy to remember! I was such a Game Book fan, and there were so many back in the 80's and 90's!

Excellent video

Got AFF Deluxe a couple years ago and ended up steadily getting extra splatbooks which are packed with goodies. The DTRPG print prices were relatively reasonable from what I recall. Nice light system for one which is Skill-based rather than Class-based and works really well for low player count parties due to each combat exchange being a single opposed roll for all involved each round. If you have two different sets of colored dice, each player and the GM can roll their Attack (2 of one color) and Damage/Armor (1 of a different color) in one go, at the same time, after determining who's attacking who. Can do all in one roll with four dice colors if solo'ing. Great retro RPG, love the classic art in the books. The layout is also rather retro so finding key rules, abilities, etc listed in the text can sometimes be a chore. Since the PoD books aren't bank-breaking, I'll probably use a highlighter on the notable bits and the monster abilities stuck in the middle of the description text in the future. Gets extra pluses for being a light system but still having an open skill & ability system for better customization. Also means it's pretty easy to hack with house rules. The "Deluxe" edition is an all-in-one, also including the first "monster manual" and the setting (if you wish to use it instead of your own) in addition to the basic rules. Good value.

Those game books were simply fantastic, no pun intended. I still want to get myself some old copies not just for nostalgia's sake but because they're so much fun. There were some great artists in the Fighting Fantasy series. Guys like the super talented Iain McCaig (who would later become a concept artist for Lucasfilm!), Alan Langford, Bob Harvey, and John Sibbick... Not to mention the cover artists, most of which were great too (Brian Bolland did the cover art for Appointment with F.E.A.R., as an example). But there were also a few duds in there as well. Now this book _here_ could have had better layout and typesetting... The art is still pretty good for the most part, but the design doesn't let the art shine. Sorry, that's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Apart from the Fighting Fantasy books there was a different series called Dragon Warriors, which I'm curious about. Apparently it had a more interesting system.

I’ve just seen the bundle of holding for advanced fighting fantasy.

I had the original version of this (or at least the first two books: Dungeoneer and Blacksand). At the time we thought it was a bit daft as it pitched the game as working through a film script, with a Director, rather than GM or DM. In retrospect though I think they were ahead of the curve, as it was encouraging story based play, which I don't think many other games were doing at that time. The only downside of this approach was that creating your own adventures seemed a bigger job than the D&D equivalent of drawing a map. The FF art of the time was really good - particularly Iain McCaig, John Blanche and Russ Nicholson. I can't take early (pre-1983) D&D art seriously in comparison to it.

Looks like you like the game for the same reasons I do. :) One extra thing to add, those pages with the Out of the Pit weapons and armour tables are a patch for an oddity in how the game is published. The first monster book, Out of the Pit, is a reprint of the original from the 80s which collected the gamebook monsters at the time. The reprint rights don't allow any addition or modification, so OotP only has gamebook-standard SKILL & STAMINA stats. That's why the rulebook has those tables to tell you what level of weapon and armour and number of attacks each has (for example large claw and light natural armour). It's a bit inconvenient, but I just manually wrote the info into my OotP book next to each monster and it didn't take all that long. The later monster books are written for the RPG so the stat blocks are all together. Also, you didn't cover it much but the roll-and-add that we're using for non-combat checks is an optional rule. As written, it's roll-and-add for combat only, roll-under for everything else. I tried the standard rule at the beginning, but having it standardised seems to work better.

Whoever has the most books wins!

yah loved this one since the mid 1980s, while not part of the fighting fantasy series my first experience on this was buying and playing the Way of the Tiger books by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, loved all of em, Yep fighting fantasy set in orient. The UK fighting fantasy books were much superior to their American counterparts like Choose your own adventure and the TSR D&D choose your own adventure books.

Very nostalgic - the words "minor magic" especially bring it back! I think it must have been more popular in the UK than elsewhere. My American pals never saw it - d&d ruled the roost.

Richard will be happy with this. :)

Can you do a review on Exalted RPG 3rd edition from Onyx path, this is the fantasy setting a pre history to the world of dakrness setting by White wolf. Love this one.