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Post by CharlesX on Dec 31, 2021 13:51:31 GMT
This is a poll of your favourite SF FF. It's a straight one, after the training wheels/bowling buffers one; no HOH, no Blood, no second vote. And no Spectral Stalkers. Urging people to vote at the same time as voting on their favourite non-traditional FF. Voting closes 7 Jan 9:00 P.M.
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 7, 2022 22:08:25 GMT
It looks like Appointment with F.E.A.R. has a following, although I suspect this has at least as much to do with superheroes being big in pop culture as the supposed merits of this gamebook. Starship Traveller and Star Strider are both badly-designed gamebooks, Starship in particular had the potential to be one of the best gamebooks, but became one of the worst.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 8, 2022 17:03:25 GMT
Why didn't sci fi do that well in FF? After Sky Lord there was nothing more.
All these books are 'one off's'. There's no continuity. There's no sci-fi FF version of Allansia or Kakhabad. I've no idea if that has anything to do with it.
Generally they appear relatively early on, especially the 'teens' - FF 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, with all of these being released in the year 1985 when gamebooks were still very popular so it's not like sci fi was an afterthought in FF.
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Post by philsadler on Jan 8, 2022 17:49:15 GMT
Why didn't sci fi do that well in FF? After Sky Lord there was nothing more.
I think you answered your own question  |
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Post by a moderator on Jan 8, 2022 17:53:45 GMT
Why didn't sci fi do that well in FF? After Sky Lord there was nothing more. All these books are 'one off's'. There's no continuity. There's no sci-fi FF version of Allansia or Kakhabad. I've no idea if that has anything to do with it. There is a tiny detail of continuity linking Andrew Chapman's SF FF books: in Space Assassin you can encounter a Scallopian Fang, and one of the characters in Rings mentions the same species. But other than that neligible detail, there's nothing to suggest that any of the sci-fi FF gamebooks are part of the same reality. A more cohesive universe might have given the books a bit of a boost - I remember being more excited about Armies of Death than it merited because of the links to Trial of Champions - but there's no real way of knowing if the odd familiar face or location would have made a significant difference. If Kieran ever returns to the Prey of the Hunter universe, as he had once thought of doing, maybe then we'll get some idea of the draw of continuity. |
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,472
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jan 8, 2022 18:40:24 GMT
I wouldn't rule it out but probably unlikely. Apart from having a lot less free time these days to write anything, I've gone off a few of the concepts I had for that universe. |
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 8, 2022 19:40:23 GMT
Star Strider - just before Sky Lord - was badly-designed and boring.
The FF structure is one of slow combats and box text description, in contrast that is to vast, successful video games such as Zork (many more now computing has moved on).
The SF FFs didn't sell as well as the more conventional ones, and now gamebooks are niche instead of huge, I think it seriously unlikely there will be a (new) SF FF.
* Eats humble pie when SJ's new FF turns out to be SF *
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Post by The Count on Jan 8, 2022 20:01:45 GMT
The sci fi books overall weren't very good
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Post by vastariner on Jan 9, 2022 13:57:31 GMT
I think what helped to kill the sci-fi books was Allansia.
Look at the first fifteen FF books. None of them mentions the word Allansia. There are some cross-references between some of them - Yaztromo, Firetop Mountain, and Deathtrap Dungeon for instance - but you've got the following settings:
Quasi-mediaeval world of magic: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14
Sci-fi: 4, 12, 15
Present(ish) day: 10, 13
Specifically stated to be a separate world: 11
There was no necessity that the next along had to be in Allansia. Nearly half of the books were not.
But when Warlock had the first map of Allansia, and then Sorcery! was specifically linked to Allansia via Out of the Pit, it was like "THIS is the world of Fighting Fantasy", and there was an expectation that everything had to take place there. Which led to some fairly brutal retcons - Swords of the Samurai for instance being shoved in as an isolated country.
From then onwards the series was pretty much a magick-world series and the sci-fi books were too rare to counter that supposition. And as suggested above the last two were weak sauce.
My vote incidentally is for Rebel Planet. One of the best-written of the FF books and a great world-building exercise.
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Post by vastariner on Jan 10, 2022 13:46:51 GMT
Just looking at the run of books as well...nine of the first ten were Jackson/Livingstone, then they looked to extra authors to put out product while it was heating up. And those books were written at a time when there was no textbook to write towards. Given a brief of "gamebook" it's no wonder they looked to the future as well as the mythic. But once there was OotP and Titan - there WAS a textbook. That was the world in which most books were set, so follow that. There's no blueprint for the interstellar future.
After all, Arthur C Clarke on magic and science refers. You could translate fantasy gamebooks into sci-fi and vice versa fairly readily.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 10, 2022 14:45:13 GMT
There's no blueprint for the interstellar future. But there could be. Lay down a timeline, create some star charts and notes on the natives of different inhabited worlds, and you can create a setting defined enough that the readers can recognise familiar elements and callbacks, but flexible enough to allow a variety of plots and themes. Depends how 'hard' you like your sci-fi. And some fans get ridiculously picky about the distinction between SF and fantasy, as shown by the response to issue 11 of Proteus. The adventure in it was an above-average example of the sort of adventure that the magazine published - a mix of exploration, combat, traps and puzzles, with a moderately narrow 'true path' and poor odds of survival for characters with low stats - but it was science-fantasy rather than 'regular' fantasy, and that prompted complaints. The people who wrote in to whinge were only bothered by the trappings: if the androids had been golems and the lasers sorcerous lightning bolts, they'd have had no problem with the adventure. But they couldn't or wouldn't engage with it because of the SF aspects. |
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Post by vastariner on Jan 10, 2022 15:40:33 GMT
There's no blueprint for the interstellar future. But there could be. Lay down a timeline, create some star charts and notes on the natives of different inhabited worlds, and you can create a setting defined enough that the readers can recognise familiar elements and callbacks, but flexible enough to allow a variety of plots and themes. Could be, but wasn't. Andrew Chapman talked about how he only had WoFTM to copy for Space Assassin, hence para 400 was such a dud. Titan had the night sky in it but nobody ever used those constellations as the setting for a book. So without an interstellar guide, but with a fantasy one, it made more sense to fit it to the fantasy one.
To be fair it would be hard to do a sci-fi blueprint. After all, you have an infinity of time and space to explain or explore. Starship Traveller has a dozen different worlds, all of which could be Titanned in isolation. And they were all in an alternative universe to the PCs, who had fallen through a black hole.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 10, 2022 15:43:02 GMT
There's no blueprint for the interstellar future. But there could be. Lay down a timeline, create some star charts and notes on the natives of different inhabited worlds, and you can create a setting defined enough that the readers can recognise familiar elements and callbacks, but flexible enough to allow a variety of plots and themes. This would have had more chance of success if one or both of the founders of FF were responsible for the proposed setting. Most likely it would have been Steve Jackson to do it - we can see that Ian was keen on expanding Allansia whilst Steve was more likely to branch out in other directions. The last gamebook Steve wrote was Creature of Havoc all the way back in 1986, and so he would have had the opportunity to do a sci-fi series of books had he wanted to - the gamebook craze was not over by 86. Joe Dever brought out 4 'post-apocalypse' gamebooks in 1988-89 in a consistent setting. How the sci-fi books sold compared to fantasy, I have no idea. If they did badly then we can understand why they died out, but they all sold well in my tiny corner of the universe, I remember classmates getting them from the Puffin Bookclub. Star Wars was popular, and so were lasers and spaceships... Thinking back and trying to be honest I think overall I slightly preferred the fantasy books but didn't dislike the sci-fi ones at all. Except FF33. |
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 10, 2022 17:41:45 GMT
How the sci-fi books sold compared to fantasy, I have no idea. If they did badly then we can understand why they died out, but they all sold well in my tiny corner of the universe, I remember classmates getting them from the Puffin Bookclub. Neither have I, but allow me to infere: In German, only two of the SF-books were published at all (Starship and Rings) as opposed to all other FFs up until Masks. That could suggest lower sales of the SF books, but whether it was in response to bad sales in the UK or Germany I don't know. |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 10, 2022 19:22:52 GMT
How the sci-fi books sold compared to fantasy, I have no idea. If they did badly then we can understand why they died out, but they all sold well in my tiny corner of the universe, I remember classmates getting them from the Puffin Bookclub. Neither have I, but allow me to infere: In German, only two of the SF-books were published at all (Starship and Rings) as opposed to all other FFs up until Masks. That could suggest lower sales of the SF books, but whether it was in response to bad sales in the UK or Germany I don't know. Was science-fiction as a genre popular in Germany and Austria at the time? [And when exactly are we talking? How much of a lag-time was there between UK and German releases?] There's a possibility that if it was not a popular genre, then the publishers (believing they know their market) would not have thought it worthwhile putting the books out. |
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 10, 2022 19:42:49 GMT
How the sci-fi books sold compared to fantasy, I have no idea. If they did badly then we can understand why they died out, but they all sold well in my tiny corner of the universe, I remember classmates getting them from the Puffin Bookclub. Neither have I, but allow me to infere: In German, only two of the SF-books were published at all (Starship and Rings) as opposed to all other FFs up until Masks. That could suggest lower sales of the SF books, but whether it was in response to bad sales in the UK or Germany I don't know. mentions SF FFs never sold as well as the more prevalent Fantasy titles. The fact at least three were complete crud wouldn't have helped, either. Appointment with F.E.A.R. and Freeway Fighter were clearly attempts to capitalise on existing SF franchises rather than fresh world-building. Frankly I think the whole concept of SF FFs was always a difficult one. |
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 10, 2022 20:05:08 GMT
Was science-fiction as a genre popular in Germany and Austria at the time? [And when exactly are we talking? How much of a lag-time was there between UK and German releases?] There's a possibility that if it was not a popular genre, then the publishers (believing they know their market) would not have thought it worthwhile putting the books out. Hexenmeister (Warlock) was published in 1983, so not a significant lag going on there.
At the time SF was almost certainly more popular than fantasy, with the heyday of the Perry Rhodan series (weekly pulps, at that time print runs of about 400,000 booklets per week) dwarfing anything else in these genres.
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