Fighting Fantasy Ideas

[King Gillibran]

In an ambitious idea where I am hoping to pitch 10 different Fighting Fantasy ideas to Scholastic in the hope of a comission I decided to see which one fans would most like me to write. I just want to get an idea of fans interest for possible future adventures. Warning there is a very slim chance I shall actually be comissioned I just think it is worth a try. A blurb of each shall be given below.

The Sword of Excelisar

You must save the legendary magical sword of Excelisar from the serpent king Grishzag before his legions destroy Kalahaarth. Set in Khul. This is the only one written in its entirety the rest are in varying stages of development.

Rise of the Nyadach

The Nyadach race has risen in numbers and strength under their Sorcerer leaders in a cavern deep beneath the Dwarven city of Fangthane. You must save Fangthane from invasion: both from outside and within.

Dragonfire

Your village has been burnt to the ground by a terrifying red dragon. You set out on a quest to slay it but the secret lair is only known to the orcs of the Bonerat Caves. Set in southern Lendleland.

Crown of the Netherworld

You have been hired by King Challanna to find the legendary crown of kings so peace can be restored in Femphrey. To do this you must seek out the Netherworld Sorcerers.

Sands of the Snake

Lord Azzur has ordered you to find a cure for the Serpent Queen, a quest that will lead you straight to the cities of the Kaarth.

The Dead City

The undead is pouring from the dead city in countless waves. You must journey their and destroy the source of the undead. You will start in Shabak.

Trails of Trauma

You have been hired to take your caravan to a wizard with a powerful magical item, but you are being hunted on the way. The player will not only manage the hero but the caravan soldiers as well.

Servants of the Night

You have been sent by the elves to assassinate the dark elf king in his city deep under Allansia.

Into the Wilds

The Svinn of the Shamutanti Hills have hired you to hunt out and destroy the bandits who tried to sacrifice the chiefs daughter. You must journey through Kakhabad to find them.

Lair of the Spider Queen

The Cragspider Isles in northern Titan are being overun by the spiders. You must find the central nest and kill the Spider Queen

If you wish for more details on any specific one just ask.

[kieran]

Mar 23, 2023 12:42:23 GMT King Gillibran said:

Warning there is a very slim chance I shall actually be comissioned I just think it is worth a try.

You could always write one as an amateur gamebook if Scholastic aren't interested?

I went with:
Crown of the Netherworld - I assume this is a prequel to Sorcery. Would be interesting to see the origin of the Crown and see if it has some sort of link to Throben.

Trails of Trauma - interested to see the caravan soldiers management element

Dragonfire - getting help from orcs sounds interesting.

[CharlesX]

For me some of these seem over-derivative\don't have enough of a USP. I know J K Rowling became a billionaire by writing derivative books but for me having an original concept helps sell a book. At the same time somehow the old cliche of 'saving the world' can be a powerful message - I say 'Dragonfire' seems like a gamebook which would work on paper, maybe even a good Amateur adventure, but wouldn't sell (unless you were Ian Livingstone and the publishers accepted any old tat - sorry Ian).

   I went for:

Dragonfire - In spite of my criticism I think this sounds like a good traditional adventure. Not sure how an adventurer could 'power-up' to fight an adult dragon, and afraid it could be too much like Night Dragon.

Sands Of The Snake - I like Lord Azzur adventures, he's a nuanced bad guy in the tradition of Mr. Burns, and I think there could be lots of different ways to create a cure.

Servants Of The Night - I like adventures with Elves, and this already sounds like it could be a good Amateur adventure. Could be too similar to Siege Of Sardath.

[scouserob]

My 3 picks:

Into the Wilds
I like this idea the most.
A small and simple concept with a potentially large and interesting canvas to play out on.
Are you a wizard from Analand?
A native of the Shamutanti Hills?
Flanker or one of his drinking associates hanging out in Kharé?
Where will the bandits' trail lead you?
Are you a willing participant in the quest or are the Svinns being their usual, gently persuasive, selves?
Will there be rumours of a powerful Wizard who has somehow opened the spell-locked northern gate of Kharé?

Lair of the Spider Queen
Sounds like a classic Fighting Fantasy romp with the added horror of spiders, lots of spiders!!!  Aaaarrggghhh! 
🕸🕸🕸🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷🕷🕸🕸🕸

Trails of Trauma
I'm intrigued by the escort mission concept and the possible mechanics that will facilitate it.
If they have stats then I'd make the soldiers Skill and Stamina scores pre-rolled to avoid an overly long Starship Traveller like pre-game.

[sylas]

I'd say that most who have written amateur FF adventures have at some point wished or made written effort to be commissioned for the next book by current FF publisher. A highly unlikely event - that's why our amateur FF adventures are still amateur adventures. And Scholastic are more likely to have other guest writers rather than anyone who actually understands the FF world and system.

I also agree with Charles X in that original ideas work far better and will give publishers more reason to be interested. Some of your ideas have potential but more information and research is needed to get a better feel of the proposed adventure and what it involves.

For example, for The Dead City, you have: The undead is pouring from the dead city in countless waves. You must journey their and destroy the source of the undead. You will start in Shabak.

Readers may want to know: where is this dead city, who does this affect, who are YOU to solve the problem, where are the undead heading/attacking, why, etc?

Extend each summary to answer some common questions and the adventures will begin to come alive on their own as yours and our imaginations race to fill out possible scenarios. Hope this helps.

[stevendoig]

Rise of the nyadach

Have they even appeared outwith Out of the Pit? - either way, time for a book aboot them.

[CharlesX]

Kindah ironic only one written The Sword Of Excelisar is one no one so far has voted for! Don't know if we're missing out but it sounds like Roger Lancelyn Green meets an FF writer.

[King Gillibran]

I will start doing some more detailed description of the adventures.

Sword of Excelisar
This adventure I have printed out to play myself it has a really cool cover designed by someone I know and is roughly format b in size. The cover shows the big bad. Grishzag is a four armed two headed snake man with a jagged scar across the chest. The blurb on the back is this.
Seventy years have passed since Excelisar defeated the Snake King Grishzag. Now evil stirs in the land again.: raiding orcs attack peaceful towns; land is laid waste by chaos beasts. Worst of all the sword of exselizar - a symbol of power to the people - is stolen.

You are sent to rescue it. Can you recover the sword and defeat the enemy before evil envelopes the land?



You start in the City of Kalahaarth in central Khul and then begin a short journey to the pit of Ungath where the enemy dwells. As you enter the pit an enormous army marches out to destroy Kalahaarth. You have to recover the sword slay Grishzag and defeat the army.

I have playtested it and so although the big bad is high skill and stamina I would say it was possible to complete the adventure with 9+ skill.

[King Gillibran]

The dead city is the one in khul to the east of the inland sea and Shabak is the city of beggars.
Also Nyadach have only been used in one paragraph in Phantoms of fear. And Skorn(which will appear) have never been used in gamebooks.

[King Gillibran]

Rise of the Nyadach.
You are a Human stongarm leader of a caravan trading with Fangthane. When an invading army of orcs appear then you have to flee inside the mountain. You are then asked to leave the mountain as humans are not allowed inside and they show you the passageway to leave. As you are leaving you are knocked unconscious and wake up in a torture chamber. After a while a torturer and the Nyadach sorcerer and the orc leader of the army outside enter. You must then escape. As you make your way up you see the gathering army of Nyadach. You warn the dwarves and then you have a choice of options (the dwarves now trusting you) you could seek out the Skorn's aid or defend the main gate which is under assault from the orcs and a greater fire demon. Or you could leave Fangthane to seek reinforcements. Or you could investigate the mysterious rumours about a shrine at the top of Fangthane. Or much more. All this builds up do a final battle which will use some new mass combat rules or just strategic maneuvers. It all ends with a terrible deception.
This is my favourite idea other than Sword of Excelisar which is quite biased as I have actually played it.

[sylas]

Why not remove the Fighting Fantasy label and just publish them yourself? Substitute new names for FF related places, creatures, people, alter the game mechanics slightly and you'll have publishable material for the world you created.

[vastariner]

Mar 23, 2023 12:42:23 GMT King Gillibran said:

Lair of the Spider Queen

The Cragspider Isles in northern Titan are being overun by the spiders. You must find the central nest and kill the Spider Queen

Um, given that the place is named for spiders, shouldn't one simply leave the spiders be?  Replace "spider" with, say, "halflings" in the sentence to see how that reads...

[hallucination]

Mar 23, 2023 12:42:23 GMT King Gillibran said:

Trails of Trauma

You have been hired to take your caravan to a wizard with a powerful magical item, but you are being hunted on the way. The player will not only manage the hero but the caravan soldiers as well.

Depending on the mechanisms for managing the soldiers as well as the hero, this could be quite interesting and novel for the FF system (or a FF-like system), if managing the soldiers goes beyond merely managing them via managing the hero, the rather minimal mechanism of selection for a battle or accompaniment  (Armies of Death; Starship Traveller)...  

If some sense of hero/solider autonomy was achieved this opens up many potentially interesting possibilities.

scouserob has a fair point about pre-grame setup, but if there was a real upshot to the stats of the soldiers (individually or as a group) then it may be worth the time. (Not the case in Starship Traveller)

[sylas]

Mar 23, 2023 19:36:24 GMT King Gillibran said:

The dead city is the one in khul to the east of the inland sea and Shabak is the city of beggars.

The Dead City is on the western side of the Inland Sea. Shakuru is the City of Beggars. Shabak is in eastern Allansia not Khul.

Details must be correct if you plan on writing for FF.

[misomiso]

Don't know if you will find it useful but here is some feedback:

I think it's a mistake to revisit some of the Sorcery! locations and themes. Fans might not like anyone but Steve messing with the original, and just generally if you're pitching you should be looking at new creative ideas.

There are some nice ideas here; there are a couple of versions of Fantasy ideas that have not yet been tackled by Fighting Fantasy like the spider queen and going into the underdark (my version of this is 'Evil Under Allansia where the Hero has to travel underground to rescue a princess!), but I would say if you're going to pitch go for the easiet and clearest story with a clear and simple goal. That way it's more accessable.

Good luck, though I don't think scholastic are interested in non-name authors at the moment.

[King Gillibran]

Sylas the adventure The Dead City is one idea I jotted down when I didn't have easy access to Titan so I tried to write the idea off memory. I would say it was my least favourite idea. Also I have no desire to publish it privately as I the only reason I want to publish anything is because I want to be part of fighting fantasy. You said in a thread that you did playtesting fighting fantasy. Do you have any contacts I could send my proposals to?

[King Gillibran]

I can understand that fans might be a bit edgy about other people using Sorcery ideas - I felt the same way with Salamonis in Gates of Death. But I would try to use entirely new areas so I don't change anything about Sorcery I would also rely on Sorcery as a guide to the world of Kakhabad and would try to not contradict anything it says. Also if I was insanely lucky (I might be dreaming a bit too much here) I would request John Blanche if he is still illustrating.

[tyrion]

I don't want to appear too critical, but these are my thoughts:

The Sword of Excelisar: sounds too much like Excalibur, which may be the intention. Also you have spelt it in two different ways.

Rise of the Nyadach: I'd avoid names in titles (this goes for the sword of... as well). How many FF books have names of characters/monsters in them referenced directly? I don't know who or what Nyadach is/are, so why should I care about the adventure?

Dragonfire: sounds a good idea, but maybe too similar to tower of destruction.

Crown of the Netherworld: an historical adventure? Intriguing but be careful not to step on Sorcery!'s toes.

Sands of the Snake: FF heroes generally aren't keen on being ordered to do anything.

The Dead City: needs to have an interesting story. I've written something similar for Dragon Warriors, where the undead are being summoned by a sorcerer who is under the control of his evil brother; the sorcerer isn't even aware that he is the source of the problem.

Trails of Trauma: not keen on the title, but the premise sounds good. What system would you use for mass combat: Seas of blood or Armies of death? Or one of your own devising?

Servants of the Night: so a dungeon crawl to kill a mad wizard in his lair? Sound familiar?

Into the Wilds: I'd leave these locations alone.

Lair of the Spider Queen: sounds too similar to City of the Spider Queen.

I wish you good luck, but I wouldn't get my hopes up of anything being commissioned by scholastic. Ian and Jonathan are very protective of the FF IP that although these might well be better written than say Port of Peril or Gates of Death the chances of anything coming out from this would be slim.

[a moderator]

Is there any particular reason why you appear unwilling to write for Fighting Fantazine?

[sylas]

Mar 24, 2023 8:37:19 GMT King Gillibran said:

Sylas the adventure The Dead City is one idea I jotted down when I didn't have easy access to Titan so I tried to write the idea off memory. I would say it was my least favourite idea. Also I have no desire to publish it privately as I the only reason I want to publish anything is because I want to be part of fighting fantasy. You said in a thread that you did playtesting fighting fantasy. Do you have any contacts I could send my proposals to?

Not really. Jon Green asked if I was interested and I said YES! previously I had playtested Jon Greens ACE gamebooks series and made improvements to some of his combat systems. I had also revised Knights of Doom unofficially. But other than corresponding with Jon I didn't have anything to do with Scholastic publishing it.
Note also that Jon Green himself has only just come on board the Scholastic series even though we'd expected him to have been quite an important part of FF already. So if it's that tough for him, it'll be much harder for everyone else without a big name.

[thealmightymudworm]

Mar 24, 2023 8:37:19 GMT King Gillibran said:

Sylas the adventure The Dead City is one idea I jotted down when I didn't have easy access to Titan so I tried to write the idea off memory. I would say it was my least favourite idea. Also I have no desire to publish it privately as I the only reason I want to publish anything is because I want to be part of fighting fantasy. You said in a thread that you did playtesting fighting fantasy. Do you have any contacts I could send my proposals to?

This strikes me as odd. I mean 90% of my gamebook experience is Fighting Fantasy and there would be a particular thrill in being part of the official series, but I'd love to have an actual book selling to people that they could get immersed in and puzzle through and keep regardless of whether it was part of another series or my own.

One thought might be that it would be worth it as a means to an end. If you could start a proposal to Scholastic with the phrase "I am a published gamebook author and..." they might at least read it before throwing it in the bin.

[thealmightymudworm]

I've gone with Sands of the Snake, Trails of Trauma and Servants of the Night (although maybe rethink the title of the second one – the word 'trauma' doesn't quite land right imo). Those have clear points of interest that an author could make use of:
-Struggling to get help from good characters when you're on an evil master's quest.
-Can you use the magical item yourself and are there risks associated with that? What unique skills do your crew have and how are they best deployed against a plethora of unpredictable threats?
-How do you hunt down and assassinate the leader of a race which is so naturally inclined to be assassins themselves?

A note on the vote numbers for The Sword of Excelisar (currently 1): the premise of 'go and fetch a legendary sword to save the kingdom' cannot be described as very original. It's the plot of, at least, Sword of the Samurai and Battleblade Warrior – the latter of which the blurb fairly closely resembles (excluding the word 'serpent'). That's not necessarily a disaster as the premise of e.g. Vault of the Vampire is not very original yet the execution has ensured many think it's a classic. But you'd need to include more USPs in any proposal.

[a moderator]

Posts on an unrelated gamebook moved to the appropriate thread.