FF Stat Book

[champskees]

Hello everyone,

Some of you may be aware that I started a small mini project to work out the chances of success when playing each of the books. I was hoping to complete the first 10 and post this as a bit of a Christmas present for the forum, alas I was not able to complete them all in time.

Attached is the excel file with all 68 books done, plus the 4 Sorcery! Books. 

Fighting Fantasy Matrix.xlsx (260.22 KB)

It is like a flip book, you can use the tabs at the bottom of the file to move through the different books. Basically I wrote a program to play through each of the books using the solutions posted on the forum, ran it 100-300 thousand times and then totaled the amount of victories.

The percentages are all rounded to the nearest 0.1, so be aware that even though it might say 0, there might still be a slight chance of success! 0.1% (1 in 1000) might actually be 0.05%, which is 1 in 2000. Running a scenario many times will give you an approximation, but it is only accurate to around 0.1% Rounding distorts this further. There is also the possibility of coding error, and although I proofread each line of code, there is always a chance of programs containing errors. Lastly a human player may be able to increase their chances slightly by using their provisions and luck more frugally/aggressively as they can play it by ear. My program was too simple in most cases to be able to effectively do this, close but not perfect.

Personally I found it a joy to explore each of the books again and some of the results were quite fascinating to me. The aim though was to assist the reader in evaluating an adventure's overall difficulty and to better compare the books based on the frequently quoted statement at the beginning of each book, that goes along the lines of 'no matter how weak a player's initial dice rolls, any adventurer should be able to get through fairly easily'.

[daredevil123]

Thanks, this is very interesting. I would love to see probability calculations for Crypt and Trial, and it would also be great to see how Blood of the Zombies works out, what with all the bizarre rules.

[johnbrawn1972]

This is a wonderful resource. Not surprisingly I am going to request Night but only as long as my solution is proved to be 100% the most logical and rational solution!(I fear some of the disagreement will be about what 'rules' to obey)

Trial is closer to Caverns with 12/24/12. Crypt will be hilarious. The only question I have is whether the amended route will reach 1% with 12/24/12.

[kieran]

Dec 29, 2017 1:00:21 GMT champskees said:

Hello everyone,

Some of you may be aware that I started a small mini project to work out the chances of success when playing each of the books. I was hoping to complete the first 10 and post this as a bit of a Christmas present for the forum, alas I was not able to complete them all in time.

Attached is the excel file with the first 10 books done. 



It is like a flip book, you can use the tabs at the bottom of the file to move through the different books. Basically I wrote a program to play through each of the books using the solutions posted on the forum, ran it 100-300 thousand times and then totaled the amount of victories.

The percentages are all rounded to the nearest 0.1, so be aware that even though it might say 0, there might still be a slight chance of success! 0.1% (1 in 1000) might actually be 0.05%, which is 1 in 2000. Running a scenario many times will give you an approximation, but it is only accurate to around 0.1% Rounding distorts this further. There is also the possibility of coding error, and although I proofread each line of code, there is always a chance of programs containing errors. Lastly a human player may be able to increase their chances slightly by using their provisions and luck more frugally/aggressively as they can play it by ear. My program was too simple in most cases to be able to effectively do this, close but not perfect.

Personally I found it a joy to explore each of the books again and some of the results were quite fascinating to me. The aim though was to assist the reader in evaluating an adventure's overall difficulty and to better compare the books based on the frequently quoted statement at the beginning of each book, that goes along the lines of 'no matter how weak a player's initial dice rolls, any adventurer should be able to get through fairly easily'.

In future I will add to this and update after I complete a batch of 10 books. The next ten will probably be the ones that are the most difficult. I am thinking Crypt, Trial of Champions, any other requests?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

This is awesome Champskees, thanks for this!

A couple of questions:

- For Warlock, do you assume the player will take the Potion of Strength and use it twice during the Iron Cyclops fight if need be?

- Would books with extra attributes to roll against (like Presence in Island of the Undead) be too complex to work out with your system?

If you're planning to do the toughest books for the next ten, I would say definitely these 8:

- Trial of Champions

- Crypt of the Sorcerer

- Spellbreaker

- Knights of Doom

- Curse of the Mummy

- Eye of the Dragon

- Bloodbones

- Blood of the Zombies

And between Masks of Mayhem, Chasms of Malice and Paul Mason's last 3 books for the last 2 spots.

If anyone's interested, I thought I'd do a "Fairness Quotient" for each of the books based on Champskees' data. Basically this is the percentage of Champskees' combinations where the reader has better than a 50% chance of victory (presuming they take the optimal path of course):

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: 93%

Citadel of Chaos: 100%

Forest of Doom: 100%

Starship Traveller: 100%

City of Thieves: 56%

Deathtrap Dungeon: 14%

Island of the Lizard King: 27%

Scorpion Swamp - Selator: 93%; Poomchukker: 79%; Grimslade: 72%

Caverns of the Snow Witch: 8%

House of Hell - by the rules: 6%; applying Kris Knife bonus to Attack Strength: 92%

[champskees]

Dec 29, 2017 13:58:18 GMT kieran said:

Dec 29, 2017 1:00:21 GMT champskees said:

Hello everyone,

Some of you may be aware that I started a small mini project to work out the chances of success when playing each of the books. I was hoping to complete the first 10 and post this as a bit of a Christmas present for the forum, alas I was not able to complete them all in time.

Attached is the excel file with the first 10 books done. 



It is like a flip book, you can use the tabs at the bottom of the file to move through the different books. Basically I wrote a program to play through each of the books using the solutions posted on the forum, ran it 100-300 thousand times and then totaled the amount of victories.

The percentages are all rounded to the nearest 0.1, so be aware that even though it might say 0, there might still be a slight chance of success! 0.1% (1 in 1000) might actually be 0.05%, which is 1 in 2000. Running a scenario many times will give you an approximation, but it is only accurate to around 0.1% Rounding distorts this further. There is also the possibility of coding error, and although I proofread each line of code, there is always a chance of programs containing errors. Lastly a human player may be able to increase their chances slightly by using their provisions and luck more frugally/aggressively as they can play it by ear. My program was too simple in most cases to be able to effectively do this, close but not perfect.

Personally I found it a joy to explore each of the books again and some of the results were quite fascinating to me. The aim though was to assist the reader in evaluating an adventure's overall difficulty and to better compare the books based on the frequently quoted statement at the beginning of each book, that goes along the lines of 'no matter how weak a player's initial dice rolls, any adventurer should be able to get through fairly easily'.

In future I will add to this and update after I complete a batch of 10 books. The next ten will probably be the ones that are the most difficult. I am thinking Crypt, Trial of Champions, any other requests?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

This is awesome Champskees, thanks for this!

A couple of questions:

- For Warlock, do you assume the player will take the Potion of Strength and use it twice during the Iron Cyclops fight if need be?

- Would books with extra attributes to roll against (like Presence in Island of the Undead) be too complex to work out with your system?

If you're planning to do the toughest books for the next ten, I would say definitely these 8:

- Trial of Champions

- Crypt of the Sorcerer

- Spellbreaker

- Knights of Doom

- Curse of the Mummy

- Eye of the Dragon

- Bloodbones

- Blood of the Zombies

And between Masks of Mayhem, Chasms of Malice and Paul Mason's last 3 books for the last 2 spots.

If anyone's interested, I thought I'd do a "Fairness Quotient" for each of the books based on Champskees' data. Basically this is the percentage of Champskees' combinations where the reader has better than a 50% chance of victory (presuming they take the optimal path of course):

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: 93%

Citadel of Chaos: 100%

Forest of Doom: 100%

Starship Traveller: 100%

City of Thieves: 56%

Deathtrap Dungeon: 14%

Island of the Lizard King: 27%

Scorpion Swamp - Selator: 93%; Poomchukker: 79%; Grimslade: 72%

Caverns of the Snow Witch: 8%

House of Hell - by the rules: 6%; applying Kris Knife bonus to Attack Strength: 92%

For warlock, yes definitely. My system in that book checked at the beginning of every combat round if your stamina was <3. If it was, then a dose of the potion was used. This was for any combat in the book.

The coding is actually very simple now that I have the general program and commands already done. I actually follow exactly what happens in the books, will be no problem. The problem is really in the presentation of data - a fourth statistic means a reworking of the tables I have devised so far.

The first 8 books you have suggested are largely in line with the titles I was considering apart from Knights of Doom (though on reflection it is pretty tough), so i'll do those next. I was also going to do masks of mayhem due to the item required in there, don't know about the last one, might even just pick one of my favourite titles i.e. Vault, Shadow Warriors or Creature of Havoc.

I love the idea of a fairness quotient too - I reckon that is a great way of comparing the books.

[champskees]

Dec 29, 2017 13:41:57 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

This is a wonderful resource. Not surprisingly I am going to request Night but only as long as my solution is proved to be 100% the most logical and rational solution!(I fear some of the disagreement will be about what 'rules' to obey)

Trial is closer to Caverns with 12/24/12. Crypt will be hilarious. The only question I have is whether the amended route will reach 1% with 12/24/12.

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over your solution mate. I'll probably just code two or three of your variations if you want and ill leave it there. Not really interested in perfecting the perfected, so to speak.

[kieran]

I hadn't realised Champskees had updated some of his solutions with more of these matrices. For those interested, I've provided "fairness quotients" for all the books he's done matrices for:

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: 93%
Citadel of Chaos: 100%
Forest of Doom: 100%
Starship Traveller: 100%
City of Thieves: 56%
Deathtrap Dungeon: 14%
Island of the Lizard King: 27%
Scorpion Swamp - Selator: 93%; Poomchukker: 79%; Grimslade: 72% (Overall: 81%)
Caverns of the Snow Witch: 8%
House of Hell - by the rules: 6%; applying Kris Knife bonus to Attack Strength: 92%
Talisman of Death: 39%
Space Assassin: 100%
Freeway Fighter: 20%
Temple of Terror: 22%
Rings of Kether - hard path: 63%
Seas of Blood: 3%
Appointment with FEAR - Super Strength: 100%; Psy Powers: 77%; ETS: 55%; Energy Blast: 60% (Overall: 73%)
Rebel Planet: 33%
Demons of the Deep: 94%
Crypt of the Sorcerer: 0%

Based on just the books above, here are the authors ranked by the fairness of their books (note I'm giving Steve Jackson the benefit of the doubt and saying he intended the Kris Knife bonus to be applied to Attack Strength)

Steve Jackson (UK): 91.6%
Steve Jackson (US): 87.5%
Andrew Chapman: 55.3%
Mark Smith: 39%
Jamie Thomson: 39%
Ian Livingstone: 37.8%
Robin Waterfield: 33%

[johnbrawn1972]

The extra books are a wonderful addition.

Only about 40 to go!

[champskees]

Hi all,

Have updated the stat book on first post. 

Now contains first 20 books as well as the Sorcery! epic.

Note with the sorcery books the percentages are cumulative i.e. 65% for Crown of Kings means you have a 65% chance of beating books 1-4 without dying. I found the contrast between warrior and wizard to be quite strong, not surprising though.

Books 11-20: a lot of them are sci-fi with extra attributes and rules which were not only annoying to program but also to display. Seas of blood was probably the most painful to calculate because you roll for crew strike and crew strength in addition to skill/stamina/luck. As a consequence the stat tables for those tricky books are a bit different.

Anyway I hope this is again of use as a supplementary resource. Will do some more hopefully over the coming months.

[philsadler]

Thanks for this. Information like this is always useful to designers.

[daredevil123]

Thanks for the update. Trial of Champions will be interesting - I reckon it is the hardest book other than COTS and BOTZ.

[johnbrawn1972]

Jun 10, 2018 17:03:01 GMT daredevil123 said:

Thanks for the update. Trial of Champions will be interesting - I reckon it is the hardest book other than COTS and BOTZ.

Crypt and Spellbreaker are the utmost pinnacle of madness of the original books. When it comes to the later books Blood is in a league of its own as the analysis by Champskees makes manifest.

I agree the difficulty of Trial of Champions is ramped up but at least the ruthless quality control at the beginning makes sense because it exploits the weakness of any avatar with a skill of eleven or less.

It would not surprise me if 12/14/7 has something like the same statistical chances as Deathtrap, Island or Caverns. At least somewhere in their vicinity. I admit the punishing demands on stamina might push it a little further than the others.

[daredevil123]

Jun 10, 2018 17:38:28 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

Jun 10, 2018 17:03:01 GMT daredevil123 said:

Thanks for the update. Trial of Champions will be interesting - I reckon it is the hardest book other than COTS and BOTZ.

Crypt and Spellbreaker are the utmost pinnacle of madness of the original books. When it comes to the later books Blood is in a league of its own as the analysis by Champskees makes manifest.

I agree the difficulty of Trial of Champions is ramped up but at least the ruthless quality control at the beginning makes sense because it exploits the weakness of any avatar with a skill of eleven or less.

It would not surprise me if 12/14/7 has something like the same statistical chances as Deathtrap, Island or Caverns. At least somewhere in their vicinity. I admit the punishing demands on stamina might push it a little further than the others.

I haven't read Spellbreaker but from what I've heard the difficulty is insane. Trial is exceptionally hard without a walkthrough because of its mind-boggling linearity. Even with a walkthrough the limited options to restore stamina probably make it harder than Livingstone's earlier books. At least it has the "It's supposed to be impossible!" defence which the original Deathtrap also has.

[kieran]

Jun 10, 2018 17:03:01 GMT daredevil123 said:

Thanks for the update. Trial of Champions will be interesting - I reckon it is the hardest book other than COTS and BOTZ.

I think all three of Jonathan Green's Puffin books would have it beat.

[daredevil123]

Sorry, I should probably explain that I haven't played all of the FF books, particularly many of the later ones. I did try Curse of the Mummy recently and the difficulty is ridiculous.

Having reviewed the probabilities, I stand corrected. Masks of Mayhem is even harder than Trial of Champions!

[champskees]

So, did another 10 of the books...updated excel file.

[johnbrawn1972]

Jun 25, 2018 4:14:20 GMT champskees said:

So, did another 10 of the books...updated excel file.

I have just realized you are halfway through your project.

I am still sweating over Night of the Necromancer as it has been an all consuming quest for perfection. I keep trying to guess what the percentage will be. Maybe 10% or 20% because the beginning is punishingly difficult even with my system allowing for codeword Devourer. If Champskees realizes my solution is flawed I will have to take up glass swallowing to try and recover my loss of esteem.

I now have three systems for Stormslayer but all three have major problems. All three are probably 25% up to the final three encounters then they drop to 1% it seems to me. I am not sure if the Chainmail Armour and Wyrmskin Cloak will generate enough attack rounds to defeat opponents who have a +2, +3 and +3 advantage respectively. The only other thing in your favour is the last two are really st6 and st8 which helps. Where to use the luck?

[champskees]

Jun 25, 2018 13:03:51 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

Jun 25, 2018 4:14:20 GMT champskees said:

So, did another 10 of the books...updated excel file.

I have just realized you are halfway through your project.

I am still sweating over Night of the Necromancer as it has been an all consuming quest for perfection. I keep trying to guess what the percentage will be. Maybe 10% or 20% because the beginning is punishingly difficult even with my system allowing for codeword Devourer. If Champskees realizes my solution is flawed I will have to take up glass swallowing to try and recover my loss of esteem.

I now have three systems for Stormslayer but all three have major problems. All three are probably 25% up to the final three encounters then they drop to 1% it seems to me. I am not sure if the Chainmail Armour and Wyrmskin Cloak will generate enough attack rounds to defeat opponents who have a +2, +3 and +3 advantage respectively. The only other thing in your favour is the last two are really st6 and st8 which helps. Where to use the luck?

I will probably have to go over night and stormslayer from scratch before I write any programs, but I should be able to write code to test several of your proposed routes without too much trouble.

The program writes the percentages directly into the excel book now, so if you click on a specific cell the actual percentage will pop up I.e it is rounded to nearest 0.1 on the table but the actual figures are still there. I see this being useful if you are measuring marginal success rates I.e Min stats w stormslayer.

[kieran]

Jun 25, 2018 4:14:20 GMT champskees said:

So, did another 10 of the books...updated excel file.

Hmm, I can still only see the first 20 (plus Sorcery, Crypt and Blood).

[johnbrawn1972]

Jun 26, 2018 4:18:56 GMT champskees said:

Jun 25, 2018 13:03:51 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I have just realized you are halfway through your project.

I am still sweating over Night of the Necromancer as it has been an all consuming quest for perfection. I keep trying to guess what the percentage will be. Maybe 10% or 20% because the beginning is punishingly difficult even with my system allowing for codeword Devourer. If Champskees realizes my solution is flawed I will have to take up glass swallowing to try and recover my loss of esteem.

I now have three systems for Stormslayer but all three have major problems. All three are probably 25% up to the final three encounters then they drop to 1% it seems to me. I am not sure if the Chainmail Armour and Wyrmskin Cloak will generate enough attack rounds to defeat opponents who have a +2, +3 and +3 advantage respectively. The only other thing in your favour is the last two are really st6 and st8 which helps. Where to use the luck?

I will probably have to go over night and stormslayer from scratch before I write any programs, but I should be able to write code to test several of your proposed routes without too much trouble.

The program writes the percentages directly into the excel book now, so if you click on a specific cell the actual percentage will pop up I.e it is rounded to nearest 0.1 on the table but the actual figures are still there. I see this being useful if you are measuring marginal success rates I.e Min stats w stormslayer.

The only Night of the Necromancer solution I want you to test has been flagged but of course it is perfect! You could test the Cador and Korzen solution as well but it is strictly superfluous as is the 12/24/12.

All three solutions for Stormslayer need to be tested to see which one is best but of course they are all brilliant!

[philsadler]

Jun 26, 2018 12:04:37 GMT kieran said:

Jun 25, 2018 4:14:20 GMT champskees said:

So, did another 10 of the books...updated excel file.

Hmm, I can still only see the first 20 (plus Sorcery, Crypt and Blood).

Same here. I thought it was just me.

[champskees]

My bad, should be right now.

Finished up to 39 now. 38 is taking a while because of the faith mechanic, as well as all of the spells and combat particulars.

[philsadler]

Thanks for your work!

[kieran]

Thanks Champskees. I've worked out the fairness quotients of all the books so far and ranked them from fairest to least fair (in a case of a tie breaker, I looked at the chances with minimal stats and the chances with maximum stats:

1. Starship Traveller 100%
2. Citadel of Chaos 100%
3. Forest of Doom 100%
4. Space Assassin 100%
5. Daggers of Darkness 100%
6. Portal of Evil 100%
7. Demons of the Deep 94%
8. Fangs of Fury 94%
9. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain 93%
10. Beneath Nightmare Castle 90%
11. The Shamutanti Hills 86%
12. Khare: Cityport of Traps 86%
13. Robot Commando 86%
14. The Seven Serpents 85%
15. The Crown of Kings 85%
16. Scorpion Swamp 81%
17. Appointment with FEAR 73%
18. Rings of Kether 63%
19. House of Hell 61%*
20. Stealer of Souls 60%
21. City of Thieves 56%
22. Battleblade Warrior 42%
23. Talisman of Death 39%
24. Slaves of the Abyss 38%
25. Midnight Rogue 37%
26. Rebel Planet 33%
27. Sword of the Samurai 32%
28. Island of the Lizard King 27%
29. Creature of Havoc 26%
30. Temple of Terror 22%
31. Freeway Fighter 20%
32. Phantoms of Fear 17%
33. Deathtrap Dungeon 14%
34. Caverns of the Snow Witch 8%
35. Seas of Blood 3%
36. Star Strider 0%
37. Chasms of Malice 0%
38. Armies of Death 0%
39. Trial of Champions 0%
40. Masks of Mayhem 0%
41. Sky Lord 0%
42. Crypt of the Sorcerer 0%
43. Blood of the Zombies 0%

* Assuming the Kris Knife bonus can be applied to Attack Strength and taking it that you need a Fear of 9 or more

And based on these books, the ranking for the authors based on the average FQs of their books:

1. Peter Darvill-Evans 95%
2. Steve Jackson (US) 87%
3. Steve Jackson (UK) 80%
4. Keith Martin 60%
5. Andrew Chapman 55%
6. Luke Sharp 49%
7. Marc Gascoigne 42%
8. Paul Mason / Steve Williams 38%
10. Graeme Davis 37%
11. Mark Smith / Jamie Thomson 36%
13. Ian Livingstone 28%
14. Robin Waterfield 17%
15. Martin Allen 0%

[champskees]

1 - 50 done.

[slloyd14]

This is an awesome resource! I love it!

[johnbrawn1972]

Congratulation to Champskees for completing the first 60 books and thereby reaching the end of the Puffin books.

The finishing line is in sight.

(At this very moment I am writing 1001 reasons why my hobby horse solutions are correct to infinity. I feel like that bloke in Warlock where you have to batter down the door).

I can accept if I am wrong.(Kryten lie mode)

Further amendment I just remembered books 65, 66 and 67 are already complete so that leaves 61, 62, 63 and 64. The incredibly detailed Bloodbones solution is probably just a case of following the mathematics. The 8 skill Howl of the Werewolf will generate the most interesting probabilities as it is winning with minimal resources. The remaining books, and resulting arguments, will, I believe, require opioids.

[champskees]

...and I'm spent.

Every FF book up to 67 has now been added to the Stat Book.

So now this forum not only has a solution for every book, but also a percentile guide to help measure its difficulty. My computer has played over 1 billion individual playthroughs of FF in order to complete this task, insane really. 

I think I am going to take a break from FF for a while. That's the problem with Fighting Fantasy: the fantasy. Sometimes you get so drawn in, the imaginary worlds start to replace the only one that is real.

Hopefully, Steve Jackson delivers the goods with his upcoming entry so I can return for book 68!

Ciao,
Jake

[daredevil123]

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. The whole endeavour has blown my mind. I don't blame you for taking a break and don't mean to be demanding, but it would also be brilliant to see the table for the Wizard edition of Curse of the Mummy - I tried it and found it almost impossible!

[johnbrawn1972]

I will be blasting like mad to do book 68. I do not have the benefits of mathematical assistance so I am Giles in disguise.

I will now be looking at all instances to see if I can find a 0.1% improvement. End Kryten lie mode though I have already pointed out one or two.