Recommend me a handful of FF books that are new to me

[drmanhattan]

I have owned all the books but to my shame have not even played half of them, so looking for your top tips, say 5-10 that you think are the best, and why. In order to help, let me describe the books I have played and what I like, since those of you who have played them all will know which of the books will best fit


I would describe myself as a nostalgiac old school FFer, so have played most of the original IL / SJ books, and very few of the "presents" books. I'm not a big fan of overly difficult, "one true path" books, unless it's the kind of adventure you can have fun mapping, since I fondly remember drawing maps of the originals and that made the repeating of sections a lot more fun, one of the reasons I find the iPad versions a bit boring (tried Bloodbones). I did appreciate that SJ did new twists for each of his books whereas IL was more your traditional D&D type adventure, even if I tend to prefer the IL genre all my favourite books are actually Steves (Sorcery, Citadel, House of Hell, Creature of Havoc in particular). For IL of course Deathtrap, City of Thieves (Warlock as well).

I have read

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

The Citadel of Chaos

The Forest of Doom

Starship Traveller

City of Thieves

Deathtrap Dungeon

Island of the Lizard King

Scorpion Swamp

Caverns of the Snow Witch

House of Hell

Talisman of Death

Freeway Fighter

Temple of Terror

Appointment with F.E.A.R.

Trial of Champions

Creature of Havoc

Bloodbones
Blood of the Zombies

I might have read

Space Assassin

The Rings of Kether

Seas of Blood

Demons of the Deep

Armies of Death

Return to Firetop Mountain



So this lot is the leftovers

Rebel Planet

Sword of the Samurai

Robot Commando

Masks of Mayhem

Beneath Nightmare Castle

Crypt of the Sorcerer

Star Strider

Phantoms of Fear

Midnight Rogue

Chasms of Malice

Battleblade Warrior

Slaves of the Abyss

Sky Lord

Stealer of Souls

Daggers of Darkness

Portal of Evil

Vault of the Vampire

Fangs of Fury

Dead of Night

Master of Chaos

Black Vein Prophecy

The Keep of the Lich Lord

Legend of the Shadow Warriors

Spectral Stalkers

Tower of Destruction

The Crimson Tide

Moonrunner

Siege of Sardath

Island of the Undead

Night Dragon

Spellbreaker

Legend of Zagor

Deathmoor

Knights of Doom

Magehunter

Revenge of the Vampire

Curse of the Mummy



OMG thats 37 to choose from!
plus I have not read 

Eye of the Dragon
Howl of the Werewolf (which I know is highly rated)
Stormslayer
Night of the Necromancer
Assassins of Allansia
Port of Peril
Gates of Death
Crystal of Storms



45 to pick from. Anyone care to pick 5 of the best that would resonate with a bit more "old school" feel (not necessarily traditional IL, but not overly complicated and tricky, anti cheating stuff and overly elaborate "trying to do something different".

[thealmightymudworm]

Jun 10, 2021 19:00:52 GMT drmanhattan said:

I have owned all the books but to my shame have not even played half of them, so looking for your top tips, say 5-10 that you think are the best, and why. In order to help, let me describe the books I have played and what I like, since those of you who have played them all will know which of the books will best fit


I would describe myself as a nostalgiac old school FFer, so have played most of the original IL / SJ books, and very few of the "presents" books. I'm not a big fan of overly difficult, "one true path" books

Overly difficult stats-wise or banging your brain against what's going on, or both?
Avoid Crypt of the Sorcerer for the first (IL's most ridiculous until Blood of the Zombiee) and The Crimson Tide for the latter

, unless it's the kind of adventure you can have fun mapping, since I fondly remember drawing maps of the originals and that made the repeating of sections a lot more fun, one of the reasons I find the iPad versions a bit boring (tried Bloodbones). I did appreciate that SJ did new twists for each of his books whereas IL was more your traditional D&D type adventure, even if I tend to prefer the IL genre all my favourite books are actually Steves (Sorcery, Citadel, House of Hell, Creature of Havoc in particular). For IL of course Deathtrap, City of Thieves (Warlock as well).

I have read

[...snip...]
I might have read

Space Assassin

The Rings of Kether

Seas of Blood

Demons of the Deep

Armies of Death

Return to Firetop Mountain

I'd take another look at Demons of the Deep to make sure. It's a particular favourite of mine, but in general the worst people tend to say about it is that it's a bit easy. It's definitely more likely to be described as fun than a slog.

So this lot is the leftovers

[...snip...]

Ones out of that lot that I've enjoyed:

Sword of the Samurai - two routes, pretty good use of Japanese mythology

Portal of Evil - inventive adventure with zombies (sort of) and dinosaurs and an unusual antagonist
Vault of the Vampire - a very successful attempt at a horror-themed adventure which gets the atmosphere right

Master of Chaos - features a greatly celebrated sidekick and an unusually honourable secondary villain
The Keep of the Lich Lord - fun, atmospheric undead adventure (though a bit too easy if you take the direct route)
Spectral Stalkers - inventive world-hopping adventure clearly influenced by Dr Who
Moonrunner - a very different, near universally acclaimed horror themed adventure (all the Stephen Hand books are highly rated, this is just the one I know best)

(there are a lot of those I haven't played)

Edit:

I'm not sure I've stuck very closely to your brief, but hopefully the descriptions help. I don't have a lot of patience for books where the average person still won't have won after 10 playthroughs (for whatever reason) though so that probably speaks to the last bit of your preferences.

[bloodbeasthandler]

I'd echo most of what Mudworm says in his recommendations to you.
You like mapping? Then you'll probably like the books by Keith Martin [actually Carl Sargent in real life].

With regards to Crypt of the Sorceror... you saying you like IL's books and an 'old school feel' I would recommend the book to you. Just don't play it by the rules as written. If you see SKILL bonuses in the text, add them to your Initial SKILL, and if you die it's up to you if you go back to the start or just carry on regardless like many of us tended to do when we first read these books as children.

[drmanhattan]

thanks!
Yeah I don't mind hard stats wise because if I get fed up I'll happily fudge those, but it's good to know in advance if it's going to be impossible with a weedy stat block.

Also, is there a list of all books that have actual mistakes in them that prevent you from finishing? I will find that quite annoying!

I actually hadnt realised until I posed that I have only properly played a fraction of the books, so in that sense I'm very happy there are so many books left for me to try.

and I am definitely into the mapping and jotting down, that was a huge part of the fun for me, having "well developed story" / Reading isn't as important for me, I primarily want the gamebook with just enough story to tie it together than loads of massive sections that take ages to read, but then again I am a lot older now so maybe I will find the exact opposite and the story stuff is a lot more important.

such a shame that once again, a fond nostalgiac hobby turned into a collectors thing, selling books for hundreds of pounds, sod that, I have given away thousands of pounds worth of stuff I now realize, I live in hope that one day the series will be reprinted, maybe via kickstarter with the ORIGINAL covers and art, perhaps unified slightly in style, maybe even mini hardbacks like WoFTM25, but I am not holding my breath. Print on demand maybe? I feel so annoyed that the reprints get progressively worse in terms of art, but I guess its all about trying to "market it as new". Bah.

[The Count]

Jun 10, 2021 19:00:52 GMT drmanhattan said:

So this lot is the leftovers

Phantoms of Fear

Chasms of Malice

Vault of the Vampire

Master of Chaos

Moonrunner

I think these five.

Phantoms has a couple of different paths, though an early puzzle can be frustrating, and interesting to map due to the latter part
Chasms is interesting for mapping as its not constructed round right angled corridors, and has multiple paths to get to the end
Vault and Master both have hub designs with multiple options so you don't need to find the true path but it helps, and good to map
Moonrunner has a few different paths and is good to map

[kieran]

Of your leftovers, I think these five might cater most to your old school/ mapping desires:

- Stealer of Souls (dungeon adventure with mostly orcs and goblins and the like but with a finale that's a bit different)
- Robot Commando (very non-linear so fun from a mapping point of view and working out the best routes to take between the cities)
- Beneath Nightmare Castle (creepy dungeon adventure though not as devious as House of Hell)
- Vault of the Vampire (a spooky castle to explore filled with optional nooks and crannies)
- Midnight Rogue (a quirky opening leads into a very old-school dungeon crawl)

I wouldn't say these are the best 5 by any means but I think you might enjoy them.

[drmanhattan]

awesome cheers!

[bloodbeasthandler]

Jun 11, 2021 10:23:32 GMT drmanhattan said:

I actually hadnt realised until I posed that I have only properly played a fraction of the books, so in that sense I'm very happy there are so many books left for me to try.

In that respect I'm a bit envious of the position you are in. A book can can read [or in the case of these ones read and played] for the first time only once. I've got quite a good memory when it comes to these books, decades after reading them, so there aren't any plot surprises. 
If you have the time and inclination you could always drop us a few lines here on this forum and tell us what you think of the books you are reading for the first time and from an adult's perspective. 

Jun 11, 2021 10:23:32 GMT drmanhattan said:

such a shame that once again, a fond nostalgiac hobby turned into a collectors thing, selling books for hundreds of pounds, sod that, I have given away thousands of pounds worth of stuff I now realize, I live in hope that one day the series will be reprinted, maybe via kickstarter with the ORIGINAL covers and art, perhaps unified slightly in style, maybe even mini hardbacks like WoFTM25, but I am not holding my breath. Print on demand maybe?

It's the way of things I suppose. Supply and demand and the whole thing gets turned into a business. Ideally, printings of the rarer later books would get them in the hands of those who actually want to read them and incidentally lay waste to that business. We will see what the coming reprints of later Lone Wolf will do to the online prices of Hunger of Sejanoz and Vampirium. The good thing about Lone Wolf is that the books can all be found on Project Aon. I myself have had to access three of the books online there otherwise I'd not have had the pleasure of reading them. Yes, why not print on demand? I can't see any drawbacks to that at all. 

[drmanhattan]

I will try to keep active here even though it seems like there are not so many people posting regularly, I’m quite excited about experiencing these books 1st hand, even as an adult, just trying to work out how to do it, like selections from above, or all in order, or by author. I will definitely post sorcery updates to get feedback on if I missed critical stuff for next books, I will probably play fair a time or two but then I will likely use some cheats, I.e. rewind from Instagram deaths but note that as a +1 attempt. Use some python code to get a % roll to win a combat or calculate expected stamina loss etc. then later attempts even branch back to map out some of the other paths. I would like to explore all the books at some point with sketches, maps and lists of items and creatures. I’m sure this has been done many times by many of you!
I am also planning to pick out favourite illustrations from each book, maybe that would be a fun poll.

[novarupta]

I would recommend Jonathan Green's FF books, those being: Spellbreaker
Knights of Doom
Howl of the Werewolf
Bloodbones
Stormslayer
Curse of the mummy
As they are my favourite gamebooks mainly due to the premise, however these books are insanely hard and at times literally near impossible to complete, (KoD has rly powerful enemies with skill 12 yet you need to fail a skill test early on for a vital clue)

[a moderator]

Howl and Stormslayer aren't nearly as harsh as Jonathan Green's earlier books, and if you're any good at codebreaking, there's no actual need to fail that Skill roll in Knights.

I'd recommend the following:

Beneath Nightmare Castle
Slaves of the Abyss
Vault of the Vampire
Dead of Night
Siege of Sardath

While Slaves and Siege don't entirely line up with your stated preferences, I think they're good enough to be worth checking out anyway - but pay attention when reading.

All are by different authors, so if you particularly enjoy any of them (apart from the one-off Siege), you might want to check out the other books by the same writer(s).

[drmanhattan]

excellent, thanks. I somewhat enjoyed revisiting the books I'd read before but as a 50 year old I don't have the patience or indeed interest to keep returning to the start so I mostly read through them, skipped combat dice rolling and backtracked here and there. Sketching the maps was quite fun again. I will look into some of these recommendations but wonder if FF had its time when I was a wee lad, a lot of the "game" in them is pretty silly what with the random items you sometimes need to collect and the need to replay them many times to win. I did very much enjoy replaying Deathtrap Dungeon and Trial of Champions, Citadel of Chaos and City of Thieves but Lizard King was a bit dull, Starship Traveller dull, though House of Hell was fun again.

I am going to start with Sorcery now though, since I only vaguely remembering completing the 1st one, and getting stuck in the 2nd one, but I might try to do it properly, mapping it out, combat rolls, even memorizing the spells and taking my time with them.

As an 11 year old I couldn't get enough of these and loved restarting, mapping, taking notes, rolling the dice. But I think that kind of dynamic worked a lot better in the 80s when we didnt have internet, smartphones and next gen video gaming and computers in every household. Would be fun to try some RPGs probably, but again, relative to FF, the concept of being forced to randomly choose directions and items then getting to the end and you lose, it's just not an appealing idea any more when I'm not going to get the joy of replaying the book/scenario over and over as the highlight of my evenings after school and weekends.


Dunno if that makes sense.

[pip]

IMO, these stand out particularly:

Slaves of the Abyss
Siege of Sardath
Dead of Night
Phantoms of Fear
Legend of the Shadow Warriors

Crypt of the Sorcerer is also a good book and it's worth reading, but if you don't want to have to cheat with the dice, I'd stay away from it.

[drmanhattan]

I don’t bother with the dice as I find that very tedious now.