FF Poll 41-60

[King Gillibran]

The poll is to choose your Five Favourite Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I will do the same for Gamebooks 21-40, 41-60 and so on the five top will go into another poll of 20 and then eventually down to one. I will end some time after Christmas. Enjoy!

[scouserob]

I don't own any of these, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to instead thank you, King Gillibran, for organising these polls.
I'm enjoying them rather a lot.

I'll keep my eyes out for the next one where I can re-enter the fray.

[King Gillibran]

Dec 14, 2022 12:35:24 GMT scouserob said:

I don't own any of these, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to instead thank you, King Gillibran, for organising these polls.
I'm enjoying them rather a lot.

I'll keep my eyes out for the next one where I can re-enter the fray.

The next one will be incredibly tough for me. I really just chose the ones I own for this one.

[CharlesX]

Slight technical point - I think\believe there have been fewer than 20 further new official FF gamebooks published, and on a related point, that's including Sorcery! FF. I don't know how you will make it up to (the next) twenty - will you be including Goldhawk books, as well as Clash Of The Princes?!

[scouserob]

Ouch.
I pity the Scholastic releases if they end up pitted against Sorcery!
Especially if the four Sorcery! books are included and kept separate in the poll.

71 Mainline
+4 (or 1 if combined) Sorcery! (If Included)
+2 (or 1 if combined) Clash of the Princes (If Included)

Maybe scale down the number of votes and qualifiers to 3 or 4?

[King Gillibran]

Tomorrow I will post the last 20 and they will be all the mainline 61-71 ones, the four Sorcery, two Clash of the Princes, and I had to get a few more so I added the three mini  adventures: Caverns of the Snow Witch, House of Hell, Eye of the Dragon.

My five where:

1 Return to Firetop Mountain

2 Legend of Zagor

3 Curse of the Mummy

4 Eye of the Dragon

5 Night Dragon (by the way Eye only comes higher than this because I have only done Night Dragon 1.)

These are my only Gamebooks in the 41-61, and I don't even own Night Dragon.

[pip]

Siege of Sardath is an easy number 1 for me here.

Legend of the Shadow Warriors, The Crimson Tide and Magehunter are also great.

Overall, though, I think this is the weakest batch of the three as a lot of the books in the 50+ left me with a "meh" feeling.

[CharlesX]

Dec 14, 2022 16:49:22 GMT pip said:

Siege of Sardath is an easy number 1 for me here.

Legend of the Shadow Warriors and Magehunter are also great.

Overall, though, I think this is the weakest batch of the three as a lot of these books left me with a "meh" feeling.

There were several FFs which had a heavily epic-esque feel (Tower, Night Dragon, LOTSW, LOZ, COTM and IOTU), and they either are your thing or they aren't. I sometimes like that sort of thing, which is why I put Island Of The Undead as one of my favourites.

   Revenge Of The Vampire would have been disappointing even without its numerous errors - to me its easily Keith Martin's worst FF. I dislike Tower Of Destruction for similar reasons - rule ambiguities and errors irritate me no end, and of course Tower has half a ton of them. 

[kieran]

Dec 14, 2022 16:49:22 GMT pip said:

Overall, though, I think this is the weakest batch of the three as a lot of these books left me with a "meh" feeling.

The 50s let down the 40s imo. 4 of my picks were from the 40s with only Magehunter representing the 50s

[trialmaster]

Surprised Master of Chaos isn't faring better as I thought it was one of Keith Martin's best particularly the 1st half with the notoriety score working particularly well. And of course Jesper the Mongoose, one of the best and most humorous NPC's in the canon.

[kieran]

Dec 14, 2022 18:54:13 GMT trialmaster said:

Surprised Master of Chaos isn't faring better as I thought it was one of Keith Martin's best particularly the 1st half with the notoriety score working particularly well. And of course Jesper the Mongoose, one of the best and most humorous NPC's in the canon.

Just so many good books competing for that Top 5!

My picks were:
Legend of the Shadow Warriors
Spectral Stalkers
Moonrunner
Siege of Sardath
Magehunter

Honourable mentions: Master of Chaos, Black Vein Prophecy, The Crimson Tide, Return to Firetop Mountain

[nathanh]

This is a brutal 20; Keep of the Lich Lord can't even get a vote!

[terrysalt]

Dec 14, 2022 21:51:48 GMT nathanh said:

This is a brutal 20; Keep of the Lich Lord can't even get a vote!

40-49 was the peak of the series for me. So many excellent books!

[King Gillibran]

Dec 14, 2022 16:49:22 GMT pip said:

Siege of Sardath is an easy number 1 for me here.

Legend of the Shadow Warriors, The Crimson Tide and Magehunter are also great.

Overall, though, I think this is the weakest batch of the three as a lot of the books in the 50+ left me with a "meh" feeling.

I really enjoy Return to Firetop Mountain and Night Dragon.

[King Gillibran]

I am dissapointed that not many Jonathon Greens are there and I am surprised by the popularity of Siege of Sardath. It came 51st in the poll in Fighting Fantazine 3.

[CharlesX]

Dec 14, 2022 21:51:48 GMT nathanh said:

This is a brutal 20; Keep of the Lich Lord can't even get a vote!

That's history now, Keep Of The Lich-Lord seems to have several. Keep Of The Lich-Lord feels like a gamebook from another universe, indeed Dave Morris has said he wanted Keep Of The Lich-Lord not to be tied down by FF conventions, and it's no wonder he's adapted Keep for Fabled Lands (tbh, I suspect FF wasn't his first choice, either). It's independence is it's greatest strength and weakness - strong because it's a lot of fun the first few plays, and it's forgiving unlike many FF - weak because it feels superficial and it isn't particularly ambitious.

[King Gillibran]

I am going to lock this poll and put Temple, Talisman, Khare, Crown and Citadel in a fifth place poll.

[King Gillibran]

Sigh, I have never done a single one of the victors for this one.