I reach the rather ominously named city of Fang where I intend to enter The Trial Of Champions, a deadly tournament in which competitors have to overcome various booby traps and foes to reach the end of Baron Sukumvit’s deadly labyrinth. I start my quest sailing up the River Kok (stop it) in Chiang Mai, a province in northern Allansia, the fictional world in which many FF books are set. Could be better, but could be far worse! Cautiously optimistic, I turn the page… However, for LUCK I manage a pretty good 11 out of 12. But then I get a lackluster 19 out of 24 for STAMINA. It’s been over 30 years since I last did one of these and I can’t remember any of the traps or pitfalls so this could possibly be a very short article indeed! All the same, I promise not to cheat, use online maps and walkthrough guides or backtrack if I take a difficult route (unless that is a legitimate option).įirst off I have to throw some dice and add their totals to preset scores to determine my traits.

I’m going to need a suitably epic soundtrack for my adventure (vinyl copy of Cuts Both Ways by Gloria Estefan, which I picked up from a rather remarkable second-hand record salesman with fake hands) and a warrior’s drink (Aperol Spritz) to gird my loins for the coming trials. I’ve familiarised myself with the rules, bought some snazzy looking skellington dice, grabby a clicky pencil and printed off an Adventure Sheet I made in Photoshop (so as not to write in the actual book – one of my pet hates). Prompted by the recent release of a new official FF book, The Gates Of Death by Charlie Higson, I decided to dig out one of my old volumes and document my progress for your entertainment. But even then, you could still take a wrong turn and meet a sticky end. If the book proved difficult I would quickly ditch the “elaborate combat and scoring system”, opting instead to just assume that I would vanquish whatever foe I encountered, or that I “just happened” to have picked up the potion or amulet needed to progress. However, I am sorry to admit (and I am sure many of my peers will too) that I did bend the rules a little on occasion. I loved the idea that you could make the story unique each time and I made sure I collected as many subsequent books as I could. I picked up my first one ( The Forest Of Doom) courtesy of the sadly departed Puffin Book Club (where the children’s arm of Penguin would sell their wares through schools).

Thanks to Fighting Fantasy books, exotic and terrifying sounding places like The Citadel of Chaos, Scorpion Swamp or The Island of the Lizard King were places we all visited each night. “When you encounter the monkey, hit it with a spade!” (I may have made that last one up).

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