Advanced Fighting Fantasy
by Matt Staggs
Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Cubicle 7 Entertainment, softcover, 200 pp., $29.99, ISBN: 978-0-8574-4067-9.
In 1982—practically a gulf in time measured in aeons by gamer years—British game designers Steve Jackson (unrelated to the American designer of the G.U.R.P.S. RPG) and Ian Livingstone introduced a groundbreaking variant on the Choose Your Own Adventure novels, popular at the time, called the Fighting Fantasy series. Every Fighting Fantasy novel was a stand-alone roleplaying system, enabling the player to not only guide the story, but also create a unique character and overcome monsters and other obstacles through rolls of a six-sided die. In time, the world of the Fighting Fantasy books became a distinct setting all its own, with each new volume adding to its lore and history. These books were enormously popular, especially among pre-internet gamers geographically isolated from their peers.
Many young gamers cut their teeth on the Fighting Fantasy books, and still remember them fondly to this day. Some of them will even tell you that those books contained the workings of a good tabletop roleplaying game. And they’re right.
A stand-alone Fighting Fantasy roleplaying game first appeared on the market in the late eighties, but with the hobby in its heyday it failed to distinguish itself from flashier, better-marketed properties like Dungeons & Dragons. Still, it had its devotees among gamers who enjoyed a simple but robust system geared toward “bash in the door and kill the monster” dungeon-crawling. Now, over twenty years later, writer Graham Bottley and Cubicle 7 has introduced a new edition of the game called Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
This new edition retains the simplicity of the original rules, but modifies the game in other ways to accommodate the expectations of today’s gamers: a “Talent” system allows players to better define their characters in terms of expanded capabilities and areas of expertise, and a point-based character creation method refines these options even further. Even dungeon creation has become a simpler affair. Bottley introduces a map creation method, which involves dropping a handful of six-siders on graph paper, that works a lot better than one might think.
This being said, most of the game’s old rules have remained intact and untouched, and sometimes that’s a problem. Rolling for weapon damage requires consulting an individual table for each weapon, with an identical method used to calculate damage absorbed by armor. While I fully respect including these legacy rules as an aesthetic choice, I can’t help think it bogs down the flow of play.
These minor quibbles aside, Advanced Fighting Fantasy delivers a rules light, but surprisingly robust, gaming experience that harkens back to the golden years of the hobby.
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