Great post. I bought the original Advanced Fighting Fantasy books, but never got around to playing an actual game -- when they were being published I was just about hitting the age where I was only interested in playing the guitar and falling in love (and neglecting my schoolwork, incidentally). Those books are notable in containing some really brilliant artwork by Russ Nicholson.
Re Appointment with FEAR... I tended to go with the gadgetry skill, whatever that was called. Perhaps with a sneaky SKILL of 12 that the dice just happened to give me, to simulate some martial arts abilities.
... and can I note that the way Appointment with FEAR was structured was really exceptional -- the special power you chose didn't simply change the way you resolved each encounter, but utterly redirected the story so that you found different key clues according to which power you possessed. Like this, the various clues that you'd (hopefully) picked up sent you off in different directions at the story's finale, so that the final confrontation with the big baddie, the Titanium Cyborg, happened in a range of different ways. I don't remember them all -- if you had strength/flight, you had to confront him on an aeroplane in the sky; if you had gadgetry you had to learn to construct some widget that would shut down his cyborg components...
Some of Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy books were outstanding.
In one of the encounters in 'Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-Playing Game,' an NPC offers you a bowl of nuts. If I remember rightly, you have to roll a die and, if you score a 1, then you've received a bad nut, and you lose 1 STAMINA point from eating it.
Now, in the year 2026, I enjoy snacking on nuts. I'm not a big fan of chocolate or sweets, but I can eat nuts all day long. So from time to time I'll accidentally eat a bad nut.
And, to this day -- coming up forty years later, mind -- when this happens I'll still think to myself, 'I just lost a STAMINA point.'
Great post. I bought the original Advanced Fighting Fantasy books, but never got around to playing an actual game -- when they were being published I was just about hitting the age where I was only interested in playing the guitar and falling in love (and neglecting my schoolwork, incidentally). Those books are notable in containing some really brilliant artwork by Russ Nicholson.
Re Appointment with FEAR... I tended to go with the gadgetry skill, whatever that was called. Perhaps with a sneaky SKILL of 12 that the dice just happened to give me, to simulate some martial arts abilities.
... and can I note that the way Appointment with FEAR was structured was really exceptional -- the special power you chose didn't simply change the way you resolved each encounter, but utterly redirected the story so that you found different key clues according to which power you possessed. Like this, the various clues that you'd (hopefully) picked up sent you off in different directions at the story's finale, so that the final confrontation with the big baddie, the Titanium Cyborg, happened in a range of different ways. I don't remember them all -- if you had strength/flight, you had to confront him on an aeroplane in the sky; if you had gadgetry you had to learn to construct some widget that would shut down his cyborg components...
Some of Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy books were outstanding.
In one of the encounters in 'Fighting Fantasy: The Introductory Role-Playing Game,' an NPC offers you a bowl of nuts. If I remember rightly, you have to roll a die and, if you score a 1, then you've received a bad nut, and you lose 1 STAMINA point from eating it.
Now, in the year 2026, I enjoy snacking on nuts. I'm not a big fan of chocolate or sweets, but I can eat nuts all day long. So from time to time I'll accidentally eat a bad nut.
And, to this day -- coming up forty years later, mind -- when this happens I'll still think to myself, 'I just lost a STAMINA point.'
AFF & the Heroic supplement are excellent.