First steps

Right, if you happen to have had the misfortune to stumble across my blog, I'm reckoning there's a good chance you are a Fighting Fantasy fan. If, however, that is not the case, then welcome anyway. I shall either convert you to the cult of Zagor or smite you down in hellfire. Ok, I may be exaggerating, but seriously, I hope to make this series of reports on my various adventures throughout the world of Allansia and beyond as entertaining as possible, so if it's not, feel free to bombard me with abuse telling me how to do it better, such as 'The cheese! Why didn't you use the fucking cheese!' Ah yes, perhaps I should've said at the beginning. I am not going to hold back with my language in this; I feel if I was really going through a dungeon filled with various horrible denizens, I would not be saying 'God bless my soul' whenever I came across a group of demon with razor-sharp claws that had just added me to its 'to slaughter' list. For those who do not know, this year is the 30th anniversary of the very first Fighting Fantasy book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. This fact is kinda why I've decided to write this blog, along with a pathetic reasoning that writing this will help embellish my creative writing skills for when I start my Uni course.

30 Years of having the crap beaten out of you by millions
of people worldwide can really anger one.

I suppose my main inspiration for starting this blog must lie with the three blogs to the right, which I have unashamedly stolen the idea for this one from. However, I can guarantee that they will be of much greater quality than this, as to be honest I still don't really know what I'm doing yet! They are all highly amusing and full of humour, which, whilst I will hope mine will be similar to it that vein, I am going to endeavour to keep mine as original as possible so I do not not get hunted down and eaten by any copyright demons that happen to be lurking on the next reference. My current vision for how each playthrough will be laid out is as such:

• Introduction - The synopsis for the book I'm attempting, stats for my warrior, etc.
• The Quest - A (reasonably) detailed account of my adventure, varying in detail depending on how far I actually progress. From what I remember of how difficult Crypt of the Sorcerer was, expect a highly detailed account of very few encounters at all when that book's turn arrives.
• My Journey - The Path I took, listing all references I visited, so that if you ever lose the will to live you can travel through my exact adventure for yourself.
• How much fight was in this Fantasy? - A crappily named feature in which I break down the adventure into various aspects and give it a rating out of 10, thus deciding whether it gets the Galactrix seal of approval or not. I plan to use aspects such as illustrations, monsters featured, storyline and level of difficulty to decide how good each book is. There will doubtless be other criteria as I read through the books, but for now, that's what I've got

By now you're probably relieved to know I've nearly come to the end of my first post. Having recently fallen in love again with the series due to the excellence of those blogs on the right (Seriously, why haven't you left this one for one of those yet?!) I scoured a certain online auction site to get hold of the original puffin series which are scarily older than me. Having acquired most of them (Revenge of the vampire £40?! Really?!) I now have a vast plethora of books to fail horribly in. Curiously enough, I shall not be running this blog in numerical order where the books are concerned. Order and logic rarely works in Fighting Fantasy, so why should it here? On that note, I shall be starting on Portal of Evil from the original puffin series, based purely on the fact there's a frickin dinosaur on the cover! I shall be going into the book blind, with no previous experience of it, and therefore have a horrible feeling my adventurer may also end up blind by the end. Oh, one last thing. I may also take a break from time to time to play the quite frankly awesome Gamebook Adventures series by Tin Man Games, who interestingly enough have also acquired the rights to make digital versions of FF books... Go check them out, they're cheap and great fun, even if they are just as hard as good ol' Fighting Fantasy. For now, I shall leave you to do far better things with your lives.. Until the Portal of Evil, Goodbye!

Seriously, DINOSAURS!! What's not to love?!