#fighting fantasy

I love art books. I’ve got a ton of them. Been enjoying them ever since I was a lad, so, uh, several decades. Keep that in mind when I say I am not sure I have ever experienced an art book go so hard as Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy (2024).

In terms of scope, there aren’t many books that are comparable. Art & Arcana, I guess, as a collection of art for a game that’s been around for several decades. A&A is so concerned with being on message (about D&D’s place in history, culture, the market place) though, that the art part of the book often feels secondary to the propaganda. Magic Realms isn’t worried about any of that. It wants to show you all the awesome art. And it does. For 350 pages. It’s unrelenting and, while it does not contain all the Fighting Fantasy artwork in existence, the density of artwork on display makes it seem like it must be damn close. Part of this is the remarkable consistency the gamebooks have had over the years. Even modern iterations with wildly different styles find ways to conform to a greater whole; every piece in this thing is recognizably FF in some way.

And yet, the focus is not on Fighting Fantasy as a brand or lifestyle or whatever. It’s squarely on the artists. 28 get in-depth treatment in alphabetical order, frankly an insane pool of talent including Ian Miller, Russ Nicholson, Iain McCaig, Martin McKenna, Chris Achilleos, Les Edwards and so many more, all at the top of their game, most displaying four illustrations up on a page (John Blanche has so many iconic pieces that his eventually go twelve-up to save space!). All of these are accompanied by a short essay explaining their place in Fighting Fantasy’s legacy (including, in the case of McKenna, Achilleos and Nicholson, brief mentions honoring their passings). The last hundred pages is split between surveys of more minor artists, artists for overseas editions, many collections of variant covers and some derivative products.

Showcasing art from some of my favourite artists, and those that have attracted my attention, in the field of visual arts, including vintage; pulp; pop culture; books and comics; concert posters; fantastical and imaginative realism; classical; contemporary; new contemporary; pop surrealism; conceptual and illustration.

While everyone is conquering the world or bringing about the apocalypse, the Riddling Reaver (from Fighting Fantasy) is planning to use an ancient artifact to alter the universe. If he succeeds, rather then everyone's moral status being easily placed into one of nine unambiguous categories, Morality will be grey, blurry and impossible to uncontroversially define. At one point someone starts panicking about the terrible possibility of having evil people who don't know they're evil.

Fighting Fantasy was a series of 80-90s British game books, similar to Choose Your Own Adventure ones but with a D&D-style adventure focus (and occasional sci-fi and horror ones) and a stripped-down version of the D&D system to go with them (which you can find in the back). I love them (despite being younger than the original run) and, if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons but don't have a group you can play it with, they'll be a good substitute, Hence, I'm making this list of links to Internet Archive copies so you can enjoy them.

Appointment with F. E. A. R.

Armies of Death

Beneath Nightmare Castle

Bloodbones

Blood of the Zombies

The Citadel of Chaos

City of Thieves

Creature of Havoc

Crypt of the Sorcerer

Deathtrap Dungeon

Eye of the Dragon

Fangs of Fury

The Forest of Doom

House of Hell

Howl of the Werewolf (playing through this is one of my Halloween traditions)

Island of the Lizard King

Legend of Zagor

Magehunter

Night of the Necromancer

Portal of Evil

The Port of Peril

Rebel Planet

The Rings of Kether

Seas of Blood

Space Assassin

Starship Traveller

Star Strider

Stormslayer

Sword of the Samurai

Talisman of Death

Temple of Terror

Trial of Champions

In making the conlang, I assigned the female prefix as 'el', because I want them to be a matriarchal society, and this links through to the start of the word for nation/peoples - 'eshen' ('shen' being a tree).

The suffix of 3rd person singular object pronouns are 'o', making 'her' be 'elo'.

This causes some... issues regarding Elowyn's name, and it's shortening of 'Elo' 🤦️