Any Fighting Fantasy Conversion Notes?

[Technomancer]

Firetop Mountain has one bit of dungeon ecology that violates my SOD, namely the 4 dwarves in a room in the maze playing dice.

The original tabletop rpg conversion book (called simply Fighting Fantasy) had something like this too, if I remember. In the middle of this dungeon full of nasties, there was a tavern run by some dwarves.

 

[Arnwyn]

Got links?

Sadly, no. It's all at home, and it's very much non-OGL.


My favorites (especially for conversion) include:
- the Sorcery! series
- Seas of Blood
- Beneath Nightmare Castle
- Keep of the Lich Lord
- Vault of the Vampire
- Crypt of the Sorcerer
and
- Trial of Champions (very difficult and time-consuming to convert and enhance, but very much worth it in the end)

Like Hobo, Warlock of Firetop Mountain did very little for me.

 

[S'mon]

Sadly, no. It's all at home, and it's very much non-OGL.

Which is entirely irrelevant since if you were violating any copyrights it'd be those of the FF books' owner (Jackson & Livingstone I expect), not WotC!

 

[S'mon]

Sadly, no. It's all at home,

I think he wants the links to the website with the walk-throughs you mentioned, which would be cool.

 

[Arnwyn]

Which is entirely irrelevant since if you were violating any copyrights it'd be those of the FF books' owner (Jackson & Livingstone I expect), not WotC!

Yes, both actually (but I didn't want to bother expounding on it...). But since you decided to mention it: tons of non-OGL because I use and describe such feats and special abilities; and copyright laws because I use the FF art.

I think he wants the links to the website with the walk-throughs you mentioned, which would be cool.

Ah, that would make sense. Let me see if I can find it with a quick Google...

Hmmm... it looks like the site that hosted them is now the official Fighting Fantasy page (since the books seem to have been re-released). Gack!

 

[Jer]

It's funny--I know that seems to be everyone's favorite and all, but I never liked that one. I got it after already having a good half dozen other ones, and I always thought Firetop Mountain was really annoying. It had really bad artwork compared to some of the others I had, the maze was incredibly annoying and even then the whole problem of "nonsensical dungeon ecology" bothered me.

Firetop Mountain was the first FFG book I ever got, which means that it holds a deep bit of nostalgia for me. My parents got it for my as a Christmas present -- I was into both D&D and Choose-Your-Own-Adventures at the time and I didn't even know the FFG books existed (I guess they didn't much in the US - they came out slowly for the next few years after that).

Discounting nostalgia, though, I guess City of Thieves was actually my favorite of the fantasy-based FFG books - I spent a lot of time running through that one over and over again, trying out different paths through the city.

My favorite of all time, though, was probably "House of Hades" (which I think was called "House of Hell" in the UK). I spent hours with that one, dying periodically in various horrific ways trying to get out of that damned house. I turned a good chunk of the map I made for that one into a Call of Cthulhu adventure at one point too -- the players certainly weren't expecting demons in their CoC game, but it's nice to shake up expectations every once in a while.

 

[Desdichado]

Re monster conversions, I've converted a fair few from Out of the Pit, and I sprung a Shapechanger, the cover star of Forest of Doom, on a PC in my Moldvay B/X pbem, much to his enjoyment as it nearly killed him.

Which cover?

Edit: I think overall Forest of Doom is my favourite, along with the Sorcery series. I love the wilderness-as-dungeon flowchart approach, something D&D designers could learn from IMO, it much beats just rolling on a random encounter table.

One of mine, too. Then again, Forest of Doom and City of Thieves were the first two that I managed to get my hands on, so there may be a bit of a first-love syndrome with those two relative to the others.

 

[Desdichado]

Hmmm... it looks like the site that hosted them is now the official Fighting Fantasy page (since the books seem to have been re-released). Gack!

Fear not! Archive services come to the rescue. http://web.archive.org/web/20010202070200/http://fightingfantasy.com/

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know some company did some conversion of some books into adventure modules. Are they any good?

No.

You'd be better off saving your money and just converting the books on your own. The conversions are almost word-for-word conversions of the books, with maps still incomplete, a lack of understanding of D&D rules (the Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a sorcerer with a spellbook), no fleshing out of adventures based on lore from other books (think of how Firetop Mountain is referenced multiple times).

I wish I had better things to say about their adaptations, but stay away.

 

[S'mon]

Which cover?
One of mine, too. Then again, Forest of Doom and City of Thieves were the first two that I managed to get my hands on, so there may be a bit of a first-love syndrome with those two relative to the others.

The top cover - the original (I'm British). City of Thieves was good too, again the flowchart approach for a city adventure is I think preferable to the scripted/random approaches of most RPG scenarios.