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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9495238" data-attributes="member: 11760">[ATTACH=full]384362[/ATTACH]1E AD&D was my first fantasy RPG, but probably the second-most formative one for me were the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks published in the early 1980s. My parents worked for the government, and we were stationed overseas when the first Fighting Fantasy books were released, meaning my brother and I picked up Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom, Deathtrap Dungeon, City of Thieves, the interconnected Sorcery! trilogy, and about half a dozen others at school book fairs.I never saw 1984's House of Hell at one of these book sales. Either it came out after we went back to the US or school officials weren't keen on selling an aggressively horrific gamebook to American school kids during the Satanic Panic years. So I missed it until years later when it was reissued in the states and available via Tin Man Games' apps. The book is one of the most popular of the Fighting Fantasy books, with a pitch-black tone and deadly reputation. I've only played it once and, true to its reputation, got whacked extremely early on.So, for Spooky Season 2024, I'm going to try again, playing through House of Hell until I get killed. So this could be a two- or three-post Actual Play, or this could go quite a bit longer. Who knows?I will not be copying and pasting the text from the books, but rather rewriting it, treating this like any actual play session. (Also, piracy is bad, y'all. You can pick up a digital version of this book for only a few dollars and the paperback is relatively available in the newest printings. It's also a good bet that it'll be in the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/fighting-fantasy-gamebooks-coming-to-america-via-steve-jackson-games.707386/" target="_blank">first 10 Fighting Fantasy books that Steve Jackson Games brings to the US next year</a>.) (Not the same Steve Jackson who wrote House of Hell. Probably. They've enjoyed people getting them confused in the past, so who knows.) I will note the page number of each post, for people who want to track what I'm doing more closely.For people unfamiliar with Fighting Fantasy's rules, it uses 2d6, Skill, Stamina and Luck stats and mostly uses a universal roll-under resolution system. Individual books add additional stats or rules subsystems, which aren't always thought out perfectly and which don't necessarily work the same from book to book (Citadel of Chaos and the Sorcery! books both introduce spellcasting systems, but they don't work the same.) In House of Hell, Fear is added to the core three stats -- if my character accrues too much Fear, they die of fright, in addition to the danger of being hacked to bits or something by denizens of the house. I'll include my stats in each post, so readers can see how I'm doing.My nameless character is starting with 8 Skill (determined with a 1d6 + 6). This is the roll I'll use all the time, if other Fighting Fantasy books are a guide, both in combat but to do any other sort of "skill" rolls we might see in other RPGs.His Stamina (a combination of Hit Points and Constitution in D&D terms) is 22 (2d6 +12).His Luck is 8 (1d6 + 2). This stat, unsurprisingly, is what's used to see whether the character succeeds in purely random situations. It can also be used in combat to do extra damage or for the player character to take less damage. But Luck also goes down every time it's used. Eventually, a character's Luck will run out, leaving them a sitting duck for the next time it's needed.Finally, his Fear stat is 11 (1d6 + 6), which appears to work like Stamina for being scared. Eleven is pretty darn good, so I'd expect my character to probably die in some other horrible fashion rather than a heart attack.</blockquote>

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