Starship Traveller - Turn to 400!

When it was first published back in 1983, Steve Jackson's Starship Traveller was notable for two reasons. (1) It was the Fighting Fantasy series' first foray into science fiction, and (2) it was the first FF gamebook not to have 400 sections.

But now, Danish gamebook author Morten Gottschalck has extended the adventure, with the full permission and approval of Steve Jackson and the FF team, so that it has 400 sections.

There is currently a crowdfunding campaign running on Kickstarter to publish this revised edition in  Danish, but it would seem likely that, if it funds, when Steve Jackson Games come to publish Starship Traveller in the US again, there could be an English language edition of the extended adventure as well.

If you would like to support the Kickstarter, follow this link. And to support the current Steve Jackson Games Fighting Fantasy Kickstarter campaign, click this link.

40 years of Rebel Planet

2025 marks 40 years since the publication of the fifth Fighting Fantasy sci-fi title, Rebel Planet (FF18), by Robin Waterfield.

“I was working in the Penguin/Puffin copy-editorial department when the series began," Waterfield explains. "My desk was free to edit one of the books, and after that I became the default copy-editor for them all, having got the hang of them. Later, after leaving Penguin, I became the series editor from 1986-1988, when I handed over to Marc Gascoigne.

“By the time I wrote my first one, I had edited quite a few, and was already involved in reading (and rejecting) the countless submissions from hopeful kids. I knew how the games worked, and I’ve been a lifelong games-player (though I was not involved at all in the RPG world). So I didn’t find them too difficult to write. The first one I wrote was non-Titan (Rebel Planet), but that was because Philippa specifically asked me to do an SF one.”

In Rebel Planet, the leaders of SAROS (a secret Earth organization) are fighting to overthrow the alien Arcadian Empire. Having gathered together their last few resources, they send the hero on one last daring, and foolhardy, mission to strike at the heart of the Arcadian homeworld.

Rebel Planet was adapted to become one of a select group of FF computer games, available for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. The cover was provided by artist and colourist Alan Craddock with Gary Mayes producing the internal black and white illustrations, just as he would for the next two SF FF titles.

Robot, by Gary Mayes.

(© Gary Mayes, 1985 and 2025)

“If I remember correctly, the opportunity arose through the Games Workshop magazine, White Dwarf, and I think my name was put forward to the publishers Puffin, as a likely candidate,” says Mayes, recalling how he came to contribute to the Fighting Fantasy series. “In many ways it was a breath of fresh air to illustrate a whole book and particularly to work in black and white, something I had wanted to do for quite a while. My work at that time was varied and came from a number of different sources and this [Rebel Planet] gave me an opportunity to work within the fantasy/science fiction genre, which I had wanted to do since I had started drawing as a child.

“My early influences were illustrators like Frank Bellamy, Frank Kelly Freas, and numerous others that I had pored over as a teenager and inspired me to think about work of that nature. The FF books were a significant step along the way and provided an opportunity to develop my skill and method of working with a subject I loved.”

Alan Craddock’s cover rough for Rebel Planet, which at the time went by the title Emperor of Arcadion.(© Alan Craddock, 1985 and 2025)

But what of Craddock? Did he have a background in RPGs? “I had played Waddington’s Risk board game for many hours with my friends,” says Craddock. “During the Sixth Form school holidays we would play games which would last days at a time. So I knew the pleasure a good board game could provide. And when I had finished reading Tolkien I wanted more, and obviously a role-playing game could be a way of achieving that. But painting was my particular outlet. Once I became a professional artist in 1979 and got married soon after, those long balmy summer days of playing Risk for days on end were gone. I wanted to be the best artist I could be; no time for playing games. I also had to decorate and wash dishes!” 

Gamebook author Mark Lain is currently working with Gary Mayes on Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel. To read an interview withM Mark about the graphic novel, follow this link.

To read more about the history of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, follow this link.

40 years of Appointment with F.E.A.R.

Another Fighting Fantasy gamebook celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2025 is Steve Jackson's superhero smackdown Appointment with F.E.A.R.

Back in 1985, Steve Jackson had not written a Titan-set FF adventure since The Citadel of Chaos and his fifth title in the series continued this trend. Appointment with F.E.A.R. (FF17) took as its inspiration the comic books Jackson had so loved as a child and involved more problem-solving as opposed to the item collection ‘shopping list’ approach of some gamebooks.

The action takes place in the suspiciously familiar sounding Titan City with the hero assuming the role of Jean Lafayette and his alter ego, the crime-fighting Silver Crusader.

The Silver Crusader does battle with such colourful characters as the Scarlet Prankster, the Serpent, and the Alchemists, as he struggles to discover the time and location of the next meeting of F.E.A.R. – the Federation of Euro-American Rebels – an evil organisation led by Vladimir Utoshski, a.k.a. the Titanium Cyborg.

It is the Titanium Cyborg who is the subject of the book’s cover art by legendary comic book cover artist Brian Bolland, while internal illustrations were provided by Declan Considine, who made his artwork look like panels from the pages of a comic book.

The Macro Brain, a super-villain from Appointment with F.E.A.R.,
by Declan Considine.

The adventure begins with the reader choosing one of four superpowers for the Silver Crusader from Super Strength, Psi-Powers, Enhanced Technological Skill (or ETS), and Energy Blast.

Appointment with F.E.A.R. also made use of a new HERO POINTS attribute. These points are awarded for every villain the Silver Crusader captures and every potential disaster he manages to avert. (Although it doesn’t necessarily affect the outcome of the game, it does allow players to compare performances from one read-through to the next.) Rather like Batman, the Silver Crusader is not permitted to kill his enemies, and any such deaths that may occur result in the loss of precious HERO POINTS. In one-on-one combat, when an enemy’s STAMINA score drops to 2 STAMINA points, the enemy simply surrenders.

It could be argued that Appointment with F.E.A.R. is only a science fiction adventure in as much as Spider-Man or Superman comics are science fiction stories. It is, in truth, a comic book superhero gamebook; nothing more, nothing less.

To date, Appointment with F.E.A.R. is the only non-fantasy adventure published by Scholastic, and the gamebook also exists now as a video game from Tin Man Games.

Will we ever see an Appointmentwith F.E.A.R. comic one day? We can but hope.

If you enjoy watching playthroughs of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, GoneHollowMedia have recorded their own attempt at tackling the adventure.

And if you want to learn more about the history of your favourite gamebooks, pick up Jonathan Green's YOU ARE THE HERO: An Interactive History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks today.

40 years of Freeway Fighter

2025 marks 40 years since the publication of Freeway Fighter - the only Fighting Fantasy gamebook, to date, to be set in a dystopian world.

For his sixth solo contribution to the FF range, Ian Livingstone ventured into the realm of near-future (for 1985) post-apocalyptic science fiction. Clearly inspired by the Mad Max movies - and set in 2022 - Freeway Fighter (FF13) had the hero crossing the American wilderness in their heavily armoured Dodge Interceptor, to reach the distant oil-refinery of San Anglo so that they might return with vital supplies for the inhabitants of the peaceful town of New Hope. But success is far from certain since the wilds that lie between the scattered, fortified towns are the territory of lawless bandits and brigands.

Vehicular combat was a feature of this adventure with the Dodge Interceptor having both a FIREPOWER and an ARMOUR score to represent its offensive and defensive capabilities.

The Adventure Sheet for Freeway Fighter.

Like Starship Traveller (Steve Jackson’s one and only foray into hard sci-fi Fighting Fantasy), Freeway Fighter has fewer than the standard 400 references, coming in at only 380 paragraphs. How come? “Because 400 references was a guide,” explains Livingstone, “not an absolute requirement.”

The original US edition of Freeway Fighter.

The cover was by the renowned SF artist Jim Burns. When the book was republished by Wizard Books, the cover was reworked by Burns. However, this was not an original piece of artwork for the range - the illustration had already been used back in 1984 on the cover Games Workshop's Battlecars.

The interior art was by Kevin Bulmer. It was completed in only nine days, as a favour for Ian Livingstone after the original illustrations that had been commissioned were rejected at the last moment.

Kevin Bulmer’s illustrations for Freeway Fighter.

One of the early contenders for internal artist on Freeway Fighter was actually FF legend Iain McCaig, but other commitments meant that it simply wasn’t to be. However, we have an idea of how the book might have looked since McCaig did start work on an image for the book.

In 2017 Titan Comics published Ian Livingstone’s Freeway Fighter, a limited four-part comicbook series that was then collected as a trade paperback. It was written by Andi Ewington, with art by Simon Coleby, colours by Len O’Grady, and lettering by Jim Campbell.

Concept and cover art for the Freeway Fighter comic by Simon Coleby, with colours by Len O'Grady.

While Freeway Fighter is not currently in print as a physical gamebook, it is available as part of Tin Man Games' Fighting Fantasy Classics app.

Will Sir Ian ever return to the lawless hinterlands of America to write a pedal-to-the-metal heart-stopping sequel? We'll just have to wait and see...

Happy New Year!

Back in 1985, the Fighting Fantasy series was in full swing. During that year, seven FF gamebooks were published, five of which just happened to have a non-traditional fantasy setting.

The seven books were, Space Assassin, Freeway Fighter, Temple of Terror, The Rings of Kether, Seas of Blood, Appointment with F.E.A.R., and Rebel Planet.

The final book in Steve Jackson's Sorcery! series was also published in 1985 - The Crown of Kings!

And then there was the Fighting Fantasy monster manual, Out of the Pit.

Last, but by no means least, was the FF adjacent puzzle book The Tasks of Tantalon, written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by Steve Lavis.

Over the coming year, you can expect deep dives into these classic gamebooks and other publications, that are marking their 40th anniversary this year, here on the official Fighting Fantasy blog. 

But in the meantime, you can get an insight into the creation of all of these titles in YOU ARE THE HERO: An Interactive History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks.

Starship Traveller - published on this day 40 years ago!

Starship Traveller by Steve Jackson was published 40 years ago today on 1 September 1983.

Having only written one fantasy gamebook by himself, why was it that Jackson abandoned an alternative Tolkien-esque past for a gleaming, rocket-fuelled future?

“I liked to try new things out,” says Jackson. “Sorcery! had a new magic system, Starship Traveller was the first SF adventure.”

Set in the distant future, Starship Traveller (FF4) had the hero become the commander of the eponymous starship and its crew. After his interstellar vessel is sucked through a black hole into an unknown quadrant of space, the hero has to search the local star systems for the coordinates to another black hole and the way home.

As well as keeping a track of his own attributes, the reader had to keep a note of the attributes of his officers. Starship Traveller also added the stats WEAPONS STRENGTH and SHIELDS so that the reader could re-enact battles between spacecraft.

Jackson: “I was a big Star Trek fan. Always preferred it to Doctor Who. Mr Spock was my hero. I liked the episodes where Kirk & Co landed on a planet where they encountered alien races and philosophies. Never liked the deep space battle episodes. Starship Traveller was unashamedly based on Star Trek. And the long dedication was a listing of the entire Games Workshop staff as it was at the time. Some of the GW department heads appeared in the adventure too. ‘Bran-Sell’ was a reference to Bryan Ansell, who ran the Citadel division and later became GW Managing Director. There was a race called the Dar-Villians; a reference to GW’s Sales Manager Peter Darvill-Evans. Fioral was Albie Fiore, who ran the Production Dept. And lots more.”

Both the cover artwork and the internal illustrations were by Peter Andrew Jones, a first and last for the Fighting Fantasy series.

Many years later, Tin Man Games turned Starship Traveller into an app, commissioning new full-colour artwork for the adventure in the process.

While the gamebook was reissued by Wizard Books, Scholastic UK have yet to publish the adventure. So, watch this space...

21 July 2022

Today is 21 July 2022 or, as some of you will know it, Freeway Fighter pandemic day!

Having witnessed how a pandemic has affected the human race on your Earthly Plane over the last couple of years, the Warlock could quite easily believe that Sir Ian Livingstone was having some kind of prophetic vision when he wrote Freeway Fighter, predicting how people would react when faced by a threat of an unstoppable illness.

You can enjoy his vision of a world given over to lawlessness in which petrol has become increasingly unobtainable, in one of several ways. First there is the seminal Fighting Fantasy gamebook, first published in 1985 and featuring cover art by celebrated SF artist Jim Burns*. Secondly, you can relive the adventure via Viber, and thirdly, as part of the Fighting Fantasy Classics app. And fourth, there is the graphic novel prequel to Freeway Fighter published by Titan Comics in 2017.

* Not once, but twice!

Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel - 24 hours to go!

Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel, written by Mark Lain and illustrated by Gary Mayes, has just 24 hours left to go on Kickstarter and it has already achieved its funding goal.

The book will not be available to buy after the Kickstarter, so if you want to secure your copy, make sure you pledge your support before it's too late!

Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel - Mark Lain Interview

Rebel Planet: The Graphic Novel, written by Mark Lain and illustrated by Gary Mayes, has only been running for a week on Kickstarter but it is already more than half way towards its funding goal.

The Warlock decided that it was time to find out more about the project and so summoned Mark Lain to the dungeons beneath Firetop Mountain to interrogate him... Sorry! To interview him.

The Warlock: What inspired you to turn Rebel Planet into a graphic novel? 

Mark Lain: It’s the only sci-fi FF that really has a fully-developed “world” and the concepts in it are still very contemporary and relevant. The sheer variety of the environments of the planets you visit gives a lot of scope for showing the different experiences and challenges faced by the Player’s character. Plus the Arcadians are a brilliantly designed set of species and Gary’s art really beings the whole package to life.

TW: What can fans of the original gamebook expect from the graphic novel?

ML: Something faithful to the gamebook but not a slavish rendition of the true path. There needs to be peril and moments of potential failure, so some of the areas that you should avoid on the true path are here too, to make it more than just an easy ride to success. This is meant to be a mission against the odds. Also, there will be some surprises.

For example, some parts of the gamebook have been substituted for aspects from the computer game adaptation, particularly in places where I personally thought the computer version handled things better or more logically. There are some essential details for the Prologue too that are missing from the gamebook so I’ve added in some material of my own, but nothing that will contradict of offend – it’s purely to complete and fill gaps.

TW: What will readers who have never heard of Fighting Fantasy get from this adaptation?

ML: For these readers, it’s a cracking sci-fi yarn. Because of how the plot plays out, the reader has no requirement to know anything about the gamebook or FF in general. Indeed, the plot will be a total surprise for non-FF readers. At the end of the day, this is a science fiction graphic novel.

TW: What has it been like to work with Gary Mayes?

ML: So far it’s been great. He is full of enthusiasm for the project and is very open to my ideas and suggestions. We have been discussing this collaboration for over a year now, and I’m really happy at how keen he is. He is the artist who will bring my words to life so a passion for the material is vital. His love of sci-fi and knowledge of the genre makes my job of explaining concepts and tropes much easier as he just gets what I’m referring to straight away, and he’s a consummate professional.

TW: Are there any other FF books you would like to give the graphic novel treatment?

ML: Well, without giving too much away, there is an open ending designed to segue into a sequel, but obviously this first book needs to hit the right notes so we actually get a sequel (and all the necessary permissions of course)! But I’m not going to say which book it is that the ending leads to – people will have to read the Rebel Planet GN to find that out.