Show caption ‘The way is full of peril’ … The Forest of Doom, 1983, Gates of Death, 2018, and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, 1982. Composite: Puffin Books Dare YOU face the orcs? 80s game books Fighting Fantasy return The role-playing adventure books sold 20m copies in the 80s, before being eclipsed by video games. Now they’re back with a new story by Charlie Higson, can they captivate the web generation? Alison Flood Wed 4 Apr 2018 12.21 BST Share on Facebook

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Ian Livingstone calls it the “five-fingered bookmark”: that grip known to children of the 80s and 90s. You’d insert a finger into various sections of your Fighting Fantasy adventure game book in order to be able to return if, say, your choice to drink the “sparkling red liquid” and turn to section 98 turned out to be a bad one, or if attacking the Mirror Demon “from another dimensional plane” proved fatal.

“You used to see it on public transport everywhere,” says Livingstone, who with Steve Jackson dreamed up Fighting Fantasy back in the early 80s. “It’s like peeking around the corner. You can’t call it cheating – it’s taking a sneak peek.”

Once hugely popular, the Fighting Fantasy books – billed as “a thrilling fantasy adventure in which YOU are the hero” – launched in 1982 with Livingstone and Jackson’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Typically set in the fantasy world of Allansia, the books dispatch their reader on a quest armed only with a pencil and dice, battling foul creatures, deploying magical potions and making a continuous series of choices in an attempt to make it through the Deathtrap Dungeon, say, or City of Thieves.

The series had an amazing run into the 90s – there were 59 books, with Jackson and Livingstone roping in co-authors to keep up with demand, and 20m copies sold around the world. By 1995, though, it had run out of steam, and publisher Puffin closed down the series. “Video games were around, in force; they’d had a pretty good run. Thirteen years of being at that level was huge,” says Livingstone.

‘Penguin’s MD laughed so hard his head hit the desk’ … Steve Jackson, left, and Ian Livingstone in 1982. Photograph: Ian Livingstone

He is here today because the major children’s publisher Scholastic believes the time has come for Fighting Fantasy to have its day again. It has poured money into the cult series, preparing a swanky new look for the first 12 books which brings them more in line with titles like Charlie Higson’s Young Bond books or Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider titles, and signing up Higson himself to write a new adventure to head up this week’s relaunch.

Livingstone and Higson met years ago at a gaming event; Higson, one of the creators and actors of The Fast Show, describes himself as “big into gaming”, and had long wanted to meet Livingstone, who with Jackson co-founded Games Workshop in 1975, and launched Dungeons & Dragons in Europe.

“We went out for a couple of drinks,” says Higson, sitting in Scholastic’s London offices. “It was a bit of a meeting of minds,” agrees Livingstone. “We started talking and got on OK, and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be a hoot if he wrote one of these with his twisted imagination, adding a new dimension to Fighting Fantasy?’”

Higson’s title, The Gates of Death, asks its reader if “YOU are brave enough to face the all-powerful Queen of Darkness”? In Allansia, a “terrible plague has devastated” the land, “striking its people down with a sickness that turns them into hideous, demonic monsters”. Their only hope is YOU, who must “travel to the Invisible City with a smoke-oil antidote”. Obviously, “the way is full of peril”.

It is packed full of terrifying demons and deadly monsters, and Higson has clearly had a whale of a time writing it – although, he admits, it was something of a challenge. The books each contain around 400 mini-sections, nearly all of which provide the reader with a choice, or a battle, meaning that the stories can quickly become sprawling affairs. Livingstone pulls out a sheet of paper with a map showing how he tries to keep things under control – various pathways lead to exciting-sounding endings like fire dragons, or worm dogs.

We were so into interactivity, because it’s empowering, rather than passive reading, which is a linear experience

“It was a real mindfuck,” says Higson. “I should have planned it a little bit more than I did. I just sort of launched into it and I was about a third of the way in when I suddenly realised I was lost in one of Steve Jackson’s mazes.”

Livingstone looks quietly delighted at Higson’s travails. “It is hard hanging it all in your head … There are multiple things to consider. You’ve got to make sure there are no cul de sacs. You’ve got to have balance, make it not too hard, not too easy,” he says. “People don’t like a random death. Even though I love luring people with rose-coloured petals to their doom, you can’t do it too much.”

‘I love luring people to their doom’ … Livingstone, left, and Jackson today. Photograph: Legend Photography

“Everyone who’s read enough of your books knows if it looks good, don’t go that way,” says Higson, whose Young Bond books, and his young adult Enemy series, in which adults have been turned into zombies, have been bestsellers. But he found he “couldn’t just use the old tricks” to write his Fighting Fantasy title. “You’ve really got to guard against telling it like a story; it’s got to feel to the reader that they’re driving it forward,” he says.

He worked out soon enough that he needed “a couple of pinch points”, so that “you cannot progress to the next part unless you’ve been through there”. It meant that rather than thinking of the whole book as “this huge great amorphous thing”, he approached it in three shorter acts. “And then I did start having to do charts and maths. There’s all these things you don’t think about. I mean, Ian did try to warn me.”

When Livingstone and Jackson set out to co-write the first Fighting Fantasy title, there was little like it out there; the Choose Your Own Adventure books, which launched slightly earlier, just offered readers a branching narrative, without the chance to battle monsters with a dice. After launching Dungeons & Dragons in Europe, they were approached by an editor from Penguin, Geraldine Cooke, asking them to write a book “about this phenomenon of people playing role-playing games”.

“We said, ‘Rather than writing a book about it, why can’t we write a book which gives you an experience of it?’” says Livingstone. “We were so into interactivity, because it’s empowering, rather than passive reading, which is a linear experience.”

Cooke was keen, and they sent in an outline. “The MD of Penguin Books apparently thought it was such a preposterous idea having an interactive book that he laughed so hard his head hit his desk,” says Livingstone. But Cooke argued their corner, and they were given the green light.

The Evangelical Alliance warned that by interacting with demons you’re bound to be possessed by the devil

Just like Higson today, “it took us ages to write the first one”. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain initially got little support from Penguin – “the sales staff and retailers didn’t get it, because it just looked like a normal book”. But Jackson and Livingstone pushed it in their Games Workshop magazine, and it spread through word of mouth. Penguin “reprinted 10 times in the first two months”, and demand spiralled.

“Most children’s books in the 80s sold 10,000 units; Deathtrap Dungeon sold nearly 400,000 in the UK and Commonwealth alone. By the mid-80s they were gangbusters, they were being signed up all over the world,” says Livingstone.

Not everyone was a fan. Livingstone shows me a petition sent in by worried parents; the Evangelical Alliance “published a warning saying because you’re interacting with ghouls and demons you’re bound to get possessed by the devil; the local vicar threatened to chain himself to Penguin’s railings until they were banned”, he says. “We got nothing but bad publicity but people started to realise how great they were for reluctant readers, how they improved literacy, and they sold 20m copies over time.”

Charlie Higson. Photograph: David Hartley/Rex

By 1995, “the world had had enough of Fighting Fantasy”. But both Higson and Livingstone believe their time has come again today. “Parents have got kids the age they were when they played it,” says Higson. “And children do love it, the thought of having those multiple choices … It’s a really good way of getting kids to think about how to tell a story without it feeling too like a boring English lesson.”

Livingstone says the books “speak to the 21st century child in the same way video games talk to them. Netflix are talking about interactive stories now, and there’s interactive cinema – it’s about giving power to the consumer.” The books are also available as an app, “but people love the physicality of a book. They can cheat with a book, in a way you can’t cheat with a game.”

Ah – cheating. I admit, finally, that I’d never bother with a pencil when playing Fighting Fantasy – that I’d just allow myself to win against any monster I took on, and that I’d give myself the best attributes I could at the start. For those not familiar with the books, you start out by rolling a dice to come up with the Skill, Luck and Stamina with which you’ll take on adversaries; you then battle various monsters by rolling the dice for each of you. But who wants to embark on a quest with a measly Skill score?

“Typical, typical! Cheat!” Livingstone says with glee. “There’s a few hardcore people who say they’ve never cheated, but you’ll die off pretty quickly. You’ve got to start with a decent score. You’ll get provisions and stuff to make yourself stronger at any point but it’s obviously a lot harder if you get a bad dice roll to start with. But that’s life, isn’t it?”