Fighting Fantasy began in 1982, with the publication of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Said story casts you as the hero, and you begin at chapter one, embarking on a quest to bring peace to a fantastical land oppressed by a wicked wizard who lives, yup, within a nearby mountain. Each chapter—well, most of them, as some can lead to dead(ly) ends—presents the reader, the player, with options: would you like to do this, this, or maybe this thing next?

Books, my friend. Adventure books. More specifically, choose-your-own-adventure books. If you're still confused as to what I'm talking about, let me break it down for you.

Each option carries with it a corresponding chapter number: So, perhaps that'll be turn to 202 to attack the skeleton, 347 to run in the other direction, or 118 to attempt to reason with it. Some books have one ending, which can be reached by various paths. Others have multiple conclusions, some better than others. All have their means of undoing your quest, be that through death, traps, or something less immediately painful but equally final.

Warlock was written, collaboratively, by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, British fantasy fans who'd, back in 1975, founded Games Workshop. They'd been approached by a publisher to produce a book on the fantasy (tabletop) gaming world, what with Dungeons & Dragons blowing up in popularity. Instead of that, though, the pair decided to take some of the mechanics of D&D and its peers and incorporate them into a book.

Long before I properly understood video game role-players, I was devouring Fighting Fantasy books by the dozen. When I was 10, 11, around that age, I adored these things.

And so, Fighting Fantasy was born: stories in which you not only make decisions as to your course through the fiction, but also engage in dice-rolling combat and trials of luck and skill. Of course, many readers—myself included—cheated their way through the books more often than we played them properly, but as Livingstone's OK with that, there's no need to feel guilty about it.

As of 2017, marking the series' 35 th anniversary, Fighting Fantasy is returning via publisher Scholastic UK, with a brand-new story penned by Livingstone incoming, titled The Port of Peril. The writers and designer spoke to us on the UK podcast last year (listen to it here), and teased the possibility of a new book, so it's great to see that actually happening. The Port of Peril will be, by my count, the 60th main series Fighting Fantasy book in total.

Books? I thought this was a video games site?

Waypoint loves all kinds of games! (We've covered tabletop stuff in the past, for example, and will certainly continue to.) And Fighting Fantasy books are games, most definitely. There are rules to follow, internal logic to adhere to. There are (a few) good and (several, often very) bad outcomes for the hero of each story. Many are set within the same world, Titan, which gives them this overarching coherency and relatability across seemingly standalone happenings, something we find in many video game RPGs.