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Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The

Seminal ‘make your own entertainment’-reinventing ‘single-player roleplaying gamebook’ by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, attracting the attention of a million bandwagon-conscious schoolboys, and the ire of a million minor politicians and BBC Local News reporters. With the aid of just dice, a pencil and some pages that a pencil could never write on properly, you too could dodge Orcs, Dragons and The Maze Of Zagor in the hope of discovering the titular Wizard and his not-at-all-ZX-Spectrum-version-of-The-Hobbit-inspired multi-lock secured treasure chest. All good clean fun despite the tabloid rumours.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Jo Pacey

    February 14, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    I’ve still got this book, along with The Citadel of Chaos and several others. Occasionally I’ll get one out and have a go – I have never succeeded in getting to the end. I tend to cheat in the fights. My two sons think I’m completely sad and have never shared my enthusiasm (I guess it just doesn’t have the same allure as the X-box). We put a lot of books in a car boot sale recently and my husband couldn’t understand why I insisted on saving all my Steve Jackson books. Aw… what does he know?? He had a deprived childhood…..

  2. K Straw

    March 7, 2010 at 12:00 am

    I still have mostly first editions of the inital 25 or so books. One even signed by Jackson and Livingstone.

  3. THX 1139

    February 23, 2020 at 11:34 pm

    The Steve Jackson ones were impossible to complete, Starship Traveller always ended on the same page, assuming you got that far, saying you’d blown up at warp speed or something. It involved maths to win, so no chance. Appointment with FEAR has a great premise (be a superhero!) but was also dead difficult.

  4. THX 1139

    April 5, 2022 at 12:15 pm

    There was an entry in Warlock of FM where you died by having a zombie bite your arse. Funny the things you remember…

  5. Richardpd

    April 5, 2022 at 10:20 pm

    There were some slightly easier to play books based on Asterix, Biggles & The Famous Five, and possibly some other series.

    I have an Asterix one & a Biggles one. I would say there was a 1 in 5 chance of completing them if your were lucky enough to chose the right equipment (you could only start with 1 of 4 but if you were lucky you would pick up more along the way) & roll the right characters on the dice, which had the heads of 3 characters each on two sides.

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