Reveal FF you think would have better if wrote by Joe Dever

[jmisno1]

I've had A Idea. How about we each reveal 1 Fighting Fantasy Gamebook that in our opinion is in the top 10 worst in the series that you believe that if it had been wrote by Joe Dever it would be in the top 10 best in the series but if you've forgot why but haven't forgot which Book,  like I have, I don't mind

Mine's Island of The Undead but I've had that opinion for so long that I've forgot why I think that

Also in my opinion this topic is, or should be, allowed because its asking us to name 1Fighting Fantasy Gamebook that in our opinion is in the top 10 worst in the top that we believe that if it had been wrote by Joe Dever it would be n the top 10 best in the series 

[anotherknight]

Probably Joe Dever had achieved something great in the F&F world.

[wisestrider]

Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Only half joking - I use that book as an example, but you could pick any from dozens of examples from that series.

Joe's biggest strength compared to the Fighting Fantasy authors, as seen in the Lone Wolf series when compared to many "classic" Fighting Fantasy adventures, is writing memorable villains - not even that, but building villains up by making the adventure, the enemies you face, the locations you explore, teach you about the villain - who you may or may not fight at the end of the book.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a pretty typical example of a Fighting Fantasy dungeon crawl.

Castle Death is a good example of that kind of adventure in Lone Wolf.

But compare the pretty generic caves, traps & standard D&D "fantasy" enemies of Warlock to what we face in Castle Death.

The whole island is quarantined by a magic barrier to keep the evil in, the hoard of creatures on the beach that eat your boat, the mutated minions (who appear to be the result of genetic experiments / unholy cross breading), the court in which you are sentenced to the Maze, the magical enemies & traps that toy with you for the amusement of the watching minions, the slaves caged for later use (sent to the Maze for entertainment, or to be used in experiments) - and then you fight the overlord running it all.

Similar build up can be found in most Lone Wolf books - in Chasm of Doom you encounter small groups of bandits, maybe have a mysterious encounter warning of supernatural threats - find remnants of D'Vals patrol - see how they were outnumbered and butchered - find townspeople enslaved and sent to the mines, find Ruanon ruined & burnt to the ground, well organised & very well equipped Vassagonians attacking the survivors within - you slowly learn this is no mere rabble or bandit raid long before you hear the name Barraka - he's hardly even in the book, just a fight at the end really - but through the adventure you learn about him, you get to know him, about his drive & ruthlessness, his intelligence & knowledge of war / tactics, and his evil intentions / darker loyalties - all revealed slowly through your encounters with his army, travelling through lands he has been raiding for weeks / months & some discussions with D'Val.

Vanotar gets 2 books (especially Fire on the Water) of build up - albeit hidden away, not necessarily something you learn on your first playthrough - we gain reason to hate him in the first book, if we find Banedon, as we learn he is the architect of the Kai massacre - throughout the second book we face his agent's & assassins, we witness his magic power manifest unnatural storms to sink ships, then later raise an undead armada (if we find him in the sea battle we connect the dot's & find he is the man behind the mark of the Serpent) - then in Caverns of Kalte we again face unnatural weather that works to foil our quest, we learn he rules the Ice Barbarians, we learn how (through mind control bracelets) these are not willing followers, we see he is estranged from his former allies the Dark Lord's (sending Helghast to hunt him), we eventually learn from Loi-Kymar how he took control of this nation and the secrets he has been researching - and only then, after learning who he is, and how he works, after seeing his plots and schemes play out, seeing his power, do we face him.

Who is the Warlock of Firetop Mountain - what are his motivations, his wider goals (other than perhaps organising raids from his lair in order to hoard wealth?) - he seems content with being a simple bandit king, no designs on ruling a kingdom, no darker power he secretly serves, no plots for world domination - just a guy who can cast spells & is willing to make bargains / exert control over other evil creatures who decided banditry is a good way to make money.

This isn't isolated to the first Fighting Fantasy book - in Tomb of the Vampire, what do we learn about the Vampire throughout the adventure to build up to the final confrontation? - We learn he's a pretty typical Vampire, weak in sunlight, sleeps in a coffin, returns to the coffin when weakened to sleep & recover his power, and has a other Vampire thralls / other servants under his control - we don't ever get hints of who he was before, how he came to be, how he recruited / enticed his thralls into his service. Just a Vampire, doing vampire thing's & we, as the hero, must hunt him down.

Pick other Fighting Fantasy book's - Citadel of Chaos or City of Thieves - the main enemies feel largely interchangeable - the Warlock of Firetop Mountain has a lair in a Mountain, in Citadel of Chaos it's a fortress, in City of Thieves he controls a city - the monsters and challenges are as you expect from the location of enemies base, they do vary from book to book, but not necessarily based on the personality & powers of the main bad guy you are trying to bring down - you rarely learn their history, of their ultimate aims - they are largely just different name's.

Had he written one I'm sure Joe Dever would have given us one of maybe a handful of Fighting Fantasy books with a truly memorable villain - because the encounters leading up to confronting the villain would have slowly revealed different facets of that villain, rather than never really giving us much beyond the information from the introductory paragraph - there is a villain causing trouble and you have set out to bring them to an end.

And none of this is to say I dislike Fighting Fantasy book's - I just think Joe Devers gamebooks had many great and memorable villains, because of how they were built up, how we learned about them, saw who they were through the actions of their minions (the Dark Lords servants infighting in the heart of their capital in the Masters of Darkness shows exactly why removing Gnaag will set those forces back to civil war hoped to last centuries - we see similar scenes in Captives of Kaag, but the infighting is overt now that the Dark Lords are no longer around to keep everyone in line, no longer hiding their conflicts in the shadows, because they no longer fear what will happen if discovered - both tell us about the Dark Lords and how they ruled by showing the difference caused by them being their & being gone).

That's mainly why I always preferred the Fighting Fantasy books without a main villain, with different objectives - Starship Traveller (trying to find a way home), Sea's of Blood (being the best Pirate) and Scorpion Swamp (mapping the swamp & finding a safe path through for trade) - they didn't set up villains for me to defeat, and so didn't disappoint when those villains turned out to be largely forgettable / interchangeable with the guy from the last book.

[anotherknight]

Your dissertation is interesting. True that F&F got a similar basic structure based on a final encounter.
But LW is an advanced version of F&F.
What I like from LW is that there is a kind of philosophy for being written by a single author,
with a temporal line and well constructed episodes and all the LW universe is more developed and coherent.
And yes, I do think LW has certain influences from F&F, in fact I believe LW is an emancipated son, to a certain degree.