'People really want to see the monsters': Jonathan Green on the art of Fighting Fantasy
The author on publishing a book on the artists of Titan with FF co-creator Sir Ian Livingstone. Plus, a game book review round-up in this Fighting Fantasy special
Experienced adventures of yore (the 1980s) had news that should get them gleefully sharpening their broadsword last month with Sir Ian Livingstone’s announcement of a new Deathtrap Dungeon Fighting Fantasy adventure to mark the game book classic’s 40th anniversary.
(Though “2nd sequel”, Sir Ian? Has the good knight forgotten the quality Armies of Death in the DD series, along with Trial of Champions? We are here, if nothing else, to nitpick).
The Dungeon on Blood Island, set for publication in September, will be the first book in the main series since the twin release of Livingstone’s Shadow of the Giants and Steve Jackson’s Secrets of Salamonis in 2022, to mark FF’s 40th anniversary.
It won’t be the only Fighting Fantasy related release this year. Livingstone has got together with long-time FF collaborator Jonathan Green on Magic Realms, a book celebrating the work of the artists who have bought to life the series’s home world, Titan, and its often-monstrous denizens.
To find out more, we spoke to Jonathan about what we can expect from Magic Realms.
How did the idea for Magic Realms come together and what did writing it involve? Who did you speak to?
JG: I pitched the idea of a book that celebrated the art of Fighting Fantasy to Steve and Ian three years ago. They both liked the idea and Ian came on board to help me write it. After all, he owns a significant percentage of the art that appears in the book.
I had already spoken to a lot of the Fighting Fantasy artists when I wrote You Are the Hero - A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, but I contacted them all again, along with those artists I hadn't interviewed previously, to find out how they actually went about producing the art for the FF adventures, and to see if they had any intriguing anecdotes they could share about their experiences of contributing to the world's premier gamebook series.
What was it like working with Ian Livingstone on this?
JG: It required all my SKILL as a writer, a great deal of STAMINA, and a fair few LUCK rolls as well. 😉
I got the Fighting Fantasy bug as a kid when looking through The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and seeing Russ Nicholson’s dead-eyed zombie troupe staring back at me. I also remember Dave Carson’s barrel of severed heads in Beneath Nightmare Castle having a bit of an impact. Was there an image or images from the series that captivated you in a similar way?
JG: I picked up The Warlock of Firetop Mountain pretty much as soon as it was published and the image I remember from when I initially flicked through it in the bookshop was Russ Nicholson's picture of the Ghoul, that looks like it's about to tear your face off!
I was also amazed by the musculature of the Minotaur, the bizarreness of the Iron Cyclops, and the picture of a Dragon that appears in the book. I picked up pretty much every adventure after that.
Although many people aren't fans of Emmanuel's original cover for The Citadel of Chaos, I was captivated by the image of an endless stream of monsters emerging from Balthus Dire's Black Tower.
I remember being unnerved by the dead-eyed Clones in The Forest of Doom, marvelling at the illustration of Nicodemus the Wizard in City of Thieves, and being captivated by the Bloodbeast on the cover of Deathtrap Dungeon.
I could go on, since every FF gamebook I read had an impact on me, first as a reader and later as a writer as well. If I had to pick out one more book in particular, it would have to be Vault of the Vampire, purely for Martin McKenna's incredible gothic illustrations.
In terms of your own association with FF, how did you break into writing game books for the series?
JG: When I left school, I wrote to Puffin Books asking if I could write gamebooks for them. In due course I received a letter from Marc Gascoigne, who was the consultant editor for the series at the time, telling me how to go about submitting a pitch for an adventure but also warning me that my chances of publication were very slim.
Two years, two different ideas, and numerous rewrites later, I was commissioned to write Spellbreaker, my first Fighting Fantasy gamebook. I have been published every year since.
With your own work on the gamebooks, how did the process work with the illustrators? Was there much of a collaborative process there in terms of sharing ideas on what you were looking for, or was it left for the artist to interpret your text themselves?
JG: You always had to write an illustration brief for the artist, explaining precisely which scenes you wanted illustrating and including any pertinent details, but while I was working for Puffin, there was never any direct contact between me and the artists who illustrated my books.
That changed when I started working for Wizard Books, with the internet having been invented by then. I would sometimes ask what sort of thing the artist would like to draw, so I could play to their strengths.
Are there any parts of the world of Allansia that you’d love to see drawn more in the books. Where haven’t we seen much of that would be amazing to capture?
JG: I still have unused ideas for FF gamebooks, but I think any area is fair game to be captured in an illustration.
However, what I think people really want to see are the monsters. So I would really want to see more of the amazing creatures that inhabit the Fighting Fantasy world.
This book is obviously about the art of Fighting Fantasy. Is there any appeal in doing a similar book about the text: and what inspired each author in the writing of their own tales?
JG: That has already been covered in detail in You Are the Hero - An Interactive History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, which will be published this year. You can also find more of this sort of thing in Fighting Fantazine, which is available for free online, and which features interviews with many of the writers involved in the FF series.
Outside of Fighting Fantasy, what else are you working on?
JG: I am writing lots of gamebooks! I have my first Arkham Horror Investigators Gamebook, The Darkness Over Arkham, coming out in the summer from Aconyte Books, and I will be crowdfunding my eighth ACE Gamebook, Shakespeare Vs. Cthulhu: What Dreams May Come, later this year.
I also need to finish The Box of Delights RPG I'm writing and there are some other projects in the offing that I can't talk about yet.
Are there any games – board games or otherwise – that you enjoy playing with family members?
JG: We are quite traditional when it comes to family games. Rummikub, Quirkle, Yahtzee and Uno are all popular in our household. So, nothing that takes too long to set up and play, and nothing with pages and pages of rules to learn!
Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, will be out this autumn in the UK, published by Unbound.
Review round-up
This week, me and the kid have mostly been playing…
Fighting Fantasy: Forest of Doom
Trying out the five-finger bookmark once again for this return trip to Allansia.
Read the full review
Fighting Fantasy: Crystal of Storms
Seventy original stories in, FF finally had its first female author in Rhianna Pratchett. Who better to test this choose-your-own-tale out with than my daughter?
Read the full review
10 best Fighting Fantasy game books
For Fighting Fantasy’s 40th anniversary, I wrote about my favourite books from the series for Tabletop Gaming magazine. You can read about my picks here.