“We stripped the roleplaying system down to its basics without dumbing it down, concentrating on three attributes, ‘Skill’, ‘Stamina’ and ‘Luck’, and created a branching narrative like the Choose Your Own Adventure books but attached the game system to make it more appealing to roleplaying gamers,” explains Livingstone. With a little simple arithmetic and and a couple of dice rolls, Livingstone and Jackson landed on a way to let readers battle enemies and ‘test their luck’ in the tense scenarios presented by each book. It was the action-packed nature of the books that really set them apart. We thought it’d be great to bring D&D to a wider audience, if we could replace the dungeon master with a book. That was what was mostly original about our take on it.”

“Roleplaying was gaining in popularity – people were talking about solo books, and there were a couple around at the time, but not using a proper roleplaying system with dice and character sheets. “The time was right in the universe,” adds Jackson. “Having played and being involved with the game for six or seven years, we thought it’d be great to bring it to a wider audience, if we could replace the dungeon master with a book.” We acquired the exclusive distribution rights to Dungeons and Dragons the same year, and that really got us completely obsessed and immersed in roleplaying games,” recalls Livingstone. “Steve and I started Games Workshop in 1975 with another school friend John Peake.

Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone in the early FF days.

Where to buy fighting fantasy books