YOU are the Hero: Mashing Up Fighting Fantasy and Dice Age

I saw a comment on the Dice Age Facebook page asking how to use them for solo gaming. I’ve been playing around with the idea for a while and was going to use them to remix Dungeon!, but then I thought, “why not Fighting Fantasy”?

For those of you that are younger than the internet, Fighting Fantasy was like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure but more hardcore. The company is currently porting all of them to iOS but has decided not to sell the actual books in the U.S. However, if you’re using this thing called The Internet, you know how to find them anyway. Let’s assume that you do.

I playtested this a few times with Rebel Planet, mainly because I like sci-fi a lot. Out of about half a dozen test drives, I found that that the dice added enough surprises without throwing things off too much, mainly because the effects are pretty well balanced between helping and hindering the player.

The best dice for this are the red ones from the first series because the numbers fall between 1 and 6. I suppose you could use larger dice to replace two d6′s, but for the moment let’s stick with rolling the same amount of dice. I found that choosing which dice to use both before and during play became a part of the game itself. Some dice will be better choices than others, while some might offer a big advantage that rarely comes up. In the end, using Dice Age dice like this might not be balanced, but it does make things interesting.

 USING THE DICE

• Before beginning, choose two dice. These are the only dice you can use throughout the gamebook (until you die and start over).
• When rolling stats, roll one for Skill and the other for Luck. You must use two different dice for these stats. Use both to determine Stamina.
• When a number is rolled, treats as a standard die.
• When a symbol is rolled, consider this a roll of 1, then consult the below chart.

EFFECTS

• Cannon = If rolling for Attack Strength, automatically damage the opponent. You may also Test for Luck to reduce or increase damage. This may result in one side being damaged twice or both sides being damaged once. This does not effect extra multiple opponents if you couldn’t damage them normally.
  
• Chaos = If rolled during combat by a Creature, roll that die again. If you roll Chaos again, add another copy of that creature to the combat starting next turn.
• Gear = If rolled for any reason on any roll, you may recover any of your starting equipment and money.
• Pit = If rolled by a Creature to determine Attack Strength, the Creature automatically destroys one of the player’s non-starting equipment of the player’s choosing.
• Roman Numeral = This die “explodes”. Add the number rolled to the score, than roll again. Add the resulting score and/or effect. This die may continue to explode.
• Triangle = If rolled for a Creature’s Attack Strength, the creature recovers 1 Stamina. If rolled for any other reason, you recover 1 Stamina.

Some bonkers things happened while I was testing this. I had a Stamina of 30 at one point but got nicked-and-dimed to death because I couldn’t stop rolling Chaos. Another time I kept losing gear almost every time I fought someone. A third play-through saw me get my teeth kicked in by superior opponents but shanking them to death anyway with Cannon rolls and a high Luck. There’s a lot more here to experiment with, and I’ll get back to this sooner than later. If you play with this hack, tell me how it went.