However, because it was Alice, I thought it would be appropriate to let players use playing cards instead of dice, if they wanted to. Also, the initial letters of Alice’s stats spelt out her name. Purely by chance, three of those were Agility, Combat and Endurance. So, when I sat down to write The Wicked Wizard of Oz, I decided to use the same basic rules set (minus Insanity and Logic) making it an ACE Gamebook.
An interview with Jonathan Green, author of Fighting Fantasy, ACE Gamebooks and other gamebooks. Latest in series of solo gaming interviews.
Disclosure - I'm a DriveThru RPG affiliate.
Chat with Jonathan Green of ACE Gamebooks and Fighting Fantasy
Jonathan Green is author of ACE Gamebooks, several Fighting Fantasy books, and many other novels and gamebooks. He also organises Fighting Fantasy Fest and wrote You Are the Hero - An Interactive History of Fighting Fantasy.
We have the first gamebook, story of ACE, writing the history of Fighting Fantasy, organising a gamebook con and the next books. Among other questions.
What was your gaming story before writing gamebooks?
Reading gamebooks and the red box Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set.
I discovered the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series first and not long after D&D took off as a craze at my school. My best friend at the time also had the Expert and Companion rules too and would DM for me in an early example of duet play.
A few years later I encountered Warhammer (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) but didn’t really get into it until I was freelancing for Games Workshop.
How did your first gamebook come to be?
To cut a long story short, on leaving school, I wrote to Puffin Books asking how to go about writing a gamebook for them. (By this point I had written several of my own for fun, but the longest had only been 200 sections.) Marc Gascoigne, the FF consultant editor at the time, wrote back explaining what to do.
Following his instructions, I spent the summer before heading to university writing the pitch and first 100 sections of a Fighting Fantasy adventure, which I summarily submitted. It didn’t pass muster, but Marc gave me some very helpful feedback. Two years, two completely different ideas, and about five rewrites later, I was commissioned to write Spellbreaker, which was published as #53 in the series in June 1993.
What's the story behind the ACE Adventure Gamebooks?
Whilst writing a novella for the Pax Britannia setting I created for Abaddon Books inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I decided it would be fun to turn Lewis Carroll’s classic into a gamebook. I decided to fund it via Kickstarter in order of pay for it to be illustrated. At the time, I hadn’t considered making it part of a series.
However, because it was Alice, I thought it would be appropriate to let players use playing cards instead of dice, if they wanted to. Also, the initial letters of Alice’s stats spelt out her name. Purely by chance, three of those were Agility, Combat and Endurance. So, when I sat down to write The Wicked Wizard of Oz, I decided to use the same basic rules set (minus Insanity and Logic) making it an ACE Gamebook.
As well as ACE being taken from the basic stats in the game, and the use of playing cards, it also meant the series would appear at the top of lists.
And there’s a fourth reason, it’s a good fit as well.😉
Which has been your favourite gamebook to write?
That is a really hard question to answer. I have written 31 gamebooks and have fond memories of writing many of them.
I suppose I would have to say Shakespeare Vs. Cthulhu: What Dreams May Come, as it’s the one I’ve just finished, and I had great fun fitting in as many direct quotes from Shakespeare’s plays and poems as possible.
What was it like to write the Histories of Fighting Fantasy? How did you feel at the end?
Exhausted!
It was a great experience. I started writing the first volume because I thought I knew a lot about FF adventures. As it turned out, there was far more I didn’t know.
I got to meet and interview all sorts of amazing people – such as Geraldine Cooke, the commissioning editor who originally championed the series – and had access to Steve and Ian’s FF archives.
The first time many of their notes and maps were published was in You Are The Hero. It just took far longer than I was expecting, and the finished manuscript came in at 100,000 words.
What advice would you give to aspiring gamebook writers?
Flowchart your adventure, proofread everything, and employ play-testers!
What have been the Challenges and Highlights of organising the Fighting Fantasy Fests?
Organising any event takes a lot of time and the sending of numerous emails. With FFF4 I put myself under much too much pressure – moving from London to the West Country a month beforehand didn’t help – and I never get to enjoy the talks or shows like the attendees.
However, highlights have included the charity pub quizzes that take place the evening before, and meeting more amazing people, like Iain McCaig, who flew all the way from Canada to join us – twice!
I’m also quite fond of the merch we produce and wear my FFF T-shirts with pride.
What are your next big projects that you can talk about
My second Arkham Horror Investigators Gamebook, The Tides of Innsmouth, is out in June, and Shakespeare Vs. Cthulhu: What Dreams May Come will be published this autumn.
But I don’t think I can talk about any of the other projects that I have in the works at present. What I can tell you is that I have another two books to write before the end of the year.
Where can people find you online?
Via my websites jonathangreenauthor.com and acegamebooks.com. On X I’m @jonathangreen, on Instagram I’m @jongreen71, and on BlueSky I’m @acegamebooks.bsky.social.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
Please buy my gamebooks and follow me on Kickstarter so you can score yourself some cool stuff when my next ACE Gamebook crowdfunding campaign launches.
Finishing Up
If you haven't tried one of Jonathan's gamebooks, go and give them a try.
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