I've told this story a number of time, but the meeting I had with this book really opened my eyes to gaming. I read this book so many times that I ran it for people at a birthday party just a few days later.
From that day forth, there was no going back. I knew I was not alone in the world thinking of these kind of things.
My parents despaired.
The story is fairly classic: evil wizard in a tower, go and take him out. There are a number of really fun, nasty traps and the typical types of combats you find in these books. Fun. Fun. Fun.
As I was writing this, I managed to find a cheap copy of it on Ebay. Guess what. It is now mine!
MINE!
MUHAHAHAHAHA!
JP
PS: My wife will kill me for going on Ebay.
I think that might have been my first Fighting Fantasy book, too. One of many to follow. My own favorite was "Space Assassin", though in truth the plotline isn't that dissimilar to "The Citadel of Chaos".
ReplyDeleteMaybe it gained some cool points in my young brain, due to being set IN SPAAACE. :)
Then I got into gamebook series like "Lone Wolf" and "Way of the Tiger", where you actually got to play the same character all the way through and ... gasp .... upgrade him with different abilities.
It was an inevitable downward spiral to tabletop RPGs after that!
Oliver-E