| Advanced Fighting Fantasy | |
| Years: | 1989 (AFF 1st ed.), 2011 (AFF 2nd ed.) |
| Genre: | fantasy tabletop roleplaying game |
| Random Chance: | six-sided dice |
| Skills: | storytelling, roleplay, imagination |
Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF) is a British roleplaying game based on the Fighting Fantasy and Sorcery! gamebooks, first published in 1989. Just as the gamebooks, AFF is set in the world of Titan. A second edition of AFF was published in 2011.
AFF is chiefly meant to facilitate the games master to write his or her own adventures inspired by Fighting Fantasy. The few adventures published for the game are brand new adventures specifically written for the system as opposed to converting existing gamebook stories for multiplayer RPG usage.
AFF is unrelated to both the Myriador d20 conversions of several gamebooks by Jamie Wallis, and the electronic conversions of the Sorcery! series by inkle. Both of these feature unique rules not seen elsewhere in the Fighting Fantasy brand.
The rules of AFF are adapted from the rules of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and was an expanded but separate follow-up to Fighting Fantasy – The Introductory Role-Playing Game. This system is based on skills, here called "Special Skills". The game features neither classes nor levels.
A player character, called Hero, is defined by:
The creation of a Hero starts with the choice of a "concept", e.g. a Knight of Salamonis or a Student from the magical school of Yore — this has no influence on the attributes and is more a background guideline. Unlike the gamebooks, the characteristics and special skills are not rolled but are bought with creation points. The rules provide archetypes which allow a fast creation: Adventurer, Archer, Barbarian, Priest of Telak, Rogue, Warrior, Wizard...
There are three types of tests:
The rules provide difficulty adjustments for given situations (e.g. -5 to the Climbing special skill when wearing a plate armour).
The combat rules are the same as the gamebooks', except that the points of damage (Stamina loss) are determined randomly: the attacker rolls 1d6 and reads the points of damage on a table (one for each weapon), the defender does the same to apply the damage reduction from his armour. There are a few combat options: Luck test to increase or reduce the damages, surprise, feint...
A spellcaster must have a least 1 in the Magic characteristic and one point in one special skill: Magic-Minor, Magic-Priestly, Magic-Sorcery or Magic-Wizardry. There are three types of magic:
| Title | Authors | Cover Art | Interior Art | Published | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dungeoneer | Marc Gascoigne & Pete Tamlyn | John Sibbick | 1989 | ||
| Blacksand! | Marc Gascoigne & Pete Tamlyn | John Sibbick | 1990 | ||
| Allansia | Marc Gascoigne & Pete Tamlyn | John Sibbick | Russ Nicholson | 1994 | |
The main change brought by this edition is the addition of the Sorcery! magic system. Arion Games also brought in several titles not previously directly related to AFF (as opposed to FF in general) under the Advanced Fighting Fantasy brand.
For Out of the Pit, Arion added the statistics needed to make that monster book compatible with AFF rules. The spells in the Sorcery! spell book were likewise given additional mechanics to make them AFF spells. Other publications, such as the Titan worldbook, was republished as-is (with no system specific info).
| No. | Title | Authors | Cover Art | Interior Art | Published | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CB77001 | Advanced Fighting Fantasy[1] | Graham Bottley | John Sibbick | Various | 2011 | |
| CB77002 | Out of the Pit | Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone (Edited by Marc Gascoigne) | Christos Achilleos | Various | 2011 | |
| CB77003 | Titan | Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone (Edited by Marc Gascoigne) | John Christos Achilleos | Various | 2011 | |
| CB77004 | Crown of Kings | Graham Bottley & Steve Jackson | John Blanche | John Blanche | 2012 | |
| CB77005 | Heroes Companion | Graham Bottley | John Sibbick | Russ Nicholson | 2012 | |
| CB77006 | Blacksand | Graham Bottley | Martin McKenna | Iain McCaig and Steve Luxton | 2012 | |
| CB77007 | The Sorcery Spell Book | Graham Bottley & Steve Jackson | Maggie Kneen | John Blanche | 2013 | None |
| CB77008 | Beyond the Pit | Andrew Wright | Terry Oakes | Various | 2013 | |
| CB77009 | The Warlock of Firetop Mountain | Brett Schofield | Martin McKenna | Russ Nicholson and Brett Schofield | 2014 | None |
| CB77010 | Advanced Fighting Fantasy Deluxe | Graham Bottley, Marc Gascoigne, Peter Temlyn | John Sibbick | Various | 2016 | None |
| CB77011 | Stellar Adventures | Graham Bottley & Jonathan Hicks | Alan Craddock | Gary Mayes & Mark Robinson | 2017 | None |
| CB77012 | Stellar Adventures Starship Catalogue | Graham Bottley, Dan Quinlan, Simon Strafford | Graham Bottley | Graham Bottley | 2017 | None |
| CB77013 | The Titan Herbal | Andrew Wright | Maggie Kneen | Various | 2017 | None |
| CB77014 | The Kaladarian Response | Graham Bottley | Graham Bottley? | Gary Mayes & Mark Robinson | 2018 | None |
| CB77015 | Demons of Doom | Graham Bottley | Tony Hough | Various | 2019 | None |
| CB77016 | A Rough Guide to the Pit | Andrew Wright | Mike Tenebrae | Various | 2019 | None |
| CB77017 | Weapons and Armour Catalogue | Graham Bottley, Dan Quinlan, Simon Strafford | Graham Bottley | Graham Bottley | 2019 | None |
| CB77018 | Travels in Arion | Graham Bottley | Bob Greyvenstein | Russ Nicholson & Maciej Zagorski | 2019 | None |
| CB77019 | Return to the Pit | Andrew Wright | Les Edwards | Various | 2019 | None |
| CB77020 | Creatures of Mishna | Benjamin Quinton-Bottley | Various | 2020 | None | |
| CB77021 | Combat Companion | Graham Bottley | Various | 2021 | None | |
| CB77022 | Citadel of Chaos | Brett Schofield | Henrik Karppinen | Russ Nicholson | 2022 | None |
| CB77023 | Encyclopedia Arcana Vol I - Treasures | Andrew Wright | John Blanche | Various | 2022 | None |
The roleplaying game is translated and published in French by,[2] [3] as Défis fantastiques, le jeu de rôle (DF-JdR). They added original material: the core book has a 100 pages additional campaign, Le Tambour de Gondrim (The Drum of Gondrim), and original illustrations. They also created a gamemaster's screen with an original adventure, and paper figurines, floorplans and tiles.
Scriptarium started a call for crowdfunding to publish the translation of Titan in March 2014.[4] The success of the subscription allowed the execution of new original illustrations (by John Sibbick, Malcolm Barter, Bill Houston, and maps by Steve Luxton), illustrated cards for the magic spells (playing cards format), a miniature representing Yaztromo, and an A2-format colour map of Titan showing the location of the adventures (gamebooks and romans). It also contains an original 90 p. campaign, À la Recherche de la jeunesse perdue (In Search of Lost Youth).