Fighting Fantasy

This past Thursday, my wife and I hosted thanksgiving for both our families. As we were celebrating I walked by a conversation between my father in-law and my brother. They were talking about Victoria and my wedding, specifically my brother's speech.My brother was my best man. This meant, that in keeping with tradition he had to give a speech. His speech began something like this:"For the last four or five years, Davis and I have been hanging out every Friday night. Just so you know...we're huge nerds!" This garnered a laugh from our guests. But it's true. My brother went on to give brief details of our Friday night adventures to our local comic book store to play our favorite card game: Magic the GatheringHe talked about one of our favorite car ride games, the highly sophisticated and complex game of Who would win? He even hinted at our attempts to play tabletop role playing games. Moral of his story was that I like classically nerdy things.My wife Victoria, is not a classic nerd. Her eyes glaze over when I talk about my hobbies that reside in that realm, but nevertheless (and this was my brother's point) my wife was willing to learn and at times even enjoy my hobbies in order to spend time with me. It was a sweet speech. But the reference to it got me thinking about all our attempts at playing Role Playing Games (RPG's).It all began one night when I was up late watching Netflix at my parents house several years ago. For some reason I felt like looking for a horror film (very rare for me). I found something that looked promising:DARKNESS RISINGScary title right?! I clicked it. The first eight to ten minutes were...disappointing to say the least. The beginning ran like something I could have made with my camera phone and a group of friends with a lot of time on their hands. The first eight minutes consisted of: cheesy lines/accents, plastic weapons and armor, and worst of all: death scenes consisted of someone getting hit with a plastic weapon and pretending to die.Just before I turned it off, the screen shimmered and the scene changed. A group of middle age men sat around a round table with a bunch of paper and dice. I recognized a few of them. They were the same actors from the scenes before. It was then that I realized I'd also misread the title.DORKNESS RISINGThings just got interesting.Below is a youtube video from The Dead Gentlemen,the production company, and their trailer for Dorkness Rising. Now finding this on a whim is probably one of the best things I've stumbled across...ever. I've watched it dozens of times, and it still makes me laugh. Below is an affiliate link for it on Amazon Prime. Even if you don't use the link below, I highly recommend checking it out. Click picture for linkBut one thing that this movie did other than provide hours of entertainment, was ignite my brother and my interest in playing an RPG. Not the typical video game RPG's that are everywhere these days, but the classic table top RPG as seen in the movie. That being said, neither my brother and I had much experience with it. So I looked up a beginners guide on Google, and found a beginner friendly system. I wrote a brief story for us, drew out a map, and we played for a few hours until we were comfortable. *Fun Fact!That same dice system that I originally found to introduce my brother and I into table top RPG's is also what inspired my upcoming Dice Books!*After we became comfortable I started building upon the system, making it more advanced and allowing us more options for customization. We created characters like Plork, the shape shifting platypus.Plork Or Ronin, the Knight Templar werewolf.Ronin Playing as such dynamic characters through whatever the campaign was always a good time. We would have done it more had time constraints not got in the way.Enter Fighting Fantasy.Fighting Fantasy is not only a niche genre of books, it is also a series of books by Steve Jackson. Fighting Fantasy is like the Google of Solitaire Adventure books...it's in the name. Above are affiliate links to some of Steve Jackson's most acclaimed books. For those of you who enjoy classic tabletop RPG's but struggle to find the time, perhaps pick up one of these books. The fighting fantasy genre allows the reader to experience that a rich fantasy world, through the eyes of unique characters on your own time. Stay tuned for Dice Book Publishing's own contributions to this genre. We've started writing one, and have been kicking around ideas for another.At the moment I've had to shut down the shop for maintenance. But as soon as that's out of the way be sure to sign up to our email list for special coupon codes to be used in our improved shop!Thank you for reading!Davis SummerlinFounder of Dice Book Publishing Contact@dicebookpublishing.com