{"id":11357,"date":"2013-01-13T20:47:55","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T10:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11357"},"modified":"2014-04-26T17:45:33","modified_gmt":"2014-04-26T07:45:33","slug":"out-of-the-pit-by-ian-livingstone-and-steve-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11357","title":{"rendered":"Out Of The Pit by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=2474\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2474\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2474\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tfwbookclub.jpg\" alt=\"tfwbookclub\" width=\"600\" height=\"75\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tfwbookclub.jpg 600w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tfwbookclub-300x37.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=11362\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11362\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11362\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp0011.jpg\" alt=\"ootp001\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp0011.jpg 450w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp0011-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Ever look on eBay or Amazon and feel the urge to spend hundreds of dollars on books, toys and knick knacks from your childhood?\u00a0 It probably goes without saying that as a grown man who collects Lego, hoards video games and owns the complete sets of <em>Tintin<\/em>, <em>Asterix<\/em>, <em>Calvin &amp; Hobbes<\/em> and <em>The Far Side<\/em> that I am someone who is drawn to revisiting memories from childhood.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">One such passion as a kid was Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone&#8217;s pen n&#8217; paper roleplaying series <em>Fighting Fantasy<\/em>.\u00a0 I read (played?) my brother&#8217;s copies of <em>The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain<\/em> and <em>Deathtrap <\/em><em>Dungeon<\/em> and became hooked on the series.\u00a0 I think the popular choice of &#8216;interactive novels&#8217; for most kids my age was <em>Choose-Your-Own-Adventure<\/em> but I found those books to be pretty lame.\u00a0 Fighting Fantasy was where it was at.\u00a0 I mean just look at all this sweet artwork.\u00a0 And it struck just the right balance of difficulty for teenage Me.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t care for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.\u00a0 Too complicated.\u00a0 But <em>Fighting Fantasy\u00a0<\/em>was just the right level of challenge and fun.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Out of the Pit isn&#8217;t a self contained <em>Fighting Fantasy<\/em> story.\u00a0 Rather it is a compendium of all the monsters from the series.\u00a0 I <em>loved<\/em> this book as a kid and can remember pouring over its content from cover to cover.\u00a0 I&#8217;m kind of bummed there isn&#8217;t a hardback coffee table edition because the artwork is fantastic and drawn in a style evocative of the Eighties and Nineties that you don&#8217;t really get anymore.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=11359\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11359\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11359\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp003.jpg\" alt=\"ootp003\" width=\"630\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp003.jpg 630w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp003-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=11360\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11360\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp004.jpg\" alt=\"ootp004\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp004.jpg 450w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp004-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=11361\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11361\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11361\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp005.jpg\" alt=\"ootp005\" width=\"450\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp005.jpg 450w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ootp005-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Its possible that by buying\u00a0<em>Out of the Pit<\/em> I&#8217;ve started down the road of an expensive and extensive branch of childhood nostalgia.\u00a0 There&#8217;s about fifty of these <em>Fighting Fantasy<\/em> books.\u00a0 Not to mention Allansia&#8230;and Blacksand&#8230;and Sorcery&#8230;and Titan&#8230;and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever look on eBay or Amazon and feel the urge to spend hundreds of dollars on books, toys and knick knacks from your childhood?\u00a0 It probably goes without saying that as a grown man who collects Lego, hoards video games and owns the complete sets of Tintin, Asterix, Calvin &amp; Hobbes and The Far Side &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,230],"tags":[2399,1648,1651,1649,1650],"class_list":["post-11357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-book-club","tag-book-club","tag-fighting-fantasy","tag-ian-livingstone","tag-out-of-the-pit","tag-steve-jackson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14043,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11357\/revisions\/14043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}