House of Hell

Infobox Fighting Fantasy book 2covers


caption1=The original cover of "House of Hell" illustrated by Ian Miller


caption2=The Wizard cover of "House of Hell" illustrated by Nicholas Halliday
location=Earth
references=400
authors=Steve Jackson
illustrator=Tim Sell
coverillustrator=Ian Miller
year=1984
number=10
ISBN=ISBN 0-14-013831-3
wcoverillustrator=Nicholas Halliday
wyear=2002
wnumber=7
wISBN=ISBN 1-84046-417-8

"House of Hell" is a single-player roleplaying gamebook written by Steve Jackson, illustrated by Tim Sell and originally published in 1984 by Puffin Books. It was later republished by Wizard Books in 2002. It forms part of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy series. It is the 10th in the series in the original Puffin series (ISBN 0-14-031831-3) and 7th in the modern Wizard series (ISBN 1-84046-417-8).

The US version of the book, published by Dell Laurel-Leaf, was titled "House of Hades" as the word 'Hell' can be considered a profanity there.

Creation

A short version of the adventure was first published in . It was made up of 185 references. The adventure was expanded for the final book but a few of the original references were removed.

Story

"House of Hell" is a horror themed book, and the only Fighting Fantasy book set on modern day Earth. The player's car breaks down during a rain storm, forcing the player to seek shelter in a nearby mansion. Though this is the only Fighting Fantasy book to employ this type of setting, books such as "Beneath Nightmare Castle" use the horror theme in the more common fantasy setting of Titan.

The player's quest to escape the mansion is hampered by the presence of Satan-worshippers and various demons, though not all are entirely hostile. Much of the gameplay involves searching a series of rooms, most of which bears an obscure religious or satanic titles, including the Shaitan Room and the Mammon room. If the reader is to be successful, he must recover a hellfire-forged kris dagger and survive an encounter with the house's Master.

Rules

"House of Hell" uses a Fear score in addition to the usual scores. Every time the player encounters some particularly disturbing event, he must add between 1 and 3 Fear points to his total Fear score. Once the character reaches their maximum score, determined at the beginning of the game, he will quite literally die of fright.

As the book is set on modern day Earth, the reader is unarmed at the start of the book and suffers a Skill penalty until they find a weapon.

See also

* Fighting Fantasy
* List of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

References

* cite web
title=Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks on gamebooks.org
url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_series.php?id=11
* cite web
title=House of Hell on gamebooks.org
url=http://www.gamebooks.org/show_item.php?id=47
* cite web
title=House of Hell on the Internet Archive record of the old fightingfantasy.com site
url=http://web.archive.org/web/20051127132124/www.fightingfantasy.com/ffb10.htmOfficial sites:
* cite web
title=House of Hell on the official Fighting Fantasy website
url=http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/ff7.htm
* cite web
title=House of Hell on the Wizard Books website
url=http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/wizard/wbook.cfm?isbn=1-84046-417-8Magazines:
* cite journal
year = 1985
month = June
title = Open Box
journal = White Dwarf
issue = 66
pages = 6–7