House of Hell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Fighting Fantasy series |
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 The 'green stripe' cover, featuring art by Ian Miller |
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| Outline | |
| Location: | Earth |
| Sections: | 400 |
| Publication details | |
| Author(s): | Steve Jackson |
| Illustrator(s): | Tim Sell (book), Ian Miller (cover) |
| Year of release: | 1984 |
| Number (Puffin) | 10 |
| Number (Wizard) | 7 |
| ISBN: | ISBN 1-84046-417-8 |
| List of FF books | |
House of Hell (ISBN 1-84046-417-8) is a single-player roleplaying gamebook written by Steve Jackson, illustrated by Tim Sell and originally published in 1984. 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 and 7th in the modern Wizard series. The version of the book released in the United States (published by Dell) was named House of Hades. It is the only Fighting Fantasy book which is set on modern Earth. The book's difficulty led some fans to erroneously believe that it contained errors, although this is not the case.
Contents |
[edit] Story
Stranded miles from anywhere on a dark and stormy night, your only hope of refuge is the strange, ramshackle mansion you can see in the distance...
But entering the House of Hell hurls you into an adventure of spine-chilling and blood-curdling terror. The dangers of the torrential storm outside are nothing compared to the nightmarish creatures that await you within its gruesome walls.
Be warned! You must try to keep your fear under control - collect too many FEAR points and you will die of fright. Can you make it through the night without being scared - to death?
House of Hell is a horror book, set in 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, they must survive an encounter with the house's Master, The Earl of Drumer, though all is not as it appears...
[edit] Rules
House of Hell is the only book in the series to use a Fear score in addition the usual scores, though it is not the only book to use a similar system as Willpower points are used in the Beneath Nightmare Castle. 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 die of fright.
[edit] Warlock version
A short version of House of Hell was originally published in Issue #3 of Warlock Magazine. It featured 185 paragraphs, most of which eventually found their way into the final book with some rewrites. A few of them however never made it past this version, making this issue of the magazine a collector's item for the book's fans.
