House of Hell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Fighting Fantasy series |
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 The original cover of House of Hell illustrated by Ian Miller |
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 The Wizard cover of House of Hell illustrated by Nicholas Halliday |
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| Outline | |
| Location: | Earth |
| References: | 400 |
| Publication details | |
| Author(s): | Steve Jackson |
| Illustrator: | Tim Sell |
| Puffin | |
| Cover illustrator: | Ian Miller |
| Year of release: | 1984 |
| Number | 10 |
| ISBN: | ISBN 0140318313 |
| Wizard | |
| Cover illustrator: | Nicholas Halliday |
| Year of release: | 2002 |
| Number | 7 |
| ISBN: | ISBN 1-84046-417-8 |
| List of FF books | |
House of Hell 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 (ISBN 0140318313) and 7th in the modern Wizard series (ISBN 1-84046-417-8). The version of the book released in the United States (published by Dell) was named House of Hades, because the word "Hell" is sometimes considered a mild profanity. It is the only Fighting Fantasy book to be set on modern Earth.
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 and Star Strider are the only books in the series to use a Fear score in addition to the usual scores, though they are not the only books to use a similar system as Willpower points are used in Beneath Nightmare Castle, for example. 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.
[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.
