Things We Learnt at Fighting Fantasy Fest 5

On Saturday 7th September, for the fifth time in the last decade, several hundred Fighting Fantasy fans descended on a venue in Ealing for Fighting Fantasy Fest, with much to celebrate: a new book in the series by Ian Livingstone, The Dungeon on Blood Island, the new book celebrating the series' art Magic Realms, and Jonathan Green's new fully updated, revised and now interactive edition of his exceptional history of the series, You Are the Hero. Further excitement was generated by the return of the legendary Iain McCaig in person, after he'd Zoomed into the previous event from his home in Canada. On an entertaining day of talks and queuing for autographs, here are some of the things we leant:

• Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson submitted a proposal for a book where the player character would be a vampire seeking to drink Abraham van Helsing's blood, which they suspect was rejected because of the first sequence, where the player killed a young woman.
• White Dwarf magazine used three or four different pseudonyms to cover up the fact that most of the articles were being written by Dave Morris.
• The fact that in Black Vein Prophecy you have to fail a stat check to get an item you need to win the game was entirely deliberate, and was inspired by authors Paul Mason and Steve Williams' stint as editors of Warlock magazine where much of the reader correspondence was about how the books should be as difficult as possible.
• When Marc Gascoigne took over as editor of the magazine he found boxes containing literally thousands of reader-submitted mini-adventures in the office.
• The magazine was cancelled by Penguin in spite of selling in excess of twenty thousand copies per issue.
• Marc started working at Games Workshop two weeks too late to be there when David Bowie walked into the store to buy a Dungeons & Dragons set as a birthday present for his son, but was there when Dave Lee Travis entered the store to buy the same product a short while later.
• Iain McCaig was once so late with an illustration for Deathtrap Dungeon that he had to complete it in the offices of Penguin Books, and looked up from finishing it to find that everyone had gone home and he was locked in the building.
• Darth Maul's horns are actually meant to be feathers bound to his head, and are the result of someone misinterpreting Iain's concept art.
• Ian Livingstone does not enjoy the music of Cliff Richard.
• In spite of Ian's repeated comments about its quality, he still managed to sell a copy of the Nintendo DS adaptation of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain for over £100 at the charity auction. Again.
• One of the other items at the auction was one of the original promotional posters for the series, which inexplicably used a giant photograph of Ian and Steve Jackson up a tree.
• Owing to a hilarious screw-up on my part, I now own a copy of Black Vein Prophecy signed by Paul Mason twice, two years apart.