Livingstone, Ian
Entry updated 13 February 2023. Tagged: Author, Game.
(1949- ) UK Game designer, writer and entrepreneur. With Steve Jackson and John Peake, Livingstone founded Games Workshop in 1975, hoping to create and sell their own games, though the early growth of the business depended on importing US Role Playing Games. Games Workshop was later to become something of a British institution in the mould of 2000 AD, trading on the darkly humorous tone and fantastical violence of such games as Warhammer 40,000 (1987) and Dark Future (1988). Livingstone's most significant contribution to games design, however, was the creation of the Fighting Fantasy series of Gamebooks with Jackson. These books are essentially single-player pen-and-paper RPGs, quite different from such predecessors as the US Choose Your Own Adventure series. The commercial success of Fighting Fantasy led to a boom in similar, mostly UK created, series, including Lone Wolf and Blood Sword (see Gamebooks). Livingstone also designed several Board Games, of which the most interesting was perhaps the 2000 AD licence Judge Dredd (1982 Games Workshop), wrote an early nonfiction book on RPGs (Dicing with Dragons: An Introduction to Role-Playing Games [1982]) and, with Marc Gascoigne, authored a novel based on the Fighting Fantasy series, Shadowmaster (1992).
In the 1990s Livingstone moved into the Videogame industry, where he has subsequently served as a director on the boards of several prominent publishing companies. He was honoured with the Order of the British Empire for "services to the computer game industry" in 2006, and knighted in 2022. [NT]
Ian Livingstone
born Prestbury, Cheshire: 29 December 1949
works
series
Fighting Fantasy
- The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1982) with Steve Jackson [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Peter Andrew Jones]
- The Forest of Doom (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1983) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Iain McCaig]
- City of Thieves (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1983) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Iain McCaig]
- Deathtrap Dungeon (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1984) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Iain McCaig]
- Island of the Lizard King (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1984) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Iain McCaig]
- Caverns of the Snow Witch (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1984) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Les Edwards]
- Freeway Fighter (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1985) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Jim Burns]
- Temple of Terror (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1985) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Chris Achilleos]
- Trial of Champions (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1986) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Brian Williams]
- Crypt of the Sorcerer (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1987) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Les Edwards]
- Casket of Souls (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1987) [chap: Fantasy Questbook: hb/]
- Armies of Death (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1988) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Iain McCaig]
- Return to Firetop Mountain (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1992) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Les Edwards]
- Shadowmaster (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1992) with Marc Gascoigne [Fighting Fantasy Novel: pb/Russ Nicholson]
- Legend of Zagor (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1993) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Jim Burns]
- The Zagor Chronicles: Firestorm (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1993) with Carl Sargent [Fighting Fantasy Novel: pb/Terry Oakes]
- The Zagor Chronicles: Darkthrone (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1993) with Carl Sargent [Fighting Fantasy Novel: pb/Terry Oakes]
- The Zagor Chronicles: Skullcrag (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1994) with Carl Sargent [Fighting Fantasy Novel: pb/Leo Hartas]
- The Zagor Chronicles: Demonlord (London: Penguin/Puffin, 1994) with Carl Sargent [Fighting Fantasy Novel: pb/Leo Hartas]
- Eye of the Dragon (Duxford, Cambridgeshire: Icon Books, 2005) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Martin McKenna]
- Shadow of the Giants (London: Scholastic, 2022) [Fighting Fantasy: pb/Mike McCarthy]
nonfiction
- Dice Men: The Origin Story of Games Workshop (London: Unbound, 2022) with Steve Jackson [nonfiction: Games Workshop: hb/]
links
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