# Steve Jackson - Maker: Game designer - Date: b. 1951 - Houses: Games Workshop, Puffin Books - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-jackson-uk/ > The British co-founder of Games Workshop who, with Ian Livingstone, created Fighting Fantasy and wrote The Citadel of Chaos, Creature of Havoc and the four-part Sorcery! epic. **Why it matters:** Jackson helped bring Dungeons & Dragons to Britain and then, with Fighting Fantasy, turned the roleplaying game into a paperback that a single child could play alone. The series introduced millions of readers to fantasy gaming and launched a generation of British game developers. ## Quick answers **Who is Steve Jackson?** The British co-founder of Games Workshop who, with Ian Livingstone, created Fighting Fantasy and wrote The Citadel of Chaos, Creature of Havoc and the four-part Sorcery! epic. **When was Steve Jackson born?** Steve Jackson was born in 1951 in Altrincham, England. **What is Steve Jackson known for?** Steve Jackson is best known for Fighting Fantasy. **Why does Steve Jackson matter to fantasy and games?** Jackson helped bring Dungeons & Dragons to Britain and then, with Fighting Fantasy, turned the roleplaying game into a paperback that a single child could play alone. The series introduced millions of readers to fantasy gaming and launched a generation of British game developers. ## Life Steve Jackson was born on May 20, 1951, in Altrincham, near Manchester, and studied at Keele University from 1968 to 1972. [Ian Livingstone](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ian-livingstone/) and John Peake were school friends with whom he would build a games business, and in 1974 began working as a games journalist for the magazine *Games & Puzzles*. A note on names: there are two well-known game designers named Steve Jackson. This one is British, a co-founder of Games Workshop and co-creator of [Fighting Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fighting-fantasy/). The other, [the American Steve Jackson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-jackson-us/), designed *The Fantasy Trip* and *GURPS* and founded Steve Jackson Games in Texas. The American even wrote three Fighting Fantasy books, *Scorpion Swamp*, *Demons of the Deep* and *Robot Commando*, which appeared without any note that their author was not the series co-creator. After Games Workshop he returned to journalism, including writing about games for the *Daily Telegraph*, and later moved into video games. He is an honorary professor at Brunel University London, where he teaches digital games theory and design. ## Work In early 1975 Jackson, Livingstone and Peake founded [Games Workshop](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/games-workshop/) in London. They published a monthly newsletter, *Owl and Weasel*, largely written by Jackson, and through it came into contact with [TSR, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/), arranging with Brian Blume for exclusive rights to sell [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) in Europe. The company sold games from their flat until their landlord evicted them in 1976, tired of visitors looking for a shop. By 1978 Games Workshop had opened its first retail store in London, and its magazine [White Dwarf](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/white-dwarf/), launched in 1977, became the voice of British roleplaying. At a Games Day convention in 1980, Jackson and Livingstone met Geraldine Cooke, an editor at Penguin Books, and proposed a book that would work like a roleplaying game for a single reader. The result, *The Warlock of Firetop Mountain*, published by [Puffin Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/puffin-books/) in 1982, was a [Gamebooks & Interactive Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/gamebook/) with numbered paragraphs, a simple dice-and-pencil combat system and an adventure sheet for tracking Skill, Stamina and Luck. Jackson and Livingstone each wrote half of the adventure. It was a sensation, and Fighting Fantasy became a long-running series. Jackson's own contributions were some of its most ambitious. *The Citadel of Chaos* (1983) cast the reader as a wizard; *Starship Traveller* (1984) moved the formula into science fiction; *House of Hell* (1984) was a horror story; *Appointment with F.E.A.R.* (1985) made the reader a superhero. *Creature of Havoc* (1986), in which the reader begins as a monster with no control over its own actions, is often regarded as the most difficult and inventive book in the series. The four-volume *Sorcery!* (1983–85), aimed at older readers, carried one character across a whole campaign and was accompanied by a spell book of its own. With Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy behind him, Jackson and Livingstone sold their interest in Games Workshop in 1991. He later co-founded the video game developer Lionhead Studios with Peter Molyneux, leaving when Microsoft bought the company in 2006. He has continued to write Fighting Fantasy, most recently *Secrets of Salamonis* (2022). ## Legacy Fighting Fantasy did for Britain in the 1980s what D&D did for the United States: it introduced a generation to fantasy gaming, and it did so through bookshops and school libraries rather than hobby stores. Combined with Games Workshop's shops and *White Dwarf*, it helped create the British fantasy-gaming culture that also produced [Warhammer Fantasy Battle](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/warhammer-fantasy-battle/). The series has sold, by various counts, between 18 and 20 million copies, and was soon joined on bookshop shelves by rival series such as [Lone Wolf](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lone-wolf/), alongside the American [Choose Your Own Adventure](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/choose-your-own-adventure/) books. The gamebooks also proved unusually adaptable to screens. From 2013 the studio inkle adapted *Sorcery!* as a series of acclaimed mobile and computer games, showing how naturally the branching, choice-driven structure of Jackson's books translated into digital form. ## Facts - This Steve Jackson, born on May 20, 1951, in Altrincham, is a different person from the American [Steve Jackson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-jackson-us/) of Steve Jackson Games. - He co-founded [Games Workshop](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/games-workshop/) in 1975 with Ian Livingstone and John Peake, running it at first from their shared flat. - At a Games Day convention in 1980, he and Livingstone met Penguin editor Geraldine Cooke, who commissioned what became [Fighting Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fighting-fantasy/). - *The Warlock of Firetop Mountain* (1982), co-written with [Ian Livingstone](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ian-livingstone/), was published by [Puffin Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/puffin-books/). - His four-part *Sorcery!* (1983–85) was written for older readers and carried a single character through an entire campaign. - inkle's digital adaptations of *Sorcery!*, released from 2013, brought his gamebooks to a new generation. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jackson_(British_game_designer)) - [Wikipedia: Fighting Fantasy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.