If anyone is interested I asked http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com about basing Quest games on FF gamebooks. This was the reply I received:

Hello Craig,

Just to let you know the situation: Fighting Fantasy is a valuable and protected ‘brand’ which people sign up licenses for. If we were to let people use FF for free in the way you suggest, then existing and future commercial licensees would want to know what they are paying for! So unfortunately the legal situation is that you can’t use Fighting Fantasy, the rules, the names, locations, etc, etc without a proper license; even if the intention is non-commercial.

Hope that helps.

The Warlock

Webmaster: http://www.fightingfantasy.com
http://www.fightingfantasycollector.co.uk
Twitter: @fightingfantasy
Facebook: Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks

So they you have it. KEEP WELL CLEAR!

Hehe, yeah that's word for word the exact same response I got from them with a similar question I had for them. They must get asked that question a lot if they have a standard form response.

And it looks like tin man games won the rights to do them. To be fair looks like they do a smashing job of it too.
http://tinmangames.com.au/blog/

If anyone is interested, maybe be inspired for ideas and/or haven't discovered this site yet then Abandonia.com has got PDFs of old classic Gamebooks to download.

Unfortunately, not Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and some of the links have been stopped due to legal reasons but it should keep you busy for a while.

http://www.abandonia.com/en/gamebooks

Thanks for that cdutton! I visit Abandonia from time to time, but I've never noticed the gamebooks before.