For those of you who grew up gaming in the 80s, Choose Your Own Adventure books were the cornerstone of the solo-gaming experience. Video games weren't sophisticated enough, or portable enough, to give us the roleplaying experience we wanted. Even then, the standard CYOA books told you who you were, what you could do, and how you could do it, providing only "Turn Left" or "Turn Right" options. Then came Joe Dever and Gary Chalk.
The Lone Wolf Adventure Book series was far more of a roleplaying game book than any other. Though you played the same character, you were allowed to select from a variety of equipment and a range of powers (called disciplines) that would give you different options in the story. You also performed combat with a simple random-number generator and two basic statistics, Combat Score and Endurance. Lone Wolf lives in the hearts of many an old-school gamer.
I've been excited to find numerous projects celebrating Lone Wolf have been in production over the years, the largest and most significant being the Aon Project's conversion of every Lone Wolf game book produced into electronic format, for FREE. I've been enjoying adventuring in Magnamund again on my iPad and the fact that they are free is astonishing to me.
Other projects, such as Megara's spin-off series Autumn Snow is brilliant, introducing a female Kai monk that my daughter can enjoy (not to mention myself). Also, the recently funded Lone Wolf Adventure Game and the currently active Lone Wolf Boardgame!
It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Lone Wolf series, from the world of Magnamund to the Kai monks themselves. In fact, I'm currently working on a huge conversion project for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons to bring the Kai monks and the beautiful world of Magnamund to your gaming table.
If you're a fan of Lone Wolf, old or new, consider linking over to the current project and helping to get it funded. As an add-on, you can get a copy of Megara's spin-off series Autumn Snow as well. Then check back here around Christmas, or better yet, subscribe to the blog, to find new classes, races, monsters and magic items for your 5th edition game.
ADDENDUM: Two other projects I forgot to mention include an Android app of all the gamebooks and a new iOS Lone Wolf game.
ADDENDUM: Two other projects I forgot to mention include an Android app of all the gamebooks and a new iOS Lone Wolf game.
There is an outstanding Android app as well. I've gone through about 8 of the books and have only found a couple of very minor mistakes or bugs. The app is free but also allows you to donate to the Aon project if you like. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GDVGames.LoneWolfBiblio&hl=en
ReplyDeleteExcellent. Thanks for the update, Adam. There is also an iOS app, but the game is very different than the original books. I'll update the post with both.
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