PDA

View Full Version : Good news for fans of the "Lone Wolf" Role Playing Novels!!!



Wraith Storm
03-09-2009, 06:34 AM
When I was younger my brother and his friend were really into the Lone Wolf RP novels. So naturally seeing them enjoy the books and being a fan of RPGs, I got hooked on them as well.

For those of you who don't know about the Lone Wolf RP novels i'll explain. They were inspired by and in competition with Steve Jackson & Ivan Livingstone "Fighting Fantasy" Novels and were just as successful if not more so. Essentially they were a glorified "Choose Your Own Adventure".

You played the character Lone Wolf and similar to Dungeons and Dragons you would create a character sheet. You would distribute character points and select skills and items to use throughout the book. There would be times when you would fight battles and you would use the "Random Number Table" in the back of the book, coupled with your stats, to determine how much damage you inflicted.

It was just like playing an epic RPG or a game of D&D but you didn't need to have a TV and a game system or a group of friends and someone to DM. All you needed was yourself a pencil and one of the Lone Wolf books. I was never one to read to many books... but these really gave me a reason!

Here in the states they have been out of print for many years. Hell, all we got were the first 20 books. We missed out on the last 8, but not our lucky friends in the UK. The books have recently made a resurgence over there. For the past few years Author Joe Dever has gone back and revised, fine tuned, and expanded the books. They are being published by UK's Mongoose Publishing and by the looks of it I'll have to import them because were lame here in the US, no one cares about these kinds of books anymore, and therefor I must suffer. So now i'll have to pay twice what I would have payed, but Its certainly worth it to me so I guess I can't complain too much.

The point of this thread however is that along with the revisiting of these books, Ksatria Gameworks (http://www.ksatria.com/) is making a game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 based on the first novel: Flight From the Dark. They have some videos on their site. I think it looks great so far. Somewhat like Dark Messiah: HOM&M. I can't wait!!! I wanna fire up the game and start picking my Kai Skills!!!

Original US release (Left)-------------UK revised HB release (Right)http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm177/Archaictear8x/LoneWolfBoth.jpg

WOOO HOOO!!! Post number 400! Not a better thread to celebrate with ;)

roushimsx
03-09-2009, 06:52 AM
Oh neat. Color me excited for that game.

shawnbo42
03-09-2009, 07:59 AM
I still have my first 14 books for the Lone Wolf series. Actually, haven't played for a while, I should bring them out again. I did find, way back when, it was easier to use a 10-sided die rather than the Random Number Table, due to the fact that that page of the book was starting to fall out.

What good times those books were, I need to get the rest of the series at some point, but, yeah, I'd also be interested to check out the game.

Lady Jaye
03-09-2009, 08:25 AM
I love role-playing novels -- in French, several series (including Lone Wolf, Fighting Fantasy, Quest for Grail, and some German ones) were published together by Gallimard under the Livre dont vous êtes le héros collection. Still have all my books, although i never had many Lone Wolf books.

Hopefully, that game will come out here and will be half-decent. I can see it being adapted into an action-RPG.

Original French edition of Flight From The Dark:

http://www.alapage.com/resize.php?&ref=9782070332908&type=1&r=0&s=0&m=r

Current French edition (with a different front page illustration):

http://multimedia.fnac.com/multimedia/images_produits/ZoomPE/9/1/9/9782070574919.jpg

shopkins
03-09-2009, 11:00 AM
I tried a few of these when I was a kid and really liked them. I would have been a D&D nerd, I think, if I had actually known people who played it. The new editions might be something I'll check into.

My favorite when I was a kid was Freeway Warrior.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~parsonsp/html/freeway.html

jb143
03-09-2009, 12:13 PM
I had a couple of these and liked them. I do remember those of us that had them in jr high getting in trouble for using pencils durring the class reading time. A few years ago I found the complete set at goodwill when books were on sale 10 for a dollar. I ended up selling them on ebay for quite a bit more than that.

Skelix
03-09-2009, 01:13 PM
I always liked the Fighting Fantasy books better Steve and Ian just plain rocked.

Another interesting series was Crossroads Adventure.

But yeah the Lone Wolfs, the sorcerer ones, and those Super Endless Quests ones (TSR). I didn't care so much for.

But as it is, I'll check out the video game!

Gentlegamer
03-09-2009, 03:56 PM
Freakin' Sweet!

Arcade_Ness
03-09-2009, 03:57 PM
Cool, I used to be really into the Lone Wolf books back when I was in high school. I only had a couple of the books. I'll wait and see if the game turns out to be good or not.

maxlords
03-09-2009, 10:59 PM
I loved those books....and I also have the four actual novels that were written. Very good stuff. I find it interesting that the first two books were remade as a really excellent homebrew DS game and now there's a real game in the works too. Weird to have such a sudden resurgence in such an obscure part of my childhood.

Gentlegamer
03-10-2009, 12:02 AM
By the way, every Lone Wolf adventure is playable online in html format: http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books

Arcade_Ness
03-10-2009, 08:38 PM
By the way, every Lone Wolf adventure is playable online in html format: http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books

Thank you so much for that link. Now I can finish where I left off, all those years ago.

Jorpho
03-11-2009, 03:29 PM
There was a 2D platformer game released years and years and years ago, too. (It used to be available at HotU; not sure where you'd get it anymore.)

Daria
03-11-2009, 03:34 PM
By the way, every Lone Wolf adventure is playable online in html format: http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Books

You've discovered the cure for boredom.

Because boredom's like cancer, only less interesting.

Wolfrider31
03-11-2009, 06:27 PM
Those were a blast. I always loved the Virtual Reality Adventure ones. Mmmm the Coils of Hate and its not so subtle references to anti-semitism.

Has anyone ever been here? http://www.gamebooks.org/

Wraith Storm
03-12-2009, 12:50 AM
Has anyone ever been here? http://www.gamebooks.org/

Yep! That site is amazing!

I couldnt believe that EVERY role playing novel I had was documented on that site. I even looked up ones that were a bit more obscure, but they had them. I also love how they have the character sheets, etc. to print out because some of my books I got used and the previous person wrote all over the sheets in the book. :grrr:

Truly an essential site for fans of RP novels!

Jorpho
03-12-2009, 02:52 AM
Don't forget that the HotU Gamebooks archive is still available at http://groups.google.com/group/hotu-revival/web/location-of-all-hotu-related-files-content. No Lone Wolf books from the looks of things, though.

boatofcar
03-12-2009, 03:19 AM
Wow! I never knew this genre even existed! I'll definitely check these out at some point.

Daria
03-12-2009, 10:55 AM
I had some Narnia Solo games, and some middle earth books when I was a kid. They were awesome, although there was a reference page missing from one of the Narnia books rendering it completely unplayable.

These Lone Wolf books are kick-ass though. I knocked out three of them last night. They're a little unfair at times, in book two I was given a fork between left and right. There's was no option to use sixth sense or tracking, but one fork would have given me a mandatory item for much later in the story. Without it I was caught in an infinite loop with death or cheating being the only possible outcomes. I cheated.

But then I accidently gimped myself for the first three novels by not scrolling down to reveal the second combat chart. I thought it maxed out at a 0 ratio, which was seriously pissing me off as I was racking up freaking 11s.

I digress. Awesome series.