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Lone Wolf (gamebooks)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Computer & Video games

   Lone Wolf is a collection of 28 gamebooks, created by Joe Dever and
   initially illustrated (books 1-8) by Gary Chalk. It was first published
   in July 1984 and became one of the most popular game books ever
   published, selling more than 9 million copies worldwide.

   The story focuses on the fictional world of Magnamund, where the forces
   of good and evil fight for control of this planet in a final showdown.
   The protagonist is Lone Wolf, last of his caste of warrior monks known
   as Kai lords. The book series is written in the second person and
   recounts Lone Wolf's adventures as if the reader is the main character.
   As Lone Wolf, you make choices at regular intervals throughout the
   story which then change the course, and the final outcome, of the book.
   Each book in the series can be read/played seperately, but they are
   designed in such a way that skills and items obtained in one book can
   be carried over and used in the later ones.

   Although the series ceased publication in 1998, a dedicated fan base
   established Project Aon in 1999 and have subsequently converted many of
   the books to HTML format. Joe Dever gave his permission for free
   distribution of the books online via the internet. Subsequently, there
   has been a strong revival of interest in Lone Wolf, particularly in
   Italy, Spain, and France where the books were republished between
   2002-2006. Several adaptations now exist of the Lone Wolf series,
   including a D20-style Role-Playing Game (by Mongoose Publishing Ltd
   UK). A computer game and a mobile phone game are currently in
   production for release in early 2008.

   Lone Wolf was notable as a gamebook series because it was the only one
   of its type where the reader played a single character who grew more
   and more advanced over the course of the series. It was the first
   role-playing mega-campaign, and it has had a hugely influential effect
   upon the design of the first person fantasy computer games and MMO's
   (Massively Multi-player Online games) of recent years.

Synopsis

   Magnamund is a planet in the universe of Aon which is the focus of
   battle between the powers of Good, among them Kai (God of the Sun) and
   Ishir (Goddess of the Moon), and Naar, the evil God of Darkness.

   In the north-east of Magnamund's northern continent lies the realm of
   Sommerlund. Its people, the Sommlending, are devoted followers of Kai.
   There are those among them, known as Kai Lords or simply 'the Kai', who
   possess extraordinary innate abilities. Trained from childhood at the
   Kai Monastery, the Kai Lords are Sommerlund's greatest defence against
   Naar's agents.

   Naar's champions upon Magnamund are the Darklords, who dwell in the
   scorched wastes of the Darklands, west of Sommerlund. This realm,
   inhospitable to most life, enables the Darklords to survive on
   Magnamund - though powerful, they are greatly weakened by the natural
   atmosphere of the world. Forced to enact their will at a distance, the
   Darklords wage war with armies of Drakkarim (humans devoted to Naar),
   Giaks ( goblin-like creatures spawned in vast numbers), and other
   creatures, and are served by agents such as Vordaks ( undead with
   psychic powers) and Helghasts (shapechanging undead).
   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   At the Kai Monastery is a young initiate, given the name Silent Wolf.
   On the feastday of Fehmarn, when all the Kai Lords gather at the
   monastery, Silent Wolf is sent to cut wood from the surrounding forest
   as a punishment for his inattention in class. While he is gone, a
   surprise attack is launched from the Darklands at several places across
   Sommerlund. The Monastery is assaulted and the gathered Kai Lords
   massacred. Rushing back from the woods, Silent Wolf is knocked out by a
   low-lying tree branch (in the Legends of Lone Wolf novelizations based
   on the books, it's implied that the branch was placed there by a being
   called Alyss so Silent Wolf would be spared the attack). When he
   awakes, he finds himself the only survivor. The last of the Kai, he
   renames himself Lone Wolf and sets out for the capital to inform the
   King of the loss of the Kai.

   The Kai series follows Lone Wolf as he rallies the armies of Sommerlund
   and her ally, Durenor, to repel the invasion, pursues and captures the
   traitor who brought about the invasion, and survives plots to complete
   the destruction of the Kai. At the end of the series, Lone Wolf
   recovers the Book of the Magnakai, the ancient text which contained the
   higher lore of the Kai Lords. With the massacre of the Kai, and Lone
   Wolf only an initiate, these teachings were thought to be lost.

   The Magnakai series takes up the tale, with Lone Wolf now a Kai Master
   striving to understand the Magnakai teachings. The Book, however, is
   ancient and incomplete. To perfect his understanding and train a new
   order of Kai Lords, Lone Wolf must follow the path of Sun Eagle, the
   first Kai Lord and author of the Book of the Magnakai. Sun Eagle
   quested for the wisdom encapsulated in the Lorestones of Nyxator, seven
   orbs scattered across Northern Magnamund. As Lone Wolf begins the same
   quest, however, war breaks out again. The Darklords have again rallied
   behind a single leader and now hasten their invasion to defeat the
   Magnakai quest. Lone Wolf pursues the quest through the war-torn realms
   and even beyond the plane of Magnamund. Ultimately, he enters the
   Darkland capital of Helgedad and brings about the destruction of the
   Darklords.

   The Grand Master series continues the story of Grand Master Lone Wolf
   and introduces the restored order of Kai Lords. With the destruction of
   the Darklords, Naar and his agents abandon open warfare and seek new
   paths to dominance, often focused directly on Lone Wolf as the keystone
   of the forces of Light.

   The New Order series features a new protagonist, whose name is
   speculated to be Falco Nero, or Black Hawk, a Grand Master in the
   Second Order of the Kai and a student of Lone Wolf, who is now Supreme
   Master. Much of the series focuses on attempts by Naar's minions to use
   remnants of the power of Agarash the Damned, Naar's greatest champion
   and predecessor to the Darklords. As such, the settings explore
   Southern Magnamund, where Agarash's empire was centred and which was
   ignored in the earlier series.
   Spoilers end here.

Books

Writing

   Joe Dever was seven years old when he became a fan of a comic strip
   known as "The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire", which appeared in a
   magazine called Look and Learn. He built armies of Airfix Roman
   soldiers and converted their spears to laser rifles, long before he was
   introduced to fantasy. Dever was introduced to "science fantasy" by his
   high school English tutor. He was the first and possibly only British
   person to compete in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Championship of
   America, which he won in 1982.

   Dever has stated that his earliest inspirations for Lone Wolf were
   medieval classical texts such as Beowulf, Ivanhoe, King Arthur's
   Knights of the Round Table. In his teenage years Tolkien, Moorcock and
   Mervyn Peake along with military history and Norse mythology all
   contributed to the creation of the Kai. He also used travel books to
   discover images of "exotic places".

   Dever developed the world of Magnamund from 1975 to 1983 as a setting
   for his Advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Originally called
   "Chinaraux", the world consisted of only northern Magnamund. The Kai
   lords are like "psionic rangers with special powers bestowed upon them
   by their gods." An individual book took 9 weeks to write, with three
   for mapping and plotting, and then 6 weeks of writing the story,
   creating an average of 12 entries per day.

Publication

   Dever was originally contracted by London-based publisher Hutchinsons
   for four books, despite having planned out at least 13 for the series.
   When the first books proved to be popular, Dever was allowed an
   extension of contract and went on to write 20 books with Lone Wolf as
   the main hero, and 8 more featuring a new Kai Lord. He also developed
   the character Grey Star during this period, and four books were written
   using this character by Ian Page. Dever also wrote The Magnamund
   Companion, in which all countries of the Lone Wolf world are described
   in some detail; readers are also given details on the Darklords and a
   trainer course in the Giak language. There are two games included, a
   Ragadorn Tavern Board game, and a short solo adventure that takes place
   immediately prior to book one, featuring the character of Banedon.

   With the help of Joe Dever, Paul Barnett, whose pen name is John Grant,
   wrote twelve novelizations of the Lone Wolf books known as the Legends
   of Lone Wolf, several of which were heavily edited before publication..
   They have received mixed reviews from fans. Barnett was the creator of
   the characters Alyss, Qinefer, and Thog. Barnett has been in
   discussions with an Italian publisher about reprinting the books
   unedited. Random House stopped publishing the novelizations because
   "the books weren't selling," though the truth of this statement is
   contested. There has long been question amongst fans as to which
   version of the series is canon. Joe Dever has stated that as the game
   books precede the novelization, they are the "authoritative" versions.

   Only the first four volumes of the Legends of Lone Wolf were made
   available in the United States (though Sword of the Sun was divided
   into two separate volumes, The Tides of Treachery and Sword of the
   Sun), and only the first 20 of the core Lone Wolf gamebook series were
   made available in the United States; the last 8 books were never
   printed in the US. It should also be noted that the American editions
   of books 13-20 were abridged versions and thus are shorter than the UK
   editions. The UK versions also have colour maps. The abridgements are
   sloppy, sometimes leaving broken links, or sections referring the
   reader to an incorrect new section.

   During the latter period of writing, Joe Dever and Publisher Red Fox
   were at odds, and Red Fox ceased publishing the Lone Wolf series after
   book 28, The Hunger of Sejanoz, citing lack of interest in the
   interactive gaming genre, despite hundreds of requests for the
   reprinting of several Lone Wolf books that had gone out of print. This
   left the series unfinished, as Dever had four other books planned. He
   plans on releasing these books in some form after completing his
   collaboration on the new Lone Wolf RPG.

   In 1999, Dever gave permission for his Lone Wolf book to be published
   for free on the internet by the non-profit organization Project Aon.
   Joe Dever later gave his permission to publish the out of print New
   Order series. As of July 2006, 17 of his Lone Wolf books, the World of
   Lone Wolf series, the Magnamund Companion and several other Lone Wolf
   related written works are available for download.

Fan base

   Today Lone Wolf still commands a cult following, which is mostly
   located on two sites online; Project Aon Forums and Tower of the Sun.
   Project Aon prints the books for free online. Tower of the Sun is a
   forum started by Winterhawk with RPG elements such as rewarding site
   members gold crowns and experience points for posting, and allowing
   them to join a class from the Lone Wolf series. Tower of the Sun also
   has an ongoing fan fiction which exceeds ten chapters and a thousand
   pages of text.

Reception

   The gamebook series was published between 1984 and 1998 in over 30
   countries, translated into 18 languages, and sold in excess of 9
   million copies worldwide. Each of the first 20 books had average print
   runs of 250,000.

   The response to the Lone Wolf book series has been largely positive.
   Three books of the series won "Game Book of the Year" between 1985 and
   1987. The series was also awarded the Gamemaster International "All
   Time Great" award in 1991. The high quality of Joe Dever's descriptive
   prose recieves especial praise, as well as the fact that the books, if
   played together, form a cohesive continuing story, with reoccuring
   characters (something not often seen in gamebooks). Even so, the books
   are not without criticism. Wavering difficulty is a common criticism
   made about the series. The battles tend to be either too hard or too
   easy. This is mostly attributed to the attainment of the Sommerswerd in
   the second book Fire on the Water which drastically increases the
   wielder's combat abilities. Another reason for this would be the fact
   that a player can start with drastically different stats. Finally,
   because the books were written to be functional both as a series and as
   stand alones. the question of whether or not a player would have access
   to certain special weapons and abilities made difficulty hard to gauge.

   Another criticism is that the epic fights of the series, due to a
   simplistic battle system, lack a suitably epic feel. There has been a
   fan attempt by Zipp Dementia to remedy this by rewriting some of these
   battles as enlarged special "supplements" with adapted combat rules.

   Some also think that the Lone Wolf series is too linear, forcing the
   player to approach most problems in the same way, and to go a certain
   path. The more plot-oriented books are noted to be more linear, while
   the books that focus more on dungeon exploration are far less linear.

Adaptations

   Three computer games were released during the late 1980's using the
   Lone Wolf license. The first two, published by Hutchinson, were adapted
   from the first two gamebooks, while the third entitled 'Mirror of
   Death' from Audiogenic Software, featured an original storyline. The
   game was well received by several game magazines.

   The Legends novel Eclipse of the Kai was abridged as an audio book read
   by Edward da Souza in May 7th, 1992. Another was recorded but not
   released. A version narrated and composed by Joe Dever was also made,
   but never released.

   There was also a series of telephone adventures called "Phonequest",
   one of which was known as "Fortress of Doom".

   In 2004 the license was adapted as a role-playing game by Mongoose
   Publishing under the Open Game License using Mongoose's OGL System.
   This has met mostly with praise for its adaptation of the Lone Wolf
   world, though some believe that there are many overlooked problems with
   the RPG, such as balance between classes and "hard to interpret" rules.
   Dever is credited with helping the game's principal designer, August
   Hahn, to incorporate information from his final four unreleased books
   into the game. A line of miniatures was also created for the game.

   Three scripts were developed for a potential Lone Wolf film release but
   they did not proceed beyond the pre-production phase.

   An online MMORPG was developed by fans throughout 2005, at one point
   with the help of Joe Dever, and a playable demo had been released for
   beta testing, but development abruptly stopped when it was announced
   that a first-person computer game was being developed by
   Singapore-based Ksatria Gameworks Pte Ltd. Joe Dever is cited as Lead
   Designer on the project, which is scheduled for release in the first
   quarter of 2008.

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