Can you turn "Lone Wolf" into a group adventure?

wonderfly

Mongoose
I was thinking of running an rpg based off of the Lone Wolf novels, following the plot of the books pretty much exactly as they unfolded in the novels, starting with "Flight from the Dark" and going onward, with one key difference: make it so that there are multiple "Lone Wolfs". Instead of one survivor of the Kai massacre, there will be 3, 4, or 5, (however many I can get to play in my game).

I think it would be a great experience for a rpg group to roleplay the novels, and the plot is already written out, making it easy for me to GM the game. My question is: do you think the "Lone Wolf" books would work well as a "team" game, instead of the usual solo adventure?

My concern is that some sections of the books rely on Lone Wolf fighting one villain...I'd have to increase the number of villains attacking for everyone to have someone to battle. I mean, does it take away some of the challenge if you have 4 heroes in battle against a Darklord, compared to the usual one hero?

Also, some sections of the book rely on Lone Wolf being inconspicious and secretive...isn't that harder to pull off with 3 or 4 Kai lords?
 
I think a few people have tried it trough the years, with no real problems.

Some narrative license, some intelligently acting villains with possbly a increased power (or numbers), and slitting the group or threateneing one member and having it a race aganst tme for the others to help should keep the tension and challenge alive.

Just recently we stared a game with multiple Kai Lords, and just rescued Banedon before the game paused - it's still a race against time to stop the lone Giak and help him with the rest, even with five Kai Lords in he fray :D
 
This is exactly what I'm doing with my group of players.
But playing only Kai Lords is a bit uninteresting in game terms beacuse the system push to have very similar characters (powers and so on) as soon as at medium level...

In my group we have a 2 Kai Lords, 1 Dwarf gunner, 1 Borther of CS and 1 "ranger-archer-like". It works well... with the only problem that Kai Lords are too powerfull compared with other characters.

I'm thinking about completely changing the Kai powers progression (and rules) but it's a soooo huge work!!!

Translating the books into a multiplayer campaign proves to be quite easy.

Be carefull anyway to let the players have more choices than just the "left door" or "straight ahead" kind of choices you find in the gamebooks...

Regards,
 
I think the important thing in a same class party is to encourage and force the characters to be different in roleplaing terms, and encourage that aspect. That way, even two characters with equal powers may well be different depending on how they wish to use their powers, and what personality traits and defects get in the way!

I know balgin ran a game with five dwarf gunners (d20), and I don't think they seemed samey from my external view
 
beowuuf said:
I think the important thing in a same class party is to encourage and force the characters to be different in roleplaing terms, and encourage that aspect. That way, even two characters with equal powers may well be different depending on how they wish to use their powers, and what personality traits and defects get in the way!

And quite aside from that, what's forcing a party of five Kai Lords to take the exact same Kai disciplines at the exact same levels?
 
some intelligently acting villains with possbly a increased power (or numbers), and slitting the group or threateneing one member and having it a race aganst tme for the others to help should keep the tension and challenge alive.
 
darktalon said:
And quite aside from that, what's forcing a party of five Kai Lords to take the exact same Kai disciplines at the exact same levels?

Nothing of course!
But as you know ALL Kai disciplines taken by the player automaticaly increase at every level. That implies a loss of specialisation in the mid-term.

Understand me well: I am not saying that there won't be any specialisation, but juste the fact that, "discipline-speaking", all Kai Lords are going to be less and less different.

Of course the roleplaying remark is good. The important fact is to roleplay your character differently, whatever disciplines you have.

But for me the major problem remains the huge disproportion between Kai Lords and other classes habilities.
Kai Lords ARE "grosbill" as we say in french (something that can be translated by "power players friendly"). Mainly because they have a wide range of disciplines.
They not only are battle stars, they also are masters of discretion and psionic "automatic-damage-doers"!

Of course this is the purpose of Joe Dever's world! Kai Lords are the (good) stars of Magnamund! But as a more wide spectrum RpG it's a kind of concern...

Just my opinion...
 
I keep on coming back to the idea of a game based on "Flight from the Dark" and "Fire on the Water"...and I'm having trouble with the idea of a group of 4 or 5 Kai Lords going after just one Sommersword. Who gets to hold the legendary sword? Is he/she the hero and the others tag alongs? Do I need to create multiple Sommerswords?

One thought I had was maybe mixing it up a bit by having the party include a Kai Lord, a Sommerlund Knight, and a Toran Wizard, (ala Banedon). Then I don't have to come up with multiple items of power. On the other hand, that makes the Kai Lord the star again, (with him being the sole survivor).

Maybe I'll have multiple Kai Lords survive the massacre, but also throw in a Knight and a Wizard...

Thoughts?
 
Which ever Kai is the group leader. Whichever Kai is the purest/weakest. One Kai whose destiny it is. As we know from the book, the sword isn't neccessarly a reward, it can be made to be a huge burden. And whoever has the sword maybe has too much of a commitment to protect it to advance in other interesting ways, and so misses out on becoming the founder of the second order. Or becoming the general of the Sommlending army. Or becoming the king's closest advisor. Not everyone has to get overpowered items at the start of their journey.

Why do any of the four or five Kai in the group have to be the Sommerswerd welder? How about a slightly higher ranking Kai also survives, and the group have to protect him.

Or how abut he gets almost to the end dies, and then the group as a whole has to decide who is pure enough to wield the blade, and what is to be done with the blade afterwards. Why do you have to figure out the group's dynamic for them? :)

Lone wolf was a single young lad who survived and took on the imagination and hope of the king and Sommerlund, and by the nature of the narrative was trusted to keep the blade. Perhaps a defuse group of survivors are not as impressive, and so don't get to keep the blade. The king still assumes it is the property of Sommerlund, and will still, after Zagarna is defeated, insist the blade is returned to Durenor for safe keeping to re-seal the alliance.

Lots of fun ways to get around the issue! :D
 
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