Lone Wolf atmosphere.

[Anonymous]

How do you know when the game is Lone Wolf, as opposed to generic fantasy?
Is it the feeling that, at any moment, the forces of true evil will be unleashed?
...the sense of history and culture that make up the world of Magnamund?
...the fact that there are no Orcs.--Giaks--Cough Cough.

No.
These things help, of course, but pale into insignificance compared to the true sign-

Number Puzzles!!

Seriously, these things crop up through the books. How often has a door been locked with a dial surounded by numbers, and you have to guess (sorry, calculate) the right one? How many times has Lone Wolf been in a tavern or on a boat, when some one comes in, gets on stage and asks you "If two horses set out from Toran at the same time etc. etc." ?
So go on, put these puzzles in your campaign.
I'm sure your players will thank you for it. :wink:

 

[Sabbak]

That's true.
The riddles and puzzles are one of the greatest aspects of the adventures. You have to use your brain instead of your luck (or cheating hability) like in the combat scenes...

I have to think about that for my players! :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

Don't be afraid to be graphic and deal with serious subject matter. One thing I always got from LW, even at a young age, is that anyone around you could die and that evil didn't just wear black armor and laugh maniacally but was a truly destructive force and enjoyed slaughter and murder.

 

[Kojiro]

I don't think I'm clever enough to come up with a riddle like the Zakhan fiasco in book 7. Took me an hour to figure that one out.

 

[Wannabe Drakkar]

as if ya need to come up with original stuff
i'm currently freaking out my pc's by attempting to resurrect vashna, i'll be sure to steal a number puzzle when the good timing pops up

 

[Kojiro]

Hey, I like being original.

 

[Yarul]

I agree with the usage of puzzles and riddles in an adventure. However I believe that the true essense of a role playing scenario must have something of everything in order to keep the players at their peak of imagination.

The good atmosphere using appropriate music, the usage of riddles and the fighting must all come in balance in every adventure. If a player is intelligent enough to solve a riddle and his or her character has an intelligence of 5 could be a problem in role-playing the character.

I strongly believe that a scenario and all its components must be "original" in a certain way. The combination of investigation - horror - dungeon crawling - heroic adventure is what makes the players ask you for more.

 

[munari]

I often don't like using puzzles for the reason Yarul mentioned. I'd hate to give a puzzle and then not allow a PC to get it right because they are not intelligent enough even though the player is. Also, if you make a puzzle for the PCs and its really tough, perhaps there is a character in the game with an intelligence of 18 or higher, which I would assume is along the lines of genious, would probably be able to solve it easier than the player. And, as a player, I find it frustrating when given scenarios to figure out (when it comes to tactics and such... in one game, my PC is a war survivor and knows tactics, I do not though... its not fair to my PC to make me come up with stuff, at least not completely).

How do you all balance these issues?

 

[redlaco]

... its not fair to my PC to make me come up with stuff, at least not completely).

How do you all balance these issues?

As GM, I give hints to the player, but making sure he understands they come to the PC. And I try to make it fit with his class/background. For example, when confronted with a puzzle, I might say to a player who's PC is a bard with 17 INT and many points in knowledge skills :

"Marc (player's name), Eltan (PC name) remembers a blurb from his many readings about a similar situation..."

And then I would give him some clue to help him out. It works fine so far and the players understand their PCs are sometimes smarter than themselves. In some groups, it may just not work, I don't know.

 

[Anonymous]

I regularly put puzzles in for the players, mostly because a couple of my players enjoy them, whcih is really the reason I do anything in my game, player enjoyment.
I usually allow them an intelligence check if they need a clue, then high intelligence characters have a better chance. I also sometimes allow a decipher script check for clues, to reward the characters who take knowledge based skills.

 

[mthomason]

Trouble in Tanoren in S&P#22 has a puzzle for this very reason It's been kept to a non-pivotal position, where it can be extremely helpful but not vital to the storyline. I considered using numbers for it, but in the end decided not to - numbers were pretty much the only way to go in the book, but I wanted to do something that kept the feel of the original books while exploring some of the extra things you can do with the RPG.

 

[columbob]

Trouble in Tanoren in S&P#22 has a puzzle for this very reason It's been kept to a non-pivotal position, where it can be extremely helpful but not vital to the storyline. I considered using numbers for it, but in the end decided not to - numbers were pretty much the only way to go in the book, but I wanted to do something that kept the feel of the original books while exploring some of the extra things you can do with the RPG.

Yeah, I read that yesterday, pretty interesting scenario Matt! That puzzle isn't too easy to solve though...nice tamperproof lock.

 

[DuskFox]

If you really want your players to hate you, throw Shamath's riddle at them from the Legacy of Vashna. That riddle has infuriated Lone Wolf enthusiasts for years.

 

[ParanoidObsessive]

Don't be afraid to be graphic and deal with serious subject matter. One thing I always got from LW, even at a young age, is that anyone around you could die and that evil didn't just wear black armor and laugh maniacally but was a truly destructive force and enjoyed slaughter and murder.

This reminds me of a conversation I had as a child (this has to be something like 22 years ago), which I've never forgotten.

A friend of mine and I were basically running around and playing pretend Lone Wolf-style, and since he had the first 8 LW books while I had the 4 Grey Star books, he was pretending to be Lone Wolf (with a wooden Sommerswerd) and I was Grey Star (with a mop-handle Wizard's Staff and an egg-shaped river rock I'd found - which I still have - as my Moonstone). We'd also roped in another friend of ours and sort of made him Banedon against his will, in spite of him having absolutely no idea what that meant.

Anyway, since neither "Lone Wolf" or I had read the other series at the time, we were sort of comparing notes here and there as we went, and at one point, I asked him who his "companions" were. After all, Grey Star spends a significant portion of his time across multiple books traveling with or interacting with Tanith, so she's probably the closest thing he has to a sidekick. And then a case could be made for Urik, Samu, Sado, Hugi, and even Shan Li being companions of sorts (and only poor Shan comes to a tragic end along the way). So I was sort of used to thinking of Magnamund as being a place where heroes hang out with interesting, helpful friends.

After I'd asked him who Lone Wolf's sidekicks were, he sort of stood there for a moment, looking a bit puzzled, kind of lost in thought. Then finally, he said something like "I don't know. Everybody I travel with or talk to winds up dying 20 minutes later."

That always stuck with me. Even after I got into the LW books myself, and after I started getting into the later books with Banedon becoming Lone Wolf's best friend and Rimoah his close advisor, I could still never shake the idea that, at least in the early LW books, Lone Wolf is almost ALWAYS alone (apropos of his name!), and to be even remotely helpful to him is apparently the surest form of suicide available in Magnamund.

 

[WritingWolf]

I like the riddles and most of the number puzzles in LW. However, I still cannot get the puzzles to close the Shadow Gate in Book 16. I know someone explained it before, I forgot and I still have no idea how to do it.

 

[SnowShadow]

I like the riddles and most of the number puzzles in LW. However, I still cannot get the puzzles to close the Shadow Gate in Book 16. I know someone explained it before, I forgot and I still have no idea how to do it.

SPOLIER
I think I saw once someone put a different explanation to the solution but to me the figures in the central column are the difference between the sum of the left hand pair taken away from the sum of the right hand pair. "164" answer is 6, "235" is 110. On 164 the middle column figure in the first row we see is 3 because Right Pair Sum is 13 (8+5) and Left Pair Sum is 10 (6+4); 13-10=3. I think there is another way but not sure what it is.

On the subject of LW's companions yes there are only a few survivors - Banedon, Prarg, D'Val are some of them. I remember a previous thread where we spoke about Ships in a similar way. Captains would be extremely wary of taking Kai passengers - without even looking it up I can think that The Green Sceptre sank in Book 2, Cardonal blown off course BK 3, the Vassagonian Crew are all murdered in book 5, the ferry is attacked by pirates in Bk 6, the ferry in book 8 has Kezoor the Necromancer on board and the flying ship attacked at the end, Sebb's little boat sinks Bk 10, Bk 12 has several sinking ships, Bk 17 has destroyed boats, Skyrider is destoyed Bk 18 and as for the New order series, I lost count of the number of ships that have trouble in the Bks21-22, 23 more flying ship trouble... Yes I am sure any Captain worth his salt would be reluctant to take any Kai on board.