New Lone Wolf Books...

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Mongoose
So, as stated in the Mongoose address:

We have had some stalls on the Lone Wolf line, as devotees of the solo gamebooks will know. Not all of them were down to us… but we have to raise our hands and say most of them were.

The new Multiplayer Gamebook range did come out as promised, along with a decent amount of support – four books already this year, with another (the Magnamund Bestiary) due to skid in just before Christmas, printers permitting.

This new RPG, stripped down to the same core rules as the solo gamebooks, has been far more popular than we had guessed it would be, and has prompted us to commission a clutch more books for release next year.

Some of these will have a familiar ring for those who played the first D20 version of Lone Wolf, such as the Darklands sourcebook (just has to be done!), and we will be converting and compiling the Corruption of Ikaya adventure, originally printed in S&P, into a mini-campaign for the Multiplayer Gamebook.

However, first to appear next year will be the Book of the Magnakai, expected in February and written by fan-favourite, August Hahn. This book will allow every character class to be expanded beyond the current ten rank system, with new powers and new rules to handle higher powered gaming (the latter being the reason this addition to the game was too large for Heroes of Magnamund – what started as a fairly simple idea ballooned rapidly!).

We also have a sourcebook covering the Stornlands, much in the same style as Sommerlund and the Darklands, and are currently making plans to add more titles for the range in the second half of 2011. This game will build up into a very nice set of books.

The solo gamebooks have been slow this year, but we are aiming to redouble our efforts on them in 2011, starting with Book 15 in early January (again, printers permitting – their Christmas break may knock this onto late January), with a commitment for one book every other month thereafter. The one thing that may trip this up are Books 29-32, the first of which is expected to be with us before the end of the year. We’ll be pushing that one forward through production as soon as we can and, as promised, qualifying Mega-Deal customers will see their copy at least four months before anyone else (the rest of the world will be able to grab their copies sometime in the Summer, most likely).

Finally, we need to talk about the oft-mentioned softback editions of the solo gamebooks. Up to this point, we have been trying to link UK and US markets for joint releases without much success. However, we have now made the decision to stop farting about and actually get these books into print. We are looking to formalise this very early next year (selling to the mainstream book trade is a slower process than the hobby games trade), which will put a potential release date somewhere in Autumn 2011. Don’t hold us to that, as there are many things that can trip us up in this market, but that is what we are now pushing for, and it is an important component of a wider effort on our part, which has bumped up its priority. The first book (at least) will have a brand new cover, and the softbacks will also lose the bonus adventures that the collectors hardbacks have.

We’ll keep you up to date on what is happening with the softbacks, as slow as the process is but, in the meantime, you will see lots of support from us in the way of the hardbacks and the Multiplayer Gamebooks.
 
Its great to hear that their sales of the new LW multi-player books surprised them and I'm really looking forward to the new supplements that are on the horizon.

Lets hope that their words translate to actions. If these books are selling well then it'd be in their interests to meet release dates and keep things regular to sustain interest.
 
I think this is really great. We've got brand new Lone Wolf products, and I think overall a great creative group of people working on these things. Although I dread the thought of there being an actual ending to the Lone Wolf series as the last books are authored (and I haven't read much of any of the spoilers & future timelines and such that have been published...want to save the surprise.)

And we all know how it ends anyways...the Cener Druids of Ruel shall rule all.:twisted:

With a commitment to improved delivery on Lone Wolf, I think 2011 will be a GREAT MONGOOSE year !

Koreth
 
Sotcover editions with new covers... and without bonus adventures? That's silly, and a business suicide in my opinion. I hope for Mongoose I'm not right, but I don't see a reason to buy them if they'll be just as it has been described. I hope msprange and others at Mongoose will change their ideas and include the bonus adventures in the books.
 
Because you've never read them before?

Remember, the whole point of the softcovers is for them to be picked up by a whole new generation and readership, not for the small (if dedicated) current LW community.

The hard covers were for the dedicated readers. They could be released in small runs. The softcore books will need to have a large print run to feed amazon, distributers, etc. All of whom (I beleive) have the ability to give such books back.

Suicide would be committing to such huge runs when also inflating the page count so production costs would be significantly increased.


I could be wrong, but I would assume that is what is behind such a decision.
 
Remember that CEs won't be available forever: ended them, noone will be able to read the bonus adventures. I don't think that adding 50 pages to each book will increase so much the price: Mongoose is only trying to earn as much as possible from the CEs, which have a far higher price than they should. In my opinion, that's not whe right way to manage this project, but I'm only a poor foreign LW reader, and it seems that, whatever the company does (even making poor mistakes), they're the best in the world and everything is perfect... :roll:
 
RatedRWolf said:
Sotcover editions with new covers... and without bonus adventures? That's silly, and a business suicide in my opinion. I hope for Mongoose I'm not right, but I don't see a reason to buy them if they'll be just as it has been described. I hope msprange and others at Mongoose will change their ideas and include the bonus adventures in the books.

Mongoose communicated this right at the start that the bonus adventures would only be in the hardback collector editions. That's one of the rewards for spending the extra money on such editions.
 
RatedRWolf said:
Remember that CEs won't be available forever: ended them, noone will be able to read the bonus adventures.

The paperbacks probably won't either. Many books go out of print.

The bonus adventures weren't part of the original books either and that's what these paperbacks are there for.

RatedRWolf said:
I don't think that adding 50 pages to each book will increase so much the price:

It very well could. I've looked at self publishing and the costs are there. The extra 50 pages could push Mongoose into the next production paypoint.

RatedRWolf said:
Mongoose is only trying to earn as much as possible from the CEs, which have a far higher price than they should. In my opinion, that's not whe right way to manage this project,

I think its the right way to go - Mongoose are rewarding the early adoptors of these books and justifying the higher price point of the CE hardbacks.

RatedRWolf said:
but I'm only a poor foreign LW reader, and it seems that, whatever the company does (even making poor mistakes), they're the best in the world and everything is perfect... :roll:

Oh FFS, grow up son. Seriously. Mongoose get criticised a lot here, I should know - I've done the criticising. They aren't perfect by far but the bonus adventure availability within the hardback and not the paperback has been common knowledge pretty much since this project was started/announced. You don't like it and that's fine, but this hasn't suddenly been announced.

Personally, I think producing the paperbacks is the wrong business decision as I don't think they'll sell enough copies to justify the investment. I hope they do, but...
 
Its the Magnakai book I'm most interested in. After all the discussion with others here as to how the bonuses to actions will be resolved for higher level disciplines would be handled, I'm intrigued to see which way the official rules end up going.
 
Random Code said:
Its the Magnakai book I'm most interested in. After all the discussion with others here as to how the bonuses to actions will be resolved for higher level disciplines would be handled, I'm intrigued to see which way the official rules end up going.
I thought the same thing.
 
I definitely hope you like the way we've gone here. Without offering too much by way of spoilers, I can tell you that for the most part, the additional levels of power are about expanding abilities and getting new 'tricks' without significantly stacking new bonuses.

The higher numbers -are- there, but the book is more focused on greater capabilities and not massive bonuses. :)

-A
 
Bleeding said:
I must admit I reduced the power of most abilities, even those of Heroes of Magnamund.

Nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, that's one of the benefits of a rules light system in my opinion. You can make wide scale adjustments to fit your play style without worrying too much about overall balance.

Hope you've been enjoying the books so far!
-A
 
I stopped buying before Sommerlund. I'm waiting for the Bestiary to order them both and all the books so far are very enjoyable.

And you're right, the rules light system is very flexible.

I added a skill system and it remains 100% compatible with your books.

About overall balance, I think the ranger is not very balanced. At his last rank, he can fight with a bow, doubling damages, adding 10 CS with his bow and 10 more CS against a chosen enemy...

Deadlier than most fighters...

You're doing a good job nonetheless and I hope this game will last for years :)
 
RatedRWolf said:
Sotcover editions with new covers... and without bonus adventures? That's silly, and a business suicide in my opinion. I hope for Mongoose I'm not right, but I don't see a reason to buy them if they'll be just as it has been described. I hope msprange and others at Mongoose will change their ideas and include the bonus adventures in the books.

I'll just be happy to get them in English in editions that don't take up as much space as hc's. I seriously doubt that the omission of the bonus adventures will decide people against buying them.
 
Btw, the German edition of the current CE has softcover with the bonus adventures included. We will probably never see hardbacks, but everybody seems happy with the quality softcover (it's better than the average softcover, harder and more flexible) as I never heard/read otherwise.

Now that we know there are bonus adventures, why would anyone want the books without?
 
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