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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.