Who wants to RP the Gamebooks?

Hellebore

Mongoose
I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this previously (it seems so obvious I can't believe NOONE has) but I think a group of adventures would be cool using the lone wolf books as the basis.

Basically the concept being that instead of Lone Wolf running off to tell the King in Holmgard about the destruction of the Kai, your band of PCs does.

If you were all Kai for instance perhaps you all escaped instead of Lone Wolf- or if you aren't then maybe you stumble upon the burnt out Kai monastery and quickly decide that travelling to tell the King of their destruction is paramount to the survival of Sommerlund.

This then naturally leads into the second book where the king sends your band off to get the sommerswerd (not necessarily because any of them get to use it, but because it needs to be used to kill the dark lord Zagarna).

I think with a little work your PC band could eventually end up fighting Ixiataaga at level 17.

The good thing about the books is that when your characters finish the quest, they get to go up one level, keeping up with Lone Wolf's levels in the books.

Hellebore
 
Hi Hellebore,

Mongoose have already done a LWRPG version of the first Lone Wolf book Flight From The Dark. It could easily be adapted to to a party of players and it's a free download in the Lone Wolf section of the site. There are supposed to be more being released but, well, I wouldn't hold your breath. I for one would be willing to pay for them in book format or pay to download PDF if it would enable mongoose to allocate resources to it. I suspect there may be some lisencing issue that stops it maybe to do with project aon they did a couple of pdfs of the LW books at one time...

Yep I think it's a great idea and would love to see it happen.

Regards WW
 
The Project Aon PDFs shouldn't have anything to do with why Mongoose haven't made available any others than the first one. One of the earliest things Matt announced was that they had Joe's permissions to make free PDF RPG editions of the original gamebooks... and I guess that the "free" part is the key. When you are knee-deep in work that pays, which I believe Mongoose are, the non-paying work tends to get lower prio, even if you think it is a really cool idea.

There are people who have run campaigns based on the gamebooks. I am pretty sure there's been people reporting from such games at Tower of the Sun, but in these cases it has been like more average adventures, not section by section according to the books.

One questions is what Mongoose would say if fans volunteered to convert the gamebooks into RPG versions and submit them to Mongoose for quality assurance and final production? Still some unpaid work for them to do, but...

The conversion effort should not to be so huge. The original text is available at Project Aon in electronic form already, and although the Flight From the Dark RPG PDF does not state it, it is apparently based on that text, since the errata fixes in the Project Aon version are included and many of the footnotes have been worked into the text.

BTW, about the Project Aon PDFs, the project would really like to continue making them, but there needs to be a skilled volunteer with enough time to do the work too... (hint, hint).
 
Hellebore said:
I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this previously (it seems so obvious I can't believe NOONE has) but I think a group of adventures would be cool using the lone wolf books as the basis.

I haven't seen your post since now so my answer is a bit late...

Anyway, I am currently mastering LW using the gamebooks as basic storyline. It is very simple and fun to "replay" these books as RpG!

I have yet GMed "Flight from the Dark" and "Fire on the Water" and I'm preparing to GM the 3rd book (Caverns of Kalte).
Just inbetween, I have "inserted" the "Blood Moon Rising" scenario (who need a STRONG uprising of the "bad guys" stats to be considered a real chalenge for 5-6 level characters).

My players are: 2 Kai Lords, 1 brother of CS, 1 archer (not the real toranese one, I have created another kind of "free archer") and 1 Bor dwarf. It is a very balanced and effective party.

I can only encourage anyone willing to use the books storyline: it is damn cool!
 
Hellebore said:
I don't know whether anyone has mentioned this previously (it seems so obvious I can't believe NOONE has) but I think a group of adventures would be cool using the lone wolf books as the basis.
I don't understand why Mongoose did not wrote “scenarisation”, as there seem to be a great number of people wanting it. Hey! Demand=money, so? A series of three(or more)-volumes softback scenario books would be easy to sell, no?

With added value compared to the gamebooks for background as well as for preventing a GM to be lost with adventurous PC departing too far from the gamebooks. If Mongoose put as much intemporal (well, low-temporal) informations, they may kills three birds with one stone:
  • an eagerly awaited scenario
  • background information usable in both MS 5000 and gamebook-time plays (and why not in post-gamebook time, like the “future events” sections in Core book?). Diversity is a great way to ensure maximum chances of survivals. Maybe only a minority of people want to play in MS 5000…
  • Greatly added value, so no requirement for making it free, like the Flight from the Dark conversion. Well, that may require Joe Dever’s approval, I don’t know.
 
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