I still have very fond memories of the Lone Wolf game books I lent from my friend Sven back when we were still in school. The Lone Wolf books focus on the world of Magnamund, where  the forces of good and evil fighting over control. The protagonist is Lone Wolf, the last member of the Kai Lords, a caste of warrior monks. Since it’s a game book the player is in control of Lone Wolf’s actions. That is you can regularly make decisions on what to do, which changes the story and the outcome of the book.

The system (if you would call it such) was extremely easy and involved rolls with a d10 to determine if certain actions were successful or not. Most players probably used the Random Number Table provided in the book to generate random number, but you could also easily use a ten-sided die to do the same.

Recently Mongoose Publishing has released a game that surprised me a lot. It’s called “Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book” and is written by Matthew Sprange and Joe Dever, author of the original game books. The 114-paged book is a true pen & paper roleplaying game using the simple rules from the game book for tabletop gaming. Although this sounds like a crackpot idea at first, especially new players and fans of rules-lite systems will love it.

As in the original game book series, you play one of the Kai Lords. Each character has a Combat Skill and Endurance value which are used in combat, a couple of Kai Disciplines (like “Mind over Matter”, “Animal Kinship”, or Weaponskill), up to two weapons and up to eight miscellaneous items and that’s it. As I mentioned before, the system is as barebones as it gets.

In combat the combat skills of your character and your opponent are compared and you roll on the Combat Ratio chart to determine how many Endurance you and your opponent lose. Doing other tests usually involves rolling a d10, is your roll result higher than a set Difficulty by the GM you succeed.

The Gamemaster section of the book does a good job explaining what a GM does and also contains a list of monsters for the players to fight. The book also contains a quite detailed description of the history of Magnamund, and some details about the world including a map. The background definitely isn’t as deep and complex as many other campaign settings, but especially if you loved the game books back in the day, you probably won’t mind. I have to admit I picked up that game mainly because I had nostalgic feelings toward the series.

The layout is clean although I would have preferred a more classic two-columned layout. Both cover artwork and the interior illustrations are of a good quality although not really overwhelming. The look reminded me a lot of the game books itself and I am sure this was intended.

All in all the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book is an interesting game which should appeal to most fans of the original series and people who want to give roleplaying a try without having to bother with complex rules. The book contains everything players and GMs need to run a game set into the world of Magnamund although only Kai Lord characters are playable using the core book.

Here’s where the supplement “Heroes of Magnamund” comes into play. The 148-paged book introduces a couple of new character classes including the Border Ranger of the North, the Dwarven Gunner of Bor or the Knight of the White Mountain.

Every class has a list of special abilities much like the Kai Disciplines, get’s to choose from several sets of starting equipment and comes with several pages of description of the class. The book also provides a character sheet for every class. The new classes add a lot of depth to the game and the world without adding too many new rules. The list of classes is also varied enough, so that everyone should find a character he wants to play.

Heroes of Magnamund also provides new weapons, armor and equipment. I wholeheartedly recommend anyone to pick up Heroes of Magnamund if he already enjoys the core game because it adds a whole plethora of new options for players.

Even if you are not interested in using the rules provided in the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book you can easily use the information in those two books to run a Magnamund campaign in the game of your choice. I am sure a Savage Worlds conversion for example should be very easy to do.

Together with the supplement Heroes of Magnamund, the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Game Book is a valid alternative to other rules-lite fantasy games. Especially if you’re a fan of the original game book series, you should give this game a chance. You won’t be disappointed. Both books are available in print and as digital downloads. The PDFs set you back $11.99 each and are available from DriveThruRPG.

Please note that this review is based on reading through the PDF versions of the both books. My copy of Heroes of Magnamund has been provided by the publisher.

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Back in the day, when we were still young and had too much time on our hands, we played in long campaigns, sometimes even spanning years. But in recent years I haven’t finished any campaign properly. Either we lost interest in the game or the group dissolved before the campaign has reached a satisfactory conclusion.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have a lot of fun, but as a GM I still feel I should try to bring a campaign to a proper end. But I am actually my own worst enemy here, because I love to try out new things. One of the reasons why we haven’t finished any campaign properly was because of me convincing my players to try something new while we haven’t finished the old campaign first.

So I finally sat down and pondered the whole situation. After some consideration, I think the best is to just quit all half-finished campaigns for good. After that I want to start something new. Instead of starting an epic campaign or just another one-shot, I’ll prepare a mini-campaign that should last for a couple of sessions. I am not sure how many sessions are actually needed, but perhaps some of you has some sound advice. This way, we can relatively easy try out new things but still get to finish a story arc.

I really hope this might be a way to make things even more enjoyable for me and my roleplaying buddies, but I am not sure if this really works. I think I’ll just have to give it a try.

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I received and early copy of the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Red Box Fantasy Roleplaying Game Starter Set last week. It’s the first product to be released from the 4th edition Essentials product line. I have already posted an unboxing video, but now that I have spent a couple of days with the Red Box it’s time to let you know what I think.

First off I want to talk a moment about the Essentials product line. Dungeons & Dragons essentials products are people new to role playing games and new to D&D. With simplified Character creation that works with all aspects of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons its the right choice. I also feel it’s a great choice for people like me. People who DM more games than they play and struggle over character creation as a result. Being able to quickly build a character and join a game is worth it’s weight in gold to me. Continue Reading

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Recently a few more reviews of WR&M have been released. The first has been written by Ina Vegt of the “Tales of the Swampwitch’s Adventures” blog. Some while ago she already reviewed the 4-paged version of the game and now she picked up the revised version to give it another look. Here’s an excerpt from her review:

All in all, this is an improvement over the old version of WR&M, but the new things aren’t really ground shaking, and the differences are minor. It’s free, so if you enjoy WR&M, or think you might enjoy it, you should pick it up.

The second one has been written by Will Hopkins of Creatively Anomalous. His support and comments to WR&M actually helped me a lot when I was working on the revised edition. He also included “From the Imperial Forges” in his review. Here’s what he has to say about the game:

At the astonishing price of $0, you can’t afford not to pick up both WR&M and From the Imperial Forges.  WR&M makes a great game for experienced and new roleplayers alike, and there is something attractive about the DIY nature of the game.  It’s certainly a polished product, but it still feels like something a bunch of friends cooked up together.  I can’t give a much higher recommendation than that.

Thanks for the reviews, Ina and Will!

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I am probably not as familiar with the exploits of John Madden as some of my American readers, but I found this video funny nevertheless. Please enjoy!

By the way, have you ever had to deal with a “replacement dungeon master” and things got wrong? If so, please tell us about it in the comments below!

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Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to prove that there’s no renewed interest in older editions of D&D and other games, but I want to share my thoughts on the perception of that phenomenon.

Recently there was some more discussion about the OSR on Twitter and on various blogs. The whole drama was started when someone discovered a quite unfortunate blurb on the Frog God Games site.

I don’t want to repeat what the whole hubbub’s about, you’ll easily find out when using Google or checking your favorite old-school blogs. But again people started to muse about the state the “OSR” is in, as if it were a single entity – which it isn’t. There are a lot of people interested in old-school gaming (whatever this may be for each of these persons) and some of them think of themselves as members of the Old-School Revivial (or Revolution) movement. But there’s no single organization uniting all these gamers. Basically everyone fends for himself.

There probably still is TARGA, which tried to be an umbrella organization for all things old-school, but it’s definitely not speaking for all old-school advocates, not even the majority. And they had a fair amount of drama on their own turf as well. Go figure…

When fans of D&D 4th Edition praise their own community for its unity they forget that a) that there is no single “OSR” community and b) the old-school movement is about a lot of different D&D editions and even other games as well, not just one. It’s much easier to be a united group if you can decide on just one game to venerate.

My advice is to remember that when you deal with something old-school you’re not facing a tight-knit community but a bunch of individuals who merely like older editions of D&D. It’s not an OSR scandal or something, it’s just the opinion of individuals.

Now let’s move on, there’s nothing more to see here.

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