Lone
Wolf - A Solitary Journey
Book
2 - Fire on the Water
After
surviving Book 1 - Flight from the Dark with 2 character deaths I managed to
rack up 3 more before rolling to a glorious finish with Lone Wolf the 6th. My
natural inclinations are not a good survival choice I find and there are a
number of ways to walk into a situation your stats can't pull you out of
(either through combat with a monster way above your paygrade or just instant
death).
These
books are great for replay value. I have about exhausted Book 1 after three
runs through it. While you learn to avoid certain of the instant death trails
as you follow one numbered paragraph to another part of surviving the game
involves knowing which Kai Abilities to choose. I neglected healing with my
first character in book one and found that to be a terrible blunder. Part of survival depends on your Combat Skill
and Endurance, but CS is the most important of the two. My characters with 12
and 13 CS just couldn't cut it and died in combat encounters a higher stat'd
character would have walked away from. All part of the game and really, the risk
of character death enriches the experience.
Fire
on the Water and Flight from the Dark are both quest adventures and a great
deal of the charm of the books comes from the interesting glimpses, brought to
life with Gary Chalk's fantastic illustrations, of the game setting as you make your way through,
The books are a quiet bit of fun broken
by an occasional bout of swearing and a cheer when you overcome an opponent.
There
is a bit more of the random rolling in Fire on the Water, at least more that I
encountered than had been in Book 1, and it was a welcome addition to the
straightforward solo game system. There is some replay value but the book can
only cover so many possibilities. It cries out to be turned into an RPG and a
series of adventures based on the solo books.
Didn't Mongoose publish RPG rules back when they were reprinting the expanded hardcovers of these books?
ReplyDeleteI think so, but I have a 1e AD&D mind so I don't think they would be compatible.
ReplyDeleteThen you would also have to screen your gamers to see if they ever played these books.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had grabbed the expanded hardcovers years back, they are quite expensive now. And there are 13 or 14 of them. Plus a world book and the other adventure series that i forget.
Oh well, we all have regrets on things we should have bought.
It would be a good idea regardless to make changes from the solo adventure if you set it as a multi-player rpg scenario, but it would also require a good deal of expansion work.
ReplyDelete