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Post by John Bryntze on Mar 1, 2018 14:54:06 GMT
Fire on the Water probably in 1984 (certainly before Chasm of Doom came out). Suspicious of poor Capt Kelman, couldn’t work out who the assassin was, got frightened and slain by Helghast. I thought your first Lone Wolf experience was in Port Bax?
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Post by rhygar on Mar 6, 2018 9:05:54 GMT
Fire on the Water probably in 1984 (certainly before Chasm of Doom came out). Suspicious of poor Capt Kelman, couldn’t work out who the assassin was, got frightened and slain by Helghast. I thought your first Lone Wolf experience was in Port Bax? Ha! Yes –followed by a fight against impossible odds, six hours’ worth of escape and evasion and then getting killed by those bloody Helghast. I really should have written away to the King urging him to get more [any!] magic weapons dealt out to his soldiers. I’m not asking for Sommerswerds or Daggers of Vashna, just something capable of hurting the greater undead. Even Prince Pelethar’s sword was just plain steel. Defence cuts to blame I expect. Disgraceful.
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Post by juanconmiedo on Mar 8, 2018 20:04:49 GMT
as many others I started on the mid 80's (so long ago OMG!) with "flight from the dark", which in Spain was named "huida de la oscuridad". I was only seven or eight years old and it blew my mind; I remember being so obsessed to finish the story that I cheated without remorse I see myself with all my fingers on different pages in order to read all the options! hahahaha! what I really regret is that I used a pen for writing on the adventure sheet and I ruined it
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Post by bigmeuprudeboy on Apr 8, 2018 9:53:23 GMT
Was just after Flight from the Dark was released. 84 or early 85 so I was 9. My school had this book club where you got books at a decent discount rate and spotted FFTD in the catalogue and I loved the cover pic so got it. When I got it I didn't quite understand how to read it as it had all these numbered sections and as I'd never seen anything like it before it didn't make sense...but the illustrations... What I remember the most was flicking through the book and being utterly spellbound by Gary Chalk's pictures. Really wanted to immerse myself in that world so took the book to my mum who figured out for me how to play it. That was it for me from then on...totally hooked to this day over 30 years later. In those days it was a bit of a stigma to be into that sort of thing esp where I grew up. You were risking a slap for admitting to being into fantasy so it was something I really kept to myself as my 'thing. Still to this day find a lot of comfort and happy memories in Joe and Gary's work.
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Post by icemann on May 9, 2018 3:40:13 GMT
First gamebook experience - Twistaplot book set in a haunted mansion. I forget the name of it (may even have been called "haunted mansion"). I was only like 7 or 8 at the time. It was the usual style of choose your own adventure type thing where most paths lead to death.
First Lone Wolf experience - A year later I believe. Caverns of Kalte was available in a book sale at my school. As I quite liked haunted mansion I was up for this one. I was hooked immediately due to the more RPG nature of gameplay. My friend got the book before it. I purchased a couple of others years later, but did not seek to get a complete collection until decades later when I was in the work force and you had the wonders of Ebay available to you. Took me a year and a fair bit of cash, but I got a complete collection in the end + picked up Storms of Chai when that was released.
I hope to see the rest of the series released some day. I've even played the PC game which was half half + a Neverwinter Nights mod which covered the training years of Lone Wolf. I'm a Lone Wolf fan for life.
Quite liked the Fighting Fantasy books as well, but they lacked the progressive story, always playing the same character (until new order) and the universe always being the same which the FF books lacked.
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Post by joe101 on May 13, 2018 6:11:13 GMT
Kingdoms of Terror. I went to my local K-Mart back in 87' or 88' looking for the latest "Choose Your Own Adventure" book since a new one showed up about once every three weeks. This time there was no new book, but I saw the cover for this other book called "Kingdoms of Terror" and after reading the back cover I decided to buy it. After going through it the first time I was hooked and had to get all the others I did not have, and wait for the last few of the first 12 books to hit the bookshelf.
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Post by Ofecks on Jun 6, 2018 8:16:54 GMT
KoT is a good one to start with.
I was 12 and I saw someone in my class reading one. Looked interesting so I asked about it. They talked it up and let me borrow the first two. Hooked immediately. Too bad it was the end of the year (May/June) and I had to give them back before summer break.
The next year in school I found out a friend was really into the series. This guy had all of them, and over the course of the year, he let me borrow them one-by-one. Grey Star included. I actually never was able to return War of the Wizards to him. Probably just a string of unfortunately-timed absences from him or myself, and I lost contact with him after that school year. Had that book for 12 more years before I sold them all off.
Anyway, I almost never read for fun until LW. It was that and Nintendo Power (which was mostly images), that's about it. My mom was so happy that I was interested in reading something that the following year she ordered all the main series for me. I had the first four GM books as well (the terribad US abridged versions ugh) and never saw the other 4 in stores until my senior year of high school. That was '97/'98. Must've been a new reprint. They also had Grey Star #1 which I snatched up as well. A few years later I completed the GS set via ebay.
Until PA came along with statskeeper and other tools, I cheated like hell. It was mainly because there are no instructions for handling death. Always had a thumb in the previous section, just in case. Made little bookmarks for them, they had sketches of the 'Swerd and stylized lettering with the title. I also knew where the good numbers were on the RNTs, at least until way later when I found a 10-sided die in a board game we had (one of those party games like Taboo or something).
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Post by Zipp on Jun 9, 2018 15:51:10 GMT
Legends of Lone Wolf, Eclipse of the Kai, initially! I think I've told this story before, but my aunt bought me Eclipse of the Kai as part of a number of fantasy, literature, and sci fi books as a present and it was my favorite. I still hold it up as a good fantasy novel, even if the rest of the series is of questionable (and variable) quality.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered book 14: Captives of Kaag, in a random little bookstore. There were FOURTEEN of these?! I started to read and quickly realized this was a Choose Your Own Adventure, like Journey Under the Sea (my first gamebook ever). To this day, Kaag is my most well-worn book in my Lone Wolf collection. It was the American edition (I wouldn't get to read the unedited series until Project Aon came along) and full of errors and broken paths as a result but it is a testament to Joe's writing that I never noticed until years and years later.
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Post by Ofecks on Jun 9, 2018 16:51:23 GMT
Can confirm US edition of Kaag was broken as hell. There was only one specific path that was actually completable, and if you deviated at all from this path you'd get stuck. I'd say it was by far the most broken of the US GM series.
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Post by Zipp on Jun 9, 2018 17:28:37 GMT
Can confirm US edition of Kaag was broken as hell. There was only one specific path that was actually completable, and if you deviated at all from this path you'd get stuck. I'd say it was by far the most broken of the US GM series. It's pretty bad. I seriously don't know how I completed it multiple times. Probably massive cheating.
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Post by stardragon on Oct 16, 2018 2:51:41 GMT
I first got into Lone Wolf when I was twelve. I was with a friend and we were at a bookstore that sold "choose your own adventure" books. My friend got some books where you take on the role of a ninja and martial arts guy and I got my first Lone Wolf book. It was Fire On The Water and it got me hooked.
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Post by Ofecks on Oct 16, 2018 19:57:21 GMT
The martial arts books were probably Way of the Tiger. I've not read them myself but I know of their existence. I didn't come across any as a kid but I would've been really into them because I loved ninja stuff. Megara Entertainment has hardcover reprints available, I've considered buying some.
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Post by stardragon on Oct 17, 2018 17:23:44 GMT
The martial arts books were probably Way of the Tiger. I've not read them myself but I know of their existence. I didn't come across any as a kid but I would've been really into them because I loved ninja stuff. Megara Entertainment has hardcover reprints available, I've considered buying some. No it was not Way of the Tiger. I've read the first book from Way of the Tiger and it was good but I like Lone Wolf better. The martial arts books my friend got were ordinary "choose your own adventure" books where you don't have any kind of character record sheet like in LW and you don't roll dice or use random number charts like in LW. Anyway LW does have some eastern martial arts in it or at least it has some elements of eastern martial arts and eastern culture.
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Post by Ofecks on Oct 17, 2018 22:01:42 GMT
Yeah, many locales in Southern Magnamund could definitely be considered "Not-Asia".
The only brand-name CYOA I had was indeed of that theme - Return of the Ninja.
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Post by stardragon on Oct 19, 2018 20:39:59 GMT
Yeah, many locales in Southern Magnamund could definitely be considered "Not-Asia". The only brand-name CYOA I had was indeed of that theme - Return of the Ninja. Well none of the locales in Magnamund are Asian, or for that matter of any culture in the real world because Magnamund is a fantasy setting. That's not to say it can't have certain characteristics that are Asian like, or characteristics that are similar to other real world cultures. That's the thing about a fantasy setting and thats the beauty of it, it can be anything the writer wants it to be.
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