Post by Zipp on Dec 1, 2009 18:26:02 GMT
Update on Transcriptions
Very soon you will be able to start downloading PDF versions of these adventures, broken up by book. The transcriptions include only those posts relating to the game, with some of the technical posts edited out to make things read smoother. Grammar and spelling has been corrected to the best of my ability.
Furthermore, the combats and longer conversations have been turned into novelized third-person narratives and pictures from the original gamebooks have been edited into appropriate spots. There are also some notes from me after each session that fills in a bit on other paths Silent Wolf might have taken and what would've happened as well as other behind-the-scenes commentary.
Beowuuf has graciously agreed to host the documents, so a big thanks to him!
Flight From the Dark
Fire on the Water
Introduction to concept
I was highly inspired by the "adventures of Lonecheeter" posted on these forums and decided to try my hand at the MSN Lone Wolf game. There's a couple differences between my run and the "cheet" run, some of them rules related.
First of all, this Lone Wolf is a female. That's going to put an interesting spin on everything, plus I'll be reworking sections to apply more to a feminine mentality.
Also, I am starting LW at 29 endurance (max endurance for kai series). LW gets to pick her five starting disciplines. The disciplines have increased applicability in this version of the game, mostly improvised as the situation allows. However, there are some hardfast rule changes.
Animal Kinship now will be giving bonuses in fights against animals.
Hunting gives a bonus to finding food when instructed to eat, but does not ensure success until later in the series.
Combat is also done entirely like my legendary fights, though not pre-set, so sometimes not as in depth. However, there are no "set" CS scores in this version of the game. I will pick the combat ratio based off of the situation, Lone Wolf's experience and abilities, and the strength of the enemy. Lone Wolf can affect this CS by her decisions in combat.
Finally, on the matter of death, I'm going to try to avoid killing off LW as I think the point of the series is to tell an epic story and nothing kills epic like the hero's death. I was debating having the player switch characters to another surviving kai if LW dies during a mission. We'll cross that bridge if we come to it.
For the most part, I'll be giving LW chances to escape instant kills and extremely poor combat situations, but I will also be giving penalties, most likely story related, to such saves. The goal, of course, is to make the player feel like they could die at these moments, but miraculously saves themselves.
In any case, I'm scheduled to begin the game in an hour or so. I'll post the results here! Of course, this isn't an attempt to "out do" my predecessor's game. It will be interesting, I think, to see the differences between the two play-throughs. Anyway, I just couldn't help but run a solo-Lone Wolf game when it looked so fun! It's also been inspiring me back to the Lone Wolf legendary fights. I started outlining the Akra'neenor fight this morning.
Finally, to my players over at TOTSRPG... no, I haven't forgotten about you. In fact, I've got some things planned out for the next few chapters. Looking at it, we're closer to the end than I thought we were. We'll start again in the next couple of weeks.
Rules Changes or additions
Lone Wolf begins the series with 25 endurance, the "average" roll. This was done to better balance the fights and make the player feel like she was controlling more of a ranger character than a bruiser character.
Healing allows the player to roll the die at certain points in the series and recover that many points, usually with a base addition to the roll based on the section.
Combat does use a CS now, with LW's determined randomly at the start (with modifiers). That starting CS forms the "base" CS for the fight. Every action uses this as base and then goes up or down the combat chart based on how tactically sound the action taken was.
Lone Wolf begins each book by choosing a Kai Discipline to be "learning." Throughout the subsequent book, this ability is available like the others, but in lesser form, with its results usually decided by die roll. At the end of the book, LW gains the ability in its full form and starts learning a new one. This effectively gives LW one extra ability each book, but in a lesser form.
Magnakai Progression
thought I'd post some of my proposed changes to the Magnakai abilities for comments:
Improved Disciplines
These are those things like telescopic sight or spirit walking that the books give you as you go up in rank and that seem to come into play rarely. I'm doing these a little differently. Rather than just giving LW an improved discipline automatically as she "levels" I'm going to be giving her the choice of any two improved disciplines whenever she gets a Lorestone (so book 11 is going to see her getting a lot of these). The restrictions on what she can choose are that she has to be at that "level" to take the skill, with the exception that some of the disciplines don't get skills until later levels... these she can take at their lowest available level (there was probably a less confusing way to say that).
There's a few reasons for me to do this. Mainly, I don't want her to have to keep track of fifty skills. It would get ridiculous, plus she would be able to get out of many plot related sections by clever combination of the skills. This way, she can improvise with the cool skills she'll get without being overly powerful and without need for lots of paperwork.
Circles
I've changed the requirements and benefits of many of the circles. Remember that, in my game, the Sommerswerd doesn't add +8 to CS, plus I'm probably going to end the Maganakai series with her returning the blade to durenor and starting fresh in the GM series. I need her to have a little bit more of a CS boost by that time.
Circle of Fire: +2 CS +2 EP (now also requires psi-surge)
Circle of Light: +1 CS +3 EP (now also requires divination)
Circle of Solaris: +2 CS +3 EP (now also requires curing)
Circle of Spirit: +3 CS +2 EP
I'm actually not positive that even these boosts (actually, I lowered total EP gain by 1) will be enough for the GM series, but I don't want to overpower her for the Magnakai series and it's always easier to add CS boosts later than it is to take them away. If the GM series is proving too difficult I can always have her find items which increase CS and EP further.
Changes to Disciplines
The following Disciplines are going to undergo small changes to accommodate our style of play better. Ones not listed play more or less as Dever has written them.
Animal Control- same basic thing as animal lore, only now she doesn't have to roll for lesser, more friendly or common, animals
Pathmanship- no need to roll for tracking, it's an automatic skill
Curing- I'm going to start letting her use the healing ability at times other than sleep or long journeys. It won't heal as much as when she sleeps, but it will give her the opportunity to heal "on the road"
Psi-Surge: Psi-Surge will be able to do a lot of the things that I didn't let her use mindblast for, like stunning whole groups of enemies or drastically injuring an enemy
Psi-Screen: She will gain the ability to tell when a monster is immune to mindblast or other mental attacks
Grand Master Series
First of all... the problem. For me, the GM series has some great adventures. This is the "James Bond" part of Lone Wolf, where you've built up the character to now be recognized as the best in the land and now she starts jumping into all sorts of super-villain lairs to stop massive plans for world domination... only in a fantasy setting. It's pure fun and is a little bit more mature in its themes than the past Lone Wolf books (if only slightly). However, it is hampered by the GM abilities and the Improved Abilities. It's all well and good to give LW the ability to transform into a wolf, but it never comes into play and... well, it's a little over-powered anyway, isn't it? The story around the gaining of the GM abilities is silly, too. LW just happens to find abilities that are even better than the Magnakai? Total McGuffin work, there. Even Joe seems to know they were silly, often referring to the abilities as "super powers." The basic descriptions of the abilities, too, seem to just slightly improve upon their magnakai predecessors.
In other words, they are pointless. So I'm removing the GM abilities.
Well, not all of them. I think the dual-classing into wizardry and sorcery is actually really cool, so Kai Alchemy and Magi Magic are sticking around. Also, Weaponmastery and Kai Surge seem fair growths of those powers, so they are automatically gained at the series start. In fact, the four abilities I've just listed are the four she will start the adventures with. The one difference is that she only knows 3 spells. She can choose them from either Magi Magic or Kai Alchemy, or both, but only three (the choices are Lightning Hand, Mind Charm, Levitation for Alchemy and Shield, Power Word, and Invisible Fist for Magi Magic).
Every book, she can gain 2 more spells, as described in the improved disciplines in later books. Some of the other improved discipline abilities I will also occasionally give her access to, if she wants to choose them instead of more magic.
To me, it makes more sense that LW would master the Kai Class and then start to dual class rather than gain legendary class levels. Maybe if the book made more use of them, it would be acceptable, but as only a few come into play and some are, frankly, useless compared to others, this is my preferred method of handling the continued growth of the character over the GM series.
I was playing around with the idea of doing the GM series as a two player campaign using the multi-player gamebook, but I'm going to do that for the New Order series instead. Makes more sense.
<b>Further musings on the GM series</b>
For those who are interested, I have roughly decided how skills/disciplines in the GM series is going to work. First of all, it's going to be a "class" system. There are going to be eight classes that Lone Wolf can gain levels in. Each class has a maximum of four levels and new abilities/powers per level. She starts book 13 with four points to distribute and gets an extra point at the end of each book.
The classes are as follows.
Kai Lord
By continuing to study the Book of the Magnakai and exploring the hidden power of the Lorestones, Lone Wolf can reach the pinnacle of her expertise in the skills of her masters. Ranks in Kai Lord will ultimately give her Kai Surge, Kai Shield, Weaponmastery, and one of the improved disciplines (haven't decided yet).
Elementalist
The form of magic practiced by the Dessi Mages, Elementalism will grant abilities based on the four elements and their manipulation. Lone Wolf will master a new element with each level in the class.
Sage/Astronomer
The Sages of Lyris have learned how to plumb the secrets of the universe and time from the cosmos. This skill effectively lets Lone Wolf look ahead into the gamebook to see what the consequences of her actions/decisions might be. The higher the level, the further she can look, though accuracy can dwindle the further one tries to see into the future.
Bard
The bard is the consummate performer and can easily integrate herself into a crowd, ingratiate herself with a local population, or quickly find information. She is also a loremaster and knows the histories of nearly any place and the language of any culture. As her level in bard increases, Lone Wolf will even gain access to hidden knowledge of the occult, while her crowd-pleasing skills will greatly increase.
Herbalist
The skills taught by the Order of the Herbalish have long protected Magnamund from plague. Lone Wolf, in learning these skills, can not only identify and use most plants, she can also make potions between missions and increase the potency of her potions.
Magi
Magi-Magic is a hybrid of the magic known by the Vakeros Knights. By learning these skills, Lone Wolf will gain access to powerful magical abilities, as described in the improved disciplines.
Wizard
Kai-Alchemy is a hybrid of the left-handed magic practiced by Banedon and his order. By learning these skills, Lone Wolf will gain access to powerful magical abilities, as described in the improved disciplines.
Armourer
The art of forging is used in between books to craft and maintain weapons and armour. At the highest level, Lone Wolf can create magical weapons. The ability, though most useful in between books, can also be used to appraise weapons and armour.
Combat guidelines
During Chasm of Doom, this set of guidelines was developed. They were only used as hard fast rules for that one book, but I thought people might be interested in seeing them posted here for reference.
Basically, depending on what Silent Wolf writes, there are several moves that will attempt to be performed. Throughout this, free hit refers to a round where only one of the opponents does damage.
Charge: A charge is a powerful attack that ups LW's combat ratio for a round to let her do massive damage. However, afterwards, she loses position and the monster generally gets a free hit off.
Defense: Any move that seems to be purely defensive, like dodging. In it, LW generally doesn't get to do any damage, but gets to raise her combat ratio for next round.
Maneuver: a maneuver is a combination of an attack and a positioning move. Any time LW's attack tries to hurt her opponent and bring her into a better position she uses her current combat ratio and rolls. Both opponents take damage, but LW's next ratio is better or worse depending on how well she rolled.
Attack: an attack is a holding position, basically letting LW roll for damage at her current combat ratio with no affect to the ratio based on the die roll.
This way, Lone Wolf decides the shifting combat ratio for each fight.
NOTE: After Chasm of Doom, these combat rules became more of a guideline than hard fast rules as we decided we liked the free-flowing form of description combat with me providing modifiers based on the description and rolls better.
Very soon you will be able to start downloading PDF versions of these adventures, broken up by book. The transcriptions include only those posts relating to the game, with some of the technical posts edited out to make things read smoother. Grammar and spelling has been corrected to the best of my ability.
Furthermore, the combats and longer conversations have been turned into novelized third-person narratives and pictures from the original gamebooks have been edited into appropriate spots. There are also some notes from me after each session that fills in a bit on other paths Silent Wolf might have taken and what would've happened as well as other behind-the-scenes commentary.
Beowuuf has graciously agreed to host the documents, so a big thanks to him!
Flight From the Dark
Fire on the Water
Introduction to concept
I was highly inspired by the "adventures of Lonecheeter" posted on these forums and decided to try my hand at the MSN Lone Wolf game. There's a couple differences between my run and the "cheet" run, some of them rules related.
First of all, this Lone Wolf is a female. That's going to put an interesting spin on everything, plus I'll be reworking sections to apply more to a feminine mentality.
Also, I am starting LW at 29 endurance (max endurance for kai series). LW gets to pick her five starting disciplines. The disciplines have increased applicability in this version of the game, mostly improvised as the situation allows. However, there are some hardfast rule changes.
Animal Kinship now will be giving bonuses in fights against animals.
Hunting gives a bonus to finding food when instructed to eat, but does not ensure success until later in the series.
Combat is also done entirely like my legendary fights, though not pre-set, so sometimes not as in depth. However, there are no "set" CS scores in this version of the game. I will pick the combat ratio based off of the situation, Lone Wolf's experience and abilities, and the strength of the enemy. Lone Wolf can affect this CS by her decisions in combat.
Finally, on the matter of death, I'm going to try to avoid killing off LW as I think the point of the series is to tell an epic story and nothing kills epic like the hero's death. I was debating having the player switch characters to another surviving kai if LW dies during a mission. We'll cross that bridge if we come to it.
For the most part, I'll be giving LW chances to escape instant kills and extremely poor combat situations, but I will also be giving penalties, most likely story related, to such saves. The goal, of course, is to make the player feel like they could die at these moments, but miraculously saves themselves.
In any case, I'm scheduled to begin the game in an hour or so. I'll post the results here! Of course, this isn't an attempt to "out do" my predecessor's game. It will be interesting, I think, to see the differences between the two play-throughs. Anyway, I just couldn't help but run a solo-Lone Wolf game when it looked so fun! It's also been inspiring me back to the Lone Wolf legendary fights. I started outlining the Akra'neenor fight this morning.
Finally, to my players over at TOTSRPG... no, I haven't forgotten about you. In fact, I've got some things planned out for the next few chapters. Looking at it, we're closer to the end than I thought we were. We'll start again in the next couple of weeks.
Rules Changes or additions
Lone Wolf begins the series with 25 endurance, the "average" roll. This was done to better balance the fights and make the player feel like she was controlling more of a ranger character than a bruiser character.
Healing allows the player to roll the die at certain points in the series and recover that many points, usually with a base addition to the roll based on the section.
Combat does use a CS now, with LW's determined randomly at the start (with modifiers). That starting CS forms the "base" CS for the fight. Every action uses this as base and then goes up or down the combat chart based on how tactically sound the action taken was.
Lone Wolf begins each book by choosing a Kai Discipline to be "learning." Throughout the subsequent book, this ability is available like the others, but in lesser form, with its results usually decided by die roll. At the end of the book, LW gains the ability in its full form and starts learning a new one. This effectively gives LW one extra ability each book, but in a lesser form.
Magnakai Progression
thought I'd post some of my proposed changes to the Magnakai abilities for comments:
Improved Disciplines
These are those things like telescopic sight or spirit walking that the books give you as you go up in rank and that seem to come into play rarely. I'm doing these a little differently. Rather than just giving LW an improved discipline automatically as she "levels" I'm going to be giving her the choice of any two improved disciplines whenever she gets a Lorestone (so book 11 is going to see her getting a lot of these). The restrictions on what she can choose are that she has to be at that "level" to take the skill, with the exception that some of the disciplines don't get skills until later levels... these she can take at their lowest available level (there was probably a less confusing way to say that).
There's a few reasons for me to do this. Mainly, I don't want her to have to keep track of fifty skills. It would get ridiculous, plus she would be able to get out of many plot related sections by clever combination of the skills. This way, she can improvise with the cool skills she'll get without being overly powerful and without need for lots of paperwork.
Circles
I've changed the requirements and benefits of many of the circles. Remember that, in my game, the Sommerswerd doesn't add +8 to CS, plus I'm probably going to end the Maganakai series with her returning the blade to durenor and starting fresh in the GM series. I need her to have a little bit more of a CS boost by that time.
Circle of Fire: +2 CS +2 EP (now also requires psi-surge)
Circle of Light: +1 CS +3 EP (now also requires divination)
Circle of Solaris: +2 CS +3 EP (now also requires curing)
Circle of Spirit: +3 CS +2 EP
I'm actually not positive that even these boosts (actually, I lowered total EP gain by 1) will be enough for the GM series, but I don't want to overpower her for the Magnakai series and it's always easier to add CS boosts later than it is to take them away. If the GM series is proving too difficult I can always have her find items which increase CS and EP further.
Changes to Disciplines
The following Disciplines are going to undergo small changes to accommodate our style of play better. Ones not listed play more or less as Dever has written them.
Animal Control- same basic thing as animal lore, only now she doesn't have to roll for lesser, more friendly or common, animals
Pathmanship- no need to roll for tracking, it's an automatic skill
Curing- I'm going to start letting her use the healing ability at times other than sleep or long journeys. It won't heal as much as when she sleeps, but it will give her the opportunity to heal "on the road"
Psi-Surge: Psi-Surge will be able to do a lot of the things that I didn't let her use mindblast for, like stunning whole groups of enemies or drastically injuring an enemy
Psi-Screen: She will gain the ability to tell when a monster is immune to mindblast or other mental attacks
Grand Master Series
First of all... the problem. For me, the GM series has some great adventures. This is the "James Bond" part of Lone Wolf, where you've built up the character to now be recognized as the best in the land and now she starts jumping into all sorts of super-villain lairs to stop massive plans for world domination... only in a fantasy setting. It's pure fun and is a little bit more mature in its themes than the past Lone Wolf books (if only slightly). However, it is hampered by the GM abilities and the Improved Abilities. It's all well and good to give LW the ability to transform into a wolf, but it never comes into play and... well, it's a little over-powered anyway, isn't it? The story around the gaining of the GM abilities is silly, too. LW just happens to find abilities that are even better than the Magnakai? Total McGuffin work, there. Even Joe seems to know they were silly, often referring to the abilities as "super powers." The basic descriptions of the abilities, too, seem to just slightly improve upon their magnakai predecessors.
In other words, they are pointless. So I'm removing the GM abilities.
Well, not all of them. I think the dual-classing into wizardry and sorcery is actually really cool, so Kai Alchemy and Magi Magic are sticking around. Also, Weaponmastery and Kai Surge seem fair growths of those powers, so they are automatically gained at the series start. In fact, the four abilities I've just listed are the four she will start the adventures with. The one difference is that she only knows 3 spells. She can choose them from either Magi Magic or Kai Alchemy, or both, but only three (the choices are Lightning Hand, Mind Charm, Levitation for Alchemy and Shield, Power Word, and Invisible Fist for Magi Magic).
Every book, she can gain 2 more spells, as described in the improved disciplines in later books. Some of the other improved discipline abilities I will also occasionally give her access to, if she wants to choose them instead of more magic.
To me, it makes more sense that LW would master the Kai Class and then start to dual class rather than gain legendary class levels. Maybe if the book made more use of them, it would be acceptable, but as only a few come into play and some are, frankly, useless compared to others, this is my preferred method of handling the continued growth of the character over the GM series.
I was playing around with the idea of doing the GM series as a two player campaign using the multi-player gamebook, but I'm going to do that for the New Order series instead. Makes more sense.
<b>Further musings on the GM series</b>
For those who are interested, I have roughly decided how skills/disciplines in the GM series is going to work. First of all, it's going to be a "class" system. There are going to be eight classes that Lone Wolf can gain levels in. Each class has a maximum of four levels and new abilities/powers per level. She starts book 13 with four points to distribute and gets an extra point at the end of each book.
The classes are as follows.
Kai Lord
By continuing to study the Book of the Magnakai and exploring the hidden power of the Lorestones, Lone Wolf can reach the pinnacle of her expertise in the skills of her masters. Ranks in Kai Lord will ultimately give her Kai Surge, Kai Shield, Weaponmastery, and one of the improved disciplines (haven't decided yet).
Elementalist
The form of magic practiced by the Dessi Mages, Elementalism will grant abilities based on the four elements and their manipulation. Lone Wolf will master a new element with each level in the class.
Sage/Astronomer
The Sages of Lyris have learned how to plumb the secrets of the universe and time from the cosmos. This skill effectively lets Lone Wolf look ahead into the gamebook to see what the consequences of her actions/decisions might be. The higher the level, the further she can look, though accuracy can dwindle the further one tries to see into the future.
Bard
The bard is the consummate performer and can easily integrate herself into a crowd, ingratiate herself with a local population, or quickly find information. She is also a loremaster and knows the histories of nearly any place and the language of any culture. As her level in bard increases, Lone Wolf will even gain access to hidden knowledge of the occult, while her crowd-pleasing skills will greatly increase.
Herbalist
The skills taught by the Order of the Herbalish have long protected Magnamund from plague. Lone Wolf, in learning these skills, can not only identify and use most plants, she can also make potions between missions and increase the potency of her potions.
Magi
Magi-Magic is a hybrid of the magic known by the Vakeros Knights. By learning these skills, Lone Wolf will gain access to powerful magical abilities, as described in the improved disciplines.
Wizard
Kai-Alchemy is a hybrid of the left-handed magic practiced by Banedon and his order. By learning these skills, Lone Wolf will gain access to powerful magical abilities, as described in the improved disciplines.
Armourer
The art of forging is used in between books to craft and maintain weapons and armour. At the highest level, Lone Wolf can create magical weapons. The ability, though most useful in between books, can also be used to appraise weapons and armour.
Combat guidelines
During Chasm of Doom, this set of guidelines was developed. They were only used as hard fast rules for that one book, but I thought people might be interested in seeing them posted here for reference.
Basically, depending on what Silent Wolf writes, there are several moves that will attempt to be performed. Throughout this, free hit refers to a round where only one of the opponents does damage.
Charge: A charge is a powerful attack that ups LW's combat ratio for a round to let her do massive damage. However, afterwards, she loses position and the monster generally gets a free hit off.
Defense: Any move that seems to be purely defensive, like dodging. In it, LW generally doesn't get to do any damage, but gets to raise her combat ratio for next round.
Maneuver: a maneuver is a combination of an attack and a positioning move. Any time LW's attack tries to hurt her opponent and bring her into a better position she uses her current combat ratio and rolls. Both opponents take damage, but LW's next ratio is better or worse depending on how well she rolled.
Attack: an attack is a holding position, basically letting LW roll for damage at her current combat ratio with no affect to the ratio based on the die roll.
This way, Lone Wolf decides the shifting combat ratio for each fight.
NOTE: After Chasm of Doom, these combat rules became more of a guideline than hard fast rules as we decided we liked the free-flowing form of description combat with me providing modifiers based on the description and rolls better.