Decent roleplaying games are somewhat like public transport! You can sit there and wait for ages for a bus to come along and when you least expect it three turn up at once. Likewise Mongoose Publishing have unleashed what is sure to be yet another success onto the games market, following on from their recent releases of the stunning Babylon 5 Fact Book and Roleplaying Game and more recently the excellent Conan the Roleplaying Game!

What am I talking about? Well if you where around as a gamer back in the late 1980’s then you will no doubt remember the series of fantasy adventure books that got an entire generation hooked and brought badly needed fresh blood into the roleplaying hobby. The worlds of adventure book gaming where dominated by three names during the 80’s, Steve Jackson, Ian Livingston and finally Joe Dever and it is the latter whose works on his Lone Wolf series has finally been given the roleplaying make-over it so desperately needed by August Hahn of Mongoose Publishing!

Taking on a license is never an easy task for any company, but it is something that Mongoose seem to do with comparative ease. Babylon 5, Conan, Judge Dredd, Slaine and now Lone Wolf! With Starship Troopers looming ever closer on the horizon it is simple to see why Mongoose are the main choice for license deals and why Joe Dever’s excellent fantasy setting is in very firm hands indeed!

Brief History
Lone Wolf began as a series of play by page roleplaying adventure books back in the mid eighties, the kind that have the player generate a character and then usher them through an adventure, using random encounters and random page or paragraph settings to generate the story and action. No two games of this kind will play the same and of all the adventure books that hit the shelves back then and introduced thousands of gamers to the hobby of roleplaying for the first time it is perhaps Joe Dever and his Lone Wolf series that stands out as the most person, allowing the player to build up a character that they actually cared for!

Not only did your character actually progress through the series of adventures, but you also uncovered a huge plot with more twists and turns than most Hollywood blockbusters can ever dream of matching. The series ran for over ten years and during that time it spawned twenty-eight games books, over a dozen novels and at least two comic adaptations, not to mention perking the interest of many gamers and leading them by the nose into the hobby in general.

The world is Magnamund a mystical place where anything can happen and the twists of fate conspire to control the destiny of one man and his fight for pure and bloody vengeance!

Lone Wolf is set some fifty years before the events of the first book and tells the back story of the fantasy world of Magnamund, setting it all down for the events that will unfold in the adventure books and novels.

Classes
There are seven player character classes in Lone Wolf the Roleplaying Game, and each one is a little more varied than the last. If your wish is to train as an initiate of the arcane arts of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star or to master the Psionics arts of the Kia themselves, you will find all this here and much more besides.

First things first is race! In Lone Wolf the Roleplaying Game you will notice that there are only two character races available to play, these being human and Dwarven Gunners of Bor. The worlds of the adventure books are rich and very detailed but on the whole there are very few races encountered other than humans and the odd rare occasion when a dwarf does appear. Some may find this stifling in a fantasy setting, but much like their other license Slaine, Mongoose have not held back and there is plenty of detail and information for the players to get to grips with and after all it makes a change to have a world that isn’t totally over run by pouting elves or prancing hobbits!

Character Creation
Not too much different here compared to other games of the d20/OGL systems, save for hit points being called Endurance points now and look as hard as you may, but you wont find any Feats at all in this game, which of course will force the player to think more on their feet, rather than hand information to their character.

Brother of the Crystal Star
No fantasy game worth its salt would be complete without a magic user class and the most powerful wizards on the world of Magnamund are those from the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. These elitist magic users spend decades perfecting their craft until they are able to control the very fabric of magic itself and become a true master of the arcane arts.

Magic here is a three-tier effect, with every spell cast by the magic user taking one of the three effects they may choose from. The lower end effects of the tier are of course the easiest to cast and also the weakest, but have the advantage of that they can be cast again and again over the period of a day, whereas more powerful and higher tier spells will force the magic user to rest. Spell fatigue is very important in this system and it is quite possible for your Brother of the Crystal Star to completely exhaust himself from casting magic, having to rely on his fellow companions to pull their rear guard up and defend him while he recuperates.

As well as knowing magic, members of the Brother of the Crystal Star also learn ‘word power’ or ‘word magic’! It has long been associated with magic that true names of things can give complete power over them. Word magic is very powerful once the caster gets to a high level and can be completely devastating, making the Brother of the Crystal Star one of the choice classes for players.

Magic is cast using by making an Occult roll to pronounce the spells wording correctly with a base DC of 10 + 5 x the tier level of the spell being cast. All spells are successful on a roll of 20 and of course a failure on a roll of 1.

One of the neat things that this character class picks up as he advances is the Skyrider, a magical air ship that can make travelling across Magnamund that much more simple. The Skyrider is another nod to the long history of the Lone Wolf series and it is nice to see its addition here.

Gunner Dwarves of Bor
As already noted this is the only non-human character class that is present in Lone Wolf, and these stout characters make expert marksmen and are masters of black powder and the hand gun.

Dwarves only originate in the area of Bor in the northwest of Magnamund and make excellent mercenaries, a craft that they are trained from a very young age to master. Of all the classes in the rules this is the one that I find the most interesting and the character of the dwarves just leaps off the page and begs to be created and played.

Though they are not magic users as such, the Dwarven Gunners of Bor are able to cast magical effects with their powder weapons. At 2nd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 20th levels the character gains a special ability that allows them to do all kinds of trick and special shots with their weapon, from a super-fast reload, to firing two guns at once, or even using a pistol as a melee weapon in combat.

Gunner Dwarves look like great fun to play and with them constantly smelling of smelted iron ore and coal I can see lots of fun comments being passed around the games table during play.

Kai Lords
Next we come to the Kai Lords themselves, around which the entire universe is based. The Kai Lords are an ancient and mystical society that dedicates itself to the protection of the innocent and defeating evil in all its forms, an ever present threat to Magnamund.

Trained from a very young age to master their inner most powers and almost become as one with nature, the Kai Lords are a religious organisation and live a life that is almost monastic compared to most other characters in the Sommerlunds of Magnamund, and once a Kai Lord takes his or her first steps on the path of enlightenment they serve ties with friends and family, putting the land first and foremost.

The Disciplines of the Kai allow the Lord to blend in with nature, have control and dominion over animals, heal others and engage in powerful mental duels, as well as many other talents, and once a Lord reaches the level of Grand Master his power is awe-inspiring.

The Disciplines are very similar in structure to the spells of the Brothers of the Crystal Star, but whereas when a Brother character gains a new spell; he also gains all the tiers of that same spell; the Kai Lord only gains a new tier every other level and each Discipline has five tiers of abilities to learn.

So by the time a Kai Lord character where to reach 5th level he would have one discipline at tier 5, one at tier 4, one at tier 3, one at 2 and finally the latest tier achieved would be at tier one.

Once the first ten levels of disciplines are mastered the Kai Lord can then progress onto much more powerful magic and disciplines in the form of Mangnakai Disciplines, and these are some of the most powerful magic’s that the player can ever learn.

Kai Lord players are really going to love the powers that they will be able to wield, but a word of warning is perhaps needed for those with hack and slash Munchkins™, the Kai Lord is a mind of perfect devotion to his duty and the sworn protection of those under his charge and even if undercover, working as an hidden agent the character must still stick very closely to the very strict codes of honour that the monastic upbringing demands!

Shadaki Buccaneer
The Shadaki Buccaneers are masters of the water, able to make a vessel do things that most mortals would think impossible or miraculous. They are without question the best sailors in Magnamund and although they are highly superstious they make great and firm allies and having a buccaneer at your side often means that your back is being watched.

The characters gain all manor of skills related to sailing and every three levels they may take a Buccaneers Flair that allows them to gain extra advantages. One of these flairs allows the character to become a demon with a blade, or fighting with two blades with no penalties and amazing accuracy.

Though not as in-depth as the Kai Lord, the Shadaki Buccaneer is perhaps one of the most playable of the classes.

Sommerlund Knight of the Realm
Again trained from a very young age, the Sommerlund Knights are not as monastic as the Kai Lords but every bit as honourable. They are among the best horsemen in all the lands of Magnamund and their virtues are legendry.

Each Knight has a set of codes that they must follow or lose face and favour with their order and once a character reaches 20th level they must choose one of these codes as a Paragon, which they must uphold to their very last breath.

Telchos Warrior
The only thing deadlier than the Telchos sun is a Telchos Warrior. The only thing deadlier than a Telchos Warrior… is his wife
Drodarin Saying

The Telchos Warriors are one of the best character classes in the entire game, they are versatile and rounded and boy are they ever strange. Like many of the classes in the system, the Telchos Warriors have their own unique form of simplistic magic, but one that takes the form of primal screams and war cries and some of their spells are really cool. One of the best of these is The Eyes of Fire battle cry, which again has three tiers of difficulty and on the final tier the damage that a character can do can be totally devastating.

Equipment and Skills
There is nothing much here that hasn’t already appeared in other OGL books so I will just point out that some of the weapons and magical items are ideal for an high level campaign. The Sommerswerd is a powerful weapon, rumoured to be forged by the gods themselves and acting as a balance against the Dark Power Naar. Against a normal foe this weapon is very powerful, but against the undead fiends and Darkspawn it is nothing short of spectacular, delivering vast amounts of damage with each blow.

Combat
Likewise with the combat chapter, all of this material has been covered many times before in the OGL books and if you have even a vague familiarity with them you will no doubt find it pointless for me to go into great depth of such familiar territory.

Adventuring in Magnamund
This chapter goes into detail about all the dangers and elements that one faces during the course of an adventure set in a fantasy campaign, most of this has been covered before, but some is unique to Magnamund itself and is worth reading through thoroughly.

The Lone Wolf Games Master
No book on Lone Wolf would be complete with some advice on how to run adventures in this world! Here August gives fellow Games Masters how own viewpoints on how to get the best out of your games set in the Lone Wolf world and he touches briefly on the main thrust of the game, that of epic adventure and the heroic. Though quite short in length, this chapter is as invaluable as any other in the book and I strongly suggest that anyone who picks up this game read through this section as soon as they have had a glance through the book as it will give them a better idea of exactly what August Hahn is trying to get across.

Supporting Characters
Another small chapter that gives the Games Master an extra set of character types that can be used to generate npc’s or easily adapted to use for players. The character types given are Adepts, Aristocrats, Commoner, Expert, and the Warrior, with each being fully covered making them ready for almost instant generation.

The Magnamund Gazetteer and Bestiary
These are perhaps the longest sections of the entire book and spans over 100 pages, laid out over two chapters. Here is where the real life of the game is breathed into the pages with great care and diligence by August, showing his passion for the subject matter in hand. The Gazetteer features everything you need to know about the world of Magnamund and all its lands, its entire history and timeline and major events that have changed the shape of both the world and its peoples, gods and monsters.

Fans of the Dever series of both novels and adventure books will go absolutely nuts here over the attention to detail that has been painstakingly added, fleshing out every ounce of information that a GM would ever hope of learning about the world of Magnamund. The game itself is set fifty years before the first gaming book introduced us to the world of Magnamund and its colourful characters and as such we get the whole back story before the ransacking of the Kai Temple that drove our hero out for bloody and just revenge.

The Bestiary covers ever creature that I can find in my own Lone Wolf collection, with a few more thrown in for good measure and some of these creatures are going to pose real problems for players around the world and have them chomping at the bit trying to destroy them. I wont go into any depth in this review as it is lengthy as is, but needless to say the creatures covered in the bestiary could be of great use to any Games Master planning on running any fantasy d20 campaign, period!

Layout
As one would expect coming from a company with a proven track record for high quality products such as Mongoose, the layout is simple in its execution, uncluttered and very easy to navigate, presenting the reader with something that is easy on the eyes with no garish borders or text to distract the eye.

Interior Artwork
The one thing I did notice when I first began to read through Lone Wolf the Roleplaying Game was that the artwork is noticeable by its absence! That is not to say that the book is without illustrations, no sir there are lots of really nice fine line drawings in the book, but they play a second place to the text, which to be honest makes a change. Many companies fill their products with artwork to disguise the fact that the text is poor or weak in parts, but here the sparseness of the illustrations only adds to the quality of the product!

The art that is in the book is excellent with some very nice fine line drawings of the beasts and creatures that inhabit the Lone Wolf universe, but the one thing that stands out the most by far is the excellent fold out map section of Magnamund at the rear of the book. I seriously hope that Mongoose decide to issue this map as a separate item as it is a shame to remove it from the core rulebook.

Conclusions
Well another OGL product under their belt and Mongoose shows absolutely no signs of slowing down, and rightly so! Lone Wolf the Roleplaying Game is an excellent example of what a publishing house can do if it puts its mind to a task and August Hahn is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with in the industry. Lone Wolf is far from just a mere fantasy roleplaying game, to call it that would do the product very ill justice indeed. I would like to see other companies follow suit with fantasy products that emphasise more on the roleplaying aspects of the game than trappings and flavour text! Here we have a product that is a world made for heroes and promotes the ideals of roleplaying in the best ways possible. If you are a fan of the Lone Wolf adventure books and novels I am sure that you will find this much more than just nostalgia, looking back at a decade or two ago with rose tinted glasses on, this is a living breathing product that jumps off the shelf and stands apart from its closest rivals. Lone Wolf is for heroes and a world without heroes is no place to be, if you want to be a hero then just follow me! Highly Recommended…

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