Lone Wolf : Flight from the Dark

Well, I had a day off today and decided to do someting "gamey" with it. I don't usually get many days off just for myself - they are usually used either to do something planned or to go away on holiday. We have just come back from a weekend away to the city of Oxford (did lots of touristy stuff like visiting Oxford Castle, the Botanical Gardens and the Ashmolean Museum, as well as eating and drinking lots of lovely food) and I decided to book an extra day off for the hell of it.

After completing a few chores and doing the weekly grocery shop during the morning and just after lunch, I decided to pull out the Lone Wolf book and character sheet for the Kai Lord I had rolled up a few weeks back. As mentioned in a previous post, I have not played one of these book adventures in a very long time and I was quite excited to get involved in some solo gaming (albeit without miniatures).

The adventure began well, as I slowly headed eastwards (don't know why, I just decided to go that way) and found a number of artifacts that I thought might come in handy as the saga progressed. I avoided a few combats, skirted a few skirmishes and generally decided to only get involved if it sounded like it might be a plot advancing combat. I wound up saving the Crown Prince from an evil Gourgaz (a tough fight that I eventually won) and agreed to carry a message to his father, the King.

I defeated a Gourgaz - image taken from internet withjout permission

I was just beginning to really enjoy the tale unfolding as I thought I was getting somewhere but the last few sections I passed through railroaded me (i.e. I had no say in the last couple of sections) to an unavoidable death. This left me quite cheesed-off as I would have liked to have rolled my dice to at least attempt to save myself (I most likely would have lost the combat anyway as I had been so badly wounded against the Gourgaz).

Ho hum - I guess I will roll up another charcter and start again - this time I will head in a different direction and maybe partake in a few of the lesser combats along the way to get more of a feel for the game and story.

I was left a little disappointed by my ending as I felt that I had no control over the combat. I think the adventure is probably written this way in order to end the story at certain points and force more action from the player. I would like to see the grid used to show the best paths to use and how they all interconnect with each other, but at the moment I don't want to spoil the storyline until I complete it for myself.