Lone Wolf : Flight from the Dark (2nd attempt)

A belated Happy New Year everyone!

As I was away on holiday over the New Year, I aimed to get in some well-earned rest and recuperation. I took plenty of reading material along with me on my Kindle, as well as a last minute addition of the first Lone Wolf adventure book - I was hoping to re-run the adventure with a better outcome than last time.

I read the rules again to refamiliarise myself with the game and rolled up a fresh character as the previous one died - I won't do this in future; I will just start the adventure again from the beginning and reset the character to its starting stats for the beginning of that particular adventure book.

I didn't take a snap shot of the character sheet at the start of the adventure as I just wrote it in a notebook, but I updated a new copy of the sheet with the stats at the end of the adventure when I got home...

I won't go into too many details here in case others wish to run through the adventure and don't want any spoilers. That said, I played it stealthily sometimes and bravely at others; I rescued a few people, got hoodwinked upon my travels, hid a few times, picked up a couple of useful items, lost my backpack and all its contents, and fought a number of adversaries along the way. It took me a good couple of hours to complete the book (including the rules re-read and character creation), helped by me actually having some time to myself for once, with no interruptions: I felt it was time well spent.

The first run through when I first got the books a year or so back was a bit of a let down as I felt I was a little railroaded towards the end, but this time I had choices and was able to capitalise on them. Flipping through the book whilst playing, I felt I missed out on a lot of other choices and paths, so I think there would be at least a couple more unique play-throughs available.

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.

Lone Wolf : Starting Character Sheet

Now that work is out of the way for the week, I have a weekend wherein I have a few hours spare to indulge a little in my hobbies. I have been for a 5km run (not a particularly good run, but a run none-the-less), and read a number of comics (2000AD and Red Sonja) in order to whet my appetite for a deep dive into the Lone Wolf books I was given for my birthday.

In order to get started, I read the preamble in Book 1 : Flight from the Dark, and how to create a character. This prompted me to look online for an editable character sheet. I typed Lone Wolf Character Sheet PDF in the search engine and found a basic one here that suited my purposes.

Once downloaded, I began to fill out the character sheet according to the rules. Anywhere it asked for a random number/choice, rather than roll a pencil on the randomiser in the back of the book (handy if you have no dice about your person), I rolled a d10 instead as per the rules. These rolls were all genuine for the sake of randomness and thus allowed me to create a unique starting character profile.

Page one of the character sheet...

Page two of the character sheet...

To get me in the groove, I also looked up a few pictures of Lone Wolf miniatures. I will try to paint up and use one of my existing figures as a point of reference for when playing the combats in future but, in the meantime, this is going to be my go-to image until I can get a figure sorted...

Image used without permission

I know he doesn't have the axe and backpack my character has, but it is an iconic image of the Lone Wolf character.

Next post, I will let you know how I got on navigating the world of Magnamund.