Wednesday, October 24, 2007

New Diversion: Lone Wolf Action Chart

I was a huge fan of the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks when I was a kid. I don't own them all in multiple versions or whatever, but I do own US Books 1-20, the Gray Star set, the Magnamund Companion, both pairs of Combat Heroes, and some other related books.

When Mongoose announced they were rereleasing the entire series I decided to splurge and pre-purchase them all via their Collector's Edition Mega-Deal. I've gotten two of them so far and I've been very happy. (The expanded Flight From The Dark is a little hard to hold open at paperback size, but that's a pretty minor quibble.)

Given what I've paid for them, the last thing I'd want to do is write in the book. Even when I was young I used notebook paper for my character sheet, keeping the same sheet from the destruction of the Kai Monastery to becoming Supreme Master. So I've started working on a Lone Wolf character sheet...err...Action Chart and Combat Reference. You can grab it from http://www.esglabs.com/othergames/.

I'm pretty happy with it, at least for a first version. The one major thing it doesn't have is space for notes on your items. I know I used to write that on the back of the sheet; what I don't remember is if I moved the Special Item list to the back or if I just made notes on specific items when I needed them. I think I did wind up putting some or all of the item lists on the back and then used the extra space for combat effects in the CS/END areas, but I don't know for sure. Bah.

It also doesn't have built-in Lore-Circle notes, which can be handled by a quick note somewhere but might as well go into the sheet if I go to two pages. I didn't bother Acrobat Forming this one, both because it's a work in progress and because I didn't think people would be printing it every time their Disciplines changed. (That's the main thing that remains constant throughout a Lone Wolf run.)

Anyway, I hope people like it. Feel free to post comments here or email them to me.

For Sommerlund and the Kai!