Monday, May 19, 2008

Lone Wolf & Other Books Available Free Online!

Long before the emergence of virtual worlds, many of us had played in make believe worlds framed by books like Advanced Dungeon & Dragons and other Role-Playing Games book. Among the more successful ones include those Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever. I personally have played the whole Lone Wolf series till book 12, as well as the 'World of Lone Wolf', Freeway Warrior and 1 or 2 Combat Heroes books. I still have a number of these books packed away somewhere in storage boxes.

So in part nostalgic, in part curiosity, I visited the Project Aon site when I heard that they are putting all Lone Wolf books online, and for free!

It seems Joe Dever has given his permission to re-work all the books onto online version. I tried the 1st book "Flight from the Dark", and I must say the experience is not bad. There is a Java script of the character sheet, which makes updating of items easy. The script also include a combat function, so no more need to 'point the tip of the pencil' at the random number page of the book. For those who want to run everything online concurrently, the Project Aon team also provided a 'StatsKeeper" program that displayed the character sheet on the left while the player plays the game using the right panel. Cool!

The Project Aon team took on this role when they realised that the books are no longer published, and ever since then there is a renewed interest in Lone Wolf. Perhaps there is limited publication of the books, but I can still find a number of these books in the second hand bookstores. Moreover, I think the Lone Wolf game may be made as an online MMORPG soon, based on news that Joe Dever is working with Ksatria Gameworks on the project.

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