If people want to try some Lone Wolf nostalgia then check out Project Aon. They host all the books with Joe Dever's permission.

Quote from: RPGPundit;883968I liked Fighting Fantasy better.

Fighting Fantasy was quick and easy, but Lone Wolf (the stuff actually written by Dever, at least) had considerably more depth, not just in the system, but in the actual story itself. You can go quite a few pages at times without a decision, and he's actually a pretty decent writer and story-teller.

The very first book was pretty light and simple, but improved dramatically from there. Further, I frequently felt that I was actually making important moral decisions at times, weighing up the cost of my actions vs the cost of failure.

To the topic at hand, I've never even seen the C7 version, but I found the Mongoose D20 version did an excellent job. The lack of feats was also refreshing, although I didn't realise it until I started running Conan d20 and was puzzled why it suddenly felt like so much effort to stat up NPCs. Eventually, I realised how much work I'd been saved by the fact that Lone Wolf replaced all feats with class abilities.

The actual, original gamebooks are also extremely gameable in a tabletop setting (with whatever rules you want to use), if you take the time to go through them and convert the plot. Unfortunately, it can take quite a bit of work if you want to adhere to the full storyline in each book rather than just adapting the broad strokes.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;885352Fighting Fantasy was quick and easy, but Lone Wolf (the stuff actually written by Dever, at least) had considerably more depth, not just in the system, but in the actual story itself. You can go quite a few pages at times without a decision, and he's actually a pretty decent writer and story-teller.

The very first book was pretty light and simple, but improved dramatically from there. Further, I frequently felt that I was actually making important moral decisions at times, weighing up the cost of my actions vs the cost of failure.

Also, the fact that it was a continuous story and you played the same character from book to book added to my enjoyment (I actually liked the Grey Star books better, they seemed darker and scarier).

I enjoyed Lone Wolf for a while, but the later books put me off a little with the Darklords' submarines and trains.

Fighting Fantasy rocked too, though.  I enjoyed the tabletop version of that as well.

Now if we could just get a Way of the Tiger tabletop RPG, all my childhood dreams would be fulfilled*.


*Well, not all

Well, there was also the "Sorcery!" books, which were set on Titan (same world as Fighting Fantasy) and were sort of halfway between the complexity of FF and Lone Wolf.

Quote from: RPGPundit;885706Well, there was also the "Sorcery!" books, which were set on Titan (same world as Fighting Fantasy) and were sort of halfway between the complexity of FF and Lone Wolf.

With a very nifty spellcasting system, as I recall.

Quote from: RPGPundit;885706Well, there was also the "Sorcery!" books, which were set on Titan (same world as Fighting Fantasy) and were sort of halfway between the complexity of FF and Lone Wolf.

True, those were good as well.  I've use the Sorcery! spell book with the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game (the earlier tabletop version that preceded AFF) to expand the spells available.

I came across this article recently which focussed on hand-held CRPGs and considered game books to be their progenitor: The history of handheld rpgs: part one.

It's a real blast from the past!

Cool.

Quote from: Technomancer;885729True, those were good as well.  I've use the Sorcery! spell book with the Fighting Fantasy Introductory Roleplaying Game (the earlier tabletop version that preceded AFF) to expand the spells available.

AFF2e has full rules for using Sorcery spells and has even reprinted that spellbook with the AFF stats contained therein.