lone wolf

GenCon kicked off on Thursday morning and I started off the convention in the giant Will Call line. It stretched across the length of the convention center and looked pretty daunting, but I had been through the same thing the year before and found that the line moved pretty quickly. I ended up getting through and picking up my event tickets in about fifteen minutes.

I passed even that short of a time pretty quickly by talking to the people in front of and behind me in line. That isn’t the kind of thing I normally do, but it’s part of the magic of GenCon for me. It’s four days surrounded by thousands of people who are at least as weird as I am. It’s a very liberating experience.

The high point of the first day for me and possible the whole convention was getting to meet Joe Dever and getting my copy of Lone Wolf #1 signed. He was super friendly and very generous with his time. The Lone Wolf gamebooks were a big part of my childhood, second only to Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and it was a complete thrill to get to meet Mr. Dever and tell him that. I was giddy the rest of the day and thinking about it still makes me grin.

Most of the rest of the day I spent in Hall F which is where Harebrained Scheme’s Golem Arcana play area was. I had signed up for the Midwest Tournament and a large number of the other people in it were from my playgroup here in Indy (note the bowling shirts), so there were plenty of other games to watch when I wasn’t playing myself. I had a bye for the first round as a result of League Play earlier in the year, and I managed to narrowly win my Round Two game. Unfortunately I lost my Round Three game so I didn’t play in the semi-finals on Friday, but it was a super close game.

By the way, I say “super close” not cause I’m trying to mitigate losing. I really enjoyed that game. Both myself and my opponent played extremely well, and the game literally game down to dice rolls on the last two rounds. Had I’d rolled a hit, or had my opponent rolls a miss on the following turn, the outcome would’ve reversed. I totally prefer games like that over just steamrolling someone. Although winning is always nice.

I capped off the day by meeting up with my friend Todd (Wininoid) and playing games in the convention center until they shut the lights off in the play hall at midnight. We had to pack up by cell phone flashlight.

I’d gotten up at 7 am Thursday and didn’t get home and get to bed until 2:30 am. I was pretty amped up from the day even though I was exhausted, so it took me an hour to wind down enough to sleep.

One last thing! It’s not too late to join in, unless you’re reading this after August 31st. Visit the Blaugust Initiate Page to see how.

Lone Wolf Collectors Editions

There was a white box waiting for me when I got home from work tonight. I had no idea what it was until I saw the word Mongoose in the return address. I didn’t expect the books to get here so quickly, but I am completely ecstatic. Check out the slide show below or the album here.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Aside, from the odd login to EVE for a skill update or to check on my planetary extractions I haven’t been playing much this week, and it’s all Anjin’s fault.

Last Tuesday, Anjin over at Bullet Points posted about his Top Five: Gamebooks which included my favorite childhood series the Lone Wolf and World of Lone Wolf books. These books occupy a special place in my memories, because it was the closest I could get to a pen and paper D&D (besides the Bard’s Tale series) until I hit high-school. See, this was back in the 80’s when being a geek was not cool. Plus, I lived in a small mid-western town, so my options for D&D were zero. I was probably the only kid between 8 and 16 within a 25 mile radius who cared about such things. So Choose Your Own Adventure books were a way for me to pursue in my interests, and the Lone Wolf books were my favorite gamebook series (some pics), enough so that I kept all of the ones I had.

Reading Anjin’s post really stirred up my nostalgia. So, after my son was asleep, I dug out my books and indulged in some major reminiscing. Then (of course) I did a little Googling just to see what there was to see and found out that there had been a bunch of books beyond the 12 that I’d read as a kid. /gasp Of course now that I knew, I had to have them, but I figured the chances of finding books a decode or more out of print were slim and not. Still, I was continuing to poke around the internet and I found something unexpected and wonderful.

Project Aon is a labor of love by fans of the series combined with the generosity of Joe Dever, the author, who has the full publishing rights and given his blessing to posting everything online. It’s a fantastic site and not something I expected to find. No adds, no pay wall, no sketchy downloads, just a simple and elegant site devoted to the complete series by a bunch of people who love the books as much or more than I do.

Most of this week, I’ve been spending time rereading my old books and looking at the new versions online. I also found, via the Aon site, that Mongoose Publishing has been updating and re-releasing the series. I’ve already ordered the first four books and imagine I’ll end of getting the rest at some point.

Huge appreciation to Anjin for his post which inspired this whole experience.