Yeah, its me.
Who, I hear you ask?
The guy that has left this playthrough dormant for a period of months without a really adequate explanation.
The truth is, that there was a valid reason for a significant period of time when many of my commitments, including this playthrough, were left fallow.
However, when it came time to resume, I just, time and again, couldn’t muster the passion or drive to write a meaningful update. It would be easy to ascribe this to the difficulty and frustration associated with the last couple of Lone Wolf books, but I don’t know if this is completely true.
I owe everyone who has been following me on this journey an apology. Not for the lack of updates – I wouldn’t want to put forward substandard content.
The apology is for leaving people hanging without an adequate story as to what was happening. All I can say is that I kept feeling that I’d have a new post in the ‘next couple of days’ and then all would be forgiven.
So – where to from here?
For better or worse, I’m going to be letting this webpage lie fallow for a while.
But!
I am not giving up on gamebook playthroughs!
I’m going to shift my attention to the ‘Falcon’ series – the science fiction time-travel gamebook series written by the same duo who crafted the fabulous Way of the Tiger series.
The webpage is http://www.falconplaythrough.wordpress.com . There’s nothing there for the moment, but posts will commence shortly (and I mean shortly! I’m just awaiting delivery of another copy of Book 1, since my copy has fallen to shreds).
Addendum – I am still trying to locate Books 5 (The Dying Sun) and Book 6 (At the End of Time) from the Falcon series – if anyone can point me in the right direction, much will be appreciated!
And yes, at such time as Lone Wolf calls to me again….I’ll be back!
LONE WOLF PLAYTHROUGH 
Actually I was always hoping you’d do Falcon next, followed by Greystar. Bill Waterson quit Calvin and Hobbes rather than have it become below standard, P.C. Hodgell has been working on the same series since the early eighties because she finds it so hard to get the creative juices flowing, you’re in good company. Looking forward to Falcon.
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I’m really happy to read this. I enjoyed your Lone Wolf posts, of course, but it is probably my least favourite continuing series and I’m looking forward to Falcon. If I lived twelve thousand miles closer, I would offer to lend you my copies of books 5 and 6, but I’m afraid I don’t quite trust the international post enough. If you fancy taking a trip to the UK to pick them up in person, though…
By the way, the link in your post doesn’t work for me, because the punctuation at the end of the sentence is included. It should be http://www.falconplaythrough.wordpress.com
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Any chance of getting PDF scans of the books? Happy to pay you for your time.
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I will email Jamie Thomson to ask his permission, using the address from his Fabled Lands blog ( http://fabledlands.blogspot.com ). Some years ago, Fabled Lands Publishing reissued book 1, so there may be plans to do the same for the rest of the series, in which case there may be objections to having PDFs of the originals made. On the other hand, he said about the no-set-date-for-republishing Walls of Spyte (Bloodsword 5) “if you can find a pirated PDF, grab it with my blessing” and even linked to one, so you never know.
If he does agree, it may take me some time to produce the pdfs (especially if you want them OCRed and checked for errors rather than just a collection of jpegs), but hopefully not as long as it will take you to blog books 1-4. I’ll let you know if I get a reply.
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Unfortunately, my email was returned undelivered as the mailbox is full. I didn’t see this at first, since the automated message was misidentified as spam by my email program. I shall leave a message in the comments at fabledlands and see whether that yields any results.
I should also clarify that in my previous comment it was another of Jamie Thomson’s collaborators, Dave Morris, who gave his blessing for readers to download The Walls of Spyte.
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Thanks again for your help.
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It turns out that is easier said than done. It seems to require a google account, which I have now created, but my comment still hasn’t appeared on the page, so either it has disappeared into the ether or there are up to three copies of it somewhere I can’t see them. If anyone else has any ideas, I would love to hear them.
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I’m sad to see you put Lone Wolf on hiatus, but I would be sadder to see you continue the series if your heart isn’t in it.
For what it’s worth, I think you would find the remainder of book 17 frustrating (though perhaps satisfying, but it is regarded as the most difficult of all the Lone Wolf books), book 18 enjoyable (it revisits much of the same ground you trod in book 6), and books 19 and 20…well, they are an acquired taste. If you didn’t like book 11, you probably wouldn’t care for them.
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Gloccus – Jamie Thomson himself has now actually provided me with PDFs of Books 5 & 6 (!!!) Thank you for your help.
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That’s great news. I also received an email reply from him a few hours ago, so clearly he did receive one of my many attempts to communicate. I hope he only received one of them, otherwise he’s been rather unfairly bombarded.
By the way, I think the link to your WotT blog on the front page of your Falcon blog is wrong as it takes me to a “register domain” page.
Good luck with the new play through.
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Thanks, I’ve updated the link and it should work now.
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I have the first Falcon book! Also, welcome back! I started it a bit but never got around to it, so maybe you’ll be the kick in the pants I need. It’s not the only game book I haven’t gotten to yet. The Morris & Thomson gamebook Can You Brexit is on my kitchen counter. I should get to that one too, since I hear it’s somehow more timely than ever. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling you’ve neglected us. I constantly don’t get around to things either. I don’t even have a wife and kids, and while I have a full-time job, unlike a lawyer, I can’t bring casino dealing home with me.
I have been checking out your Twitter sometimes. Though when I read a Twitter feed, I’m the type of personality who reads through as much of it as he can, going back weeks or months if I have to. Favorite author Stephen King says he loves Twitter because it’s like a conversation along the world’s longest fence. While I can see how that’s true for some people, it’s not that way for me.
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Enjoyed your readthrough tremendously, but the Grand Master books do seem a bit of a slog, so I’m glad to hear you’ve found a more enjoyable series. Off now to see what you wrote about Way of the Tiger and enjoy that nostalgia trip too. 🙂
By the way, a shameless plug: I write similar stories in my spare time over at Choice of Games (https://www.choiceofgames.com). My fellow author Kevin Gold, whose “Choice of Robots” and “Choice of Magics” are probably the best things in the CoG library, is also a massive Lone Wolf fan.
Might be worth a try, for anyone who grew up on gamebooks and likes the idea of a steady stream of new ones on mobile. (As a plus, the CoG design standards don’t allow insta-deaths)
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I got as far as The Darke Crusade (LW 15) and have also called it quits on the LW series. When you say “the difficulty and frustration associated with the last couple of Lone Wolf books” I agree entirely.
The first 5 were really good and set a high point for 1980s game books. Book 6-9 were okay too. But the series didn’t maintain the same level of writing, the same feeling of epic scope and growth, the same complexity of internal maps. I don’t expect it was easy, and even 5 in a story arc is pretty good, so I’m not knocking it.
But just over three years later than you took a break from them, so did I.
But I still have my 59 Fighting Fantasy book on the shelf, half of which I’ve never played. And the four-book Grey Star series (World of Lone Wolf) is edited by Joe but written by someone else and is not a Kai adventure at all. And Jonathan Green’s ACE series are just, well, ace.
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