No you are not.

I kinda want to demand a Let's Play series on this. Yes, demand. Because Austin has too many cool ideas and he might move on to a new cool idea next video. My wishlist now includes: - The off brand superhero cinematic universe - A Let's Play series of these books.

LoadingReadyRun do a series of Fighting Fantasy playthroughs. You can find them in their channel.

Do it!

Yes!

I'm just playing through them for the first time. They have this aura around them, since my dad used to play them when he was slightly older than me. Unfortunately, we only have the first five, the rest is unavailable and my dad is hesitant on buying the rest in English, since he doesn't speak it as well as me or my sister. But damn, am I stoked for what's to come. It took me a few tries to finish the first book, but I managed to do it on my sixth attempt. (I have the Czech translation, so forgive me if I say something wrong) The guy I pulled through with for the first time has 19 Battle mastery but only 20 Endurance points. The d10 was my friend that day and I love this guy to the death. I like to roleplay as him, his fighting style and so on. I know how to handle a sword in real life and for the weapon he trained with, the d10 picked the Shortsword. I have a home rule, where I set each ending of a book as a checkpoint. If I die in the book following it, I restart from the beginning of this one. I keep track of things I had back then to not cheat. I'm currently at the start of book 5, just past game rules. And my Lone Wolf has a new problem from the looks of it. ... Loneliness ... Just the emptiness of the Kai monastery, only the Sommerschwerd to keep him company, Wich makes for good roleplay potential. Unfortunately, the Sommerschwerd proved to be too powerful in the last two books. Leading me to Insta-kill Vonotar's weird monster and the guy who tried to revive Vashna. (I rolled an 8 and a 0 for these while I had a shield and a magic helmet from Ikya) I try to use the Sommerschwerd as little as possible, Lone Wolf thinks it's power is holy and should be used only when necessary. Because over-relying on it would make him weak. Don't get me wrong, it saved his a** more than he can count, but I was forced to use it a few times, because I had no other weapon or my enemy was immune to my regular Shortsword. I'd like to ask, is it possible to lose it? If there is any scenario, where you lose all your stuff including the Sommerschwerd. I don't know the ruling on this. Since it counts as a weapon *and* a special object, *can* it even be lost? Since, it's like ... The most holy object in all of Magnamund. Or is Lone Wolf smart enough to hold on to it like his life depends on it? (Because it does)

@@OrangeDragon04 I think the sword is just a tool. It doesn’t equal the worth of the man that wields it; though, it certainly makes the job of vanquishing evil much easier. Endeavor to persevere.

@@evilstratton So it's like a gun? ;)

Me too I read through them all as a child and have them all to charity as an adult. Recently bought a few of them for my children but they didn't take too them as fully as I did. I remember getting massively OP by the last few books, because I guess the author still wanted anyone to be able to pick them up anywhere in the series, whereas I had levelled up throughout. Good Times 😊

Proving the stuffier of Victorians right: novels will melt your brain!

spent most my high school in the back row playing rpgs with a friend. in middle school we had notebooks hopping from player to player occasionally intercepted by teachers who were often horrified by the content. can always learn the class at home when else are you going to be trapped in a room together with friends

Show me an avid fiction reader, and I'll show you someone who's spent time immersed in a story when they were supposed to be doing something else. It comes with the territory. If you don't end up having to learn self-control in regards to a passion, is it really a passion?

@@jameswoodard4304 lol supposed to be doing something else. Not everyone's so enthusiastic about being a cog in the machine nor they owe it to anyone else

D&D did the same thing to me. I completely stopped reading text books in class and read and reread the Players Handbook.

Don't worry. Most of the books are available online for free.

Hahah, I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt the urge to buy them 😂

There is a free app you can download.

@@horrorsage1346 bUT WHERE?

@@horrorsage1346 TELL US THE NAME

Some people can be the best people you will ever meet, but can never quite get the knack of parenting.

Nah the books are waaaaaaaay more interesting than standard family drama

Yeah, those kinds of people made me kind of surprised and gives me a lesser great impression of them if I find out they were/are not great parents. But I get that parenting is really hard tho and that being with family can be complicated.

@@saturdaymorninggaming5628 I have one word for you: *bruh*

Moral of the story: life is nothing more than a... drop of the pencil?

I was about to ask if this was the same thing as Fighting Fantasy (and hence troika)

@@DarkadeTV Lone Wolf has for sure had an inspirational factor in the Old School Renaissance genre. Troika is probably one of the best inheritors of those solo play books.

​@@jonsadler3013 I see. I'm pretty excited for Down in Yongardy, a new solo Troika book, maybe something for Austin to check!

I dont u win

I'm not sure what you mean by missing link? DnD came out in 1974. The Tunnels and Trolls tabletop RPG came out in 1975. The first T&T solo adventure came out in 1976. And Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out in 1982. Tabletop RPGs predate and inspired gamebooks.

👍

Sounds like the perfect thing to get a kid more into that tabletop side of rpg

@@lilheinz9496 I say 'kid', but she's 19. She has had the books for about a week (it took me a few days to find them). She has asked if I could dm for her and a friend yesterday. I am going to run Phandelver for them next weekend. I'm going to run 2 sidekicks along with them to balance their party. The hardest thing for me will be keeping 'Dad' out of the game. Except for the jokes. Can't be a dad without the dad jokes.

@@coolintruddle have fun

@@spritemon98 It was a blast. The first time I asked "What do you do?", they were at a bit of loss but that passed quickly when they realized they could attempt to do anything they wanted. The initial orc fight at the dead horse (...oh my god. First orc fight over a beaten dead horse...I just got that now...) was a lot of fun.

Out of curiosity why is your group shutting down?

Discord, fruitsnack nation, has connections to dnd groups-

A fighting fantasy boxset isn't a bad idea either. Or any of the countless Tunnels and Trolls boxsets.

I really want a dnd group but I don't really know anyone interested

Try looking at Choice of Games too. They do a bunch of those types of books online. I use them when my players cancel last minute

„For Summerlund and Kai!“

We're getting close. It's been more than twenty-five years since *A Game of Thrones* was published and there's (at least) two volumes to go until it's done. Considering *A Dance of Dragons* came out the same year as the first season of the HBO show, only forty years for *A Song of Ice and Fire* to finish seems a little hopeful at this point.

Lol

The Lone Wolf saga actually has at least two arcs. Lone Wolf himself establishes a new Kai Order and in one of the book you switch character from Lone Wolf to one of his student (you get to pick your own Kai name!). There's also a point in the story where Lone Wolf levels up from Kai Lord to Magnakai Lord.

You are writing a book saga? I would love to know more about your work

@@BaronessAnicca Something I've been working on since 2014. It's gonna be 10 years soon. Went through a few re-writes, but been solid since 2019.

@@Foreign0817 Woah, is there anything published yet? High key would be awesome to buy one of them

@@BaronessAnicca Not yet. I'm hoping to start getting things out before 2030.

@@Foreign0817 Best of lucks with that!! Im rooting for you ^^

Project Aon is your friend

it happens sometimes, I've had callbacks, I remember watching the redwall series and wanting to find it again but didn't remember what it was called, I don't recall how I found that series again.

There was also the 3rd book port later down the line. They were quite good, and the DS was a great fit. You have your media on one screen (Character sheet, Illustrations, etc.), while having the text on another, with hyperlinks to make choices. I loved playing them, those ROMs were my introduction to the whole CYOA genre.

That's right, that was a four-book series, co-written by Ian Page. I liked that series better than the Lone Wolf series, personally, because...wizards.

I hear they might be getting the DE treatment also 😎🤟

Is Grey Star based off of that Cartoon with the space traveling sword wielding heros?

@@lanceknightmare No relation. Grey Star is an independent property except from Lone Wolf, being set in the same world of Magnamund.

Lone Wolf was wonderful, but Grey Star was even BETTER. :) So sad that those 4 books have never gotten fancy new editions like LW has.

What is the name of the video game and what system is it for?

@@undrhilThe name of the game is “Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf” & I played it on my PS4/5. It’s on basically all major platforms, so PS4/5, Xbox, Switch, PC & iOS.

@@Nobanion Is it the same as the app on mobile phones?

@@undrhil It’s the same game on mobile & console, aside from the graphical settings lower for mobile.

@@Nobanion Interesting! I will check that out!

Palpatine: DO IT! :p it's a rally fun experience.

There are D&D or other RPG modules that are solo (run _and_ played by one person) you might wanna check some of those out too.

What books or system would you say are leading this resurgence?

@@zetametroid It's not one system but rather a cool confluence of tools that make things easier to solo than ever before. Mythic GME, Ironsworn/Starsworn, and awesome actual plays like Me, Myself, and Die here on YT show that this area of the TTRPG scene is only just getting started.

@@zetametroid I've been diving into solo TTRPG lately, I'd heartily suggest things that run on the Carta engine (Borealis, Cryptkeeper, Punchcard Memories), things that run on the Lost and Found engine (Artefact, Archived, Novel Story), or maybe some Wretched and Alones (Go Alone, The Sealed Library, The Wretched), though there's a whole huge world of them out there, even within those engines I mentioned, the example games are just scratching the surface, there's such great stuff around.

@@Glacier_Nester I just found something interesting thanks to this. Thanks for the reply, Kenneth See also.

The books were designed so that you could start a new character just for each book, without having gone through the other ones. It was helped by having skill resets; once the books reached the point that a long-time character could have learned all the skills, new characters just got them all and there was a new set of higher level skills available.

Arw you currently selling them? And if so where csn they be found?

It lays in the future, and it will be so. [I hope]

@@lanceknightmare I understand where you're coming from with children being deprived of education, but codifying 'breeding laws' is a pretty horrendous thought, no?

To me the illustrations are reminiscent of manga panels like in Berserk, which is my favorite story of all time however it's incredibly graphic at times so fair warning if you decide to read it. The character development and journey is so incredible, and the artwork legitimately becomes museum worthy it's amazing

Fighting Fantasy also had a series, Sorcery!, which is imo among the best books FF ever put out. There were a few other series as well, but none really did as well as either of those. The most inpressive otherwise is probably Fabled Lands, which was a open-world/free-roaming gamebook series. And not just open-world within each book; each book represented a country and you could walk back and forth between them as you wished if you had the coresponding book.

@@Painocus cool only knew about choose your own adventures. Didn't know about the rpg books until this vid but now I know there's one with an open world 🌎 which is blowing up my already blown mind.

Hmm.. Fighting Fantasy but no dice 🤪

Apparently the first 5 books eventually got homebrew DS ports (complete with character progression carrying over between games), so that's cool.

As far as I'm aware, the first 5 books (or the original Kai Saga) are available as DS homebrew. Also long ago, there was a site that had all of the original books as PDFs too, I still have those PDFs, I know they're around some other places too. But apart of the hype for the Definitive Editions is that the stories are actually expanded compared to the originals, and that's apart of why I want to try to find the definitive editions. There are some actual bookstores near me that I'm gonna poke my head in next time I have money. Also because I'm absolutely in favor of supporting a project with as much passion behind it as this.

@@placeholderplaceholder3448 Oh of course. I was mentioning the adaptation in case people want to try it, see if they like Lone Wolf! If so, grab the new, bigger versions! ☺ (DS is nice for on the go though!)

It is confirmed that they will be released as e-books as well.

Still huge in Italy I understand as Lupo Solitario.

Einsamer Wolf in germany

@@somone124 and Ensamma Vargen in Sweden. Askfageln do excellent work, and so especially does Lukas Theljn the artist they use

That's how I knew the series too!

Loved GrailQuest! have the whole collection, trying to get my kids interested

@@CaliPSSF It's a great series for kids to start with IMO. It's pretty basic fantasy, the system isn't too complicated, and it's generally funny, the humor being on a level a child can understand.

I didn't even know Brooks had finally wrapped the series chronology up until I looked it up after seeing this comment. That said, he's supposedly got a few more interstitial books in the pipeline for the franchise. Now I gotta go look into reading the franchise in full, seeing as I fell off after _Ilse Witch_

I thought it was going to be The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - a trilogy that actually had a 52-year gap between publication of the first and third books. Maybe Austin should do a whole series on fantasy series that took decades to finish.