19th Level

Joe Dever's Lone Wolf  gamebooks were incredibly popular among my circle of friends in the 1980s. The 1980s were a great time for gamebooks - I remember devouring Bantam's Choose Your Own Adventure series but the Lone Wolf books were my favorite by far. Throughout the series Dever revealed more and more of the world of Magnamund. A simple combat system added an element of randomness to the tales. An amusing irony about the books is though they were for solo play, they encouraged a lot of socialization among my peers. We discussed the world, used elements of it in our D&D games, traded books with each other, etc. Dever passed away this week, far too young at the age of 60. I'm glad he got to see his creation endure beyond the gamebooks fad of the 1980s. Cubicle 7 recently released a beautiful adaptation of Lone Wolf as a fully realized RPG. It's nice to think his words and his creations will live on. There are probably people adventuring in Magnamund as I writ...

This topic is a little iffy as one can define both a new game and the past 12 months in some odd ways. For example, is a new edition of a game a new game? And in what form does it need to be? For example, Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition became available digitally last November, though I'd had a backer preview for several months. And the physical books are still pending. I think it's reasonable to go by the date the game became generally available in some form. But I'll cheat a little. First, we'll go with a new edition. Then we'll give a truly new game. And finally we'll stretch 12 months to mean a bit more than 12 months. Timey-wimey... Overall I'll go with  Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition . I did a brief review of it a while back and since then I've gotten some mileage playing it. It plays easily, retains compatibility with previous versions of the game, and adds some much needed modern conventions to the game without changing things for the sake of change...