User summary
This influential British gamebook series, written by Joe Dever, started in 1984. Its main features are a richly detailed world (Magnamund) and the ability for the reader to continue their character from one book to another. It features the warrior-monk Silent Wolf aka Lone Wolf, sole survivor of an attack on his Order, and the key element to stopping the Darklords of Helgedad to engulf Magnamund.
The books are divided into story arcs:
Book 1–5: Kai
Book 6–12: Magnakai
Book 13–20: Grand Master
Book 21–32: The New Order
The first three arcs feature the same main character. Books 29–32 were never published the first time the series saw the day, due to slow sales (according to publisher).
The game books saw translations to many languages, of which only French and Italian continued the whole series. Of the other translations, German, Spanish, Swedish, Czech and Malay kept for the first two arcs, whereas translations to Danish, Portugese, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian held for only a few books. (Information from http://www.gamebooks.org/)
In 2007, Mongoose Publishing launched a reprint of all books, with the ambition to reprint everything up until book 32. These "Collector's Edition" of the books feature a bonus adventure per book, by different authors but overseen by Joe Dever, and are also released in Italian and German.
Parallel to that, Mongoose also released a pen-and-paper role playing game based on the overly simplistic d10-system from the game books, and are following up with several source books.
The Mongoose reprints slowed down and came to a halt at book 17 in 2012 (?), and the publishing of the reprint was taken over by Mantikore Verlag in Germany. At this point, Joe Dever also took over all the international licensing into his own hands, re-launching the franchise on a wider scale.
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