The Lone Wolf saga: from the game books to the TV series

The name of Lupo Solitario, in Italy, is practically synonymous with book game. Since the release of the first issue for the EL publisher, in fact, Lupo Solitario has been chosen as the spearhead for the bookstores of the Trieste-based publishing house, so much so that the director of the series, Giulio Lughi, has given the series a real Italian adaptation.

With the recent announcement of a TV series dedicated to the character, it is appropriate to retrace the history of this successful book game saga from the beginning.

The origins of the Wolf

The creator of Lone Wolf (Lone Wolf in original) and the fantastic world of the Magnamund, Joe Dever, unfortunately prematurely passed away in 2016, was born in England on February 12, 1956.

The birth of the Magnamund was a gradual process, and took place between 1975 and 1983, during which Dever held a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting it right on the Magnamund. Only a few know that Dever was among the few non-US Dungeons & Dragons players to win the American D&D championship in 1982.



Following the popularity gained by the game genre with the publication of The Wizard of the Burning Mountain by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, Joe Dever approached the two authors with the proposal of a series of game books set in the world of his invention, and featuring a monk Kai (known by us, in the EL version, like Ramas), a sort of chivalric order composed of rangers with psychic powers. However, the two sides could not find a satisfactory agreement, therefore Dever decided to do it himself and proposed his idea to several publishers, until finding publication with Hutchinson.