Joe Dever

Joe Dever (2008)

Joe Dever (born February 12, 1956 in Chingford , England , † November 30, 2016 ) was an award-winning British fantasy author and game developer. Initially a musician, he became the first Briton to win the Advanced Dungeon & Dragons Championships in the USA in 1982 . He designed the fantasy world Magnamund as the setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. In 1984 he published the first book in the Spielbuch series Einsamer Wolf , the books in this series have sold over 10 million copies worldwide since then. As the playbook market slowly shrank from 1995 onwards, he ran into difficulties with his English publisher until publication was finally stopped in 1998, before the last four volumes (29 to 32) could appear. From 2003 the series enjoyed great popularity again, particularly in France, Italy and Spain, so that it was reissued in these countries. In England (since 2007) and Germany (since 2009) the books are now being published again in an expanded version.

Since 1996, Joe Dever has been involved in the development of several successful computer and console games. He also worked on a lone wolf role-playing game that was published by Moongoose Publishing in 2004 in England.

Life

After school, Joe Dever became part of the Pye Records music studio orchestra in London in 1976 , which provided musical accompaniment to singers and solo musicians. When the orchestra disbanded 18 months later, Dever continued to work as a freelancer until he found work as a sound engineer at Virgin Records in a studio in Oxfordshire . He stayed there for five years and worked with a variety of artists, including Frank Zappa , Peter Gabriel and the Sex Pistols . Dever had two children.

From June to August 2005 he underwent an expensive operation due to bilateral kidney cancer , during which parts of the right kidney and the entire left kidney had to be removed. Seventy percent of the remaining kidney could be saved. The procedure went without any complications and Dever recovered quickly afterwards. His kidney function was preserved to such an extent that he could continue to lead a normal life without dialysis and medication.

Creation of Lone Wolf

Joe Dever was seven years old when he became a fan of the comic book The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire , which appeared in a magazine called "Look and Learn" . He built Roman armies from toys from Airfix and exchanged the figures' spears for laser rifles long before he came into contact with fantasy. Dever was introduced to Science Fantasy through his English teacher . He was the first and probably only Briton to take part in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championships in the USA, which he won in 1982.

Dever originally designed the fantasy world Magnamund from 1975 to 1983 as the setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. At first he called the world "Chinaraux", and at first it consisted only of the Northern Magnamund. Dever has said that he drew his early inspiration for Lone Wolf from classics in English literature like Beowulf , Ivanhoe, and the Arthurian saga . In his youth, JRR Tolkien , Michael Moorcock and Mervyn Peake , as well as his interest in military history and Norse mythology, had a major influence on the creation of the Lone Wolf series.

The story of the series centers around Lone Wolf, who is a young student in an order of warrior monks, the Kai Lords. They defend their homeland Sommerlund against the forces of evil embodied by the Black Lords of Helgedad. In the event of a sudden invasion, all Kai Lords are slaughtered and only Lone Wolf survives. The series follows Lone Wolf and later one of his students in their endeavors to take revenge on the Black Lords and thwart the plans of the dark god Naar, who wants to subjugate the world.

publication

Dever was initially under contract with the London publisher Hutchinson for four books. The first two parts of the Spielbuch series Lonely Wolf were published in England at the same time in 1984. In the first week of their release, they sold over 100,000 times. Thereafter, the Lone Wolf series has been published in over 30 countries and translated into 18 languages, and to date, more than 10 million copies have been sold worldwide. The series has won several awards in England.

With the help of Joe Dever, Paul Barnett (stage name John Grant) wrote twelve Lone Wolf novels, which were published in England under the name "Legends of Lone Wolf" and were partly heavily revised before their publication. Furthermore, Dever created the character Silberstern der Magier together with Ian Page , who is the main character in the 4-part playbook series of the same name, which plays like Lone Wolf in Magnamund. In 1986 the "Magnamund Companion" appeared in England , which contained a description of all the countries of Magnamund, additional information on the Black Lords and an introduction to the Giak language. It also included the Ragadorn tavern board game and a little adventure in which you played the role of Banedon the Magician.

The Kai-Orden-Volumes of the Lonely Wolf series (Volumes 21 to 28) were only printed in smaller editions in England than the first volumes. As a result, they have become rare and sought-after collector's items and some of them are now selling for over € 100.

Between 1990 and 1996 there were three scripts for a possible Lonely Wolf film, but the projects never got beyond the pre-production phase. The publisher Red Fox discontinued the series in 1998 after volume 28 and gave as a reason a declining interest in the playbook genre - despite hundreds of requests from fans for books that were already out of print. Dever later wrote the last four books in the Lonely Wolf series and revised volumes 1 to 28 for the new edition by Mongoose Publishing .

In 1999, Joe Dever gave the non-profit organization Project Aon permission to publish volumes 1 to 20 of Lonely Wolf online for free. Later he extended the permit to the Kai Orden series (Volumes 21 to 28) and the "Magnamund Companion" , as well as other of his works.

More work

In addition to the Lonely Wolf and the Magician's Silver Star , Joe Dever has created two other playbook series ( "Freeway Warrior" and "Combat Heroes" ) and has helped develop several successful computer and console games. The Freeway Warrior series consists of four books and is set in a post-apocalyptic future that resembles the world of Mad Max . The four Combat Heroes books are illustrated adventures in which each section consists of a fully illustrated page that shows what the player is currently seeing. There are two game modes. If you play alone, the goal is to escape from a labyrinth. If you play against each other in pairs, both players fight each other in this labyrinth. Each player has a different book. In certain places the books show an empty corridor. If both players are in the same empty corridor, there will be a duel before the game continues. This unusual game concept also had a major influence on the later development of computer games.

Catalog raisonné

In Germany, the following titles by Joe Dever have been published by Goldmann Verlag (from 1984) and Mantikore-Verlag (from 2009):

Lonely wolf

1. Escape from the Dark (1984/2009)
2. Fire over the waters ( 1984/2009 )
3. Danger in the Caves / The Kulde Caves ( 1985/2010 )
4. Battle over the Graves / The Gorge of Fate (1985/2010)
5. The Book of Magnakai / The Shadows of the Desert ( 1986/2011 )
6. Kingdom of Terror / The Kingdoms of Terror (1986/2011)
7. The Castle of Death / Castle of Death (1988 / ????)
8. The jungle of horror / The jungle of horror (1988 / ????)
9. The Demon Cauldron / The Ruins of Zaaryx (1988 / ????)
10. The dungeons of Torgar (1989 / ????)
11. The Prisoners of Time (1989 / ????)
12. The Lords of Darkness (1990 / ????)
13. The Druids of Ruel (2013)
14. The Damned by Kaag (2013)
15. The Darke Crusade (2013)
16. Vashna's Legacy (2014)
17. The Death Lord of Ixia (2014)
18. Dawn of the Dragon (2015)
19. The Shadow of the Wolf (2015)
20. The Curse of Naar (2015)

The new Kai Krieger - The continuation of the Lonely Wolf game book series

1. Hunt for the Moonstone (2016)
2. The Pirates of Shadaki (2017)
3. The Crown of Siyen (2018)
4. The Runic War (2019)
5. The Wolf's Track (2020)

Magnamund playbook

1. Banedon's Order (2010)

Silver star of the magician

1. The Witch King (1987)
2. The Forbidden City (1987)
3. Behind the Shadow Gate (1988)
4. War of the Wizards (1988)

Web links

• Mantikore Publishing House

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anna Slater: Legendary fantasy author Joe Dever dies. In: East London and West Essex Guardian Series. November 30, 2016, accessed November 30, 2016 .