The Chasm of Doom (1985) is a little weird, because Lone Wolf gets put in charge of a troop of soldiers. That isn’t very “lone!” It’s OK though, you get separated pretty quick. Oh, the plot: An important caravan disappeared and the king wants you to find out what happened. Spoiler: Darklords! That’s…kind of it? This one is pretty unmemorable, really. I think partly because of balance. If you’ve played through all the previous books, your character is pretty powerful (they’ve got nearly all the disciplines and some serious items) so a lot of the danger comes from instant, narrative kills rather than chance. I find that frustrating to begin with, but in a series that focuses so much on the player making strategic decisions, it is extra disappointing. They can’t all be winners, I guess.

I want to talk a little more about Chalk’s art work, a specific thing he does that I think makes his stuff stand out as special. A lot of ink illustration in games gets framed by a box and like 75% of the time, the artist will have something break the frame — a claw or sword or billowing cloak. It makes the image feel less constrained and more dynamic. The thing is, those artist almost always break the frame in only one spot. Gary Chalk? He will break the frame all over the place, over and over again (and use non-square frames, to boot). This gives so many of his illustrations a kind of delirious, off-kilter energy without feeling specific or explicit — I don’t know if I ever would have put my finger on it if I wasn’t photographing the drawing for the feed.

Also, that’s Richard Corben on the cover!