Joe Dever (born 1956, Chingford, England) is an award-winning British fantasist and game designer. Originally a musician, Dever became the first British winner of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championship of America in 1982.
He created the fictional world of Magnamund as a setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. In 1984 he released the first book of the Lone Wolf series of young-adult gamebooks, and the series has since sold over 10.2 million copies worldwide. He experienced difficulty with his publishers as the game books market began to contract in 1995, until publication ceased in 1998 before the final four books (numbers 29-32) were released. Since 2003, however, the series has enjoyed a strong revival of interest in France, Italy, Germany and Spain following the re-release of the gamebook series in these countries.
From 1996 onwards, Dever has been involved in the production of several successful computer and console games. He also contributed to a Dungeons & Dragons-style role playing game for Lone Wolf published by Mongoose Publishing (UK) in 2004 and Le Grimoire (France) in 2006-2009. Currently he is Lead Designer of a Lone Wolf computer game, and he is writing the final books in the Lone Wolf series. These works are all scheduled for publication in 2010/11.
Dever was educated at the Buckhurst Hill County High School. In 1976, he joined a studio-based record company orchestra known as Pye Records in London which provided accompaniment to solo singers and artists. After 18 months, it disbanded and Dever then freelanced for a year before joining Virgin Records as a Recording Engineer at Manor Studios in Oxfordshire for five years, working with a diverse mix of artists such as Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, and The Sex Pistols. Dever has two children, Ben (b.1981) and Sophie (b.1987).
During June—August 2005, Dever underwent extensive surgery for bi-lateral kidney cancer, involving a partial nephrectomy of the right kidney, and a full nephrectomy of the left kidney. Seventy percent of his remaining kidney was saved. The surgical team was directed by J. L. Peters of Whipps Cross University Hospital in London. It proceeded without complications on August 10, 2005, and subsequently Dever made a swift recovery, having retained sufficient kidney function to lead a normal life without any need for dialysis or renal drug treatments.
Joe Dever was seven years old when he became a fan of the comic strip "The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire" which appeared in a magazine called Look and Learn. He also built armies of Airfix Roman soldiers and converted their spears to laser rifles long before he was introduced to fantasy. Dever was introduced to "science fantasy" by his high school English tutor. He was the first and perhaps only British person to compete in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Championship of America, which he won in 1982.
Dever originally developed the fantasy world of Magnamund from 1975 to 1983 as a setting for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Originally called "Chinaraux", the world consisted of only northern Magnamund. Dever stated that his earliest inspirations for Lone Wolf were English medieval classics such as Beowulf, Ivanhoe, King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. In his teenage years J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock and Mervyn Peake, along with a keen interest in military history and Norse mythology, all contributed to the creation of the Lone Wolf series.
The story is based around Lone Wolf, who is a cadet in a monastic order of warriors known as the Kai who defend their home of Sommerlund from the forces of evil, embodied by the Darklords of Helgedad. After a surprise invasion, all of the Kai are massacred and only Lone Wolf survives. The rest of the book series follows Lone Wolf and his successor in their attempts to take revenge on the Darklords and then to thwart the Dark God Naar in his attempts to control their world for evil.
Dever was originally contracted by London-based publisher Hutchinson for four books, but had planned for at least twenty for the series. The first two books in the gamebook series were published simultaneously in July 1984. They sold in excess of 100,000 copies in the first week of release. Subsequently, the Lone Wolf series has been published in over 30 countries, translated into 18 languages, and has sold in excess of 10 million copies to date. The series was awarded the Gamemaster International "All Time Great" award in 1991 and also won "Game Book of the Year" awards in 1985, 1986 and 1987.
With the help of Joe Dever, Paul Barnett (pen name John Grant) wrote twelve novelizations of the Lone Wolf books known as the Legends of Lone Wolf, several of which were heavily edited before publication. In 2004, the Italian publisher Gruppo Armenia (Milan) reprinted all 12 novels in 5 volumes of anthology. Random House ceased publishing the novelizations because "the books weren't selling". Dever has stated that as the game books precede the novelizations chronologically, they are the "authoritative" versions. He also developed the character Grey Star, and a mini-series of four gamebooks were written by Ian Page using this principal character.
Only the first four volumes of the Legends of Lone Wolf were made available in the United States (though Sword of the Sun was divided into two separate volumes, The Tides of Treachery and Sword of the Sun), and only the first 20 of the Lone Wolf gamebook series were printed in the United States. The American editions of books 13-20 were abridged versions and are shorter than the UK editions which have color maps. In The Magnamund Companion, all the countries of the Lone Wolf world are described in some detail, as are the Darklords of Helgedad, and the Giak language. There is also a Ragadorn Tavern Board Game, and a solo adventure where you play as Banedon the Magician.
The later ‘New Order’ Lone Wolf gamebooks (no.s 21-28) were printed in the UK in smaller volumes than the earlier editions, and have subsequently become highly sought after by readers eager to complete their Lone Wolf collections. Copies of these scarce titles regularly sell for over US$100 each on the internet auction site eBay.
Between 1990-1996, three scripts were developed of Lone Wolf for a potential film release, but did not proceed beyond the pre-production phase. Publisher Red Fox ceased publishing the Lone Wolf series after book 28, The Hunger of Sejanoz, citing fading interest in the interactive gaming genre, despite hundreds of requests for the reprinting of several Lone Wolf books that had gone out of print. Dever is currently writing the last four books of the New Order series which are scheduled for release by Mongoose Publishing in 2010.
In 1999, Dever gave his permission for Lone Wolf books, numbers one through twenty, to be published for free on the internet by the non-profit organization Project Aon. Joe Dever later gave his permission to publish the New Order series and The Magnamund Companion. As of December 2009, 23 of his Lone Wolf books, the World of Lone Wolf series, The Magnamund Companion and several other Lone Wolf related written works are available for download. As of April 2010, Dever spends much of his time writing and editing Lone Wolf for Mongoose's re-publication of the original series in their special hardback Collector's Edition format. Thirteen books in this series have been published so far (December 2009). The first of this new printing (Book 1: Flight from the Dark) was thoroughly revised and expanded by Dever with the addition of two hundred new sections. It was shortlisted for the 2008 Origins Fiction Award (Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design). In April 2010, the German language translation (Einsamer Wolf: Flucht aus dem Dunkel) won the Best Fantasy Gamebook Award at the RPC Event in Cologne, Germany.
In addition to Lone Wolf, he has also created two other role-playing gamebook series (Freeway Warrior and Combat Heroes) and designed several best-selling computer and video games for PCs and consoles. The Freeway Warrior series of gamebooks are set in a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-like world. The Combat Heroes gamebooks are illustrated adventures where each paragraph is a full-page picture representing what the player sees, with two modes. Alone, the aim is to escape from a maze. In one-on-one play, two players are dueling in a maze. Each player has a different book ; at a given page, the illustration shows an empty corridor; when the other character is in sight (i.e. the players read given page numbers), the player has to turn to another page showing the other opponent's position in the corridor. Combat is then resolved before the game continues.
Lone Wolf 1 - Flight from the Dark (1984) - Extended version (2007)
Lone Wolf 2 - Fire on the Water (1984) - Revised version (2007)
Lone Wolf 3 - The Caverns of Kalte (1984) - Revised version (2007)
Lone Wolf 4 - The Chasm of Doom (1985) - Revised version (2008)
Lone Wolf 5 - Shadow on the Sand (1985) - Revised version (2008)
Lone Wolf 6 - The Kingdoms of Terror (1985) - Revised version (2008)
Lone Wolf 7 - Castle Death (1986) - Revised version (2008)
Lone Wolf 8 - The Jungle of Horrors (1987) - Revised version (2008)
Lone Wolf 9 - The Cauldron of Fear (1987) - Revised version (2009)
Lone Wolf 10 - The Dungeons of Torgar (1987) - Revised version (2009)
Lone Wolf 11 - The Prisoners of Time (1987) - Revised version (2009)
Lone Wolf 12 - The Masters of Darkness (1988) - Revised version (2009)
Lone Wolf 13 - The Plague Lords of Ruel (1990) - Revised version (2009)
Lone Wolf 14 - The Captives of Kaag (1990)
Lone Wolf 15 - The Darke Crusade (1991)
Lone Wolf 16 - The Legacy of Vashna (1991)
Lone Wolf 17 - The Deathlord of Ixia (1992)
Lone Wolf 18 - Dawn of the Dragons (1992)
Lone Wolf 19 - Wolf's Bane (1993)
Lone Wolf 20 - The Curse of Naar (1993)
Lone Wolf 21 - Voyage of the Moonstone (1994)
Lone Wolf 22 - The Buccaneers of Shadaki (1995)
Lone Wolf 23 - Mydnight's Hero (1995)
Lone Wolf 24 - Rune War (1996)
Lone Wolf 25 - Trail of the Wolf (1996)
Lone Wolf 26 - The Fall of Blood Mountain (1997)
Lone Wolf 27 - Vampirium (1997)
Lone Wolf 28 - The Hunger of Sejanoz (1998)
Lone Wolf 29 - The Storms of Chai (2010)
Lone Wolf 30 (TBA)
Lone Wolf 31 (TBA)
Lone Wolf 32 (TBA)
Companion Book
The Magnamund Companion (1986)
Freeway Warrior
Freeway Warrior 1: Highway Holocaust (1988)
Freeway Warrior 2: Slaughter Mountain Run (1989)
Freeway Warrior 3: The Omega Zone (1989)
Freeway Warrior 4: California Countdown (1989)
Combat Heroes
Combat Heroes 1: White Warlord (1986)
Combat Heroes 1: Black Baron (1986)
Combat Heroes 2: Scarlet Sorcerer (1987)
Combat Heroes 2: Emerald Enchanter (1987)
The World of Lone Wolf
World of Lone Wolf 1: Grey Star the Wizard (1985)
World of Lone Wolf 2: The Forbidden City (1985)
World of Lone Wolf 3: Beyond the Nightmare Gate (1986)
World of Lone Wolf 4: War of the Wizards (1986)
Legends of Lone Wolf
Legends of Lone Wolf 1: Eclipse of the Kai (1989)
Legends of Lone Wolf 2: The Dark Door Opens (1989)
Legends of Lone Wolf 3: The Sword of the Sun (1989)
Legends of Lone Wolf 4: Hunting Wolf (1990)
Legends of Lone Wolf 5: The Claws of Helgedad (1991)
Legends of Lone Wolf 6: The Sacrifice of Ruanon (1991)
Legends of Lone Wolf 7: The Birthplace (1992)
Legends of Lone Wolf 8: The Book of the Magnakai (1992)
Legends of Lone Wolf 9: The Tellings (1993)
Legends of Lone Wolf 10: The Lorestone of Varetta (1993)
Legends of Lone Wolf 11: The Secret of Kazan-Oud (1994)
Legends of Lone Wolf 12: The Rotting Land (1994)
It should be noted that book 3, The Sword of the Sun, was split into two smaller volumes by Berkley in the US, The Tides of Treachery and The Sword of the Sun.
Chronicles of Magnamund
The Lencian Trilogy 1: The Dragons of Lencia (2008)
The Lencian Trilogy 2: The Shadow & the Skull (2010)
