Game 126: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (1990)

 

There are some regrettable gaps in my knowledge of popular culture. Ten years ago, if you had asked me about "Buck Rogers," I would have said something like, "Oh, yeah. That's the show where the guy from The Fall Guy battles the evil Cylon armies of Ming the Merciless." Then I would have strolled away, happily recalling that one episode where Buck Rogers flies through the galaxy in his TARDIS, oblivious to you falling onto the pavement behind me, your aneurysm producing some final muscle spasms in your extremities.

A year later, I would have realized that the Cylons were from Battlestar Galactica, but I otherwise wasn't much better off. Today, thanks to the almighty Internet, I have it all straight: Created by science fiction author Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940), Buck Rogers dates all the way back to 1928, when he appeared in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories as "Anthony Rogers." He was the subject of several short stories (1928-1929), a comic strip (1929-1967; 1979-1983), a radio program (1932-1947), several comic books (1933-present), a film serial (1939), a book series (1981-1993), and two television series (1950-1951; 1979-1981), the latter of which is the one I (barely) remember. His origin story has been retold several times, always updated for the era, but it always consists of a present-day military officer who, through some plot development, gets put in suspended animation for 500 years and wakes up in a universe in which humanity has rebuilt after a disaster and is engaged in factional warfare using whatever futuristic technologies could be imagined at the time. My understanding is that the original stories and comics featured an Earth-based Buck Rogers, but the later TV series and books have been set in space.

Various depictions of Buck Rogers over the years.

The merger of the Buck Rogers universe with TSR is an interesting story. Nowlan originally syndicated his strip through the John F. Dille Company (later the National Newspaper Syndicate), which came to own the rights to the character. (Dille himself also contributed some creative elements to the franchise.) The rights passed through the Dille family trust and ultimately to the hands of Lorraine Dille Williams, who in 1984 was hired by Gary Gygax to manage the struggling TSR. Shortly thereafter, the TSR board ousted Brian and Kevin Blume, who had mismanaged the company, and the Blumes sold their shares to Williams. Gygax tried to have the sale voided but when he failed, he said screw it and sold his own shares to Williams. She was the majority owner, and head of the company, until she sold it to Wizards of the Coast in 1997.

With Williams owning both TSR and the Buck Rogers licenses, it seemed inevitable that TSR would publish a Buck Rogers RPG, and indeed Buck Rogers XXVC came out in 1988. Since SSI got the license from TSR to produce the first real D&D CRPGs, a Buck Rogers CRPG was a natural addition to the arrangement.

The game uses the same version of the Buck Rogers universe as the tabletop RPG, created by Williams's brother, Flint Dille. Rogers is an ace military pilot who, in 1990, flies a spaceship into orbit to destroy a Soviet "space weapons platform" called Masterlink. He succeeds, but his ship is heavily damaged, forcing him to eject in space. Back on Earth, the enraged Soviets blanket the U.S. with ballistic missiles, launching the "Last Gasp War," a conflict whose destruction leaves the world so horrified that everyone hastily disarms and forms international alliances to ensure world peace. These include the Russo-American Mercantile (RAM), the Euro-Bloc, and the Indo-Asian Consortium. These three eventually join together into the System States Alliance, which pioneers nuclear fusion in spacecraft and starts to explore, mine, terraform, and colonize planets. RAM takes over Mars, the Euro-Bloc gets the moon, and the Indo-Asians take Venus.

In 2275, RAM rebels against the rest of the Earth government and starts a devastating war that leaves the fascist RAM in control of a planet reverted to barbarism. Refugees flee to Mercury (it is left unexplained how they manage to colonize a planet with no atmosphere, about 1/3 Earth gravity, and a temperature that ranges from -280 to 800 degrees farenheit). A rebel alliance called the New Earth Organization (NEO) forms.

In 2456, Buck Rogers is found floating in space and is awakened from cryo-sleep. In the intervening centuries, his reputation "has been elevated to nearly mythological status by media hype--he has become a symbol as the last martyr of old Earth's foolish political struggle." Rogers soon joins with the NEO and, in a bold plan, steals a squadron of RAM spacefighters and uses them to destroy the base of RAM's power, an orbiting weapons platform called the Gauntlet. RAM abandons Earth to NEO but still launches occasional attacks and is rumored to be mustering its strength for a counteroffensive.

An inspiring speech from my commander.

I rather imagined that the player takes the role of Buck Rogers in the game, but instead you control a group of fresh NEO recruits, eager to join the struggle against the remnants of RAM. As the game begins, the recruits are in the "Chicagorg spaceport," receiving an orientation from their commanding officer, Carlton Turabian, who explains that the recruits will be given "patrol and salvage" missions at the beginning and will have to work their way up to combat. But the briefing is interrupted by a squadron of RAM ships who bomb the base and then engage with ground troops. Within a few minutes, the party is in combat on the first map.

The game uses the same Gold Box engine as Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Champions of Krynn, with only a few changes. The graphics and fonts are more futuristic, of course (though the combat sounds are identical to Champions). Characters have blasters instead of bows. What was "bandage" in the D&D titles is "aid" here. The six core attributes are the same, though there's an additional one called "Tech," or technical knowledge. Experience and leveling proceed as per D&D, and both armor class and THAC0 are present.

The races are all different, of course. You choose from the humanoid Terrans, Martians, Venusians, and Mercurians, or from the bio-engineered Tinkers (small and monkey-like, good with tools) and Desert Runners (canine/felines known for their athleticism). The humanoid races have small adjustments to their stats, explained by differences in gravity and atmosphere, but are otherwise mostly the same. Instead of "classes," we get "careers": rocketjocks (pilots), warriors, engineers, rogues, and medics. Each has minimum attribute requirements.

The biggest difference (so far) between Buck Rogers and the D&D Gold Box games is this game's selection of skills. There are more than 50 of them, including such wide-ranging abilities as climbing, piloting rockets, picking pockets, demolitions, treating diseases, programming, and singing. (Some of them, as the manual notes, aren't even used in this game but are offered in anticipation of the sequel.) You start with a certain number of points to funnel into both "career" skills (those special to the profession) and "general" skills.

This is the kind of thing that ties me in knots at the outset of a game. I have no idea what skills will actually be valuable and which will turn out to be worthless. I have no idea how many points I have to allot to the skills before it's enough. When you read walkthroughs for games like this, you inevitably encounter notes that say something like, "Make sure you put at least 50 points into 'pilot rocket!' If you don't, you won't be able to leave the starting base, and you'll have to start over!" Or, "Don't bother with 'climb.' There isn't a single place in the game where you can use it."

Assigning skill points during character creation.

Lacking the ability to read walkthroughs, I looked over the descriptions, prioritized the skills I thought were useful, and did the best I could. We'll see how well it works out.

The manual notes that you want to have at least a rocketjock, a medic, and an engineer. So many of the skills I thought were important were tech skills that I ended up going with two engineers. My party consists of:

• Austin, a male Terran warrior. Skills in leadership, battle tactics, jetpack use, acting, fast-talking, distracting, and etiquette. (I rolled until I had high charisma and decided to go with him as both my warrior and "party leader.")
• Starbuck, a male Desert Runner rocketjock. Skills in piloting, maneuvering in 0G, mathematics, planetology, and astronomy.
• Dale, a female Venusian engineer. Skills in repairing electrical and mechanical and nuclear engines, jury rigging, demolitions, and weapon repair.
• Bonnie, a female Tinker engineer. Skills in repairing life support and rocket hulls, commo operations, sensor operations
• Elias, a male Martian rogue. Skills in notice, bypass security, open lock, hide in shadows, move silently, pick pockets, climb, fast talk, first aid, tracking, and shadowing.
• Theta Sigma, a male Mercurian medic. Skills in treating wounds, diagnose, treating poisoning, treating stun and paralysis, and library searching.

The character sheet.

After you set your race, career, and name, your roll for attributes (re-rolling as many times as you want), and then pick your skills. After the character is created, just as in D&D games, the game gives you the ability to "modify" any statistics that you'd like, which I'm sure many players use to jack everything up to the maximum. I resisted, but just as in the D&D games, it didn't take too many rolls to get high scores anyway.

Instead of setting weapons, clothing, hair, other parts, and their associated colors, as in the D&D games, Buck Rogers has you pick from a selection of 36 icons of characters in various poses.

The economy uses "credits" instead of gold, but in any event, characters start armed and armored with "bolt guns" and space suits.

Combat. I think those objects are just for visual effect.

Within moments of beginning, I was engaged in my first combat with several "Terrines," or warriors bio-engineered by RAM. It was odd fighting with the Gold Box engine in a way that was mostly ranged rather than melee. There are a few variations from the D&D games:

• Characters with high "leadership" can draw NPCs to the party's side. Sometimes they're even controllable.
• When targeting, the game cycles only through enemies, not PCs.
• The game remembers which enemy you targeted in the previous round.
• There are some new commands, including intimidating enemies, flying to another place on the battlefield with a jetpack (which I don't have yet, of course), and sprinting--which allows you to cover more ground, but at the expense of not being able to attack when you're done.
• You can throw grenades, which I suppose is analogous to using magic items in the fantasy games.
• "Guard" in the D&D games meant that the character would stand ready and as soon as an enemy came into melee range, he'd attack. It works similarly here, but in this case the character stands ready with a rifle or pistol and fires as soon as an enemy comes into missile range.
• At the end of combat, the medic automatically treats injured characters; the option doesn't seem to be otherwise available in the regular movement menus.

There are little icons like fuel pumps on the battlefield, and I was hoping I could do neat things like shoot them to get them to blow up and injure enemies, but I think they're just for show.

The combat victory screen. We have "divvy" instead of "share," but otherwise it's identical to the D&D series.

I'll have much more on combat later, of course, but for now suffice to say that after a few, my characters had upgraded from bolt guns to laser pistols, and from regular spacesuits to "smart suits." I also got a supply of "dazzle grenades," but I found that they generally underperformed regular attacks.

The opening map.

The opening area featured the traditional Gold Box 16 x 16 layout, with coordinates numbered 0-15 starting in the upper-left. I couldn't visit all the areas in the map--I kept getting messages that heat from the explosions was driving me back. There were numerous "atmospheric" messages noting destruction, bodies, and wounded soldiers.

Note the futuristic cityscape in the background.

At the beginning, a dying officer mumbled something about getting to missile control and turning on the disabled defenses. This was clarified by another wounded officer, who told me that it was on the east side of the compound.

The base offered repeated battles with Terrine soldiers--so many that I'm not sure there was a limit on the random encounters the way there is in most Gold Box maps. When I finally found the missile control room, I defeated a group of Terrine guards and found a technician furiously trying to program the system to fire missiles at our base.

The game gave me some cool role-playing options here, starting with whether I should fire at the technician (and risk damaging the equipment) or charge the technician (and give him more time to finish). I chose to charge. I took him out, but he threw a grenade on the ground to destroy the equipment. Here, I had another choice: take cover or throw myself on the grenade. Austin chose the latter, and fortunately, it didn't kill him; it just took his hit points down to about 50%. 

Later, I reloaded and found that if you take cover, everyone dies. So I guess maybe it isn't a great "role-playing" choice.

With the equipment saved, I was able to turn on the missile defenses and save the base. I got a nice reward of experience and gold and was whisked away to the spaceport Salvation III, where Commander Carlton Turabian greeted me using a speech from the attached logbook. Impressed with my performance, he assigned me immediately to a space tug.

The spaceport works like a "menu town," where you can visit the bar, buy and sell goods, level up, get healed, and embark on the next journey. All my characters rose to Level 3 (and got attendant skill upgrades), and I dumped the excess equipment I'd been collecting.

Is it possible that we have yet another Gold Box title with a useless economy?

So far, I like the game about as much as any Gold Box title. The combat got a little boring towards the end of the first map, since with such limited equipment, I didn't have very many tactical options. I expect that to change now that I can buy new stuff. I look forward to seeing what else awaits me in the 25th century, including space combat, which promises a much different Gold Box experience.

Legend of Faerghail: Buggin' Out

There's supposed to be a castle here.

Legend of Faerghail is doing its best to make me quit. To recap:

1. I started with the DOS version and got a few hours into it before realizing that the game was buggy in a way that prevented encounters from showing up in the dwarven mines (and perhaps other dungeons as well). I had to switch to the Amiga version and start over.

2. The game offers at least one riddle that, poorly translated from a reference likely unknown to non-German-speakers, is essentially unsolvable without a spoiler.

3. Several Amiga versions are bugged in such a way that prevents winning the game. After studying the message boards linked to me by my readers, I downloaded the "bug-free" version...

4. ...only to find a bug that prevented any graphics (monster, chests, anything) from showing up while exploring the Temple of the Dragon Servants...

There's supposed to be a fire elemental in this screen. Incidentally, this was a fun riddle. The answer was not "mirror."

5. ...and a more serious bug that caused the entrances to the derelict castle and the elven pyramid to disappear after leaving the Temple of the Dragon Servants.

I tried to solve the last issue by reloading a saved game from a time when the entrances were still visible, but after I wasted several hours re-exploring the Temple, I exited to find that the derelict castle was gone again. I read enough of a walkthrough to know that the derelict castle has something I need to win the game, and I need something from the Temple of the Dragon Servants to finish the castle.

(Please don't bother responding with solutions unless you've experienced this specific problem and know how to solve it. I've been to all the boards and tried all the standard stuff already.)

The Temple (which for some reason I've been calling the "Temple of the Savants" instead of "Dragon Servants") was a relatively brief dungeon that held so much treasure I couldn't carry it all, reflecting the game's extremely poor approach to an economy.

Each one of these chests, and many others, held around 500 gold pieces each.

In addition to the treasure, I found a strange book that chronicled the major artifact weapons to be found in the game (I have three, and I think I maybe discarded a fourth) and a "Mithril Ball" which, judging by the message I got from the woodkeeper near the derelict castle, is somehow necessary to defeat a vampire lord. There was also a "Keystaff" that I got from a statue.

The enemy parties in the dungeon took a level in difficulty. Most of them, judging by the description, were of a saurian species, including warriors and priests. They had a way of targeting all their attacks on my poorly-armored mage and killing him in one round. I finally got to the point where I had to withdraw after every successful round, save, heal my mage, and re-enter combat, repeating until victorious. The experience rewards were quite good, though, and I was able to advance everyone to Level 8 before discovering I couldn't advance any more in the game.

I've tried transferring my saved games to different versions and a host of other things to no avail. I could try reloading from an even earlier saved game, but I don't know if I have the stamina to repeat the same dungeons or the interest to keep bothering with a game that I find mediocre overall. So expect the next post to be on Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday while I think about it.

Game 125: Dungeons and Dragons (1980)

Yep, that's what we get for a title screen.

Dungeons and Dragons

Written by Peter Trefonas

CLOAD cassette magazine, May 1980, for TRS-80

Date Started: 1 December 2013
Date Ended: 1 December 2013

Total Hours: 3
Difficulty: Easy (2/5)
Final Rating: 10
Ranking at Time of Posting: 5/121 (4%)

I have to hand it to whoever put Dungeons and Dragons (for some reason incorrectly titled "Dungeons n Dragons") on the Wikipedia list of computer role-playing games. He had to dig deep for this one. The game is the very definition of "forgettable," and its omission even on a "comprehensive" list of RPGs would be perfectly understandable.

I don't mean to insult the game; it wasn't even designed to be memorable. It was distributed via the TRS-80 cassette magazine CLOAD and probably written in just a couple of days. I reviewed another cassette game, 1979's Dungeon, back in February. Magazines-on-cassette tape were a brief fad in the late 1970s and early 1980s, superseded by magazines on floppy disk and then, of course, the Internet, and every issue would contain some articles and a few brief sample programs, none of them really intended to compete with commercial software. I don't doubt that there were occasional gems among the cassettemag and diskmag programs, but this isn't one of them.

I'm playing it because I'm stuck in Legend of Faerghail (the entrance to the derelict castle has completely disappeared, replaced by a tree), and because it's an excuse to learn a TRS-80 emulator. Dungeons and Dragons isn't the first CRPG released for the TRS-80 (that would be the Dunjonquest titles in 1979), but it does seem to be the first (and one of only three on my list) CRPGs released only for the TRS-80. The most prominent among these titles is Dungeons of Daggorath, which readers have been encouraging me to play since the beginning of my blog. I'll get to it soon. [Later edit: I guess I'm mixing up TRS models. This might, in fact, be the only RPG exclusively available for the TRS-80.]

Playing this game helped me sort out some of my own computer history. For years, I had been thinking that my first personal computer, purchased from a neighbor in 1983 with $60 I made washing cars, was a TRS-80. But when I looked at some images online while downloading the emulator, I realized that I was wrong. My first PC had no peripherals, no drives, no monitor even; it hooked up to the television. After some further searching, I've come to the conclusion that it was, in fact, the Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS1000) that I used to hook up to my TV at home and amuse myself typing:

10 PRINT "CHESTER BOLINGBROKE!";

20 GOTO 10

RUN

Never gets old.

However, I did use a TSR-80 in my sixth-grade classroom. I remember writing trivia programs on it to amuse the other students, and it spawned a brief trivia craze among them that manifested in both computer and paper games. (With embarrassment, I recall that one of my trivia questions was "What is Shakespeare's famous quote?" The answer was "TO BE OR NOT TO BE," because, you know, he had only one.) I got reasonably good at BASIC programming for a while, enough that I made some modifications to a program that my mother used for data analysis at her firm.

Dungeons and Dragons is slightly more sophisticated than anything I wrote in my heyday, but not by much. It feels like a hurried version of Eamon, combining some basic statistics and random combat with text adventure gameplay, in an attempt to create something that feels like a classic D&D module: random encounters, fixed encounters, treasures, quest items, and a final boss. If it doesn't succeed it's because the 346 lines of code don't allow for enough complexity or variety. It's not a bad approach, though, and it could have served as the basis for something more extensive.

When you start the game, you name yourself and your god (the only consequence of this is in a few bits of text). The game automatically rolls strength (hit points), dexterity, armor class (yes, this is a random roll), and starting gold pieces; you have no option to re-roll except to reload the game. You buy one or two of seven weapons, depending on what you can afford, the rest of your gold gets converted to elven healing cakes and torches, and then you're off to the catacombs of...oh, for the love of..."Khazad'Dum"...to find a "large blue-white diamond."

The game map consists of only 28 named rooms (in a fixed layout) plus a little "maze of twisty passages" whose navigation seems random. You pass through them with the N, S, E, W, U, and D commands while in "travel" mode. While in "command" mode, there's a limited selection of commands--TAKE, SAY, EAT, SCORE, FILL, LIGHT, and CLUE--and most of them work in only one or two places. There is notably no way to check inventory or current hit points.

My map of the game.

 
The room descriptions are just brief sketches, though not badly written:

• A cobbled hall: large moss-cover cobblestones cover the floor
• Parlor of the Dead: Assorted bones lie scattered over the floor
• Ante-Room: Walls are paneled with black walnut; plush furniture lies on a thick red carpet
• Chamber of Fires: the air is stifling hot, and the walls are warm to the touch. A red glow eminates from the smoke along the SE corner

One of the room descriptions, with a special encounter with a demon.

A handful of the rooms have fixed encounters with treasure-bearing monsters--a demon, a troll, a stone giant, a vampire, and a gargoyle--but in most of them, you have a random chance of an encounter with something like a goblin, hobgoblin, berserker, or gnome. When you meet such enemies, you can try to flee, in which case the monster simply disappears from the dungeon.

If you attack, the game takes you to a weird real-time combat system. The enemy starts swinging at you, and you have to interrupt his swings with the "A" (regular attack), "B" (all-or-nothing attack), or "P" (pray) keys. The frequency with which you can interrupt his attacks with your own is based on dexterity, so this becomes the most important attribute in the game. (I found that any character I rolled with less than 12 dexterity was essentially walking dead.) If you're attacking, you have to specify the weapon's first three letters. Occasionally, the enemy knocks you down and you have to hit "S" to stand up.

Combat with a gnome.

The combats are quite deadly; if they weren't, the game would only take about 10 minutes. I rolled over 20 characters, some dying in the first room, before I found the optimal path through the game and was able to defeat the various fixed and random encounters.

Killing an enemy generally produces nothing but a slightly higher score, but in three places you get a special treasure: an amulet that raises your strength, a ring that lowers your AC, and a potion that increases your speed. There are also some scattered healing cakes throughout the dungeon.

Finding a treasure after defeating a gargoyle.

Your weapon can break during combat, and if you don't have a backup, you'll have to resort to your fists. But your fists can also "break," leaving you defenseless and soon dead.

Occasionally, if the monster's weapon and fists break, he'll surrender. If you don't accept it, you'll get a message that you've angered your god and he'll kill you.

There are a few navigation puzzles, such as one-way exits, all culminating in the "dragon's lair." The game manual takes perverse pride in noting that there are special commands that only work in the dragon's lair, and they don't bother to tell you what they are. Through a lot of trial and error (GIVE results in a message that if the dragon really wants something, he'll take it; PRAY says that not even the FSM can help you against the dragon), I figured out the solution was to RUB a lamp that I found in another part of the dungeon. This releases a genie who, in gratitude, banishes the dragon.

Apparently, the genie is more powerful than my god. I guess I'll be switching allegiances.

Then, for some reason I don't understand, rubbing the lamp again in a particular corridor results in a whispered message to hit SHIFT-B (producing a lower-case "b") back in the dragon's lair. Doing so takes you to a secret niche where the diamond is present. Grab the diamond and head back to the surface, and you get the winning message and your score. The score is based on the number of treasures you found and monsters you've killed; since monsters spawn randomly, there's no upper limit.

Wow! Not just lucky but "damm lucky!"

You have a kind-of "time limit" in that you have a fixed number of torches, and if you run out, you fall into a pit and "break every bone in your body"--this game's equivalent of getting eaten by a grue. Other than combat, other ways to die include going (D)own when on a bridge, eating mold from the walls of the cave (except a special yellow mold in one location, which heals you), eating cursed elven cakes (this happens randomly), refusing to accept an enemy's surrender, or doing the wrong thing in the dragon's cave, which results in him turning you to ash.
 

I give the game an 10 in my GIMLET, with 0s in the "NPC" and "economy" categories, 2 in "quests" and "gameplay" and 1 in everything else. It simply doesn't have enough RPG elements (especially character development) to be a good game.

Still, it deserves some credit as perhaps the first text adventure/RPG hybrid. Eamon--a much better game--was released the same year, but I think it was in the fall. Their releases are so close that it's hard to imagine that Dungeons and Dragons influenced Eamon, but I suppose it's possible. For some reason, this is the first game cited in Wikipedia's history of RPGs under the "personal computers" section, even though 13 others demonstrably precede it. It is the first RPG for the PC to use the Dungeons & Dragons name (if unofficially), although Dungeon of Death, abbreviated DND, came out a year earlier.

Of the developer, Peter Trefonas, I can find nothing. Between 1978 and 1981, he wrote a series of games for CLOAD, including Worm (a variant of the arcade game Snake), Blockade, Hustle, and Empire. He falls out of sight after that. He apparently contributed some thoughts to a TRS-80 fan site in 1996, but the e-mail provided by the site bounced back.

I'm playing the game via the "TRS32" emulator, and I'm indebted to Dale Dobson's "Gaming After 40" blog for providing such clear, specific instructions to help me with the .bas and .inf files that I was able to download. If nothing else, this experience set me up well for future TRS-80 games. The next "retro" game on the list is Dunjonquest: Hellfire Warrior. I wasn't able to find an Apple II version a few months ago, but perhaps I can find a TRS-80 version.

****

Further Reading: The issue of CLOAD in which this game first appeared (coverage begins towards the bottom of Page 2); my coverage of Eamon, which takes a similar approach.

Legend of Faerghail: Riddle Me This

I do have to give you that one.

Legend of Faerghail has become more interesting and more annoying in about equal measure. More interesting with some hints as to the plot; more annoying because the hints are so cryptic and in some cases translated poorly from German. More interesting with some tough riddles; more annoying because one of them is so tough I can't solve it.

When I last blogged, I had finished up the monastery near Cyldane, emerging with a mysterious (and extremely heavy) sarcophagus and some tomes that explained the titular legend in more detail. All I had left to do in the Cyldane area was to explore a walled region in the north of the map. As I entered the area, an old priest asked to join me on my way to the "oracle." I ditched Eljot, who had been with me since the monastery, and let him in. His name turned out to be Ihl Kazar, who (probably non-coincidentally) shares a first name with the author of "The Legend of Faerghail" books I found in the monastery.

It's a small annoyance, but I don't know why the game makes you type out "YES."

When he joined, he gave me a leather bag and said something about wearing the "mask" as long as it's not in its bag. He also told me to check out the gravestones in the elven cemetery before going to the "pyramid." He turned out to be absolutely useless after that; he won't even attack in combat. For some reason--mostly because I forgot I could parlay NPC monsters into joining me--I kept him around for several more hours, reasoning that at least he was drawing some enemies' attacks.

As we progressed along the path to the oracle, we encountered three elementals posing riddles. As you know, I enjoy riddles in games, though I'm wary when they're translated from another language. In this case, they didn't do too bad.

1. "The more it gets, the more it eats, and has it eaten all, it dies."
2. "A father's child, a mother's child, but son of none."
3. "I talk without soul, I hear without ears, I talk without mouth, and I'm born in the air."
4. "Two little windows, they have non glass, they stand next together like flowers in the grass. Two little windows, they show us the world, they show us the stars, the forest, the field, and the fold."

If I ran into this guy in a passageway, I'm not sure I'd be able to concentrate on his little poem.

I found numbers 1 (FIRE) and 4 (EYES) far too easy, number 3 (ECHO) gave me a little pause, and I'm embarrassed how long it took me to figure out number 2 (DAUGHTER), which should have been more or less instant.

At the end of the path, in a stone circle, a "thundering voice" told me to "go to he, who submitted to evil, and find the face of Balaan. Break his imprisoned fire and drown his vision in the dying of life." I imaging that will somehow be helpful later.

At this point, I'd finished everything (I think) in the Cyldane area, so I went back into the mines to return to the Thyn side of the valley. But I thought that since I was now stronger, I'd try to explore the two lower levels of the mines. Level 4 produced not much of interest except a little creature who, for 250 gold, told me that to kill Balaan, I'll need "weapons and armor that bear a very special emblem."

These little creatures keep popping up everywhere. I don't know what they're supposed to be.

At the end of the level, I faced an elemental who offered a riddle that I couldn't solve, not even after I got a hint later. This is the riddle in its entirety:

What is it, that not many like, but directs even the greatest of king's actions. It's much like a sword, and made to hurt, but it never draws blood even though wounding thousands. It thieves no-one but does make rich. It spans the whole earth and makes life fit. The greatest kingdoms it has founded, and built the oldest of them all, but never has it begun a war and the peoples who trust in it will live in plenty for ever more....

Nothing I tried--NEED, WANT, FAITH, DEATH--worked, and none of them quite fit anyway. The hint I later received in the elven pyramid was to "think about the work of the dwarves." I returned and tried METAL, IRON, SMITHING, MINING, and several other similar terms, but again none really fit anyway. I admit I'm stumped on this one. If you have a guess (not if you know the answer from a walkthrough or a previous play), feel free to comment.

In the meantime, I had plenty of other places to go. I trudged back up four levels of mines, returned to Thyn, and visited an "old priestess" in a forest clearing who I'd bypassed before out of the lack of a clue on what to do with her. I "used" every item in my possession until she finally responded to the amulet and gave me a Staff of Healing.

 

Doesn't look that old to me.

In terms of dungeons, I had three places remaining: the derelict castle, the elven headquarters, and Temple of the Savants. Figuring my quest started with the elves, I headed there. To get in, I had to answer a query about the lineage of the elves from the game manual, though I don't understand from studying this diagram how Scagnar is Findal's youngest uncle.

The elven "pyramid" consisted of four levels that gradually got smaller as they went up. The accumulation of room descriptions and hints suggested that the elves had recently become martial and bloodthirsty when their king was deposed and they made some kind of alliance with dragons. The pyramid featured the best graphics so far, with neat touches like detailed paintings on the walls:

Wandering monsters included elven guards, elven officers, elven mages, dwarves, and lizard men, and none of them were particularly hard except the mages. The mages have a "stun" spell that never seems to wear off  no matter how long I rest after the battle. Nor do I have any effective counter-spell. The only way I could find to cure it was to return all the way to the town and go to the temple, which I did exactly once. After that, I simply withdrew from any encounter with mages.

 

The levels were also full of treasure, so much that I had to retreat to the town and its bank several times--a process made all the more absurd by the fact that chests respawn when you return. Eventually, I just stopped picking up gold, knowing I could always return for the loot if I needed it. I marked locations of high-value treasure chests on my map.

In addition to gold, I found lots of good weapon and armor upgrades, including elven chain and some "dragon chain" and "dragon leather." Everyone has a pretty high AC now except for my mage, who hasn't found anything that he can wear. 

Another weird little creature told me that "only gem, corona, and staff make the key to the mountain." Okay, then. A dwarven warrior in a jail cell warned me that my amulet is "not genuine." A lot of people have stuff to say about the amulet; it's a good thing I didn't reject it at the beginning of the game.

 

At one point, I freed a lizard man from a jail cell and he gave me two maps. Reading them in-game referred me to numbered maps in the game manual, much like the journal entries you find in the Gold Box games, Wasteland, Dragon Wars, and such. They didn't really help. They showed locations of secret doors, but I'm in the habit of always looking for secret doors anyway.

 

I liked this image of a lizard man. I suppose it's plagiarized, too.

 

At the top level of the pyramid, I had an encounter with the "Mask Bearer" who went down in a few hits, leaving a glowing mask behind. The game didn't give me any option to pick it up, but remembering Ihl's statement that connected the mask to the leather bag he gave me, I used the bag and got it that way. I tried then using the mask, and it turned the character who used it into the new Mask Bearer and I was forced to kill him. I reloaded and just kept the mask for (presumably) later.

 

 

Also on the top level was a long corridor blocked by two "black flames." A previous scroll I found had said to defeat such flames with holy water. Unfortunately (see below) I didn't know which of the potions in my backpacks were holy water, so I tried random ones until the flames went down. In a cell on the far side of the flames was the imprisoned elven king. I'd hoped he'd explain a little bit about what was going on with the elves and such, but he just said that now that I'd freed him, he'd be able to fight his ancient enemy. He gave me the aforementioned hint to the riddle in the dwarven mines, said my amulet was the key to getting to the bottom level of the mines, and he gave me an elven bow.

 

Without this hint, I probably wouldn't have figured it out.

 

While exploring the pyramid, I discovered some locked doors that were passable by my thief's lockpicking or, when that failed, repeatedly bashing into them. But I also found some that clearly required a key, and I never found those keys. I hate leaving areas unexplored, but a thorough scouring of the pyramid didn't produce any more keys, so I'm not sure what that's about. Dejectedly, I left and returned to Thyn to level up.

 

This would be "rubbing it in."

 

My biggest problem with the game right now is that I'm loaded with items that I have no idea what they are. Some of them are probably treasures that can be sold; others are quest items; and others are perhaps magic items I haven't figured out how to use. These all include:

 

• A "holy symbol" found in a chest in the elven pyramid. My paladin can theoretically use it, but it's not equippable.
• A "golden casket," also found in a chest
• A coal sack found in the dwarven mines
• A barrel of explosives, also found in the dwarven mines
• The sarcophagus from the monastery catacombs. It would be really cool to get rid of this because it weighs 300 points (out of 530 capacity for the character who has it).
• A whole series of keys from the elven pyramid--air, fire, earth, and water--that opened no doors there (or perhaps some did, but not all)
• An "elven bow" given to me by the elven king. Just a good weapon, or a quest artifact?
• "Crafts" from the monastery
• Several copies of books titled "Lord of Rinse" and "Book of Stars." Also one titled "Book of Herbs," and another titled "The Capital." None of these produce text when you "use" them, unlike some other books.
• A "sacred dagger" from the elven pyramid
• A "drum of fear." Forget where I got that.
• Numerous scrolls of "enchant armour." You'd think they'd enchant my armour, but if I try to use them, I just get a message that it's "of no use in this situation."
• The mask from above

 

I'd appreciate any hints as to these items, because I'm seriously thinking about just selling the ones I don't understand.

I'm also a bit annoyed by the way the game handles potions. There doesn't seem to be any way to identify them. If I try to sell them at the store, the shopkeeper will say, "I'll give you X gold pieces for that Potion of Whatever," but that's the only way I can determine the nature, and it doesn't rename the potion when he says that. I have to remember what each potion does by its position in the inventory.

 

Not to mention what is a "Potion of Kybol"?

 

Other miscellaneous notes:

• I keep encountering "tradesmen" as wandering monsters. You'd think, given their name, they'd be interested in trade, but they never respond to my overtures. They just want to fight.

They look so friendly, too.

• I've had three NPCs join me so far, and none of them have said anything interesting after I added them to my party. There was no victory speech from Eljot when we cleared out the dark dwarves from the monastery, for instance.

• I've accumulated food so fast that it's weighing me down too much. There doesn't seem to be any way to drop it, but I got rid of a lot of it by trading it to my NPC before I booted him out of the party.

 

I now have the derelict castle and the Temple of the Savants to explore, plus the bottom level of the dwarven mines if I can ever figure out the riddle. My characters are Levels 5 or 6; I've been getting about one level per character per dungeon. Flush with cash, I've trained all of my characters in every language in the game: animal, orc, troglodyte, elf, dwarf, lizard man, "dark," and "magic."

This game has its moments, but I was ready for it to be over some time ago. It just doesn't feel like a six-posting game. I'm hoping I can win it in one more.

****

Further Reading: My first, second, third, fourth, and fifth posts on Legend of Faerghail, plus coverage of the game on "CRPG Revisiting old classics."

NetHack Version 2.3e: Ascended!

 

NetHack (early series; version 2.3e)

The NetHack development team 

The series includes 4 public releases between July 1987 and April 1988

Date Started: 3 January 2011
Date Ended: 12 June 2013

Total Hours: 62
Difficulty: Hard-Very Hard (4.5/5)
Final Rating: 36
Ranking at Time of Posting: 76/121 (63%)

Okay, here's how this happened: a few months ago, when I was bored waiting somewhere with no Internet access, I started fiddling with the NetHack app on my iPhone. I had remembered not liking it before, and I still didn't really like it. It isn't the app's fault; the iPhone screen just isn't big enough to accommodate much of the dungeon, nor many of the common commands.

But the whole experience gave me a NetHack jones. The good thing about NetHack is that it's perfect for small blocks of time, especially when you're half-doing something else. Its minimal graphics, no sound, and ability to pause indefinitely between moves makes it an ideal supplement to boring conference calls, webinars, bus rides, TV viewing, and whatever else. If I'm sitting in an airport with five minutes to kill before my flight, I'm not going to fire up Wizardry VI or Legend of Faerghail; it takes that long just to get the game running, map sheets and note pages open, and all the windows positioned right. But a five-minute NetHack session is just fine. In fact, I'd argue that NetHack probably should be played in small bursts of time, so you don't lose your level of alertness and make mistakes.

If I was going to play more NetHack, I wasn't going to waste time playing the version I'd already ascended, and I didn't want to jump the line by going to the 1992 version, so I decided to go backwards and mess around with 2.3e, the last of the "early NetHack" series, which I played for a while back in January 2011.

I was surprised to note how primitive this version seemed compared to 3.0, which I ascended back in June. Early NetHack had no rogue class, no alignments, no attributes other than strength. Classes don't have names associated with their levels. The screen doesn't display your current condition--blind, hallucinating, confused, and so forth--so you have to note what's happening and when it goes away. There are no NPCs (oracles, guards, friendly creatures, priest) or any command to talk to them even if they existed.

Apparently someone thought this was funny.

The dungeon structure is also a lot more primitive. There are no special levels except the idiotic one featuring the Three Stooges that only appears in this edition. There's no castle level, nor does Vlad's tower appear in the levels of Hell. There is a division starting around Level 30 between dungeon levels and the mazes of Hell. The Medusa is present in this early version, on the last level before Hell, and she was responsible for the deaths of two of my characters. Instead of a Wand of Wishing in the castle, you get one hiding under a boulder on the first level of Hell, a fact that caused no end of frustration when my characters lacked any way to bust up that boulder. More on that below.

And the maze levels oddly use hyphens instead of pipes to mark vertical walls.

Like the 3.0 series (but unlike later versions, I think), the Wizard of Yendor has the Amulet in his possession, and he's located on some random level of Hell (between 30 and 60). There are no down stairways on the Hell level, meaning that you have to find some way to get to the bottom and begin working up.

But enough was the same that I had my bearings. In my final rating for the 3.0 version, I bragged that, "now that I've won, now that I know how the entire dungeon maps out, now that I realize what's possible and how to do it, I think I could ascend... at least once every 20 characters." Well, that nearly held true. I think I fielded 27 or 28 characters before I ascended, and about 18 of them made it past dungeon level 15. When I look back on my early posts, I can't believe how many characters I lost for dumb reasons on the first few levels.

In many ways, early NetHack is harder than the 3.0 series. (Since I haven't played it, I can't compare it to the current version.) Some reasons:

• There are intrinsics, but they're a complete mystery: you get no hint that you've acquired the intrinsic when you eat a corpse. This means if you eat something that grants poison resistance, the only way you'll know it works is the next time something tries to poison you. There isn't even an option to see your intrinsics when you die.

• I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think classes start with intrinsics, and certainly not all the ones they get in later versions. The barbarian isn't immune to poison, for instance.

• The game is much fonder of swarming you with multiple foes at once--including extremely frequent orc hordes and killer bee colonies--than the later version.

These guys were right at the bottom of the stairs.

• There are no helpful messages that indicate the presence of monsters, shopkeepers, throne rooms, and such.

• Dipping potions in fountains doesn't dilute them, so you can't make plain water that way to later turn into Holy Water. Even if you could, there are no altars to make Holy Water. This is fine, though, because dipping things in Holy Water doesn't bless them. There are no blessed items in this version, just regular ones and cursed ones. 

• The lack of altars also means that you don't have an easy way to test the cursed status of items.

• There are unicorns, but they don't leave horns, meaning you don't have instant ways to cure hallucination, confusion, and the like.

• Although blindfolds and pick-axes exist, I never encountered them as items in the dungeon. The only way I ever acquired them is by either starting with them or wishing for them.

• The enemy AI actually seems more intelligent in this early version. They don't necessarily come charging at you, nor to they stand in one spot during your combat. They'll dance around and move aside to allow their allies to flank you instead of, say, stubbornly standing in doorways.

• The cool weapon/artifact Excalibur is not immune to damage as in later versions.

• Perhaps most notably: there's a level cap at 14! Between regular combats, Potions of Gain Level, and wraiths, this is extremely easy to achieve.

• Wishes seem rarer. Thrones and fountains are very reluctant to give them up, and there are no Scrolls of Charging to help you get more out of the occasional wand.

• I don't have the quantitative evidence, but I felt this version had a lot more traps, including "mine traps" that not only damage you but screw up your legs and reduce your encumbrance capacity for a time.

• There are no items of magic resistance or reflection. No amulets at all, in fact (except the Amulet of Yendor). No cloaks except the Elven Cloak. No boots.

• The dungeon consists of 60 levels instead of just 50.

• Enemies have no trouble following you upstairs, so you can't use the "stair-scumming" trick.

• There are a billion ways to directly get your strength drained from both monsters and corpses, at least until you finally get lucky and get the "resist poison" intrinsic. Potions of Restore Strength are some of the most valuable objects in this game.

Balancing these challenges was a series of things that made it a little easier, at least in parts:

• Spellbooks were a lot more plentiful, and genocide actually appears in this version as a spell that you can acquire. I hardly used spells in 3.0, but in this version, they were key to my success.

I just about fell out of my chair when I saw this. But you do still have to be a fairly high level to cast it successfully, and it fades fast.

• Identification scrolls also seemed more plentiful. Between acquiring the "identify" spell and identification scrolls (along with the various tricks I'd picked up during my 3.0 series play), I rarely didn't know what things were.

• Though Excalibur is weaker, since there are no alignments in this game, any class can acquire it very easily by dipping a longsword into a fountain. 

Not quite how it happened to King Arthur, but we'll go with it.

• No soldier ants. No liches. If you can genocide dragons, you don't have any heavy-damage spellcasters to worry about. This balances the lack of any magic resistance items.

• "Genocide" automatically works on every monster type in a class, just as "blessed genocide" does in later versions.

• Elven cloaks protect against rust monsters, so they aren't the same menace they are in later versions.

• Though there are no altars, you can "sacrifice" and boost your luck anywhere.

• Although none of the Hell levels have down staircases, all of the up staircases are in the exact place that you arrive from the level below. This makes it absurdly easy to both find the Wizard (just put on the blindfold on the 60th level, find the staircase, and hit "up" until you seen him) and to escape the Hell levels after finding the Amulet.

• There's no "final level" after you leave the dungeon. Winning is just a matter of getting back to Level 1 and going up the stairs.

Because this version lacks so many of the items (particularly magic-resistant and reflection ones), the "ascension kit" ends up being quite small: a blindfold and the "telepathy" intrinsic, a Ring of Teleport Control, a Ring of Fire Resistance to survive in Hell, a Potion of Levitation to get across the Wizard's moat, (there are no boots), and some way to get down to Level 60 and start searching for him. The latter bit ended up being the hardest. It's tough to find level teleport traps after you have a means of teleportation control. There's no Unholy Water so no way to curse a Scroll of Teleportation to get you there when you're ready to go. I ultimately got there by reading a regular Scroll of Teleportation while confused, but you have to get lucky to find the items in the right order.

Without telepathy and a blindfold, you couldn't scope the Wizard like this. You'd have to go looking for him at the center of every level. That would get old fast.

After a series of characters who died both honorable and stupid deaths (eating tainted corpses, stumbling into water while confused, acquiring teleportitis before teleport control and warping into the middle of a treasure zoo, stumbling on the Medusa unaware), I won with Chester the Archaeologist. I decided to go with that class because he starts with a pick-axe, one of the few items I consider absolutely essential. On the way down, I found a Ring of Teleport Control and Ring of Fire Resistance fairly early, both within a massive shop on Level 2.

Look at all this stuff. I was testing things in here for hours.

I cleared out several throne rooms on the way down and, after taking care to boost my luck by sacrificing fresh corpses, sat in them. In one of them, I got my strength elevated to 18. On another, I got the option to genocide a creature, and I chose dragons. Later, with a spell of genocide I acquired, I did away with vampires, too. I used the Wand of Wishing on the first level of Hell to get a blindfold, then zoomed down to Level 60 and started working back. I found the Wizard and his pet Hellhound on Level 40, in a closed chamber surrounded by a moat.

Chester acquires the last item he needs.

I had found out the hard way from a previous character that you don't want to use the Wand of Death on the Wizard in this version. It just bounces off his wall and kills you:

Well, that sucks. Gideon the Barbarian was moments from winning.

But as I said earlier, this version's Wizard is a pushover. I killed him with Excalibur, grabbed the Amulet, and headed up quite quickly given the way this version of Hell handles stairways. As in later versions, the Wizard occasional returns and dogs you on the way up, but he's no more difficult than he was in his lair.

Yes, and I'm pretty sure I can do it again.

Between my existing maps and teleportation, I was able to clear the way back to the surface almost too easily.

I never found an Elven Cloak with this character, so my equipment took a pounding from rust monsters.

Although not all the spoilers I'd previously learned helped, the overall approach did: move slowly, think, be cautious. Don't go nuts chasing nymphs around to recover things you don't need. Don't feel like you have to explore every room and kill every creature. Don't feel inadequate if you ignore throne rooms and treasure zoos.

I absolutely do not have to prove myself in here.

When I ascended in 3.0, the winning message indicated that I'd become a demi-god. The winning shot for this version is more akin to Rogue, where getting out with the Amulet simply added points to your final score, but the position on the leaderboard was ultimately more important than "winning" the game.

Now that I've experienced the totality of the game, some adjustment of the original GIMLET (which I completed almost three years ago) is in order. Version 3.0 improves so much on this one that it deserves to be ahead by more than 2 points.

• Character creation and development goes down to 4 (I originally gave it 6). With no alignments, the opening choices makes less of a difference, and the inability to see intrinsics develop means that it's hard to enjoy that aspect to leveling. 

• Encounters and foes goes to 5. The next version more solidly deserves the 6 that I previously gave to this version, with a greater selection of enemies with special attacks, and more special encounter locations.

• Equipment gets docked a point to 7. This version lacks the full breadth of 3.0's gear, and it doesn't have the options to mix and match them in so many cool ways.

• By giving this game a 7 on gameplay originally, I was being inconsistent in how I usually treat elements of difficulty. The same score I gave 3.0, 5, would be more consistent.

• Everything else stays the same: game world at 1; NPC interaction at 1; magic and combat at 5; economy at 4; quests at 2; graphics, sound, and inputs at 2.

This brings the score for NetHack 2.3e down to 36 from the 42 I assigned originally. When I first rated it, I was giving it too much credit for what I hadn't seen. This new score makes this version scale much better with the 44 that I gave to version 3.0.

This little endeavor added another 42 hours to my gameplay time on this version, added to the 20 I spent on it back in 2011.

Despite the more primitive nature of the gameplay, this version satisfied my roguelike cravings for the moment, so it's time to get it together and get back on track with the main list. Thanks for indulging me in this diversion.

***

Further Reading:  My first, second, third, fourth, and GIMLET postings on this version of game from January 2011; my ascension from 3.0 and my GIMLET for that version; a rundown of the 2.3e version from Wikihack.