Game 173: Moria (1983)

Moria was first released in 1983; I'm playing a DOS version from 1988 that, as far as I can tell, maintains the basic structure, mechanics, and spirit of the original game.

      

Moria

United States

Independently developed and distributed
Released 1983 on VMS systems; ported by various developers over the years to multiple platforms, including DOS, in 1988, by Don Kneller
Date Started: 23 December 2013

     

If we ignore graphics and sound, both of which should matter least to an RPG player, Moria is second only to Ultima III as the most advanced game of 1983. In considerations of equipment, economy, and monster variation, it not only surpasses Ultima III but any game released in 1984 and most games released in 1985. Again, we have to note that reliance on ASCII characters and only the most primitive sounds freed roguelike developers (in this case, University of Oklahoma students Robert Alan Koeneke and Jimmey Wayne Todd) to focus all their attention on logistics and mechanics. NetHack remains my highest-ranked game when it comes to the uses and variety of equipment, and only a few games rival it when it comes to the variety and special attacks and defenses of its monsters. I knew nothing about the roguelike sub-genre when I started this project, and my exposure to it has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my blog.

Moria is arguably the second roguelike game, after Rogue itself. Hack is often credited as a 1982 game, but as far as I can tell, it wasn't released until 1984, which of course matters most when considering a chronology. Wikipedia's chronology of roguelikes gives several others that supposedly precede Moria, but all of them are quasi-roguelikes retroactively labeled. They precede Rogue itself (Beneath Apple Manor, DUNGEON), show no awareness of Rogue (Sword of Fargoal, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Cloudy Mountain), or don't have the full complement of roguelike features.  To review, these are usually given as:

• Turn-based movement, ideally with no activity during the period between player actions
• Randomly-generated areas
• Abstract representation of graphics, usually with ASCII characters
• Permadeath: while you can save a game for later play, the death of a character results in the erasure of the saved file (or it's erased on every startup)

These four elements seem to be on everyone's list. Most of them also feature some kind of complex logistics associated with items, including an identification system, creative ways in which they interact, and a large variety of items to wear, wield, and use. 

The frequency and permanence of this screen separates roguelikes from normal RPGs.

Moria is certainly a good roguelike and a good CRPG for 1983, but it's somewhat unsatisfying playing it after NetHack. Unsatisfying and disconcerting, I should say, because the game looks like NetHack and yet operates under different rules. Some, but not all, of the commands, items, and monsters are the same. Having invested an absurd number of hours in NetHack last year, it was very difficult to re-learn the interface and conventions of a visually-similar but mechanically-different game. Ultimately, NetHack is a much better game, but of course it's also much later. In discussing the game, I'll try to make more comparisons to Rogue, its predecessor, than NetHack.

A typical Moria screen. On Level 1 of the dungeon and character Level 2, I fight a giant white centipede, who happens to be standing right next to a kobold. Another centipede awaits me in the room beyond, as well as a potion.

Moria's main quest is to descend into the mines of Moria and slay a balrog. (The two names are  lifted from the works of an obscure 20th century British author.) There's no other back story or context to the game world. The game begins above-ground, in a town with multiple shops and a handful of crude NPCs. From here, the player descends into 50+ levels of randomly-generated dungeons, slaying monsters, increasing levels, and finding better pieces of equipment on the way. Assuming the player makes it that far, the balrog is found somewhere around Level 50. Killing it immediately and victoriously ends the game.

Several characteristics of dungeon generation make Moria significantly different from Rogue and, ultimately, NetHack:

• The dungeon levels are very large, occupying multiple screens.

• Although you can move both up and down in the dungeon (and return to town), dungeon levels are randomly-generated every time you visit. There's no need to exhaustively explore a level, as you only have to go down and then back up to regenerate the level with new monsters and treasures.

• Because of the random generation, all staircases are one-way. Upon arriving on a new level, you must find new staircases both to go down and to return to upper levels.

• Monsters respawn extremely slowly on levels you've already cleared.

I found the game relatively easy in its early stages. It's quite hard to die in the first five or so levels, except through carelessness or really bad luck. Because enemies hardly ever re-spawn, you usually have very large, cleared "safe" areas in which to dither around and regenerate hit points. Enemies are relatively weak, and conditions like "poison" are only temporary and do not affect attributes, only hit points. Finally, because you can get a brand new level just by leaving and returning, you don't feel the same obligation to explore every corner that you do with Rogue.

White worm masses replicate and swarm, leading to a rare early-level death if you're so stupid that you take them on.

In the later stages, on the other hand, Moria can be a real bastard. Harder monsters may get multiple movements to your one (more on speed variances in the next post), making it hard to kill them and impossible to flee them. Perhaps most important, the sheer number and size of the levels increase the cumulative probability of death. NetHack took a long time to win because of the difficulty, but my actual winning game took less than 8 hours of actual gameplay. In Moria, I've played twice that long only to die on Level 20. You don't so much "win" Moria as outlast it.

As with other roguelikes, inventories can get out of control very fast.

I'm going to cover each of the major sections of the game in detail (most in the next post), but before I do, let me simply mention some of the main differences from NetHack for those of you stuck (as I was) in a NetHack mindset before playing:

• There are no intrinsics (save the "abilities" that we'll talk about) and no eating of corpses.

• Enemies don't drop any equipment and only rarely drop treasure. Valuable items are found randomly in the dungeon, not on slain foes.

• While items can be "cursed," the effect is simply to make the item non-removable. It is not a worse item, intrinsically, than a non-cursed version. There are no blessings.

• Items cannot be used in conjunction with each other.

• There are no special encounters like thrones, sinks, and fountains.

• There are no alignments or religious system.

On the other hand, Moria does have a number of its own innovations, including a town level and more complex shops. It had a full array of attributes, races, classes, and abilities before NetHack did. In keeping with its Tolkien source, you can "mine" valuables directly from some walls. There's a useful distinction between "equipped" items and "inventory" items and a bigger selection of magic items and effects. Combat mechanics are a bit more complex, and there are more ways to extract yourself from encounters (like spiking doors). While I still think NetHack is superior, I would easily put Moria ahead of Rogue for enjoyment.

Although every dungeon level spreads across multiple screens, you can bring up a small-scale map to help you navigate.

It's taken me so long to post about Moria because I really wanted to win the game and tie everything together in a single posting. At this point, having invested a few dozen hours in the game since December 2013, I have to say that you're not likely to see a "won" posting without an asterisk. While I'm convinced that the game is beatable with time and patience, I simply don't have the stamina to go through another NetHack experience. As I write now, the lowest level I've reached is 24. As I finally start this series of (probably three) postings on the game, I'll do my best to play honestly, but I'm also going to allow myself to copy the saved game every 2 or 3 levels. We'll see how far I get before having to resort to restoring one, and how much save-scumming I have to do after that to reach the final screen.

In creating your character for Moria, you choose your sex and race from a list of eight options: human, half-elf, elf, halfling, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, and half-troll. (The origin of the latter is perhaps best not imagined.) They have the normal D&D-inspired strengths, weaknesses, and class restrictions; for instance, halflings are good at thievery, only humans and half-elves can be paladins, and half-orcs and half-trolls are dumb but strong and best suited as warriors.

The game then rolls for age, height, weight, social class, and the game's six attributes (the standard D&D set of strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma). You get a cute little "background" paragraph for your character, which varies depending on your race and sex selections but is also heavily randomized. For instance, one random roll for a half-elf might give you:

Your father was a Green-Elf. You are one of several children of a yeoman. You are a credit to the family. You have dark brown eyes, wavy blond hair, and an average complexion.

Another roll for the same character might produce:

Your father was a Grey-Elf. You are the illegitimate but acknowledged child of a serf. You are the black sheep of the family. You have blue-gray eyes, straight black hair, and a very dark complexion.

It's just simple sentence substitution, but it's still a little fun.

A character background for a dwarf male.

The attribute rolls are fairly generous, and it's not hard to get everything in the double digits with a few SPACE bar entries. It's best to focus on the attributes. Weight matters a little, for carrying capacity and bashing, but I don't think the other statistics (age, height, social class) have a significant effect. The background doesn't really matter at all except for role-playing reasons.

After accepting the attributes, the player selects a class from those available to the race. Only humans and half-elves can choose from every class: warrior, mage, priest, rogue, ranger, and paladin. Finally, depending on all of these factors, you get a ranking from "very bad" to "superb" in eight skills: fighting, bows and throwing weapons, saving throws, stealth, disarming, use of magic devices, perception, and searching. These are immutable throughout the game and basically tell you how to best play the character. [Later edit: This last sentence was an artifact of an earlier draft and is incorrect. The skills are not "immutable"; they change with levels, attributes, and items.]

I've had a lot better experience playing a spellcaster in Moria than in the early versions of NetHack. Spells are much more useful here, particularly since they don't fade away from your spellbook. I'll cover the system in detail next time, but suffice to say that I consider "Detect Monsters" and "Find Hidden Traps/Doors" to be particularly vital, and I wouldn't want to rely on scrolls for these.

I haven't had a lot of luck relying on magic for combat, however, so strong martial skills are still important. After experimenting with a variety of characters, I've settled on a half-elf ranger as my best option. With the right stats, he starts at least "good" in every ability, which can showcase almost everything the game has to offer.

The final character sheet.

The game starts in a town level of six buildings: two magic shops (one for priests, one for mages), a weapon shop, an armor shop, a potion shop, and a store that sells exploration sundries like rations, torches, and iron spikes. (I can't remember this staple of tabletop RPGs showing up in any other computer RPG.) Item selections are partially randomized and remain quite relevant even at advanced levels. Particularly useful are potions and scrolls that increase your attributes or improve your weapons and armor. The problem is that the further you explore the dungeon, the further you get away from the town, and the longer it takes to backtrack and trade. This makes "Word-of-Recall" scrolls, which automatically whisk you between the town and the lowest explored level, a necessity.

The player starts out with a reasonably good default selection of items and an amount of gold influenced by starting attributes--the game actually compensates for lower scores by giving the player more starting gold. I generally found it was best to save the shops until I'd explored a few levels. There's a bargaining system, but gold is plentiful enough that I haven't bothered much with it. [Later edit: This last sentence is also the artifact of an earlier draft, and it's laughably wrong. The economy actually plays a major role in the game; gold is not that plentiful at higher levels, and every gold piece you can save makes all the difference. I apologize for the error.]

Bartering for iron spikes in the shop.

The town is also full of the most annoying NPCs that ever existed, including drunks, street urchins, beggars, blubbering idiots, rogues, and lepers. They swarm you, begging for money (rogues even steal it), stumbling into you, and you have to keep acknowledging their messages. There's no "talk" option in the game that makes them useful. I soon found that while there's no reward for killing them, there really isn't any penalty either.

If "more beggars than a Eurostar stop" isn't already a phrase, consider it coined.

After exploring the town, it's time to hit the dungeon, where--just as in any roguelike--you have to master a long list of keyboard commands (many varying whether you use uppercase or lowercase or a CTRL modifier), fight monsters, collect treasure, and slowly grow more powerful.

As with any good roguelike, there's an exhaustive in-game list of keyboard commands. If anyone's playing along with me, here's a tip you won't find in the manual: the DOS version recognizes only the right CTRL key, not the left.

This seems like a good place to break off. In the next post, I'll talk about the game's mechanics, including monsters, inventory, combat, and magic, and then probably spend a third post on the endgame if I can reach it.