Shadowkeep: A Novel Approach

The author of Star Wars, several Star Trek novelizations, The Black Hole, and Alien goes slumming.

  

Sasubree was the largest and most powerful city on the High Plains, alive with merchants and traders, farmers come in from far and near to market their produce, craftsmen, wandering soldiers-of-fortune, and all manner of adventurers from several intelligent species. It was a thriving, impressive community. Exactly the kind of place where one would go to find an impressive hero.

Thus begins Shadowkeep (1984), the novelization of the game by Alan Dean Foster--an author who built a career in large part around novelizations, including both the first and most recent Star Wars and Star Trek films. Today, it is hardly remarkable when a novel tie-in accompanies a successful game, or when novels contribute to a video game universe, and even by 1984, there were plenty of video games based on novels, including Dracula (1982), Ten Little Indians (1983), Dragonriders of Pern (1983), and any number of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit adaptations. But until Shadowkeep, it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone to go the other way. Wikipedia claims that Shadowkeep is the "first video game that inspired a novel" (which is not quite true, as Shadowkeep's publishers specifically commissioned the novel), and I can't find any evidence to contravene the claim. 

It is an odd game to have such a distinction. With virtually no NPCs and an extremely derivative plot, there doesn't seem to be enough stuff in the game to build a novel around it. Already in the first paragraph of the book, we see two proper names that show up nowhere in the game documentation. The game has only three named characters--Nacomedon the wizard, Dal'Brad the demon, and Raddath the innkeeper/salesman/otyugh--and yet the book still manages to change Nacomedon's name to "Gowyther" and Raddath's to "Norell." (Or, more accurately, I assume the developers changed or invented the names after having given Foster the notes.) More than half the book concerns itself with the formation of the party. It isn't until Page 132 (of 243 total pages) that the characters enter the Shadowkeep and thus join the progress of the player.

During the first half, the novel is well-written and interesting. It begins as a mysterious figure named Spinner visits Shone Stelft, a famous-adventurer-turned-smith whom Spinner hopes to lure out of retirement to end the threat emanating from Shadowkeep. In a fun reversal of the normal trope, Stelft stodgily refuses to leave his forge and family, but his apprentice, Practor Fime, is inspired to go instead. As Practor journeys to the Shadowkeep, he stumbles into a variety of adventures through which he slowly assembles the rest of his party: a friendly Roo fighter named Sranul, a beautiful Thaladar mage named Maryld, and a Zhis'ta warrior named Hargrod.

The party is attacked by two "barguests" and a gargoyle.

Once in the dungeon, the book follows the encounters in the game. The characters come upon the same altar, anvil, pile of rubbish, and pedestal that I encountered on Level 1 of the dungeon. When one character starts messing with the altar, it knocks him across the room, just as happened to my character when he tried to climb it. Upon reaching the "podium," they divine that one of the gems sold by the innkeeper would probably fit within it (though they decline to go back and purchase one). All that's really missing is the dozens of random combats and any sense of a maze between the rooms. At least so far, for instance, the book does not describe any one-way passages or doors. The characters have to find the staircases upward; the levels don't all branch of a central staircase like they do in the game. Presumably Foster was given the text of the encounters but not the actual dungeon maps. This would explain why the book has no analogue to the game's Level 2--a twisty, confusing maze that has no special encounters.

Unfortunately, the book starts to fall apart at this point. The special encounters in RPGs of this era didn't really lend themselves to sensible narratives. As the book's party careens from one silly puzzle to another, discovering magic items lying in wait for them and fighting hordes of trolls along the way, the narrative starts to feel forced. Foster tries his level best, I should add, but you can sense him struggling with a very different sort of adaptation. I haven't finished the book yet to avoid potential spoilers, but I'll quote more from the text as I encounter the same elements in the game.

As for my playing, I've mapped only two more levels since the last post. The game is relatively slow-going, with random encounters every 6-10 steps. Nonetheless, I've discovered two things about the game since the last post that makes it likely I'll continue until the end. First, the game probably doesn't have 25 levels. It seems likely to only have 9 or 10. I must have gotten the "25 levels" idea from the "hints" part of the manual, which I somehow interpreted as 1 hint per level. Instead, some levels have multiple hints.

The second major factor is that there is character development of a sort. As characters successfully strike foes, parry attacks, and cast spells, their associated skills have a chance of increasing by a point. It's not much, but it gives the game more RPG credentials than I originally thought. However, attributes, hit points, and spell points do not seem to increase, which means that the game scales only very slightly in difficulty from level to level.

"Wa" is up to 50% on his attack from a starting 30%.

Reflective of this, the second level that I mapped was Level 4. The pedestal/"podium" that I discussed last time turned out to be a teleporter that took me from 1 to 4--hardly necessary, as Level 4 was already accessible from the stairs. The Level had a small number of special encounters:

• An "office" in which searching a desk revealed Gloves of Cold.

• A wall with the Rune of Death on it. I couldn't figure out anything to do here, but when I cast the "Perception" spell, I got a message that said, "PASS uttered with determination allows passage into the sixth door of death."

• A room containing a single silver rose, which I took.

 

Level 2 as I said, was just a big maze. It seemed to have more random encounters than the other maps, but there were no special encounters. I learned the hard way that I really didn't want to run from enemies because when you flee, the game moves you to a random place facing a random direction, and getting back on target in such circumstances was nearly impossible with this layout. There weren't even any doors to use as markers. I resorted to dropping "soggy sticks" (burned torches) in key places to avoid getting lost.

Level 2. I think I screwed some things up in the northeast, so don't rely on it for your own game.

When I was done with the level, I returned to the inn to see about spending some of my rapidly-increasing gold on magic items. (My starting gold had been enough for the best regular weapons and armor.) The game manual faithfully describes what each magic item does, but I remain slightly confused about which ones operate by simply wearing or wielding them and which have to be INVOKED. I'm also not sure which ones operate for a limited duration, and which will stay with me indefinitely. For instance, the Gloves of Cold disappeared a few hundred steps after I put them on.

I reloaded and took them off in case this was the only pair and I needed them later.

A lot of magic items seem to simply duplicate spells. The 500-gold-piece Eldritch Staff, for instance, simply casts the "Perception" spell and gives you a hint for the level or the specific location. I purchased a few largely random items to test them out before making a commitment to a larger purchase.

The magic items sound cool but mostly replicate the spell list.

Level 3 would seem to be the next stop, but here's something interesting: the PASS codeword I found on Level 4 opens up the doorway to Level 6. Oddly enough, the book mentions this: "Doors are often sealed with spells of warding, released only by the timely use of magical words discovered by those who made the journey before you. The passwords that are known are..." and it goes on to list 5 of them, including PASS. On a lark, I tried them all on the ninth level, and one of them--HOME--opened it. I have no idea why the manual just gives you these words, but I'm half-tempted to skip right to Level 9 and see what happens.

Miscellaneous notes:

• You have to READY your weapon every time you enter the dungeon after exiting.

• If a character doesn't have enough money to buy something, the game automatically deducts the difference from another character. That's handy.

• Now that I know skills increase with use, I've been having my warriors "attack and parry" each round instead of always putting their energy into "attack twice." I've also been having my mages cast spells even when they're not strictly necessary.

• The stairway is always a safe place to rest and replenish spell points, which can be used to replenish hit points. I don't know why you'd pay Raddath for healing unless you created a party with no monks (the class that starts the game with "Heal").

• I've found several scrolls scattered about the hallways. These can be used to learn spells by character classes who wouldn't normally have access to those spells. I had one of my warriors learn "Luminance" (light) so I wouldn't have to deplete a real spellcaster's points with the spell.

• With few exceptions, all enemies seem to drop exactly 51 goldens. A 4-enemy party will drop 204.

• So far, there have been no "boss" battles on any of the levels. 

I haven't died yet, but I've come very close a couple of times, usually because of an ambush. Ambushes are particularly annoying because they scramble the party and you have to take a while to get your warriors back up to the front ranks.

So far, Shadowkeep is a little on the easy side and a lot on the boring side, and I hope the number of special encounters increases as we ascend. I've barely used a fraction of the 400 words the game supposedly understands. Now that I'm home for a little while, I can start interspersing Shadowkeep sessions with Martian Dreams.