Quarterstaff: Knock on Wood

An early encounter.

       

I was keeping a good schedule for a while, but a game like Quarterstaff was destined to break the pace. I've been very busy with work in early December, trying to wrap up some projects so I can take my usual mid-December to mid-January vacation. If I'd been playing something light and uncomplicated during this time--some Ultima or Wizardry clone--I probably could have kept on with regular entries.

A text adventure like Quarterstaff is another matter. It doesn't lend itself to playing on-the-go. I find myself needing two monitors to accommodate all the tools I use to play it: the emulator, a draft blog entry going in Firefox, the game documentation, a mapping program, and a notepad. Perhaps more important, it requires the concentration inherent in adventure games. You can't just blast down a corridor killing orcs and then solve an occasional button puzzle; you have to carefully map, annotate items and encounters, and think through puzzles. There are times that I'm just not in the mood for that.

      

Part of the game map so far.

      

So far, I've mapped all or most of what I think is the first level. (I'm using Trizbort, which works great. Thanks, Iffy and Teknefer!) The only way I can find to move on from here is a "Spiral Death," and I haven't yet found a way to navigate it without getting hurt. This is what I can report from multiple forays through the first level:

There are one billion items. I have no idea what to do with all this inventory. Some of the rooms just have piles and piles of stuff. By the end of the level, I was juggling this list: berserker sword, black potion, blanket, broadsword, bronze key, coin, copper bracers, curvy dagger, deerskin boots, elven gourd, food ration, gnarly club, gold brooch, hot poker, identify wand, inlaid book, iron key, leather gloves, leather braces, leather headband, match, old ring, old scroll, ornate ring, parchment, potion of sleep, pretzel, quiver, ransom note, red garnets, redwood staff, resin torch, ruby ring, rye bread, scarab of insanity, silk pouch, sleep potion, small lantern, small leather pouch, small potion, small torch, soft leather bag, steel rapier, tarnished key, teleport potion, thick potion, tinderbox, wax blob, wax candle, wooden ring.

  

Some of the many items in a single room.

     

Perversely, a lot of the corridors are narrow and won't let you through if you have a heavy inventory. My assumption is that many of these items are just for flavor, like all the junk lying around a typical Elder Scrolls room, or at least optional, such as some of the weapons. (There's no way that I can tell to determine relative damage and accuracy levels among weapons.) 

It was late in my exploration that I found an "identify wand" and even later that I learned how to use the tools that came with the game to figure out the magic code words required to activate the wand and identify potions, rings, keys, and other wands. It involves putting a coin in the middle of a paper diagram, rotating it according to instructions on the paper, and following a path of letters. It's not all that different from the "codewheel" that came with the first two Gold Box games. Now that I know how to use it, it might help me identify some other items.

      

Rotating the "coin" image on top of a "parchment" to find keywords. I'm doing this in PowerPoint.

      

There's not much in the way of plot exposition. I suppose that may come on other levels, but so far I haven't learned a damned thing about the Tree Druids and why they disappeared. Part of the problem is a lack of meaningful ways to interact with NPCs. You can SMILE at them and GREET them but not interrogate or ask complex questions. Thus, when I run into a "chief torturer" and a "druid guard" hanging out together in an early room, I'd like to know what's going on, but there doesn't seem to be anything to do except fight them. Same goes for an "insane druid" and a "wild wizard" encountered later.

Even the PCs don't interact with each other. The first character, Titus, encounters the second, Bruno, in an early room. The third, Eolene, is rescued from a cell. None of them has any dialogue when they meet. They just smile and nod at each other repeatedly until they finally join Titus's party.

There are a few plaques, inscriptions, tapestries, and books that offer poems alluding to the deeds of various druids. If they have any significance for the main plot, the meaning is cloaked in thick language and obscure references. In their use of proper names, the developers drew from several Welsh texts, including the Triads and the Mabinogion. There are references to two Briton bards: Taliesin and Llywarch Hen. One bit of verse mentions Llwch Llenlleawg, a Welsh hero who has been suggested as a early incarnation of Lancelot. They're all cute, but so far they don't add up to much.

         

This passage about Dremhidydd is drawn directly from the Welsh Triads.

         

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be killing things. Role-playing citizens in a land of druids has made me cautiously pacifistic. There are four potential combats on the first level: a chief torturer and a druid guard, a huge spider, an insane druid, and a wild wizard. But I don't think I really have to kill any of them. The wild wizard doesn't pre-emptively attack you. He just picks up items that you probably want and runs off. The insane druid is only insane because he's holding a berserker sword. You get nothing from killing the huge spider, and the path he's blocking can be circumvented.

As for the chief torturer and his druid guard, that's an interesting encounter. It's one of the earliest in the game. At first, I tried just killing them in regular combat, but after a few rounds, the chief torturer would always manage to close his manacles around Titus's arms and immobilize him. After a few attempts, I realized that I could pre-emptively close the same manacles around the torturer's arms, and moreover close a pair of thumb screws around the druid guard's thumbs, incapacitating them both. This allows me to mercilessly kill them, but also to loot their items without killing them--at least, some items. I'm not sure if the others are necessary. One of the items I can't loot while the guard is alive, for instance, is a Scarab of Insanity. But maybe I don't need it, as all it seems to do is change the sex of the wearer. My characters, incidentally, make absolutely no comment when this happens to them. They really are pretty mellow druids.

      

Giving the torturers a taste of their own medicine.

      

Combat is otherwise pretty boring. I type KILL HUGE SPIDER for Titus and MIMIC (which is like "ditto") for the other two and watch the results. Most of my attacks miss. I type REPEAT for all three the next round. And the next. Eventually the spider is dead. Maybe there are more options later with magic and the use of items and such. 

      

Trading blows in combat.

      

Puzzles are light. I talked above about the complexity of adventure games and how you have to pay attention. In the case of Quarterstaff, this is more hypothetical than actual. So far, the puzzles have been easy. You need a couple of obvious keys to open doors. A hidden door is found behind a tapestry. A lever opens another hidden door (though a second lever opens a trap). I've only flagged two squares with "things I can't figure out," including a shrine with a sarcophagus I can't open (though maybe I'm not supposed to) and a conspicuous "protruding brick" I don't know how to manipulate.

  

Maybe I should let this druid rest in peace.

    

I hate the windows. Last time, I noted how Mac games often use the conventions of the Mac interface including multiple windows that the user can size and position. I stopped short of praising this element, and I'm glad I did. I've come to hate the damned windows. I can't get any configuration to work well. Finally, when I started mapping in my own application, I just hid the automap, expanded the text window, and played it like a straight text adventure. That, however, doesn't stop unwanted and unnecessary graphic windows from coming to the forefront every time a particular room triggers them.

    

This frigging' window pops up every time I enter a passage. I can guess by now what a passage looks like, thanks.

    

RPG elements are almost non-existent. My weapon proficiencies have increased slightly from use, but I suspect that these improvements will end up playing a small part in the game.

Logistics have not yet played a role. The manual promises that half the battle is keeping your party fed, watered, rested, and in possession of light sources. The latter has come up once or twice when someone falls in a hole and leaves the others in the dark, but so far no one has complained of hunger, thirst, and fatigue. I've found several items of food and a couple places to drink, too. Maybe it's just a really long game and I've barely started.

Aside from all of this, the game keeps annoying me by splitting my party without asking. Every time I do something that causes one character to get left behind (e.g., two characters can fit down a hallway but the third can't), the game automatically creates two parties with two leaders, switching back and forth between them. You have to specify some action for each leader each round, but usually I just have one party trying to get back to the other, and I just want the other to stand still. It's hard to explain without playing, but trust me: it gets confusing and irksome fast.

All I can tell you about the plot is that the Tree Druids' colony seems to be largely deserted. I had to step over a previous adventurer's body as I entered. The chief torturer and druid guard seemed to be getting ready to ply their trade on Eolene before I killed them and freed her from her cell. No telling where they came from; it's hard to believe that the peaceful Tree Druids employed a "chief torturer" before all the trouble started. No one is in the main chambers, banquet hall, or shrine hall except an insane druid with a berserker sword and a "wild wizard" who seems to be searching for something.

    

The wizard has a "ransom note," but I don't know if he's the writer or recipient.

In some ways, it's probably good that I haven't made much progress in the game. By next week, I'll be home for the holidays and in a much better place to enjoy it, if it is indeed enjoyable. I'll probably start completely over then and may have a better experience.

*****

List note: I've decided that the upcoming Quick Majik Adventure isn't enough of a game to bother playing on this blog. It's a demo version of a longer game called Majik Adventure which no longer seems to exist. I'd be happy to play the full thing if someone can find it, but the "Quick" version starts you at a high character level and just lets you explore one dungeon level. It's not enough to get a sense of the full game or to constitute a game on its own.