Quarterstaff: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The party's last torch had gone out, and they killed Setmoth in the dark.

     

Quarterstaff

United States

Simulated Environmental Systems (1987 developer and publisher)
Infocom (1988 re-developer and publisher; with subtitle Tomb of Setmoth)

Released in 1987, 1988 for Macintosh

Date Started: 29 November 2017

Date ended: 19 December 2017

Total hours: 14

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)

Final Rating: 25

Ranking at Time of Posting:110/274 (40%)

When I last wrote, I had explored about 75% of the game. I wasn't stuck on anything, but I was getting frustrated juggling a huge inventory that I wasn't sure I'd ever use. That never went away.

It turned out there were three more NPCs who could potentially join my party. The first was Dirk, a thievery-oriented character waiting in a "dark chamber" behind a secret door opened by pulling some torches. Waiting too long, it seems, because when I entered the chamber, Dirk was dead. An inspection of his body suggested he'd died of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, or all three. I guess if you're not there to say EAT, DRINK, and SLEEP, NPCs--even if they haven't joined your party yet--just die.

Later, in a throne room, I encountered a dwarf warrior named Sandra and an NPC named Piffer. I have no idea what Piffer's strengths or weaknesses are because I never got him or her to join my party. He or she ignored round after round of SMILE, GREET, and BRIBE (the latter being the only thing I ever found to do with all these valuables). Sandra was pretty useful.
      

A big text dump upon entering the throne room. Whose throne? That's not really clear.

      

As I approached the final areas in my first game, my characters were pretty beat up. They were suffering from thirst and starvation and were out of food and water. Piffer not only hadn't joined my party, she'd been killed by an enemy. Sandra was on her last legs after a battle with someone named "Tarmac." I decided to just start over completely and try to get to the end in better shape. This time, I made it to Dirk alive and got both him and Sandra to join me. Still no luck with Piffer.

These NPCs would be interesting if they had any kind of backstory. Instead, they just join your party after a lot of smiling and greeting but offer no dialogue or even explanation for their presence.

The same is true of your enemies. The endgame areas brought some tough combats. A guy named Trinot attacked me in a throne room when I fussed with one of the throne's gems. I had to split my party to kill him so he wouldn't regard any one of us as the "leader." He had a trident and wore a Cloak of Protection that I was happy to loot. But who was he? Who, for that matter, was Tarmac, who attacked me with a "dancing sword" when I put a black gem in a demon's mouth? I can't shake a feeling that I missed some commands that would have given me more backstory on both NPCs and foes, but I've been over the documentation, and I just don't see anything.

The game's strength remained in its complex puzzles. There was the typical Infocom navigation puzzle at one point, as I tried to sort out the exits from a series of rooms with near-identical names--Misty Room, Smokey Room, Foggy Room, Fog Chamber, Smokey Chamber, Smoke Room, etc.--where the passages seemed to have no logic to them. To get into the throne room, I had to put a blue ball into a small hole, a solution referenced ages ago in the "wild wizard's" ransom note.
        

There was no way to make this area clear.

      

There was one puzzle that I bungled, although I guess I shouldn't say that because my solution worked. There was an area with a locked door and a grue on the other side. Apparently, I was supposed to drink a "thick potion" that would transfer me to the grue's body, allowing me to unlock the door from the other side and drop some useful items, then transport back to my own body, open the door, and collect the treasure. I just smashed the door open and killed the grue.
 

Infuriatingly, the game doesn't give an image or description of the grue other than it's "nasty."

      

Another puzzle I maddeningly had to look up a hint for. The "dark chamber" in which Dirk was found had a bunch of spell reagents: bat's brains, hydra blood, toad's eyes, calf's brains, goat's bladder, and the like. After the tangle of smoke rooms, I found myself at a pentagram. A scrawled note read:

        

Star of flames

Multi-headed breather of flames

Make its blood like its breath

You must seek your death

Thrust quick to thy heart

Tis dour doing but our part

Take the key from the trap

'Ware the plaque where it be

Come what may, come what might

There's sure to be a dirty fight

Whether fair, whether foul

Expect the worst to be on the prowl

       

Annoyingly, I figured out most of it. "The multi-headed breather of flames" is of course a hydra. The ritual wanted me to use the hydra's blood and to "make its blood like its breath" by setting it on fire. I would then have to sacrifice myself on the pentagram. The part I was missing was the need to ENTER the pentagram. Anyway, the ritual brought me to another dimension where I retrieved the "tomb room key"--one of the few truly essential items in the game--and then sacrificed myself on an analogous pentagram to return to the real world.
      

I wish I'd gotten this without help.

     

The game culminated in a battle with Setmoth at his titular tomb. For those wondering who "Setmoth" is, that's a fair question. At one point, I found his diary. It related how he, "mightiest being who has ever existed," came to the "plane of Threa" and conquered it. He made every king his slave and tortured and killed everyone who displeased him. Soon, he grew restless and decided to conquer "all the thousand planes," fearing only the powers of the plane of Agood.

One of his lieutenants, Dresf, joined forces with the powers of Agood and slaughtered Setmoth's armies. Setmoth killed the rest of his own followers to gain power from their souls, then retreated to a safe place "until time and place meet again for another battlefield." He ends the diary by encouraging the reader to "awaken your master, Setmoth, the one you were born to worship."
      

Setmoth's diary lays it all out.

     

Cool story, bro, but none of it really makes any sense. Is "Threa" supposed to be the world I'm in now? 'Cause the manual gives it as Rhea, which is close but not the same. And--spoiler alert--my party is about to open Setmoth's tomb and kill him. But why would we open it in the first place? How did he lock himself in the tomb from the inside? What does he have to do with the disappearance of the Tree Druids, since he doesn't seem to have escaped yet? Does anyone even remember the Tree Druids? They haven't been referenced since, like, the fourth room.
      

None of this is explained when you finally meet Setmoth. He's a tough customer. I had to split my party again to keep him from focusing on a single character. I distributed potions of healing among my party members and had them flee from the tomb and quaff the potions if their hit points got too low. Even then, it took me a couple of reloads to defeat him. When I did, I got the brief message--no graphic, even--at the top of the screen. I don't really feel like I "completed my mission," since I didn't solve the mystery of what happened to the Druids. Is it as simple as they accidentally broke into Setmoth's old stomping grounds? I suppose that's the most plausible explanation. But if Setmoth wasn't free yet, what actually happened to them?
      

Setmoth had a badass entrance.

     

Looking over my map and notes, it's clear that a ton of the game world was unnecessary, serving only to supply the party with items of questionable use. The number of "treasure" items that have no purpose is baffling. Why did the developers fool the party into loading up on gems and jewelry for no reason except perhaps to bribe a couple NPCs into compliance?

Infocom's promotions of the game are heavy with the letters "RPG," suggesting a bold new direction for the company. In the end, that's something of a joke. The game is barely an RPG. Beyond Zork did a better job with real RPG elements. This one has some extremely limited character development that mysteriously stops after a few combats and a bit of flexibility in inventory choices but no way to tell which items are better than others.
      
Again, I eagerly await The Adventure Gamer's judgement, but as an RPG, I have to call it a misfire. It would be interesting if more CRPGs went in this direction, offering highly atmospheric rooms instead of featureless corridors--smaller, more detailed dungeons that take longer to complete because you have to carefully explore every feature. That could be cool. But I would want that approach within in the context of good CRPG combat, inventory, and character development mechanics.
     

Sandra's proficiencies. My characters never got out of the low-40s.

    
In a GIMLET, Quarterstafff earns:

• 3 points for the game world. The backstory is somewhat original and seems to be pointing towards an original quest, but the game itself delivers so little lore or plot exposition that the backstory might as well not exist.

     

A warning not to disturb Setmoth. I honestly don't even know when the game switched from druids to dwarves.

      

• 1 point for character creation and development. There's no creation. "Development" consists of some slight increases in skill as you fight, but mysteriously the increases stop after a few battles. This is a key element of an RPG that the game simply didn't implement at all. Encounters don't even really play differently with different characters.

• 2 points for NPC interaction. It's cool that you can get them to join the party, but the game needed a dialogue system.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. The foes are nothing special--enemies of different names, some hitting harder than others. I give most of the points for the decent navigation, logical, and inventory puzzles. But there are no role-playing encounters such as a true RPG would offer.

       

The party doesn't get very far greeting and smiling at Setmoth, but he did accept our gift!

       

• 3 points for magic and combat. There are magic items, but no spellcasting system. Combat is mostly just KILL ENEMY over and over. But I do give it some credit for a missile weapon system that allows you to attack enemies in the next room, which is a kind of "tactic," as is the ability to split the party.

• 3 points for equipment. The strengths are a large variety and evocative item descriptions. There's even a bit of a puzzle involving how to use the "Identify Wand" to tell what potions, scrolls, keys, and wands do (though I never found an unidentified wand, and the uses of keys were pretty obvious). What the game lacks is any real utility to most of its items and any statistics to help you evaluate their relative worth.

• 0 points for no economy.

• 2 points for a main quest with no role-playing options, no alternate endings, and no side quests.

• 3 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Some of the graphics were well-drawn and detailed. I didn't hear a lick of sound during the game, but I read a review that said there's at least a "death scream." Perhaps an emulator issue? If someone can confirm that it has sound and describe it, I might give an extra point here. The interface has good points and bad points. The menus are a nice addition to the text parser, which otherwise has Infocom's strengths. But I didn't love the methods of arbitrating the actions of multiple party members, and I would have rather had a fixed interface than these Mac windows. The automap is nice.

• 4 points for gameplay. It's more linear that it seems at first, but the challenge level and length are about right. I can't see any reason to replay it.

          

That gives us a final score of 25, again something of a failure by RPG standards, but adventure game aficionados might like it more.
     

Setmoth was menacing, but I don't think he was quite that big. Note that Infocom not only stresses that this is an "RPG" but spells out what that means.

      

Most of the reviews I'm finding, both contemporary and modern, disagree. Dragon gave it 5/5 stars and called it "among the finest fantasy role-playing games for any system" and "the most true-to-form [role-playing game] we've found." The February 1989 QuestBusters praised how well it "captures the mood and feel of non-computerized fantasy role-playing." I do understand what they're talking about. The dungeon is well-designed, and there's a constant tension as your party moves from room to room and encounters each new puzzle. Successful characters in the game act like tabletop characters, moving slowly, investigating everything, knocking on walls for secret doors, and so forth. That's unquestionably the strength of the game. But it isn't what I'm addicted to and, let's face it, not what by 1987 we've come to understand is an "RPG" when applied to a computer game.

I spent some time with the earlier version of the game and didn't notice a lot of differences with the map or the major puzzles. The automap looks the same, but there are fewer graphical interludes. The first version does't have the "Identify Wand" and associated puzzle with the game documentation; you just have to figure out items through experimentation. Eolene and Bruno start with Titus; the cell behind the chief torturer and druid guard has a "crazy druid" rather than Eolene. Combats take a lot longer, with much more missing, and poison does significantly more damage. The interface is more annoying, with incomplete menus (unlike the Infocom version, you can't see every object in the room from the menus) and fewer parser shortcuts. The game doesn't assume that you open a door if you go in a direction that has a door, for instance. You have to take a turn to open it. I didn't get far enough to encounter any of the famous bugs.

        

I totally forgot that the Infocom version had a "help" window until after I won. That could have been useful.

       

For all the effort spent by Infocom building this up as their first big foray into the RPG market, they didn't really seem to get much momentum out of it. 1989's Journey: The Quest Begins (link to my review) shows some lessons from Quarterstaff, including juggling party of adventurers and constructing sentences by selecting menu commands instead of just typing. (I'll always remember that game as establishing that "grues" are the same thing as "orcs.") But that was less of an RPG than this one. As a commenter recently pointed out, they also attempted an adventure/RPG hybrid on the NES called Tombs & Treasure (1991), an update of a Japanese game. By then, Infocom wasn't really Infocom anymore, the Cambridge staff having been laid off by Activision in 1989. Activision has periodically re-released compilations of the old Infocom adventures (the most recent in 2012) but has otherwise largely abandoned the label.

As for the original developers, Simulated Environmental Systems doesn't appear to have worked on any other games, and neither did authors Scott D. Schmitz or Kenneth M. Updike. Mr. Schmitz left a comment recently, so if he sticks with my series to the end, perhaps he'll talk about the game's background, where life took him, and which one of the two was a fan of Welsh mythology. I hope he's not raw at the poor review. It's a good game for its genre, but that genre--despite Infocom's promotions--is not CRPG.