Monday, September 5, 2022

Tygus Horx: HABA

I'm not sure "mazenary" is a word.
      
It's been a busy couple of weeks in Chez Addict, with a business trip followed immediately by the first week of the fall semester. I had entries pre-scheduled for one week but not two, so there was an unavoidable gap. Then, we welcomed two new kittens to the house, both completely black. One came with a collar, which is the only way I can tell them apart, but it seems mean to leave it on. When Irene didn't have any ideas for distinguishing  them, I suggested we give them the same name and not even bother. She assumed I was joking, but I'm not sure more than 50% of the cats I've owned have ever learned their names, and I'm not sure even they knew it was their "name" rather than just a sound I made when I had food.
   
Anyway, you'll be pleased that we considered a lot of names out of RPG-dom, although Irene wasn't aware that's where they came from. I nearly had her on "Vaermina" and "Namira," but she thought "Namira" was the name of one of the wolves on Game of Thrones, or at least that other people would think that. "Minax" had some traction for a while. But when she seriously seemed to be considering "Tygus" and "Horx," I switched themes, and now it's either going to be "Treme" and "Marigny" or "Bolden" and "Ellington."
         
The long-awaited Level 2 of the Tygus Horx maze.
      
Tygus Horx was on my mind because I had found a version that didn't replicate the bug, which made me honor-bound to play it. I converted the BRIEF to a proper number and made a couple of edits, then got busy grinding. Much like The Bard's Tale, the game on which it is based, Horx doesn't offer a lot of blogging fodder for the hours spent. It's taken me another five just to assemble this meager entry.
 
I probably wasted more time grinding than was strictly necessary. I should have done more of it in the dungeon, where the rewards would have been higher. But by letting you flee from most combats and allowing you to save anywhere, Horx encourages a get-in-and-get-out approach to dungeon exploration. Although the experience rewards are less, it ultimately saves time just to grind next to the temple, where you can sleepwalk your way through the combat options and occasionally pay for healing.
      
Leveling up.
       
Everyone gets +1 to an attribute plus some additional max hit points when leveling, but like The Bard's Tale, the most tangible method of increasing party strength is to acquire more spells and spell points. Horx makes this a tad more difficult than its source. Where The Bard's Tale reliably gives you a new spell level every two character levels, Horx spaces it out a bit more. I lost count of the exact ratio, but my spellcasters are Level 14 and still haven't acquired Level 6 spells. Consequently, neither has changed classes. Horx's approach removes some of the imbalance in the earlier game, where a steady increase in monster difficulty meant that spellcasters could rocket through the later classes. It doesn't remove this issue entirely, though, and I'm sure I'll find that my second and third spell classes go more quickly than the first.
   
The Maze turned out to have three levels, all of them properly mazelike. As I stepped off the stairway to Level 2, a message appeared: "The Maze shows its true face. Leave it or die." I didn't leave it. "It burns you down," another message hinted. There were quite a few empty rooms before I made it to the northwest corner, where an old man asked me to "say what the three messages are about." I'd actually received more than three messages, but three of them definitely pointed to the answer of FIRE (Level 1's "It is hot" and "It is red and yellow" and the Level 2 message just recounted). As riddles go, that was pretty easy. The way opened to Level 3.
 
Level 3.
     
Level 3 had three messages:
     
  • "The maze gasps at you and will never let you free again." I think maybe it meant "grasps"?
  • "Do not believe in illusions!"
  • "Seek the Temple of Urlando!"
          
Despite this, it let me free again.
    
I was exploring this whole time with several spells active. MATO ("Magic Torch") is the best of three conjurer light spells; MACO ("Magic Compass") is the best of three conjurer compass spells; and MASH ("Magic Shield") is the best of three magician shielding spells. There really aren't any other buffing spells, including no "Levitate," which caused problems on the third level.
    
The final square was at the end of a long hallway with several traps that sapped my hit points and spell points. When I reached the final chamber, someone called The Great Mazenary attacked me with 13 phantoms, 10 shadows, and 8 krimmels. ("Krimmel" is a common German last name, and I assume the author knew someone who had it.) I set in with physical attacks, my conjurer's EVPO ("Evil Power"), and my magician's POTO ("Power Touch"), both mass-damage spells. The traps had left me low on points, but I had just enough to complete the battle.
      
The first mandatory combat of the game.
    
"You beat me, but your way is long and the Evil One soon sieges the whole universum!" the Mazenary said as he died. He left a small key. I had three characters die from the traps on the way back, and I had to pay to have them resurrected.
       
I beat him. He is destroyed.
    
The small key opens the way to Ulandar's Temple on the west side of the city. I assume that will turn out to be another small dungeon.
 
I couldn't get much else done this week, but I didn't want you to think I'd disappeared entirely. More on Dungeon Master II soon.
   
Time so far: 8 hours

69 comments:

  1. Welcome back! As usual, of course real life takes precedence. Nice to hear you have two new cats. I could have gone with "Minax".

    The 'Sentinel Worlds' meme still lives on after ten years, hehe.

    Hmm, not sure I got the title, I'll put my guess in ROT13 in case others want to try as well: "HABA" -> "Unys Oneq'f Gnyr" (onfrq ba gur fcryy nooerivngvbaf hfrq)? Be "unys-onxrq"?

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    1. Ah, yes, makes sense. I guess you're right.

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    2. Argh. I had a joke in there about hairballs. I deleted it but forgot to change the subtitle.

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  2. Welcome back ! Interesting entry, as usual.

    By the way, "urlando" struck me as Italian for "screaming" or "shouting". Perhaps... In a temple to a half-deaf god, worshippers have to be louder than singing and praying ? :)

    I guess the author was going for a variation on the name "Roland" (e. g. "Orlando" in Italian) or more likely Ulandar, as noted later.

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    1. reminded me of Urland in the Dragonslayer movie

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  3. Good luck with the cats Chet. I owned many cats over many years but now I am kind of past pet ownership -- they can get tiring and it´s better if they have plenty of garden space (even if it´s enclosed).

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  4. Sooty and Sweep could be interesting cat names :)

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    1. I knew a woman with a mean rescue cat (not his fault for being mean, I know) named "Abraham". I renamed him "Lucifer". He was all black too. Which seems fair since all dogs go to heaven and all cats are from hell. Just kidding, I have nothing against cats, I actually admire their attitude.

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  5. "I lost count of the exact ratio, but my spellcasters are Level 14 and still haven't acquired Level 6 spells."

    That probably means they get one spell level every three character levels, so should get level 6 spells at level 16.

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    1. No, I didn't explain it well. They got Level 2 spells at character Level 3, and I think they got Level 3 spells at character Level 5, so it started out every 2 levels. It just lengthened somewhere that I didn't notice.

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  6. As a kid, we had 2 cats Missy & Lonely. Lonely was Missy's kitten and because Lonely was a black cat, she couldn't be given away due to that dumb superstition. So our family kept her and called her Lonely since she may or may not have missed her brothers and sisters. I adored her growing up. She lived to 22 years old. There's a family photo of her from 1972 when she was little, then a photo of me from at least 1989 with her on my lap. Great memories of that kitty for sure.

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  7. Now I'm a little disappointed you didn't name your cats Tygus Horx.

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    1. I don't really want to be thinking about this game in particular for the next 15 years every time i call their names.

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    2. Fair enough, but -- per your deleted joke about hairballs -- if one of them coughs one up in the next 48 hours, I think it's a sign that one should be named Tygus. The other one, Strayhorn (which has the merit of being jazz but sounding RPG).

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    3. Alternative suggestions then which might bring better memories:
      - "Ava" (like Gardner) and "Tar" (goes with the colour).
      - "Werdna" and "Trebor" (ok, not really)
      - "Might" and "Magic"
      - "Tyran" and "Thraxus" (sounds like two males, though)

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    4. "Tygus" is a perfectly reasonable name for a cat anyway. I think the one that coughs up the hairball should be named "Horx."

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  8. I'm not sure I'd call "Krimmel" a "common" German last name. I've heard of it, but it's not like "Smith."

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  9. While it's a noble approach to name your cats after RPG characters, you really can't go wrong by choosing the names of ancient Greek, Roman or Egyptian entities for your pets, in the case of two female kittens, I'd go with...

    ...Bastet and Sahmet.

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    1. I have a Stevie Ray Vaughan and a W C Handy myself in my kitty names. And Morticia Addams.

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    2. I suggest Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer.

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    3. My parents' dog was called 'Monty', so I had to expand that to 'Montezuma' for more gravitas, see what I mean?

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    4. I have a feeling that Bastet is going to eventually morph into Bastard.

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    5. I gave my own dog, a Dobermann, the name 'Noobie', just so that I can call him 'Anubis' when the occasion arises, that's my pattern regarding pet names...

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    6. When I first got Angel, I wanted to call her Allie, or Allie Kat - short for Alison Katherine of course, because she was a street cat, but our other cat was named Princess, and my wife picked the name Angel accordingly. If I get another, I might call her Clawdia or Droolia.

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  10. Update: The kittens love the Meep that the I got for supporting Hero U.

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  11. You know, I can't help but feel that a lot of the games you've been playing lately have been the annoying variety, those long and hard games you don't really have a good excuse to stop playing, but you really don't find fun in any way.
    This does make me wonder how many Bard's Tale clones there are left. None of them ever seem to improve upon anything the originals did, and they're almost always like this.

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  12. I had a cat I named "Cat Cat the cat." My wife and kids thought it was stupid, but through sheer repetition on my part it stuck.

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    Replies
    1. "Cat Cat the cat." Love it!

      ...and not only because it reminds me of CatCat, the Finnish singing duo: https://youtu.be/X533UHd_-x0

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  13. Your blog is like a little island of happyness in a sea of ugly reality. Thanks for that.

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  14. As someone with a couple of black cats, I predict you'll start to be able to tell the cats apart within a few months. Other people might not be able to, though.

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    Replies
    1. Indeed. I named ours Max and Moritz. German readers will know where that comes from.

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  15. True story. My stepmom inherited two black cats from a previous renter of an apartment she moved into. They were identical except for their collars: one red collar, one blue collar. The black cats' names were Red and Blue. Blue ran away. Red stayed with the family for close to 20 years.

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    1. Also, I'm really surprised the cats' names aren't going to be Gin and Tonic.

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    2. Maybe if they were calico, but not for black cats, I think.

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  16. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Concerning the names for pets, I suppose that anything is better than the name chosen by the protagonist of the French film from 2008 A Man and His Dog (the final film of Jean-Paul Belmondo after he suffered a stroke and had to relearn how to speak): "Mon Chien" - 'My Dog'

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  17. "Three of them definitely pointed to the answer of FIRE :
    - "It is hot"
    - "It is red and yellow"
    - "It burns you down"

    Woot ! That was a tough one.

    Since we are Chez Addict, I would like to propose my own riddles à la Tygus Horx ; with 3 cryptic hints you must somehow find a word.

    Here is the first riddle :
    - It cuts down trees
    - It is both a weapon and a tool
    - It is favored by dwarves

    Have you guessed ? It was an easy one !

    Here is an harder one :
    - It purrs
    - It catches mice
    - It is cute and full of fur

    Harder, isn't it ?
    I am going to give you an extra hint - should you need it (ROT-13) :
    vg vf fbzrubj eryngrq gb fbzrguvat gur Nqqvpg fnvq va guvf negvpyr.

    Now, here is the hardest one. Ready ? Not for the faint-hearted !
    - It is the sad part of the circle of life
    - It is the end of existence.
    - It precedes funerals

    Tough one, eh ?
    Because it is so hard, here is an extra hint - in ROT-13 so you only really need it if you don't find the solution.
    Lbh fubhyq guvax bhg bs gur obk naq abg nobhg n culfvpny bowrpg.

    I hope you had fun. Post your own devilish riddles.

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    1. - It is blue and wet.
      - It rhymes with "later"
      - It starts with a "W"
      ...what is it? Oh no, you must be stumped by this tough riddle!!

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    2. 1: Laser.
      2: Mop robot.
      3: Work.
      The last one was hard, but got it without the hint.

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    3. You forgot the Dwarven one, which is clearly Dynamite

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    4. ....but "Water" does not, in fact, rhyme with "later". So unless there's some obscure "Wollogater" that's blue and wet, shouldn't it be "rhymes with 'daughter'"?

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    5. 1) It cuts down trees.
      2) It eats its lunch.
      3) It goes to the lavatory.

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    6. @100Floors I LOL’d.

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  18. I've never bothered with Games of Thrones, but Namirrha is an evil wizard in a short story by Clark Ashton Smith

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    1. Yes, right. He's from 'The Dark Eidolon' (1932) which is part of the Zothique-Cycle. I could ramble on for a few paragraphs why this is a particularly great story, and how CAS is a master of name-giving (see what I did there), but I'll simply shepherd you all to the magnificent original text, you're welcome:
      http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/212/the-dark-eidolon

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    2. Always love it when Klarkash-Ton gets some shoutouts. My favorite fantasy writer!

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  19. The kickstarter for 5e RPG Solasta (great game btw) has a genius marketing gimmick of starting every update with pictures of the developers' cats. Contributed greatly to the kickstarter's success. So if you want more engagement for the CRPGAddict's blog, you know what to do, wink-wink.

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  20. I had furbabies named Odo and Nerys.

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  21. I named my black cat Pixel after The Cat who Walks Through Walls. Lousy book, but for some reason the cat's name stuck with me.

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  22. What about Jaana and Mariah? Since black cats are often associated with magic-working women (though admittedly usually in a negative way), you might name them after the two most magical Companions of the Avatar.

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    Replies
    1. "Dear Katrina, you're not magical, so go #$@% yourself."

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  23. Just a minor thing that bothers me: hit points show maximum first, then current; spell points show current first, then maximum. Whoops.

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    1. You get used to it. In a way, it makes sense to have the current values together in adjacent columns.

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  24. My black cat with an RPG-derived name… is Bigby.

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  25. "Minax" sounds surprisinlgy adorable as a cat's name, while "Bolden" and "Ellington" would make them the poshest pair of felines. I can't have cats, but if I ever got two at the same time, indistinguishable from one another, I'd probably call them "Beer" & "Pretzel".

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  26. Maybe not the best place to post this, but I did just turn up a cool student film from 1981 all about playing mainframe assisted RPGs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJxsDJOUIYY

    While it is fiction and not exactly sticking to tabletop D&D or any actual mainframe RPGs it does give a glimpse at the culture at the time I think. With admins trying to stamp out silly little late night CRPGs.

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    1. Well, that was weird and interesting. Thanks!

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  27. I wonder why Ultima Underworld 2 is not on the "highest rated" list? Was it disqualified for some reason?

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    1. I just hadn't gotten around to adding it. Blogger made some changes last year that make editing those sidebar pieces annoying.

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  28. @Chet re your "September 2022" post (since we can't comment directly on it): Sorry to hear this semester's start is so tough. Hope it gets better soon and you find energy and free time again, first and foremost for yourself!

    We'll be here whenever you manage to come back and at least for me there are still older posts to (re-)read and new comments to discover in the meantime. Or we can start or rekindle some discussion(s) in the comments sections of existing entries ;-).

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    1. Take care - and we can read when you get back. Like Busca posted - there are still things to comment on anyway.

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    2. AlphabeticalAnonymousSeptember 11, 2022 at 8:47 PM

      Agreed, with both the good wishes and the large 'back catalog' -- the first 20 min of my lunch hour is, more often than not, spent reading some old entry from this site!

      Delete
  29. Stay well Chet, have a productive September. We miss your insights.

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  30. Good luck and take care read you when your back

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  31. "Seek the Temple of Urlando!"

    Disney World? The Mouse has spread throughout the multiverse.

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  32. It is really funny that you mentioned the monsters called "Krimmel". Yes, it is the last name of my chemistry teacher in school. And I didn't like him too much.
    There are also more monster names which are connected to the music I listened at time of coding.
    "Headhunter" was a song from Front242.
    "Moving Hand" was a song from The Klinik.
    BTW: I found the original maps. I will scan them. Greets from Germany!

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