Legends of Valour: Man About Town

 

Good thing there are no alignments in Legends of Valour.

        

In a previous session, we learned that to figure out the main quest of Legends of Valour, I would have to become the head of four guilds:

   

1. Either the Guild of Men at Arms or the Mercenaries' Guild. I chose Men-at-Arms.
2. Either the Fellowship of the Asegeir or the Brotherhood of Loki. I chose the Fellowship.
3. The Temple of Set, the Temple of Aegir, or the Temple of Odin. The Temple of Freya is unavailable to me because they only take women. I chose the Temple of Aegir because it didn't require me to resign from an existing guild.
4. The Guild of Thieves. No choices there.

   

This session started with a focus on the Temple of Aegir, god of the sea. I had joined and got my first promotion in the previous session. I next went for the "Theologian" rank, for which I was tasked with bringing back proof of the death of the murderer Hoder. Hoder is curiously not mentioned in the manual's Mitteldorf Post, and I'm not sure what his crimes were. The first NPC I spoke with said that he had already been arrested and was in jail.

     

Probably for "acting suspiciously."

         

The city has four lock-ups, labeled "Turret Jail," "Castle Dungeon," "Hireling Prison," "The Brig," and "Town Gaol." I don't know what the jurisdictional differences are between these facilities, but the Town Gaol was closest and, it turns out, correct. There, the guard told me that Hoder had died after a night in a cold cell. His body was sent to the Charnel House. That was my next stop, and I found there a Certificate of Death for Hoder. That was easy. I thought I was going to have to kill him.

    

Becoming Divine Mediator was harder. I had to "capture the invisible spirit of Skoll." Skoll, or rather his spirit, is mentioned in the Post. An article titled "We're Sick of Werewolves!" notes that the large number of werewolves wandering the streets at night are searching for the Spirit of Skoll using "pocket spirit diviners."

          

Lore in the manual is used well in the game itself.

       

Werewolves are easy to find at night. I found one on the street, summoned him to me, and executed him. Sure enough, he had a "spirit diviner" that took over my compass to show the direction of the Spirit of Skoll. Unfortunately, I contracted lycanthropy when fighting the werewolf. I didn't realize it until a couple of days later, when I abruptly turned into a werewolf at midnight. This was accompanied by a fun animation.

   

I didn't notice any real benefit from the change, and I also had some other ailments that I needed the temple to cure. You can't pick and choose--it's all or none. Thus, it wasn't long before I was a human again. I was going to call this a "first," but then I remembered you can get lycanthropy in Nethack, maybe even Rogue. This is the first time it's depicted graphically, I think.

 

I didn't mean to call you a meat loaf, Jack!

      

The diviner let me find the spirit, but I had no idea how to capture it. Message boards came to the rescue. They led me to a "spirit bottle" at Drysdale's Salvage. I then followed the diviner until it led me to a house where it started spinning around. I fiddled with the bottle and soon had a "spirit in a bottle," which I took back to the temple for my promotion.

    

The cleric promotion was most interesting. The instructions for the guildmaster were to go to the house of the temple's representative on the Council of Five, follow the instructions on a scroll I would find there, and return the scroll to the temple for incineration. The Council of Five meets in a special building called the Meeting House, which I'd already discovered. After I got the quest, notices started appearing on message boards that the council would be meeting daily "due to the current political climate."

        

Bursting in on a council meeting.

          

The Council meets at night. When I entered, there were indeed five members. To identify my temple's representative, I talked to each of them--they didn't seem to mind that I was interrupting--and asked their religion. My representative turned out to be "Garth o' the Barnhouse." I was worried that I was going to have to follow him home, but fortunately "Where is the Barnhouse?" started showing up as a dialogue option.

    

A scroll in his house said, "The Council traitor is Cadby. He must be killed immediately. Only the traitor must die." This referred to Cadby the Needy, one of the five members I'd spoken to. As much as I dislike the idea of assassination, I hadn't gotten this far to quit and try a different temple, so I returned to the Meeting House and engaged Cadby in a duel of insults:

"You're the child of a degenerate halfling," I opened.

"And you look like a halfwit bog elf," he said. I guess we're both pretty racist.

"You look like a rotting ogre," I tried.

"You walk like a rotting ogre," he shot back. Oooh, good one.

     

 

Trying to provoke an attack.

       

This was getting me nowhere, so I just killed him. None of the other council members seemed to mind. I returned to the guildmaster with the scroll and got my promotion.

The quest for High Cleric required me to pay all of my gold. It was getting low anyway, but I spent most of the rest on a feast before taking the quest. 

      

A dragon's egg and a round for the house!

           

The final quest was to become a member of the Institute of Zoolatry. "The Institute commands great power across the whole of Wolfbrood," the guildmaster explained. "As such, they can pick and choose from the elite of Mitteldorf." Wolfbrood is the volcanic island on which Mitteldorf is situated.

  

I couldn't find any information at the Institute itself, but once again, the message boards had my back. A new message said that the Institute was seeking people for a "chimeric development plan." Aspirants, it said, should present themselves at the Institute with an egg of a wild lizard man. 

      

What is that lizard man doing to the water table?

      

"Where is the wild lizardman" appeared as a dialogue option after this. One NPC told me to look at the wetlands around the boatyard. This turned out to be a dungeon beneath the boatyard. Waterfalls ran down the rocks inside, and pretty much all of these waterfalls had secret doors behind them. I killed about a dozen lizardmen there and retrieved a golden egg.

       

A druid would have a tough time in this game.

            

When I took the egg to the Institute, things got weird. I was told I had to perform "the initiation ritual." This consisted of going to the Seahorse Tavern, drinking at least four gin-and-tonics, and killing a worshiper of Bacchus. That sounds like how you join a gang in New Orleans, not join the board of a zoo.

Nonetheless, I did as instructed. I downed the four drinks and stumbled out of the tavern, the world threatening to go black as I staggered down the street. "Wass yor relgissism?!" I demanded everyone who passed. When I finally found a bacchusite, I sacrificed him to the god of the sea. This earned me my Institute membership and, more importantly, a High Cleric position in the Temple of Aegir--all without having to cast a single priest spell.

       

The hangover made the ceremony tough to endure.

            

As expected, there was another skull in the High Cleric's quarters, along with a message: "Only one more skull you must collect. And the Book of Summoning--a spirit to resurrect." So not only do I need the fourth skull but also the Orb of Vision (mentioned in the second scroll) and this Book of Summoning. I actually know where the Orb of Visions is: in the jeweler's. I found it accidentally while exploring the place, looking for something to steal. Not knowing what it was, and conscious of taking up inventory space with something I didn't yet need, I left it where it was. I have no clues at all about the Book of Summoning.

    

The Thieves' Guild didn't want anything to do with a Templar in the Guild of Men at Arms, so after I grabbed the Skull of the North from the Templar's quarters, I resigned. After I left the Men at Arms and joined the Thieves' Guild, I started getting attacked a lot more on the street. Entire races who I'd never noticed before, like dwarf fighters, suddenly started coming up to me and telling me I looked like a boil on the bottom of a half-wit rotgoblin. Fortunately, these combats are still very easy, so the extra attacks were to my benefit. But I also started getting arrested a lot more, perhaps because the Thieves' Guild required me to commit several crimes, and because there's no "hide" mechanic in this game, I had to commit them in the open.

     

The Men-at-Arms don't take resignations well.

          

Getting membership at all--you join with the title of "Beggar"--requires stealing the collection bowl from the Temple of Set. It's a walk in, walk out quest. The second is also pretty easy: stealing a day's worth of tax collections from the authorities. Once I got this quest, notices started appearing on message boards that for the next few days, tax collection would be handled in the back room of the Troll's Arms.

          

If the IRS did all their collection in bars, I might not have been six months late filing last year.

             

As I entered the Troll's Arms, some guild member came up and said he'd already taken care of loosening the tax collector's purse strings. I just needed to follow him until the purse fell. As I noted before, "following" is difficult in this game, since the slow speed of turns makes it impossible to keep your target in sight when they go around corners. Fortunately, in this case, the guard dropped the purse before he was even a block down the street. I took it back to the guild and was promoted to "Pickpocket."

    

This guy should get the promotion.

      

My "Graverobber" promotion was the most difficult quest in the game so far. I had to burgle the plans for the thieves' guild from the architect who designed them. His house was easy to find--I just had to ask NPCs--but it was swarming with guards looking to arrest me the moment I set foot in the building.

   

Success required me to "case" the building for a while first and note its layout and the presence of guard patrols. I did this partly by peering in the windows and partly by saving at a nearby tavern, charging in and running around until I got caught, and reloading. Eventually, I figured out where the stairs up to the second floor were, and on my seventh or eight try, I managed to skirt the guards and get to the stairs. This also required me to use my "Portal" spell to enter via one of the windows rather than through a door, incidentally. Other than the breaking of immersion caused by the reloads, it was a thrilling quest--one of the first times in CRPG history that the game's mechanics of NPC movement and detection have allowed for something this complicated. The influence on The Elder Scrolls is again fairly clear.

    

Attempted burglary.

     

Speaking about plans and window entries, I was getting sick of getting to the Thieves' Guild. You have to enter through a door at the south end of the map (in the rear of a tavern), go down to a dungeon, follow a twisty path, and finally emerge into a building with no entrances or exits--except windows. I don't know when I first realized that "Portal" works on windows, but now that I knew, I used it to exit the guild via a window and then note exactly what building the guild was in, so I could enter via the same window in the future. A little later, I realized that I no longer even needed "Portal" to enter and exit via windows; I was given that skill as part of one of my Thieves' Guild promotions. I would note again that learning the skills or spells necessary to enter a building through its windows is not only a "first" in this game but, as far as I know, an "only."

     

Viewing the interior of the Thieves' Guild from the street.

    

Throughout the process of leveling up in the Thieves' Guild, it became annoying to keep having to stop and make enough money to both live and afford additional quests. It's humiliating for the High Priest of the Temple of Aegir and the head of the Fellowship of the Asegeir to be hustling packages for shop owners to make a living. These days, my preferred method of making money is to stand in the middle of a crowded place--the square in front of the Mercenaries' Guild is a good one--let haters come and attack me, and then sell their stuff. Sometimes, they drop nothing. Other times, it's a few gold pieces. But occasionally, I get lucky and they drop a few gems, or a hunk of treasure worth 20 gold. A day spent doing this lets me live for another week and afford the next guild quest. Unfortunately, standing in the middle of a public square waiting for trouble also attends to attract guards. I keep getting arrested for "acting suspiciously," which inevitably costs me 10 or 15 gold pieces. The criminal justice system in Mitteldorf needs some serious reform.

           

Having to pay for quests is getting a little irksome.

   

My "Thief" promotion required me to go to the Hanged Man tavern at midnight, find a guild member named Greyfell, do what he said, and return with his seal of approval. Greyfell approached the moment I entered and said that my instructions were on a scroll in the Troll's Arms. A scroll in that tavern instructed: "Gain entry to the Castle Keep and steal the stone urn from the Keep Courtyard. Take it to the Guild of Mercenaries and place it on the table in the Arena."

    

It was just that simple. Except for all the subterfuge and meeting in taverns, this could have been an entry-level quest. The castle keep doesn't have any guards that block you or anything, so I just had to wander in, grab the urn, and take it to the Mercenaries' Guild. Then I had to return to the Hanged Man and get Greyfell's seal.

     

The urn must not be that valuable.

    

The last promotion was to "Godfather." As usual, to get it I had to pay all my gold, so I preceded it with a couple of days of feasting. The task was to steal the "Jewelled Rock" from the Forbidden City. Moreover, I had to return with "knowledge of the lesser known point of entry to the city."

   

I also briefly tied up some of my gold in commodities.

        

As usual, the quest began by asking random NPCs, "Where is the Forbidden City?" The first one came through: "I heard that Choker Bloodaxe has been there and he has a map. You'll find him at the Hanged Man." As for "What is the Forbidden City": "It is a legendary part of Mitteldorf where the streets are paved with stone and the talk is of revolt."

    

Liar!

   

Here, I've run into a problem: I can't find Choker Bloodaxe. He isn't in the Hanged Man or any of the buildings near it. The damnedest thing is that he was here early in the game; I even noted him in my first entry. Maybe he insulted me and I killed him.

   

I figure the Forbidden City is found in the underground. There's a vast network running beneath the city, and I've only explored a small part of it. Aside from the time limit on the quest (which I think is renewable), I thought it would be fun to try to explore as much as possible, especially now that I can cast or pick my way through grates and "Warp" out if things get dangerous. I descended into the sewers via a random hovel and started poking around. I killed a few trolls, lost some gold to goblins, and was generally having fun when I suddenly wandered into a room dominated by a huge, red, snake woman and died nearly immediately. That sucked, as I lost all my progress, but it was also kind of cool. I wonder if she's just a random creature, or if she's part of one of the other guild's questlines.

           

Part of me is glad I just got to see this.

         

As quests go, this game is pretty good. As I keep saying, I like how the guild quests vary in length, difficulty, and nature. The only problem is that none of the game mechanics are up to the quality of the quests. No game has done stealth very well yet, so I can forgive that, but plenty of games have done combat, equipment, and NPC interaction better. It's too bad that Legends of Valour didn't graft its excellent guild and questing system onto a more conventional mechanical backdrop.

Another severely under-developed mechanic is the spell system. Mages and clerics have the same spellbooks, and they consist of only eight spells. I've experimented only lightly with a few of them, but this is what I can tell you:

             

• Portal is invaluable for a while. It lets you enter any locked door (except those that, for plot reasons, absolutely require a key) or pass through any window or grating. Eventually, you get enough thief skills to do the same for no expenditure of magic, however.

• Fireball lets you shoot fireballs for a brief duration of time. The problem is, you can't cast it in combat. You have to anticipate combat and cast it before the enemy engages. I could see it being useful in dungeons, particularly against those goblins that you want to keep away from you. But I'd have to experiment to see how it performs against just throwing things.

• Create Food expends half your "energy" bar for a single food item that increases your food meter marginally. I can see why they made it so expensive, as otherwise it would ruin the carefully-balanced economy, but I can't see using it unless I was really desperate.

• Create Water uses only about a quarter of your spell bar but is otherwise the same story.

• Warp takes you from wherever you are to the circle of Standing Stones in the middle of the city. There's a hostel, a tavern, and a store a short walk from there. Extremely useful. I use it a lot when I just don't feel like walking.

• Heal fully heals you. There's no "Cure Light Wounds" in this game. The problem is that it does nothing for injuries or disease, which deplete your "combat" meter, and you usually need those things cured more.

• Power increases the damage you can do in combat. "Some monsters just won't fall over without it," the manual says. I've yet to meet one.

• Protection decreases the damage you take in combat. Again, combats have been so easy that I haven't needed it, but it might come in handy during long dungeon explorations.

         

The spellbook is the same for both clerics and mages.

     

Over the course of my hours with Legends, I've really gotten to know Mitteldorf. The map is only a rough guide--there are lots of fences and other dead-ends that it doesn't depict. But now if I have to get from one end of town to another, I can mentally work out the best route and plot key stops on the way. And yet, on any route, I pass dozens of buildings I still haven't entered--buildings that probably don't have any major secrets because this game isn't quite there yet, but buildings that nonetheless might hold intrigue and secrets. This evokes something of the feel of wandering through a real city, and it's a major milestone on RPG development.

    

I'd appreciate any hints on Choker Bloodaxe. Failing that, I'd appreciate if anyone can confirm whether I will or won't find the Forbidden City by systematically exploring the underground. Otherwise, if I have nothing in a couple of days, I'm going to have to look at spoilers.

   

Time so far: 29 hours

Secrets of Bharas: Encyclopedia Bharatica

This game has a thing about goats.

         

I don't know how I found time for personal reading when I was a freshman in college, but at one point I found myself reading an onerous book that I hadn't been assigned by any class. I read it "for pleasure." It mentioned a lot of people, places, and things, and I had trouble keeping them all straight. (Imagine it was Lord of the Rings and you'll get the idea.) To assist with the reading, I decided to create a quick glossary for myself and build it recursively as I worked my way through the text. If it were Lord of the Rings, and I knew nothing about the story going in, from reading Page 1, I would have been able to create several entries:

Bag End

A residence or division within Hobbiton.

Baggins, Bilbo

Resident of Bag End in Hobbiton. Turning 111 as the story begins. At some point in the past, went on an adventure and returned with riches. Made an heir of his cousin, Frodo, when he was 99 and Frodo was 21.

Hobbiton

A town or country that contained Bag End. Bilbo, Frodo, and "Sackville-Bagginses" were among its residents.

And so forth. Each page delivered more information, which sometimes caused me to simply append information to the existing entry and other times caused me to re-write it entirely. By the end of Chapter 1, I would have had this:

Hobbiton

One of the older villages in the country known as the Shire. It was situated in Westfarthing, next to the village of Bywater, on a stream known as The Water. A hilly region, it contained many of the old-style Hobbit homes built as burrows in the ground, including Bag End, the residence of Bilbo Baggins.

       

By the end of the book, I would have been able to talk about how Saruman destroyed it during the War of the Ring and replaced the Old Mill with a factory, and how Sam healed it.

   

Anyway, I loved the process of slowly assembling the entries--which was good, because the subject had more than one book. A glossary slowly turned into an encyclopedia. Two years after I graduated from college, it was several hundred pages, and useful enough to other people who enjoyed the subject that I had it published. It sold a couple thousand copies, mostly to libraries, and I still get a check for around $50 every once in a while from my publisher.

     

Bolstered by my success, I started creating encyclopedias for other subjects. But the Internet soon spelled the end to those ambitions. Even before "wikis" became a thing, fans were posting encyclopedia-like pages online. Irene and I were working on a fan encyclopedia of Babylon 5, for instance, when we found a web site that had basically already done it for us. My encyclopedia-writing career came to an end.

   

Every once in a while, however, I get the same spark of excitement when I take notes for a game. This week, it was The Secrets of Bharas. It's been a long time--probably since Ultima IV--since I've put this much effort into note-taking. I created a document with four sections, the first covering the NPCs in each town and a summary of their dialogue, the second covering the steps on the main quest, the third outlining the history of Bharas, and the fourth an encyclopedia of major places, people, and events. I started with the manual and then moved on to the NPC dialogues within the game. Before long, I had over 20 pages of material. Here's the current draft.

           

Wandering into the village of Amiens.

      

I don't expect you to read the entire thing, but a look through the history section and a random selection of glossary and dialogue entries will give you a sense of the detailed world-building that went into this game. We've seen this level before, of course, with the Ultima, Magic Candle, and Starflight series, arguably Quest for Glory and Challenge of the Five Realms, too. Still, there are some layers in the world of Bharas that make perhaps only Ultima its equal. For instance, we have contradictory or alternate interpretations of history. The official story is that the six continents of Bharas where unconnected until a human sailor named Sadananda made first contact a little over 200 years ago. But some NPCs talk about ancient times when a cabal of mages ruled the world. As for the humans on Surya, some say they descended from a race called the Yukons, but others say that the continent was colonized by a human sailor named Vyruimneas. Conflicts create mysteries. Mysteries create intrigue. Intrigue creates excitement and a desire to keep playing. I would have noticed none of this if I hadn't started taking these notes.

      

I also like the way individual NPCs exhibit personalities and eccentricities. Kilroy of Amiens refuses to believe in magic despite it making up a huge and obvious part of his world. Philippe claims (almost certainly falsely) that he invented the magic that everyone credits Keviv the Wise for. Mahula decided to learn the art of healing at an advanced age after her husband was killed in the Fourth Great War. King Stanislas the Peaceful of Dharthi is ostensibly married to Queen Sonja the Beautiful. Spend some time in his palace, and you discover that he actually has ten women stashed in the basement, all named "Sonja," one of which he chooses to be the queen on any given day. How did they come up with that?

 

There are a lot of narrative details that make the world feel richer and more realistic, such as the low-level rivalry between mages and healers, or the fact that most healers take up the profession late in life as second careers, or that most young NPCs are well-traveled and think of themselves as Bharals, while most older NPCs (who experienced the last one or two Great Wars) are more nationalistic and suspicious of other races, or how a lot of ex-soldiers turned to dungeon exploration after the wars.

     

There are a lot of fun connections to make, too, if you're paying attention. In the Royal Palace on Surya, you meet a dwarf named Jean-Claude who came to Surya from Toulon in Dharthi. He characterizes Toulon as an "awful village wracked with poverty and disease" but is cagey about what forced him to leave. If you go to Toulon, you meet a female dwarf named Babette who says Jean-Claude was her fiance, but he left her at the altar. Her brothers have sworn vengeance if they ever find him. Similarly, a man named Ur'Zal in the Gathering of Nomads in Wairan laments his lost son, missing for years. In Parthenay in Dharthi, you meet a young man named Dagh'Al who says that he hopped a ship and fled from Wairan because he couldn't stand the life of a nomad anymore. Unfortunately, there are no dialogue options, no keywords, no way to really interact with any of these NPCs to solve their little mysteries. 

       

We can hear about NPCs' psychological problems but can't do anything to help them.

     

A lack of interactivity isn't the only bad news. The mechanics of the game simply aren't up to the quality of the narrative. The creators made a rich backstory for the various dungeons, for instance, but when you get there, none of that backstory is reflected in the layouts, graphics, or encounters that you find. This sets Bharas apart from the other game series mentioned above and makes it more interesting to write about than play. Also, the narrative is interesting but not evolving. Since NPCs are the only way information is delivered in this game, and since all of them are found in towns, and since I've visited most (all?) of the towns, it's unlikely that any of the mysteries of the setting--the secrets of the title--are likely to have any major payoff. Nonetheless, it was still fun to create this document and see what the developers came up with, and to see how the backstory of the manual is fleshed out in the dialogues of the citizens.

    

In my previous sessions, I had explored the human continent of Surya and the dwarven continent of Dharthi. As I discussed last time, I took poor notes and ended up losing them and a lot of screen shots. So for this session, I revisited both continents and then moved on to the others. There were 21 cities in total, each one holding about 10 NPCs on average. I also discovered 12 dungeons but didn't do any dungeon exploration during this long session. Nor did I fight any battles: I simply fled every combat, which cost a trivial amount of money each time.

       

Finding a dungeon in the center of Wairan.

        

Many miscellaneous notes from the experience:

   

• People in Bharas sure do like to talk about goats. The word appears 56 times in my dialogue notes. There's an entire Goat Herders' Village on one of the islands of Nadhi. Goat hair is used in spells. There's an artifact called the Helmet of Goat Empathy that I'm supposed to find, but some goat herders say they can already talk to their goats. Heck, you can even talk to a goat:

         

Say hi to your mother for me.

       

• This is one of the few RPGs I've ever played to offer a realistic depiction of the effects of war on a population. NPCs talked about being displaced, about people they'd lost, about trauma they'd experienced. More than one NPC is a soldier clearly suffering PTSD.

• An NPC named Vidya in the Fishing Village of Nadhi has developed "Continental Drift" theory. That reminds me that we were still (popularly) calling it that (rather than "Plate Tectonics") at the beginning of the 1990s.

    

He's even figured out subduction.

       

• The creators had fun with the different continents and name ethnicities. Suryans have English, German, and Italian names.  Dharthians, if they have real-world sounding names at all, are often French (e.g., Jean-Claude, Babette). Hawans are west and south Asian. Nadians are heavily Greek, particularly ancient Greek (e.g., Hercules, Aphrodite). Native Wairans have apostrophes in their names.

• In Wairan, you can meet another adventuring party. Like mine, it has two warriors, two healers, and two mages. Like mine, they got in the business to save the world. Unlike mine, they got distracted by riches. They all have Shakespearean names: Bianca, Cordelia, Katharina, Kent, Malvolio, and Petruchio.

• There are pyramids on each continent that can be accessed by speaking the simplified names of the gods of the lands. One NPC explains that the ancient gods set them up at the request of a mortal who was terrified of sea travel. The names are BRIGHT (Surya), COLD (Hawa), DARK (Dharthi), WET (Nadhi), DRY (Wairan), and HOT (Jalamuki). The problem with using these to travel is that most continents have more than one island, so you still need a boat to get between them.

• There seems to be no way to access Hawa's royal palace. Several NPCs spoke of it. There's a section of mountainous region in which it is clearly located--the compass (which points to the nearest town) indicates that something is in there--but it's surrounded by uncrossable mountains. I've heard no talk of anything in this game that suggests any kind of spell or item that lets you cross mountains.

• By far, the most annoying feature of this game is the day/night cycle, by which squares get "dark" at nighttime, the more the further you get from the party. It makes it so hard to find cities and dungeons in the landscape that I've generally just shuffled back and forth whenever night falls until it's light again. Time doesn't pass in cities, so you don't want to walk into a city at night because you'll have a horrible time trying to find your way around. Despite this, some cities have underground areas that are permanently dark. I can't be sure I found all the NPCs there. There is no light spell or item that generates light as far as I know.

        

Trying to find anything in this mess.

       

• Taking second place in the most annoying mechanic is transitioning from a boat to land and vice versa. Where most games do this with a simple pair of B)oard and X)it commands, here you have to go into the "combat formation" menu and drag everyone in or out of the boat.

    

Most of the useful dialogue was geared towards four things:

 

1. Encouraging us to seek out Yajiv the Big-Nosed in Surya.

 

2. Encouraging us to seek Keviv the Wise or Yaniv the Powerful to learn the game's high-level spells (you only need to seek one of the two). This involves finding a precursor artifact first, a Scroll of Wisdom for Keviv and an Orb of Sparks for Yaniv.

         

Keviv levels us up.

       

3. Alerting us to the existence of ancient artifacts, including the Gem of Vision, the Amulet of the Third Eye, the Helmet of Goat Empathy, and the Crystals of Bolton. The first three of these are the next stage of my quest, given by Yajiv. They're all said to lie in dungeons, and there might be more than one of each.

4. Telling us where we could find dungeons.

After getting the relevant dialogue and item, we got the top-level spells from Keviv. These are corpora trementia ("Tremor"), Impetus Cordis ("Kill"), Resurgens ("Resurrect"), and Daemon Pugnans ("Summon Demon"). I haven't had cause to cast any of them yet.

    

Unfortunately, we've run into a bit of a problem. The Mines of Minere on Surya won't operate without a Crystal Key. From a couple of NPCs, I traced the Crystal Key to a woman named June in the Suryan town of Vashi. But she won't give it to me, even though I'm sure I'm using the right keywords. Something in the game must be bugged. It's hard to imagine that this mine, closed off as it is and requiring the Crystal Key, isn't necessary in some way. I could end up spending dozens of hours exploring the rest of the dungeons for no purpose.

     

June's response even though I know I have the correct keywords.

      

I'll let it sit for a few days and see if anyone has any suggestions. I may try hex-editing the party to the next level in the Mines, although that variable might be hard to find in the data. Unless I want to try to find it in a save state file or the entire disk image, I have to find an Apple IIGS disk utility to extract the save file from the disk image first. I'm grateful to emulators, but playing old games can still be a real pain sometimes.

     

Regardless of what happens, I had fun compiling the "encyclopedia," even if, as I look at it now, it does seem a little insane. Then again, this whole project is insane.

    

Time so far: 35 hours

 

Game 393: StarQuest: Rescue at Rigel (1980) and Game 394: StarQuest: Star Warrior (1980)

An uninspiring main screen kicks off the first game.

           

StarQuest: Rescue at Rigel
United States

Automated Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1980 for Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET; 1981 for Atari 800; 1982 for Commodore VIC-20; 1983 for DOS

Date Started: 7 October 2020
Date Ended: 3 January 2021
Total Hours: 2
Difficulty: User-definable, ranges from easy to hard (2-4/5)
Final Rating: 9
Ranking at Time of Posting: 12/404 (3%)

StarQuest: Star Warrior
United States

Automated Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1980 for TRS-80; 1981 for Apple II and Atari 800; 1983 for DOS
Date Started: 7 October 2020
Date Ended: 3 January 2021
Total Hours: 4
Difficulty: User-definable. Ranges from very easy to hard (1-4/5).
Final Rating: 14
Ranking at Time of Posting: 50/404 (12%)

      

The brief StarQuest series started as an attempt by Automated Simulations (soon to be Epyx) to squeeze a bit more out of their Dunjonquest engine, which had been introduced in 1979 with The Temple of Apshai. (For a rundown of the series in general, I recommend my Hellfire Warrior review.) StarQuest gives the engine a science fiction theme but otherwise cuts the features to the bone, removing so many elements that I would not consider either game an RPG. Indeed, when I first visited Rescue at Rigel in a brief 2010 entry, I quit in the middle after rejecting it. I suppose I could have let that stand as the BRIEF, but it was a bit too brief even for a BRIEF, if that makes any sense.

    

Automated Simulations' approach to production qualities has always amused me. If they published a game that consisted of nothing more than a blinking cursor, it would still be accompanied by an illustrated 20-page manual providing an epic backstory for that cursor. Their manuals for the Crystalware titles that they re-published in 1982 walk the line between high art and high fraud, and here we see them cutting their teeth. Rescue at Rigel, whose gameplay complexity struggles to exceed that of Frogger, nonetheless comes with an illustrated short story that endeavors to seat the hero, Sudden Smith, among such luminaries as Flash Gordon, James T. Kirk, and Han Solo.

    

The StarQuest titles are set in the same universe as Automated Simulations' Starfleet Orion (1978) and Invasion Orion (1979), a pair of strategy games in which humanity faced off against invaders from the Confederation of Orion and the planet Klaatu. The strategic space battles in these early games use simple ASCII graphics and display minimal information on screen, so to enhance the players' imaginations, each scenario has a backstory in the manual, featuring a variety of characters and establishing the lore of the setting. Sudden Smith appears in one scenario in each game, a pilot whose combat experience has left him with some cybernetic parts.

          

I fight an enemy while a prisoner waits to be rescued.

        

In Rescue, you "play" Smith directly rather than just flying his ships around. An insectoid species called the Tollah have abducted 10 human VIPs and have brought them to their base orbiting Rigel. The base has 6 floors and 60 rooms, and 10 of those rooms have the VIPs. You must maneuver Smith through the rooms and corridors, fighting aliens and rescuing the captives. You only have one hour to accomplish this.

 

This setup makes Rescue akin to the "MicroQuests" that Automated Simulations developed for its Dunjonquest series. In both Morloc's Tower (1979) and The Datestones of Ryn (1979), you play the default Apshai character, Brian Hammerhand, on a time-limited mission. Like Rescue, these "MicroQuests" use the Dunjonquest engine but lack character development, an inventory, and the detailed room descriptions from Temple of Apshai. But at least they have treasure descriptions, offer varied monsters, and give Brian Hammerhand a (fixed) set of statistics. Rescue doesn't even go that far. Sudden Smith has only his silly name, a shield, and a couple of weapon options.

        

Heading into a new game.

           

I will admit that there is more strategy to the game than this limited setup suggests. Even on the easiest level, time, health, and energy are all severely limited. The base maintains a fixed configuration, but the locations of the hostages are randomized for each new game (within some rules, at least; I think they're all found within "dead-end" rooms, with only one entrance and exit). Even the fixed configuration is difficult to master, as there are shafts and teleporters, some of them taking you to predictable destinations, some randomized. You have to map out a path that maximizes coverage of potential hostage rooms.

          

My map of Level 3 of the base.

         

Enemies--common and high Tollahs and robots, mostly--pop up to block your progress. You have to decide whether to fight them or just blow past them, and if the former whether to expend a limited number of B)lasts or just F)ire your regular weapon, which depletes energy and can be set to various levels of lethality. (There's only ever one enemy in any room, and when you fire, your weapon aims at him automatically.) You also have to decide when to activate and deactivate your personal shield, which also drains energy. Nothing replenishes energy. You have some health packs to replenish health, but they go fast.

           

Transporting a rescued prisoner back to the ship.

      

When you find a hostage, you hit "T" to transport him to safety. If you hit "T" when not in the presence of a hostage, you yourself get teleported out of the base to safety. You can do that after you've rescued all 10 or some lesser number of hostages. Either way, the game simply gives you a screen that says, "Safe Aboard!" and gives you a score based on the number of hostages you rescued (one particular hostage, Delilah Rookh, gives you more points) and the number of enemies you killed. This screen is the same regardless of the number of rescues; you don't get a special "won!" screen for having rescued all ten.

          

The closest we get to a "win" acknowledgement.

       

By far, the hardest part of the game is mastering the Dunjonquest system of movement by which you adjust your facing by turning L)eft, R)ight, or V)olte-face and then hit a number to indicate how many steps you want to go in that direction. Lots of steps in quick succession depletes fatigue (which, unlike the other statistics, does regenerate), so you have to make sure to find rooms without enemies to rest and recharge occasionally. Still, unlike the other Dunjonquest games, you're not picking up inventory here that causes encumbrance issues, so fatigue is less of a problem.

     

        

The old Dunjonquest engine is still at the base of Star Warrior, but the creators managed to make it a much more interesting game. It still isn't an RPG, but they've replaced the missing RPG elements with some new tactical options, and the result is a game that I found both challenging and fun in its own way.

The setup, on which we will have more in a moment, is that the planet Fornax has been taken over by a tyrant. A resistance leader has sneaked off-planet to hire a mercenary group called the Furies (motto: "Retribution is Our Business") to overthrow the despot. The Furies, apparently as martially-gifted as the Spartans, respond by sending one agent with the cringy name of Purvis Youngblood.

           

Flying with my jetpack, I arrive on screen to see an enemy fortress.

         

You play Purvis in two scenarios: "Diversion" and "Assault." The first has no particular objective; you run around the map trying to destroy as much as possible (obtaining the highest score possible) in the time you've allotted. In the second, you're trying to destroy the installation housing the military governor. But accomplishing this task simply adds the line "Mission Successful!" to the scoring screen at the end of the scenario; both scenarios are fundamentally about pushing yourself and your character to achieve higher points.

      

You have more resources to accomplish these tasks than in Rescue at Rigel. In addition to the blaster and power gun (which again may be set to different ranges), you have a nuclear missile launcher with a fixed number of shots, two different shield levels, two different armor levels, a jetpack, and systems for auto-healing and remote sensing. Any of your weapons or systems may be destroyed in combat but repaired with an auto-repair module. Finally, there's a complex set of terrain-related variables that allow you to hide from the enemy, or detect the enemy before he detects you (or vice versa), adding a stealth element to the game.

            

An equipment summary precedes your outing.

       

Supporting these features are three character builds that you choose at the beginning: "dragoon," "marauder," and "ninja." You can also customize your own class by specifying exactly what systems and how much inventory you want to take; extra space is converted to speed and energy.

         

The game's explanation of the different "classes."

      

In either scenario, you roam an open map with terrain features but no barriers. The map is 6 screens wide by 10 screens high, although it has the illusion of endlessness because if you try to move off the edge of the world from a border screen, it just repeats that screen (except for the south, where it ends the game). Movement is with the same system as Rescue, but there's no longer a fatigue statistic, so there's really no reason not to spam "9" repeatedly when you're trying to get somewhere. 

   

The screens offer multiple types of enemies and fortresses. Fortresses remain fixed in position, appear the moment you step on a map, and do not respawn once you destroy them. Other enemies can come and go as you traverse a screen, wait, hide, or destroy them. Fortresses might be civilian or military. you lose points for destroying civilian ones. You can distinguish them with the O)bserve command. Only missiles work on fortresses.

      

Preparing a missile strike on a compound.

     

You get to set the minimum time in the first scenario, as well as a difficulty level from 1 to 5, so it's not hard to "win." You just set it for "easy" at 1 minute, kill a couple of things, and then leave the game when it says "Recall!" You end the game by moving south off a southernmost screen. The game gives you more points the further north you travel as you destroy enemies, presumably to encourage you to take risks. The manual offers that 100-300 points would be normal for a first attempt; 1000 once you get some experience. "We are still waiting for the first player to break 2000," it challenges. That would be tough. Even if you were willing to fight indefinitely, you'd eventually run out of rounds and energy.

   

Scenario #2 has no fixed time. You leave when you're done. A sensor tells you the direction and distance of the installation containing the governor, and if you kill him, you get an extra line in the scoring screen. You can boost your score with extra destruction beyond that. The two scenarios are otherwise indistinguishable.

       

I fight a heavy tank in the forest with the ruins of a fortress behind me.

      

I found the game challenging and fun up to a point. A lot that happens is random and extremely variable. Sometimes you pass through multiple screens without a single enemy; sometimes, you encounter five enemies in a row on one screen. Sometimes, the enemy appears on the other side of the screen and doesn't see you through the trees; sometimes, he appears right on top of you. Sometimes, his shot does 43% damage and disables your shields; sometimes, it does 3% damage. I suppose this kind of randomness is necessary given the nature of the game. It maximizes replayability and keeps the player from developing a sure-fire system.

    

I won, but I'm not proud of that score or time.

    

I rated Rescue at Rigel a 9 on my GIMLET and Star Warrior a 14, the latter entering the realm of "not bad" for games being rated on an RPG scale that aren't RPGs in the first place. They do best in their inherent challenge and replayability, and I could imagine that if I had someone to play with, and we kept leapfrogging each other in high scores, it would keep me playing. If you're curious about the dates, I had this entry written in October, but for reasons not worth explaining, I lost my screenshots. I kept it in reserve until I had time to replay the game and replicate the shots.

 

As you can see, the graphical style is quite different between the games, but this is as much to do with platform differences as game differences. Both games featured very different graphics depending on their platforms. Some of the platforms have sound; others don't. At best, the sound boops and screeches and slows down gameplay. I was grateful that Warrior had a setting to turn it off.

       

Rescue at Rigel for the Atari 800.

       

I want to return to the backstory of Star Warrior, because it reads a bit like a sci-fi update of The Turner Diaries. The reason Fornax was so easily taken over by a despot is that private ownership of firearms was outlawed a couple of generations before. As for the complaints of the resistance: "Controls. Censorship. State-issued identification. Regulations no one understands. Taxes on everything: income taxes, sales taxes, use taxes, excise taxes, import tariffs, export duties--something new every week." This leads the Furies leader to make a wry historical quip about "taxation without representation."

    

I don't know about you, but if I was writing a backstory about a dystopian civilization whose governor the player was expected to murder with nuclear weapons, I might try to justify it with more than vague Libertarian trigger words. I'd have the resistance leader say something like: "Death camps. Passes required to travel outside the city you live in. Bands of government enforcers invading private homes." Seriously, state-issued identification is the rallying cry I'm supposed to get behind? As for "taxes," every civilized nation in the world has at least as many tax types as are listed here. It's what we pay for the trappings of civilization. The fact of taxes isn't oppressive; the amounts can be, as can the means of assessing them--but the character doesn't try to justify that here. It's just their existence alone that we're supposed to sympathize with.

   

As for "controls," "censorship," and "regulations no one understands," I guess I'm against those, but I want to hear a little more before I throw in with your side. Because "censorship" is what some people cry when they get fired for using racial slurs at work; some amount of "controls" are what keep life livable; and "regulations no one understands" could be someone trying to overturn environment laws, food safety measures, and the licensing of airline pilots.

       

The death screen from Rigel, because someone asked.

        

Now, someone's going to read the manual and note that I'm being a bit disingenuous, because Chambers does mention "conscription, night arrests, and 're-education camps'" among his objections, although in an internal monologue that he never voices to the Furies leader. Even here, there's nothing particularly tyrannical about "night arrests"; it depends a lot on what the person is being arrested for.

    

It gets better. The Furies representative mentions that Fornax could always join the Stellar Union. Chambers rejects this: "No. We want to be free." This is what drives me crazy: the idea that government, especially--god help us--world government--is necessarily the opposite of "freedom" instead of the guarantor of that freedom. The Furies leader approves: "The only thing worse than taxation without representation is taxation with representation, but most people never learn that." Uh, no. The only thing worse is no taxation at all, and thus no police, roads, regulations against monopolies, national defense, consumer safety, clean water, national parks, disaster relief, universal education, and nuclear power plant inspectors. Most people never learn that because lives in such societies are nasty, brutish, and short. There are still places like that in the world today, to everyone's shame, and I can't help but note that a lack of gun regulations hasn't caused stable governments to magically form there.

      

The manual is reflective of the personal philosophies of its writer, Jon Freeman, described as an "ardent libertarian" in the bio section of his later Archon (1983). Freeman would leave Automated Simulations in 1981 to start Free Fall Associates with his wife, Anne Westfall. The first game from the new company was called Tax Dodge (1982).

       

I veered into the political at the end there, and I welcome respectful, reasoned counter-arguments. I will delete insults, bumper-sticker slogans, and other forms of nonsense.

Game 392: Oldorf's Revenge (1980)

Despite the copyright date, magazines attest to the availability of the game in 1980.

         

Oldorf's Revenge

United States

Highlands Computer Services (developer and publisher)

Released in 1980 for Apple II, 1981 for Atari 800 as Warlock's Revenge

Date Started: 1 January 2021

Date Ended: 1 January 2021

Total Hours: 4

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 9

Ranking at Time of Posting: 9/392 (2%)

     

My definition of an RPG requires character development. The character must increase his abilities, levels, or skills as a reward for overcoming obstacles in the game. Such development, along with the statistics associated with combat and inventory, are the primary mechanisms, drawn from tabletop role-playing games, that put the "RPG" in "CRPG."

      

This definition has been occasionally challenged by gameplay elements that seem "close enough." Chief among them are these two:

   

• The player chooses from multiple character classes and plays in a manner that makes sense for the chosen class, but the character himself does not improve.

• There is a character creation process that involves either chosen or random allocation of points to attributes or skills, but those attributes and skills never improve after creation.

 

These elements can be present in a single-character game or a multi-character game. They can exist alone or in combination.  Bad Blood (1990) is a single-character game featuring the first element. Shadoworlds is a multi-character game with both elements. I rejected both, but there are times that I've allowed titles to pass, including basically the entire Paragon Software library (MegaTraveller, Twilight: 2000, Space: 1889) because there was rare, nebulous character development, or because the tabletop RPGs on which they were based allowed for character development. I recognize that there's a fine line sometimes. Not here, but sometimes.

      

How is this underground?

       

Oldorf's Revenge is an early example of a game that could fool some players into thinking of it as an RPG. It's not; it's an adventure game, and not much of one, but it offers an RPG-like choice of character classes, not only at the beginning but throughout the game. It otherwise fails all three of my RPG criteria, but MobyGames still insists on listing it as an RPG and I still get occasional inquiries about it. As often happens, I started writing this as a BRIEF and then found that the game was so short, I might as well win it.

    

The game features a group--I hesitate to use the term "party"--of seven adventurers who seek to loot 300 points of wealth from an underground empire. One of the areas from which they loot the wealth is Oldorf's Castle, which vaguely explains the title, although Oldorf himself appears nowhere in the game, nor does he in any way take revenge. Oldorf's Castle is the second area that you reach after an introductory area; later, you loot Snotgurgle's Palace and the Land of Lynxor before finally escaping, ideally with your 300 points of treasure.

        

If I were rich enough to have a palace, I'd probably find some time to change my name.

        

The seven characters are cleric, thief, gladiator, strongman, magician, wizard, and elf. You choose one during the extremely limited "character creation" process, but throughout the game you can switch to any of the other classes by hitting the "C" key. This process costs 2 points of strength, from an initial pool of 100, and can only be done 5 times per class.

 

The point of switching is that each character has unique skills that only he can activate. Only the gladiator can fight in melee combat, for instance. The cleric has the ability to READ, SPEAK, and TRANSLATE languages. The thief can UNLOCK and PICK doors. You use the strongman for anything that involves MOVE, LIFT, PUSH, or SMASH. The wizard's sole command--CAST--does a variety of things given the situation; the magician's MAGIC command works more nebulously. The elf has no special commands, but he can fit into small places. This isn't a Tolkien elf.

        

Only the cleric can read.

      

What's unclear during the game is whether all seven characters are exploring together and when you C)hange classes, you're just selecting the active one, or whether there's one character, but he's somehow able to morph into different races and professions. The latter option makes less sense logically, but it makes more sense in the context of the game. There are places that only the elf can squeeze through, for instance, but he still has all his other class options once he gets to the other side.

         

Switching to another character mid-game.

        

Navigating the game is largely about solving puzzles with these various special commands. If you're thinking that each character can solve puzzles according to his strengths, think again. There are places that only one character can solve even when it looks like others should be able to try. One is on the first screen. To get into the dungeon, you have to open a door. If you didn't choose the thief (UNLOCK) or the wizard (CAST), you have to spend 2 strength points on a class change already, even though it feels like the strongman ought to be able to SMASH it.

          

A rare combat.

      

The two-page manual doesn't offer much help with universal keywords, but it turns out there aren't many beyond directions (N, E, S, W, U, D) and each class's special commands. Found items are picked up and used automatically in the appropriate places. There's one room where I had to specify that my strongman MOVE TABLE before MOVE CHAIR, but it's otherwise possible that no command required more than a single word. The solution is pretty obvious in most cases, and when it isn't, having the wizard CAST almost always gets you through. There are a couple of combats you can fight with the gladiator (ATTACK or KILL) or the wizard (CAST).

        

One of the most complex puzzles in the game.

        

The harder part of the game is managing your swiftly-dwindling class changes and strength pool. Every spell costs 10 strength points, so you want to limit those castings. You want to accomplish as much as possible with one character before switching to another. In practice, this means making several trips through the dungeon, noting puzzle locations in which a particular class is necessary, before you can outline an optimal plan. When I finally won, I had no cleric, strongman, or wizard changes left. I confess that I didn't win it 100% honestly: I allowed myself to use the maps created by CRPG Addict fellow Jason Dyer in his 2019 review of the game. My excuse is that the game is a particular pain to map because you get no indication in each room which directions will work. You have to try all of them.

        

I run out of strength.

       

The introductory area funnels you to a bridge where you have to pay a 50 gold piece toll. There are exactly 50 gold pieces in the area, so you have to find all of them. Some (like all the treasures in the game) are found by just walking onto the right screen; some require you to solve a puzzle. A common puzzle, found throughout the game, has a word written in a runic language or foreign language that the cleric has to TRANSLATE and the magician has to then invoke. There are also several small spaces that only the elf can reach.

       

It's not really clear who's enforcing this toll.

      

Across the bridge is Oldorf's Castle. That's where you start finding treasures that earn you permanent points. You can also start saving the game at this point; before the bridge, you can only quit without saving. In the castle, you have to find a key to unlock a coffin, which has a ring, which allows you to translate some books in the library, which gives you a keyword that when invoked causes a bookcase to slide aside revealing a passage. This is one of several places in the game where you get a graphical cue as to the effects of your commands rather than a textual one. 

       

A signpost offers directions to the major sections of the game.

      

The castle gives way to Snotgurgle's Palace. Puzzles include a room where you have to move a table and then move a chair onto the table to get a gold cross. There's a bizarre psychedelic area ("strange!" and "wierd!" [sic] are two of the rooms' titles) that culminates in finding some magic mushrooms. One puzzle requires you to interpret some roman numerals and say the number they represent. Another requires the cleric to LISTEN to a pillar, which says "Move Me," requiring the strongman to do as the pillar says. 

         

Indeed.

        

The caverns of Lynxnor are the third area, and here I was stumped briefly by one of the less sensible puzzles in the game. Faced with two serpents' heads, or maybe cats', I found that the gladiator's ATTACK did nothing. The wizard's CAST killed one but not the other; for the other, I needed the magician's MAGIC. Why? No reason--just the game's own logic.

    

One had to be killed, one contained. Ours is not to reason why.

      

There's a final battle in the caverns with a couple of serpents before you find the exit. If you've collected all the treasure when you exit, you win.

      

Hell is going to be thousands of game developers trying to be funny.

        

Changing between character classes is an interesting idea that would have been better served in a more challenging game. It earns a 9 on the GIMLET, with 0s and 1s in most categories. I gave it 2s for having a quest and for at least being short (part of the "gameplay" category).

     

Oldorf was the first game issued by Highlands Computer Services of Renton, Washington, a town to which I have been numerous times and would readily designate "the Renton of Washington." The company specialized in adventure games with simple text parsers and "high-res" graphics. A sequel to Oldorf called The Tarturian came out the same year but no one seems to think that one is an RPG. Early advertisements indicate that Oldorf's Revenge was originally going to be called Wizard 1, with sequels continuing the numbering. In some listings, Wizard 1 survives as a subtitle. At some point, Robert Clardy of Synergistic Software acquired the rights to the game and made an Atari 800 port that he re-named Warlock's Revenge, which continues to make no sense.

    

We might have another BRIEF (or BRIEF that turns into a full entry) this week as I build up enough interesting things to say with Bharas.

New Year's News

 

Happy New Year, Addicts! I don't know about you, but I'm glad to see the end of 2020. In the coming year, I'm looking forward to Zack Snyder's Justice League, herd immunity, finally getting to see live jazz in a club again, and reaching Might and Magic IV and V.

   

I just wanted to note three things as we begin our first days of the new year:

    

1. I finished 2020 with 141 entries. That's fourth-highest among the 11 years I've been blogging, and the highest since 2013. Moreover, those early years tended to feature shorter entries, so I suspect that I wrote more words in 2020 than any previous year. I don't know of any way to count words to know for sure.

2. Part of the reason I managed to complete the year without any long breaks is the mild pressure I've felt from having Patreon supporters. Every time I say something like that, I get a lot of comments to the effect of "we don't care how often you post," and I appreciate them, but I still feel that since I'm being paid for this blog, I need to elevate it slightly higher on my priority list, even when things get busy otherwise. This feeling is just enough to be motivating and not enough to be damaging, so it's a good thing.

   

I'm going to do a better job in 2021 of keeping my patrons updated with "micro-updates" and thinking of better ways to recognize their patronage. As I recently reported to them, their support allowed me to purchase a relatively expensive gift for Irene for Christmas and to make a needed upgrade to my house. These sorts of things help justify the amount of time I spend on the blog.

 

3. PC Gamer featured my work in an article that appeared in the November print edition and was posted online earlier this week.

4. I recently contributed to another Hardcore Gaming 101 "Top 47,858 Games of All Time" podcast on Pool of Radiance. You can listen to it here.

 

Finally . . .

 

Spice up your New Year with Two New Retro RPGs

   

Two frequent CRPG Addict commenters have recently announced games that are go beyond "retro"--they're designed for, and work on, original hardware. The first is Nox Archaist, led by Mark Lemmert, who comments as U3_Guru. Designed for the Apple II, Archaist is set in a peaceful world that has recently seen the emergence of a strange cult. The primary PC, an adventurer trained under the Order of the Nox Archaist, is directed by the queen to investigate. He charters a ship for a nearby island, but it turns out to be run by pirates who throw the PC in the brig. The game begins as it runs aground. 

           

        

Archaist imagines what would have happened if CRPG development had continued on the Apple II for another decade or so. It thus includes plenty of advanced elements that no one had conceived when the Apple II was in its heyday, but that are still technically possible on the platform (at least, the Apple IIc or above; the game does require 128K of memory). Heavily influenced by the Ultima series, it has the tactical combat screen of Ultima III-V (but with a "quick combat" option), the keyword-based dialogue of Ultima IV-VI, and the ability to activate a single party member at a time that only appeared in VI. However, the game goes beyond the Ultima series in character development. Each character has three attributes (strength, dexterity, and intelligence) and six skills (melee, range, critical hit, dodge/parry, and lockpicking), which are improved through training and direct use. Thus, the player doesn't choose a class for the characters but rather defines a class through the use of skills. There is also a set of original spells.

       

Exploring the pirate ship at the beginning of Nox Archaist.

      

The second title is Adamantyr's Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown for the TI-99/4A. It boasts a party of four characters from nine classes, seven schools of magic with 60 spells, a full set of skills and attributes, and also an Ultima-inspired tactical combat screen. I know less about it because I haven't had the chance to play it myself yet, but it looks beautiful. In none of the era titles have we seen such advanced graphics and gameplay mechanics on the TI-99.

       

       

Both games share excellent production values. They come with professional-quality manuals with professional-quality maps and cover art. In the case of Archaist, the cover was designed by ORIGIN legend Denis Loubet. (The game also features a cameo by Lord British, who gave the game his official blessing on Twitter.) 

       

Combat in Realms of Antiquity.

       

I hope to get to them both eventually, but don't wait for me. Purchase Nox Archaist and Realms of Antiquity at their linked web sites. And U3_Guru and Adamantyr, please feel free to comment with any additional game features you'd like to highlight.