Yendorian Tales: A Map of the World

 

To be fair, it's not really the entire island.

        

I almost always hate the second entry of any game that I blog about. It exhausts me just thinking about it. More than once during the past week, I launched Yendorian Tales and just sat there, looking at the screen, feeling the energy drain from me.

   

The first entry practically writes itself, as I cover the history, the manual, the opening cinematic, character creation, and first impressions. By the third, I've achieved a certain momentum, and I generally understand the game by then (although there have been some notable exceptions, like the recent Star Trail, where it took me until at least the fifth entry to hit any kind of stride). For the second entry, though, there's nothing to do but to play an unfamiliar, alien title and try to make sense of it.

       

I've learned to watch for the turning point, and for Yendorian Tales, it came at about the four-hour mark, when I was exploring the Athaneum (I'll sic it this once so no one posts a "'correction") and I found, on the bookshelf, a map of the island. There's something about knowing the size and shape of the world that instantly relaxes me—less because I want to know how much territory there is to explore and more because I need a plan for how to explore it. With even the crudest map, I can make a plan.

       

The library in the Athaneum. Note the trap door behind the counter.

       

Backing up, after the opening session, gingerly started to explore the world and almost immediately ran into the Athaneum, just south of the starting city, Saccate, which I really hope is pronounced the Spanish way. Exploring the four-floor complex took nearly three hours on its own. There were more than 50 NPCs. Some highlights:

    

• The Athaneum trains both wizards and clerics in their arts. It is run by a mage named Zamora. A lot of the NPCs were students who didn't have much to say except their chosen specialty.

• It has a temple, healer, horse-seller, tavern, and a kind-of inn called "the dormitory" where you can purchase a room permanently for 250 gold. 

• A couple of custodians named Conrad and Dorothy were preparing a large room for a special presentation from Zamora. 

     

I otherwise heard nothing about this.

        

• Magical arts in Thaine, the empire from which the people of Yendor came from, were governed by the Society of Wizards and the Holy Order of Druids and Clerics. Some of the students were from Thaine, and they reported turmoil and unrest in the homeland. Some planned to go home anyway.

• Lance, a student studying to be a wizard: There are giants in the Great Forest surrounding New Devon. 

• A whole dialogue chain (i.e., "ask BLAH about YADDA") taught me that a teacher named Griffin has the title of Great Scholar, but when I met Griffin, I couldn't get anything out of him.

• In addition to the map, the library had a book chapter titled "The Return of the Great One," which outlined how Zamora revived magic in Yendor after it wasn't spoken of for many years following a great war; a list of potion colors and their effects; and a book on spellcasting that reiterated the importance of Nuore. 

     

I'm guessing the red and pink potions aren't permanent.

      

• A trap door in the library led to the basement, where a maze of hidden one-way doors (you walk into them and they dissolve) led me to an archivist named Danner. He's spearheading an effort to recover scrolls, keys, and magic items. He offers a reward for scrolls in particular.

     

The wall temporarily dissolves as I move into it.

        

• A trap door leading up from the basement brought me to a small room occupied by a guy who can enchant non-magic items and +1 items. 

      

Enhancement!

        

• The second floor had a group of Council Chambers where the land's governors, a three-person body made up of city rulers, passes legislation. 

• I met Zamora in his fourth-floor laboratory, working on some kind of grand experiment. He wouldn't respond to many keywords, and he kept asking if I was there to bring him Nuore. 

        

Yeah, that's not suspicious or anything.

      

If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said that I love games in the Ultima style, where you talk with NPCs via keyword. Either I've changed (permanently or temporarily) or something about this game (maybe the tiny dialogue window?) makes it uniquely annoying. I was so over it by the time I finished up with the Athaneum. That said, I like that the NPCs in this game have stock responses to keywords that every NPC would be expected to know something about, including MONSTERS, YENDOR, MINES, ATHANEUM, THAINE, WIZARDS, and CLERICS.

          

Someone's a comedian.

        

Commands in this game remain a little wonky. A lot of things that look like they ought to be interactable (books, money boxes, chests, barrels) are not. Others interact in strange ways. For instance, (L)ooking at the bookshelves in the library gives you nothing; you have to (P)ick up the shelf, a command that never seems to work on individual books. There's no command to view your equipment and gold; you have to (D)rop it and then ESC from the drop screen without actually doing anything.

         

Why not?! I can pick up every other chest!

       

Once I left the Athaneum, I used the surrounding road pattern to figure out where I was on the map, which turns out to be the northwest area. I then turned my attention to combat, experience, and gold.

    

Combat at Level 1 is relatively hard. I had a character killed (a reload event) in about 50% of my battles, sometimes maddeningly towards the end. As I reported last time, the mechanics of combat replicate Ultima V and aren't bad, but it does take a long time to mince the characters into position, and I really wish the game remembered which enemy you had targeted last time. 

         

One of my clerics dies with only three enemies left and four chests on the screen.

       

I faced centipedes, ants, giant rats, wasps, bats, pickpockets, skeletons, and rogues, and I think their difficulty is roughly in that order. Humanoid enemies almost always have spells or missile weapons, so I try to avoid them. Fortunately, even animal and insect enemies occasionally drop chests. As I won battles, I slowly upgraded my equipment to silver maces, copper shields, and robes. Although I was making money, I didn't buy anything in the stores, trusting rather in loot-based upgrades (this turned out to be a good decision). Almost all enemy treasure chests have ore that can be sold at the mining company in Saccate, plus Nuore for spells. Spell points are relatively generous, even at Level 1, and they regenerate as you run around, so it's possible for healers to fully heal everyone after most battles, although I do need to keep an eye on Nuore levels (one unit of Nuore is consumed for every spell point).

       

Fighting bugs. I'm glad that giant wasp has wings, as I would not be able to see him otherwise.

        

Eventually, I noticed the letter "T" next to my characters' names, and I assumed it stood for "Train." Sure enough, my characters had reached Level 2. Unfortunately, I only knew where to find training for mages and clerics, in the Athaneum. When I got there, I was surprised to see a 700-gold piece cost. My finances barely covered getting my wizard and two clerics to Level 2. Fortunately, the increase came with "Cure Poison," which will save money now that I don't have to run to the healer in the Athaneum after every battle with a snake or spider.

          

Everyone can level!

      

Even though I couldn't afford it yet, I decided to try to figure out where I could train my miners and rogue. The map showed one other city in the northwest part of the map, so I headed there. The dense forests (the party cannot walk through trees) make it difficult to go anywhere on a linear path, but I eventually found the town.

      

The town was called Thieves Guild. It had no NPCs to talk with, just shopkeepers. There was a Thieves Inn (sic, etc.), a Thieves Tavern, shops selling weapons and thieves' tools, and—yes!—a thieves' trainer. Unfortunately, there were also a bunch of respawning hostile parties of thieves. I must have reloaded 20 times in the place as I slowly explored it, saving after each victorious battle and reloading after each death. The good news is that the loot from the enemies was more than enough to pay for Darkchild's training to Level 2. I also was able to equip everyone with scale mail or ring mail and copper shields. My wizard upgraded from a sling shot to a sling shot +2.

         

The weapons seller's list. Maybe I should invest in my own bows.

       

Behind a couple of illusory walls, the town also had a map seller. He had six pieces of the world map for sale for between 50 and 250 gold pieces each. I eventually bought all of them. At first, I thought that the map simply duplicated the one I'd already found in the Athaneum, and of course I had kept a screenshot of that. But it turns out that this one is interactive; if you click on the quadrants, it tells you the names of the cities there, the enemies you'll find, and the relative cost of ore. This is the only way that I found out the name of Thieves Guild, as there were no NPCs in town to say it. 

      

The in-game map is kind-of cool.

      

I still needed to level my miners. The map suggested that the only way out of the northwest quadrant was to cross a southern bridge, but I decided to walk east to the river and then test it by moving along the riverbank. I was nudged northeast by the pattern of trees, and I soon ran into a mine entrance. I decided to check it out. 

   

As NPCs in Saccate hinted, the party can just (M)ine anywhere and there's a chance of finding gold, Nuore, and other ore. There's also a chance of breaking mining tools, so it's good to have extra. 

      

Not quite worth it.

     

Almost immediately, I found a buried chest with some potions and a lot of Nuore. A little ways in, I met a man named Flagell, "trying to live out the last years of [his] life in peace and solitude." I couldn't get anything valuable out of him, but I'll bet he becomes important later.

   

There were no monsters in this mine, and nowhere else to go, so I continued the journey. I soon found another buried chest, next to a waterfall, with 275 gold, a steel shield, chain mail, and a "Giant glass."

     

It pays to watch out for those "mounds."

       

There is indeed no way to cross the river except for the one bridge southwest of Saccate, so I took it to the island city of Helsignor. The city had a weapon shop, armor shop, inn, healer, alchemist, and tavern.

     

Exit, pursued by a rogue.

      

The tavern offered a casino with three card games: "Twenty-One," "High-Low," and "Even-Odd." The Yendorian deck is a bit different than our standard deck. It has five suits with cards numbered 1-10 plus an asterisk, which always counts as 11.

          

Instructions for "Twenty-One."

     

"Twenty-One" has generally the same rules as blackjack, except with no face cards, the odds are very different. The instructions didn't say, and I didn't play enough hands to discern whether the house must hit on a 16 or below or stand on a 17 or higher. (There's no "soft" total in Yendorian blackjack, since * is always 11.) I started to work out the probabilities and a playing strategy, but I stopped when I realized how late I was with this entry. Overall, the odds seem worse to me than regular blackjack, although I did win two out of three hands that I played.

   

"High-Low," on the other hand, is a bonanza for the player. You get dealt a card and have to guess whether the next card will be higher or lower. Ties are a loss, but correct guesses pay even money. I calculate that the player has a 71.55% chance of being right. These extremely favorable odds are probably why this game has a 10-gold piece limit instead of the 1,000-gold piece limit for "Twenty-One."

      

Of course, I get a 5.

       

"Even-Odd" is like Yendor's version of roulette. If the numbers were just 1-10, the odds would be 51% in favor of the player, but any * is a loss, so that drops the odds to about 46%.

    

Tempting as it was to save-scum, I played a few low-stakes games and called it quits.

 

The suits are interesting. They are a sword, a ball being dropped from one hand to another, something that's either a lightning bolt striking a dancing mage or a mage casting a lightning spell at a cloud (or tree), two shields, and a dragon's head.

               

After selling my excess equipment, I had just enough money to get my two miners to Level 2. Unfortunately, by now my characters were all ready for Level 3, which for the miners will cost 1,700 gold pieces. Clearly, I need to hit the mines sooner rather than later. The map shows over 20 mine entrances. I'll start in the northwest corner near Saccate and see how it goes.

      

I can only afford one of them.

       

More encounters in Helsignor:

    

• A despondent woman named Olga said her favorite piece of art had recently been stolen by thieves.

• A man named Alden lay comatose in bed, tended by his wife, Phoebe. He had been a miner, and he was attacked by a giant scorpion.

• A man named Jacob will buy jewels for 1,250 gold pieces each. 

• An injured man in the healer's shop warned me that trolls hide under bridges.

       

Another borrowing from Ultima V.

      

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• The outdoor map has occasional mounds of dirt that the party can (M)ine to find treasure chests.  

• Leveling up gives you more maximum hit points and spell points and allows you to allocate a random number (roughly between 5 and 8) to each of your attributes. 

     

The highest bonus I've received so far.

      

• As far as I can tell, the rogue's only function in the game is to spare the clerics from having to spend spell points and Nuore opening chests with their "Open" spell. (In fairness, that was his only purpose in Wizardry, too.) There is no way to steal anything in town and he doesn't seem to backstab. 

       

He's about as successful as my Wizardry rogue, too.

        

• DOSBox saves screenshots by prefixing them with the name of the program running at the time the shot was taken. Usually, when I play a DOS game, all the screenshots end up having the same prefix. The ones for Yendor cycle frequently between different numbered programs, all beginning with "PROG" (e.g., "PROG1," "PROG9"). This suggests that the game is passing the data between completely different executable files for exploration, dialogue, combat, gambling, and other aspects of the game. I wonder if anyone has any insight as to why a developer would choose to do this instead of putting everything in one program like most games do.

     

By the end of this session, I was in a nice groove and wondering why I had been so lethargic earlier in the week. Let's hope it's clear sailing from here.

   

Time so far: 6 hours 

    

****

    

Previous entry in this series

    

Next entry in this series 

 

An Interview with Developer Charles Griffith

 

The victory that led to this entry.

           

Earlier this year, I had an opportunity to exchange some emails with Charles Griffith, who contacted me after seeing my entries on The Red Crystal (1993), an intriguing but buggy game that Griffith wrote himself after he left Paragon Software. At Paragon, he had worked on MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients (1991) as well as three non-RPGs created under Paragon's Marvel license: The Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America in Doctor Doom's Revenge! (1990), The Punisher (1990), and X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants (1990).

     

Readers who were around for my coverage of the Paragon titles may remember my constant frustration. The company managed to score licenses from both Marvel and The Game Designers' Workshop; under the latter, they developed not only the two MegaTraveller games but also Space 1889 (1990) and Twilight: 2000 (1991). If that seems like a lot of games for a couple of years . . . well, yeah. Paragon's games are characterized by rushed production, incomplete mechanics, and a complete lack of understanding of what an "RPG" really is. Most of them have nebulous character development at best. In offering traditional experience and leveling, Griffith's The Red Crystal is the most RPG of the bunch.

      

Wandering a dungeon in The Red Crystal. The  level attached to the character was more than Paragon ever did in the way of character development.

         

Paragon's CEO and co-founder during this period, F. J. Lennon, would be the first to admit that the company fumbled the ball. He wrote Every Mistake in the Book: A Business How-NOT-To in 2001, in which he frankly confesses to a host of business blunders. I interviewed him in 2020, and he admitted that the company never really took time to study the mechanics of other CRPGs. There were times that the developers made up for this deficiency in its stories and quests, as we saw in MegaTraveller 2 as well as Challenge of the Five Realms: Spellbound in the World of Nghardia (1992) and BloodNet (1993), two titles released after the company was acquired by MicroProse.

   

In his interview with me, Lennon confessed to a certain bravado that led him to over-reach and over-promise. It was this swagger that led him to approach Marvel about licensing their characters even though, at the time (about 1987), the company had only developed one game and published another. Charles Griffith's story with the company begins soon after. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in computer science in 1987. The economy was shaky and jobs were thin. Griffith interviewed at Paragon and didn't get an offer. However, in a follow-up call several weeks later, he mentioned to Paragon president Mark Seremet that he had purchased an Amiga 500. Paragon needed an Amiga developer for its marvel license, and pretty soon Griffith was porting Spider-Man to the platform.

   

I'll start by saying [that] despite my best efforts, the game sucked. The PC version was horrible and I ignored most of it. It wasn't a code port, but some of the art was used. Fortunately, a newly-hired artist cleaned it up. [Griffith later interpolated that this new artist was Steve Suhy, perhaps the last of the original Paragon staff still working on games.] Sadly, while the Amiga was a revolutionary machine, it was not an easy machine to code on. Literally every program in Commodore's 300-page developer handbook resulted in a fatal error (called a "Guru meditation" with a numeric code). I muddled through getting 50% complete on developing the game before the company's sole Amiga hard drive irrevocably crashed - and no backups.  Again, as noted, deadlines never moved. You delivered by August (in time to master and produce the product for Christmas) or you went bankrupt. Long story short, we got a version out but it wasn't great.  However, I did feel some pride having been able to deliver despite the various challenges. 

      

Griffith probably regrets his name on the title screen.

         

Paragon decided at some point that the Amiga was never going to be a big player in the United States, "so Paragon graciously moved me to the PC." Griffith's next project was supporting programmer Thomas Holmes on MegaTraveller 1. Griffith remembers Holmes fondly: "He was an exceptional engineer. He literally was Paragon's early heart." Despite the many challenges he faced, including the fact that, in Griffith's opinion, "PCs were not meant for games," Holmes managed to deliver while keeping everyone's spirits up. "[He] was a great and calming agent for other engineers." On the CRPG Addict, we're about to see some more of Holmes's work on the two Ravenloft titles.

           

After his experience on MegaTraveller, Griffith lobbied to lead the development of a game, and he got X-Men 2: Fall of the Mutants. As perhaps the only true Marvel fan on staff, he saw the project as an opportunity to make up for X-Men (1989), which had demonstrated no affection for the comics. ("I mean, they introduced a gorilla as a villain!")

      

My goal was to take a major segment of X-Men history and turn it into a game that was true to the comic. I won't say we necessarily achieved that. However, I will say that it was an interesting attempt. We basically took all the potential X-Men we had in the license, created an underlying roleplaying system, and then put together a series of dynamic levels a player could explore with their team.  
     

I spent five straight days in the Paragon offices without sleep finishing this game. I had a pyramid of 200 Pepsi cans from the company machine with a continual parade of ants visiting it. Despite pleas for me to leave (or at least shower), I stayed until I finally figured it was done. I lived three hours from Paragon, and have no memory of driving home. One of the other set of team members that commuted told me they found me in my car that morning in a bowling alley passed out . . . but didn't wake me. In any event, when I did get home, Paragon called three hours into my sleep telling me I needed to come back in as they had "found a bug." I declined but we managed to make the deadline.

             

You know the situation is dire when there's snow in Dallas.

      

Griffith's next big project was as a co-programmer on MegaTraveller 2. The lead programmer, who Griffith did not want to name (and could be one of three people according to the game credits) "was an UBER-MegaTraveller fan." Griffith said that the developer had the "rare opportunity" to spend four months designing and prototyping the game, but that he didn't accomplish much during that time. "He was the classic game engineer: completely introverted, an exceptional coder, and difficult to engage. My role on the project was to help 'get something delivered.' I credit this as one of my early learnings on how to manage highly technical people." Once again, the company "put in incredible hours" to finish before the holiday deadline.

   

Griffith acknowledges the many comments I made about the lack of authentic role-playing and character development in the Paragon titles. He explains that Paragon operated in an awkward space between an independent developer, who can take as much time as he wants, and a large company, which has enough resources to fully develop their ideas. Paragon titles, in contrast, had "one or two engineers, one or two artists, a sound engineer, maybe a designer . . . [and the games were] likely tested by the same team!"

     

There was seldom downtime between games. Your lifespan was a direct result of earnings. Since it's been decades, I feel comfortable sharing some real numbers: For my roughly three years at Paragon, I started at $24,000 a year and left at around $30,000 if memory serves. The revenue I generated (and it was a small company, so numbers came in on faxes and everyone saw them), was well over $1 million. So you can imagine a small game company like Paragon  putting out about three titles a year in that era, was probably pulling in about $3 million a year. They had to cover salaries, licensing, rent, equipment, travel, [and so forth] out of that income so, it wasn't the industry it is today.  

       

The company was also having what in retrospect was its heyday during an awkward time. Changes in the computer industry were never more rapid, making it difficult to re-use last year's assets. All kinds of new technology was available, but it wasn't yet standardized even on a single platform. PCs weren't dominating the market yet, so every game had to be ported to multiple machines. You couldn't trust that most players would have hard drives, but you couldn't ship on too many disks. The industry as a whole had not developed a solid playtesting model. If the game turned out to have a catastrophic bug, there was no Internet yet to distribute patches. 

      

I liked MegaTraveller 2's story; I never warmed to its mechanics or combat.

          

Exhausted after his experience on MegaTraveller 2, Griffith quit the company, moved to Ohio, and briefly consulted on enterprise solutions for rubber companies before landing a position with another game company, the Leland Corporation (formerly Cinematronics). During the day, he worked on an SNES racing game called Super Off Road: The Baja (1993), but he couldn't shake the idea that he could develop an RPG closer to the ones he had enjoyed in the early 1980s, including the Wizardry series and Gauntlet. He began programming what became Red Crystal during his off-hours. He envisioned it more like Gauntlet than Wizardry: an arcade-like dungeon crawler with the ability to support two players simultaneously. However, he also wanted it to contain plenty of side-quests, something he felt was missing from both the Paragon titles and the industry as a whole. (He is correct in this; by the early 1990s, the only major series that clearly understood the concept of "side quests" was Might and Magic.)

    

By the summer of 1992, he had enough programmed to take it to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago and start looking for a publisher. He caught the interest of Bruce Zaccagnino from New Jersey-based Quantum Quality Productions (QQP). QQP wanted to add more role-playing mechanics, and Zaccagnino and QQP employee Steve Cohen worked with Griffith to make the necessary changes. (Griffith particularly credits Cohen with most of the game's side quests. It was Zaccagnino who came up with the Seven Secrets of Life.) QQP had fewer resources than even Paragon, however, and the game was released in 1993 with minimal playtesting. Although acknowledging the game's many bugs, Griffith was particularly proud of a last-minute compression solution that he developed to fit the game onto two floppy disks, which was considered necessary at the time.

      

For all its flaws, the game had solid art and production values.

          

"Of course, the game was not the success QQP nor I hoped for," Griffith said. "Worse, [it] was available on WAREZ boards within hours  of release." On the other hand: "It was a PhD in learning."

   

Griffith had some final thoughts on the era:

      

It was still a moment in time when individuals could publish unique products with limited guidance or direction. However, these games had to be completed within ridiculous time frames with almost no support (engineering libraries, tools, high-end art packages, or multi-disciplined teams). Occasionally, this [reality] delivered compelling games that launched franchises; more often, players got inconsistent, flawed games which tried their best but never hit the mark. Sadly, most of mine fell into the latter category but, like babies, they were still mine and I love them for what they aspired to be. 

       

I think that Griffith's sentiments help explain why it's sometimes more fun for me to write, and for you to read, about flawed games than it is to write and read about the genre's masterpieces. 

    

Griffith continued for a while in the game industry, jumping to Acclaim Entertainment from 1992 to 1994. Between 1995 and 1997, he worked for Stargate Films, a special effects shop involved in major films like Star Trek, Highlander, and (more recently) The Walking Dead.

      

Griffith at home with his dogs.

        

Since then, his multiple jobs in the technology industry have included special effects engineering for television and films, computer-aided design and product rendering, e-commerce platforms, transportation logistics and supply chain management (he launched Amazon's worldwide delivery system), and business analytics. He has lived in the Seattle area for the last two decades and is eyeing retirement. He wrote his own closing line: "Like Bilbo Baggins, he looks back on these early adventures with fondness and a small bit of regret. However, he knows it pushed him to become more than he thought he was capable of."

MUD Day Postponed to 20 June

Hi, everyone. If you were excited for 16 May, I apologize, but I'm going to have to postpone MUD Day to Saturday, 20 June 2026. My apologies to those of you who cannot make the new date. The time and other details are unchanged. Of course, you're welcome to experience MUD on 16 May or any other date, but I won't be there until 20 June at 18:00 UTC. See you then!

 

In related news, the next update won't happen on the blog until probably Monday or Tuesday, 18-19 May. 

Upcoming Games: Al-Qadim (1994), The Odyssey (1993), Escape from Ragor (1994), Dungeon Arcade (1987), Pagan: Ultima VIII (1994), Warriors and Warlocks (1983), Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (1994)

 

Probably not the best game of 1983, but likely the best manual cover of 1983.

         

For the first time since January, it's time to discuss the next seven games on the "upcoming" list, plus a "secret eighth" that will be here sooner rather than later. When we last did this, I assumed that The Elder Scrolls: Arena would take a lot longer than it did, and also that I'd like it a lot more than I did. I correctly estimated that Realms of Arkania: Star Trail would tie me up for a while.

   

As a reminder, this discussion is to offer:

     

• Opinions about the game's RPG status. While applying your own definitions to such a discussion is fine, what really helps is if you apply mine. The FAQ (7th question) covers my definition.
• Tips for emulating the game
• Known bugs and pitfalls
• Tips for character creation
• Trivia
• Predictions for my reaction and/or the GIMLET score (without specifics that will spoil the game).
• Sources of information about the game from around the web, particularly obscure ones that I might otherwise miss during my pre-game research.

      

These are the next seven titles:

     

• Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse (1994 | DOS | Cyberlore). My understanding is that this is a relatively simple action RPG, perhaps more notable for its D&D credentials than its RPG ones.   

• The Odyssey (1993 | Macintosh | Independent): An iconographic shareware adventure for the Macintosh that uses classical themes. It looks competent enough.

• Escape from Ragor (1994 | DOS | Motelsoft): I've done poorly with Motelsoft's iconographic games, but better with its first-person games. This is a first-person game. It appears to me to be a single-character Dungeon Master clone.

• Dungeon Arcade (1987 | Atari 800 | Antic): Most of the games from the 1980s that are "unplayed" on my list are questionable as RPGs, but I watched some video of this one, and it seems solid enough. It's an iconographic game, but I can't tell from video whether its primary inspiration is roguelikes, early Ultima, or the Quest series.

• Pagan: Ultima VIII (1994 | DOS | Origin): This will be the first mainline Ultima game that I've never previously played, except for about five minutes. I'd say I was looking forward to it, but there must have been a reason that my previous attempt only lasted about five minutes. As for the famous jumping puzzles, I'm going to try to start with a pre-patch version

     

I don't care for the look of it.

       

• Warriors and Warlocks: Scenario - Castle Myrhavell (1983 | TRS-80 | Random House): This one flew under the radar until Dungy discovered it and added it to MobyGames a couple of years ago. I gather it's a Wizardry clone, but it has some nice production values. It's iffy whether I'll be able to play it: I thought I had a working version when I added it to the list, but that turned out not to be the case. I'm looking for another one.

• Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (1994 | DOS | DreamForge). Back when I used to read (but not play) Dungeons & Dragons modules, I thought that Ravenloft was the best I'd ever read. Years later, I found out that many people shared that opinion. I have no idea what to expect from the CRPG adaptation except a vague notion that if it were any good, it would be more famous. I know it uses the same engine as Menzoberranzan from later in the year. Video suggests that it blends elements of Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld.

 

A shot from Ravenloft, I assume in camp.

        

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, in addition to these announced games, we're also going to have, in the near future, a guest series on The Search for Freedom (1994), written by our colleague, AlphabeticalAnonymous. Freedom is the second of two RPGs by Howard Feldman of the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History fame. I did not choose it for my primary pass through 1994. I will be away a bunch between 20 May and 7 June, so AA's series will help me keep on track during a period in which my own playing time will be limited.

       

I can't say that I'm really looking forward to any of these games, but neither am I dreading them. Hopefully, one or more will turn out to be unexpectedly fun.

   

****

   

 

Mark your calendars: 20 June 2026 is MUD Day!

On Saturday, 20 June 2026 from 18:00-22:00 UTC (14:00-18:00 EDT in the U.S.), maybe longer depending on how things go, I will be playing the original Multi-User Dungeon (1978), as hosted on British Legends. (I will subsequently post an entry about it.) You will find me in the game as "Chester" or maybe some obvious variant. Please, no one be a jackass and confuse things by creating similar names or pretending to be me.

      

The modern iteration of a 50-year-old game.

         

MUD was created by  two students at the University of Essex on a DEC PDP-10, inspired by Zork (1977). Starting in 1983, players from around the world could access the game remotely. It was licensed by CompuServe in 1987 and renamed British Legends. It lasted until 1999. In 2000, Viktor Toth registered the domain british-legends.com and rewrote the game from its pre-CompuServe source code.

      

While MUD is not the first CRPG or even the first multiplayer CRPG, it is notable for going a slightly different direction than the multiplayer games that preceded it, predominantly the PLATO-based dungeon crawlers like Moria (1975) and Oubliette (1978). It mixed CRPG-style attributes and experience with the interface of a text adventure and spawned a subgenre of games that players enjoy to this day.

     

Here's all you have to do to join the game from a Windows 10/11 computer:

   

1. Go to the "Turn Windows Features On or Off" control panel.

2. Check the box next to "Telnet." 

3. Type Windows-R, then "CMD," then  ENTER.

 

(You can replace these steps with a dedicated terminal emulator like PTerm or PUTTY.)

 

4. At the prompt, type:

TELNET british-legends.com 27750

 

5. Enter a user name.

 

The game will then ask you for an email address. Once you type it in, it will send you a password. Then just repeat Steps 4-5, enter the password, and Jack's a doughnut, you're in the game!

           

Logging in to MUD.

         

Of course, you'll want to read some information about how to play the game first. The site has a "How to Play" page, a more elaborate "More Advice" page, and a "FAQ."

 

I've been in touch with Viktor Toth, the owner of the site, and he doesn't anticipate any problems. He warns that if there are more than 36 players, the server will create a second instance of the game, so you may end up in a world in which I'm not participating. 

       

A long and ultimately tragic battle with a zombie.

        

Since MUD is a multiplayer game, let's make this a multi-author entry! Record your notes and thoughts about your experience with the game, take screenshots, and either send everything to me within 48 hours of our playing session, or post your experiences to the comments after my entry is published.

   

And let's try to recreate the original experience. Take notes, make maps, avoid spoilers. Provide hints (but not outright spoilers) to other players. Hang out in the tearoom in chat. Yell! And of course kill each other (and me) to harvest our treasure and points.

   

Let me know if you have any questions; otherwise, I look forward to seeing you there! 

 

Game 577: Yendorian Tales: Book I

     

Yendorian Tales: Book I

United States 

SmithWare (developer and publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 6 May 2026

     

You would think that the title Yendorian Tales is a reference to the Amulet of Yendor from Rogue (1980), itself an ananym of "Rodney." But it rather seems to be a case of the same thing happening twice: two of the primary authors of the game were named "Rodney." All belonged to the Smith family of Fort Worth, Texas, the eponym of SmithWare (later abbreviated "SW Games"). I'm guessing that Rodney R. Smith was the father of Timothy and Rod Smith II, but I haven't been able to confirm yet. I'd like to reach them because paying the full shareware fee of $22 supposedly got the player a full manual. The text file that comes with the game doesn't explain a lot.

    

Their game is a competent shareware title in the vein of Ultima V/VI. Its backstory is told in a series of title cards with light animations. It takes place on the island of Yendor, which is cut off from the rest of the world by a thick mist. It was populated a century ago by a collection of wizards who fled tyranny in the kingdom of Thaine. They set up a free educational institution called the Athaneum, established a benevolent republic, and attracted a lot of commoners from the mainland.

      

The third game has the character return to Thaine. It will be a while.

       

Happily, Yendor is also rich in Nuore, the reagent that forms the basis of all magic. It must be mined. Hence, the population of the land is divided between the mages and clerics who study at the Athenaeum and the miners who supply them with Nuore. Lately, however, the miners have been experiencing frequent attacks from monsters, which has jeopardized the production of Nuore. The governors of the island are looking for heroes to investigate the source of the attacks and stop them.

       

This is what we call "book smart."

      

The game supports a party of up to six members, both men and women, in four classes: miner, rogue, cleric, and wizard. Each has six attributes: strength, intelligence, dexterity, wisdom, stamina, and charisma (which roll on a scale from 30-60), plus the derived attributes of accuracy, damage, and absorption. I created a party of two miners, one rogue, two clerics, and one wizard. You can choose from a selection of 20 portraits during this process.

      

Assembling a party.

      

The game begins in a tavern in the town of Saccate. The party is represented by a single icon. The interface uses a combination of overhead and axonometric graphics, with the perspective from the southwest (instead of Ultima VI's southeast). The game uses tiles but manages to achieve the illusion of a continuous surface by blending them well and putting leg animations on character movement. Movement is with the arrow keys or numberpad. Other commands are accessible from an icon bar with keyboard backups, including (T)alk, (P)ick up, (A)ttack, (C)ast, and (L)ook. Targeted commands bring up a cursor that you can use anywhere within a three-square radius

      

Characters have an active weapon, armor, and shield that can be set by scrolling through possibilities. My miners started with cloth armor and no shields. The miners have knives; the rogue has a dagger; the priest has a staff; and the wizard has a sling shot. We have 300 gold pieces and a lock pick set. All unequipped items are stored in a collective inventory.

     

My lead miner and his equipment.

              

A problem becomes immediately clear: the game buffers all keyboard inputs, so delayed inputs keep executing even if the key is released. That means if I hold down an arrow key too long (and everything is too long), the character bumps into the nearest object in that direction until the buffer clears. You have to mince one step at a time.

     

NPCs scurry around the screen. They enter and leave buildings, sit down at tables, and occasionally go to sleep in beds for a while. The game doesn't have a day/night cycle or any way (that I can tell) to tell time, but the NPCs are definitely operating on a schedule. Interaction with them uses an Ultima-style keyword system, though with all the messages crammed uncomfortably in a small window in the lower right. NPCs all respond to HELLO, NAME, JOB, and BYE and of course often respond to keywords that come up during the conversation.

      

In real life, if a bit of track is broken, beating it with a pick doesn't help.

           

I work my way around the city, meeting NPCs and investigating services:

     

• The tavern is run by Donovan, who sells ale and wine.

• Neil: Works in the mines. Had a bad day. Everyone in my party can mine if we have enough mining tools. We'll also need a mining cart. If we come across a section of broken track, we can use mining tools to repair it.

• Garret: Wants me to buy him an ale. The governor is looking for people to enter the mines. I can find him in his house.

• Dean: Fights in the mines. They're becoming tough. Recently, he fought a bunch of giant rats.

• Tyler the Guard: Confirms the name of the town and says that the Athaneum is to the south. Tells me the laws of the towns: You cannot get drunk, attack or kill an innocent person, or enter a building while mounted on a horse. If you do any of these things, you'll be stopped and arrested when you try to leave.

• The blacksmith shop sells horses for 200 gold.

       

And at a sensible horse-to-character ratio.

        

• A mining company store sells carts, mining tools, and torches. It will buy ore. 

• Marcus: If I want a job, I should talk to the governor in the northwest part of town.

• Norma: Works in the mines with Osgood. One can find gold, Nuore, and other ores in the mines, which the mine shop will buy.

• Osgood:  Works in the mines with Norma. They're full of monsters. Most of them die quickly. He can increase my charisma by 6 points for 2,000 gold pieces.

     

I'll have to remember that.

       

• Barton: Works in the mines repairing broken track. Mine shops will pay for fixing broken track.

• Zeke: Works in the mines. If I find something in a spot, I should move on, as there won't ever be anything else. 

• The inn has rooms for 30 gold pieces. You can also ask for the BOOK, which takes the player to the main menu, where he can create characters and change the composition of the party.

      

The "book" continues the storybook theme inherent in the interface.

       

• Arlo: Protects the governor. The governor is a member of the Council of Governors, which meets at the Athaneum to the south.

• Dewey: Governor's aid. Asks if I'm willing to put my life on the line to help the Governor and Yendor. When I say YES, tells me to go see governor. 

• Governor: Annoyed that I'm bothering him until I speak to Dewey first. One of four governors on the Council. There are mines in the Northern  Mountains, the Coastal Caverns, and the Eastern Mountains. Recaps the main plot of the game.

     

The governor is in bed when I talk to him, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

      

• Lynn: Can see into the future. For us, sees great battles, a big group, important people, a dark cave, and a celebration. She says that very soon we will "join with many people and witness a great tragedy," and that she and I will speak again. 

• Alexander: Owns the weapon and armor shops, which are run by his sons. 

• The armor shop sells wooden shields, copper shields, gold shields, cloth armor, robes, leather armor, ring mail, and steel shields +1. Each item has a minimum required strength.

      

Browsing the armor selection.

       

• The weapon shop sells bolts, staves, daggers, clubs, hammers, maces, flails, knives, short swords, spears, hand axes, broad swords, morning stars +1, and cross bows +1. They have both minimum strength and dexterity requirements. 

• Bailey: Looking for a flail to defend himself against thieves. There are several bands northeast of Saccate, "around the thieves' town."  

• Warren: Guards the gates at the south end of the town and watches the horses tied up there. You cannot take horses into any of the shops. 

   

My starting gold doesn't go very far. I buy everyone except my wizard (who can't carry one) wooden shields, then upgrade the wizard and one of my clerics to robes. 

   

When I go to leave the town, I get a taste of the justice system. Apparently, while testing the controls, I tried to attack an NPC earlier. This results in the party being arrested and send to jail in the town of Mantov, where they can pay a fine (I don't have enough gold) or "serve time" by literally just sitting there and letting a few days pass in real time. 

     

Still superior to Arena's system of inflicting capital punishment for every offense.

       

When I get out, rather than immediately exploring another city, I just head for the exit to get a sense of the bigger world. Mantov turns out to be on the coast, with water to the south. I start heading east and soon run into the entrance to a mine. I start to poke around a bit, but I can't get far without a mine cart, so I save it for later.

    

If you say so.

      

A few steps down the road, and I encounter a group of archmages. I'm absolutely slaughtered before I can even act. 

       

This did not go well. They were all capable of spells from a distance.

       

On a reload, I try going the other way, and this time meet battle against two spiders. At least they don't have ranged attacks. Battle in this game mimics Ultima V: It takes place on a separate screen that provides an inset of the terrain in the main exploration window. Each round, characters can move one space, attack, or cast a spell. Attacking and casting brings up a targeting cursor. Adjacent enemies can be attacked on the diagonal.

      

Targeting a spider in combat.

       

One annoyance is that when it's a character's turn, a selector blinks exactly once and then disappears, so if you lose track of whose turn it is, you have to guess. Also like Ultima V, the two spiders nonsensically drop treasure chests when the battle is over. Each contains multiple items: gold, Nuore, and different types of ore. Each one tells me that there is "no trap," so I guess traps are possible. Clerics have spells to safely open chests.

     

Unfortunately, I'm killed in my next battle against two alligators, a snake, and a swamp troll. On subsequent reloads, I get slaughtered by skeletons and goblins and ultimately end up restarting the game so I don't get hijacked from the starting city so soon.

   

Some miscellaneous notes:

    

• The game has only one save slot.

• I can't find any way to interact with things that look like they ought to be interactable, like chests and items in shops. (U)se only applies to inventory items; (L)ook just gives you a description; (P)ick up simply doesn't work. There's no command to search or open.

• You can rest and heal in the outdoors (in towns, you have to stay in the inn).

       

Resting right in front of the city.

       

• There is no food system. 

   

I'm going to wrap up there, a little earlier than I'd like, because I'd really like to have a map and manual for the game. (I already have the "Readme" document that came with the game; it begins with a section called "Game Information" and ends with one called "ATTENTION." I get the impression that registered users got a more complete manual.) If not, I'm sure I'll figure it  out.

   

Time so far: 2 hours 

     

**** 

 

Next entry in this series

 

Further Reading:

   

My coverage of the games that I think most influenced Yendorian Tales: Book I: 

 

• Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)  

 

 05/08/2026