Our Second-Greatest Gift

Art from the 'American Kingdoms' project by Vincent De Nil, an alt-history designer and developer. You can see the finished Medieval American Flag design in his shop, or read more about Kaiser Cat Cinema and the project behind it.

    

"For this end, wee must be knitt together, in this worke, as one man. Wee must entertaine each other in brotherly affection. Wee must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. Wee must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekeness, gentlenes, patience and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make other’s conditions our oune; rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together, allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission and community in the worke, as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace." — John Winthrop, "City upon a Hill" speech, 1630. 

    

"I will have my own kingdom." — Conan the Destroyer, 1984.

        

We didn't plan this—AlphabeticalAnonymous began writing his entries for The Search for Freedom almost a year ago—but it seems fitting and proper that the game is on the "active" list (and coming to its pinnacle—just as America celebrates its 250th birthday. AA has drawn all of his subtitles from the document that inaugurated the new nation, written by a brilliant but flawed man, one of the founding fathers of a brilliant but flawed nation.

   

Today we celebrate a quarter millennium of that nation's existence, now the oldest alive under the same written Constitution, and there are times that we seem more flawed than ever. And yet I hoisted my flag this morning with pride. That pride is in some ways defiant; the kind of pride that says yes, there are many ways in which we suck and have continued to suck, but come and show me another country with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. But it's also a pride borne from what I see as the first great American virtue: a firm belief in the inevitability of both national and personal progress.

    

Or, to use another term, leveling up.

       

       

My country was born at the dawn of a new era for humanity—an era in which life started to steadily get better for most people. The job of the farmer plowing his field barely changed between ancient times and about 1800, and then all of a sudden farmers had the cotton gin, the mechanical reaper, the steel plow, and the gasoline-powered tractor. In 1800, the average person rarely strayed far from home; a century later, people rode on steamboats, trains, and automobiles (with vulcanized rubber tires) and were about to get wings. Communication with distant places in 1800 was an expensive and lengthy process that was out of reach for the average person; a century later, they had telegraphs, telephones, and phonographs. The drudgery of daily life in that period was made easier by electricity, sewing machines, typewriters, fountain pens, and refrigeration. Not all of this progress was American in origin, but we were the standard-bearers of it, the nation that inspired much of it and reflected all of it. If some other nation invented it, America probably reverse-engineered it, improved it, and mass-produced it.

        

During the same time, we made progress on our sins. We ended slavery, ended segregation, ended legal discrimination, and elected a Black president. We stopped making territorial acquisition the object of our wars. We expanded democracy, expanded the franchise, funded arts and sciences, kicked off the New Deal, and legalized gay marriage. We welcomed immigrants. With a 300-foot statue. Sure, we gave them a hard time for a generation, but then we embraced them and added their distinctiveness to our ever-evolving culture. We took the lead in establishing the United Nations, the body that will perhaps someday help bring our excesses into check. We have much work still to do still, but no end to the line of individuals willing to carry the flag even against stubborn resistance.

     

       

Americans level up. We get better. We get stronger. We grind. We atone. We apologize (sometimes dragged kicking and screaming). Even when the majority of us are doing something wrong, there's usually a group shouting and pleading for us to start doing it right. That minority becomes the majority. We invent. We learn from our mistakes. We don't just dream of a better future; we make plans for it. We go to the moon.

   

We still have many, many flaws—many sins for which we have not atoned. But like any patriot, I love my country despite those flaws, perhaps even because of them. What a boring country we would be if we had no flaws! What future would we look to if we had already arrived? What chance would there be for any of us to be pioneers of progress? American patriotism—indeed, patriotism everywhere—means not loving your country uncritically, but loving it enough that you want it to do better, that you want to help it move forward. 

            

Progress is rarely a straight line, alas. We hit roadblocks, bumps, obstacles. We get busted down a level or two by a vampire. An intellect devourer makes us all stupid for a while. Afraid of change or at least disliking the pace of it, people resist the inevitable. They secede; they lynch; they gerrymander. They march Japanese citizens to internment camps. They plant themselves in front of the doors to schools in Little Rock. Their tactics sometimes work to delay the march of progress, but not to halt it. (I think it's insane that they don't see how futile their efforts are even as they're doing them.) Many people in my country today will not be hoisting their flags, will not be enjoying lobster rolls and cheeseburgers and fireworks, because they believe that we're so deep in one of these setbacks that the nation is no longer worth celebrating, even on its birthday. I feel sorry for them. I believe that in the not-so-distant future, when all the woes of today will seem like a bad dream, they will regret having squandered this chance.

       

                 

Equal to our commitment to societal progress is our belief in the virtues and possibilities of individual progress. Our society is awash in literature, entertainment, speakers—propaganda, to some extent—that encourage us to "level up." Our holy trinity is Dale Carnegie, Charles Atlas, and Tony Robbins. We even bent old-world religion to it, in the form of the "prosperity gospel." It's in our DNA, the idea (oversimplified but not entirely false) that a mail-room clerk can end up as CEO, that talent and hard work is all you need to go from rags to riches, that the only royalty is earned royalty. It is our origin myth, the defining separation between the new world and the old world, where emphasis on clan and caste served to suppress the primacy of the individual. If such things are increasingly untrue of the "old world," I would suggest that America's example had a lot to do with that. 

    

Although I'd probably wax about the virtues of my country on such a momentous birthday anyway, all of this does have relevance to my blog. I don't think it's a coincidence that RPGs are an American invention. I'm not talking about the concept of "role-playing," which goes back to ancient times, nor the thematic nature of most RPGs, which we owe to a Brit. (Although let's not forget American Robert Howard!) I'm talking about the character sheet. I'm talking about experience points. These are the ultimate expression of self-improvement, of progress, of leveling up, in ways that we can measure and quantify. I first encountered this dynamic in a game where a peasant from Geraldtown, irrespective of any existing nobility, becomes a Baron. It is very American to say: start grinding against rats and eventually you'll be able to beat anyone. It is American to ignore thousands of years of history and to see kingship as something you can earn through effort. Look at the way we interpret "role-playing." We insist that it involves making choices consistent with our desires. We think of a game as offering a lot of "role-playing" if it maximizes the character's agency. The term could equally be interpreted as fulfilling one's role rather than defining it. If the RPG had been created in some other cultures, that peasant from Geraldtown would spend the entire game trying his best to be a good peasant.

      

        

It is also very American to focus on the goal and not the means. Sociologists have observed this in anomie theory, a distinct illustration of which is the RPG hero who triumphantly hoists the grail amidst a pile of bodies. Most RPGs, both tabletop and computer, including the earliest, allow the characters to be good or evil, or even to vacillate between the two, in their pursuit of certain objectives. Most players will choose good, and many plots assume that they do, but we still want that choice. We bristle at the idea of having that agency taken from us. And to the extent that we choose to behave virtuously anyway, we want it quantified. We want to be able to visit Hawkwind. We want a karma meter.

       

It took a long time for this approach to RPGs to be understood by the rest of the world; we've seen how many of the early European games just didn't really "get it" when it came to experience and leveling. The nation that grabbed hold of the RPG concept most vigorously was of course Japan, a subject worthy of a much more thorough discussion, but there's an extent to which Japan in the post-war period and through at least the 1980s was consciously trying to emulate American values. It fits.

   

Ah, but I digress into details and lose my original purpose. If you don't agree with my thesis that the RPG as we know it had to be invented in America, you must at least concede that it was. And thus, on the day of our 250th birthday, I ask you to tip your hat, raise your glass, and shout "huzzah" to this magnificent bastard of a nation, this nation that you have at times despised and at times admired, that sometimes has you shaking your head in disgust and sometimes has you dropping your jaw in awe, that for all its flaws at least gave the world RPGs. I'm going to continue to do my patriotic duty to analyze this American-inspired art form and make its virtues and vices known to the world at large. And in support of this mission, with a firm reliance on the patience of Irene, I solemnly pledge to you my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

        

         

P.S. To answer the question suggested by the title: Jazz, of course. If there is a God, he created America to make jazz. Everything else has been a side quest.

Multi-User Dungeon: Summary and Rating

 

Playing the game with the WizTerm client. There are apparently even more advanced client applications.

     

Multi-User Dungeon

AKA "MUD1," "British Legends" 

United Kingdom

Independently developed

Written in 1978 for a DEC PDP-10 at the University of Essex 

Date Started: 12 June 2026

Date Ended: 27 June 2026

Total Hours: 20 

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

         

Summary:

   

The original Multi-User Dungeon combines the attributes and leveling of an RPG, the text interface and parser of Zork, and multiple other players who can help you, fight you, steal from you, and kill you. The result is a tension-filled, chaotic experience as many players simultaneously explore The Land, solve puzzles, gather treasure, and gain points—all with the goal of making it to the "wizard" level with its consequent immortality and administrative powers. MUD spawned an entire genre and remains fun to play today, although a decrease in the number of users and stricter moderation means that modern users don't quite get the original experience.

   

****

         

I remember when an episode of NCIS engendered widespread derision for introducing a character who holds "the high score in virtually every massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game." The absurdity of such a statement comes first from the idea that MMORPGs are all about a "high score," as if they're all just complex games of Pac-Man, but also from the idea that there was enough time in a single person's lifetime to master all of them.

   

MUD, ironically, does have scores, but it also demonstrates, at a very early age in the lifetime of multiplayer games, the time commitment necessary to master even one. I invested about 20 hours in the game over these three entries, and I barely scratched the surface of its puzzles. I spoke to one of the game's original players, now a wizard, who has thousands of hours in the game, and he says that there are puzzles that even he hasn't solved. 

      

A view of The Land from the west, from Richard Bartle's web site.

        

Even getting to wizard status is harder than it first appears. I discovered through my conversations with existing wizards and administrators that it's not just a matter of making 102,400 points without dying. (Even that's harder than it seems, since treasure decreases in value as your rank goes up.) That just qualifies you. To make it to permanent wizard status ("perm. wiz." in the lingo), you get apprenticed to an existing wizard and quizzed in the game's puzzles. There might be even more requirements that I don't know about.

    

These types of things make me feel better about my decision to exclude multiplayer games from my list in the first place. My experience with MUD and Legend of the Red Dragon (1989) a few years ago have been positive, but they've also shown me that multiplayer games would be progress-killers—and not just because of the time commitment. MUDs and MMOs naturally have societies, and with those societies come norms, language, and cultural mores. We've had to tiptoe around a few of these in our explorations of MUD, including being careful about spoiling all but the most introductory puzzles. (I do want to emphasize, though, that no one explicitly told me this was necessary, or suggested that I wouldn't be able to continue to play if I published any secrets.) The wizard I spoke with told me that the existing wizards will put characters in limbo (an actual place in the game) or kill them outright, if they violate rules like playing multiple characters at the same time (including killing your own characters for the points), abusing other players, and "passing information to other players," although this latter violation must be loosely enforced since plenty of wizards passed on information to me (again, though, only for introductory puzzles). Overall, mastering the game means making it a part of your life and identity in ways that is never really true for single-player games.

        

An article from a 1984 issue of Micro-Adventurer claims that MUD is moving to the United States because phone calls are cheaper there.

       

Another reason that it's good for me to have excluded MMOs is that it's virtually impossible to recreate the original conditions of the game. This is true for single-player games, too, but playing on modern computers with emulators mostly just avoids a lot of frustration. In the case of MMOs, the games are continually updated and the original versions lost. We've seen that as far back as the PLATO system, on which it is no longer possible to play the original versions of Moria, The Game of Dungeons, or Orthanc. In the case of MUD, thanks to information I received from Viktor Toth (current owner of British-Legends.com) and a PDP-10 version that commenter Rob turned up, we know that the Elizabethan Tearoom is a late addition and the mausoleum puzzles have changed (a forum on British-Legends.com has a historical archive of them). An entire second area of the game, called The Valley, was available for a while, then not. Special Telnet clients have made the interface easier. Even its name has changed over the years; according to co-creator Richard Bartle (we exchanged emails last week), it has been called MUD, MUDD: Multi-User Game of Adventurous Endeavour, Multiple User Dungeon, British Legends, and of course the name that I've been using.

     

This screenshot of a 1985 session (from the book An Introduction to MUD) shows that the longer name was being used as early as 1985, anyway.

      

We also can't recreate the social conditions of the original game, as much as I tried with "MUD Day." According to my wizard correspondent, back in the 1980s: "There was no safe space. There were often people waiting to kill you as you entered, and people willing to kill them when their stamina became low." This type of behavior would be punished on the modern server.

      

None of these factors have anything to do with the game's quality, of course; they're just explanations for why I'll mostly continue to exclude MMOs and regard them as "N/A" for their winning conditions when I don't.

      

I spent a few more hours with the game after MUD Day. Recognizing that I was never going to "make wiz," I concentrated on at least finding my way to the shipwreck at sea and the northwest island. And I did! It turns out that an area of "slippery rocks" that I assumed all led to death was in fact a maze, and solving it led (finally) to a boat. There were a lot more deaths to be had at sea, simply by going in the wrong direction, but there are hints to get the player through this additional maze. Eventually, I set foot on the shipwreck and then, later, on the island. A sign warned of a dragon, but I never met him. I just picked up some nice treasures, tried to leave, and found that getting safely home isn't just a matter of reversing the directions I used to get there in the first place. I eventually decided I was satisfied having made it to this far-flung area.

     

On the northwest island. I finally found a broadsword!

         

Before I quit, though, I spent some time with the idea of scripting exploration, taking advantage of the fact that if no one is on and you sign out, the game resets. Then you can just sign in and do it again. The following sequence, for instance, is worth about 500 points:

    

W. E. E. E. N. N. N. N. E. SE. [Enter all the solutions to the Mausoleum puzzles.] N. GET ALL. S. W. GET ALL. E. E. KILL ZOMBIE. GET ALL. W. SW. GET ALL. NE. S. GET ALL. N. SE. GET ALL. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. SWAMP. DROP ALL.

                

My top score.

        

But that only works if you're the only person in the game, and even then little variables can screw it up. Also, I don't think you can type more than about 10 consecutive commands at once. 

        

I knew that MUD really wasn't the game for me when I found myself getting annoyed that other players were present while I was trying to map. I kept thinking, "Why won't he go away and let the game reset?" and "Why is he talking to me?" Elaborating on the first question, on a couple of occasions, I joined the game to find users logged in but clearly not playing (the game does not kick you off for inactivity). They were just sitting in one place, their users probably having left the terminal emulator running while they went off to do something else. I had fun dealing with my annoyance by STEALing from them.

      

Gameplay in MicroMud (1988) for the Commodore 64.

       

What I really want, I thought, as I kept slowly filling in my map, is an offline version of MUD, like Zork, but with MUD's leveling and combat. It turns out that not only does such a game exist, but also that I played it eight years ago! It's called MicroMud (1988). I came across my own entry while searching for information about the game. I even made a map, which is still in my "recents" list in Trizbort. I can't believe it. I have absolutely no memory of playing this game or writing about it, although its existence does explain why even as I started MUD, I had a vague sense of the directionality of major areas.

      

By the time MicroMud was published by Virgin Games, MUD had become an industry. Creators Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw had founded Multi-User Entertainment (MUSE), and they were operating the original MUD for CompuServe (which renamed it British Legends) and a sequel called MUD2 (1985) for British Telecom. (There were eventually at least half a dozen versions of MUD2 running on different systems.) Because MUD was a commercial product, it had been deleted from the University of Essex system, but a variant called MIST was still running there.

        

Duncan Howard's book (1985) helped new players get used to the game.

               

MUD obviously became a category-namer for a large number of other games with similar characteristics. Most of them were created by people who experienced the original, though at least one, Scepter of Goth (1983), seems to have been developed without knowledge of MUD but with the same inspirations (RPGs + Zork). Other games often given as MUDs like Drygulch (1980) and Island of Kesmai (1982) were multiplayer RPGs but without quite the same interfaces. My understanding is that a proper MUD needs:

    

• A text interface with a noun/verb parser.
• Detailed descriptions of rooms.
• Inventory puzzles.
• Experience and leveling.

  

In other words, Zork with RPG mechanics. (I've read of MUDs that don't have experience, that focus heavily on interactive storytelling or interaction between players, but these almost always have other names and are recognized as "branches of MUDs" rather than MUDs proper.) Authors have developed hundreds of these MUDs on local networks as well as the Internet at large all the way through the current day. Naturally, in popularity with online players, they have been eclipsed by MMORPGs.

       

This 1995 publication shows that there was still a market for MUDs into the Internet Age—along with MOOs, MUSHes, and MUCKs, apparently.

       

I explored a bit of MUD2, but it's harder to get registered for that one, and guest players are restricted in what they can do. From what I can tell, it uses the same (or a very similar) map as MUD, but it has some interface improvements like colored text, keyboard shortcuts, and additional commands.

       

The title screen for MUD2.

    

And a bit of the gameplay.

        

A GIMLET of this game completely misses the point, but because I always offer a GIMLET for a numbered game, I went ahead and completed one. It earned 26, which is pretty solid for a 1978 game. I rated it highest in "NPCs" (5), substituting actual NPCs with the way in which you interact with other players (I've done this for other online games). I gave 4s in "encounters" (for the puzzles, but also some monsters that require special solutions) and "Gameplay" (nonlinear, replayable). I gave a miserable 19 to MicroMud, and I'm surprised to see that with that game, I gave a 0 for "Game World" (I gave 3 here). It might not have a backstory, but it holds together nicely as a world, and you can't say that the player's actions aren't felt.

       

If you want to learn more about MUD from a single-player experience, including spoilers to a lot of the puzzles, I highly recommend Nathan Mahney's six-part series from 2018-2019 (starting here). Once I decided I was done, I read his entries and spent a lot of time slapping myself over the solutions to some of the puzzles. 

     

The man who started it all, Roy Trubshaw, went on to a long career as an IT manager for various companies before starting his own consulting firm in 2008. "I appear to have fallen into a niche of cleaning up failing websites or projects," he reported. Richard Bartle earned his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Essex while designing MUD. He ran MUSE until 2007 and began teaching computer game design at his alma mater in 2002; he retired last year but holds emeritus status. Throughout this period, he has consulted with developers on video game world design and has contributed to a number of articles, interviews, videos, and podcasts. In 2003, he published Designing Virtual Worlds, which he has since made available for free. It's a behemoth, clocking in at almost 1,000 pages. Last year, he published the first volume of a second edition.

    

I don't know whether I'll try any more MUDs, but I'm glad I had this experience with the first one.  

           

****

   

Previous entry in this series.

   

****

   

For further reading:

    

• MUD resources and information on Richard Bartle's web site. 
• The first of a multi-part series on MUD at CRPG Adventures. 
• The first of a multi-part series on MUD at Renga in Blue. 
• The Digital Antiquarian's coverage of the game. 
• My coverage of MicroMud (1988). 

    06/27/2026

Game 580: Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse (1994)

I'm going to go with the usual way of representing the game, but the opening screens separate the series title and game title, and the manual refers to it as Genie's Curse (without the definite article).

         

Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse

United States 

Cyberlore Studios (developer), Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher) 

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 23 June 2026

     

As we've previously covered, Strategic Simulations' license to publish D&D content was in its waning months in 1994. TSR was almost frantically trying to squeeze everything they could out of the license. Having exhausted its own development bandwidth with Eye of the Beholder III (1993) and the two Dark Sun titles (1993 and 1994), they happily took proposals from other developers who agreed to publish through SSI. Many of these proposals resulted in games for niche campaign settings, such as Spelljammer (1992), Warriors of the Eternal Sun (1992), and the forthcoming Ravenloft (1994). Into this milieu came a new developer, Cyberlore Studios. It was formed by Lester Humphreys, Herb Perez, and Ken Grey, the first two of whom had worked on The Dark Queen of Krynn (1992) for MicroMagic. They began working on Al-Qadim (whose tabletop manual had just been published) almost immediately. I haven't been able to find any information about where the project originated, but the speed at which they got set up and running suggests to me that SSI already knew they wanted the game and essentially funded the new studio.

     

The game title.

         

"Three distinct visions of Arabia have helped give shape" to the Al-Qadim campaign setting, according to its 1992 guide: (1) the historical Arabia, "home of great warriors, explorers, and traders, as well as great knowledge and civilization"; (2) the mythology and stories of these people, "the world of genies and ghuls"; and (3) the "Araby" of Hollywood, reflected in films from The Thief of Bagdad (1940) to Sinbad's Shazaam! (1991). Scheherazade may go back 1,300 years, but the image you have of her has more to do with Maria Montez than any Arabian author. TSR had a bit of luck releasing the Al-Qadim tabletop materials in the same year as Disney's Aladdin (1992).

      

The source manual.

                  

Al-Qadim ("the ancient") was a brief lark for TSR, never intended to exist for more than a few publications—probably a good thing given its phonetic similarity to "Al-Qaeda," which was about to become a big part of most Americans' vocabularies. Although the land of the setting, Zakhara, is nominally set in the Forgotten Realms (somewhere south of Faerûn), it could be plugged into any campaign setting where some Arabian flair was needed. My understanding is that it was the first campaign setting to offer character "kits," and that some of its monsters and rules live on in fifth-edition D&D. Those more experienced in tabletop D&D will certainly be able to contribute more.

        

In some ways, Zakharan society represents an idealized American model rather than anything historically Arabian. Zakhara is such a melting pot that even orcs, goblins, and other monster races are integrated with the rest of the civilization. There are no racial enmities (although, the book notes, elves do seem to prefer other elves). There is a strong hereditary caste system, with "social status" measured on a scale of 1 to 20 along with standard D&D attributes, but adventurous types are explicitly given a certain social mobility.

      

The manual's depiction of a meeting between a Dao djinni and an efreeti.

         

The "kit" system—a combination of class, alignment, proficiencies, magical abilities, and special skills—are a particularly interesting addition. They had been introduced in The Complete Fighter's Handbook (1989) and continued in the other class-based handbooks of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was the first time they were baked into a campaign. They include such evocative titles as "corsair" (sea-based, dual-wielding fighters with some thief skills but no heavy armor), "sha'ir" (mages who specialize in summoning genies), "barbers" (rogues specializing in identification, language, and medicine), and "mystics" (chaotic nomad priests who can use edged weapons and who receive their spells through revelation rather than divine gift). There are new proficiencies for characters, including begging, grooming, camel-riding, and genie lore. Heavy armor exists, but given the heat of the setting, those who wear it suffer significant penalties. Hydration is carefully tracked. 

   

"Genies" are not specific creatures but rather a class of creatures, from elemental familiars to powerful efreet. (To forestall wasting time in the comments, these entries are going to follow the D&D convention of djinni and efreeti for the singular and djinn and efreet for the plural, regardless of what actual Arabic does.) They can be summoned and provide benefits to their summoners, which only at the highest levels include wishes. The game's backstory (as the title suggests) involves these beings. A mysterious force has been freeing genies from the magic that binds them to human servants, but a seer who serves one of the genies has predicted that this same mysterious force will yoke the genies for itself. I guess the titular "curse" is the ability for the genies to escape their former masters, although the genies themselves see it as a "blessing."

            

A mermaid later explains it to me.

        

An arrogant efreeti named Mirza Gubishbuskin used to serve a sha'ir named Farid al-Mutan, a resident of Sorcerer's Isle. Mirza unexpectedly found himself freed from servitude in the middle of an invasion. He refused to help the island, and it was sacked by ogres, ettins, and other monsters. The seer has predicted that a son of the protector of Sorcerer's Isle, Al-Hazrad, will be the key to defeating the mysterious force and returning the genies to bondage, but it is not clear that all genies see that outcome as preferable.

    

The son, of course, is the player character. He starts the game not as an inexperienced youth but rather as a Level 2 corsair, having already seen plenty of adventure serving the Master Corsair Sinbar. He's even wooed Kara, a caliph's daughter, and plans to marry her.

     

The character's starting statistics. One more goblin, and he's Level 3.

       

Character creation is thus not much; the player gets to give the kid a name (Sunduq in my case) and choose a difficulty level. The character has attributes, but they're the same for every new game: 18(74) strength, 17 dexterity, 16 constitution, 14 intelligence, 15 wisdom, 14 charisma, 3900 experience points, 22 hit points.

     

The strength statistic seems justified.

        

Gameplay begins in Sinbar's palace, where he's complimenting Sunduq on his accomplishments, noting that only Sunduq's brother, Tarik, "has ever shown your skill and bravery." Sinbar regrettably dismisses Sunduq from his service: "You must put aside thoughts of adventuring and prepare for your wedding to the Caliph's beautiful daughter, Kara." All Sunduq has to do is negotiate a maze to a teleporter that will take him home to Zaratan on Sorcerer's Isle.

   

Sunduq gets a chance to talk with Sinbar a bit; the game features full-sentence dialogue options. (SSI introduced them in the previous year's Dark Sun: Shattered Lands.) In them, we learn that the seer referenced in the back story, Khatarina, is Sinbar's daughter. "She said she had a vision of you as a great hero," he tells Sunduq before leading him to the maze.

      

"Wait. I meant that the other way around."

       

Controls are simple; Al-Qadim is more of an action game than an RPG. Everything can be done with the mouse; right-clicking to move in the direction of the screen cursor, left-clicking to swing the character's weapon or initiate dialogue (I guess the game figures out which you want to do based on who you're next to). The numberpad and its ENTER key can be used instead. I'm not sure which I find easier yet.

    

The graphics are not a million miles removed from Dark Sun, if Dark Sun featured only one character and the icons were a bit larger.  

    

Entering Sinbar's maze.

     

The "maze" turns out to be less a maze and more an obstacle course intended to teach the controls. In order, the character faces:

     

• A force field that comes from behind and teleports you back to the beginning if you linger too long. 

• Rocks protruding into the hallway that the character must navigate around.

• Spikes protruding from the ground that he must navigate around.

• Spikes that go up and down, requiring him to time crossing them.

      

Sunduq gets hit in an unfortunate place.

        

• Fireballs shooting from a hole in the corridor.

• Pressure plates that activate jets of flame from the floor.

• Jets of flame in a row that activate in sequence.

• Spikes that shoot up from the floor in the character's path. There's no way to predict them, so you just have to react fast and not walk into them.

• Spikes blocking the corridor that have to be lowered by choosing the right pressure plate.

• Large jars blocking the path that must be smashed. 

       

I wasn't fast enough.

         

• Wandering balls of flame that must be avoided.

• Traps in the floor that must be avoided.

• Circular saw blades running back and forth along the corridor. They must be timed and avoided.  

      

The penitent man shall pass.

         

• A corridor where you can pick up a lot of gold, but if you do, you can't avoid the teleportation field and you lose the gold. 

• A pit that must be crossed by activating invisible tiles.

• A bunch of jars that must be flown over by finding a lever that temporarily turns you into a bird. 

     

I avoid a lot of smashing.

         

• Spikes coming out of the floor.

• Chasms opening unpredictably in the middle of the corridor.

• Rolling rocks. 

• Much faster saw blades, much closer together. I couldn't even begin to avoid them.

     

Getting killed by these obstacles results in a message that I die "with dishonor," which seems a bit harsh. In any event, I eventually make it through to a large treasure chest. Sinbar's voice congratulates me; I earn 450 experience points, which gets me to Level 3; and I get Oil of Water Elemental Invulnerability, Oil of Air Elemental Invulnerability, and 200 gold pieces. 

     

I have to look up who this "Loregiver" is.

          

A teleporter whisks me home to Sorcerer's Isle, on a sandy beach outside the city. My sister, Aliya, meets me and escorts me through the guarded gates to a giant cistern. My father, standing next to it, greets me warmly, and I learn that he sent me the sword I carry. Aliya says she has to practice her magic, but I should visit her in her house. Finally, I can play.  

     

I've been using it to smash jars.

          

The manual includes a helpful map of Zaratan and its various buildings. I explore the town and talk to NPCs, including various members of my family. In most interactions, I have a humble and respectful option, a proud and haughty option, and a mercenary option. I'm not sure how much those options matter. The few times that I saved and tried every option, I got different NPC responses but ended up in the same place. For instance, when the Qadi asks me to deliver a peace treaty, I can say:

    

• "Yes. I will do your bidding, wise Qadi."
• "I am a Corsair, not an errand boy!"
• "The Al-Hazrads will never make peace with the Wassabs!"

      

Dialogue options with my neighbor. The middle version of Sunduq really wants people to know that he's a Corsair.

        

The Qadi has a negative reaction to the second two, but I still end up with the treaty in my pocket, awaiting signatures. 

      

Everyone's talking about my forthcoming wedding. My brother, Tarik, is on the way home from his work as a merchant marine. My bride-to-be has written me a love note.

        

The game's depiction of Zaratan, the capital city of Sorcerer's Isle.

         

It's clear from my dialogue that my family's business is in the sea trade. We own a captive genie named Muliban and use him to protect the city but also to create fair weather for our trading vessels. We have an ongoing rivalry with the Wassab family, which thinks our use of the genie gives us an unfair advantage. The town Qadi (the magistrate) is concerned that our family feud will lead to violence in the streets, and he wants both families to sign a treaty to behave honorably. 

              

Thanks, Qadi! I swear by the nose of Bozo the Clown you haven't aged a day!

         

Other findings:

   

• In further conversation with my father, I learn that my sword is called the Sword of Honor. It will grow more powerful if I can find a "special shard of the Moonstone." He also tells me our neighbor Babazar's daughter is terribly ill. Tarik, my brother, isn't here yet but is on his way for the wedding.

• The inn is run by a confused man who mistakes me for my brother and thinks I'm marrying the Caliph's mother. 

• One of the inn's residents heard that there is a fabulous treasure on a nearby reef. He talks himself out of trying to claim it himself.

    

Don't let me discourage you.

         

• Another guest, Zultan, says he came to the city to study my family's genie. I tell him the genie is not an insect to be studied, and he gets all offended.

• The weapon master asks me to deal with some monsters west of town. He also agrees to spar with me, so I finally get a sense of the game's combat, which seems to consist of the opponents standing face to face and slashing at each other. The manual mentions sneaking, using missile weapons, dodging, and using spells, so I'll explore those eventually. 

          

This turned out not to be a great use of my health points.

         

• At the temple, I generously give 50 gold pieces and get 180 experience points. I try it again with 10 but get no further experience.

• I wander into a house that turns out to be the Wassabs' house. Their son, Mamoon, tries to attack me, but his father stops him. The father won't sign the treaty unless my father signs it first.

      

Given how long it took me to get through the obstacle course, that might be a fair hit.

        

• I can hit ENTER when next to some furniture and baskets, but I'm spared the ethical dilemma of looting them by the fact that none of them have anything of value.

      

Food is not a requirement in this game.

         

• My sister gives me a Sling of Seeking, "which can be increased by finding the correct Shards of the Moonstone." Aliya has been accepted by Zaratan's Sorcery Guild. Its founder, the efreeti's owner from the backstory, fled town after his genie disobeyed him. "He hides in that strange tower to the northwest of town."

• A poor resident asks me for 30 gold to help fix his house. I give it to him and get another 180 experience points.

      

This might be a good time to remind readers about Patreon.

         

• Another guy tells me I borrowed 5 gold from him before going off to be a corsair. I return it and get 90 more experience points. 

• A guy tells me that he's going to "turn into a tiger, say the magic words, and turn back again!" Then he turns into a tiger and stays that way.

      

I knew there was a problem with your plan.

        

• There's a potion shop where healing potions go for 50 gold each. I've spent so much money by now that I don't want to spend any more here. 

• At Babazar's house, he says that his daughter is sick and needs herbs that grow "wild in the oasis." Monsters there have driven everyone back. Again, I have some role-playing options. I say I'll do it. He says to ignore the red and blue berries and get the purple berries. He also gives me a Sunfire Shard. From the manual, shards are like wands, with limited uses. I don't think this type of shard is the same thing as the Shards of the Moonstone. 

      

I hate to break it to you, Babazar, but your daughter has a 67% chance of dying.

       

• At my aunt's house, she's standing on a chair, avoiding an infestation of frogs caused by a spell gone wrong. She gives me a wedding present of 10 gems and 100 gold pieces.

• At the Sorcerers' Guild, I learn how to walk through secret walls. A sorceress asks me to smash a bunch of urns so she can practice magicking them back together. 

          

You can't see me because I'm in the middle of this wall.

        

I head outside to check out the monsters and to try to find the berries, noting with some trepidation that my health never recovered after the fight with the weapon master. I thought it might regenerate slowly on its own. Not only does it not do that, but there is also no way to restore health by sleeping, whether at home or in camp. It looks like I'll need to pay for those potions at some point.

 

As I head west, I am attacked by what the manual calls werehyenas, miniature air elementals, and at least one giant boar. "Miniature" elementals and some other creatures (e.g., desert cyclops, acid blob, giant Zakharan rat) were created specifically for this game and have full-page Monster Manual-like descriptions in case the player "would like to incorporate them into your own campaign."

      

I'm not sure that the world needed these.

         

There are also plants that shoot missiles at me, but it doesn't seem that I can kill or even engage them. Similarly, there are trees with beehives that disgorge swarms of bees if I get too close. 

       

Some bastard plant nails me for no reason.

      

What follows could be characterized as a "Bacchanalia of Reloading." It takes me a long time to get used to the combat system, and even then I'm not sure that I really have it. Attacking in melee range with the sword usually involves an unavoidable hit point loss unless I dance around a lot, and my fingers haven't gotten that agile yet. (I can't decide at this point whether I have an easier time with the keypad or mouse.) The sling can theoretically shoot enemies from afar, but it has a bit of a wind-up period in which they can close the distance, especially if I face multiple foes. The Sunfire Shard will kill a lot of enemies at once, but only once, and it has to be carefully aimed.

     

This seems like a lot to handle.

            

Obstacles help, and sometimes enemies will just mysteriously stop in their tracks, giving me a chance to nail a few of them with the sling until they come to their senses. If I can get the timing exactly right on melee attacks, I can sometimes keep them at bay. (This seems to work better on the horizontal than the vertical.) Even though the character can move diagonally, he cannot face diagonally, so I have to make sure I'm attacking along straight lines.

     

I keep having this very annoying problem where I need to turn around to face an enemy, but the game insists on making the character walk backwards. It can be fatal when it happens, and I can't find anything in the manual or my experimentation with the controls that makes a solid difference between the two types of movement. The game just seems to pick randomly.

           

What, exactly, do I have to do to face east?

         

It turns out that there's a particularly wussy way to survive: Mince along, firing sling bullets every few steps. When the bullet goes off at an angle, that means it's detected something. Keep firing and hope to destroy the enemy off-screen. 

      

The whole experience reminds me (not pleasantly) of a console action RPG or action game like Deadly Towers or The Legend of Zelda. What makes Al-Qadim technically an action RPG and not an action game is the use of character attributes and levels to determine success in combat, but the attributes are pre-determined. It appears that the only thing the player has any agency over, when it comes to the character, is how many of these side-quests to do, which I guess might contribute an extra level or two here or there.

          

The bards singing of my quest doesn't sound bad . . .

             

(I honestly wonder if the attributes are even "real." Since every character starts with the same attributes, are they even part of any of the game's formulas? Could I hex-edit them to improve my success? Or are they just for show?)

   

Here's a phenomenon for which I think there ought to be a term, but for which I'm not going to coin one until I get some confirmation that other people think the same way. It's complex, but it goes something like this: You're playing a game in which healing is rare or expensive. You're motivated to save after every success. You're also motivated to reload not only when you die, but when you've taken a significant-but-unnecessary loss of hit points. What's "significant?" Roughly half your hit point total before taking the damage. If the character is fresh, you might accept a 50% loss as the cost of doing business with a particularly hard foe. After that, it's 25% (or 50% of the remainder). Then 12.5% Then 6.25%—okay, you're not actually calculating to two decimal places, but you get the idea.

      

What?! What did I do that was dishonorable? I got eaten by a pack of jackals!

          

Knowing that this is going to happen means that, paradoxically, there's no point in bringing the character to maximum health. Eventually, you're going to get to the point where you're reloading with practically every hit anyway. Might as well live on the edge and use it as an excuse to master the combat system. So that's what I did—which is why the health bar in the screenshots hardly budges. Only I never really "mastered" it. I just reloaded a lot.

        

I found the oasis with the berry plants. The game solved my colorblindness issue by not even letting me pick the red and blue berries. When I went to pick the purple ones, a mermaid appeared and welcomed me to the Oasis  of the Pahari. She asked if I was a man of honor, and I said yes. She said I could heal myself as often as I liked in the oasis if I did her a favor: Take a message to the Qadi of Zaratan that the mermaid's master, Farid (from the backstory, now living in exile in a tower) wants to speak about the monsters infesting the oasis. She went on to say that my family's genie, Muliban, "has rid the oasis of monsters many times, but somehow they return." She further asked that I not tell anyone else of her existence, lest "greedy men" try to capture her for their own profit.

       

How about you let me heal first, then take your message?

      

Having a free place to heal sounds like the solution to a lot of problems, so I prepare to head back to town even though I haven't killed all the monsters yet. At this point, I run into a problem where the game freezes every time I try to walk off the screen and back to town. So I guess I'll wrap up while I try to solve that problem.

   

So far, I like the setting and plot. The NPCs are fun and remind me pleasantly of those in the Quest for Glory games, while the early experience exploring the city feels a bit like Conan the Cimmerian (1991), but both impressions might have more to do with the themes of the setting than any actual influence. I am not a fan of the controls, so far, and I suspect the RPG elements are going to turn out to be somewhat illusory.

   

Time so far: 3 hours (this included a lot of reloading in the oasis); I probably only made an hour of real progress).

   

****

   

Next entry in this series. 

     

**** 

   

For further reading:

   

• My index of games played by lineage has all other Dungeons & Dragons titles.
• The Internet Archive has the Al-Qadim: Arabian Adventures source book. 

06/27/2026