Game 527: The Quest for the Holy Grail (1981)

         

The Quest for the Holy Grail

United States

HHH Enterprises (developer and publisher, first edition); Superior Software (developer and publisher, second edition)

Released 1981 for Apple II

Date Started: 23 July 2024

Date Ended: 1 August 2024

Total Hours: 3

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)  

      

One of the greatest cons ever pulled was convincing a large portion of the public that the Holy Grail was an actual thing--something that could be retrieved by Indiana Jones or Robert Langdon--and not just a weird plot device of 12th-century French literature. It is the subject of numerous myths and conspiracy theories. Heinrich Himmler sponsored an expedition to find it. Numerous churches across Europe claim to possess it. There's a rumor that it's in Fort Knox. This cannot be stressed enough: There was never anything to find or possess. The Holy Grail was invented almost 1,200 years after the death of Jesus Christ, and it wasn't even "holy" at first.

         

We don't know when the first grail story was written. We do know that in the 1180s, French poet Chrétien de Troyes began work on Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal ("Perceval, or the Story of the Grail") using some lost text as a source, but he never finished it. In it, the naive young knight Perceval happens upon a mysterious castle owned by the Fisher King. The king invites Perceval to dine with him. During the dinner, a servant walks into the dining hall carrying a lance with blood dripping from its tip. He is followed by two more servants carrying golden candelabra, and they are followed by "a girl . . . holding a graal-dish in both her hands." The word means "cup" or "dish" in old French, going back to the Latin gradalis. It isn't the Cup of Christ; it isn't holy; it isn't even the.

    

It certainly isn't the secret to eternal happiness.

       

The episode is deliberately meant to be confusing. Perceval has all kinds of questions--Who is the Fisher King? What is his real name? Why is he injured? What was the purpose of the little procession? Where were they going? Why is the lance bleeding? That dish has food in it! Who are they taking it to?--but he sits there in silence because he's been warned that to ask too many questions is rude. Unfortunately, the whole episode has been purposefully designed to make him ask questions--it's the only way to break a curse--so it's with more than a little consternation that the Fisher King and his staff watch the silent youth ride away the next day.

    

The graal here is just a prop--one of many that Perceval sees during his visit, and if Chrétien hadn't called it out in his subtitle, we probably would have thought no more about it than the candelabras. When he died and left the work unfinished, dozens of authors stepped forward with their own fan-fiction, which of course had to explain why the graal was of particular importance. Some of them went pretty wild with it, and I wish I could spend time talking about all the variants of this story (look up Diu Crône or Perlesvaus if you get a chance, or Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, where the grail is a stone), but for our purposes, the most important bit is that an author named Robert de Boron, writing about 10 years after Chrétien, had an "aha!" moment and drew a line between the graal and Jesus's cup at the Last Supper, and he we are. At some point, some moron decided that even the innocent Perceval was too worldly to be the knight that solves the quest, so the useless Galahad appeared and has contributed absolutely nothing to the Arthurian cycle ever since.

      

Neither has a certain 1975 film.

      

One constant remains in almost all the Arthurian stories of the Grail (and the non-Arthurian ones need not be considered, as the Grail is an Arthurian plot device; it would be like considering Mjollnir without any connection to Thor): The so-called Quest for the Grail, holy or otherwise, is never about finding the Grail, or possessing it, or bringing it back to Camelot. It is about understanding its mysteries. In Chrétien, those mysteries are pagan; in de Boron and his followers (including Malory), they are Christian. The quest is about being worthy enough, whether by blood or deed, to stand within the Grail's presence. It is about concluding a ritual that must be concluded for a stasis (represented in some sources by the wounds of the Fisher King and the ailing of his lands) to be lifted. It is a fictional object, and I am an atheist, and yet even I bristle at the sacrilege when some adaptation has the hero touch the Grail or--gods help us--drink from it. That's the kind of imbecility that got Perceval in trouble in the first place.

     

You can imagine my reaction, then, to a backstory that says, "The quest is to locate the Holy Grail, the golden cup that holds the secret to eternal happiness." I can almost see the Fisher King doing a face-palm. No, it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game, such as it was. I just wanted an excuse to write about the Grail.  

    

Superior Software was a rare company that made its programs completely transparent to the user.

          

The backstory in question comes from the introduction to The Quest for the Holy Grail, an early adventure-RPG hybrid recently analyzed--it feels like I say this a lot lately--by El Explorador de RPG, whose entry offers a more thorough analysis of the specific statistics and mathematics than I'm going to attempt. Authors Thorne D. Harris III and Mark Ben Hattier advertised it as "fully listable and modifiable," which no doubt contributed to the fact that the most common extant version online has its title and victory screens vandalized by some "warez" jackass; as El Explorador points out, it's possible that he may have made changes to the contents of the adventure as well. Fortunately, reader LanHawk was able to locate a clean copy for me. Not only does this copy have the proper screens, it includes in-game documentation that the more common version does not. 

         

Character creation has you either roll random values for bravery, fame, wisdom, virtue, and wealth (the first four on a scale of 1-5; the last on a scale of around 100-600). Well, it's clearly supposed to roll random values, but you always get the same ones no matter what. You can also just type in your own values if you'd like. El Explorador noted that this ability reminded him of the character creation process in The Temple of Apshai, and Harris told me that he had indeed played that game.

           

I'm lonely, but at least I'm not sick.

       

The game begins at King George's Inn, where you have the option to hire additional people for your party, including a barber, a minstrel, a juggler, a jester, and a friar. Each of them has skills useful for various encounters. You can also buy up to 6 unknown potions for 10 gold pieces each. There are other random encounters to be had in the inn--a wizard threatens you and your bravery goes down; a barmaid flirts with you and your wisdom goes up (?)--if you linger.

    

The game then takes you to a relatively faithful map of Great Britain, though denizens of the Scottish Highlands may have some objections. Seven monasteries--all claiming to have the Grail--are marked on the map: St. Ben, St. John, St. Sebastian, St. Stephen, St. Michael, St. James, and St. Mark. These do not correspond, as far as I can tell, with any real locations. The location of the Grail is randomized for each new game. Your location is represented by a little blinking dot. You start in the center of the island, in modern-day Yorkshire.

      

How is there no St. George?

      

Your first choice is the monastery that you want to visit. The little dot moves across the map and, as it does so, is frequently interrupted by random encounters in the forest. Some examples:

    

• A rabbit blocks your path. You can either kick it aside, spear it, go around it, or ask your companions to help. Whatever you do, the rabbit could be a regular rabbit or a killer rabbit (the only nod to Monty Python and the Holy Grail that I saw, though I'm hardly an expert on the film). 

       

Except I didn't know it was innocent until now.

       

• A dragon blocks the path. There's a chance that it will just kill you instantly. Otherwise, you have options to fight, walk on by, or ask your companions for help. A minstrel seems to help in almost all these cases, but I'm not sure how. Maybe he lulls the dragon to sleep with a tune.

       

The dragon encounter is one of few preceded by a graphic.

       

• You find a tavern. Some of your companions might disappear permanently. You might meet Sir Lancelot, who tells you a letter that the name of the monastery with the Grail contains.

          

The game features the trope of the ale-loving friar nine years before Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

      

• You meet a fair maiden. You can approach, walk on by, or ask your companions for help. She may turn out to be an innocent maiden or a seductress or witch.

• You come up against a man-eating tree, a group of sirens, a cesspool, or the Black Knight. You can fight, walk around, or ask companions for help.

      

How do you fight a cesspool?

     

• You find a chest that may or may not have gold pieces. Sometimes the chest is covered by a tangled mass of vines.

    

Your choices in these encounters can make your attributes go up or down, although not always in predictable ways. You might lose bravery for trying to kill what turns out to be a regular rabbit or gain fame from trying to walk away from a killer rabbit, having it attack you, and then winning the subsequent battle. I lost 2 virtue and 2 fame for just opening what turned out to be an empty chest. Successful outcomes tend to reward you with bravery, fame, or wisdom. 

       

The game frequently recaps your status.

     

When you finally arrive at a monastery, you have to pay to enter unless you have a friar with you. The monastery says you have to leave by sundown, which is enough time to search three rooms of five: kitchen, library, chapel, great hall, and room of penance. Like the wilderness, these come with their own random encounters:

   

• You meet a peasant girl delivering eggs to the monastery's kitchen. The game has you automatically violate her, without even a role-playing choice, and consequently lose all your virtue.

• In the kitchen, you find a pot of stew. You greedily grab it and burn your hand, losing wisdom.

• In the library, you accidentally open the "Necronemcon" and get cursed for a decrease in random attributes.

• In the library, you find a map to the Holy Grail (as with Lancelot's clue, you can only make out one letter). The game has you automatically steal it, which costs you almost all your virtue but raises your wisdom.

       

That narrows it down to two.

      

• In the library, you find "books to aid thee" and your wisdom goes up.

• In the chapel, you're asked to donate even more money to the collection plate for a chance to gain virtue.

• In the chapel, there is a funeral for a brave peasant who challenged the Black Knight. Just watching the procession, your bravery goes down.

      

That seems a little arbitrary.

       

• In the chapel, you join monks in prayer and increase your virtue.

• In the great hall, monks are shooting dice. You can join in (and have a chance to win or lose about 150 gold) or decline. Declining increases wisdom.

• Wandering into the Room of Penance, you are mistaken for a sinner and tortured by the monks.

• In the same room, you find a maiden who the monks claim is a witch. You can free her, with consequences depending on whether the game decides she is a "true witch" or not.

       

Potions, which you can purchase at inns, can sometimes forestall the negative effects of these interactions.

     

A potion neutralizes the "Nemocron."

     

When you're done with the monastery, you can set off for a different one, re-enter the one you just left (for another donation), or save the game (the only place you can do so). When you reload, you'll be back in a tavern again and have a chance to recruit new companions.

    

When you finally find the monastery that has the Grail, you get a "strange feeling" when you enter any of its rooms. Only one room has the Grail. The game asks whether you want to use a potion to aid your search or donate some money to the poor box for a last-minute boost in virtue. You then get a choice to humble yourself, take a potion again, or "summon thy bravery and fame" to aid in the search. I'm not sure exactly how these options affect your ability to find the Grail. When I got to the monastery that had it, I took a save state, tried all the options, and found it no matter what I did. However, my attributes may already have been high enough. I suspect that as long as at least one of your attributes is over a certain threshold, you're able to find it.

        

The final game options.

      

The endgame shows a series of screens of different colors, then an image of the Grail with beams of light coming out of it. Finally, you're taken to a recap of your statistics. At least the game doesn't say that you drank from the Grail.

    

The glory of the Grail.

      

The Quest for the Holy Grail isn't much of an RPG, but I don't think that's what the authors were going for in the first place. I think the chaotic randomness of the game is intentional. There's a certain fun in watching your statistics rise and fall in response to the game's fortunes and misfortunes, but for the most part the encounters and their results are too random to allow for any real strategy or role-playing. An expanded game of this nature, with more varied encounters, more role-playing choices, and a more interesting combat system, could be authentically enjoyable. I was struck by how much it anticipated the later Legend of the Red Dragon (1989) in many of its elements and its overall tone. As for Grail's own sources, I can't identify any for sure. In a vague way, it feels like a "campaigner" (see the glossary). I would have said that the authors could have been exposed to the Robert Clardy titles or (as El Explorador guesses) to the Maces and Magic series, but when I asked the principal author of any previous games he had played, he mentioned only Apshai.

     

My final statistics.

          

The game has an interesting origin story, told to me by Thorne D. Harris III, a New Orleans-area attorney now in his 70s. In 1980, Harris developed a brain tumor and went through a 12-hour surgery to remove it, which caused deafness in one ear and paralysis in half his face. In the midst of a long recovery, his wife bought him an Apple II to give him something to do. He taught himself programming from books and magazines and started writing a legal column for Nibble magazine.

      

A 1982 ad for the game.

             

In 1981, Harris was joined in his recovery by his brother-in-law, Mark Hattier, then 15, who had broken his leg in a motorcycle accident. Hattier learned to create graphics in Applesoft Basic, and the two of them decided to collaborate on a game. They initially called their company HHH enterprises (Harris, Hatier, and a third friend, Burt Hortsmann), but someone beat them to that trademark, so they went with Superior Software, Inc. (not to be confused with Superior Software, Ltd. or Superior Software, Inc., out of Minneapolis). They published programs from several other authors throughout the early 1980s, selling their titles primarily through magazine ads. These included Asteroid Belt (1982) and Doom Valley (1982). Superior's philosophy, as articulated by Harris in a 1982 letter to Softside magazine, was to publish its games unlocked and freely listable and modifiable, so that budding programmers could learn from their inspection of a game's code. They also offered a portion of the royalties to anyone who wanted to write new modules and encounters for Grail, but Harris says that no one ever sent anything in. Harris became something of an expert in software law and wrote The Legal Guide to Computer Software Protection (1984) and The Software Developer's Complete Legal Companion (1994). Hattier went to Harvard University, became successful in finance, and according to Harris is now "semi-retired" in New Orleans.

    

I'm coincidentally in New Orleans as this entry publishes, trying to get the first four Riftwar books read before I start Betrayal at Krondor late next week. I think I'm going to make it.