The Search for Freedom: To Provide New Guards

 

More of the backstory.

     

Guest post by AlphabeticalAnonymous 

     

Long before the public sphere came to seem so polarized, spoilers (sneak-peeks of the ending of a book or movie) were perhaps the most polarizing topic in my marriage. I can’t stand them; I insist on following the path of narrative discovery set out by the media’s creator, while my wife loves nothing more than to page to the end of a book before reading it, read a review of a streaming episode before watching it, and so forth. We recently finished watching the latest season of Strange New Worlds (a sad mistake for the most part, alas), and during several episodes I couldn’t shake an irrational, niggling distraction at the back of my mind, because I knew that she knew what was going to happen. 
       
I say all this only to absolve myself from feeling embarrassed about my party members’ names. Had I known that my primary adversaries had names like Macbeth—sorry, Macabath—and Camisole—sorry, Kamazol—I feel as though I might have tried harder to come up with more apposite character names. But none of the back story is presented until after party creation, so here we are. I hadn’t bothered to save during my first attempt, so I had to start the game over again. Without much information one way or another about ideal party composition, I decided to stick with the same party—as we’ll see below, that may have been something of a mistake for at least one character. We form the party, read the introductory text, and set out again.

      

Page six of nine from the game's initial exposition. None of this was mentioned in the manual.

       

Once again, we pick the door to our cell, and immediately visit our only living neighbor, the Insane Creature, a few cells down. From this I conclude that superior mental health care was not high on the list of Macabath’s or Kamazol’s priorities. I suppose it isn’t high on ours either, because we quickly batter it to death again; we would probably argue self-defense, since it attacked as soon as we opened the door. In any event, we learn something interesting: loot drops are at least somewhat randomized. Instead of dropping a leather armour, this time the Creature leaves a hammer (2D4 damage) and knife (1D3). I give them to my characters with the best to-hit stats, and we break out of jail.

         

This time we manage to explore a good chunk of the town—just about all of it, really—without blundering into the midst of a nigh-unwinnable battle with guards. The Majik Shoppe sells several +1 weapons and armor, along with Speed Potions; all of these cost ¤150 or more and so seem too extravagant given our current status as fugitives from local justice. On the other hand, unlike in some other CRPGs, none of the items costs thousands of gold. The vendor also sells Level 1 Spellbooks for mages, but at $200 each, I decide to skip those as well. There are also fortune cookies for sale: the manual intriguingly notes that “no one knows for sure the story behind these strange items” and that “[t]hey are addictive.” I suspect the latter comment is meant figuratively, but the last thing I need is a party of cookie-junkies. We move on.

      

Only magic could keep such a small, narrow hat standing upright.

         

Nearby we find the Training Hall, where we can pay to level up once we have sufficient experience. Two other doors provide quick encounters presented entirely in text: in one, a friendly old lady tells us about Macabath's attack; in the other, a young man mocks our ability to fulfill the prophecy of Smythetown. That’s fair enough; probably he heard how our predecessors broke out of jail and were immediately destroyed by the city guard. 
           

We find a tavern called the Red Oyster Bar & Grill (a reference to the Red Lobster chain, perhaps?) and go in. Here we can buy food to heal, buy a drink, tip the barkeep, or mingle. We feel cheap so we just mingle, which allows us to hear what seem to be short hints. Mingling takes no time and costs nothing, so we do this over a dozen times before we start to see duplicates. Examples include:

• "The more powerful an undead is, the harder it is to turn."
• "Paralysis usually wears off at the end of combat"
• "Hawkslayer's tomb lies in the deepest chambers of Blusfor, where he must guard the blade of Soulseeker in his undeath, for eternity."
• "Silver can harm some undead which normal steel cannot."
• "Boats are a rarity in this land"
• "Luckily, lycanthropy is not contagious"
• "Always set a watch, to wake the party in case of trouble."

         

We don’t need food, so we try to leave, only to be told that we must first buy a drink! I didn’t see anything about that on the sign out front, but we knuckle under and pay.

We find the town’s Market Square on the eastern edge of town. This features Fred’s General Store (selling torches and lanterns), Ted’s Armory (selling four kinds of armor, and shields), a street vendor selling suspiciously cheap shields at half of Ted’s prices; and the Blacksmith’s Shop which sells weapons. The town may be rather inbred, because to our eyes all the vendors look identical:
       

But we've only just met.

       

After considering the prices and the manual’s detailed description of item statistics, we buy three leather and three cloth armours, and two short swords and two hammers. Between the armor and our dexterity bonuses, this gives everyone but Elphaba two points of armor protection. As for weapons, the mages have the short swords and everyone else has hammers—except poor Becket. As a cleric, he can’t use bladed weapons (or bows), and his strength of only 7 makes him too weak to wield the only non-bladed weapons available for sale (mace or hammer). I’ll have to prioritize getting his magic capabilities online.

Just north of the Market Square is the Temple of Good Faith, where characters can pay to be healed and where clerics can donate gold. In this case, the donations serve a very special purpose: the manual says that “once a sufficient donation has been given … [one can] learn the new spell level.” There’s no indication how much of a donation is sufficient, but our careful accounting has left only two gold coins in our purse—probably not enough to earn new magical capabilities. 
      
The game is filled with music and little sound effects. I haven’t sampled them all yet by any means, but entering most establishments seems to cause a specific, characteristic MIDI-style tune to play. Combat combines two themes, one of which is almost certainly the thematically debatable “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” (Why are there so few CRPGs set in the old west? Ghost miner forty-niner, cursed cowboys, etc…) The Armorer’s shop plays a tune that I definitely recognize but can’t immediately place; the Temple recognizably plays the first verse of “Adeste Fidelis.”
        

Is it just me, or does this priest look extremely sketchy?

       

Decked out in what gear we could afford, we head back to the Sentries. With only two gold left, we could technically afford a single torch and try to go down and explore the catacombs. But I worry that it might run out only after a short (and unknown) length of time, leaving me stranded in a dangerous situation. Our choice is justified by what we find: this time not four, but only three Sentries stand before us. Thus, both rewards and enemies are randomized, at least to some degree. Things go better with our new loadout: they rid me of my troublesome priest, but the rest of them go down. The survivors earn . . . 15 XP each. It could be a long time before leveling up! They also leave behind a chest: Ruxpin goes to pick it but instead sets off the trap, knocking himself out as well. Inside we find 81 gold and a torch.
     
We return to the Wayfarer’s Inn, pay seven gold for a room, and rest. The game has an interesting resting mechanic that I haven’t fully explored yet: it seems that one can potentially pitch camp anywhere, but the manual warns that at least one character should always be left to stand watch. It cautions that if everyone rests all at once, enemies can potentially ambush the party. Since we’re close to the inn (and feeling flush with our winnings), we all rest at the inn. The two characters who were knocked out recover at the same rate as everyone else, one HP per hour. Full death occurs when HP reaches minus nine. It can apparently be reversed at the temple, but only at considerable cost.
        
In short order we take out the Sentries in each of the three remaining towers. Each time we lose one character but otherwise triumph to receive 20-25 XP per character, roughly 100 gold, and an occasional weapon or armor that we can sell for a few paltry coins. After the third victory we finally have enough gold to buy Becket the right to his spells. By process of elimination (and a reload), I learn that a cleric must donate around 200 gold to learn their first level of spells. That makes some sense; it’s the same cost as the Mage's spellbooks. I almost decide to also just pay 21 gold to heal Tyrion's seven remaining HP, trading gold for time, before recalling that Becket must anyway rest for 12 hours to fully learn his new spells. After another seven-gold-piece stay at the Inn I finally have a functioning magic user. He only has 13 magic points, but this is enough for six castings of Light, four of Magic Compass (provides a compass while underground), three of Fear or Cure Light Wounds, or two of Sleep; the last three spells seem to be the only potentially-useful combat spells.

We head to the final turret and find five Sentries. In combat we try to use some narrow gaps in the walls as cover. At an opportune moment, Becket dives into the fray to cast Sleep (at Level 1, he can only cast it on adjacent enemies). All three targeted Sentries resist the spell. Uh-oh. The following round I’m told that he manages to successfully instill Fear in two of them... but it must not be enough fear, because those same two immediately slay him. I decide that when the rest of the party realizes that one of their clerics won’t touch most weapons, can’t lift the weapons he might touch, and can’t even cast useful combat spells, they decide they’ve had enough and head for the hills. Routed, they try to escape over the border of the combat map—only to be told that we can't even flee the battlefield, because of a "magical barrier." In the resulting chaos, we suffer our second full-party death and are forced to reload again.

I still haven’t said much about combat yet because I continue to hope for it to really prove the worth of its tactical grid. No question that the potential is there: much like the gold box, the party starts together with enemies at least one round's movement away. I’ve neither seen nor inflicted any ranged attacks, so everything happens at close quarters. The main strategy seems to be surrounding an enemy from all sides and hammering away, then moving on to the next one. When an enemy attacks a party member or is attacked by one (or vice versa!), both usually turn to face each other. After someone has been attacked once in a round, any character can attempt to backstab (for extra damage, with a bonus to hit) by attacking directly from behind. Enemies can backstab the party members too, but their AI seems poor enough so far that this rarely happens; whoever does it, it’s not always successful. A high degree of randomness seems to be involved in all aspects of combat, since in our second time against this group of five we lose only Elphaba before we triumph (Becket’s spells again proved ineffective). Past them is a storage room with our first set of high-quality loot: a Long Sword +1 and Chair Armor +1.
      

Tyrion's statistics after equipping our first +1 magic items.

      

As you see above, we give both magic items to Tyrion, who has our highest to-hit statistic. I think 15 means a roughly 25% chance to hit; I should start keeping track of hits and misses, like at a baseball game, to see if that’s correct. We give Tyrion’s hammer and leather armor to Elphaba, who even with a short sword (and despite being a mage!) has been surprisingly useful in melee combat due to her high strength. Leaving her to continue in that role for the time being, we use our gold to buy our other mage, Kizke, a spellbook. He has to rest for 12 hours without interruption in order to learn the spells in his new book (Becket had to do this, too, after donating to learn his first-level spells). Kizke has 30 magic points and now has access to all nine first-level mage spells. Besides the always-popular "Magic Missile," these include "Detect Traps," "Trap Zap" (disarm), "Open," "Light," "Locate" (get coordinates), "Armor Enhance," "Clumsiness," and the previously-disappointing "Sleep." With nothing left to do in the city, we head down into the catacombs to begin the hunt for Macabath in earnest.

Time played: 5 hours. 2 deaths. 1 reload.

 

*****

    

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