tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post925329676264015410..comments2024-03-28T14:39:04.452-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: Game 408: The Dungeon Masters Assistant (1985)CRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-32709262718265004412021-04-16T11:32:21.069-04:002021-04-16T11:32:21.069-04:00In B/X (which this game is based on) and OD&D ...In B/X (which this game is based on) and OD&D Elves are considered to be a combination Fighter/Magic-User. The first dual class, if you will, where as Dwarves and Halflings could only be Fighters (or Thieves, if you were using them). Elves could wear metal armor and cast spells at the same time.vileculthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11817532493973515247noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-65817152023415797082021-04-14T14:53:54.041-04:002021-04-14T14:53:54.041-04:00"You learn to recognize certain "bad sig..."You learn to recognize certain "bad signs" when you're a CRPG addict. Confusion over the name of the game is one of them; grammatical errors in the game's name is another. The Dungeon Masters [sic] Assistant has both."<br /><br />The grammar of Dungeon Masters Assistant is consistent with the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide and Players Handbook, although AD&D 2nd edition published in 1989 would alter the titles to Dungeon Master's Guide and Player's Handbook.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-86103414638345193292021-04-14T10:34:35.592-04:002021-04-14T10:34:35.592-04:00Huh, that's a weird little detail. The "s...Huh, that's a weird little detail. The "saving throws" listed here are from D&D (2nd edition and earlier), but they've mixed up categories for no clear reason. In the D&D rules, paralysis should be moved to the the first line, staff moved to the second (along with rods), and polymorph should be added to the third.<br /><br />As I don't see any reason for these particular changes, maybe the author was going from memory and got it ever-so-slightly different?Radianthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03866535042372152723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-84553741088638120072021-04-13T00:57:28.219-04:002021-04-13T00:57:28.219-04:00@Buck: While it may be technically true that there...@Buck: While it may be technically true that there's a Javascript programming environment available in your browser console, that's not at all the same thing, and doesn't seem particularly relevant to the matter at hand. I doubt too many kids took their first steps toward learning programming by typing Javascript into their browser consoles.<br /><br />@Alex: Of course there are a lot of free IDEs out there, but as Buck says in their second post, you still have to go through the trouble of downloading and installing them; it's a different level from having BASIC available as a built-in part of the operating system. Back then it seemed that every kid with an Apple or another computer that could run BASIC at least knew how to write a simple program like 10 PRINT "HELLO" : GOTO 10. Is there any such universal programming experience nowadays?<br /><br />Then again, I concede that much of my feelings about the loss of BASIC may be just founded on nostalgia and/or grumpyoldmanism. Things are different now, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're worse. No, BASIC doesn't come built in with the operating system, but as you say, there are a lot of free learning materials available now. In fact, I guess in some ways things are <em>more</em> conducive now to learning programming. Back then BASIC may have been readily available, but we had to learn how to program it from books or magazines; now there are all sorts of free websites that teach programming interactively. And kids may not be learning how to program through BASIC anymore, but there are plenty of other ways kids can get introduced to programming; I wonder how many kids get their first taste of programming by writing simple scripts for popular systems like GameMaker and RPGMaker?<br /><br />(Besides, I'm coming to realize that my learning of BASIC as a kid was fairly superficial anyway. In preparation for the relaunch of my blog about level editors and game creation systems, I've been going through the BASIC code of the Apple release of Temple of Apshai to try to understand the exact format of the game data files, and... yeah, it's written in BASIC, but it goes way beyond what I did with BASIC as a kid; I wrote some simple games, but I never use BLOAD, and only used POKE and PEEK for certain special memory locations that had specific effects, and I didn't know anything at the time about Apple shape tables. There was a lot more to BASIC than I had realized. (Though it turns out technically the Apple Temple of Apshai isn't written <em>entirely</em> in BASIC; it resorts to machine language for one routine to clear the left half of the screen, presumably for speed reasons. Took me a while to figure out what that routine was doing...) Granted, one has to start somewhere, and such superficial knowledge of BASIC is still a starting point, but by that same token simple scripting languages used in various games are valid starting points too.)Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-75175540316197878692021-04-12T12:49:22.734-04:002021-04-12T12:49:22.734-04:00The way it rotated the turns and that a single cha...The way it rotated the turns and that a single character is capable of putting up a good fight makes me think the game is really a multiplayer game.Nobodynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-71705355895642581572021-04-12T11:20:41.205-04:002021-04-12T11:20:41.205-04:00Proving the idea that, no matter how obscure or aw...Proving the idea that, no matter how obscure or awful the game is, there will be someone with nostalgia for it, this game was a huge part of my and my sibling's childhoods. We ran it on an old IBM PC Jr, and took turns playing for hours and hours, spending our time away from the keyboard drawing sketches of our characters. Seeing it with new eyes, it's very clear the heavy lifting was being done by our imaginations and not so much the game itself, but it's still delightful to see you break it out, even though it does not hold up well.Ryan Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18063361293476758622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-20983560320152651532021-04-12T06:40:56.741-04:002021-04-12T06:40:56.741-04:00Having to install an IDE (and choosing one, plus a...Having to install an IDE (and choosing one, plus a programming language) is a major hurdle that hardly anyone will take outside of a computer science class. On the Apple II, when you switched it on, you instantly had a BASIC interpreter and could start coding with instructions from the manual. And it was a sensible thing to do since you ususally didn't have that many programs or games on these machines. Nowadays, there's just too much already available, and moving a character across a screen won't impress anybody anymore.<br /><br />Not necessarily a problem, as long as schools teach what people learned by themselves back then. And if you want to study computer science at a University, abstract thinking and a good grasp of math is actually more important than previous coding experience.Buckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07270991090065636515noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-88542368511651818662021-04-12T00:54:35.555-04:002021-04-12T00:54:35.555-04:00Stronghold uses basic D&D. Surprisingly, it...Stronghold uses basic D&D. Surprisingly, it's a fantasy kingdom management sim not an rpg at all. joehbrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03837988222714030857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-31035628375736992362021-04-11T21:12:06.863-04:002021-04-11T21:12:06.863-04:00On that topic, would you or your blog perhaps bene...On that topic, would you or your blog perhaps benefit from a guest post on the history and editions of D&D, with an emphasis on how to recognise which edition a game is referencing, and which editions are substantively different rulesets rather than minor iterations? I'd be happy to offer one, at this point.GregThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01532920274312703426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-2374873871188142202021-04-11T21:09:54.082-04:002021-04-11T21:09:54.082-04:00Basic is very much a different ruleset to OD&D...Basic is very much a different ruleset to OD&D - which you can tell by how quickly I recognised that this *wasn't* OD&D.<br /><br />It does have saving throws, specifically the ones mentioned here.<br /><br />Basic is as different from OD&D as AD&D 2E is from OD&D. <br /><br />Under normal circumstances, this would all be pedantry of the highest and most irritating degree - except that "first and perhaps only videogame based on the D&D Basic rules" is exactly the sort of thing your blog likes to note, and given the importance of D&D to the western CRPG tradition, it's probably deserving of that note.<br /><br />Also, as Jalen notes above, there are several games based on Basic's default setting of Mystara - including the arcade games - but Warriors of the Eternal Sun is to my knowledge the only one that implements anything that's identifiable as specifically the Basic ruleset, and I haven't played it so I don't know whether it uses more of that ruleset than just the class selection.GregThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01532920274312703426noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-21101372833408978572021-04-11T19:38:31.188-04:002021-04-11T19:38:31.188-04:00There's plenty of free-as-beer-and-speech IDEs...There's plenty of free-as-beer-and-speech IDEs out there for any language for Windows, Mac and Linux. Nearly as many free learning materials as well.<br /><br />If anything's going to change how many people are interested in coding per generation, I think it'll be the gradual move away from general-purpose PCs to low-cost smart devices. I'm not anti-smart-device by any means--I love my tablet and I'd be lost without my smart phone--but there's no doubt that it's confining. Everything is constantly version-checked against an authoritative source of apps and content. OSes aren't on the filesystem, they're directly encoded in resin-blobbed chips and you'll void your warranty trying to access them.<br /><br />It's easy to forget as an adult computer geek, but formative experiences are everything when it comes to growing up around and learning how to use computers. For those four-year-olds you see with brand new iPhones, their primary computer takes care of itself with very little user intervention and has exactly one source of applications. They might grow up never touching a physical keyboard, let alone anything that will let them write their own applications or think about WHY a computer is the way it is.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14025511634630902101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-37481646120634531482021-04-11T17:58:10.172-04:002021-04-11T17:58:10.172-04:00Open your browser console and you have a JavaScrip...Open your browser console and you have a JavaScript programming environment.Buckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07270991090065636515noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-15977502707651393562021-04-11T17:05:02.556-04:002021-04-11T17:05:02.556-04:00(Dang it, typo—I meant of course classes and races...(Dang it, typo—I meant of course classes and <em>races</em>, not levels.)Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-40633546895919130512021-04-11T17:03:01.050-04:002021-04-11T17:03:01.050-04:00My own first programming experience was with BASIC...My own first programming experience was with BASIC too—not GW-BASIC but Applesoft, but yeah, same idea. Yeah, it is a bit of a pity that modern computers don't have that kind of easily accessible built-in programming environment.Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-91839999294221464852021-04-11T16:56:34.390-04:002021-04-11T16:56:34.390-04:00Both the Basic sets and first-edition AD&D go ...Both the Basic sets and first-edition AD&D go back to OD&D for their core rules. They take things in slightly different directions from there, of course—Basic lumps together classes and levels and (until you get the Expert set) limits characters to three levels; AD&D adds good and evil alignments and a whole bunch of fiddly rules for things like disease and henchman loyalty that probably most DMs didn't bother with—but the core rules are pretty much the same. They both have the same six ability scores; the same saving throw categories; the same combat system of finding the number the attacker needs to roll on d20 to hit by looking up the defender's armor class vs. the attacker's level or hit dice on a table. (This combat lookup table was just as unwieldy as it sounds, and its replacement with "THAC0" was one of the biggest changes between first and second edition AD&D.) So, yes, you could say that a game based on the Basic set ultimately gets its core rules from OD&D, but you could say the same of a game based on first-edition AD&D too.<br /><br />Not that I'm suggesting you should edit your post and "correct" it—honestly, this is kind of a technical detail that most of your readers won't care about, and I think I've sometimes accidentally written "OD&D" when I meant Basic in the past myself.Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-89860092074524751092021-04-11T16:33:29.005-04:002021-04-11T16:33:29.005-04:00Off topic but Good ol' G-Dubbs! I loved typing...Off topic but Good ol' G-Dubbs! I loved typing code from magazine listings into it. <br />I always feel like MS should've kept including a basic, easily learned (not BASIC) programming language in Windows as well - I owe my whole career to GW Basic and the massive 600+ page BASIC manual my XT clone came with.<br />Not having a programming language as easily accessible as GW BASIC was meant that kids who were just playing around on Windows could only really do things like minesweeper. Imagine if they could click and icon and access an immediate code environment? Half the kids in the 90s would've become coders...Gamerindreamsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-73153004066433094032021-04-11T15:07:34.457-04:002021-04-11T15:07:34.457-04:00I wasn't sure if the basic set had rules for s...I wasn't sure if the basic set had rules for saving throws. In any event, my reading is that the "basic" sets go back to OD&D for their core rules, so I don't think I'm wrong in saying that the rules of this game are based on OD&D as opposed to AD&D.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-39796953865089852252021-04-11T02:53:19.199-04:002021-04-11T02:53:19.199-04:00He has a sci-fi themed one for when he's playi...He has a sci-fi themed one for when he's playing science fiction games (Mission: Thunderbolt). There hasn't been one for a while.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14025511634630902101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-41972736556302127222021-04-11T02:48:12.070-04:002021-04-11T02:48:12.070-04:00Totally off topic, but when did you update the ban...Totally off topic, but when did you update the banner on the homepage!?Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09555164129781347046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-46312819293708771192021-04-10T23:05:22.300-04:002021-04-10T23:05:22.300-04:00Sone details might reflect the later Mentzer editi...Sone details might reflect the later Mentzer edition, but absent those it could be based on the 1981 Moldvay, Cook and Marsh. That is mostly a refined take on the original set plus select elements from Supplement I. At the time the "B/X" edition impressed me as very well done, and it seems to be the favorite starting point for "retro-clone" works. <br /><br />Spells being limited to scrolls might be fun if the program (A) allowed one to invest time and gold making them, and (B) provided a context in which how much to prepare between expeditions was an interesting choice. It looks as if the plan was to allow simple purchase, but that got overlooked in a rush to release. Dwayanuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04236161934857958035noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-58436035087156850112021-04-10T18:14:59.286-04:002021-04-10T18:14:59.286-04:00(Er... I mean one of the games previously covered ...(Er... I mean one of the games previously covered on this blog <em>besides</em> Dungeon Masters Assistant, of course.)Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-57627011771929281432021-04-10T18:13:09.043-04:002021-04-10T18:13:09.043-04:00Hm, out of curiosity, I did a search on Mobygames ...Hm, out of curiosity, I did a search on Mobygames for "Mystara", the flagship Basic D&D setting, and a few more games did turn up that were set in that world and therefore almost certainly based on Basic D&D. Only one of them seems to have been an RPG, though, <em><a href="https://www.mobygames.com/game/dungeons-dragons-warriors-of-the-eternal-sun" rel="nofollow">Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun</a></em>, and that was a console game that doesn't seem to have ever had a PC release, so it's unlikely to be covered here.<br /><br />Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't other games inspired by Basic D&D—any game set on Mystara is likely to use Basic D&D rules, but the converse isn't necessarily true. There may very well be games based on Basic D&D but not set on Mystara, or that were set on Mystara but don't mention it in the title or the Mobygames description, or that were unlicensed games inspired by D&D but not bearing the D&D brand and not using D&D trademarks. It's entirely possible that one of the games already covered on this blog was influenced by Basic D&D, but nothing comes to mind offhand.Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-7974465193214150492021-04-10T16:40:41.451-04:002021-04-10T16:40:41.451-04:00It *does* sound like Basic D&D, except for the...It *does* sound like Basic D&D, except for the "easy" part. A single fighter most certainly not be able to survive an entire dungeon level with ease!ronaldsfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15221297712822999741noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-48516402653725157892021-04-10T16:12:02.828-04:002021-04-10T16:12:02.828-04:00The only BECMI influenced game I'm aware of is...The only BECMI influenced game I'm aware of is a console tactics game: <br /><br />https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons:_Order_of_the_GriffonCarl Crosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04607235019394126096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-72996327566766008442021-04-10T15:01:42.960-04:002021-04-10T15:01:42.960-04:00@Laszlo Benyi: Oh, I'm not referring just to p...@Laszlo Benyi: Oh, I'm not referring just to people who prefer "old-school" gaming in general. I think there are some good points in favor of it, and while I'm not really an OSR fan myself, I can see where they're coming from. I wasn't saying it's weird to like old-school games; I was referring to people who thought <em>OD&D specifically</em>, the ruleset from the original boxed set, was the best ever edition of D&D. I mean, still wanting to play Basic, I can get. Still preferring first-edition AD&D, I can get. (Or retroclones of those games.) I don't share those preferences myself, but I wouldn't call them weird. But OD&D? That was very much a first draft; it was extremely incomplete in a lot of ways; I'm not sure exactly what those people think they're getting out of OD&D that's so superior to the later versions.<br /><br />@Tristan Gall: OD&D <em>did</em> have the same alignments as Basic, so that's <em>not</em> one of the things that shows this game wasn't based on OD&D. But yeah, overall GregT is certainly right that this was based on the Red Box. As for whether there were any other games explicitly influenced by Basic... I couldn't name any off the top of my head, but I'd be surprised if there weren't. Basic D&D was very popular in its day. Not as popular as AD&D, maybe, but it had its share of adherents.Jalen Wandererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973042209003357278noreply@blogger.com