Might and Magic and Ability Scores

Grey Star the Sorcerer: weak, slow, and clumsy, but lucky and smart

            

Might and Magic is the first game in which I'm really noticing the affects of ability scores. Every game up until now has had them, but I didn't really think about them once the game started. Here, their effects are front-and-center. Ability scores, attributes, characteristics--whatever you call them--are an element that almost all CRPGs share. In this, of course, they are adapting rules from pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons. The earliest games had only one or two scores. Rogue, I think, just had strength. But fairly quickly--by Ultima I, really--games had grown into the standard set of five or six ability scores. It's rare to find a game (like Ultima IV, which only had strength, dexterity, and intelligence) that reverts to fewer. I'm always amused by the numerous ways different games try to be original by changing the names of the ability scores. The standard D&D list is strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, and constitution. Perhaps in an effort to avoid copyright violations, Wizardry offered a slightly different but nearly synonymous list: strength, IQ, piety, vitality, agility, and luck. "Charisma" was presumably left off the list because in early CRPGs, there were few ways to actually base anything on it. "Luck" is an innovation for Wizardry--an extra score that has subtle influences on just about everything--and it would carry over into other first-person, multi-party games like The Bard's Tale and Might and Magic. 

    

Wizardry's character screen with ability scores.

       

Might and Magic's contributions, such as they are, to the evolution of ability scores is to use "might" instead of strength, split dexterity into "accuracy" and "speed," and combine wisdom and charisma into "personality," the prime stat for clerics (in this they anticipate the third edition D&D rules). Like D&D games, each character class has minimum levels of attributes. Although the names change, the purpose of different ability scores remains fairly consistent. In descending order of prevalence, we find:

• Something that determines how much damage the character does when he hits something. This is almost always called "strength" but of course is "might" in Might and Magic (otherwise, it would have to be Strength & Spells). Secondary uses of this attribute in some games include determining what type of weapon one can wield (Phantasie), how much weight the character can carry (Elder Scrolls) and whether the character can force doors or chests (D&D-derived games).

• Something that determines the character's spell power. Usually this is "intelligence" but it also goes by "IQ." Like strength, it has secondary uses in more advanced CRPGs. In D&D games, for instance, it helps determine whether you can translate scrolls and identify magic items. In Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale II, it also determines the sophistication of your dialog responses.

• Something that determines how likely a character's attack is to connect. "Dexterity" is the D&D term, but we also have "agility," "accuracy," and "aim." I can't think of secondary uses for this one, but see below.

• Something that determines how fast the character moves and, hence, how likely he is to be hit. In D&D, this is also "dexterity," but some games, including the Might and Magic and Elder Scrolls series, split it off into a separate "speed" score. In continuously-scrolling games (like all games are after the mid-1990s), this score may literally determine how quickly you move across the screen. Some of my fondest times in Oblivion is when my speed-enhanced character rushes up and down mountainsides, blasts through forests, and leaps across rivers. In turn-based games like Might and Magic, speed determines the attack order of characters and enemies (more on this in the last paragraph).

• Something that determines how much damage you can take. Usually, hit points are a "derived" statistic based on your level and an ability score. In D&D, that ability score is called "constitution," but we also have "endurance," "vitality," and "stamina" in the repertoire. As games get more advanced, this statistic also determines how likely you are to succumb to certain spell effects and how much liquor you can hold.

• Something that determines how charming you are. "Charisma" or "personality," generally. This has a bunch of different uses depending on the game, including spell power for clerics or priests, prices at shops, and relations with NPCs. In the Baldur's Gate series, it determines how easy or difficult it is for the PC to hold together a party of differing alignments, and it determines who the PC can romance.

• A secondary characteristic for priest spells. In games that separate cleric/priest spells from wizard/sorcerer spells, "wisdom" or "piety" or "personality" will determine the power of those spells and how many the character can cast. Except when combined with the above attribute, this doesn't seem to have many secondary uses.

• Do you feel lucky? Finally, as we've seen, Wizardry and its posterity introduced a "luck" statistic just to shake things up.

Setting ability scores in Ultima I.

    

CRPGs offer a lot of variety as to how these statistics are determined. Some automatically generate them and you take what you get. Some allow you to "re-roll" until you get the outcome you want. Some give you a fixed score pool and allow you to allocate the numbers the way you want. A few (Pool of Radiance and Temple of Apshai come to mind) allow you just to specify the attributes you want, which offers a usually-insurmountable temptation to just max everything. Perhaps the most unique attribute-setting method was found in Alternate Reality: the City, in which a constantly-spinning series of dials fixed in place the moment you walked through a portal.

"Hold it...hold it...Now! No, wait!...Okay, now!"

 

Perhaps one of the most variable aspects of CRPG playing is how mutable these statistics are once fixed. In D&D games, it practically requires an act of the gods to change your ability scores, and even then you can only change them by a little bit. This makes sense in the context of the D&D worlds, in which there is a theoretically upper limit for any human, no matter how heroic. In later Might and Magic games, by contrast, it hardly matters what statistics you have at the outset because your final characters will have many many times that initial number. I remember starting out Might and Magic VI with 15 or 16 strength and--thanks to potions, wells, barrels of colored liquid, magic items, and other fortunate finds--ending up with almost 300. Oh, let's quickly cover a few other aspects of ability scores worth thinking about:

• They can be damaged. Spells, poisons, curses, and other assorted calamities can give you the strength of an infant and the intelligence of Glenn Beck.

• They can be enhanced. Other spells, potions, and magic items can elevate your stats. I particularly like finding Gauntlets of Ogre Strength in D&D games and immediately transmuting a character with a strength of 6 to one with strength of 18 (the third edition ruined this).

• They are modified by race and sex. If the game allows multiple races, very often you'll find yourself with higher strength (dwarves), lower charisma (half-orcs), or some other adjustment after finishing your character.

• Each character class usually has a "prime requisite." Strength for fighters, dexterity for thieves, and so on. There is usually a minimum acceptable ability score for those classes. In some games, you choose the class first and the ability scores get adjusted; in others you get your scores first and have to choose from a limited selection of classes based on the results.

With a charisma of 6 and an intelligence of 4, I could only choose between the "Fox News Commentator" and "Galoot" classes.

      

Bringing this back to Might and Magic, as I said, I'm feeling the results of my initial ability score selection choices. I did well enough with might for my two fighting classes, and when their swords connect, they connect with a satisfyingly-high amount of damage. I did well with accuracy on my archer, too (19)--she lands every shot she makes. But I skimped on speed except for my robber (16). The result is that he almost always attacks first, but with an accuracy of 13 he often misses, and with a might of 8 he hardly ever does any damage. What you really want, I'm discovering, is a sorcerer with a high speed score, so he can immediately blast groups of enemies at the opening of the battle. Conversely, you want a cleric with a low speed score, so she can go last in the rotation and heal any major damage taken by party members in that round, getting them back on their feet for the next round. This is important enough that I'm considering ditching my existing cleric and sorcerer and re-creating ones with better (or, in the case of the cleric, worse) scores. Other than that, I'm still exploring and mapping, and collecting screen shots for a post later about the different things you encounter in the Might and Magic world.

Linearity in CRPGs

Am I safe in saying that nobody likes linearity in a CRPG? Non-linearity, or the illusion thereof, is one of the features that separates CRPGs from other types of games. The idea that you can just wander out from your starting point and explore the world, blundering your way into impossible encounters at low levels, doing quests in any order you choose, running right to the endgame if you know where it is, backtracking...it's intoxicating. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the games I cherish most are inevitably nonlinear.

In this facet, CRPGs stand in stark contrast with, say, first-person shooters. Imagine a Half Life 2 where there aren't so many mysteriously locked doors (couldn't possibly open any of those with my shotgun, rocket launcher, or grenades, could I?) and in which you could wander off the train, grab a crowbar from some shack along the tracks, start beating Combine soldiers, and head out the city's front gates. I might want to play it again. Even the classic "adventure" game tends to be fairly linear, forcing you to do things in an exact sequence to find the box that contains the key that opens the gate that releases the unicorn that attracts the virgin that gives you a kiss that etc. etc. etc. Each game in the King's Quest series is like a huge Rube Goldberg machine.

"It's impervious to crowbars, pistols, shotguns, grenades, rocket launchers, submachine guns, pulse guns, and gravity guns...a true revolution in home security!"

But fire up Morrowind, for instance, and you can jump off the ship, make a quick stop in the Census & Excise Office, and head literally anywhere in the huge game world. (There isn't even a single locked door that requires a key, unlike Oblivion.) You can just explore and never initiate the main quest, or you can make a beeline directly for Dagoth Ur's fortress beyond the Ghost Fence. Assuming you can survive--hard but not impossible--you can gather the tools you need to defeat the god and win the game in less than half an hour. This guy did it in 7:30, and most of that was waiting until the introductory characters stopped blathering:

Morrowind stands as the most nonlinear game I have ever played, largely because it is set on an island, so there are no artificial boundaries to progressing around the world. But really all the Elder Scrolls games share this feature. It is one of the most compelling elements of the series and more than makes up for their occasional flaws.

Other wonderfully nonlinear games include:

• The Might and Magic series. I remember IV-VIII well enough to know that you can pretty much go anywhere in the game world after the introduction. I'm discovering the same is true of I as well, but I don't know about II or III yet. Sigh...I suppose I'll have to acknowledge there was a IX at some point, but...just not yet, okay?
• Ultimas IV-VII Part I. You have the entire game world to explore and can visit the towns, and talk to the denizens, in any order.
• Baldur's Gate. Once the episode with Gorion is over, you can stalk off in any direction and have a number of fun encounters unrelated to the main quest. The main quest itself, with its "chapter" division, does introduce some linearity, but you have a lot of freedom even here. Baldur's Gate II is a little more linear because its game map doesn't have mysterious areas into which you can just wander--you have to be told about them first--but the game does give you a lot of freedom in quest order and how soon or late to move between chapters.

Although I typically follow the same pattern every time, I theoretically could do this in any order I want.

The issue of linearity helps explain why some games are simply less fun to play even when they use the same game engine, game world, or game play. The Bard's Tale I and II, whose interfaces are nearly indistinguishable from Might and Magic, are a lot less fun because they force you to progress through the dungeons in a specific order. There is no sense of exploration. I enjoyed Ultima VII Part II much less than Part I for the same reason. The Icewind Dale series uses the same game engine as Baldur's Gate but is far less compelling because you're forced to move methodically from one chapter to another. The first time I played Neverwinter Nights, I left some quests undone in Chapter 1, assuming I could wander back to Neverwinter from Port Llast in Chapter 3. I was very disappointed to find out I was wrong--and for the dumbest of reasons. I'm blocked by trees! That's worse than Half Life's shotgun-proof door locks.

The worst CRPGs are completely linear, railroading you through a series of maps and steadfastly refusing to allow you to backtrack. I'm talking about you, Dungeon Siege, and you, Jade Empire, and unfortunately you, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal. At least Neverwinter Nights allows you to explore each chapter's areas in whatever order you want.

What makes non-linearity so fun? I would suggest there are five main reasons:

1. The feeling that you're playing your own game. If you thoroughly shuffle a deck of 52 playing cards, chances are overwhelming that that particular arrangement of cards has never existed before. I like the same feeling in a CRPG: that the game I'm playing has never been played by another player. No other player has ever exited the Oblivion dungeon, headed back to the prison to try to turn himself in and, finding no recourse to do that, punched the guard on duty so he could be arrested and finish serving his sentence. But I did, last time I played.

2. Honest-to-God role playing. Why did I do that sequence last time I played Oblivion? I decided my character was going to be an ex-guard himself, committed to the principles of law and order, who had made a bad decision and was suffering horrible guilt for it. In that game, you can invent such complex characters and role-play them accordingly. In Baldur's Gate you can (at least for a time) decide you always hated Gorion and head off in a random direction looking for gold. Or you can develop a pathological hatred for bandits and spend hours patrolling the Sword Coast collecting their scalps. Ultimately you have to capitulate to the main quest if you want to "win," but non-linearity allows you to do it the way you want to do it.

3. Backtracking. Ever visit your old High School and walk its corridors, using the experience to gauge how much you've changed since then? You get some of the same feeling wandering the streets of New Sorpigal (in Might and Magic VI) after clearing out a map full of dragons. Remember how the goblins in Goblinwatch gave you such trouble when you were level 1? Well, they've re-spawned since then. I love taking my level 30 characters into some dungeon on the first map and committing nonstop slaughter of my erstwhile archnemeses.

Hmmm...bridge trolls. Let me introduce you to a little thing I like to call a "Kill" spell.

4. The joy of exploration. Most nonlinear games--though not all--seed their expansive gameworlds with interesting things to find and do, including plenty of side quests. Baldur's Gate has a village of Xvarts for no other reason except that you stumble upon them and have to decide whether to slaughter them or flee. In another map, you're wandering along through the forest and see a statue of a fighter in the middle of nowhere. Just as you realize "hey, that's not a statue!" here comes a basilisk. That's CRPG gold.

"In retrospect, we should have seen this coming."

5. Replayability. This reason builds on the other four, but it's still worth mentioning. There would be no reason to replay The Bard's Tale unless enough time had passed that you simply forgot it. By allowing you freedom of movement, however, and the attendant role-playing and exploration that come with it, you could replay some games dozens of times and create new experiences each time. The funny thing is, I sometimes don't capitalize on this advantage: I often struggle to keep myself from playing a game the same way I've already played it.

Non-linearity, of course, has to be coupled with a game world worth exploring. I suppose that, technically speaking, Akalabeth is fairly nonlinear, but its effect is muted since you can't really go anywhere. Ditto Wizardry, Ultima I, Ultima II, Wizardry II, and so on.

In last night's posting, I said that Might and Magic was one of the most nonlinear games I've ever played. I suppose I should have said it was one of the most nonlinear that also had a large game world. In that sense, it certainly takes the prize as the first CRPG to allow completely open-ended exploration, including not telling you anything about your main quest! (I am assured there is one by readers.) This solves my mystery of why I love the game in a way that I didn't with the identically-interfaced The Bard's Tale II.

What are some very linear or very nonlinear CRPGs that I neglected to discuss here?

Supplement on 07/12/2010

BuckGB at GameBanshee posted a link to this article today and defended some of the linear games I mentioned, as did some of the comments. I admit I misspoke a bit when I said "the worst CRPGs are completely linear" and then proceeded to name Dungeon Siege, Jade Empire, and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal as examples. Dungeon Siege I don't apologize for, but never would I try to defend my inclusion of Jade Empire and Throne of Bhaal on a list of "the worst" CRPGs. As it happens, I enjoyed both games immensely despite their linearity. They both offer excellent dialog and superior role-playing choices.

Thus, I probably overemphasized this aspect a bit. But generally speaking, I think that if two games are equal in other respects, the nonlinear one is the better of the two. Might and Magic beats The Bard's Tale. Pool of Radiance beats Champions of Krynn. Shadows of Amn beats Throne of Bhaal. Ultima VII Part I beats Ultima VII Part II. This is only in my opinion, of course, but then again it's my blog.

The GameBanshee post, along with comments on another site, do answer the question with which I started this posting: "Am I safe in saying that nobody likes linearity in a CRPG?" The answer is no, I'm not safe; many people like linearity in CRPGs. I don't get them, but they exist.

Might and Magic: Extreme Freedom, Extreme Danger

After several hours of playing, if I blink at a white wall, I see this image.

           

Yesterday evening, after exploring Sorpigal and its dungeon, I thought Might and Magic was a little bit difficult. Oh, how I would love to have those innocent, carefree days back again.

The problem isn't so much that the game is universally "hard" so much as that, starting out, you have no guidance as to your main quest and you can literally go anywhere. This is one of the most non-linear games I've ever played. Unfortunately, the different maps don't offer predictable levels of difficulty, so it's extremely common to blunder into monsters well outside your class.

                   

When I get to be level 30, I am so going to come back and kick your ass.

Let me back up a little. Last night, I had decided to explore the towns before trying the outdoor areas. This worked for the second town, Erliquin. I delivered the scroll to the wizard Agar, who gave me a nice reward. He sent me on to another wizard in the next town, so after mapping Erliquin and part of its dungeon (access to the rest of the dungeon required a code word that I haven't found yet), I moved on to the city of Dusk. I delivered the scroll no problem and got a hint about some brothers in the last two towns.

       

I think this is the first quest-based experience reward in a CRPG.

        

But I couldn't finish mapping Dusk. One of the sections led me to increasingly difficult encounters with undead, and after dying half a dozen times, I gave it up for later. I moved on to Portsmith where I was slaughtered immediately and mercilessly. The town features hot spots that drain hit points from all male party members, the sexist bastards.

So my plan to explore all the towns first went out the window, and I decided to venture outside. "Outside" in Might and Magic is basically the same thing as "inside" but with different textures and more open areas. There are "walls" of forests and mountains, and "secret doors" that go through them.

      

A forest opening upon a desert.

            

I mapped the area around Sorpigal—map square C2—without much problem. After that, however, my characters began dying with alarming frequency. There are some map squares that just have impossibly high-level monsters, like the red dragon above. Then there are other maps that are generally easy but occasionally throw a random encounter at you that destroys you. Some of the creatures that the game treats as "low level" are actually horrifically deadly. My current most hated nemeses are:

• Killer bees and locust swarms: Both of these monsters have a "swarm" attack that damage all of your characters. If any of your characters are unconscious when they initiate the special attack, they will die.
• Acid blobs: Essentially the same problem as above, but they spray acid.
• Minor devils: I keep getting hit with packs of 10 of them, and they overwhelm my party with energy blasts.
• Troglodytes: Spray poison and I don't have cure poison yet.
• Sprites: Cast "curse" over and over making them impossible to hit.

The upshot of the game's difficulty is that for every 30 minutes I play, only 10 minutes are "saved"—meaning 20 of those 30 minutes are wasted when I die. It's not as bad as it sounds because I'm getting a lot of mapping done, but the repetition has become almost comical: venture forth to a new map area, map 10 squares, die in combat, re-load, venture forth, map 10 more squares, die in combat, re-load, venture forth, map 10 more squares and win one combat, hustle back to the inn to save, repeat from step 1.

My basic approach has been to hit each of the 20 map areas one by one, mapping as much as I can, and saving after every few successful battles. If I die three times in any one map area, I move on to the next one, saving a return to the previous one for a higher level. Two spells have made exploration a lot easier: "fly," which allows you to quickly go to any map area (and back to an area that has a town), and "water walk," which allows you to explore the oceans and lakes.

As I predicted in my last posting, this game is about the difficulty of individual battles. There are a few places where you can't rest, but they're rare. For the most part, if you can stay alive through a battle, you can rest, heal, recharge your spell points, and be ready for the next one fresh. This is in stark contrast to Wizardry, where there was no resting and the tactical difficulty came in the accumulation of battles. In Might and Magic, there's no particular reason to hold back on your most powerful spells whereas in Wizardry you tried to conserve them.

          

The Might and Magic battle screen.

           

Might and Magic introduces a few features to combat that make it more interesting than other games of the genre. The basic things you need to know are:

• When you choose a command for a character, it is executed immediately, not "stacked" the way it is in Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, and Phantasie.
• Your characters, and the monsters, attack in the order of their speed attributes. If I'd known this, I might have spent more time on the character creation screens.
• "(S)hoot" is a command that appears in this game for the first time, allowing characters not engaged in melee combat to fire a bow, sling or crossbow. Archers can do this even if they are engaged in melee combat, and I find that my archer's shot is always more deadly than her regular attack.
• "(F)ight" allows you to attack any enemy in melee range. This allows you to concentrate attacks on spellcasters or other foes you want to dispatch quickly.
• Characters and creatures with a "+" next to them are in melee combat. The neat thing is, the number and arrangement depend on the terrain. In a narrow dungeon corridor, for instance, only the two front characters will be in melee range, whereas if you come to a "T" junction with the wall to your left, then your first two and rightmost characters will be in melee range. Monsters will occasionally "infiltrate" your party, putting everyone in melee range and turning combat into a free-for-all.
• When your party members reach 0 hit points, they don't die; they fall unconscious. As long as they don't take any more damage, you can revive them. If your cleric falls unconscious, you're pretty much screwed unless you have some "magic herbs." I'm assuming my paladin gets the ability to cast cleric spells eventually, but not yet.
• Until recently, my offense spells have been pretty lame. My sorcerer just got the ability to cast fireball and lightning bolt, two level 3 spells that require a lot of points and gems but really help with the more difficult monsters.

I wasn't sure—still not sure—about combat order. Palamedes the paladin and Redbeard the knight are in the first two slots, no question, but 3 and 4 are tough decisions. It seems a waste to put an archer in a melee position because she can shoot enemies from a distance, but it doesn't seem like my robber or cleric will be particularly good fighters. I ultimately decided on the archer in slot 3, the robber in slot 4, and the two spellcasters in the rear.

Despite the difficulty, I'm still enjoying the game, largely because there are so many interesting encounters throughout the maps. On one map, there's an island with crazed natives who are able to neutralize magic, another has a series of deserted "merchants' wagons" that alternately hold treasure and ambushing monsters. Here's a toothless old gypsy who tells my characters their "signs," which I assume will come in handy later. On this map is a mysterious statue holding a scale of judgment and a trackless desert that I cannot yet cross. And deep in some mountains, I came across this oddity, which I assume will ultimately lead me from Might and Magic to its sequel:

            

Hint: the sequel is called Might and Magic II: "Gates to Another World."

           

So it's slow-going but fun slow-going. I still have no idea about the main quest (if there is one), but I'm noting anything I don't understand or can't complete on my maps, and hopefully these mysteries will all unravel in time.

Might and Magic: Getting to Know You

These sound scary and tough. They are.

       

I tell you, I was in a bit of a CRPG funk before I started playing Might and Magic. This game has revived me. As I wrote last night, it's hard to put my finger on exactly what I like so much about it. It probably has to do with the neat things that populate the game world, and the sense of mystery about the main quest.

I spent about four hours playing today, exploring Sorpigal (incidentally, "New" Sorpigal from Might and Magic VI suddenly makes more sense) and its dungeon, mapping walls, clues, and encounters in Excel. I use letters on the map to indicate special encounters. In Sorpigal, I got all the way to the letter "R"; in The Bard's Tale, I don't think I ever got higher than the letter "G," and The Bard's Tale maps are 89% bigger than Might and Magic. In other words, Might and Magic has more interesting stuff in it.

            

Sorpigal.

Among the items I found in Sorpigal are numerous statues with inscriptions that provide hints as to the game and the game world. From what I can figure out so far:

• There's a quest involving five brothers, one in each of the main towns. Since I received only one quest in Sorpigal, this must be it.
• If I slay four major beasts scattered about the game world, I'll get a special prize when I find something called the "wheel of luck."
• I need to find some idols to help a blind ancient seer named Og.
• If I can find a wizard named Ranalou at a place called the Korin Bluffs, he'll give me a quest that involves visiting six castles, including a difficult one named Doom.
• Somewhere in the enchanted forest is a castle ruled by a minotaur.
• The reason Sorpigal (and presumably other towns) are indoors is because a proliferation of dragons made it too dangerous to have outdoor towns.

           

This is almost sad.

            

Like Wizardry, Might and Magic features some squares on which you always find encounters. One of these is in a jail (6,12 on my map above). If you get by this, you can find a secret door that takes you through a darkened hallway and deposits you at another fixed encounter (4,15) which is quite difficult. My party was slain several times here before I finally beat a group of centaurs. Once I could do that, I headed down into the dungeon which, as you can see, features slightly different textures and colors.

          

Beneath Sorpigal.

          

Dungeon critters killed me frequently, and I finally got into the habit of returning to the town and saving at the inn after every three or four battles--or whenever I found a particularly good item. The problem with this is that returning to the inn resets all the maps, including fixed encounters, traps, and locked doors.

The dungeon had some neat features, including several squares where I encountered a message saying "don't turn around!" Ignoring this generates difficult battles. There was also a shimmering portal that I decided to save for later--no telling where I might end up--and an "arena" where I can fight difficult battles against various foes but for no particular reward that I can discover. This makes me wonder if every Might and Magic game has an arena; I remember them in VI and VII.

Finally, in a far corner of the dungeon, I encountered an old man who asked me to take a scroll to a wizard named Agar in another town. Does this kick-start the main quest, or is it an example of one of the first side quests in a CRPG? And aren't there a series of annoying creatures in Might and Magic VI called "Agar's pets?" I love it when stuff like this clicks.

           

Nice use of the passive voice. Who is going to reward me?

            

Might and Magic, at least at these early stages, features something that I love in a good CRPG: steady character development. As I mentioned previously, you start out with literally nothing: no gold, only a little food, and only clubs for weapons. Ever so slowly, you build experience and cash and start to find items or get enough gold to buy them. I love the feeling of replacing my short sword with a great axe, having enough money to buy a crossbow, and acquiring a few new spells when I level up. Almost all CRPGs offer this, of course, but the pacing seems particularly good in Might and Magic.

       

Leveling up is neither too quick nor too slow.

         

A few other miscellaneous notes:

• Poison. Why does every game have to have poison? My characters keep getting poisoned from traps and troglodytes, and it's going to be ages before I can cure it. Every poisoning requires a trip to the temple to waste precious gold.
• Money has been tight so far. At any given time, I'm usually broke because of the costs of leveling up and healing characters. Monsters routinely give only a handful of gold pieces per battle.
• I discovered the hard way that some encounters depend on the direction you're facing, so if you wander in to an area from the east, you may have to turn north to read an inscription. This means I spend a lot of time in dungeons spinning fruitlessly in circles.
• There are many locked doors which are trapped, and my thief (or "robber," as the game has it) really blows at disarming them. I did find some "robber's tools" that helped a little, though.
• Unlike Wizardry and The Bard's Tale, the maps in this game (at least so far) don't wrap back on themselves. This makes more logical sense to me.
• My characters age fast, from both sleeping and training. When I started everyone was 18; now they're 20 and 21. (Imagine spending three years of your life wandering around a single city.) I can tell that rejuvenation spell is going to be required at some point.

At this point, I have a few options for my next steps:

1. Leave the town and explore the outdoor area
2. Go back into the dungeon and see where that portal takes me
3. Give a gem to a gnome I found in a secret room and have him teleport me to another town

#3 seems to be the best role-playing option, since I received a quest to deliver a package to the city of Erliquin. I think what I'll do is explore the five main towns and their dungeons before venturing outside.

Last night, I said I'd talk about combat tonight. Give me one more night on that. I think it will be more meaningful once I have a better selection of spells.

Fellow CRPG players, don't you love that feeling you get when you really get into a game's groove and realize you're going to be up most of the night playing? That's what I've got. I really like this game.

Game 19: Might and Magic: Book One - The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986)

The nine-game series (not counting the Heroes spin-offs) begins.

Might and Magic: Book One - Secret of the Inner Sanctum

United States

New World Computing (developer and publisher)

Released in 1986 for Apple II; 1987 for Commodore 64, FM-7, PC-88, and DOS; 1988 for Macintosh, PC-98, Sharp X1, Sharp X68000, and MSX; 1992 for NES

Date Started: 3 July 2010

Last week, I announced that I was taking a break from The Bard's Tale II, and shortly thereafter I found myself playing a game that looks a lot like The Bard's Tale II: Might and Magic: Book One - Secret of the Inner Sanctum. Like The Bard's Tale series before it, Might and Magic is a descendant of Wizardry, offering a tile-based multi-party game in a first-person perspective. The game's approach to combat, magic, and exploration seem remarkably like its predecessors.

Yet playing it, I found myself enjoying it a lot more than The Bard's Tale II. This may have been external. I finally finished my traveling season and I've returned home for a full month (expect a post nearly every night in July). But there are some game play features that improve upon what came before, even if the graphics aren't quite as good (among other things, there seems to be no animation).

Might and Magic I was released for the Apple II in 1986. I'm playing a DOS port from a year later. It was the first publication of New World Computing and is the beginning of one of the most successful franchises in game history. I'm sure I played it before, back in the 1980s, but frankly I can't remember it. The first Might and Magic of which I have any real memory is III.

The game does not begin promising. Based on the game manual I consulted, Might and Magic tosses you into the world with no hints whatsoever as to the world's history and what your quest is all about—or, indeed, if you even have a quest. There's a cryptic line in the manual: "When you begin, the uncharted world of Might and Magic is as strange and unfamiliar to you as it is to your characters." Huh? Why is that?

To get a clue, I consulted the evocative map of the Land of Varn. The map is divided into 20 sections (A1-E4), that show some neat terrain: rivers, sea, mountains, a volcano, forest, plains, a desert plateau. Towns and castles are shown on the map as are numerous monsters: a scorpion, a sea dragon, a knight on horseback. Do these indicate actual game encounters or are they just decorative? Based on a clue I picked up in the first town, Sorpigal, I think the former. A statue reads: "One by water, one by land, one by air, one by sand. The wheel of luck will favorably pay, the more of these menacing beasts you slay. Although wishes may come true, all the beasts will become anew."

Only the Ultima series has had cooler maps so far.

The basic characteristics of the game break no new ground. There are six character classes: knight, paladin, sorcerer, cleric, archer, and robber. Each requires a different minimum combination of seven attributes: intellect, might, personality, endurance, speed, accuracy, and luck. There are five races: human, elf, dwarf, gnome, and half-orc. You can choose your alignment from good, neutral, and evil, and set your sex and name.

A very basic character creation process.

Character level is based on experience, which is accumulated through quests and combat. Your level determines your hit points and spell points and, for spellcasters, what spell level they can cast. The magic system features 47 sorcerer spells and 47 cleric spells, divided into 7 levels. Obviously, higher level spells use more spell points and many also require gems, which you pick up from slain foes.

All characters start at age 18 and can age through magic and natural passage of time. Your skills deteriorate as you age, and after age 80 there's a chance of dying in your sleep! Fortunately, there's a rejuvenation spell to reverse old age. As in the Ultima games, your characters have a food store and they eat a meal every time you rest. One major difference that seems to be a bit unbalanced: every time you rest, all of your hit points and spell points are regenerated. As food isn't terribly expensive, this suggests the major difficulty in the game will come in the form of individual encounters rather than the culmination of encounters like Wizardry and The Bard's Tale.

I created a party of six characters. I couldn't think of any reason not to just include one of each character type, so I did that, mixing races, sexes, and alignments. If you're curious, my party consists of:

• Palamedes, a good male half-orc paladin (kudos to Might and Magic for allowing any race to be a paladin well ahead of D&D)
• Redbeard, a neutral male dwarf knight
• Kata, a neutral female elf archer
• Lone Wolf, an evil male gnome robber
• Sarah, a good female elf cleric
• Grey Star, a good male human sorcerer

The game starts you with clubs, 10 meals, and absolutely no gold. I needed to find something to beat with clubs before I could even think about an edged weapon. Each character has between 8 and 10 hit points and the two spellcasters have 5 spell points. Talk about brutal.

Starting out in this game is tough.

I ventured out to explore Sorpigal and almost immediately died at the hands of a band of six sprites who bombarded my party with "curse" spells making my attacks ineffective. I wanted to throw up my hands in exasperation but I re-loaded and did a little better. Through exploration, I learned:

• Sorpigal consists of a 16 x 16 square. Until I find otherwise, I'm going to assume that all Might and Magic areas are this size. This makes exploration a little quicker than in The Bard's Tale where all maps were 22 x 22. Might and Magic may actually have more levels (so far, I figure there are at least 20 outdoor areas, 5 towns of at least two levels each—I've already discovered that Sorpigal has a dungeon—and a couple of castles, for a minimum of around 35 areas), but I like that you can get through them at a faster clip. And unless there are ways of finding secret doors that don't simply involve walking in to walls (I've found a few that way), not all of the squares on each map are used.

Exploring Sorpigal.

• There seems to be a lot more things in this game. I've only half-mapped Sorpigal, but I've already found half a dozen statues with cryptic clues, a trap that dumps you into the dungeon, a mystical leprechaun who offers transportation to other towns for a gem, and a jail full of monsters where if you're not careful the doors lock behind you—along with the usual shops, temple, and training facility.

Unfortunately, I don't have any gems and don't know when I'll find any.

• Random encounters vary from somewhat easy to very hard. It took me a while to realize that you have to (s)earch the square after you finish fighting a battle or you don't get any treasure. Even when you search, the gold and experience rewards are not that high. Based on the encounters I've had so far, it's going to be a long time before my characters reach Level 2 and can afford decent equipment.

Ah, the old reliable orc.

The game follows The Bard's Tale's convention of only allowing you to save in the inn, so you have to be careful about getting trapped too far away. Fortunately, I've discovered that if you run from combat, instead of simply skipping the battle and leaving you where you are (as in The Bard's Tale), you end up back at the inn. In dungeons, as I found out after a trap square unceremoniously dumped me into one, fleeing takes you to the entrance. This makes up a little for the fact that one out of four combats leaves all your characters dead (at least at level 1).

I'll leave combat to tomorrow's posting, but suffice to say that it seems like it has that same nail-biting ultra-tactical quality as Wizardry. I need to spend some time analyzing what makes Wizardry and this game fundamentally different from The Bard's Tale even though they seem so similar.

Again, I don't know what it is, but I'm mapping and exploring with a lot more gusto than with The Bard's Tale II despite the game's difficulty. I kind of like that I have no idea what the main quest is about (I assume it has something to do with an "inner sanctum"). I'm looking forward to continuing this one.

    

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Further Reading: The series continues with Might and Magic: Book Two - Gates to Another World (1988), Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra (1991), Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen (1992), and Might and Magic: Darkside of Xeen (1993). There was an unrelated game that preceded this one, called Might & Magic: The Lava Pits of Aznar (1983).