Eamon

Ah, nostalgia. Being able to play the game at all was something, as software generally showed up in shoeboxes from a suitcase (5.25 inch floppies fit pretty well into a shoebox) and the copies sometimes even worked. The computer was an Apple IIe that every so often we would need to take an eraser to the contacts on the cards to clean off corrosion. "Dungeons & Dragons" was more or less forbidden, which "The Pulling Report" (Michael A. Stackpole, 1990) may help suggest as to why, but then one had these computer games showing up with swords and whatnot.

The scenarios are of variable quality; the game Eamon (Donald Brown, 1979?) was early to support "mods" to extend the game, these being different scenarios loaded from a different disk. I forget the exact details. The disk switching in Ultima V took a while, and you could "teleport" between the under- and over-world by switching those disks when the game did not expect it. Those world maps used a compatible format. In Eamon there are the usual tropes; one is told to quickly defeat the $EVIL_DU_JOUR—right, head directly for the Tower of Evil—but must instead spend time wandering around to find all the keys for the various locks, clues, and whatnot. This involves less time with the computer, as one really needs a notebook on which to sketch out the scenario map, take notes in, and to doodle on. Computers these days involve more time with the computer, which is probably not good as far as repetitive stress injuries go, may not help circulate the blood about the body, and may bode poorly for socialization. That is, modern games often provide maps and whatnot that reduce or eliminate the need for outside notes. Or you can follow a walkthrough from the Internet; this is a different way to play the game as much as following a recipe is different from cooking without one.

Intermission: the battery is low, and the power has been out for a while in this glorious Republic on account of an event of ice and wind and power lines built in the way of tree limbs. Hopefully the folks fixing things are out getting overtime pay and additional days off.

Cliffs of Fire

There is probably some skill in separating flavor text from important clues, or (a mostly alien notion to a roguelike player) restarting from a save until the thing goes aright. Looks like the power outage knocked me back to the main hall, so time for a second attempt at "Cliffs of Fire" (Wade Clarke, 1991).

> In the small city of Kathros in West Eamon, the high priest's sacred white sceptre has been stolen by the evil renegade priest, Elrem. He has fled south to the Cliffs of Fire, and using the powers of the sceptre, built himself a tower and created monsters to defend it. If Elrem is given time to unlock the sceptre's full powers, he will destroy the entire city!

> In the sceptre's absence, crime is returning to Kathros and overrunning the city...

If a missing MacGuffin is enough to throw your city into chaos, maybe your society was already on the ropes? Come to think of it, "The Tombs of Atuan" used the same missing gizmo trope. Meanwhile, back in the real world (role players are said to have trouble distinguishing reality and fantasy) moral panics and such are not unknown. How different is a society that falls apart due to a missing Scepter from one that falls apart due to loss of faith in, say, Capitalism?

xkcd://222

Anyways, I got a bit more into the adventure this time (and 700 gold!) though could not figure out the maze of metal rooms before the lantern went out. I did skip picking up a bottle of water and the volcanic jewels before hitting the tower; no idea if those are important in any way. Also unknown is how to get past a locked door on level two of the tower as no key was found.

in-progress scenario graph specification

cof-take-two.pdf

You'll want Graphviz to build something from the "dot" file. A grid layout would be better here so East is actually to the East, and probably one wants a digraph due to rooms sometimes connecting or looping in wacky ways, but that's more work.

Spent the gold (plus what I had in the bank) on the BLAST spell; maybe that can get me through the locked door? Prior loot from grinding had been spent on getting HEAL up to a respectable percentage, to better avoid the strictly non-positive hit points problem. Another option would have been to level up by editing the data on disk, though that is harder in the version I'm playing.

Wizardly Powers

Pratice with sqlite may have various real-world benefits.

So one of the metal rooms has a "North" move out of the metal room maze: EAST (gold) SOUTH (bronze) EAST (copper) NORTH (stairs).

Examining the loot list indicates "There is a key in the sarcophagus." So I missed out on examining the sarcophagus to find the key. Or rather to OPEN it, not EXAMINE. One should also remember to "unlight" their lantern after the maze so it does not run out during the final battles and then you have to wander back down through a dark maze.