GEnie Livewire e-zine/LW9406MM.ZIP/ISLAND.TXT

Text File | 1994-05-23 | 10.3 KB | 262 lines

Fantasy gamers, rejoice and give praise to the
gods. Two new multi-player Fantasy Role Playing
Games (FRPGs) are slated to debut on GEnie right
away!

They are Island of Kesmai (GEnie Page 830), from
the folks who brought you Air Warrior and
BattleTech, and MUD II - The Quest For Immortality
(Page 1550) from Muse, Ltd. While both games are
technically classified as FRPGs, they offer totally
different spins on that venerable and ever-popular
genre.

Islands in the Stream

Island of Kesmai is located, naturally, on an
island. It's a big place, populated by a fearsome
array of creatures and NPCs. "We've got 120,000
squares of playing area, populated by around 5,000
critters, some bad, some good," Tom Laudeman of
Kesmai points out. The good ones will sell you
everything from recall rings to healing potions;
the bad ones will make you rich, or make you dead.

Most of the action takes place in the dungeons
beneath Kesmai. Ultimately, however, the game will
extend beyond the central island, encompassing
several areas accessible by magical portals. Each
new area will be populated by different creatures
and offer different challenges, treasures and
dangers. In addition, a variety of individual and
group quests will be introduced and maintained as
regular features.

Looking Good

Island of Kesmai (IoK) began its genesis ten years
ago as the Dungeon of Kesmai. Combining text
descriptions and ASCII graphics in a style
reminiscent of classic dungeon games like Hack and
Larn, Island soon became a huge hit. Players became
so immersed in it that the top scores are reputed
to be over a billion points!

Given the action-adventure nature of the game,
Graphical Front-Ends (FEs) were not far behind and
several good programs soon emerged. But with its
arrival on GEnie, Island brings what is arguably
its finest FE to date -- Squire. Available for
downloading from IoK's Main Menu, Squire treats
players with IBM-compatible or Macintosh systems to
256-color VGA graphics with an Ultima-style 3/4
top-down view of the game area. A text window,
creature info window, character stat display, chat
line, online help, film recorder, and 36
programmable macro buttons (18 per level over two
levels) completes a Graphical User Interface (GUI)
that is simple, functional, and a joy to use.

While keyboard input is required, most things in
the game -- from fighting to moving -- can be done
with the mouse or simplified with macros. Text
still plays a key role in combat, room
descriptions, and communications, but the FE
provides a look and feel similar to commercial
stand-alone games.

When running the FE for the first time, be sure to
set the terminal to Kesmai Protocol. Do that by
entering IoK, selecting Player Parameters from Menu
Item 7, and choosing Change Terminal Type.

Pleasant Surprises

Even without the FE, Island of Kesmai is an
addictive game. It combines elements of classic
dungeon quests, text adventures, and commercial
fantasy RPGs in a multi-player environment. Unlike
many other RPGs, however, the emphasis in IoK is
more on play than role play.

"IoK is a multiplayer fantasy adventure game,"
explains Tom. "Strong on adventure, it's computer
moderated. There's a lot of hack and slash, but
also a lot of very subtle things going on. People
who've been playing for years still get surprises."

The first surprise is the character-generation
process. It's short and sweet; you just select your
character's sex, choose a homeland, pick a
profession, and distribute development points among
seven standard character stats. That's it.

The second surprise is that you can create up to
eight different characters, and switch among them
at will. That's fortunate, because there are some
unique professions and unusual skills in IoK and
you're going to want to experiment with all of
them.

There are also some surprises in gameplay. First
off, every character has a locker, free of charge,
that will hold up to 19 items. Second, there's a
tanner in town who can take a critter's carcass and
transform it into a nifty suit of armor. Of course,
not all monsters make good subjects for armor.
Dragons, for instance, produce scale armor that can
be resistant to fire or ice; but give the tanner a
wild boar carcass and he'll hand you a football.

Then there's the training. While experience in IoK
is gained from the usual sources -- quests,
critters, exploration and treasure -- several
venues in and around Kesmai permit characters to
train in a variety of combat and magical skills.
Since there are virtually no non-magic class
restrictions, any character can train in any combat
skill.

Finally, death in IoK is a fleeting thing.
Characters can die and be resurrected by the gods,
or by thaumaturges. But by performing the Ceremony
of Death and Ceremony of Ancestors, players can
'bequeath' the experience, bank account and locker
possessions of a dead character to a new one.

IoK offers an extensive manual as a separate
download from IoK's Main Menu Item 5, but maps and
hints are essential. New players will find
excellent supplementary resource material in the
Multi-Player Games RoundTable on Page 1045, keyword
MPGRT. Just go to Category 26 on the Bulletin
Board, or check out Library 31.

Playing in the MUD

Of course, some people prefer to play in the MUD.
For those hardy souls Muse Ltd. is introducing a
radically different variation of the FPRG genre
that originated circa 1980 from Roy Trubshaw and
Dr. Richard Bartle of England's Essex University:
The Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD.

MUD took its time crossing the Atlantic but, as
explained by Dr. Bartle, "there are now several
hundred publicly-accessible games in Universities
across the globe. These mostly use one of a core
set of public domain game engines (called LPMUD,
TinyMUD, DikuMUD, etc.), and are known generically
as 'MUDs.' It should be stressed that although
these are all direct descendents of the original
MUD game, none of them are the same as it, and a
good many are decidedly inferior to MUD I, let
alone MUD II!"

Through the Looking Glass

Muse Ltd.'s MUD II -- The Quest For Immortality is
the fourth generation of the original; in fact, Dr.
Bartle himself is accessible through the game's
internal e-mail system.

The game has as much to do with solving puzzles and
finding treasure as exploring dungeons. On the
surface, it looks a lot like any other text-based
FRPG. You roll up a character and set out on a
quest for fame and fortune. But that appearance is
quickly dispelled; this is no ordinary game.

Creating a character (or persona, as it's known in
MUD II) involves nothing more than deciding which
sex you want to play and selecting a name. There
are no professions, races, or alignments to choose
from; no stats to consider or skills to develop.
The basic characteristics of Strength, Dexterity,
and Stamina are all set automatically.

Three character slots are available to each GEnie
account. And although you can "re-roll" the numbers
for each persona from your starting position in the
Elizabethan Tea Room, there's really nothing to do
but jump in and start playing.

Characters start out with nothing but their wits
and sense of humour. Weapons must be found; there
is no armor to speak of, and magic is attainable
only at moderate levels when you can survive the
Touch Stone.

The Lands are populated by a host of odd creatures
(called mobiles) that resemble a casting call for
Alice in Wonderland -- wolves, hedgehogs, ravens,
mice and rats, magpies, rams, butterflies, goats,
oxen, and parrots share the landscape with the more
commonplace goblins, dwarves and skeletons. Of
course, there's a dragon too, but it's moody,
temperamental, and quite deadly. We attempted to
interview it for this article, and were lucky to
get a flaming response of "No comment!"

The Immortal Wiz

The objective of the game -- and its attraction --
is to rise from Mere Mortal to the status of
Immortal Wiz. There's a powerful incentive to this.
As a Wiz, you achieve Game Master-like powers and
can actually participate in the design and
development of new areas in the game! No other
multi-player RPG offers this kind of opportunity.

Getting there, they say, is half the fun. It's also
a formidable task. To do it, you need to rack up
points by solving puzzles, swamping treasures,
doing deeds, and learning which critters can be
killed and which should be left alone. But there's
a catch.

Resets and Tours

The game resets itself every 104 minutes, wiping
out all your possessions, redistributing treasures,
and placing you back at the menu where you can
re-enter at a random location. As explained by Arch
Witch Satchi, "You're left with your knowledge,
character development, and friendships." The trick,
therefore, is to beat the clock. Complete your
quest or find as much treasure as you can and
deposit it -- in the swamp -- before time runs out
and the game is reset. It also helps to remember
where treasures and weapons usually appear after a
reset.

Fighting MUD's mobiles is automated (skills and
weapons are factored), and you can FLEE from a
fight at the cost of dropping everything you're
carrying. If you're killed by a another player (or
even a mobile, for that matter), he or she earns
whatever points you are worth, and your character
is wiped out.

Moving through the Lands is extraordinarily fast
and easy, especially with the period (.) shortcut
command. Typing any direction (NE, S, Up, Down,
Out, and so forth) followed by a series of periods
moves you that many times in that direction. For
example, moving toward the swamp is abbreviated
with ZW, so typing ZW..... moves you five times
toward the swamp. It's almost like flying! Lots of
action role-playing commands are available, and
typing GUESTIFY, followed by TOUR, will whirl you
into your choice of several entertaining guided
tours that help you get the lay of the Lands.

Not all treasure is lying around in MUD, or rather,
in the open. The best is hidden, accessible by
solving puzzles that range from simple to
outrageous. To be successful, you'll need to do
some serious mapping, make a lot of friends, and
get a few favors from the Wizzes.

And make sure you don't antagonize that dragon!