Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

In my last post I wrote about an original game HOBBIT (1975) coded in FORTRAN for Hewlett-Packard mainframes that ended up having a port for TRS-80; it was also the inspiration for the 1980 game The Wizard’s Castle which itself spawned many clones.

Water, Wind, and Sand, art by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1915.

To start today (and get to Ring Quest), I need to talk about another game called HOBBIT, from 1978 or so, which may or may not be related. I think the evidence is strong that the author Steve Richardson was thinking of the original HOBBIT, but I’m not sure. For the purposes of my discussion here, I’ll call the two versions CLASSIC-HOBBIT (for the original) and NEW-HOBBIT (for the new version), which was made on a PDP-11/70 at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania.

The “1978 or so” is because Richardson graduated out of high school in New Jersey in 1978, and the author of Ring Quest (Pieter Bots) first discovered the game during his 1980-1981 academic year, so the game had to be written between the two. (Incidentally, the game that Rob mentioned in the comments as being for DEC computers — that is, ported for the type of PDP that Dickinson college had — is from April 1978, so is likely CLASSIC-HOBBIT, since Richardson was still a high school senior in New Jersey at the time.)

Sam and Frodo Climb Mount Doom, 1978, by Bg Callahan. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

We do not have NEW-HOBBIT. We do have a description from the author on his blog from 2007:

When I was in college at Dickinson in Carlisle, PA, I was a bit of a computer geek, and the school’s mainframe had a text-based adventure game called, oddly enough, ADVENT. It was fun, but frustrating; there was no SAVE command, so once you started, you had to keep going until you won or died. It wasn’t exactly Myst, but it was fun! As I was a programmer, I decided to write my own text-baased adventure game based on Lord of the Rings. Since program names on this system had to be no longer than six characters, I called the program HOBBIT. Characters moved about Middle Earth collecting the Rings of Power to throw into Mount Doom. I took huge liberties with the plot, but it was fun, and I learned a lot.

NEW-HOBBIT has six rings of power to collect (and one sword for killing Ringwraiths) which more or less matches the seven treasures of HOBBIT; more importantly, NEW-HOBBIT was oriented such that the entire game is on one outdoors grid representing a large-scale map. This is highly unusual and the only other adventure I’ve played for the Project (other than HOBBIT) that does something like this is Reality Ends. The latter point (combined with the name coincidence) especially makes me suspicious that Richardson had at least seen ORIGINAL-HOBBIT.

Now, since we don’t have the actual game I’m going to pass that by and move onto the game that we do have: Ring Quest.

Pieter Bots had come from The Netherlands to study chemistry in the United States at Dickinson; while there he found the university’s PDP-11/70 and discovered it had games.

From Bitsavers.

One of the games was HOBBIT, that is, NEW-HOBBIT, the Richardson game, and as a longtime Tolkien fan he was interested. However, as Bots writes, Richardson “had taken such liberties with the story of Frodo’s quest” that “I felt that a more faithful interpretation was desperately needed.” He wrote his own HOBBIT (NEW-NEW-HOBBIT, I suppose), although ran afoul of his full ambitions due to 16K memory limit for BASIC programs. Then:

Having the same name as the authorized game on the system, my HOBBIT drew the attention of the system administrator, Tom Burtnett, first to my computer account (from which the file was confiscated on suspicion of being a hacked copy), and subsequently to my person, which started a principal-student relation of which I still have fond memories.

The affair brought me in contact with the maker of the genuine HOBBIT and his friends (notably Betzi Hoff and Chris Russell, and soon also Chris Leyon and Bill Biancamano) who led me into the magical world of Dungeons & Dragons and became great friends throughout my year at Dickinson and after.

Bots still wanted to make an “ultimate” Lord of the Rings game and when he came back to The Netherlands to resume his studies at the University of Leiden, he wrote Ring Quest on his Sharp MZ-80B (64K of memory) in assembly language.

From the Centre for Computing History, the same platform the Japanese Mystery House games were originally written on.

While at university it stayed as a “private game”, where his friends would “stay up until 3 A.M. to get to the end”. He then tossed the tape in a shoebox and unearthed it many years later (2007) and managed to rescue the audio. He then used that copy to make a Windows port.

No paring down to six rings for simplicity/size: our goal is to find all 20 rings (3 to the elves + 7 to the dwarves + 9 to the humans + the One) and toss them in Mount Doom. The map is still a grid, but 36 by 36, that is, there are over 1,000 rooms. Just for perspective, here’s what the empty grid looks like:

Some of the rooms are blocked off; this is similar to a “worm tunnel” design like On the Way to the Interview was, but with the added condition that you can go in diagonals (NE, NW, SW, SE).

You’re in Hobbiton.

S
You’re in the southern part of the Shire.

S
You’re wandering aimlessly through north-western Middle-Earth.

S
You’re standing on a foreign shore.

SE
The trees are too dense here.

NE
You’re wandering aimlessly through north-western Middle-Earth.

Even with 64K of memory I would not expect massive room descriptions; it’s almost as if the “reading lens” that usually gets used in text adventures is getting zoomed-back a bit to consider regions; however, individual rooms are still important, and in fact in my current state trying to go east direct from Hobbiton I am blocked by three entirely different death-rooms (which I’ll show off shortly).

The two “Road w/ rider” rooms both involve death unless you HIDE:

You’re following the Great Eastern Road.

Suddenly you hear a horse coming up the road.

HIDE
As long as you don’t move, you’re hidden from sight.

You see a darkmantled figure on a black horse appear on the road.
It passes by and dwindles into the distance.

Remember, diagonals are possible, but they would make the map too messy so I’m not including them. You can avoid the darkmantled figure with the opening steps NE, SE, NE, SE but that unfortunately doesn’t avoid any of the other three deaths I’m stuck on.

You’re in Hobbiton.

NE
You’re wandering aimlessly through north-western Middle-Earth.

SE
You’re crossing the Brandywine Bridge.
In the south-east you see the rim of the Old Forest.

NE
You’re wandering aimlessly through north-western Middle-Earth.

SE
Towards the south you can see the misty contours of low hills.

E
You’re on the Weathertop.

A dark shadow is creeping up the hill!

HIDE
There’s noplace to hide here.

The ringwraith pierces you with his freezing blade.

So you’re dead.

Death #2 involves the barrow-wight:

You’re standing among misty barrowdowns.

A tall dark figure like a shadow against the stars leans over you.
You’re in the power of a Barrowwight!

You find yourself lying on a stone bed.
A sickening pale hand is holding a shining sword, ready to pierce you!

S
Your opponent does not let you pass.

With a triumphant cry the sword is thrust forward.

From the Lidless Eye set of the Middle Earth Collectible Card Game.

Death #3 involves being swallowed up by Old Man Willow:

You’re walking through the Old Forest.

Overcome by a sudden drowsiness, you rest against a huge willow-tree.
Slowly you sink away into a crack in its bark…

S
You’re stuck in the bark of Old Man Willow.

(Not technically a death, but at least a softlock for the moment; still the most promising one to muscle through.)

Now, looking back at the map, you may notice some exits going west. You can take an entirely different route, and in fact, there’s enough rooms out there I don’t have it mapped out yet. An excerpt just to give an idea:

You’re in Hobbiton.

W
You’re standing at the foot of a slender tower.

CLIMB TOWER
From the tower you can see a great harbour towards the west.

GO DOWN
You’re standing at the foot of a slender tower.

W
You’re in the Grey Havens.

W
That way you’ll leave Middle-Earth.

Too bad the ships aren’t here, otherwise we could do The Lord of the Rings: The Heavily Abridged Version.

Lots of mapping likely before next time!

Again from the card game.