Graeme Yeandle first encountered computers while visiting a university in 1972, although he decided against university and went straight to work for British Telecom. Starting in 1979 he switched departments to work with a mainframe computer and became a Systems Analyst.
In 1980 he saw an article in Practical Computing which would eventually change his life.
While Graeme Yeandle’s day job was with a mainframe, he bought into the Spectrum line to get into home computing, and had trouble finding good software.
It all began with me playing an adventure game. I can’t remember when (1981 or 1982) and I can’t remember whether it was on a Sinclair ZX81 or on a Sinclair Spectrum but I think it was produced by Artic Computing.
I was aware of an article by Ken Reed in the August 1980 issue of Practical Computing that described an adventure creating program. It appeared, to me, that the Artic adventure was based on Ken’s article. I thought, “I can write an adventure at least as good as this” and wrote to Artic offering my services. They didn’t reply.
While Yeandle was searching, he found an advertisement for Gilsoft. Gilsoft happened to be located in Barry, Wales, which was quite close to where Yeandle lived (Cardiff). He decided to come to their “office” in person to look at the programs before buying, although their office turned out to be Tim Gilberts’s personal home.
Barry (in red) just southwest of Cardiff.
I’ll write more about Tim Gilberts when I get to his first game, but in brief, he was a teenager well-supported by his parents who clearly saw him as talented in programming, and helped to finance the start of his company Gilsoft. He had a handful of games (two arcade-style, one 3D maze game, plus Poker Dice and Reversi) to start.
From Spectrum Computing.
When Yeandle came to visit, the conversation turned to adventure games, and with Reed’s article (and Artic’s rejection) in mind, he agreed to write one for Gilsoft. NOTE: Gilberts has an interview that differs slightly: “He [Yeandle] was impressed enough to buy a copy of 3D Maze Of Gold, and mentioned he’d written an adventure game called Time-Line.” According to Graeme the adventure wasn’t written yet. It could be that he had a concept of a game developed enough for Gilberts to remember, but just hadn’t started yet.
The Interpreter was written in Z80 assembler, based on Ken’s article, the database was also written in assembler and the result was called Timeline. This was all done on the cassette based Spectrum and it took quite a time just to make a small change to the database.
Time-Line became part of Gilsoft’s “Games Tape 3”, packaging Yeandle’s Time-Line with an arcade game called Tasks (by Gilberts).
This is still nine months before the release of The Quill (the Gilsoft toolkit — again using Reed’s article as a basis — that will spawn hundreds of text adventures).
Via Spectrum Computing. The cover gives the title as both Timeline and Time Line so I’m using the game’s title screen instead (“Time-Line”).
Tasks involves collecting treasures from a maze and avoiding thorn bushes, while a TASKMASTER sometimes gives a problem to solve. I’ve linked a video below with Gilberts himself playing:
In Time-Line, you have “become separated from your Time Machine”, not knowing if you’re lost in the future or past. Your task is to find the machine and return to the present.
The instructions are standard “VERB NOUN” information except for this last part about not talking to strange men and being sure to use the GREEN CROSS CODE.
There’s a spot of intrigue in the setup with “you don’t know whether you are in the future or the past.” This ends up being a parallel mystery of sorts; sure, you start in a place with sheep and a “sword in a stone”, but that could technically still be in the future.
There’s also quite early on a gas mask so we’re not talking medieval, but perhaps this is “1983” which is the past of the protagonist’s present (since real time machines weren’t around in 1983).
Aboveground you’re at a barn/farm house/stable setup, starting with a sword in a stone (see initial screenshot) and a sleeping bull.
Note the river described to the south. Try to JUMP and the game responds it is too wide. There’s also a ditch to the east of the starting room. I’ve marked them both on the map and I don’t know if they’re obstacles to later be passed or just meant for flavor. Based on where I’m stuck later I’m guessing the former.
Also just lying around are a ladder, a horseshoe, and a lamp. You might think the ladder would help with the ditch, but PUT LADDER merely sets it down and no other verb I’ve tried is helpful.
I am in an old farm house. A shopping list is pinned to the wall. Exits are North, East & Down.
I can also see:
A lamp.
What should I do now?
>LOOK LIST
It says only one match left in basement.
The “list” indicates an important norm that sometimes interactable items are in the room description, rather than everything being items you can pick up.
The match is needed because going down finds the room immediately dark, and you can’t light the lamp without the match. You just need to GET MATCH while in the dark and the player will find it (nevermind one might assume the room is large enough you need to feel around for a while to find it).
To the east is an air raid shelter with a gas mask; I’ve tried both putting it on and not putting it on and there doesn’t seem to be any of the alleged poison gas to worry about yet.
What there is a problem with quite quickly is hunger. A hunger daemon triggers for no particular reason, and the only food around is the toadstool from the basement.
This might be fine — the toadstool (“Ugh! It tasted horrible.”) indeed prevents hunger from killing you — but you also turn into a fungus eventually instead, and faster than starvation takes.
I don’t think I should have eaten that toadstool. I’m turning into a fungu…
You have taken 18 turns.
Would you like another go?
You can still eat the toadstool close to when you are about to starve which buys a little extra time; this suggests the gameplay might be tight enough on move count that you’re supposed to toss yourself from one dire situation into another and then try to fix the second one in time (perhaps tossing yourself in a third dire situation which needs yet another cure).
The starvation / fungusifying means everything past here is the result of “designated death-clone” exploration, especially the maze you’ll see in a moment where I kept reloading my game in order to finish the map.
Below the toadstool room is a “damp chamber” with a boot-lace…
…and a “small chamber” with a battery.
Notice also the high fence and the chasm, both obstacles which again foil any movement. (And again, you might think the ladder might be helpful, and maybe it is, but not with any verbs I’ve tried yet.)
Heading west instead leads to the maze.
It’s fortunately not the kind of maze where the sides turn (going north and then south returns you to the same place you started); instead it drops describing exits so you have to test all six (N/S/E/W/U/D) in every room.
I am in a network of passages!
I am hungry!
What should I do now?
>U
I can’t go in that direction.
I am hungry!
What next?
>D
I can’t go in that direction.
I am hungry!
What should I do now?
There are three points of interest. One is a “phone booth” which I think it meant as a Dr. Who reference but not the actual time machine (and seems to be mainly there to dispense some pliers).
I am in a phone box. The exit is North.
I can also see:
A pliers.
A beeline straight west leads to a giant spider. I did try KILL SPIDER, SWING SWORD, etc. with no result.
Right before the spider the room is described as having a “draft” which is supposed to be a hint you can go up and find a key (I tried going up and down in every room anyway).
From here I am stuck. To recap, I have a sword, horseshoe, ladder, lamp, match (used), gas mask, toadstool, boot-lace, battery, pair of pliers, and key. I’m facing a giant spider and sleeping bull (neither are aggressive, but I haven’t gotten anything useful either); active obstacles are a ditch, river, tall fence, and chasm. I may simply be using the wrong words with the ladder, or I may be missing something more fundamental.
If anyone wants to try the game, there’s the ZX Spectrum original but Graeme himself also made a port for DOS which I’ve found easier to play. (The ZX Spectrum version of the game drops keystrokes, so GET LADDER sometimes comes off as GET LDDER. It may simply be assuming you’re on a slow membrane keyboard.) I haven’t made my verb list yet so I’m not horribly stuck, but I’m stuck enough I’m happy to take suggestions even from people who peeked at the walkthrough (ROT13 if this is the case, though).
I’ve finished (previous post here), and the game ended relatively strong, although there’s a “plot bug” of sorts (like The Deadly Game, one that can interfere with game-solving); I was not expecting a minimally-described game to even have such an issue.
Last time I had Zorgians that refused to interact with me, and my weapons (knife / revolver) did not seem to work, so I thought perhaps everyone was dead. This is not the case. Rather, the parser was doing something rather unusual behind the scenes.
This isn’t a two-letter parser, three-letter parser, four-letter parser, or a six-letter parser; that’s where all words get cut off at a certain point and that’s what gets used to check against a data list. You can type just one letter and have it fill the rest of a word:
F
FILL
YOU CAN’T F
I was misunderstanding what was going on when forming my verb list, and missed the fact that FIRE does in fact get recognized. You have to go past FI and type at least FIR so the word becomes FIRE. This lets you FIRE REVOLVER. (It’s still confusing not specifying a target, and the one place you can use the knife requires you specify a target rather than just saying USE KNIFE or the like; more on that in a moment.
You can’t pick up the COAL at all and it is irrelevant for the lantern. You can SEARCH it to find a BOX which contains a FLARE. (Just to recap, that gets added to the REVOLVER, FLINT & STEEL, the LANTERN, a RUBY RING, and a KNIFE.)
The Zorgian out on the deck next to the lifeboat doesn’t give anything up other than a BODY showing in the room, and in fact you don’t have to kill it at all. The revolver is limited to six shots so this turns out to be useful.
Zorgians marked with stars, the “SAILOR” is marked with a triangle.
After that, I kept running in circles, still unable to light the lantern. I finally went back to the SAILOR which was not marked as a Zorgian, and by default I would think they were just a human that managed to survive, but they refused any kind of conversation / trading or other interaction. I finally gave up and tried death:
The only time the knife works, saving another bullet.
This leaves behind a JEMMY (crowbar) and a BOTTLE OF OIL, which is what is needed for the lantern. I guess/hope that was a Zorgian?
The oil finally allows the lantern to be lit, opening up the bottom part of the ship.
Things kick off with using the revolver again (opening passages to the east and west)…
…although the passage farther to the west is blocked by a CRESTED ZORGIAN where the revolver does not work.
Going to the right instead is a chest with a WIRE; just as a reminder, here’s the instruction I ran across last time for making things explody:
TO MAKE A BOMB YOU NEED A WIRE AND SOME DYNAMITE AND A FLINT. TO DESTROY AN ENTIRE SHIP IT MUST BE PLACED IN THE POWDER ROOM.
I had the flint already from trading a fish with the cat, so I just needed the dynamite. The dynamite turns out to be right at the chest although I didn’t find it until later; you’re supposed to EXAMINE CHEST to find an extra secret button.
The WIRE is revealed by just opening the chest, so it seems like it’s examined implicitly, but I’d call this puzzle fair.
Further east is another Zorgian (BAM!) guarding a locker, which is “jammed” and requires the crowbar from the sailor (who I totally swear was a fish-man, honest). It has clothing, and searching the clothing reveals a paper with a code on it.
The code is 1864.
From here I was stuck (even having made the dynamite) although it was clear I just needed to get by the Crested Zorgian somehow. The FLARE from earlier is the key:
I don’t normally think of a flare as a weapon, but I guess if you visualize this as a double-sized fishman this scene makes sense.
This opens a passage with more Zorgians and a combination lock along the way (just use the code from the locker).
Finally at the end of the line is the POWDER ROOM with yet another Zorgian. (If you have tried to kill every Zorgian plus the sailor with the revolver, by this point you are out of ammo. Whoops! You can either avoid killing the one at the rowboat or kill the sailor with the knife to give you enough leeway.) With the three items held (FLINT, WIRE, DYNAMITE) I was able to MAKE BOMB, then LIGHT BOMB.
Escape is pretty straightforward, and you can go to the boat that was at the cat if you want rather than at the Zorgian.
However, there’s a major plot issue: if you try to LAUNCH early, you are told you are lacking oars and the game ends (this is true with either lifeboat). However, if you blow up the ship, somehow you win anyway, even though you still lack oars? There’s no oars in the game.
You could technically “patch” this plot hole by saying the explosion attracts another ship which rescues you, but there’s no such item in the text. I decided to just go for it on the rowboat even lacking oars just to see what would happen, but I could easily see someone be stuck here at the end due to the plot hole, flailing while trying to MAKE OARS out of something. (Maybe holding the KNIFE while at the CHEST, or something like that.)
I’m also not clear why blowing up the ship saves the world to begin with. I would surmise (again filling in the blanks) the Zorgians are trying to figure out how to operate the vessel, and then once they do the Army of the Deep will flood the shores.
Even with the glitches (game-wise and plot-wise) this didn’t come off as terrible; I did like Leopard Lord marginally more but I hadn’t gotten stuck on the verb list in that game. I’d say normally this is a promising second effort from the author and I’d be looking forward to the other games in the series (3 exist, 2 are mentioned in ads and may not exist) but according to Exemptus things go downhill from here. We’ll find out, I suppose, although I’m punting the rest of the series for a future time.
Coming up: The Quill, source of 800+ text adventures and one of the most important game-creation tools of the 1980s.
This is the follow-up game to Leopard Lord, which I played recently; you can find the historical introduction there (specifically how Kayde took a piece of software in a magazine not written by themselves and tried to sell it). Leopard Lord felt like an askew D&D level with combat determined by checking if the player is holding the right weapons/armors against a particular enemy. It was better than I expected.
Terror From the Deep takes a different tack.
Via Spectrum Computing. I don’t want to get more into Kayde Software yet. I should discuss sometime their support of the ultra-obscure Grundy NewBrain computer. Probably for their next game (Ace in the H.O.L.E.).
The year is 1864. A storm has hit our ship and we’ve gone overboard. We’ve managed to survive by clinging onto debris, and come across the SS Celestial mid-ocean.
Then you saw the sail…
Frantic paddling brought you nearer to the becalmed vessel. your shouts have brought no response from the ship and now you are drifting very close…
This is (so far, I haven’t finished yet) a “arrived at a boat where everyone is dead” type story. Hence, no fights like Leopard Lord; FIGHT isn’t even an understood verb (STAB is, which may or may not have anything to do with battle).
I’m reminded a bit of Death Dreadnaught except that the rooms don’t have any descriptions, so the game has a tougher time building up the same sort of atmosphere of dread.
which isn’t a lot to work with, and resembles Leopard Lord in length (but not in composition; no GIVE command, for instance). The one similarity is that EXAMINE and SEARCH are treated differently and both need to be done on everything you find. For example, early on there’s a BODY where EXAMINE reveals a message in blood…
The FISH can be taken, the body can’t.
…but later there’s another BODY with a key, which requires SEARCH to be used.
Here’s the first part of the map, before going down belowdecks:
There’s no obstacles in the way: it’s just a matter of wandering around decks and finding a bloody footprint and bodies. Curiously, not all the bodies are human.
I assume I’m supposed to visualize the Zorgian as a smaller version of what’s on the tape cover.
I was originally quite baffled here (before I realized the game jettisoned at least early combat) and thought this would be a confrontation, but as far as I can tell this is a dead Zorgian, not a live one. You can LAUNCH LIFEBOAT without interference, although it still doesn’t end well yet:
YOU HAVE LOST YOUR OARS. YOU WILL WANDER AIMLESSLY UNTIL YOU DIE.
From the bloody footprint to the south there’s another lifeboat and a CAT. I admit I was unsure if the cat was alive (or at least, it was both alive and dead for me simultaneously); hence it took me a while before I came back to test FEED CAT whilst holding the fish from earlier.
Other than the cat scene, the attempted atmosphere, and the KEY I found earlier on a body, the only other thing above-deck was a RUBY RING.
The stern has what the game just describes as a SAILOR. I thought briefly (since it isn’t a BODY) the sailor might be alive, but I can’t interact in any way. I’ve never had a “horror” styled text game where it is unclear at first if the character you’re dealing with is dead.
Moving on to the downstairs…
…a quick turn to the south reveals a Coal Hold with a dead (?) Zorgian. I am unable to get any coal. I’ve hacked at this room for a while for reasons you’ll see in a moment.
Further on is a LANTERN and a KNIFE (hence the stabbing in the previous screen), and even further is a stair down and yet another body.
Going down leads to darkness, and logically the lantern should be helpful, but it is described as empty. I tried to FILL LANTERN at the coal but this isn’t understood; I’m otherwise not sure how to get a light source.
That’s not quite the end of the line, though, so moving on, next is a mess room with a MAP.
The room after has a PARCHMENT with an ad for the next game in the series…
…with the final end of the passage being a huge cabin. The cabin has a LOCKER and a BOOK, the book explaining more about the bomb we’re supposed to make…
Do we need to blow up the ship to escape, or is this optional?
…and the locker has a box which itself has a REVOLVER. (I believe the key gets used here but I never tested exactly which moment.)
And with that, I’m stumped. I’ve got FLINT & STEEL, a REVOLVER, a LANTERN, and a RUBY RING and a KNIFE as “practical” items; the MAP, PARCHMENT, and BOOK all also count as items but likely just were there to dispense information. It’s strange to be stuck on something so small as the oil (or other fuel) for a light source; it “normal” playing circumstances I might be reaching for the hints right now, but I feel obligated to at least make a blog post first in case I discover something I’ve missed in the process. (Or get a helpful comment from the peanut gallery; please feel free to guess things I haven’t tried, but no hints from anyone who has looked up the solution yet, please.) I still keep wondering if one of the Zorgians is alive, just very passive; even the REVOLVER can’t be used to bring violence in any way I can find, though.
From the script of A Boy’s Life by Melissa Mathison, named before release as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
Last time I was stuck on
a botanist and a geranium that was withered so they didn’t want it
the director John Carpenter (not an obstacle or anything, but he was clearly there for a trade)
a few assorted locked doors (no puzzle here, just waiting for the right key)
a guard (having already taken down one with a rocket)
On the guard, I had a contact mine that seemed like it might work on the second but it exploded just a little too well.
Guard #2.
Gus Brasil dropped some rot13 hints but just the topic alone was enough to help; he picked getting by the guard as the goal which let me know where to focus. What eventually broke the case open was looking again at the verb list and keeping in mind something could be a little broken (that is, a native German speaker might treat something in English a little unusually), just like CHOP was used with a truncheon.
The key turned out to be knock, which in the format “knock noun” means something like knocking on a door, but is used here for “knock guard” (without the “out” you’d normally want in English) or more specifically “knock guard with truncheon”.
This leads through another set of doors (locked and requiring random keys to open, nothing behind them) and a third guard guarding a third hall in the same manner as the first two …
… except not exactly in the same manner. This guard was more aggressive and trying to give him something or interact causes him to “tear you apart”.
I remembered back at the beginning of the game, there was a guard described as cruel that knocks you out and drags you into the second (dark) cell. The guard is triggered by yelling. Since this guard was more trigger-happy then the last two, I tried the contact mine method again: THROW MINE so it is right in front of the guard, heading back to the protective steel doors, and once they are up, using the command YELL.
I found this the most satisfying puzzle of the game.
Using their aggression as a weakness.
After the guard was dead I could check the third row of doors, and at the final one I met E.T.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was a 1982 movie involving a friendly alien landing and a boy helping him go home. He causes bicycles to fly. He works out how to say things with a Speak and Spell.
A Speak and Spell, of course, I had in my inventory! Giving it over didn’t do anything, and I had to go back and look over the relevant section in the movie for a bit before I realized revivifying the flower is part of it too. If you’re holding the geranium and you hand over the Speak and Spell, he’ll repair the flower.
You know how I gave some latitude for Fairytale given the conditions it was written in, and even the baseball puzzle in Zork II gets a pass due to an alternate solution? Yeah, no such defense here.
The flower can then go back to the botanist, who will be pleased enough to give you a Rubik’s Cube.
I checked, and the Rubik’s Cube was first shown outside of Hungary at a German toy fair in 1979, and they had their own craze and familiarity with the toy. What I could not find is how it was linked to director John Carpenter. Maybe he mentioned it in some interview? At the very least we’re out of puzzles so this wasn’t hard to find.
Carpenter leaves behind a passkey, letting you unlock nearly every door in the game (you can dump the green, silver, gold and red). Back at the E.T. level there’s some more that needed to be mapped, and two doors that require the passkey.
It’s absolutely pure mapping with zero tricks, and perhaps a little odd for the very end of the game; using the passkey you can get the blue key behind one of the doors. The blue key then goes to a final locked door near the director door and you can walk out to victory.
The bottle doesn’t get used, except I think the implication is that the gunpowder was in the bottle to begin with, so you just get the empty one back?
Weirdly — and I know from the outside it might not seem that way — I enjoyed myself. It helped that I understood the context here of a game the author clearly liked and wanted to push the boundaries of and make their own. (I’m going with the assumption that Eberhard Mattes is the author of the toolkit as well as the game, although it is of course possible it was a team effort or a friend of his.) The “HAHAHA” part of the map which would have annoyed me in a professional case (Bard’s Tale 1, say) came across as somewhat charming knowing this was a way of conveying the joke.
The best troll setups are those which violate the player’s expectations. In order to do that, a setup needs to make the player think they know what they need to do, have them fail in a humorous way when they do it, and then let them know what it was that they were supposed to do instead. If any of these components is missing, a troll setup will fall flat. If a player doesn’t think they know what to do, they will not have an expectation to violate. If they don’t fail or there’s no humor, then they’ll wonder what the troll was. And if they don’t have an idea of what to do right the next time, they’ll just end up confused rather than amused. Make sure that each setup has all three components.
I still don’t think the setup-joke aspect always works as expected, but the fact we’re talking 1983 or so it’s fantastic that it works sometimes. The “nothing with a button on it” made me genuinely laugh; while I was slightly annoyed at the time with how the silver key was hidden leveraging the properties of the engine, looking backwards in an intellectual sense I find it fascinating that the trick was even possible. Anti-design for games prods at established wisdom; what’s odd is that there’s so little established wisdom in 1983 I wasn’t expecting to see much like it yet.
Despite an enormous amount of text adventures being produced by “toolkits” (especially once the Quill enters the scene) the toolkits are generally intended more in the way of a word processor trying to present things in the smoothest way possible; that is, doing something that “makes fun of” a property of The Quill is going to fall mostly flat because the players are just going to think of it as another text adventure, as opposed to the norms established by the Frank Corr-style game.
Frank Corr himself incidentally did have plans for Deathmaze 7000 in the works after Asylum II but just like his “octagonal” based space-game the new Deathmaze never surfaced. I’m not sure what happened and I hope to have the full story someday. If nothing else, I’d like his opinion on Madhouse, which until I started posting on last week was completely forgotten.
Coming up: A random Britgame, followed by the start of The Quill (sort of, it’s complicated).
I’m likely not far from the end, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to get there.
Via an Asylum II ad in 80 Microcomputing Magazine, May 1982.
Last time I left off on the very simple problem of being able to press a button on a wall. (LOOK BUTTON says there is no button here, so I wasn’t even sure if it was a button.)
PRESS BUTTON and PUSH BUTTON did not work. I did discover while fiddling that VOCABULARY works just like Asylum so you can get a full list of verbs and nouns.
Even with this list I was having no luck (I went as far as guessing it was a HOLE instead of a button and trying things like INSERT GREEN KEY IN HOLE). Fortunately, Gus Brasil, who seemingly gravitates to the really obscure stuff I play, picked up the game and played all the way to the end. He let me know the right syntax is PUSH BUTTON ON WALL. Argh!
The syntax becomes relevant again shortly.
I was thus able to enact my plan: light a rocket, drop it at the guard, run to the steel walls, survive the explosion, and get past the guard to a new area.
The box the guard leaves behind has a rubber truncheon. You can also go all the way to the end of the four doors and use the green key to find a purse with some gold coins.
I already suspected the truncheon went to the mined area (either smashing a glass wall or a mirror) but I’ll save that for later and deal with the gold coins first, which directly go to an inmate near the start who wanted to trade them for a fuse.
Again, every character that isn’t a guard can be referred to as an INMATE.
With this, I was able to go to the transporter and … still not operate it. It was described as having a button on it, it had a fuse in a “fuseholder”, and it was too heavy to cart around (you can pick it up, but you have to drop it in place). The key turned out to be the highly (highly) unusual syntax which has you PUSH BUTTON ON TRANSPORTER.
Doing this fries the fuse, which is why we needed the New Fuse in the first place (I had originally thought the lack of working was the fuse, not the parser being finicky). This was followed by an incredibly long struggle with the parser to try to take the “Blown Fuse” out, and put the “New Fuse” in. GET BLOWN FUSE doesn’t work, nor did most of the variants I tried. (“GET BLOWN FUSE FROM TRANSPORTER”: “You can’t do that”.) The big issue on top of everything else is that the parser has a character limit so you can’t type in anything you want. If you try to TAKE BLOWN FUSE FROM TRANSPORTER you get stuck by not being able to type in the “R”. Trying to use REMOVE (off the verb list) is even worse:
This is the first time I’ve ever had difficulty with a parser because it refuses to type all the characters I need for a command. Gus Brasil mentioned (based on the Vocab list) that TRANS works as an abbreviation, and indeed it does: REMOVE BLOWN FUSE FROM TRANS gets the much desired Blown Fuse.
But things aren’t over yet because now I needed to put in the new one, which was another saga in itself, and I actually took a break from the puzzle and went exploring a little in case I missed stuff. Gus also incidentally pointed out that the teleport-to-nowhere I found which kept repeating had a clear message if you do the map-upside down:
This is exactly like troll levels in Mario Maker.
Finally being satisfied that I had everything resolved (except the truncheon, which I’m saving) I went back to the grind:
put new fuse
put new fuse in trans
insert new fuse in trans
put new fuse in fuseholder
insert new fuse in fuseholder
This wasn’t a problem with guess the verb or even guess the noun, but guess the preposition. The game needs “into”: INSERT NEW FUSE INTO TRANS.
There was one small benefit from all that fiddling. At one point I typed OPEN BOX rather than my usual command (I had PUT NEW FUSE which seemingly worked, but only set the item down). I discovered that the square also contained a silver key.
You can’t move off the square without dropping the transporter (again, too heavy, so it always would look like there is a box there no matter what). The silver key is being hidden by the property of the game always displaying a single box for any item being in a spot, no matter how many items there are. If anything in this game is a troll at the level of what a fangame normally does (rather than a professional game) this is it: this is the kind of glitch in reality that most authors try to hide (and as far as I remember, never got used by Corr/Denman) but the exact conditions here (you have to drop an item on the square to turn around and look at it, you can’t see a box in the square you are standing) are being exploited by a superfan to their limit. Compare with Super Mario romhacks that require using glitches to beat:
Moving on, as we still haven’t explored the area the transporter lands on:
It’s fairly straightforward except for yet another troll, which is somewhat dependent on the player’s keyboarding. They have to wind their way out a “wormy” passage, followed by a very long passage where one step before the end you need to turn left. This means you are hitting the “up” key a lot, and if you accidentally hit “up” one too many times you plunge into a pit. I didn’t have this happen since I was moving slow to make a map, but since I could tell what the author was aiming for, I made an animation demonstrating the fall:
The bottom of the pit has infinite hallways in any direction. You have to reload. (Again: The original Corr games did have some softlocks, but not of the kind where you realize you are in an impossible room or area.)
Turning correctly, you can make it over to pick up a magic map, which is the only other item here. Normally then this would be a jump back to where you started, followed by a trip up to the mined floor, but…
…it doesn’t land you back at the same place you started! (I marked the landing point as the swirly wormhole.) I’ve also simplified the map a bit here, as there’s some teleporters that loop you around (and I didn’t feel the need to find the exact positioning for each one) and I’ve also left off marking most of the doors, some which use a gold key (which we haven’t found yet); just note you need to come back here once you have the gold key in order to pick up the red key.
After some major map-fiddling I found the “escape” door (a door seen from the other side, but requiring a silver key to open) so finally made it back to the elevator and the mined level, with the truncheon and magic map in hand. I already knew the magic map was relevant because when examining it at first, it gives the same grid as before. Once you actually arrive there, a path is drawn out like this:
Clearly my own map was turned from the “real” compass the game was using (I hate not knowing how to orient things, grr) so I did some magic with Microsoft Paint in order to redraw the route on my original map.
To get through to the route in the first place involves busting the mirror. I had some difficulty because the typical HIT and SMASH and ATTACK weren’t in the list, so I had to go with CHOP. Chopping with a truncheon?
The path then follows mostly uneventfully as long as you don’t typo your keypress. There’s also a “big blue nothing with a button on the rear side” but that’s again just trolling, and to get through the last step you should look in the box as it contains a contact mine which needs to be picked up (don’t step on it!). In the end you can reach the corner box which has a gold key.
The route is changed on the way back, so you need to refer to the magic map (or do a lot of saving and loading) to make it to safety.
In the end I wasn’t too annoyed by the fact I mapped it first before finding a relevant item, as knowing the boundaries helped make sure I did the path correctly.
With the gold key in hand you can head back and get the red key, and then go on a spree of opening doors. This yields a Speak and Spell, a geranium, a botanist (who doesn’t want a shriveled geranium and kicks you out if you try to give it over), and John Carpenter, the director (in a room marked “Director”). Seriously:
This would be after he made The Thing, but I don’t know what that means for the game. I tried GIVE for every item I had and got no reaction.
The only other open area I have is back where I blew up the guard; there’s a second guard blocking the way further, and it seems like they need to be removed out of the way as well. You can step back and throw the contact mine, then throw an item at the contact mine to blow it up, but that blows you up as well.
Guard #2.
After throwing the contact mine to be next to the guard.
After THROW TRUNCHEON. You can’t throw farther.
So that leaves the botanist (and maybe getting a non-withered version of the plant over), the director, and the guard to deal with. I still have an empty wine bottle (the flower can’t go in it) and a Speak and Spell but I’m otherwise out of options.
Gus, you’re welcome to drop hints but ROT13 only please. Based on the vocabulary list there isn’t much left to find. Anyone else is welcome to speculate about wacky stuff to try and I’ll test it out.
No cereal boxes in the vocabulary, unfortunately. COME BACK ALI. COME BACK ALI’S SISTER.
One of the disadvantages to a write-as-I-play style is that I don’t get to plunge into the hex machine code until I’m done (or at least I get really, really, stuck); Rob in the comments searched through and found a copyright notice which explains quite a bit and also makes the whole experience even more terrifying. Previously I theorized this could be a “hacked” game but special tools were needed that didn’t exist at this time to do the kind of work required here. It appears a madlad from Germany custom-made his own.
ADVLIB Copyright (c) 1982/83 Eberhard Mattes
Eberhard Mattes was a Video Genie enthusiast and has his name linked to some “monitor software” which tracks what’s going on in machine code and a bios to use CP/M on Video Genie. The copyright statement above implies he made his own fangame program to modify the machine code of the Frank Corr engine. Without any other name attached I’m going to guess this game is likely by Mattes himself. (It could even be the tool ADVLIB never got released, just the game made with it.) I’m not clear yet which game was the “base” but the verb FART is included and only showed up in the first two (Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth) and the screen layout is closer to those games; the inmate graphics and some other elements only show up starting in Asylum.
Fangames often are harder and less fair than the originals of a game; the enthusiasts who have played through a game multiple times really want a challenge and/or to torment their friends. For example, the “troll levels” so now well-refined through the Super Mario Maker games are their own ecosystem far from the ethos of Nintendo-designed levels.
You might ask, how could a Deathmaze 5000 style game be less fair than the original? You’ll see.
Continuing from last time…
…I had traded some gun powder for a bottle and a firework rocket (the rocket indicates it has a cord if you LOOK at it). I also had in my inventory a green key (used everywhere I could manage), lighter fluid, and a golden lighter (which I had filled with the aforementioned fluid). On the obstacle side of things, there was an inmate who wanted five gold coins for a fuse, a “transporter” that seems to need aforementioned fuse, a guard that stops me on level 1, a place where steel “protective” doors fall on level 1, and (still unexplored as of my last post) I had a teleporter square to get through and a mine-laden level 3.
I’m going to do the teleporter first (which will be short), then the mine area (which will be frustrating), and finally the guard and the steel doors (which are connected).
After stepping into the teleporter and turning “south”.
I don’t have much to say about the teleporter area; it drops you in a region which “loops” the west to the east side and seems intended to just make you walk forever if you don’t notice what’s going on. I dropped items (which left behind boxes) to confirm the area is endless. Mind you, Deathmaze had something trigger with particular turn numbers in a static room, so there may be something to this area still, but I have no clues pointing here yet.
There is also the possibility there is something on one of the random walls (I have yet to face each and every one to check); there’s a wall with a special object on level 3 (the mined floor) as you’ll see next.
Arriving in the elevator to level 3 and turning “north”.
The level is mostly divided into a grid pattern, where the outermost circle is mine-free, but there are many dangerous squares that will blow you up if you step inside the grid.
The mines are hopefully self-explanatory (they’re invisible, I had to step on every single one to map them); some other points on the map above:
1. There are many doors marked “elevator”. Only the door you came in on is a real elevator; walking into any of the other “elevator” rooms lets you know the room is fake, and it drops you down into a 1 by 1 room with no apparent means of escape. This seems to be a softlock.
None of the Corr games had this kind of softlock; one reason why this one is more unfair.
2. In the upper right corner there’s a visible box, but it is blocked by glass walls to the west and south. I have been unable to break through the wall, even when using FART from all the way across the map, flying towards it, and ramming. (Before anyone asks, it doesn’t work to bypass mines either.) Animation below:
3. There are two squares marked “NOTHING”. Those are boxes, and when you open them, the game describes that you have found nothing. You are unable to take nothing. They are pure trolling. (Again, a few steps past anything Corr did, although he did have red herrings in Deathmaze.)
4. There’s one wall (the only place where the grid breaks) with a mirror. I haven’t been able to get anything useful to happen here but it does indicate looking at particular walls might be needed (meaning I need to comb over every area very carefully).
The map is no doubt incomplete since I haven’t made it to the inner area yet. My guess is I’ll bust past the glass wall (somehow) which will then give access, and I also guess that the box in the upper right corner has NOTHING just like the others. You might think the firework rocket would be helpful for the glass. Unfortunately, it’s a little too explosive; you can light the cord, drop it, and run away, but it always makes a big enough explosion to (presumably) smash the glass but also kill the player.
Now, the level with the guards. There’s not much to it at the start other than the guard telling you to go back to your cell…
…and the steel wall…
…but notice how it is protective. And we have a very powerful rocket. There’s enough time while the cord burns to drop the rocket next to the guard and make a beeline for the wall.
The wall that dropped has what looks like a button.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to press it! I might need to do some serious noun-hunting (again, this is a little more unfair than what Corr did). It could even be a “hole” rather than a button or some such nonsense. If there was a way to look at the wall that might help but the obvious candidates (LOOK WALL, LOOK STEEL WALL, LOOK AROUND) give no joy, and plain LOOK BUTTON says “I see no button.”
Enough events have happened this seemed like a good time to report in, at least. I don’t think this is going to go as long as the Asylum games but we’ll see.
Consolidating the information from Will Moczarski, Ernst Krogtoft, and a 1981 interview, Frank Corr was an 18-year-old student at MIT when he used his TRS-80 to make the game Rat’s Revenge in BASIC. Denman saw a copy and offered to publish it. While Corr didn’t originally write the game to sell, he agreed to a deal, as long as he was able to “learn machine language first.” (He managed to parley writing a research paper for English into one about machine language.)
During MIT’s summer break, Corr went back to make a machine code version of Rat’s Revenge, and followed up by adding enough content it went from straightforward maze game to an adventure game: Deathmaze 5000. (This started as a true outsider whim: he had never played an adventure until he was halfway through making Deathmaze.) This same engine was used (with collaboration by William Denman himself) for a follow-up, Labyrinth. All three were out by October.
In January 1981, he made improvements to a routine “that allows graphics to be stored as data”, leading to the more elaborate game Asylum (out by the release of their Spring 1981 catalog). Corr also claimed (post-Asylum) that he was going to write one more game with “octagonal rooms” and “use a space station or similar setting.” Corr is only credited on Asylum II with the “graphics”, so he apparently either relaxed on game development to focus on MIT or switched to working on the space station game (which never came out).
There are three other lost Med Systems we know about from the 1981 catalog, which all seem to be from Denman in 1980: Samurai, Starlord, and Bureaucracy (out at least by September). The first two may not be adventures, but the last one describes itself directly as such:
Bureaucracy, the adventure of government agencies, places you in the role of an amateur mechanic who has devised a way to get 80 mpg from your old Cadillac. Your mission is to bring this cheap technology to the attention of the Department of Energy Assistance (DOEA). You must get past hordes of secretaries, muddle through myriad forms, and mix with middle management. But don’t lose yourself in DOEA’s great office building, the Octagon, and be sure to get finished before 4:30. In addition to the standard adventure features, Bureaucracy offers soft-keys for short conversations with the various personalities you will encounter and a “mini” 3-D graphics display.
All this establishes a picture of a company whose history is settled, even though it has a couple lost games (that will hopefully turn up one day). Today’s game throws that for a loop. It is not listed in any advertisement or catalog for Med Systems, yet it clearly uses the Frank Corr engine and I am fairly certain it is by Frank Corr himself (with or without Denman helping). It is a lost game that we didn’t even know was lost.
I found it while searching the same German archive I found Geheimagent XP-05. For the most part, the games there I recognized, although there are some German translations that I hadn’t seen (like one of Assignment 45). On disk 15 I found a file called MADHOUSE.CMD. There is a known Mad House game from 1983 but that’s a regular text adventure by Peter Kirsch written in BASIC. The CMD suggested the file on disk 15 was machine code so I gave it a load and was shocked by what I saw.
Above is the starting screen when you boot the game; there’s no mention of Med Systems. It has the inventory to the right like Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth and feels like an intermediate game between Labyrinth and Asylum. Was it a test game of some sort? That suggests it was written perhaps starting in October 1980, and for some reason shelved before Asylum came out. (Maybe the routine Frank Corr found in January made him want to start over?)
If that’s the case, then how did it get out? (I also considered if it was possible this was a third-party hack. While people made their own games with the Scott Adams database format, Madhouse is pure machine code and doesn’t lend itself to getting modified without modern tools.)
I have played a fair amount and nothing matches either Asylum game. It could be the Asylum material will creep in or it could all be brand new. Either way I don’t understand how the Germans have a copy. Perhaps some content in the game itself will help (Denman appears in Asylum II, so cameos aren’t impossible).
You start in a 1×1 cell with no bed or items. The only thing I could find that worked was to YELL. This causes an elevator sound, and a “sadistic guard” to approach.
He drops a “green key” but it does not open the door. The only thing to do is to YELL again whereupon you get “hit by a rubber truncheon” and end up in another cell, in the dark.
The dark cell is a 2 by 1 room so you need to move slightly before finding the right wall where OPEN DOOR acknowledges there is a door there.
Now UNLOCK DOOR WITH GREEN KEY will work (just like Asylum 1 & 2 the game is fussy about complete sentences). This opens the map up wide:
Every door that has been passed through will unlock with the green key from the start of the game (except the elevator, which is already unlocked). Every other door either requires a different key (or lockpick, or grenade pin, or whatnot).
Facing “east” after leaving the starting room.
Near the start (to the “west” after passing through some locked doors, note there’s no compass so my directions are arbitrary) are two people in rooms. One of them wants to sell you a fuse for “5 gold coins”…
…and the other describes themselves as a “pyrotechnician” with no further clarification.
Past that is a section which can be confusing to map.
The Xes are placed so that in particular positions it looks the same in every direction. As long as you’re careful mapping it’s fine, but it does give the effect of a spinner or teleporter Wizardry-style without resorting to actually moving the player around.
That is, it is easy to lose track if you’re facing north, south, east, or west while passing through this “same visual in every direction” type of intersection.
Mind you, the game is perfectly happy to resort to teleporters like with Labyrinth; stepping on the northwest tile sends the player elsewhere, although I haven’t fully mapped out the result yet.
Out in the open to the south are some boxes (in the standard Med System style) with a variety of explode-y objects: gun powder, lighter fluid, and golden lighter. You can take the gun powder back to the “pyrotechnician” and they are willing to trade for a firework rocket and a bottle.
Fortunately you can use the word INMATE (like the Asylum games). The game runs out of characters if you attempt to type GIVE GUN POWDER TO PYROTECHNICIAN.
Finally, in addition to the teleport square in the corner (which I’m ignoring for now), there’s an elevator and a “transporter” device. The transporter is an item you can pick up but it is too heavy to move, and it has a button. It doesn’t work yet but there’s a “fuseholder with a fuse” that is suggestive.
Unfortunately, PRESS RED BUTTON gets the message “Bad construction” which might mean some kind of bug. My guess is the fuse needs to be replaced first, via the inmate who wants 5 gold coins.
The elevator works normally without issues as long as you close the door behind you.
Level one has a guard that says to go back to your cell.
You can also get yourself trapped by a “protective steel wall”. Nothing else is accessible (for now).
Level two is where the player starts, and level three represents another large map, although some squares have mines (the screen turns white, you die).
Clearly the next step is to work on the third floor and the area reached by the teleporter, but teleporting and death squares tend to make mapping take a long time, so I thought this would be a good place to report in.
If you want the game for yourself, I have a download link here. There are no hints or clues anywhere because there is no documentation that this game ever even existed.
I’ve finished the game; my previous posts are needed for context. You can read my complete Ringen series including the 2019 content here, and my series starting from the DOS port here.
Nearly to the end, this game has a serious issue with how events are triggered: it relies heavily on random number generation. This is an issue I’ve brought up multiple times but it’s worth a re-fresh:
Suppose you have an event that happens 1% of the time in your game, checking every turn. How likely is it that it will take over 100 turns to see the event?
Intuitively, many people would think it quite unlikely. Another way to phrase the question is “how likely is it to get 99% — the failure state — 100 times in a row?” This is simply .99 raised to the 100th power, or approximately 36.6%. That means more than a third of players will be failing 100 times in a row.
How about 200 times in a row? That seems unlikely, right? Well, no, it’s actually 13.4%. Remember this is a designer who likely was thinking “oh it’ll be about 50, at worst about 100” and more than 1 of 10 in players are now waiting double the “maximum”.
Surely not 300 turns in a row? That’s still around 5%, or 1 in 20 of all players. Especially in the context of a text adventure, 300 turns is a very long time.
The curious thing about Ringen is there is at least a little acknowledgement of this problem. Let me go back to the scene with Legolas appearing, and giving Sting (which turned out to be central to my last leap and winning the game).
I will try to help you out of here, but first I will try to find our mutual friend Gandalf. In the meantime, help yourself the best you can. Fortunately, I have found your dear sword, Sting. Take your magic weapon, and you will have something to defend yourself with! We’ll meet again soon!
The Legolas encounter can occur any time in the game, with a 1% chance. The source code also adds an extra condition that Legolas will appear automatically if you exceed 200 moves (what I ended up doing on a rest was just walking back and forth between two rooms, and it did take until move 201 for Legolas to show up). So, under normal play conditions most players will eventually do enough turns to see him.
The problem is that the upshot — the thing I was missing — is a random roll that happens after you get Sting. What you want to happen is have the “small trolls” appear again (the ones who thought you were a wizard). However, in actual practice, they weren’t showing up for me; at first this was just by chance, but then I went to check source code and tried to get them to show intentionally and still had enormous trouble. I went to over 300 moves without seeing them (1 in 20 isn’t that unlikely! It’s just your natural 20 in D&D!)
They see the glittering sword you are holding, shout wildly, and run away in total confusion.
In the process of doing this, one of the trolls drops some clothes. (This is non-obvious; you have to either look at the room again or return to it later and be observant.) You may recall last time I was trying to translate “trollham” and I went with “troll-skin” knowing there was some ambiguity. K had it right in the comments: you’re supposed to dress like a troll to win the battle against the Balrog. The other items you’ll need are Balin’s axe and the wizard staff (technically the One Ring because the game doesn’t let you drop it, and you need to escape with it, but the Balrog can see you either way so it doesn’t matter if you are wearing it).
Before taking on that battle, a couple more RNG instances —
Back at the dragon I was confused about an inclined room to the north where seemingly every direction drops the player back down to the start. I was a victim, again, of RNG: going north sometimes will drop back to the start, but sometimes drop into a “royal” room instead.
I may not have every room (see: RNG, even testing 20 times there’s no guarantee you didn’t miss something) and on my winning run I didn’t even bother entering; it’s just treasures like a crown and a shield. (They would help with the 200 point thing with the wizard, but a.) I didn’t bother with the wizard on my final run b.) I already had enough treasures to fill my inventory, so for any extra treasures to count I needed to cash them in at the Pawnbroker, something I never figured out how to do.)
I also had an encounter with Arwen. I believe this triggers if your points are above a certain level and then your random number gets lucky again, and it is worth mentioning because it redeems the wizard scene slightly: she gives you a tiara and tells you explicitly the wizard now wants to see you, making it not so arbitrary any more to visit him.
Ei strålende vakker alveprinsesse får se deg. Hun stopper opp og ser på deg med et fortryllende vakkert smil, og sier :
`Jeg er Arwen Undomiel av høyalvenes folk.
Jeg må straks tilbake til mine egne, så jeg har ikke tid til å prate.
Ta denne tiaraen, Ringbærer, den vil kanskje kunne hjelpe deg.
Trollmannen ville treffe deg på sitt oppholdssted. Gå dit!’
Prinsessa forsvinner i en sky av flagrende gevanter.
A beautiful elf princess comes by and sees you. She stops and looks at you with an enchantingly beautiful smile, and says:
“I am Arwen Undomiel of the people of the High Elves.
I have to get back to my own people now, so I don’t have time to talk.
Take this tiara, ring bearer, it may be able to help you.
The Wizard wanted to meet you at his location. Go there!”
The Princess disappears in a cloud of fluttering robes.
Finally, the bit with the earthquake that opens a gap is not linked to the picking up the ring — it eventually just happens. This allows you to visit the Pawnbroker and the west side of the lake and the Palantir without worrying about Gollum swiping the ring.
You may incidentally wonder how I handled reclaiming the ring from Gollum. I just made sure he didn’t steal it in the first place. I don’t know the exact logic (I studied the code and I’m still unclear) but when I was ready for the final challenge, I put on the ring right before entering the earthquake passage; there’s enough time to get to the Balrog and kill it before taking the ring off, and Gollum can only steal the ring if you’re visible.
With all that taken care of, while approaching the Balrog in troll clothes he pauses, giving you enough time to act.
The Balrog seems to hesitate a bit.
What are you going to do now?
A little parser struggle here; “use axe” doesn’t work (even though that’s what you’re using), you have to “kill balrog” instead.
You attack the Balrog with Durin’s axe!
The giant monster roars furiously and strikes after you!
Durin’s holy axe seems to have a life of its own!
Suddenly it flies from your hand and hits the monster in the eye!
The monster takes a step back, loses its footing, and stands swaying.
What are you going to do now?
Using the staff, which before gave out stunning light:
The Balrog falls with a terrifying scream into the abyss.
You have defeated the Balrog!
This is not the end of the game. The fact this keeps going a little longer is arguably the classiest part of the game; not only is there one last dramatic moment, but the ending feels like a real denouement. So many of our fantasies have had an abrupt “you got all the treasures, you win”; even the ones with an “endgame” generally have not let the plot wind down gently.
You are following a road that runs east/west.
This is the widest road yet; the floor is worn from long use.
A fresh breeze comes from the east!
>e
Okay.
You are walking on a wide east/west road.
A breeze is felt from the east, and there is a faint daylight coming from there!
There are multiple rooms going out and you can find some of the random treasures here; on my winning run there was a platinum egg and Boromir’s horn. Just right after the exit:
You are on the east side of the Gate Hall. To the east, the mountain opens up.
You can see the blue morning sky a stone’s throw away, from a wide portal.
Just a few more steps, and you’ll be outside!
From behind the stones, a horde of Uruk trolls suddenly jump out with cries and block the entrance.
In the middle of them sits a black, shrouded figure on a black horse. It is a Ringwraith, a Nazgul!
With a thunderous voice the Nazgul says:
`Stop! Who are you, walking in troll clothes?’
ha ha ha yeeeeees
You see, I knew exactly what was about to happen: while Sting scared some trolls and caused them to drop some clothing, surely it was put in the game for a nobler purpose?
Nazgul illustrated by Margrethe II of Denmark for a Danish edition of Lord of the Rings.
>kill nazgul
Sting flashes furiously, and with one blow you knock the stunned Nazgul off his horse! The Uruk trolls recoil in surprise.
What are you going to do now?
You can now go east to escape (if you do anything else, you get pelted with spears).
Du er utenfor de store portene i Dimrill-dalen.
Mot øst strekker den store porten seg, og du kan se et lite vann blinke under deg. Morgenhimmelen er blå, og den lave sola skinner på fjellet over deg. Under et steinkast mot vest gaper de svarte åpningene – dystre og skjebnesvangrende. Bare litt til nå, så har du klart det!
>ø
Ok.
Du er på et platå øst for de store portene.
Under deg er den grønne dalen, og speilsjøen ligger som et prydblad og funkler under den lave morgensola; som nå endelig kaster sine stråler på deg. Intet troll kan nå deg her. Du har klart å komme igjennom Tåkefjellene. Som Ringbærer har du trosset alle farer, og fått med deg Ringen, Den Ene, gjennom de dype minene i Moria – Gratulerer!
You are outside the great gates of the Dimrill Valley.
To the east stretches the Great Gate and you can see water shimmer. The morning sky is blue, and the low sun shines on the mountains above you. A stone’s throw to the west, the openings gape black and gloomy. Just a little farther!
>e
OK.
You are on a plateau east of the gates.
Below you is the green valley; the mirror lake sits like a leaf and sparkles under the low morning sun, which now finally casts its rays for you. No troll can reach you here. You have managed to get through the Misty Mountains. As a ring bearer, you have defied all dangers, while taking the ring, the One, through the deep, the mines of Moria – Congratulations!
This had the most satisfying ending I’ve seen in a text adventure for a while. Despite the action being steps forward, there’s something much more dramatic and tangible here than the usual passage (with the brief tangle with the Nazgul at the end).
It almost makes up for the terrible RNG parts. There’s no real “points” here to balance, but I did have multiple hours wasted on what turned out to be bad dice rolls, and the game was never transparent about what was going on behind the scenes. I think the intent works better in a computer lab: multiple people playing in such a setting are more likely to collectively trigger certain events, so if one person meets Legolas the others know he is around somewhere.
The treasures came off as superfluous, even with the point-total aspect to the wizard (why should I care about the platinum egg on the way out?), but again, there’s a collective-group sense to them: if this is a game people are burning processor power over a whole semester on, forcing the addition of a restriction to computing time, an extra element other than just beating the game helps.
If nothing else, it helped I felt like I was “in the world” of Tolkien more than Ring Quest, despite that game’s bigger sweep of focus (and boosted ability scores handed over to Frodo, who was able to solo the Balrog).
Checking against the MUD, the author included many of the same rooms, but mixed up their geography. I still don’t know where to find the sulfur in MUD-form (to get by the dragon) or how to find the name on the third riddle (it would be amusing if it could be brute-forced just like Ringen; there’s no apparent wizard substitute on the MUD). As you can just walk out of the region in the MUD it loses much of its tension. The original product was in the end more satisfying, even if I had quite slow progress due to the Norwegian.
Original notes for translating the room descriptions to MUD form.
Coming up: A completely unknown and undocumented game by a (relatively) famous company. It hasn’t even been mentioned in this blog’s comments before.
Some progress, although I confess to looking at the source code for one puzzle; I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever based on what I found.
The 1984 Norwegian translation of Lord of the Rings, considered a superior version to the 70s one. Via Reddit. There’s a third translation called Ringdrotten from 2006 which adds more dialectical flair.
Just to clear up an issue I had last time, I somehow translated “en skitten striesekk” as a “pile” rather than a “sack”; I was reinforced in this by trying to “ta striesekk” (ta=take) and being denied, leading me to think it was an item that was not meant to be taken. You have to refer to the noun as a “sekk”, and then holding it will passively increase your inventory limit. (I should have done my image search.)
Regarding the cylinder (“sylinder”) I wasn’t sure about, I hadn’t randomly done “bruk sylinder” with it anywhere
Sylinderen utvider seg svært raskt. Snart er den helt oppblåst, og det viser seg til slutt at den har blitt til ei stor og sikker plastflåte.
The cylinder expands very quickly. Soon it is fully inflated, and has turned into a large, secure plastic raft.
“Plastic”, eh? In any case, it meant this was a “you’ll know where to use it when you see it” type item, not something where (I originally had in my head) I need to find a matching sphere and pyramid, or I need to find a hole in a door that it becomes a key for.
The magic staff similarly reacts to “bruk”, and creates a burst of light. If you’re being chased by trolls (from off the area to the north, say) they’ll scatter. The only problem is you can’t use the staff to assault their position because they just keep respawning in the same turn.
Finally, a fun encounter after getting the mithril armor gifted by the elves (which again, like, the sack, gets used passively, you don’t specify you wear it):
En liten flokk med småtroll kom nettopp gående ut av en sidegang. De bråstopper da de får øye på deg.
Med et triumferende rop støter den ene et spyd rett i magen din !!
Spydet skrenser av, og det faller ned brukket.
`Han må være en trollmann !’, skriker den ene hest, og alle trollene forsvinner forsvinner i ei voldsom fart.
A small group of trolls come out of a side passage and stop suddenly when they see you.
With a triumphant shout, one of them thrusts a spear right into your stomach!
The spear snaps, falling to the ground broken.
“He must be a wizard!” shouts one of the trolls, and they all quickly disappear.
This left me with a magnifying glass and a knife unused. I tried a restart and found that items were shifted a bit — placement of some things are randomized (like treasures) but others are not (seemingly the “practical” items like the magnifying glass and the raft). I found some stones (which turn out to be flint and can make sparks, but don’t light anything I can find) and Boromir’s horn (which you can play, bringing your spirits up, but doesn’t do anything useful I’ve found).
One last random-position item is some rope, which breaks the practical/treasure dichotomy, but seems to be purely optional. On the far north of the big corridor (with the trolls guarding making any progress farther) there’s a branch to the east leading to a “star room” (“covered with deep-blue silk walls and glittering stars”) followed by an otherwise-undescribed “wizard’s room”. The Star Room includes a hole with a hook next to it, and if you use the rope there you can climb down to the troll dungeon (the same area that you can get tossed into involuntarily by being chased). I think the only reason to do this is there’s a random chance the trolls will kill rather than capture, so the rope is a sure thing, but sometimes the rope is randomized to be out of reach anyway.
You may notice a very important item mentioned on the map. It can’t be reached from the dungeon (I think); I’ll get back to it.
After either being tossed in the prison or entered via rope, there’s a message below giving a hint how to escape.
The lower dungeon.
This is a small hole roughly carved out of the rock. An exit is up. On the dirty and dusty wall is a sign: “I, Gloin, was here. There is a secret exit from here, which the trolls do not know about, made by us dwarves. Just say the name of the legendary Bilbo’s nephew, son of Drogo, and you will escape — but watch out for trolls!”
FRODO works here. You can then go south and east to find what the game describes as a climbable wall, except nothing I’ve thrown at it works (trying to actually use the verb climb has the game respond if you mean up or down, suggesting that the directions up and down are overriding, but neither works anyway).
Veien mot øst er blokkert av en mistenkelig glatt og skitten steinvegg. Det virker som om det skal være mulig å forsere denne.
The route to the east is blocked by a suspiciously smooth and dirty stone wall. It seems as if it should be possible to climb over it.
I threw a ton of verbs out here with no luck, but since I’m using an English-Norwegian dictionary, I could be missing something totally obvious.
If you go south a bit from here there’s a “stone table” which seems like it might be moved over to the wall (so you can get high enough to climb). No verbs here work either and the noun isn’t even recognized, suggesting to me I’m wrong here, but given the wall has completely stumped me I can’t discard anything.
With the aforementioned wall (probably stuck by a verb), the “maze” which might just be a trap in the undergrowth, the trolls, and the witch with the riddles being my only real obstacles, I cracked at each one for a while alternating but just had no luck at all. The trolls seemed the most promising since you can pull them away from their guard spot and they have lots of reactions, but there seems to be an endless supply of them so it doesn’t matter. I started to suspect (especially on the wall) I was having a verb issue, so decided to dive into the source code.
That’s making a set of names (vicci, dicci, sicci, etc.) by random choice. I decided to try them out on the Huldra (“Witch and sorceress, what is my name?”) and got lucky my first try: “‘Correct — and never come back!’ A hole opens up in the floor.”
The hole leads down to the One Ring, behind the trolls.
Trollenes skattekammer!!
Ei stor, flat steinhelle dekker mesteparten av gulvet. I et hjørne er det ei sjakt hvor det stiger opp råtten stank. Går du ned dit vil du ikke komme opp igjen samme veien. Det er ei dør mot sør.
Du ser:
En liten gullring uten inskripsjoner. Dette er Herskerringen, Den Ene.
The Trolls’ Treasury!
A large, flat slab of stone covers most of the floor. In one corner is a shaft with a rotten stench. If you go down, you can’t come up the same way. There is a door to the south.
You see:
A small gold ring with no inscription. This is the Ring of Power, The One.
While the ring is often depicted with the Black Speech on it, by default the One Ring is plain, and the words only appear when the ring is heated up. This is depicted in the Peter Jackson movie:
From here you can drop into the prison or just use invisibility to saunter away. Note that wearing the ring for too long will cause Doom so you should take it off again once safe (“If you wear it too long, Sauron will be able to capture you in his power”).
After getting the ring, an earthquake hits and a new exit in the long hall busts open, leading to the east. In my play sequence I explored that first before looping back, but let me explain how you were supposed to find the witch’s name (Vicci / Dicci / etc.) in the first place. I needed the source code again.
There’s a scene with a wizard — back at the Star Room — where the wizard appears and tells you some information.
You are looking for the ring you have lost, but it is well hidden in the trolls’ treasury. There is no way you can get past the guards alone, but there is a person in Moria who can help you. somewhere in the mountains lives an old witch who knows an entrance to the treasure chamber.
He then tells you the name, based on the random choice at the start of the game.
I spent a long time (without checking the code) trying to get this scene but never could. Eventually — after about two hours of effort — I gave in:
5410 IF RN%=20 AND NOT(TB%) AND SC%>200 THEN 6420
SC is referring to the score. You need 200 points for the scene to trigger.
(… incomprehensible yelling goes here …)
If this was a low threshold, this moment might be semi-acceptable, but 200 is a tough score to hit: you need to visit all the rooms (visiting a room gets a point), and you need to get somewhat lucky in the layout of the items (some which can land in the post-ring area which you are about to see). You only get points for items if you’re holding them so you need to shuffle your inventory to high-value items even if you aren’t using them. If you wander into the Star Room with these conditions you’ll trigger the wizard.
It’s one thing to know that as a goal you need score, but prior to this, there was no indication that score was anything more than a progress marker. I was storing all the items in a central chamber as there was no obvious “treasure bonus spot” and because I was reloading after dying, I wasn’t necessarily including “explore every side room” in my save file — after all why would you expect a stop by a Rose Garden would cause a wizard to appear all the way across the map?
I can’t be sure but I think it’s possible to simply get unlucky with item placement and have it be impossible to reach 200 points. After figuring all this out I ended up going back to guessing the name randomly (and saving right beforehand) because it was so much easier.
Going back to the newly created hole (post-Ring finding) and going east:
To the north is an opening, while the main corridor continues from east to west. In one corner is a dirty, heavy stone slab; impossible to carry. In the middle is an area which appears to have writing, but it is so small you can’t decipher it.
This is where the magnifying glass comes in handy.
Jeg, Filur, risset dette.
Durins øks i menneskehender
skal en gang beseire
den grusomme Balrogen.
Ild skal sprute og glør fyke
når mennesket i trollham
ødelegger det uhyret
som har kuet Durins barn,
og jagde dem vekk fra minene
de en gang for lenge siden bygde
med sine egne hender.
I, Filur, carved this.
Durin’s axe in human hands
shall one day vanquish
the cruel Balrog.
Fire shall burst and embers blaze
when the man in troll-skin
destroys the monster
that has subjugated Durin’s children,
and driven them from the mines
they once built long ago
with their own hands.
“Trollham” which I currently have as “troll-skin” is a curious word and the translation may be important for the final puzzle of defeating the Balrog. (Does the Mithril count?) It does seem like us (Frodo) will be the one doing the killing/wounding, but we’re not human? (Can “mennesket” refer to a Hobbit rather than full-on Human? Does this depend on which translation of Lord of the Rings you’re using?) I did run into Legolas later so rather than doing the deed ourselves we may be handing the sacred axe (the one the “scary dwarf” kills us over) off to someone else. This conflicts with another piece of information later, though.
While in this area, almost inevitably, Gollum shows up and steals the ring. I bet you can figure out what “min dyrebare” means.
Ååååhh, min dyrebare !! Min egen Ring, endelig !
I have not found where he ends up to get the Ring back (my guess he somehow lands in prison, which I haven’t checked, or he still keeps eyes on you — there’s still a “shadow” that appears once in a while, although I’m at a 25% chance of that being Sauron instead).
Just exploring without the ring — you can drop down into a Great Hall, and then off a side passage reaching a Secret Chamber (so-named because of an unmentioned exit to reach there); going north then goes to an Even More Secret Chamber and the palantir.
This is the palantir of Orthanc.
This ball, and three like it, were made long ago by the elves.
With such a palantir you can see things that are happening far away, and things that will happen in the future.
Use this too many times and Sauron gets you, but you can get a few hints. Notably Aragon says something about “the key” being in the blackest depths (there’s a key later just lying around, so maybe he doesn’t mean a literal key)? Gimli, more helpfully, has a palantir appearance where he says…
The dwarves only accept the Ringbearer touching Durin’s axe! If you have it, you will be fine!
…meaning ring + axe is safe. (I need to get the ring back from Gollum first, though!)
Incidentally, near here is where I ran into Legolas, and unfortunately it’s another cryptic trigger like the wizard so I don’t know the exact conditions.
Towards you comes a tall, sturdy figure dressed in white elven clothing.
It’s your dear companion Legolas who is finally here to help! He hugs you with a friendly embrace, and says in a low voice:
‘I will try to help you out of here, but first I will try to find our mutual friend Gandalf. In the meantime, help yourself the best you can. Fortunately, I have found your dear sword, Sting. Take your magic weapon, and you will have something to defend yourself with! We’ll meet again soon!’
With long, firm steps, Legolas walks away down a hall and disappears.
I have not put Sting in action yet. There’s another, more regular encounter in the same area: a “pawnbroker” dwarf who says something about trading treasures. (I have thrown out many verbs with no luck, and this even includes checking for verbs in the source code.)
We accept all valuables and give good prices!
Have a good trade with Thorin!
Across from the pawnbroker is a lake; if you remember way back 2000 or so words ago, I mentioned the cylinder was really an inflatable raft, so it can apply here…
You set out on your raft. Just before you reach the other side, the raft hits a sharp stone and flips over!
The raft drifts away, but you make it to land safely.
…leading to what I assume is the last section of the game.
I found a gold key on the other side, followed by a dead dwarf with a fairly unhelpful message:
Couldn’t …. the great monster … cruel … 20 feet high … no chance … while I am still alive … Listen … my last words … not pr … the balrog out…. by … !!
Balin.
The letters cut off (“pr”) might represent some sort of Norwegian word puzzle, and if that’s the case, I would prefer someone who knows the language well just tell me because that’s past my skill.
ikke pr … balrogen ute
There’s a “secret chamber” with a door where it says you need to people to open it — maybe we get Gollum along for the trip? — a cave with an exit so burdened with cobwebs the game says to not bother (hard to know if that’s serious or not) and then of course the Bridge of Khazad-dum. Rather than chasing us up to the bridge, the Balrog is lurking at the end.
Like this, but the sides are reversed, and also it’s just Frodo. Via coolminiornot.
Keep in mind this is being done without the One Ring on, I’m just mapping ahead:
Mot øst er det en svart og bunnløs avgrunn!! Ei smal og spinkel steinbru buer seg over denne til østsida. Dette er Khazad-dum, dvergenes forsvarsverk mot øst. Brua er så smal at bare en angriper vil kunne passere over i bredden – og vil derfor være lett sårbar.
>ø
Ok.
Du er på steinbrua Khazad-dum!
Dette er ei spinkel steinbru over ei bunnløs kløft. Under deg kan du bare se mørke. Mot øst de første salene som fører ut i friheta!!
Føttene til den enorme Balrogen tårner opp over deg !!
Det stygge uhyret løfter ei meterstor hånd for å fjerne det ekle, lille krypet som rekker han til knærne !
Balrogen ser hånlig på deg. Før du får gjort noe har han knust deg som et egg under de svære labbene !!
To the east is a black, bottomless abyss! A narrow, thin stone bridge arches over to the east side. This is Khazad-dum,
the dwarves’ defenses to the east. The bridge is so narrow that only a single attacker can cross — so will therefore be vulnerable.
>e
Ok.
You are on the stone bridge of Khazad-dum!
This is a thin stone bridge over a bottomless chasm. Below you you can only see darkness. To the east are the halls that lead to freedom!
The giant Balrog towers above you!
The hideous monster raises a meter-long hand to remove the nasty little creature that reaches his knees!
The Balrog looks at you with a sneer. Before you can do anything, he has crushed you like an egg with his giant hands!
It certainly feels like I’m close to the end; I need the ring back, mainly, although I suspect I’ll need to do something other than just be wearing the ring and holding the axe in order to win.
I’ve done some major exploration of Moria, which is very open. I get the impression that part of the goal is “touristic”, just letting the player inhale the air of Tolkien’s universe without having too many puzzles in the way.
Moria, as shown on a movie poster by Dan Mumford. Source.
Let’s start with a meta-map. (If you haven’t seen one of mine before, this is a map where the directions are only vague, and is intended to show the general interconnectivity and sort things into regions.)
The maze may be an absolute trap — at least it seems to be one room that loops, and any items that you drop get swallowed up — and the trolls are an obstacle I haven’t gotten past yet. (And the point of them may not be to go past, but I’ll get into that later.)
The start area is central in more ways than one. There’s multiple holes visible in the ceiling from the start that you can’t reach, but you can go through the on the other side. That means multiple places will drop down back to the starting room (whenever they occur, I’ve marked them in red).
Regarding that “shadow” I saw just east of the start room, it appears at random at any point during the explorations, so is an “event” like the pirate appearing in Adventure. You can simply just wait in place (or as happened to me often, test to see if particular exits work and get lots of “dead end” type messages) and it will re-appear. There’s a knife nearby and I tried to USE it while the shadow was visible but Frodo is apparently “clumsy” and “unaccustomed” to handling one and just manages to cut himself instead. That’s not to say an aggressive approach will always fail but for the moment in my gameplay the shadow (my guess is, Gollum having reclaimed the ring and lurking invisible) is just something that happens.
Another possible random encounter is a “flokk med småtroll” (“group of small trolls”) although as long as you move to a different room when they appear they won’t cause trouble. (Orc in Norwegian is Orker; when I first encountered the flokk I briefly wondered if småtroll was intended to mean orc.)
Just to the north of the start is the axe which promised death, and I took it with no ill effects (but I theorized one might come in the future). Indeed, later (I don’t know if “at random” or on a timer) a “skummel dverg” (“scary dwarf”) arrives and looks at you; it may simply run away, but if you happen to be holding the axe, he’ll return with friends.
Dvergen ser skarpt på øksa du holder og piler rundt hjørnet. Etter noen sekunder kommer en hel flokk dverger løpende mens de roper noe opphisset. De river fra deg den hellige øksa og hugger deg ned.
The dwarf looks intently at the axe you are holding and darts around the corner. After a few seconds, a pack of dwarves comes running while yelling. They rip the holy axe from you and cut you down.
Closing out the central area is a pile of straw to the west of the axe, and a “wing of literature” to the east. Randomly, that wing has an elf hat and a pearl necklace, but also the inside text of the One Ring written in Black Speech.
(“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”)
Proceeding in that same direction leads to a “square room”…
…where branching off to the north is a pyramid (“some notes of music can be heard in the distance”), a “rat’s nest”, and finally a dwelling of a “huldra”. The huldra is a Norwegian mythical creature/sorceress that is usually depicted as young…
…but for the purposes of this game, it is old, and surrounded by toads. She asks if you want to solve three riddles; if you fail, you’ll get toad-ified.
Ei gammel trollkjerring sitter foran en stol oppstøttet av silkeputer.
Hun vrir det heslige ansiktet sitt til et groteskt grin og sier:
`Er du beredt til å svare på tre vanskelige og skjebnesvangre gåter?’
An old witch sits in front of a chair, propped up by silk pillows.
She turns her ugly face into a grotesque smile and says:
“Are you prepared to answer three difficult and deadly riddles?”
This was in MUD-Ringen and the riddles are the same, except that the translation of the creature is of a “ogress”. This is one moment we have confirmed from Pål-Kristian Engstad himself that this was added by him to the home computer version.
… I have only made this creature up from my imagination. It might or might not be very Tolkienish, but it always made the players wonder. I have personally always felt that the passing through of Moria was too briefly explained in Tolkien’s works, but that is in a way nice, since it allows to imagine what actually is there (or might be there).
The first riddle asks about a being who covets something round (Sauron) and the second, trickier riddle asks about which dwarf “made the great gate in the west.” Despite the gate in question being the Doors of Durin this refers to the dwarf Narvi.
He’s in the Rings of Power television show. (I like the dwarf parts, not wild about anything else.)
I have no idea the answer to the third riddle.
Deep in the mountains, in the Mines of Moria.
Witch and sorceress, what is my name?
It might be in-game rather than trivia (since the author already admitted the character was non-Tolkien). (And before anyone asks, “name” or “my name” do not work.)
Moving back to the main path, you reach a crossroads, then can go south down a slide (back to the starting room) or north past a “greenhouse”.
Du er inne i et fabelaktig drivhus av en dal!
Et mylder av vekster gror her, og det er ganske mørkt. Mot sør er ei åpning og mot nord fortsetter hagen så langt du kan se. Stien mot nord er smal, men brukbar.
You are inside a fabulous greenhouse of a valley!
A multitude of plants grow here, and it is quite dark. To the south is an opening; facing north, the garden continues as far as you can see. The path to the north is narrow but usable.
Off to one side is a “low hill” with an herbal drink; this herbal drink serves as healing (in case of, say, clumsy knife handling). Farther on is a dense undergrowth “maze” I mentioned earlier which may be a trap rather than a maze.
Du har gått deg vill i krattskogen!!
>ø
Ok.
Du har gått deg vill i krattskogen!!
>v
Ok.
Du har gått deg vill i krattskogen!!
>n
Ok.
Du har gått deg vill i krattskogen!!
Reversing back to the beginning and heading west is what I’m calling the Gorge Area.
To the far west is a Maritime Room with a cylinder (no idea what it does); the most important room is a hall with a bag of gold dust and some elves that appear. They will shout “troll” if you appear normally, but if you happen to be holding the elf hat they’ll have a different reaction.
Jeg er Gloriendel, lederen for denne lille flokken. Jeg ser av ditt hodeplagg at du er venn av alvene. Er du Ringbæreren?
I am Gloriendel, the leader of this small group. I see from your hat that you are a friend of the elves. Are you the Ringbearer?
Saying “yes” has Gloriendel give some advice about an “enormous monster” known as the Balrog which “has been in Moria since the dawn of time.” According to the elf, the One Ring has “a power greater than the Balrog” and that if you have “received the wizard’s mark” you may be able to overcome him.
You then receive a gift of mithril armor.
While you can go directly to the throne room area by going up where you meet the elves, I’m going to loop back to near the start where the knife was, and go east to what I’m calling the Huge Corridor Area.
As the name implies, the geography is dominated by a large corridor, although you can go up to a “window” to get a scene that I remember from MUD Ringen.
Du er ved vinduet.
Du ser utover et majestetisk slettelandskap. Fra ditt utsiktspunkt høyt oppe i fjellsida har du utsikt over fjell og daler ute i det fri, og den klare fullmånen som belyser landskapet. Mot sør strekker Tåkefjellene seg, og mot vest de gresskledte slettene i ditt hjemland. (Snufs!) Det er ikke mulig å presse seg ut av vinduet, men det er et hull i gulvet her, og mot sør ei vindeltrapp.
The direct translation from the MUD is:
You are standing by the window. You have a majestic view over the scenery from here. From this spot high up in the mountain you can see past mountains and valleys out in the free, and the clear full moon shines upon the landscape. Southwards the Misty Mountains extend, and to the west there are the grassy plains of your homeland. (Sniff!) You cannot squeeze yourself through the window, but there is a hole in the floor here, and a spiral staircase in the south end of the room.
I had theorized this was pulled from the original just due to how unusual a description of state of mind is in MUD-rooms. (In general, the DOS game has lots of “scenery” rooms so leans to MUD-like already. I can see why Pål-Kristian thought of porting it.)
The corridor includes a black staff and a necklace and at the far north are two trolls that will spot you right away (I assume the One Ring mitigates this). You can run away by climbing up, or you can try to run down the corridor instead and get captured and thrown in troll-jail. It’s then possible to break out and this seems to be a new area, but I’m going to save describing the dungeon for next time because I haven’t explored thoroughly yet. The important point here is that possibly you need to get captured to win the game.
The lower dungeon.
This is a small hole roughly carved out of the rock. An exit is up. On the dirty and dusty wall is a sign: “I, Gloin, was here. There is a secret exit from here, which the trolls do not know about, made by us dwarves. Just say the name of the legendary Bilbo’s nephew, son of Drogo, and you will escape — but watch out for trolls!”
One branch off the corridor leads to a “secret meeting room” with some stinking sulfur which will be used for a puzzle in a moment. In the meantime, let’s go to the last section I’m talking about today:
There’s a throne room described as being where the “Mountain King” held court, with a small side offshoot behind some drapes containing a magnifying glass. To the east is a “holy room” (with a “scent of incense and myrrh”) next to a “gold room” (everything is made out of gold, but you can’t pick it up) with an empty bottle. Curiously, the spiritual room is right next to a Vampire room, where some bats will bite and poison you if you hang out too long. The game explicitly mentions the medicine at the greenhouse as curing the poison.
Under the ceiling are several thousand small vampire bats. The floor is covered in excrement and there is an intense smell.
Back at the throne room just to the north is a dragon’s lair. This was in the MUD version and I kept getting shoved out of the room because of my scent being detected, but while holding the stinky sulfur it is possible to enter safely.
A fifty-meter-long dragon lies sleeping here. There appears to be an exit to the north, behind the dragon.
The problem is that going past the dragon just hits a slide, which goes back to the start! So I have no idea why you’d bother with the dragon in the first place. I still don’t know if the game’s norms allow this to be a “scene” for fun or if there must be some deeper significance (or at least a treasure).
Speaking of treasures, you may have spotted there have been items like the gold dust and the necklace which seem to serve solely as treasures in the Crowther/Woods style. I don’t know yet if that’s how they’ll work out; the game’s sole objective given at the start is escape, but perhaps the treasures count as points and Frodo can afford a small beach vacation before tackling Mount Doom.
Renga in Blue 
