According to the one and only source I’ve found, Ringen was originally written in Norwegian by an author going by “Hansen”, probably at the University of Tromsø. It’s based on the area around Moria (shown above) in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books.
9 years later (that is, in 1988) it was translated into English and ported to the online MUD Genesis by Pål-Kristian Engstad, and in 1991 Per Arne Engstad took the same area and added it to VikingMUD.
While I’m not generally writing about MUDs — although I did write about MUD1 a little — I made an exception here because the original source is lost. Genesis MUD has since done major modifications to its Tolkien area, but VikingMUD’s is roughly like it was in 1991, so I played that game (as a guest) and went through to the “Ringen” area (from the newbie room, go south, east four times, north four times, then east once).
So far all I’ve been able to do is explore above-ground.
Long Road. A fairly broad and flat road it is, and it seems to continue eastward for quite a while. Surrounding is the mighty Hollin forest, or Eregion, as elves liked to call it. It is not to be confused with the Great East Road further north, which leads to the hobbit Shire, since this one probably will lead to the Redhorn Pass, and not to Rivendell, where Elrond holds his house.
There are two obvious exits: east and west
>EAST
Long road. You are walking along a hard and flat path through the Hollin forest.
There is a big sign here saying something important. An old root of a tree.
There are two obvious exits: east and west
A wicked woman with her nose stuck in (he he) the tree-stump
The woman says: If you aid me, I’ll reward you, I promise!
The woman says: Please help me get free from the stump!
Other than the scenario above, which might be a puzzle (?) all I’ve seen so far is scenery, things to examine, and orcs that want to kill me.
You are on a path that winds along side a dried out river. This once was the mighty Sirannon-river, which came gushing and foaming from the Misty Mountains. The path goes up, steeply to the east, where it meets some steps in the rock. To the north the path gets wider. A small footpath leads west towards a scree. The dried out river continues somewhat south.
There are four obvious exits: east, north, south and west
Urk arrives searching for human flesh.
Urk screams uglily and starts bashing and slicing you!
You notice Urk approaching you with murder in its eyes.
The enemies are the “mobs” from the MUD system I’m playing on. They did kill me twice but otherwise I’ve been able to basically ignore them and get on with looking around the map. I’m considering them “outside the game” so to speak, assuming they aren’t really part of the original Ringen. Of course, the original game may have had some sort of enemies and combat system, but it would have been different than the MUD’s system, and without hearing from the author or translators it’s impossible to know details.
I did run into Bilbo Baggins …
Bilbo Baggins arrives.
Bilbo says: Think about it! The whole party was lost!
Bilbo says: Howdoyado that? Oh, see you later, ok?
Bilbo Baggins leaves east.
… although he seems to be just a “peaceful” wandering character; I wasn’t able to get any interaction out of him.
The literary-adaptation angle otherwise seems to be restricted to geography and map references.
You are wading across a green and slimy brooklet The stones are very slippery, so take care not to fall! The main path continues east and west.
There are two obvious exits: east and west
>EAST
This is the east side of a green brooklet. The path continues east between some gentle slopes.
There are two obvious exits: east and west
>EAST
This is the northern edge of the plain in front of the Misty Mountains. Paths from the west, north and south meet here, and to the east there is a long and narrow wall of rock. To the south however, a plain covered with soil, pebbles tussocks opens, and to the south-west extends the Sirannon Lake.
I’m not discounting the possibility there’s something else hidden though, because the sign near the old woman mentioned earlier has this:
This is the new area made by Sir Rogon. Please use ‘bug’ and ‘typo’if you find my English terrible.
It is rumoured that great treasures and terrible monsters dwell under the Misty Mountains, in dungeons called Mines of Moria. If you only could find the entrance!
The closest I could find to a possible entrance is the famous “friend” door.
You are standing under a polished vertical wall.
As the moon shines upon the grey face of the rock, faint lines appear, like slender veins of silver running in the stone. At first they are no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine that they only twinkle fitfully where the moon catch them, but steadily they grow broader and clearer, until their design can be guessed!
There are three obvious exits: north, south and west
I haven’t found any command that works here. It’s possible Ringen is just meant to have some open exploration and that’s it, but I suspect there’s at least one thing hidden I haven’t unearthed yet.
Part of the depiction of the door from the book Fellowship of the Ring.
Last time I left off at this famous door:
You are standing under a polished vertical wall.
As the moon shines upon the grey face of the rock, faint lines appear, like slender veins of silver running in the stone. At first they are no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine that they only twinkle fitfully where the moon catch them, but steadily they grow broader and clearer, until their design can be guessed!
In the book and movie, the Fellowship opens the door using the Elvish word for “friend”. (Quoting from the book, “the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days.”) Thanks to Mike Taylor, I realized I couldn’t spell Elvish correctly.
>say mellon
Suddenly the star shines out briefly and fades again. Then silently a great doorway gets outlined, though not a crack or joint has been visible before. Slowly it divides in the middle and swings outwards inch by inch, until both doors lay back aginst the wall.
>east
You run into the mountain!
A dark place.
A deep sound roams through the room, followed by a shock of damp air! Something has shut the Hollin Gate! You are trapped in the Mines of Moria! The only way out seems to be on the other side of Moria, the Eastern Gate by the Dimrill valley.
The problem: this is the total kind of darkness, and I had no torch. Fortunately, there were no pits for me to fall into or grues to eat me or the like, so I did some mapping by “feel”, that is testing every direction in every room.
>w
A dark place.
>w
You can not go that way.
>u
You can not go that way.
>d
You can not go that way.
>n
You can not go that way.
I have no idea the room names, but “Cave” is the default in Trizbort, and that seemed as good a name as any.
The map is of course so far incomplete, and I got stopped by a dragon (I couldn’t see the dragon in a description, but I still saw the result):
The dragon fums with rage and sends a cload of fire towards you.
You’re blown back into the big hall!
You are badly hurt as you hit the cold wall…
It did not even open its eyes, so it is evident that it has a very keen sense of smell.
It is impossible to pass the dragon now, so I propose you find a way of fooling its nose, that is, if you really want to pass.
Now, VikingMUD (which I’ve been playing on) does have torches, but you have to buy them … which means I need a real character, not a guest … which means I have to get some money … which means playing the “main” part of the game … which means I might (gasp) have to interact with other players. Eek!
Actually, it’s ok — I’ve played many MUDs in the past — but it does feel a little weird trying to document a single-player old text adventure embedded in a multi-player social game, so I was a bit thrown for a loop. It looks like I’ll need to slay at least a few monsters before I can go back into Moria.
I managed to find a torch and do a little mapping, this time with the actual names of places attached.
I didn’t find anything that remarkable, but here’s some of the scenery. Upon entering the main complex:
This must once have been the main junction in the Mines of Moria. There are exits everywhere. Westwards there is a rough opening which leads to the top of a wide stairway. To the north and south there are wide openings. To the east, there is a small round hole, which may be 6 feet (2 meters) wide, but it is still small when compared to the other exits. In the floor, just near your feet, a steep shaft leads down into the deep. Small steps have been made out of the rock, but it looks dangerous all the same. A steep spiral staircase rises from a corner of the room.
There are five obvious exits: down, east, north, up and west
After a bit of exploring:
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 found King Durin’s Hall, but it was already raided.
King Durin’s Throne Hall! It is said that the King of the Mountains used to keep his court here, before the trolls took over almost all parts of Moria, and made it uninhabitable for dwarfs and humans. By the western wall there still is standing the grand throne of the King, but no one is ever here. To the south is a portal to a smaller room, and to the east a wide passage.
I also ran across an ogress who wanted to pose riddles; I declined as I was still mapping at the time.
You’re in the rat trap. Left-overs lie scattered on the floor and hords of small mucky rats run to and fro. West there is a white-clothed opening of pentagonal cross-section, but a little down to the south, there is a square door. On the door there is a little yellow sign:
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
There are two obvious exits: south and west
>SOUTH
This is the dwelling of the ogress. It is a dark cave with a crackling fire-place in a corner of the room. The walls are covered with soft carpets, and the only exit is to the north, where you came from.
There is one obvious exit: north
An old wicked ogress
>
The ogress turns her hideous face into a grotesque grin.
The ogress asks: Are you prepared to answer three difficult and fatal riddles?
I found the eastmost point of Moria and the exit, which is a little more ignominious than you might imagine.
The corridor ends! The corridor gets aborted here, due to a peculiar looking wall. There is a shimmering curtain in the north wall.
There is one obvious exit: west
a bulletin board (7 unread)
>
examine curtain
It is the exit out of the Mines, since it is not finished. Just enter it, and you will end up in the village.
Indeed, testing the curtain, it leaves the whole Ringen area. In case you are curious about the bulletin board (a built in system for the MUD) …
Thread: YEAH!!!
FIRST!!!
lol
… you aren’t missing anything.
Finally, I suffered death by bat.
The Bat Cave. Up under the roof there hangs thousands of small vampire bats. The floor is covered with bad-smelling excrements, and it is an intense vapour here. Some of them beasts moves and and wheezes load. I would higly recommend you to get out of here, or else you would end up being a non-volantary blood-donator.
There are four obvious exits: east, north, south and west
a big bat
a bat
a bat
a bat
a bat
You notice Big bat approaching you with murder in its eyes.
You notice Bat approaching you with murder in its eyes.
You notice Bat approaching you with murder in its eyes.
I actually managed to run away before all my hit points were gone, but later on when mapping I came back to The Bat Cave from a different way (without realizing the exit went that direction!) and was thusly slain.
I was then without a torch, but I had a suspicion that I could visit the ogress of riddles even in the dark, so I went back with a “guest” character and found her dwelling was lit. I was then challenged to what turned out to be Tolkien trivia.
The ogress turns her hideous face into a grotesque grin.
The ogress asks: Are you prepared to answer three difficult and fatal riddles?
>say yes
You say: yes
The ogress says: Thank you, here comes the first:
Round it is, made of purest gold.
A creature covets it more than anyone other.
The Lord of Darkness. What is his name?
>say Sauron
You say: Sauron
The ogress says: Excellent! Here’s the second:
A dwarf made The Great Western Gate.
What was his name?
>say Narvi
You say: Narvi
The ogress says: You know your things, I hear.
Now to the last, and decisive riddle:
Deep in the Mountains, in the heart of Moria.
Ogress and witch, what is my name?
>say Fuithluin
You say: Fuithluin
Ogress says: Wrong, so wrong fool!
Ogress says: Hmm, what should the punish be? Hmm… What?! Do I not have the
mushroom?
Ogress says: This must be your lucky day. I can’t transform you to a toad,
yet…
Ogress says: Out, out! You miserably fool!
That last one’s pretty obscure and only from the Book of Lost Tales (ogres don’t come up as a topic in the main Lord of the Rings books, and they get only a passing mention in The Hobbit). I’m fairly sure my answer is correct but I haven’t been able to find any alternate spellings. Anyone have an idea? I may be wrapping this one up soon even if I can’t resolve this puzzle (or the dragon one I mentioned last time) just because there’s not really a “quest” to solve in order to escape Moria.
I have occasionally heard the word “archaeology” applied to the rescue and documentation of old games. (This very blog is even mentioned in a book titled Retrogame Archaeology.)
I’m not going to quibble; however, if I think of “real” archaeology, I think of exploring and digging in sites that may have other things built on top of them, and where the entirety of the original is not recoverable but where inferences can be made based on that which remains. So far, nothing I’ve done (like helping preserve Wander or Journey) has been like that. It’s been more like finding some secret book in an archive and placing it on display.
Playing Ringen is the closest to archaeology I’ve done. It was translated and ported to a MUD, where expansions and additions were made, so trying to work out what Ringen from 1979 was like is necessarily uncertain.
There’s enough clues I can make some guesses, so let’s give it a try.
…
VikingMUD (based on the more general LPMud codebase) has a variety of built-in verbs that have to do with combat and social interaction. You can attack monsters or wield and unwield equipment; you can form parties with other players and DEFEND them from attack; you can smile, wave, comfort, and so forth, and the general effect is to produce an effect other players in the room can see.
This is essentially different than the standard text adventure model, where verbs are more universally related to object interaction. In such a model, if you can RUB RING, you can try the verb RUB on any item in the game (and may get an unhelpful response, but it’s still clear the verb exists as an action).
You can do puzzle use of verbs in the LPMud, but they’re specific and custom to a room (or object), not universal across the game. The game might allow UNLOCK DOOR in a room specifically oriented for it, but UNLOCK anywhere else will get a response of “What?” (The only comparable games I’ve played are the Wander ones, like how in Aldebaran III there’s a BRIBE verb that exists while in jail.)
The fact all verbs are custom means, in practice, that puzzles reliant on verb-object interaction are heavily curtailed. One hurdle is technical difficulties. Suppose the game author wanted the player to WAVE FEATHER. WAVE is a social verb and expects to be used in that fashion (WAVE AT FRIEND) so the desired format may not even be parsed correctly.
Additionally, in a game design sense, an act like WAVE FEATHER in a specific spot would be too hard for the player to come up in practice without heavy text-hinting. There is an early spot in the Ringen portion of VikingMUD with this kind of text hint:
Long road. You are walking along a hard and flat path through the Hollin forest.
There is a big sign here saying something important. An old root of a tree.
There are two obvious exits: east and west
A wicked woman with her nose stuck in (he he) the tree-stump
The woman says: If you aid me, I’ll reward you, I promise!
>PULL WOMAN FROM TREE
You try to pull her out, but you fail!
You’re simply not strong enough!
The woman says: If you aid me, I’ll reward you, I promise!
Note that only this very specific phrasing (PULL WOMAN FROM TREE) is even recognized. I suspect the solution simply involves raising the “strength” statistic of my character. This happens to also be the first quest given in the Adventurer’s Guild in the game.
1: Witch quest (unsolved, 59)
2: Orc Slayer (unsolved, 69)
3: Forgotten Word (unsolved, 82)
4: Bright boy (m/f) needed! (unsolved, 82)
5: A girl and her teddybear (unsolved, 94)
6: Quest for the murderer (unsolved, 97)
7: Sheriffs key (unsolved, 98)
These facts combined together suggest to me the task here was designed solely for the MUD system. That’s not to say it’s impossible this scenario didn’t appear in Ringen (maybe there was no “strength check” and the action automatically worked?) but it feels very MUD-specific.
The ogress with the riddles who I mentioned in my last post probably also wasn’t in the original game. The character is most likely Fuithluin (with a misspelled name?) who didn’t appear in known Tolkien lore until the Book of Lost Tales in 1983. Ringen was made in 1979. ADD: See this comment; in an old Usenet post, Pål-Kristian Engstad confirms he added the ogress himself, although he didn’t get the idea from Tolkien:
I can’t help feeling a bit touched by your friends information. I have coded Moria in two MUDs; Genesis and VikingMUD, where I have placed an ogress as a part of a quest.
There is nothing in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien which supports this idea, and 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).
This leaves the dragon puzzle, which I’ll quote the full context of:
You have entered a big hall. On the walls hang some faded flannel carpets, and there is a huge wall-to-wall carpet on the floor. The air is filled with a stinching smell of sulfid, and thick smoke streams out of an opening in the northern wall. There are two additional openings in the western and eastern walls, though not as frightening as the one in the north.
There are three obvious exits: east, north and west
>n
You are in the dragons lair!
A dragon, fifty yards long, lies here sleeping in a huge room. Fire and sulfur streams out of its big nostrils as it breathes. It grunts and stirs asleep, but if you value your life, you should not disturb it. Instead of passing it, consider retreating slowly to the south, through the opening. It looks like there is an opening northwards too, behind the dragon, but I do not advice you to try to go there!
There are two obvious exits: north and south
The dragon fums with rage and sends a cload of fire towards you.
You’re blown back into the big hall!
You are badly hurt as you hit the cold wall…
It did not even open its eyes, so it is evident that it has a very keen sense of smell.
It is impossible to pass the dragon now, so I propose you find a way of fooling its nose, that is, if you really want to pass.
In a text adventure, I’d be tempted to find some mud I could roll around in, or masking perfume to wear, or even somehow capture the smoke smell from the big hall. There aren’t any manipulatable items in Moria I’ve been able to use, and the verb >RUB is considered a social one (that is, it wouldn’t normally be overridden by a bespoke puzzle use).
(Also, of all the puzzles, I’d really like to know the solution to this one, so if anyone knowledgable happens to be stopping by, drop a line in the comments?)
…
Taking out the puzzles, that leaves the geography: what was part of the original game? My source indicates the game was expanded in addition to translated.
The general layout does feel more MUD-like than adventure-like. What I mean is that there are portions of the map that look like this:
It’s not the presence of a dead end here that’s at issue as much as how long the path leading to it is. This is perfectly normal layout in MUD design, because you might have some jockeying with monsters where having nine rooms of space to maneuver is genuinely different than just two. Additionally, social interaction means that “plain” locations may become important, as the players create their own meaning.
However, this is still a shot-in-the-dark guess; the expansions made when the game was translated may consist only of adding rooms “along the edges” and not making hallways longer or the like.
Other than that, I would guess the “main rooms” are essentially like their originals. This one in particular (which I’ve quoted before) feels much more adventure-like than MUD-like due to the reference to the main character’s feelings:
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.
The lore details also strike me as someone trying to “write from a book” so to speak. For comparison, here’s a portion of the first fully extant Lord of the Rings-based adventure (LORD, from 1981, made in Finland but written in English):
You are now in the great living-room. On one wall, there hangs the picture of Old Took’s great-grand-uncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfiabul’s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down in a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.
There is an exit to the east. Delightfull odours can be smelled from the western end of the room.
(Text courtesy Juhana Leinonen, who was at the Finnish Museum of Games and sent some pictures; the game isn’t available anywhere else at the moment.)
…
I’m closing the case on this one for now. I have a lead on a contact so I may write about this game more in the future, but I’m happy at the moment to flee to the comfort of single-player gaming.
Renga in Blue 