Tuesday, February 3, 2009

CotAB: Entry 17 (the challenge of nothing)

DerfindorSo once again, apologies are in order. Since our last apology, we've again been negligent in or blogging. My excuse is that I'm far far too old to be blogging. The young folks in the party have no such excuse. Their excuse is probably something like "we're too cool to blog" or something to that effect that kids say nowdays to get out of doing work.

We have carried on though. We still have several cursed bonds to get rid of -- although the temptation is obviously there to not bother getting rid of them. They only seem to affect us when we actively pursue whomever put them on us. If we just retire in the country (and we could too -- we have so much gold it's difficult to carry) the bonds wouldn't have any effect at all. BUT, if we seek out who put them on us, we wind up killing them. Makes me wonder what the point of someone putting the bonds on us in the first place when all that comes of that is their own demise.

We had the bright idea of heading off to Hillsfar. The theory was that since a future adventure that we're hoping to take place in is actually called "Hillsfar" then it would be a rollicking wonderland full of adventure and plot direction.

Not so. Turns out there isn't anything of incredible importance there. Perhaps because a future adventure is so likely in Hillsfar, current adventure is right out. And like everywhere else we go it takes a very long amount of time to actually find our bearings and get the map cartographied.

Here is the map of Hillsfar. Now you don't have to go what we went through. One of the rooms looked like either an IT server farm or a metallic morgue. Not sure with my 8-bit eyes.

Map of Hillsfar
pinnacefabulous pirates
We happened upon some pirates. They talked very stereotypically, but they were pretty clean cut and had the most fabulous blue satin tunics. They actually buried a treasure. They also had the nerve to attempt to keelhaul us. Yeah! We're in the middle of the ruins of a city and they actually bothered to spot us and say let's keel haul these guys! So instead of just going up to us and stabbing us, their big plan (I assume since we discovered their treasure) was to 1) incapacitate us without killing us, 2) somehow transport us a few miles to wherever their ship was docked and 3) set sail with the sole purpose of dragging us behind the ship. And all of that plan would have had to take place without us escaping or killing them at any point. They must really love keel hauling. Maybe they do it for fun. Maybe they get enough speed that the person being keel hauled can stand on a plank in the wake. Rexbasior guessed that such an activity would be called wakeplanking.

margoyles
So we destroyed the pirates as well as some other interesting monsters. What are margoyles? Did they not get approval from the official Gargoyle Naming Society?

treasure
So we got the requisite buried treasure. At this point money is worthless, but we still have the compulsion to carry the loot around. How can we just let money go to waste? It's probably illegal.

2 comments:

Captain Rufus said...

Why didn't I find this blog sooner?

While I haven't been blogging about it myself, I have been working my way through the Krynn series, on an iMac through DOSBox as well. (Using the Boxer Frontend and the Wizardworks' 9 Game Collector's Edition version of the games. Meaning every time I die or don't like something happening to my team I get to answer copy protection questions. And randomly when I save. As usual, pirates have a better experience than legitimate customers...) I played through most of Champions at normal difficulty, and about a third of Death Knights before I dropped it down a touch to get through the series faster.

I completed the first two back in the day on my lowly but beloved Commodore 64, but only did a bit of the third on an Amiga 500. Now I want to take the same party through all 3 Krynn games, with limited character editing, and a different style of team than I used in the day. (I went heavy MU back then. Now its heavy Fighter, Cleric, and GASP! I actually have a Thief in the party.)

I am using the cluebooks available online, mostly just for the maps. I hated mapping back when you were supposed to map these games. Time hasn't changed my views much. In fact, modern RPGs have made it WORSE. (Though the draw on the grid automap that the Etrian Odyssey series on the Nintendo DS isn't too bad. Maps look clean since its digital, yet I am the one marking the stuff. Its kinda cool really.)

I would say you are playing the superior first 2 Gold Box games, though the Krynn series has more and better gameplay tweaks. Plus no Silver Blades, which is everything bad about Gold Box turned into an entire game.

Krynn overall has better gameplay tweaks, though Champions is kind of painful to play, especially till I got used to using the numeric keypad with the odd keyboard command. Death Knights streamlines the controls a bit (no 2 commands to pass a turn. Just hit the E or R option right as you get to control that character.) but compared to modern tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Disgaea, its still VERY awkward to control.

I look forward to reading your travels through the Forgotten Realms series with interest!

JasonL said...

Suffering from... withdrawal .... nnngghgg.... need ... new post ......

Please ............ before it's..... too.... laaaaate..........