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Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

newtmonkey

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Luckily I am not at the point where I have to worry about Tiltowait yet :)

---
Finished mapping level 5 (with Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in background for MAXIMUM DESPAIR).

DOS version of this level is surprisingly harmless—with the exception of Shades :( Ouch. They didn't set me back too much though, thank god. Actually, compared with level 3 and 4, this was somewhat a relief. I didn't have to worry about critical hit enemies as much (since my AC is low enough where [for the time being anyway] critical hits are extremely rare), and can wipe out groups of spellcasters with my two mages before they do too much damage (like aweigh said, getting to go first is a HUGE help). Whenever things got hairy, you have multiple routes back to the elevator, so I could quickly get back to town for resurrection, etc.

Except those shades, this would be a pretty nice place to level up actually!

Anyway, on to level 6, but I might not get a chance to explore it until the weekend.
 
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aweigh

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Class Changing:

While i wholeheartedly believe Wiz-clone class-changing shenanigans are, preeetty much the best class changing system one will run into all things considered... i fully admit i have been taken in by the current trend of japanese 'crawlers (elminage, stranger of sword city, etc) to sprinkle class-specific abilities from which the player will choose 1 of hopefully at least 2 or 3 meaningful abilities (say, a bard weighing the pros and cons of starting out w/ song of healing versus instead taking a more generic, NON-class-specific skill, such as for example something akin to extra inventory or the ability to deal 5 or 10 percent more "something" in some ridiculously specialized combat scenario, etc); elminage utilizes a large "generic" pool of skills that any class can choose from and while at first it seems there are some that are no brainers and that around half of them are "useless" it is to Starfish's credit that the more i play the elminage games the more i realize not a single one of those skills is useless whatsoever.

for example there is one called Drunken Fist (like i said, any char can take it on char-gen in elminage: gothic) that boosts melee dmg output by an undisclosed amount when the char is poisoned. obviously i'm betting p. much no one will ever pick it, and neither did i, until i started running into enemies in the post-game dungeons that came with that drunken fist skill bult-in and effectively turned my party's poison-happy Ranger-type character which i had power-gamed to the max by not only making him a Ranger w/ a class-specific ability to take the 1st turn at times, but also picking the 1 race in the game which comes with a bonus to inflicting poison... those drunken fist fuckers completely obliterated my Ranger-type char and and it turns out the dmg boost is level/cumulative, so the higher the character's level the higher the dmg output when he/she is poisoned and the dmg was scary as fuck, easily +50-60% extra. (of course, these enemies were 100+ levels, post-game, etc).

now, starfish could've had a legitimately awesome skill there w/ drunken fist except they forgot to allow players the choice to poison themselves therefore completely eliminating any use a player might have for drunken fist. OOPS.

but the point stands, i think? anyway the other thing is instead of a pool of skills utilize a combined approach allowing generic skills to be taken on char-gen and also allowing class-specific skills that don't really change the macro of the game, i mean, i am by no means advocating dumb skill trees like some sort of Diablo game or some stupid shit like that: just shit that actually does impact the gameplay on every playthrough but not in a way that any one single skill is "too essential".

the one part where Wizardry (not just elminage, all wiz-clones) fuck up in my opinion is the goddamn identification being always relegated to Bishops. This means any serious player will have to either have a bishop in the crew or have a bishop benched (something super tedious).

originally the Bishop class as envisioned and designed by greenberg and woodhead was an attempt to present 1980's Wizardry players with "hidden psychological direction". In Wizardry acquiring loot is second only to gaining character levels in determining the effectiveness of the player's characters and as such when a Wiz player acquires loot rushing back to the Town to identify the items is a glorious event and this creates the following logistical gameplay interpretation for the player:

- the player upon getting new, unidentified loot, and he/she got this shit from enemies on a brand new floor he/she hasn't explored before so he/she knows it'll be good; this player will now face the simple choices that Wizardry's type of resource management present when coupled with the simple item identification system: i.e., the player has to decide whether to continue exploring the Maze or to retreat to the Town in order to identify their loot.

- this is what i call an emergent gameplay type of scenario because in reality there is no real reason to continue exploring: the most rational action is to retreat, identify, and come back: the only reason this is even a thing is becasue the Wiz player is completely engaged with his explorations of the Maze and the new floor. The oft misunderstood aspect about the supposedly obtuse or challenging ways classic Wiz will fuck with the player is not because the designers want to frustrate the player, on the contrary what they wanted to achieve was to challenge the player to learn the underlying systems and to engage with the game not in contest but in a journey of exploration: both exploration of the game world and the constant desire to better understand the dozens of elegantly interlocking mechanical systems that comprise a Wiz-clone crawler.

- anyway, the player then has to think about his resources: hit points, spells, items, amount of party members left standing, etc. Example: in early portions of any of the first 5 Wizardry games getting poisoned by an enemy means 100% guaranteed death unless you are close to the floor's stairs to safety. Each step deals 1-5 points of poison damage and Wiz characters, regardless of class, will never usually have more than 20 points (and being generous there) before levels 5 and onwards.

- the designers intentionally price the latumofis potion, poison-removal potion, completely out of the reach of the beginning Wiz party. If i remember correctly it costs 500 gold (or more, don't remember exactly) in Wiz 1-5 and 1st floor enemies drop like... 1 gp. Getting poisoned is death... UNLESS THE PLAYER KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE HE OR SHE IS IN THE FLOOR AND KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND KNOWS EXACTLY HOW MANY STEPS TO TAKE TO REACH SAFETY.

- once more the player is rewarded for being able to save their own skins simply because they are willing to engage the game's challenges.

So, right, the Bishop was introduced specifically to provide Wiz players with the choice to continue exploring and be able to identify items inside the Maze. While on the surface that sounds like a no-brainer decision, to include a Bishop always, the discerning Wizardry/Wiz-clone player will have realized eventually that: BISHOPS ARE COMPLETELY USELESS.

In return for the ability to ID items on the spot the designers literally gave the players a non-character to occupy a valuable spot in the 6-person wiz party. Bishops don't learn their spells until a Wiz player is already playing through the scenario's END GAME; level fucking 26 (!), and Bishops cannot do anything even remotely useful in the context of dealing melee or ranged dmg either nor can they protect themselves adequately as they are given severely gimped/limited access to armors/weapons basically a gimped-Cleric but without having spells when it counts. (clerics learn all their spells at lvl 13, so they are useful from the start, as opposed to a bishop who will never, ever be useful except when identifying an item).

it's a simple thing really but most players don't even realize that they are actually forfeiting a completely legitimate spot on the team that could be occupied by an actually useful character class. however, the advantage of identifying an item inside the Maze is that there is the possibility that the party will ID an uber weapon or armor which will immediately boost their damage, or immediately boost their protection, or it might be an item with spell resistance, etc, the point is that this allows this party to continue exploring and are now effectively more powerful than they were before.

in closing all of what i have mentioned hinges completely and totally on the way wizardry handles itemization: the acquisition of loot is "random" (nothing is truly random) and the only way to acquire loot is to defeat an enemy force and then engage a second layer of conflict resolution wherein they must weigh once again whether to risk attempting to disarm/open the chest or to leave it alone. This cannot be stressed enough: in classic Wiz (and in elminage) you can literally be steamrolling everything and then open one chest and boom, immediate party wipe.

some will mistakenly assume this is some sort of "bad design" of "bad RNG" or some such bullshit: no, this is a mild skinner box element. In the end there is absolutely no reason you have to open the chest, and in fact, the Maze should instill in the wizardry player the actual and living fear of attempting to acquire loot as that chest could be a magnet trap and bye bye your Plate Armor!

all of this creates something very familiar: TENSION. The most common experience any wiz player takes away from a good session is that they did something and they did it by challenging the game. Easy example: a 1st floor party gets poisoned, everyone, because the chest they tried to disarm had a Gas Bomb, and now they don't know if they're close enough to the stair to Town to return with at least 1 surviving character, but instead of reloading (remember that classic Wiz is iron-man style, so there was no reloading) they decide, fuck it, let's see if i make it: and of course they make it and it is the single most fun part of the session managing to make it back to the Town with every step sucking hit points out of them.

i remember once i reached the stairs with 1 char alive and he had 2 hp. it was glorious. the experience has nothing to do with the game itself but rather is an experience that is born naturally from the game's mechanical systems: i consider that to be legitimate emergent gameplay, unless it means something other than what the word emergent means.

for those paying attention these incredibly simple scenarios/examples i wrote about regarding classic wiz-clone formulas manage to stimulate the players: logistics, ethics (to be greedy and attempt to take the chest or play it safe, etc), the player's independent will to further explore the game's Maze without any actual prodding whatsoever by the game itself (!!!), and of course the player's relationship with the game's rules and systems and their continuing appreciation of them as the game reveals itself to the player, but note, it is the player that has to take notice as the game itself is completely straightfoward as can possibly be.

(i didn't mention cursed items but yeah, another incredibly good addition to the stew of classic Wiz, and of course i know very well that is from d and d).
 
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aweigh

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CONT.

The purpose of changing classes has obvious and permanent benefits in traditional Wiz-clone crawler blueprint but by not being to sub-class, and the fact that changing your class resets the single most important character attribute in a Wiz-clone or Wiz-derivative crawler, i.e. the CHARACTER LEVEL is something that Greenberg and Woodhead thought about a lot when they were making Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord and there is a reason they playtested the game for more than 1 entire year before releasing it.

In an incredibly superficial mini list the main benefits of the Wiz-clone blueprint in regards to class-changing is: it is permanent. It forces the player engage deeply with the game's mechanical systems and fully understand exactly why they want to class change.
It is a deceptively layered way of prolonging player interaction long after they have probably finished it: an easy example would be...

The vast majority of players are quick to tell you class changing a magic using character in a Wiz-blueprint crawler into a "Fighter-type" that gains no magical or extra-abilities is a "probably a waste of time"; they are wrong because that advice is both true and also false because...
The Wiz-formula has always dictated that they first 10 levels of Character Advancement are "quick". The different XP tables are always, always, designed so as to make the levels 11-20 take progressively longer, by several orders of exponential magnitude, than going from character levels 1-10: this means that by mid-game and onwards, in a well-designed Wiz-derivative crawler,

a player can easily change a spell-caster's class into a pure Fighter specifically so that character can begin gaining those "quick" levels 1-10 which will allow the previously "frail" caster-type character to quickly "bulk up" their VITALITY/STRENGTH and Hit Points.

Once this hypothetical magic-caster Type has done his quick Fighter 1-10 they can then go on to the "real class" they wanted to continue supplementing their magic casting but with probably 2x or 3x the amount of hit points and probably a much better Attribute Spread.

I realize this is a very specific example of why I maintain that sub-classing is not as deep as Wiz-clone style class changing but it is also the best and easiest example to bring up to those who argue that class changing in Wiz is only good for getting spells. Only those that have an intermediate grasp of Wiz-derivative crawler systems argue that; until they realize when they hit end-game / post-game challenges that contrary to what the previously believed a creative player can find a use for any class change depending on their play style.
 
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aweigh

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(My opinion concerning Bradley's decision to make resting "free" and allow it anywhere in Wiz 6/7, and by extension Wiz 8 and why it is bad):

Oh! I almost forgot: for the LOVE OF GOD DO NOT MAKE RESTING "FREE". Adventuring inside a dungeon should be immersive, and the best way to stimulate the suspension of disbelief in a player is to allow them the opportunity to feel endangered.

The mere possibility that their possible mis-use of resources and/or simply the fuckery they just found themselves in MIGHT POSSIBILITY SPELL THEIR DOOM AND THUS THEY might actually not make it back to safety (!!!) is paramount for achieving the beginnings of proper suspension of disbelief.
 
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aweigh

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ITEMIZATION:

In a true-blue dungeon crawler like wizardry the type of fed-ex go-hiking-and-backtracking type of puzzle and obtuse trial-and-error shit all just ends up detracting from the enjoyment that we, the players who relish the lean abstraction of tactical simulation unbridled in its minimalist purity of traditional turn-based first-person dungeon-crawling; we don't need _other stuff_ to add or distract us from what we came to put our hands on:

- Dynamic and overlapping character development systems seamlessly integrated into a systematic and hand-crafted set of dungeons that each represent a metaphorical sandbox for the underlying systems to produce truly emergent gameplay in the contextual exploration of each dungeon floor and the acquisition of lovingly and thoughtfully curved itemization that never bottoms out but rather perpetually reinforces the simple depth emergent in the best moments of a dungeon crawl when the players' suspension of disbelief has been obliterated and his or her mind is feverishly negotiating the logistics of his party's adventure and the continual analytical management of the mechanical resources prevalent in the genre such as food, spells, weapons, hit points, randomized encounters and a small contingency perpetrated by the dungeon on the player in the form of attrition; the dungeon itself should always be the focal point that captures and lays out both in naked danger and subtle guidance and the challenge of navigating its contours in order to establish ownership and a sublime sense of reward and accomplishment in the player.

a puzzle or riddle that dispels this feeling for the player by jarringly gate-keeping further enjoyment of the 'crawl can at BEST be only an afterthought but unfortunately it will commonly be an annoyance. i believe the majority of the puzzling nature of the 'crawl should be comprised in challenging navigation, i.e. all that stuff i mentioned in previous posts, and not in Doom-keycards that unlock the next area's color-coded door.

this is a huge part of the reason i loved (love) elminage series so much because it gets allll of those things down PERFECTLY. it is as wizardry-bred as any fucking wiz game itself. it's more so than even any wiz after wiz5 and onwards. i'm gonna stop writing here because i don't really have any legitimate points to make other than these observations but one final thought i have on this matter is the itemization: EO-type games (and you know exactly what i mean by EO-type) usually boast a fucking overabundance of loot but 70 percent of it are usually either materials/parts you need to "collect" (that is a very strong key-word there; EO has "collecting" ingrained in it to the bone) and usually you have to collect x amount of y crap or kill z type of enemies in x area or whatever. JRPG-ish stuff. you rarely see that in the west except in an even WORSE and more degenerate form in western mmo's. to finish up and give an eo 3 example: one of the most addictive things about the continual plundering of the dungeon floors in wizardry and in elminage is that you ALWAYS end up looking foward to the next battle; every battle means a chest, and every chest means a random chance of a great loot drop. Wizardry (and Elminage) don't utilize loot-by-monster drops btw, and not many people realize that detail and that is HUGE.

in comparison i found the skill point systems in games like EO 3, DQ 9 and recently 7th Dragon to be polar opposite models that seem almost intentionally designed to string you along on very weak and very un-felt level-up consequences. you get 1 million times more "points" to mold your char in EO than in any Wiz game (in Wiz you have zero control over what a level up brings), and yet ironically you literally have to spend the equivalent of 10 or 15 levels' worth of points to achieve an ability/class/result/whatever comparable to something that might be just a "tier 2 floor drop" in a wiz-clone. too many points and yet you barely feel like the character you're deeloping is growing at all everything is so unbelievably GATED and controlled by the game that the illusion of wild player freedom seems to evaporate. i've just never found filling out a skill tree to be even remotely as comparably addictive or mechancally enjoyable as the many ways wiz-games revel in their levelling systems and their character development. getting levels in wiz is BIG. in EO 3 it means oh look, i get to put point 3/25 towards unlocking "shield bash".

it's an unbelievably drawn out process and sure, it's a legitimate itemization alternative to trapped-chests but IMO it's an abysmally inferior one. anyway i have of course a million more thoughts about the differences in styles between these two pseudo-genres but i'm just rambling at this point

wiz-games utilize loot-by-dungeon-floor, not by specific enemy types. that means that you always want to keep going, you always want to see how low you can go so you can reach the best loot in the best floors. and you don't have to worry about things like "oh i want this item very badly but i have to kill this stupid stupid tough enemy 25 times in a row at least for a chance of it dropping it!" -- that does not exist in the world of wizardry-clones. loot comes after the fight, IF you manage to succesfully survive the high-stakes bomb--under-the-table scene that is disarming every single chest. once you disarm the chest you get the loot and the loot is GLOORIOUSS.... or your ninja fucked up inspecting the chest and your party just got teleported into a wall. Anyone who doesn't find having STAKES LIKE THAT to be PERFECT instruments for great, enjoyably adrelanine-fueled dungeon-crawling looting and surviving by the skin of your teeth. these elements, these "high stakes" scenarios of which thre are many more examples than just the chests are absent from EO3. i was disappointed when i realized that you do not getactual loot or gear after winning fights.

wizardry at its core absoluely has to revolve around a very SPECIFIC kind of resource management and the vancian spell system is one of the most essential parts in those games' DNA. there are also other things that are different for what might seem arbitrary reasons to somone not exposed to the more japanese influences; a very quick example being the traditional free MP/resting stables in wiz/elminage/etc. They like to challenge you but also they know when to throw the player a soft-ball so they can assimilate the games psychological pressures better.
wiz-clones are 100% all about those sweet, sweet fixed monster encounters PAIRED ALONG with a moderately conserved "random-encounter rate". the famous monster-doors if you will. when you analyze that type of design goal and what it's supposed to accomplish among the many conclusions one can reach is the simple fact that the game itself psychologically educates and controls you the more you explore its dungeons. they are absolutely brutal at the beginning with basically your first fights really being possible party wipes and that's totes normal; but if you stick with it you get the rhythm of the mazes and (i don't know how to explain this better) eventually you WILL KNOW EXACTLY WHEN A MONSTER IS BEHIND A DOOR. i don't mention that as some sort of negative, on the contrary what i mean is that the the vancian spells combined with the hand-placed encounters serve not to complement but to COMPLETE the wizardry-style mazes.
 
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aweigh

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EAST VS WEST:

Wizardry at its core absoluely has to revolve around a very SPECIFIC kind of resource management and the vancian spell system is one of the most essential parts in those games' DNA. there are also other things that are different for what might seem arbitrary reasons to somone not exposed to the more japanese influences; a very quick example being the traditional free MP/resting stables in wiz/elminage/etc. They like to challenge you but also they know when to throw the player a soft-ball so they can assimilate the games psychological pressures better.

wiz-clones are 100% all about those sweet, sweet fixed monster encounters PAIRED ALONG with a moderately conserved "random-encounter rate". the famous monster-doors if you will. when you analyze that type of design goal and what it's supposed to accomplish among the many conclusions one can reach is the simple fact that the game itself psychologically educates and controls you the more you explore its dungeons. they are absolutely brutal at the beginning with basically your first fights really being possible party wipes and that's totes normal; but if you stick with it you get the rhythm of the mazes and (i don't know how to explain this better) eventually you WILL KNOW EXACTLY WHEN A MONSTER IS BEHIND A DOOR. i don't mention that as some sort of negative, on the contrary what i mean is that the the vancian spells combined with the hand-placed encounters serve not to complement but to COMPLETE the wizardry-style mazes.

this is a huge part of the reason i loved (love) elminage series so much because it gets allll of those things down PERFECTLY. it is as wizardry-bred as any fucking wiz game itself. it's more so than even any wiz after wiz5 and onwards. i'm gonna stop writing here because i don't really have any legitimate points to make other than these observations but one final thought i have on this matter is the itemization: EO-type games (and you know exactly what i mean by EO-type) usually boast a fucking overabundance of loot but 70 percent of it are usually either materials/parts you need to "collect" (that is a very strong key-word there; EO has "collecting" ingrained in it to the bone) and usually you have to collect x amount of y crap or kill z type of enemies in x area or whatever. JRPG-ish stuff. you rarely see that in the west except in an even WORSE and more degenerate form in western mmo's. to finish up and give an eo 3 example: one of the most addictive things about the continual plundering of the dungeon floors in wizardry and in elminage is that you ALWAYS end up looking foward to the next battle; every battle means a chest, and every chest means a random chance of a great loot drop. Wizardry (and Elminage) don't utilize loot-by-monster drops btw, and not many people realize that detail and that is HUGE.

wiz-games utilize loot-by-dungeon-floor, not by specific enemy types. that means that you always want to keep going, you always want to see how low you can go so you can reach the best loot in the best floors. and you don't have to worry about things like "oh i want this item very badly but i have to kill this stupid stupid tough enemy 25 times in a row at least for a chance of it dropping it!" -- that does not exist in the world of wizardry-clones. loot comes after the fight, IF you manage to succesfully survive the high-stakes bomb--under-the-table scene that is disarming every single chest. once you disarm the chest you get the loot and the loot is GLOORIOUSS.... or your ninja fucked up inspecting the chest and your party just got teleported into a wall. Anyone who doesn't find having STAKES LIKE THAT to be PERFECT instruments for great, enjoyably adrelanine-fueled dungeon-crawling looting and surviving by the skin of your teeth. these elements, these "high stakes" scenarios of which thre are many more examples than just the chests are absent from EO3. i was disappointed when i realized that you do not getactual loot or gear after winning fights.

in eo 3 you fight to collect an amount of specific enemies "droppings" if you will so you can then take back to town and hand them over (sell them, etc) to the shop so they can un-gate the loot tiers little by little, a dribble at a time. just enough to make it seem enticing but not really. games like EO series usually heavily front-load the player with a vast amount of collectibles they can get or need to get but it's always incredibly stretched out; like droplets of water on the tongue. this is a direct difference to the core of itemization in wiz-clones where (usually) the design goal that is the eventual conclusion of hand-placed enemy encounters and a loot-system that lives independently of the game's enemies but is instead directly tied to the exploration of the dungeons serves to deliver BIG STUFF, i.e. EPIC DROPS or finnaaallly getting that class change you've been levelling for; or whatever, my point is that the player works hard and consistently to get consistently random results that are skewed in the high-end of the scale. there really isn't much "mundane" stuff in wizardry games. there's very little filler. everytihng has to be worked for but the payoffs come big and are character/class-defining and thus gameplay changing.

in comparison i found the skill point systems in games like EO 3, DQ 9 and recently 7th Dragon to be polar opposite models that seem almost intentionally designed to string you along on very weak and very un-felt level-up consequences. you get 1 million times more "points" to mold your char in EO than in any Wiz game (in Wiz you have zero control over what a level up brings), and yet ironically you literally have to spend the equivalent of 10 or 15 levels' worth of points to achieve an ability/class/result/whatever comparable to something that might be just a "tier 2 floor drop" in a wiz-clone. too many points and yet you barely feel like the character you're deeloping is growing at all everything is so unbelievably GATED and controlled by the game that the illusion of wild player freedom seems to evaporate. i've just never found filling out a skill tree to be even remotely as comparably addictive or mechancally enjoyable as the many ways wiz-games revel in their levelling systems and their character development. getting levels in wiz is BIG. in EO 3 it means oh look, i get to put point 3/25 towards unlocking "shield bash".

it's an unbelievably drawn out process and sure, it's a legitimate itemization alternative to trapped-chests but IMO it's an abysmally inferior one. anyway i have of course a million more thoughts about the differences in styles between these two pseudo-genres but i'm just rambling at this point.
 
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aweigh

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EXPLORATION:

The constant tension that is promoted by the lethal nature of early wizardries, such as the fact that winning a random encounter is the easy part and it is common knowledge that the real test of spirit is in surviving the potentially party-wiping trapped chest; the resource management + the lethality of the game's mechanics + the puzzling instrinsic nature of the well-designed dungeon layout + fixed-encounters coupled with RANDOM encounters = a continual feeling of literal adrenaline and fear and tension that dovetails gloriously with the unspoken promise of every dungeon crawl: the plundering depths of the unknown awaiting your party's skills.

this, THIS is the spell that a good dungeon crawl can weave on a player and i frankly cannot see any way in which a gated riddle or item-based fetch-puzzle or etc can do anything other than dispel it...

i tried finding a particular thread where we were trying to figure out just what games like Wizardry "so damn hard!" after al; the games are not reflex-based nor do they require significant amounts of any particular or specific skill-set by the player; in fact the dungeon crawler sub-genre is a constantly rushing water in many ways and it certain predispositions are irrevocably ingrained in it:

the constant tension that is promoted by the lethal nature of early wizardries, such as the fact that winning a random encounter is the easy part and it is common knowledge that the real test of spirit is in surviving the potentially party-wiping trapped chest; the resource management + the lethality of the game's mechanics + the puzzling instrinsic nature of the well-designed dungeon layout + fixed-encounters coupled with RANDOM encounters = a continual feeling of literal adrenaline and fear and tension that dovetails gloriously with the unspoken promise of every dungeon crawl: the plundering depths of the unknown awaiting your party's skills.

this, THIS is the spell that a good dungeon crawl can weave on a player and i frankly cannot see any way in which a gated riddle or item-based fetch-puzzle or etc can do anything other than dispel it...

atmosphere is a very complicating thing to talk about because it shares aspects from every facet: it is an abstract conceptualization predicated on subjective interpretation of any number of esoteric sensorial cues. the dark heart of uukrul doesn't even have any sound whatsoever and (although it is super hard) it is not a roguelike derivative like the early wizardries whatsoever and there are no exploding chests and none of the stuff i mentioned just now, yet it is overflowing with atmosphere and tension. it is mostly entirely achieved through expert textual descriptions.

now, since this is not a book we are talking about but a game, the only reason this atmosphere in uukrul is achieved is because the player is engaged with its gameplay systems and its underlying mechanics. the player is keeping track of his food rations, and he is on the hunt for better gear in order to survive the increasingly difficult encounters, but he or she is also exploring an extremely detailed subterrenean world full of very interesting backstory, a few characters and i dare say a nifty plot as well. the entire game is shrouded in mystery from the the obscure way its magic system works via prayers to alien gods to the fact that the premise of the player's expedition is to follow the footsteps of a previous one.

i've been trying like hell to find that thread with the great all around ideas concerning what constitutes difficulty in a blobber and at least my own personal answer is this:

when the dungeon has so completely immersed the player that he or she will commit an irrational suspension of disbelief and experience a fight-or-flight atavistic choice as they weigh their accumulated knowledge and experience versus the dungeon, which is itself not just a mere place of course but a catch-all term for all of the multiple mechanical systems that complete one another and thus allow the dungeon to be an entity; or whether they choose to flee and engage in logistical decision-making as they make an always ever-exciting return trip to the safety of the bare, blatantly symbolic asset that is the Wizardry-city where they can engage in tons of rewards for having done but the simplest of simple things: going inside the dungeon and fighting.

the entire ecosystem of gameplay mechanics compliment each other so organically, but most of all so LOGICALLY that i still can't believe modern designers don't adopt Wizardry-style mechanics and philosophies such as: having a second conflict resolution phase after a battle, i.e. an equivalent to disarming a chest; this will of course simultaenously serve as a silver-platter skinner-box that is in every possible way better integrated into the game's authorial hold over its own world and its own gameplay than any other possible game that can be mentioned that also features the same system: example 1) diablo.

they do they same thing Wizardry does with the loot and the design ideas taken straight from the books of casino gaming systems back in the 30's, 40's and 50's except it has nowhere near the elegance of design that wizardry's utilization of trapped chests.

lastly i mention once again the loot by floor design of all wizardries and wiz-clones because giving this even just 10 minutes of thought it is CLEARLY the most balanced and rewarding systems integration for dispensing the game's itemized curve of content that the player is supposed to want to get. i know i said this already but it bears repeating: how beautifully simple a design choice it is that the player is forever wanting to explore deeper into the Maze, and thus gain mastery over the game itself at every stage of the game as they venture and explore than to simply let the player know that the only way to get the loot is to descend further downwards; yet for whatever reason almost no modern game or modern dungeon crawler utilizes a variation of this design.

the worst offender in my opinion is the etrian odyssey series with the repetitive "missions" that consist of fighting 100 eagle-sharks so you can finally get 100 eagle-shark penises and then finally be able to have the smith unlock a mediocre new sword that is nevertheless better than what you have. it's a terrible approach.
 
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aweigh

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WIZ 6:

i will grant you without any reservations whatsoever that the castle in wiz 6 was the best area in the entire game and it was GREAT. i fully admit i felt several thrills of discovery and excitement when i found the goat mask and the dagger of ramm, and when you had to jump into the sacrificial pool. that was the highest my enjoyment was while playing wiz 6. the castle's layout is also very organic and it FEELS like a real castle.

i also distinctly remember the very first time i went to the top of the parapets and read the descriptions of the vistas; it made the world feel endless.

unfortunately it did not hold to that level of quality throughout, although of course even with as much as i shit on Bradley it goes without saying that wiz 6-8 are still like, 1 million times superior rpg's than 90% of the rpg's on the market. the only reason i bitch about them is because they did away with so many of the crucial elements that made wizardry... wizardry. honestly i don't see any reason why the kind of map design such as the castle, with its purple prose detailing the fate of its room and its denizens, and the chance meetings with the ghosts haunting its halls and all of that very good stuff can't coexist with a more hard-core crawler.

i would much rather have the castle area found in wiz 6 and all that it entails, in wiz 5, instead of the endless nonsensical NPCs and incomprehensible "puzzles". i've mentioned it before but it bears repeating: the key is balance.

the sophistication of bradley's area design, npc design and encounters and integration of puzzles both for loot (the shield, the sword of striking, etc), for story (the journal of the doomed expedition that died in giant mountain, the ghosts), and for critical-path progression (the Ramm stuff, hazard-area, etc) is leaps and bounds beyond the clumsy npc interactions and i fucking dare say outright BAD puzzle design filled with needless backtracking and needless player punishment found in wiz 5.

i have no problem with something that's well made.

atmosphere is a very complicating thing to talk about because it shares aspects from every facet: it is an abstract conceptualization predicated on subjective interpretation of any number of esoteric sensorial cues. the dark heart of uukrul doesn't even have any sound whatsoever and (although it is super hard) it is not a roguelike derivative like the early wizardries whatsoever and there are no exploding chests and none of the stuff i mentioned just now, yet it is overflowing with atmosphere and tension. it is mostly entirely achieved through expert textual descriptions. now, since this is not a book we are talking about but a game, the only reason this atmosphere in uukrul is achieved is because the player is engaged with its gameplay systems and its underlying mechanics. the player is keeping track of his food rations, and he is on the hunt for better gear in order to survive the increasingly difficult encounters, but he or she is also exploring an extremely detailed subterrenean world full of very interesting backstory, a few characters and i dare say a nifty plot as well. the entire game is shrouded in mystery from the the obscure way its magic system works via prayers to alien gods to the fact that the premise of the player's expedition is to follow the footsteps of a previous one.

...and i actually don't really know what point it is i'm trying to make right now.

edit: oh, i remembered what it was. all that stuff i just typed about how uukrul manages to achieve its atmosphere purely through the emergent gameplay of its systems? that's my big problem with the wizzes 6-8; with the casualisation of a few key elements, such as being able to rest anywhere, for example, and a ton of other minor and major changes to the formula it does NOT achieve the same thing as uukrul on the merits of its gameplay alone. it stands out in other areas, but it falls short where it counts in my opinion. all that said it's still a good game. the basic combat system is still recognizably wizardry and it is very enjoyable and, at least in wiz 6 (haven't played 7) there are still a few "dungeon" like areas to explore (the mines, for example), although unfortunately they are sadly bereft of any design complexity whatsoever.

heh, the only thing that allows me to keep telling myself i'm not insane for explicitely preferring classic wiz gameplay to all other blobbers/crawlers is the fact that the entirety of japan feels exactly the same way as me. make of that what you will!

for the curious as to the reception of wiz 6 and 7 in japan it was good, but i get the feeling (from reading shit on the internet lewl) that they paid attention to it mostly because of how obsessed they are with the first 5 games. all of the modern japanese blobbers that are wiz-derivatives, which is like 80% of them, are basically wizardry 5 version 2.0 + cherry-picked stuff from wiz 6 and 7 such as dual wielding, psionis, alchemy, and the furry races but nothing else.
 
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aweigh

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PUZZLES/SPATIAL NAVIGATION:

Yeah but remember we're supposed to be brain-storming puzzles in the context of first-person dungeon-crawler rpg's. platforming in half life is not as divisive because the game is already predicated on the player's moter-skills and ability to use the controlling peripherals in fast ways with fast reflexes and a big component of that is the buildup of muscle memory which adds to the enjoyment of the game, in this case half life. going from running and shooting and crouching and running again and all sorts of kinetic displacement to jumping a few tiles in sequence is not a leap for the player, (pun not intended), nor is it a leap for the game (combo x2) regardless of the quality of its implementation.

it's not the same thing _at all_. rpgs are already a very burdened template upon which everyone from the players to the games' developers heaps their own interpretations of design and the dungeon-crawler sub-genre, if there is such a thing, (there is), is an even more lean and focused design. its foundation is derivative of other sources as well, such as roguelikes, and adventure games as well along with pen and paper gaming and lord knows what the fuck else. it's not as easy to throw in puzzles or other analogous activities in a blobber crawler (there are non-crawler blobbers); it IS easy to throw in platforming in an FPS.
 
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aweigh

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DECONSTRUCTION (or autistic sperging, take your pick):

wiz 1 featured one merciless oversight by the designers that everyone always forgets: it wasn't until wiz 2 that they introduced the game rule of not allowing neither enemies nor PC's to cast spells in a Surprise round. lol they had gotten inundated with complaints from players when wiz 1 came out saying how their level 12 parties or whatever would be exploring the final floors and get surprise attacked by a bunch of bad fuckers who would start their free round on the player with a non-stop barrage of tiltowaits haha

of course all that said, i firmly believe wizardry-style combat resolution is almost perfect in its dumb simplicity; it achieves a definite layer of elegance in its quick resolution but always demanding thoughtful management of resources such as spells and hit points and items. the symbiotic co-existence between the very basic attributes of wizardry combat, mainly: spells, resistances, afflictions and melee; they all compliment each other concisely and efficiently and, while of course not without flaws; the combat mechanics are in the end plainly logical and the player is rewarded for manipulating the game's systems.

an additional layer that quite simply seeps into the crevices of the combat mechanics and transforms the ENTIRE combat ritual and its repetition into one of the most elegant and well thought-out skinner-boxes i've ever personally witnessed in terms of video game application. i am of course referring to the fact that every combat is worth fighting through because every combat rewards the player with treasure, and not only that but the treasure itself is random (obvious gambling philosophies/design at work, as they are in almost every single RPG/game of course) and not only is the treasure random but there is a second phase that happens after the player wins the encounter and the player is then logically not just fighting random encounters but rather he/she is "gaming the system"; what i call "phase zero" is the player's venture into the Maze and exploring it and mapping it. during this phase there is constant tension and fear of the unknown.

the first real phase, or rather the first instance in which the wizardry player starts to engage with the games mechanical parts occurs when they get an encounter while exploring. this tests the players knowledge of ALL of the game's facets and machinations and minutiae and there is a very strong random element in the conflict resolution (i.e. stuff like damage, resistances, etc) but it never feels out of the hands of the player.

once the player wins the fight we get a second phase of conflict resolution that is entirely psychological: the disarming of the chest. as all wiz players know the most likely way you get wiped is disarming a chest, NOT fighting enemies. but the loot is waiting and you want it (for many reasons besides the obvious ones, post is already too long to explain this point in detail); the sheer rush of excitement that overwhelms the player after the tension and fear of the second conflict phase is over is similar to the feelings the player experiences when he wins a tough fight but not in any palpable, legitimate parallel: no, the disarming of the chest was a stroke of sheer genius by the wizardry designers.

and of course there is still one more (not really, there are MANY more but anyway); there is one more phase after getting the loot inside the chest and that is of course the lottery; the skinner-box in play during amateur hour. it is no arbitrary coincidence that items must be brought back to town to be identified normally, and the only way to identify them inside the Maze is by mastering more and moreof the game's many gameplay elements:in this specificexample of course i'mreferring to creating advanced classes like a bishop. even that decision interweaves PERFECTLY with every single other element that is constantly in play during the gameplay phases of wizardry: the bishop is worthless as a melee attacker, he has poor ways to defend himself from enemy attacks, he levelsmuch too slowly to keep pace with the rest of the party and he will NEVER learn his spells "fast enough"to merit giving up a valuable spot in the team for a useless bishop. except of course now the party can extend the phase zero: now the player can explore further and the possibility of beating an encounter and disarming the chest and getting an item and then having the bishop ID the item and have it EXACTLY THE SWORDYOU WANTED means that now your Samurai can deal 2x as much damage as he could 10 minutes ago, i.e. before this last fight that yielded the super sword. no bishop would mean a long trip back to town with less resources (no sword, for example) and awaste of valuable gold in paying for the item's ID'ing. even something as simple as that, the item identification and its relationship with the bishop and the shop-keeper, is absolutely overflowing with ramifications interms of emergent gameplay.

man, i have so much more to say: like for example the fact that chests/loot is not tied to specific enemies or specific encounters but rather theymade the genius decision to have loot tiers drop depending on the FLOOR of the maze the party is exploring; this means that the scenario of grinding versus a specific group of monsters or one rare monster in the hopes of getting it to drop what you want DOES NOT EXIST IN WIZARDRY. instead the wizardry player knows that the best way to get better loot is to... VENTURE FURTHER INTO THE MAZE. the game ismotherfucking perfect.it's arock-solid formula for a video game. the player isALWAYS motivated to engage with the game's systems at every conceivable level of interactivity, both phyisical and psychological.

long live wizardry.
 
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aweigh

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WIZARDRY'S LOOT:

IMO one of classic Wizardry's greatest strengths that has stood the test of time is the fact that treasure chests appear after you defeat the enemy, but they are not tied to that enemy nor any enemy group; instead in Wizardry each dungeon floor has 3 different "tiers" (common / uncommon / rare) and those 3 tiers are meticulously hand-picked by the designers, such that there is no random loot in Wizardry, and then each dungeon floor is assigned 3 tiers of chests which will drop after battle.

the type of enemy fought has absolutely zero bearing on what tier of loot drops, or if a drop happens at all, as that happens only via "fixed encounters". Even though wizardry features random battles and random encounters the ingenious design of the first 5 scenarios and the later japanese-developed Wizardry games is that the treasure chests (loot) is gated by encounters that are not random, and these encounters can "farmed" via various ways (exiting and re-entering that dungeon floor being the most common), however they take care to place "fixed encounters" where appropriate and they always make sure that they matter beyond the fact that they drop chests.

random encounters serve a different purpose (in earlier scenarios) where instead of dropping chests (although there is like a 0.2 % chance of them doing so in a few of the scenarios) instead the random encounters have a random chance to be "friendly" and this provides the player with the opportunity to choose to fight the enemies or to leave them in peace; an incredibly simple mechanic that functions as a way of keeping the character alignments (and thus party alignments) constantly fluid throughout the cours eof the entire game.

you can expound on these concepts and make them your own as they are such simple, and such elegant game design decisions that while seemingly simplistic serve to dovetail infinitesimally throughout every single mechanical layer that the games are providing.

The fact that loot is tied to floors in Wizardry (and thus Elminage, and many other Wiz-clones) means that there will always be a valid reason for the player's band adventurers to continue exploring further deeper into the dungeon as the lure of danker loot (and more dangerous encounters, more difficult puzzles and more extravagant navigational challenges) will always be just one floor away.

Some people mistakenly think Wizardry and its clones utilize "random loot" but it absolutely does not, which is why I wanted to explain how the loot systems work, and also in the off chance you didn't know about it to give you food for thought as it's one of the most simple and elegant ways to design a naturally symbiotic itemization map of progression for the player and the game.

Games that allow every enemy to drop all that they were carrying, when not handled well (OBlivion, Skyrim, etc) will lead to haphazard itemization (being generous here) and when treasures are made as literal random drops from random encounters (Grimoire, StarCrawlerz, many more, etc) then it can easily lead to "yay, more random junk" syndrome for the player.

itemization is one of the most difficult things to implement well in an RPG and I think studying how Wizardry 1-5 and Wiz Empire and Elminage series of games do it will most definitely serve as creative inspiration for anybody, as 30+ years onwards and there is still no other RPG that has managed to make a better skinner-box implementation than Wizardry and its legions of clones.

Wiz-games utilize loot-by-dungeon-floor, not by specific enemy types. that means that you always want to keep going, you always want to see how low you can go so you can reach the best loot in the best floors. and you don't have to worry about things like "oh i want this item very badly but i have to kill this stupid stupid tough enemy 25 times in a row at least for a chance of it dropping it!" -- that does not exist in the world of wizardry-clones. loot comes after the fight, IF you manage to succesfully survive the high-stakes bomb--under-the-table scene that is disarming every single chest. once you disarm the chest you get the loot and the loot is GLOORIOUSS.... or your ninja fucked up inspecting the chest and your party just got teleported into a wall. Anyone who doesn't find having STAKES LIKE THAT to be PERFECT instruments for great, enjoyably adrelanine-fueled dungeon-crawling looting and surviving by the skin of your teeth. these elements, these "high stakes" scenarios of which thre are many more examples than just the chests are absent from EO3. i was disappointed when i realized that you do not getactual loot or gear after winning fights.

(I have a few other posts regarding why Wiz's loot system is so perfect, and they are much longer, but I need to find them first the .doc's are somewhere in one of my many internet storage sites gathering dust).
 
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aweigh

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Pretentious shit-posting:

Just what exactly does Wizardry stand for?

in short: they are games constructed around the psychological conditioning of taking ownership of the unknown yet the player is without respite and forever running out: spells, hit points, potions, mapping directions; the true game lies in the isolated moments where the player has suspended his disbilief so completely that he is worried he might not make it back to town.
 
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aweigh

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I did, I started it in '05 it's called THE RPG FUCKING CODEX (dot NET, not COM). I think it's hosted in geocities.

In any case, this thread is about discussing, dissecting, deconstructing and generally talking all about Wizardry and its legacy and the future of the series (which is quite good!).

Where else would one post their thoughts/etc about the Wiz series but in this thread?

Frankly, this thread is a freaking embarrassment as it does little justice to its intended mission: I want to turn this thread's frown... UPSIDE DOWN!

I want that GRPG Wiz Series thread to be a beacon for all Wizardry and a a place where a Wizardry seeker (yeah, getting all religious up in here) can find themselves filled with grace. I want this thread to actually contain information about all facets of Wizardry, not just talking about Wiz 8 party builds (an incredibly limited recourse of discussion, to be sure...) or the occasional post by people briefly arguing about whether Wiz 6 is better than Wiz 7 or Wiz 8, or what-have-you.

This thread is the equivalent of a Might and Magic thread which only talks about MMX: Legacy.

This thread is the equivalent of a Fallout thread wherein the participating posters talk about the incredible quality of design found in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, with the occasional person poo-pooing Fallout: New Vegas... with FO1/2 being dismissed out of hand because they're "primitive" / "old".

This thread is the equivalent of-- oh, whatever, you guys get the picture. The mighty Wizardry dragon god L'kabreth would be sorely disappointed in most of you! But since 99% of the posters here have zero idea wtf I'm referencing, must an autist sperge a bitch!?
 
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aweigh

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WIZ 1-5 VS WIZ 6-8 + MORE DECONSTRUCTION REGARDING WIZARDRY'S LOOT SYSTEMS:

wiz 1-5:
- vancian spell system promoting careful management and usage which adds to overall tension during exploration
- save only in town (unless you're playing one of the remakes, or on an emulator)
- general healing, levelling-up and magical spell restoration only possible back in town therefore increasing the danger, tension and feeling of total immersion while exploring the dungeons
- death can be permanent and costs vitality during resurrection (if it succeeds at all otherwise the character is lost forever)
- limited inventory that promotes resource management
- intellectually designed dungeons
- loot is tied to dungeon levels and not to enemies promoting exploration; fuels need to reach just one more floor for better loot
- healing and other resources are scarce
- loot itemization is scarce and everything you find feels rewarding to get and use
- very sparse backstory and plot development as the focus is entirely on exploration of the dungeons

wiz 6-8:

- magic points-based spell system similar to your average JRPG
- save anywhere
- death has no consequences whatsoever
- can Rest anywhere and levelup anywhere eliminating sense of danger or tension while exploring
- combat layers are reduced as a result since you can rest and heal after any combat without worrying about having to return to town
- inventory is not unlimited but every character has approximately 20-40 item slots available at any time
- no management or strategical thinking necessary in regards to resource consumption or spell usage
- areas are extremely large and mostly poorly designed and listless with little in the way providing challenge of navigation or interesting exploration
- loot is no longer tied to dungeon floors and instead is tied to enemy-types and is also found in out-of-combat chests, just like in an JRPG
- healting and other resources are plentiful reducing most of the tension while exploring
- loot itemization is typical "monty-haul" with the player finding mundane loot non-stop right from the beginning
- non-stop info-dumps of badly written prose and badly written NPC's as the focus is entirely on seemingly random fetch-quests in order to unlock areas

moving on from my extremely biased bullet point comparison above, I really wanna stress how genius Wizardry's loot system is one more time. I truly think it has yet to be surpassed or meaningfully improved upon in the 30+ years since Wiz 1's release, and the only notable additive is the introduction of despicable skinner-box goldberg machine-like implementation.

Wizardry managed to avoid the skinner-box entirely and simultaenously present the player with a fantastic design and approach to how true RPG itemization can be done:

The loot by floor design of all wizardries and wiz-clones because giving this even just 10 minutes of thought it is CLEARLY the most balanced and rewarding systems integration for dispensing the game's itemized curve of content that the player is supposed to want to get. i know i said this already but it bears repeating: how beautifully simple a design choice it is that the player is forever wanting to explore deeper into the Maze, and thus gain mastery over the game itself at every stage of the game as they venture and explore than to simply let the player know that the only way to get the loot is to descend further downwards; yet for whatever reason almost no modern game or modern dungeon crawler utilizes a variation of this design. the worst offender in my opinion is the etrian odyssey series with the repetitive "missions" that consist of fighting 100 eagle-sharks so you can finally get 100 eagle-shark penises and then finally be able to have the smith unlock a mediocre new sword that is nevertheless better than what you have. it's a terrible approach.

when the dungeon has so completely immersed the player that he or she will commit an irrational suspension of disbelief and experience a fight-or-flight atavistic choice as they weigh their accumulated knowledge and experience versus the dungeon, which is itself not just a mere place of course but a catch-all term for all of the multiple mechanical systems that complete one another and thus allow the dungeon to be an entity; or whether they choose to flee and engage in logistical decision-making as they make an always ever-exciting return trip to the safety of the bare, blatantly symbolic asset that is the Wizardry-city where they can engage in tons of rewards for having done but the simplest of simple things: going inside the dungeon and fighting. the entire ecosystem of gameplay mechanics compliment each other so organically, but most of all so LOGICALLY that i still can't believe modern designers don't adopt Wizardry-style mechanics and philosophies such as: having a second conflict resolution phase after a battle, i.e. an equivalent to disarming a chest; this will of course simultaenously serve as a silver-platter skinner-box that is in every possible way better integrated into the game's authorial hold over its own world and its own gameplay than any other possible game that can be mentioned that also features the same system: example 1) diablo. they do they same thing Wizardry does with the loot and the design ideas taken straight from the books of casino gaming systems back in the 30's, 40's and 50's except it has nowhere near the elegance of design that wizardry's utilization of trapped chests.
 
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Iznaliu

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This thread is the equivalent of a Might and Magic thread which only talks about MMX: Legacy.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration; a better equivalent is an M&M thread that only talks about M&M6+. However, with that out of the way, I've seen threads about Might and Magic, Fallout, and other series that only talk about the later games in the series.
 
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BLOBBER COMBAT:

Tradtional turn-based 'crawler design (and perhaps real-time too but i can't speak for those) has been about systematic attrition both mechanical and psychological to force the player to return to the city; however the return trip is completely up to the player and it can sometimes promote extreme behaviors in the player that runs the gamut from staying in one spot grinding excessively because that spot is "safe" (the pocket dimension at work at its most degenerate) to the other extreme of the rush you get when your party's pulling off miracle moves and d20 critical hits and beheading motherfuckers left and right and scoring that sweet loot that's 3 floors further down than you have any right to be yet.... oh man, does that feel good!

party positioninig is extremely important in any blobber. the first 3 slots are the front row, and the remaining 3 slots are the back row. front row enemies cannot reach back row allies unless they're using long-ranged weaponry; they can only reach front-row allies and vice-versa for the allies. back row allies cannot reach front row enemies unless they're using long-ranged weaponry or spells and have to worry less about protection because the amount of enemy types that can reach them is of less quantity than the amount of enemy types that can reach the first 3 slots, i.e. the front row.

all of this is of course subject to the skill of the person playing since if you don't tactically resolve the enemy conflict you could FUBAR yourself into a situation in which you're exposing your back row to the enemies front row; and there are also spells available both to the player and to the enemy that scramble row positioning.

and this is all a very general deconstruction of traditional blobber combat. every blobber features varying degrees of depth to the differing rows and ranges of weaponry and spells and skills available. in reality the abstraction of positioning that occurs in a blobber grants the game designers the ability to introduce more tactical depth to the game mechanics due to the layers of abstraction that aren't limited by the simulationist approach present in war-games, as an example. but of course we are comparing apples and oranges here: as the one single thing you got right-- the fact that the blobber combat approach is meant to be FAST PACED-- does not apply to war-games.

...all this considered i think blobber-type combat is probably the best compromise between tactical, strategical and speed of conflict resolution parity available to the RPG combat game designer. some other approaches are more of one of those 3 categories but no other approach to RPG combat reaches the happy medium betweel all 3 categories (strategy/tactics/pacing) that the blobber approach does.
 
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THE ART OF MAZING AND WHY IT DIFFERS FROM "WORLD EXPLORATION":

Making dungeons is an artform, and it's one of the hardest things to do. the concept of "holes" you can't see and invisible walls/doors and one-way slides/chutes are not new, and not even specific to CRPGs; these concepts have been part of mazing since forever ago and it's a whole... thing. "A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools. A labyrinth is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. Walking the labyrinth can be considered an initiation in which one awakens"

- Ellie Crystal (crystallinks.com)
Backtracking
The process of retracing your path in a maze. This happens when you reach a dead end and have to turn around, or if you have followed a passage that leads you back to an area of the maze you have already traversed.

Bastion
The raised pathway or divider on a turf maze.

Best-Solution (or Shortest Path)
The shortest physical route through a maze (i.e. the quickest solution if one is walking). Some mazes have more than one best solution (i.e. two or more solutions that are equally short), although this is very rare.

Blind Alley (similar to Cul-de-sac, Trap)
In general, these are various looping passageways or collections of passageways that, once entered, must be exited by backtracking along the original path that you came in on. Some mazes have very large areas, within which one can wander aimlessly, that must be backtracked out of to solve the maze.

Bottleneck
A passage connecting one area of a maze to another, and that must be traversed in order to solve the maze. Every solution to the maze must go through the bottleneck.

Chartres-type (or Medieval, Christian) Labyrinth
A circular labyrinth with a distinctive 11-circuit pattern, common to Christian churches and cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Named after the stone labyrinth on the floor of Chartres cathedral in France.

Classical (or Cretan) Labyrinth
A 7-circuit circular labyrinth, the oldest labyrinth symbol known and common to many cultures in the ancient world. Named after its use on coins from the Minoan palace at Knossos on Crete (site of the labyrinth in Greek mythology).

Cornfield (or Maize) Maze
A temporary outdoor maze puzzle created out of a cornfield, designed to be walked as a family or tourist attraction.

Cross, Corners, and Dots
A simple seed pattern of lines and dots that allows for the easy creation of a Classical Labyrinth.

Daedalus
In Greek mythology, Daedalus (whose name means "cunning worker") was a skillful craftsman and artisan. He was the creator of the Labyrinth on Crete, which was designed as a prison to contain the Minotaur.

Dead End
A passageway that leads nowhere and that has no branches or junctions. Once you discover you are in a dead end, turn around.

End (or Goal, Exit)
The end point of a maze, usually indicated by "E" in printed puzzles. In unicursal mazes (mazes with a single path, commonly called labyrinths) the end is often in the center.

Hedge maze
An outdoor maze constructed from planted hedges that are too tall to see over. Similar (but much longer lasting and smaller) to a Cornfield Maze.

Julian's Bower
A traditional English name for a turf maze.

Junction (or fork, decision point, node)
An area in a maze where three or more passageways meet, forcing the maze solver to choose between at least two alternate routes going forward. Well designed junctions utilize psychology to mislead maze solvers down incorrect passageways. For example, maze solvers tend not to take passageways that appear to go back in a direction they just came from. Making such passageways the route to the solution results in a more difficult maze.

Labyrinth
Commonly used today to refer to a unicursal (single-path) maze design. In the ancient world, however, the labyrinth was more akin to our modern understanding of a maze puzzle, with many confusing paths and dead ends. From the Greek labrys, a sacred double-axe symbol of pagan religion.

Maze
A maze is an intricate, usually confusing network of interconnecting pathways, the solution of which is an uninterrupted path from a starting point to a goal. Most mazes have a single starting point and a single end point (though this is not required). Mazes can be printed on paper, constructed in the real world (hedge mazes or cornfield mazes, for example), or even exist within the confines of a virtual world (in a computer game, an interactive maze on a website, etc.).

Maze generation algorithm
An automated method for the quick creation of computer-generated mazes. There are many varieties (graph-theory, recursive division, cellular automata etc.).

Minotaur
A mythical beast, half-man and half bull, that was imprisoned in the labyrinth of Knossos by King Minos of Crete.

Outer Wall (or Boundary)
The wall or barrier forming the outermost perimeter of a maze. Everything outside the outer wall is not a part of the maze puzzle.

Passageway
A path upon which one is constrained while solving a maze. Passageways are bordered by walls, and force the maze solver to either go forward or backward along the passageway. Large open spaces in a maze (such as a room) are technically passageways if they contain exactly two entrance/exit points.


Pavement labyrinth
A labyrinth composed of stones, mosaics, or tiles laid on a floor or outdoors.

Picture maze
A maze whose solution-path forms a picture or some other identifiable symbol when solved.

Spiral
A single passageway that spirals into itself and leads to a dead end at the center of the spiral.

Start (or Entrance, Beginning)
The entrance or starting point for a maze, usually indicated with an "S." Some mazes have more than one starting point, although this is rare. In outdoor mazes visitors are forced to begin at the start. This is not so with printed maze puzzles, where a common maze-solving technique (when stuck) is to begin at the End and try to work backwards to the Start. Theseus didn't have this option.

Stone (or Boulder) Labyrinth
A labyrinth in which the pathways are defined by lines of stones, pebbles, or small boulders that are placed on both sides of the pathway. Commonly, stone labyrinths are variants of the basic 7-circuit design.

Theseus
In Greek legend, the hero who killed the Minotaur, a fearsome half-man and half-bull beast imprisoned within a labyrinth on the island of Crete. He succeeded in this with the help of Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete, who fell in love with him. On the advice of Daedalus, she gave him a ball of thread, which he used to find his way back out of the labyrinth. Theseus was also the founder-king of Athens, and was credited with the conquest of the Amazons, whose queen he married.

Turf Maze
A turf maze is most commonly a unicursal labyrinth (single path), with the paths defined by cutting or trimming the turf. It is designed to be walked upon, and the end goal is usually in its center.

Vortex
Three or more passageways that spiral into each other, to a central junction, where one must then choose a passageway leading back out. Vortices are disorienting because it is difficult to predict in what direction a passageway leading out will ultimately lead. Multiple vortices linked together can be particularly confusing to navigate.

(The above, "Vortex", this is a cornerstone of classic CRPG dungeon crawling mazes. Things like revolving floor tiles and holes in the floor are a natural extension).


- Christopher Berg (amazeingart.com)
- A maze is not a labyrinth -
Labyrinths and mazes have often been confused. When most people hear of a labyrinth they think of a maze. A labyrinth is not a maze.

A maze is like a puzzle to be solved. It has twists, turns, and blind alleys. It is a left brain task that requires logical, sequential, analytical activity to find the correct path into the maze and out.

A labyrinth has only one path. It is unicursal. The way in is the way out. There are no blind alleys. The path leads you on a circuitous path to the center and out again.

A labyrinth is a right brain task. It involves intuition, creativity, and imagery. With a maze many choices must be made and an active mind is needed to solve the problem of finding the center. With a labyrinth there is only one choice to be made.

At its most basic level the labyrinth is a metaphor for the journey to the center of your deepest self and back out into the world with a broadened understanding of who you are. - Daniel Johnston (lessons4living.com)
Some brief bullet points that sum up the most general types of mazes:
Arrow Maze
A type of logic maze containing some passages that may only be followed in one direction (denoted by the arrows). The arrow maze is something called a "directed graph" in mathematical terms, and it is the fundamental type of maze to which almost every other maze type can be reduced (with enough exotic transformations).

Block maze
A maze that cannot be solved without clearing the maze pathways of moveable blocks. When well-designed even very small block mazes can be complex to solve.

Logic maze
A maze that must be navigated by adhering to logical rules in addition to following its passages. Examples might include a maze containing different colored symbols that must be passed in a certain order, or a maze that has some passages that may only be followed in one direction (an arrow maze).

Multicursal maze
A maze with at least one junction (or node), and thus having more than one path.

Multiply-connected maze
A multiply-connected maze contains one or more passages that loop back into other passages, rather than leading to dead ends. A well-designed multiply-connected maze is more difficult to solve than a simply-connected maze, for users will spend a great deal of time simply going around in circles. The extreme multiply-connected maze has no dead ends at all, and is called a "Braid maze."

Number Maze
Any maze that uses numbers (or letters, symbols, etc.) by which the maze solver can jump to other areas in the maze by following the numbers, avoiding the usual walls. For example, a number maze with the letter "A" in two places would allow you to jump from one "A" to the other. Because of these jump connections, such mazes are partial weave mazes.

Planair maze
A mind-bending maze whose underlying topology is unusual (non-Euclidean) and which has edges that connect with one another. For example, mazes covering the surface of a torus or a Moebius strip would be planair mazes.

Simply-connected maze
Simply-connected mazes have pathways that never re-connect with one another, so every path you choose either leads to additional paths (a fork) or to a dead end. There is only one solution to a simply-connected maze, and it can always be found by following the "left hand rule "—simply walk forward, keeping your left hand on the wall at all times.

Weave maze
A weave maze has pathways that go under and over each other. Though often drawn on paper, it in fact exists in more than two dimensions and can easily foil some common maze-solving tricks and techniques. An outdoor maze that has bridges or tunnels is a partial weave maze.

Unicursal maze
A maze with a single path (commonly called a labyrinth).

Most modern maze makers create either multiply-connected, weave or logic mazes. Many mazes are a combination of types. For example, quite a few outdoor mazes are multiply-connected weave mazes, because they have passages that connect back and forth as well as passages that go over or under other passages (via bridges, tunnels, etc.). Computer-generated mazes can be of any type, but the printable kind are usually simply-connected mazes.

- Christopher Berg (amazeingart.com)
freemasonry-053-the-song-of-the-labyrinth-2-638.jpg

dedalo-reims_construcors_XVIII.jpg

Horizontally_Influenced_Depth-First_Search_Generated_Maze.png


The last one is from a random blog about architecture I found a while ago while trying to read on mazing when I was using the Wizardry Construction Kit. I believe that what you are hesitant about concerning dungeon crawler maps has more to do with how the maze is designed and less to do with whether there is an explicit intention from the developers to trick the player. I can't think of a single dungeon crawler I've ever played where a maze wasn't made to be conquered by the player, as making it anything other than that is simply ludicrous.

Obviously the developers/designers can indeed fail the player by making bad mazes that do not follow the principles of maze-making and maze architecture. Randomly throwing bottomless pits without rhyme or reason or forcing the player to navigate an area filled with tedious and obtuse "one way" devices is not only bad design, but it is the laziest type as it reduces the dungeon floor to a simple kid's exercise of trial and error.

There are examples, like in Wiz 4, where the designers begin the game with an unbelievably obtuse puzzle: without giving the player any information whatsoever they spawn the player in a locked room and expect the player to figure out how to exit the room without any clues and without anything inside the room to provide guidance; instead they explicitly made the room like that so that only Wizardry veterans could possibly guess at what they were supposed to do due to a working knowledge of the enemy types and the spell systems... however, this was an unbelievably bad call on the team's side and if this is the type of thing you think represent a "navigational" puzzle then I completely understand).

A good dungeon crawler maze/area should utilize aspects of traditional labyrinth design in addition to following the fundamental principles of maze making.

There are, however, things that are good for spicing up the players journey through a dungeon floor, such as Wiz Empire 2's usage of 1 or 2 "wall-bombs" inside a dark zone. It made for one of my most memorable dungeon experiences I've had In a long while and it was shocking and exciting and the reason it managed to remain something good was simple: they didn't "spam" the game with things like that.

It was a one off thing and it was there to escalate the player's journey as that happens in the 2nd maze. In the 1st maze there are dark zones but they are simple to navigate and hold no surprises, and then in the 2nd maze they included that surprise for the player in the 1st floor's dark zone, the wall-bombs. They didn't continue using the wall-bombs and they only appear in the game in that area, but their purpose was simply to allow the player to experience consecutively more hazardous areas placed within already-established devices, like the dark zone.

However if that was the only thing the dungeon had for the player, i.e. dark zones and wall-bombs for no reason, then I completely agree it would be a terribly badly designed dungeon crawler maze as it would have no purpose and no message for the player other than to provide tedium. It's a very fine line when it comes to balancing the challenge curve of a dungeon crawler as there must exist escalation but in an organic and intelligent fashion.

There must be a combination of:

- Left and right brain derived obstacles/challenges for the player.
- A solid maze design.
- Labyrinthine trappings.
- Everything must revolve completely around the game's fundamental mechanics, be they resource management (spells, hit points, items) or puzzles.
- There must be a resistance to leaning on already-established concepts.
- There must be escalation of every facet: the maze design, the challenges to spatial navigation, and the opportunities to disengage from the previous two things mentioned and engage in puzzle-solving that does not overlap with exploration.

It's much easier to make a simple, average maze than it is to make a bad maze, IMO. Bad mazes come from laziness, perhaps apathy and probably from lack of knowledge in how to do a dungeon crawler area. One need only look at the recent StarCrawlers to see how a dungeon crawler lives or dies (in their case: dies) on the strength of the maze exploration: the extremely basic areas in that game are not "bad", they are something worse which is simple and so easy to play through and solve that they are little more than hallways connected to rooms in repeating patterns.

(And it doesn't help that StarCrawlers utilizes random generation for non-story missions/dungeons, and they are woeful indeed).

Paper Sorcerer, I believe, is probably the best dungeon crawler in straddling the fine line between making a game around dungeons (and thus mazes) but keeping each floor of the game's tower relatively simple to navigate with rarely any spots that will stump the player... but without becoming boring. It's quite a feat, actually.

And yes, I also don't know why I even bothered making this post.

"To those able to see its pattern the ancient labyrinth also reveals its order and artistry. It was a place of planned chaos where" - some pre-Christ fuckward who used to build mazes for peeps. I forgot his name but he's credited (in legend) with the advent of the mutha-fucking VORTEX baby.
 
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aweigh

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WIZARDRY 4 IS ONE OF THE MOST INNOVATIVE RPG'S EVER MADE BECAUSE:

Wiz 4 is inarguably the most geniusly designed Wizardry game of all time and its maps (which are 20x20...) are without a doubt the very best designed maps a player will find in any of these types of games.

Wiz 4 is an RPG where the only controllable character, Werdna, is unable to utilize or equip the majority of all of the items present in the game thus subverting in a very pat way the through-line concerning Wizardry's exemplary looting systems and tiers. Wiz 4 chucked that away completely, and it went all the way balls to the wall by then making your party computer-controlled and deliberately "scarce" in variety or availability, forcing the player to make do with what is at hand.

Furthermore Wiz 4 then went ahead and chucked the entire concept of grinding for character advancement by removing the ability for Werdna to benefit from XP, this in turn subverted the underlying roots of war-gaming and conflict resolution systems consisting entirely of a battle encounter; in Wiz 4 the player (Werdna) can only advance a level by successfully completing his current dungeon floor, and with each floor that is cleared Werdna will advance 1 level whose parameters are already strictly defined: once again a deliberate chucking-away of the standard RPG ideology which concerns itself with mixing character advancement with encounter design, and on a seperate tangent it also deliberately did away with random numerical improvements to the attribute system.

Wiz 4 is an RPG that:

- Does not incentivize the player to fight encounters. Ever. Instead it motivates the player to avoid them as the encounter design was shifted towards making the enemies interlocking blocks whose sole purpose is not to wear down Werdna thru attrition, but to force the player to use smarter methods of navigating the dungeon floors. No XP is awarded, and 95% of the loot left behind is unusable by the player and there are no store (well, technically... but it's a secret).

- Does not utilize ANY of the previous design standards that made the earlier 3 Wizardry games instant classics (the same mechanics used still today in all Wiz-clones) and instead took each part of the whole of the Wiz blueprint and brilliantly subverted each one to serve a new and different ideology.

- The player's resources are strictly gated, with spells coming to Werdna only upon each successful dungeon floor ascension, and with the few weapons available for Werdna to use awarded only by having the player solve the game's many, many, many puzzles; puzzles both logic-based and puzzles of "spatial navigation", and obviously, the marriage of both such as the infamous dungeon floor that is covered by invisible floor and wall bombs/mines which is the (correct) route necessary for Werdna to take for the resolution of some non-navigation puzzles.

- (As hinted above) Wiz 4 is one of the very few RPGs that features real fail states, but since Wizardry does not actually ever end, and since Werdna (and any Wiz character) may die, that is never the end of the game; however in Wiz 4 the designers made sure to include several incorrect routes, puzzle-solutions (BUT no unwinnable encounters, mind you), becase...

- As has been pointed out in this thread a Wizardry game is not long in the sense that if the player already knows where to go and what to do, one can fly thru dungeon floors and finish a Wiz scenario in a day (give or take); thus in Wiz 4 there is an example of "story state manipulation" as there are multiple endings and myriad routes and plenty of wrong answers to optional puzzles and other such wonderful things.

It's not a perfect game, obviously. The designers went overboard with making the game a true challenge for the experienced veteran player, and in the first releases of Wiz 4 the fact that Trebor's Ghost (Trebor is the Mad King from Wizardry 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the guy who imprisons Werdna in the bottom of the game's dungeon)--

--the fact that Trebor's Ghost moved in real time and was always, without stopping, making a beeline for Werdna's location regardless of floor location + the fact that Trebor's Ghost kills Werdna instantly if he manages to reach Werdna's occupied tile... well, that shit is fucking crazy.

In later releases (such as the 2nd DOS release, and all others, etc) they made Trebor's Ghost move only when Werdna takes a step. PHEW. Still, Werdna is never safe!

EDIT: Hell, in the original release they even implemented a limit to the amount of times the player can press the keys on their keyboard! In the original Apple release (again, this shit was also taken out in all later releases) if the player exceeded some arbitrary amount of keystrokes (google it, i can't be bothered but it's somewhere around 500 thousand) then Trebor's Ghost immediately kills Werdna.

kekekeke, indeed!

What cements Wiz 4's place in legend and heraldic honor immemorial is that, since they knew they were subverting everything Wizardry stood for (and most RPGs in general as well); the Wiz 4 designers (i.e. Woodhead and Greenberg) made DAMN FUCKING SURE to make Wiz 4 the absolute pinnacle of MAP DESIGN.

The way the puzzles, the encounters, the navigation, the mazes, the mazing all seamlessly dovetail into each other to provide the player with arguably the epitome of exploration-based interactivity in any RPG! It is only Werdna's relentless pursuit of freedom through each artistically designed maze in order to attain revenge (or freemdom, depending on your ending) that the blistering force of the auteur's hand presents itself in an undeniable capacity making it an RPG that surpasses all standard RPG conventions and that probably will never be topped.

The brilliance of playing thru a map like "The Ziggurat" in Wiz 4, or the mind-blowing experience one can attain when doing Wiz 4's "true ending" playthrough, which literally ends with the game breaking the 4th wall and taking the player along for a kabbalistic ride to the tree of life and beyond... all the way to under a tree, a tree whose shade makes the game's protagonist ponder what the meaning of playing a game like this means in both in-game conception and also the pondering of man and the divine.
 
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aweigh

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Dorateen

I dunno man, did the Dark Savant ever say something as cool as DIS SHEET:

I was entertaining a Vampire Lord and several of his leigemen, when the door to my study was kicked open and in burst
a wild-eyed team of adventurers bent on my destruction. I was too far away from the
amulet to reach it in time, and my pentagram for summoning monster allies was on
the other side of the room.

I quickly gathered up my energy and began to cast the awesome Tiltowait spell, while my guests rushed forward to my defense. Just as I
unleased that hellish fireball, I saw the Vampire Lord dissolved

What I got was a blast of raw energy that almost vaporized me on the spot. It was a good thing that I had been working behind a shield. The ground beneath the Castle was melted, churned, and twisted out like pulled taffy.
When everything cooled, I indeed had my ten level underground fortress maze, although it was much wilder than I had envisioned. That was good, for the backlash of that awesome force had completely obliterated my tower!

More than somewhat shaken, I Malored down to my new abode. I had barely tapped whatever lay within the amulet, yet it had almost destroyed me. I vowed never to invoke it again until I could discover how to channel its power.

- Werdna, Wiz 4 manual
 
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aweigh

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sorry but compared to Savant's mustache twirling, reading Werdna owning fools left and right with his awesome Tiltowait is just fucking priceless.

BTW, that's a small part of the written fanfic, er i mean prologue to Wiz 4 found in the game's manual.

EDIT: ...he fuckined uses Malor as a verb. He is truly the Krishna Goku son Rama of Wizardry, he's on the level where he don't just go somewhere. He casually says, "aight I'll malor by the store later". :D
 

Dorateen

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sorry but compared to Savant's mustache twirling, reading Werdna owning fools left and right with his awesome Tiltowait is just fucking priceless.

BTW, that's a small part of the written fanfic, er i mean prologue to Wiz 4 found in the game's manual.

EDIT: ...he fuckined uses Malor as a verb. He is truly the Krishna Goku son Rama of Wizardry, he's on the level where he don't just go somewhere. He casually says, "aight I'll malor by the store later". :D

Dark Savant had a Power Glove.

Werdna was an overrated wizard with a name that's not even an anagram, but the developer's own name spelled backward. The Savant left the party in a cliffhanger ending, which took ten years to meet up again and resolve the confrontation.
 
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aweigh

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i suppose it all comes down to whether or not sending the party off into space forever banished from even their cosmic terrain is more bad-ass than effecting the most agonizingly arduous escape from a 10 floor dungeon, starting without power and at the bottom only to reach the very top of the castle above the dungeon... and then go on to experience a trascendance of which dumps Werdna into the position of being the arbiter for humanity while talking to Kodorto, the highest god of Wizardry (reigns over all life and death, created human life, etc) and then out-smarting the would-be God into revealing that all is but dust in the air and that he is no more a god than werdna is a man, etc, etc, + a ton of kabbalistic shit thrown in for good measure.

Werdna goes on to not only "slay" the gods of Wizardry, but he goes further still (in the true ending) and dismantles the founding concepts behind religion and belief and how they pertain to a man's spiritual grace or if they do not pertain at all!

to top it off, werdna ends everything after that encounter w/ ze god(s) by sitting under a tree and philosophizing over whether or not he is alive at that moment or if his entire life was a dream: this obviously being an appropriaation of CHAUNG TZE's famouse philosophical food-for-thought concerning what constitutes reality, i.e. he's the chink who said that he dreamt he was a butterfly and then woke up and no longer was certain if he had dreamt he was the butterfly or if he has always been a butterfly dreaming of being a man.

might sound pat now in 2017 but chuang tze laid down that truth-nuke about 600 years before Christ.

EDIT: still, a pimp glove goes a looong way, as wel all know from watching THE WIZARD with fred savage, + permanently banishing the heroes to fuck knows where, few villains ever actually do anything so... effective.
 

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