We can learn a lot from old Dungeon Crawlers
NOOOOO! Greenleaf!! Oh man, I've been romping back and forth through a pile of amazing Amiga500 dungeon crawlers that I missed out on as a young lad. I never had a gaming computer like many others, I was a console boy. Matter of fact; my first mouse came with the Super NES game- Mario Paint! I was lucky to have what I had growing up, but an entire library of games whizzed over my head for a majority of my life. That is until now! With help from an awesome donation of an Amiga500 from an old friend, (literally he's older than dirt) and help from the Wisconsin Computer Club's Maklarr I have access to an entire collection of awesome games!
Black Crypt (pictured above) has become my recent addiction. It got me thinking too. What is fun about being lost in a maze for countless hours??
Classic role-playing games had very distinct play styles. Some were extremely good at laying out the story in front of you and holding your hand while you adventure through it. While others give you an open world with a brief introduction of a potential story that really, you just need to figure out as you go. And, heck- some games give you basically no story and you just draw up whatever conclusions, conflicts, or reasons behind the maze. I don't know what it is, maybe it's me gettin older, but I'm starting to lean in that direction of just building whatever story the 'ol imagination builds for me!
My early experiences with some of the best RPG's/Dungeon Crawlers was Bard's Tale on NES of all things. It was fairly devoid of story or graphics. So I would take breaks from the game to draw pictures or write micro sized fan fiction stories based on the characters in the parties of the games I would play. I often would be so focused on the games themselves that I would spend time in school drawing and writing rather than paying attention to the lectures and classes!
For instance look at my current party in the Amiga port of Bard's Tale. Boromir, Legolas, Gandalf, and Aragorn from LotR somehow managed to get sucked into Skara Brae along with Conjurer. Now good old Conjurer has been stealing supplies from randomly generated adventurers for a few weeks now on a quest to sell items and stack up enough gold for the best weapons and armor available. Unfortunately THOR 6 has recently died, and we're on our way back to the guild. In my story the dialogue would go something like this:
Gandalf lunges forward. "No, Legolas, the One Ring! I can't hold it..."
Legolas glances around their new surroundings. "Where are we? This can't be Lothlórien."
A dark figure emerges from the shadows. "Welcome, gentlemen. We mustn't dilly or dally. Let us make haste, but first, I will discard of THOR 6."
Aragorn snaps back. "Who are you?! What is this place?!"
"I am the Conjurer. I have assembled you in this world to defeat evil and save the lands!"
"What do you mean discard of Thor... six?"
"Yes, I'm just making a new adventurer for us real quick here. Alright, there we go!"
[THOR 7 HAS JOINED YOUR PARTY!]
Boromir interrupts. "One does not simply create adventurers and discard them like mere playthings!"
"I feel each of you are well equipped for my quest to thwart the vile Mangar the Dark!" The Conjurer nods with a crooked smile.
I think these kinds of daydreams while having an RPG on my mind are what attract me so much to series like Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl and other LitRPGs. The whole concept of a story that reads like a role-playing adventure, where the party somehow stumbles through the plot of the campaign while you just take it in, is such a trip. I hope the writing projects I release over the rest of my life inspire even just a little bit of that same daydreaming in you. You will likely find hints of classic games hidden throughout my work, and I am so excited to finally share these projects with you.
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