FOR
REAL?
This
month has been the first in which no new strategy or
wargames have found their way to me. I hope that this
is just a post-Christmas thinning out, and that the
forthcoming year will bring a variety of new and interesting
releases for computer owners who prefer to do something
other than blast things with their joysticks.
Perhaps
some people see wargames as blasting things in slow
motion. The moral problem which the very concept of
making a game out of something which involves killing
large numbers of people arises from the confusion between
game and simulation. Because of the limitations of what
can be put into a computer in the first place, no matter
how much memory is available, simulations must always
have elements of gameplay. Sometimes computer wargames
are slanted so heavily towards that gameplay end of
the scale that all simulation is lost sight of, and
quite often the result is a slight enough game anyway.
Simulation
is always a game, anyway, when it's carried out by people
for the enjoyment of it; simulations of car crashes
by seat belt manufacturers and simulations of crimes
by the police wishing to reconstruct an incident are
neither pleasant nor done for fun, but are intended
to provide information of some sort. The kind of things
that people simulate for the sake of doing it vary more
than you might imagine -- when you think about it, the
amateur actor playing Hamlet is simulating a prince
whose father has been murdered by his uncle -- but it's
usually something that they would find interesting to
do in real life, whether it would be pleasant or enjoyable
or not. They hope to recreate something of the real
experience, without any disagreeable or dangerous elements.
The undergraduate actor playing Hamlet may perform for
the enjoyment of playing to an audience, but he may
also be trying to recreate all the emotions of passionate
revenge and indecision which he would hope never to
have to feel himself. The player with a flight simulator
attempts to get some of the tension and joy of flying
and crashing without the danger that would come with
the real experience, which he may not even have any
desire to attempt. And the same principle applies, of
course to the wargamer.
The
most completely non-abstract wargamer has to be the
live battle re-enactor, who goes to the trouble of dressing
up, equipping himself with weapons, encountering the
'enemy' in the flesh, and even interacting within a
society of other people acting out the same simulation
as he is. This is too time and resource-consuming to
be done often, even by the enthusiast. In most instances
simulations start on the table-top, and this is where
abstraction must begin as well. Those gamers who re-enact
battles with lead figures follow statistical rules for
movement and combat, but the rules are still very much
a means to the end of recreating a historical event.
When
we get to board games which use counters, typically
to represent larger units than figures, the rules start
to take over. There is no way that a square cardboard
figure with something that looks like a sealed envelope
and a figure 2 printed on it can be visually equated
to 2000 infantry soldiers of the last 1st Panzer Division.
With gleaming rows of beautifully-painted miniatures,
a degree of literalness can be retained. But with board-based
games, the player needs nets of elaborate rules to enclose
the fluid reality of the distant campaign. Exactly the
same thing happens in role-playing combat systems which
make some attempt to be realistic. Mud, despair, camp
conditions and the charisma of a leader are all equated
with numbers, and added together in various formulae
to attempt to produce an approximation of the original
results.
Although
it's fairly obvious that these approximations must in
the end bear no approximation to reality, the illusion
of simulating reality still motivates the board wargamer.
They will happily take a whole afternoon to go through
one turn, delighting in the complexity of the rules.
The
way in which this differs from what is demanded of necessity
by a computer game I will have to look at in detail
next month, for I seem to have run out of space.
.
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This
is the first review in a series in which I'll take a
look at some past releases which I haven't had the chance
to review in Manoeuvres. SSI have a huge back catalogue
of games which are readily available -- by mail order,
at least, and probably through friendly software shops
-- only a traction of which has ever been covered in
ZZAP! Having finally got hold of some of them, and having
no new releases to review this month, I've decided to
start with one of SSI's fantasy strategy roleplaying
games, The Eternal Dagger.
This,
apparently, is the sequel to The Wizard's Crown,
a game which I have not seen. It is, however, entirely
self-contained -- you can use characters saved from
a previous game of Wizard's Crown, although you
have to leave behind all their goodies, but the story
bears only a tacked-on relation to its prequel and there
are full character generation facilities.
The
player controls a party of adventurers who are native
to the land of Arghan, which he had the task of saving
in the previous game. It comes as no great surprise
to the seasoned hero to learn that it is in desperate
danger yet again, under attack by hoardes of screaming
undead nasties flowing in from the Dungeon Dimension.
The source of these undesirables was unknown to the
Wizard's Fellowship until its leader made contact with
n wizard, Ssur, in the Middle World. The Middle World
is not geographically separate from Arghan; rather,
it appears to be in a slightly different dimension,
and travel there requires adventurers to pass through
a 'gate', leaving behind all weapons and armour and
magic items. Ssur is the last surviving Wizard in the
Middle World. The others have all been defeated by the
Big Bad Evil Necromancer, who is leading an invasion
of unpleasant forces: using the Middle World as a beach-head,
he is planning to move into Arghan. The battle for the
Middle World has not quite been lost as yet -- Ssur
and a few rebels still hold out -- but once it has,
there is no hope for Arghan. Until the next game. The
response of the Arghan Wizard's Fellowship is the obvious
one. Send a few decent skull-splitting chaps into the
Middle World to wander about the landscape in a party,
killing monsters, looting their treasure, finding magic
items in dungeons . . .
Attentive
readers might well conclude that this sounds very much
like Shard of Spring, and indeed every other
computer roleplaying game they have ever encountered.
And so it is, unashamedly. It does not have a readily
apparent quest object, although I suspect that one might
be discovered in the course of adventuring; the general
idea is merely to bump off a few of the nasties and
delay the wholesale invasion of Arghan while the Wizard's
Fellowship builds up its forces. I note with interest
that the SSI catalogue describes Shard of Spring
as 'introductory' and The Eternal Dagger as 'intermediate'.
This seems reasonable, for the game system of The
Etemal Dagger, although it bears a generic resemblance
to that of Shard of Spring, is quite a bit more
complex. There's more of everything; more weapons, more
armour, more combat damage rules, more character types
and more skills.
Unless
you want to use the thoughtfully-provided pre-generated
party, creating a set of characters is the next stage.
The party can contain up to eight, and as usual there
is little advantage in going out with less than the
maximum number. The player has complete control over
the creation of a character, there being no random element
involved. Each has a fairly standard set of characteristics
-- intelligence, strength, dexterity and hit points
-- which are bought up to any level the player desires
from a pool of 58 points. Intelligence is determined
not by point expenditure but by the choice of profession,
and professions must be bought with points from the
pool. It costs 14 points to become a sorcerer, 2 to
become a ranger and intelligence is roughly related
to the cost -- the professions allow a basic, automatic
aptitude in the range of skills associated with them.
It is possible for characters to have more than one
profession -- there's nothing to stop them having all
five -- and it is expected that many will, for the skills
associated with being a thief are essential, but a character
who was nothing but a thief would be very little use
for anything other than picking locks.
As
a final touch, the player can choose a figure to represent
each character from a bank of about thirty in slightly
different poses, wielding different weapons. This reminded
me of choosing lead figures in live roleplaying, and
making desperate efforts of imagination to convince
each other that a nicely-painted half-orc really did
look a bit like a female magic user.
This
character generation sequence is very scientific, slightly
confusing, and seems to me to lack excitement. In a
strange way it's too generous, and through its desire
to allow for the sophistication of multi-profession
characters it loses their individuality. Although blindly
rolling for characteristics is an old-fashioned way
of doing things, most modern live roleplaying systems
retain a prominent random element. Being in total control
of the composition of the character's abilities may
seem sensible, but there's something missing.
The
characters start off in Ssur's tower, where the gate
between Arghan and the Middle World operates. There
they are equipped with their main weapon and -- generously
-- the best kind of armour that they can wear. After
choosing one of the party to be a 'pointman', they can
set off into the hostile environment of Ssur's island.
It has been overrun by the Necromancer, who himself
is hiding on a small island off the northwest coast,
and so is teeming with undead creatures. The booklet
of hints and strategies goes into detail about the environs
and points the way to the first scenario. A large dragon
roaming about part of the island was responsible for
stealing Ssur's secret weapon, the Holy Morning Star,
which ensured that the Necromancer was able to overpower
him. A brand of rebels hiding in the north have a special
dragon-slaying sword, and if the party can make contact
with them they might be able to recover the Holy Morning
Star from the dragon's lair.
A
symbolic representation of the party moves about a landscape
of hills, grass, swamp and plains, while time passes
only with each player move. This aspect of the game
is similar to Shard of Spring. Surprise random
encounters happen too, with wearisome regularity. But
there is a remedy for this; instead of being forced
to act out every encounter in detail, you can choose
between 'quick' and 'tactical' combat. Quick combat
resolves the battle immediately, without going into
any details, and is only to be used when you're certain
that your party can walk over the opposition. It gives
the opposition a much better chance of winning. Tactical
combat plays everything out in detail. However, unless
the party is ambushed you do usually have the option
to attempt to establish friendly relations with any
group encountered. Often it's essential to talk rather
than fight.
Tactical
combat is complex and involved, without really being
involving. Each character has a wide variety of possible
moves to make in his action phase; as well as the obvious
option of attacking a nearby enemy, he can do things
like 'sneak' -- try to hide from the enemy -- and 'stand
on guard'. Some can be combined with physical movement,
but others take up the whole action phase. Naturally,
magic users have access to a battery of offensive magic,
and the kind of tasks that can be performed in battle
by sorcerers vary from straightforward fireballing to
turning the whole party invisible. Priests can pray,
too, to effect instant healing.
When
a character is hit, a description of the wound, its
location on the body and its effect is flashed onto
the screen. A distinction is made between injury and
bleeding, and characters can die from blood loss with
alarming rapidity. It is not easy to tell what state
the opponents are in.
It
was my experience that -- even playing on the easiest
level, and there are five -- as soon as my party set
toot beyond Ssur's tower they were met by large hordes
of monsters who just outclassed them and certainly outnumbered
them. The tactical combat is slow -- it doesn't have
the satisfying simplistic smoothness of the routine
in Shard of Spring -- and the sheer number of
enemies in the wilderness encounters make it seem interminable.
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