Thanks so much for your help Dark. You are a true guru, and not a grue!!!
Keith
----- Original Message -----
From: "dark" <d...@xgam.org>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 4:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Any sword and sorcery games for the blind?
Hi Kieth.
Wow what a question! and probably one that requires a long answer. Asking
whether there are any sword and sorcerery themed games is a little like
asking whether there are any games that use guns :d.
firstly, I suggest you go to http://audiogames.net/dbindex.php and search
the audiogmaes.net by the genre catagory of rpgs (you might also want to
look under adventure games and gamebooks too), that's probably the best
way to get an overview.
Broardly speaking, there are four types of games that might fit the bill.
1: Audio rpgs, ie, role playing games that just use sound as interface.
There aren't many of these, but what there is is pretty good. The two best
in that genre are entombed, a full scale tactical turn based combat audio
roguelike dungeon hack with many random elements and literally hours of
playing even in the demo, see the entombed page on the audiogames.net
database for more details, and Airik the clerric, a more action rpg title
sort of like an audio version of Zelda, with lots of exploring and an on
going plot (though note you'll neeed windows 7 for that one).
There is also Sarah and the castle of witchcraft and wizardry. Though
strictly an adventure game more than an rpg, it is set in the harry potter
universe, is a full first person audio adventure, with many puzzles, magic
artifacts, and great stounds. If you like Harry potter you should try
that.
Lastly, there id castaways. Though strictly speaking a stratogy game more
than rpg, it does have much more of plot and mission structure than most
other stratogy games, involving controlling a small number of units in
more detail rather than controlling many hundreds of units.
For instance, the first mission involves being shipwrecked on a shore and
having to build a village, farms and sustain your population in order to
create soldiers and knights to fight back the hoards of attacking goblins,
and eventually build and stock a ship to hopefully sale back from where
you have come.
Further rpg games, such as another installment of the airik the clerric
may well be in the works too.
2: Muds.
These are similar to interactive fiction, accept that everything in them,
all events are real time sent from the mud server to your computer. So
you'll get into combat, and combat rounds will happen whether or not you
attack a monster, but typing in commands will let you do things like use
special attacks, cast spells etc.
Like interactive fiction you wander through rooms and areas, but many muds
do more than just offer puzzles. You can craft items, go on quests that
might involve killing monsters or talking to npcs, join together with
other players to form a party or fight against them.
all you need is a mud client to connect to the mud, such as vipmud from
www.gmagames.com.
Another point about muds however is that some muds can have sound and
audio, this is accomplished by creating a special script where your client
will play sounds when certain events in the mud happen. .
Alteraeon, a game we've been discussing on list recently, and imho one of
the best and probably most accessible muds ever, has a special sound pack
created by Oriol gomez that has so many sounds, keys to do one thing
instead of typing commands, helpful options and such that it virtually
turns alteraeon from a text game into an audio rpg. See the audiogames.net
db page for alteraeon for more details.
3:Brouser rpgs.
These are text games played in your web brouser, and are played online
against many other people. Rather than typing commands interactive fiction
style, you click on links to make stuff happen. So there could be a
description of your location and a link called "attack monster"
Most brouser rpgs have strong competative elements, many players online,
but also quests and other things to do as well. I'd personally recommend
the game's warriors 2, Sryth, Monster breeder (though that one hasn't been
pdated in a while), metroplexities and the comedy games Twilight heroes
and Kingdom of Loathing.
See the audiogames.net db for more information.
Another catagory of games that you can play online are gamebooks. These
are superficially similar to brouser rpgs, but you don't have other
players, just linked sets of html pages that run together to create a
story your charaacter progresses through based on your own choices and
sometimes dice rolls.
Occasionally you have to fill out your own character sheet and roll your
own dice for these, but for especially good gamebooks such as the
chronicles of arborell or the Project Aon lone wolf series (nothing to do
with the submarine game), it is worth it.
Combat and choices that involve death abound, and of course you clicking
links to choose what happens not typing commands , so though technically
gamebooks are fiction you can interact with, they are not interactive
fiction in the strict sense.
5: If style text rpgs.
there are actually some games, ---- even some written in if languages,
which, though using a similar interface to interactive fiction like Zork,
have full combat mechanics, learnable skills, lots of exploring etc.
though many of these are old dos programs like fallthru or westfront, they
can be great fun if done properly, indeed I've been beta testing a new
example of such a program myself, Eamon deluxe which is an entire
adventure system with over 200 adventures in it all with combat, treasure
etc.
Even if you can't run old dos style programs though, there are some games
like this written in the if languages, like the tads games idols of war
and magocracy, the glulks game Kirkircroup, or the zcode game wumpas 2000.
I think that is a sufficiently good overview. As I said, for more
information see the db at www.audiogames.net, or the fantastic games like
at www.pcsgames.net.
Hth!
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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