Roguelikes for beginners
NexusSix
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Disclaimer: I have zero experience with Roguelikes and I haven't done any PC gaming since the late 90s. On a scale of 1 to 100, my current PC skills are probably... 5. But I did spend well over 15 years playing P&P/tabletop RPGs, mainly as a Dungeon Master, so I know the background and basics. So, yeah, I'm mostly coming from a complete n00b angle with all of this.
Any who...
I was reading through the Incursion thread and found it really interesting. I love my console gaming, but I'm always pining for the good old days of tossing some d20s and digging through the DMs Guide looking for obscure rules and references. It's just that... I don't have the time for D&D these days and a console allows me to sit down for quick, no-fuss no-muss gaming.
The idea of foresaking graphics in order to come up with some deep RPG gameplay is something I find very appealing, but I'm not sure where to start. I checked the Wiki page on Roguelikes to get a general idea of what they are and how they work, and it sounds like it would be a nice change of pace from my 360 graphics whore gaming.
So what would y'all recommend? Here's what I'm looking for:
* I pulled up the ToME site, and it looked interesting--I'm a Tolkien fan and just finished up The Children of Hurin, so trying to hunt down and destroy Morgoth sounds cool. But I know that doesn't necessarily mean ToME is a good one to start with.
* I like hack-n-slash as much as the next guy, but a straight-up dungeon crawler isn't something I find appealing. Yeah, combat is fun and all, but I'd really like to find something that offers a good story. I prefer a world where I can get into some history, mythology and a good plot--and those things are what drive me to explore the dungeons. I love exploring towns, interacting with NPCs, wilderness hikes, and twisting plotlines and intrigue--most of the time, I have more fun with that stuff than dungeon crawling. Any recommendations on this?
* Are there any fees, or are all Roguelikes free?
* I was pretty good with messing around with PCs back in the early/mid 90s to optimize my games, but these days I don't really know that much. Do you have to fuss around with DLing updates, running debugs, or mess around with anything else? I'm looking for something simple--click and play. I love complex rules for the gameplay itself, but having to mess around with PCs is a drag for me.
Let's get us some edumacation on Roguelikes--have at it with recommendations, suggestions, or just some kewl Rogulikes stories.
Any who...
I was reading through the Incursion thread and found it really interesting. I love my console gaming, but I'm always pining for the good old days of tossing some d20s and digging through the DMs Guide looking for obscure rules and references. It's just that... I don't have the time for D&D these days and a console allows me to sit down for quick, no-fuss no-muss gaming.
The idea of foresaking graphics in order to come up with some deep RPG gameplay is something I find very appealing, but I'm not sure where to start. I checked the Wiki page on Roguelikes to get a general idea of what they are and how they work, and it sounds like it would be a nice change of pace from my 360 graphics whore gaming.
So what would y'all recommend? Here's what I'm looking for:
* I pulled up the ToME site, and it looked interesting--I'm a Tolkien fan and just finished up The Children of Hurin, so trying to hunt down and destroy Morgoth sounds cool. But I know that doesn't necessarily mean ToME is a good one to start with.
* I like hack-n-slash as much as the next guy, but a straight-up dungeon crawler isn't something I find appealing. Yeah, combat is fun and all, but I'd really like to find something that offers a good story. I prefer a world where I can get into some history, mythology and a good plot--and those things are what drive me to explore the dungeons. I love exploring towns, interacting with NPCs, wilderness hikes, and twisting plotlines and intrigue--most of the time, I have more fun with that stuff than dungeon crawling. Any recommendations on this?
* Are there any fees, or are all Roguelikes free?
* I was pretty good with messing around with PCs back in the early/mid 90s to optimize my games, but these days I don't really know that much. Do you have to fuss around with DLing updates, running debugs, or mess around with anything else? I'm looking for something simple--click and play. I love complex rules for the gameplay itself, but having to mess around with PCs is a drag for me.
Let's get us some edumacation on Roguelikes--have at it with recommendations, suggestions, or just some kewl Rogulikes stories.
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NexusSix on
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Aruzre Dreams, Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon, Chocobo's Dungeon, Izuna. They're good for beginners to the genre.
Not really my cup of tea, but thanks.
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Oh, also, I can't think of any Rougelike that has these sorts of things. Most rougelkes are dungeon crawls for the sake of dungeon crawls.
Have you considered MUDing?
Completely Windows-based, using a mouse for equipment management and such. Icon graphics so you don't have to dive into undecipherable ASCII. A save and load anywhere system which makes it a very easy introduction before you play the standard "one life to live" games.
It actually has a semblance of a story too, with periodic events pertaining to your character.
That sounds like it could be up my alley. Have you played any? I'll look into Castle of the Winds too. Thanks.
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I just recently started to get back into it. Checkout Achaea and Lusternia. Achaea is older than dirt, and as such most of the history has already been written. People have described it as being in the "happily ever after" mode. I tried it first, but the other day tried Lusternia and I think it's *way* more interesting. Be warned though, you're expected to be in character at almost all times. Also, you wouldn't just be learning the MUD, you'd also have to learn a MUD client (like zMUD). It might be a bit more of an undertaking than what you're looking for.
Edit: Achaea and Lusternia have their own mud client that you can use first (so you don't need zMud). Just click the Play Now button.
If you want another pc roguelike, Ragnarok is pretty fun (not to be confused with the korean MMO). It has 6 quests revolving around retrieving things for the gods so they can 'win' Ragnarok. Lots of different areas to explore and ways to die, even at your most powerful. My favorite being accidently transforming into a fire giant and getting choked to death by my gorget. It's probably the next step up in difficulty from Castle of the Winds, which I will third as a great beginner RL.
irc.freenode.org:#nethack; telnet nethack.alt.org
irc.freenode.org:##crawl; telnet crawl.akrasiac.org
Crawl is my favorite roguelike by a long shot, but it is by far the most difficult roguelike I know in the early game. The infant mortality rate (death before level 3) is close to 100% at first, and can be over half even for experienced players.
Google is down to me right now, so I cant provide you a link, but it should be easy to find and download.
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Some of my best gaming memories come from a MUD I played pretty heavily. Join a guild as a monk, had to do training to earn belts, real emotional highs and lows, it was a blast! Even fishing was fun! I couldn't believe how connected I felt to the guild and my character. I recall getting very upset for failing a belt test and getting myself sloshed. I worked my way down an alley into a darker corner and drank. The whole guild(were talkin like 10 people, nothing huge) came out looking for me. It was pretty cool feeling.
http://www.achaea.com/main.html
There wasn't much of a story I was aware of, mostly RPing.
http://www.zincland.com/7drl/liveonce/
Written in 7 days, may not be a RPG, completable within a day or two. Very good.
Edit: Also, ToME does have a bit more story than most roguelikes, but that's not saying much. Really, if you're looking into roguelikes for story, prepare to be disappointed a lot.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/frozend/
Few commands, straight forward gameplay. It even has something unique to bring to the table: heat. You can die from being too cold, so it's important to wear warm clothing and find other ways to avoid becoming a block of ice.
If the lack of graphics phases you a bit, you might try Iter Vehemens Ad Necem ("The Violent Road to Death"). It's not easy, it's actually quite difficult, but having a graphical interface makes things so much easier.
Tome is probably the best of the "vanilla" roguelikes. It;s very straightforward dungeon crawls with a Tolkien setting but not much story. It lacks the zaniness of more complicated roguelikes like Nethack and ADOM but also is more predictable and less likely to kill you in a retarded fashion. My biggest gripe about i is there's not not much variation between races and classes. Also it's extremely long compared to something like Nethack where you can finish the game in a few sittings
SAngband works kinda like that, though a couple of skills are kinda vague.
SAngband + ZAngband's overworld = my ideal roguelike. Barring a complete Dwarf Fortress, that is.
EDIT: wait, not SAngband, that's the crafting one. Shit, can't remember the name of it now...
IVAN works kind of like that, for example carrying lots of stuff will slowly raise your strength, running a lot will help your vitality, etc. You can also modify your arms and legs through various means to get your strength up to very high levels.
Too bad it's not very good as a game, mostly it's just torture.
You could play Morrowind, with the difficulty cranked up.
Gosh, I'm smart.
Easy is a bit of an overstatement for zangband. It's likely going to be a death fest for a new player, which is par for the course on roguelikes. Death magic is pretty imbalanced in late game though, if you can get there in the first place.
I meant easy to grok.
No roguelike should ever be easy.
I saw the DF thread in here and glanced over it a bit. Isn't it more of an RPG/RTS/Godgame hybrid? That would be cool with me.
So many options... I'll probably do a bit of research on all of the suggestions over the next weekend or two and try out of of them--I wish I had little more time to dig into all of this. Thanks for all the info, everybody.
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It has a Roguelike mode as well. The Fortress mode is pretty hard to get into if you aren't familiar with ASCII DOS interfaces -- I spent about an hour squinting at my screen, trying to figure out what was going on and arguing with the controls before giving up. I plan to try again later.
This is Crawl, basically. Your race determines your intrinsic aptitude for the various skills and your rates of ability score increase as you gain levels; the only effect of the character class you choose is to determine your starting equipment and starting skill point allocation. Your character's skill growth after that is entirely determined by what you do: you gain XP for killing monsters, and if you have unspent XP, performing an action related to a skill may spend some of it to increase that skill. Whacking something with an axe trains Fighting and Axes, getting swung at trains Dodging (if you have light armor) or Armour (if you have heavy armor), casting a fireball trains Spellcasting, Conjurations, and Fire Magic, ...
To provide more detail, when you first start to play the game creates a large randomly generated world, complete with caves and towns and such. In Adventurer mode, you get to poke around in that world, and if you've made any fortresses in Fortress mode, they will still be where you left them, abandoned and filled with monsters.
One of the more interesting aspects of Dwarf Fortress is how combat is handled. There's relatively little abstraction involved with injuries; there are no visible hit points, just color-coded injuries on various parts of bodies. A lot of the time death is the result of slow bleeding from multiple injuries (often with you passing out before hand), though you can also be crushed to a pulp by particularly powerful attack (usually instant death) or be pierced in some critical organ (you usually die in a few turns). Expect to die often, though usually only when death would make sense.
You get to dump a bunch of points into skills when you make a character, but beyond that skill advancement is based on how much you use a skill. There are hidden levels that give you bonuses, but they're just based on how many skill ranks you've gained.
This is hardly a Rogue-Like for a beginner. Hell, it's hard to swallow for those of us who are used to RLs. I'd stay away from DF until you have a decent understanding of Rogue-Like interfaces and commands.
I have to second this statement. DF seems like it's awesome, but I'll probably never know for sure because it's too complicated to me - and I've actually beaten ADOM with a good ending, which is a pretty tough RL. I *want* to love DF because it seems so cool, but it's just so anti-user-friendly
as an aside, I would sorta recommend ADOM. fun gameplay, not much plot though. gets pretty hard. one frustration I'd mention is that it's sort of timed. as the game progresses, your body will get affected by chaotic corruption, which is really hard to reverse, and eventually it will consume you if you take too long... I would like the game better if I had the freedom to take my time, but that admittedly would remove a lot of the challenge...
as for MUDs - you might consider checking out http://www.medievia.com/ - very well-developed MUD, I played it for years. It has some of the good points of MMORPGs without some of the bad points.
Perhaps you're missing a secret passage somewhere? I don't think the game will let a level be uncompletable.