Dannic, The Prince of Cats

Posted by Dannic on April 3rd, 2005 in Role Playing

What is a text based game?

Well, that is a pretty simple question and can easily be answered.

Many of us started out playing those cool games on their IBM XT computer. You know the ones. where you typed in what you wanted to do or chose from a list of options similiar to multiple choice quizzes.

The screen would scroll out the characters describing what you saw. You would have to determine the course of action to take and type it in using a small list of verbs and choosing the nouns in the text before you.

Not exactly roll play at the time but it is what led to the beginnings of Muds. The true first Role Playing games there were.

I remember watching a friend of mine with his 300 baud accoustic modem dial into one such Mud. Talk about exciting at the time. May not sound like much now but it was awesome then. I couldn’t afford a computer or a modem at that time. Both of them put together were close to $3000.

This eventually became more popular as time went on and the technology of the computers and modems increased. By the time I was able to actually start using the internet in the mid 90’s, we had rudimentary browsers. Still mostly text based with some graphics. The popularity of Muds was just increasing.

Most of these muds were trying to emulate Dungeons and Dragons just over a computer. Of course, Dungeons and Dragons was the ultimate Role Playing medium at the time and people wanted more people to play with.

Role Playing at that time was mostly typing in your actions so others could see them and they could react to those actions. Descriptions of where you were and what others looked like were left up to the imagination with a little help from the medium you were connected to.

What was nice about this was that you actually had to read what others were doing and saying. You actually had to read the descriptions of the rooms/areas you were in to find subtle clues as to the things you could do in those places. It left you to imagine just like you would if you were reading a great book.

Then came along great games like Ultima and Castle Wolfenstien. These were all graphical games. You moved an icon around the screen trying to solve a quest. It was the graphical answer to Dungeons and Dragons.

Unfortunately, TSR didn’t get into this game until they were already well behind the leaders of the industry. It was too late by then. But that is another story altogether.

The Online Role Playing Game was born when Everquest arrived. It was the first truly successful graphical role playing game. There was still plenty to be left to the imagination but it was more in lines with the first player graphical games prior to it.

You were actually able to see what you were doing. Now the only really imagination required was immersing yourself into a character you created and developed.

Graphical games are great. Don’t get me wrong. I like watching the imagination of others come to life in front of me when I play but there is something about a text based game which is just as addictive as that flashy, and cool, graphical game.

Reading skills are improved and used quite extensively. Many people will take the time to point out your misspellings. Or you may have a chance to play something totally off the wall. All of these are much harder to accomplish using a game such as Everquest.

One of the first text based games I played when I got my first computer is called Legend of the Red Dragon. It is an old BBS Door game. I loved it so much that I actually purchased a license to run it on my BBS, Cyber Central. Another was called Tradewars.

Today there are some browser based games which are equivalent to those two and are still quite text based. One is called Legend of the Green Dragon. It is similiar to it and has the same basic concept but that’s about where it stops since each server can fully customize the game to their liking. It is still very text based as well. Almost a Mud or BBS flavor to it if you like.

Another is called Black Nova Traders. It is similiar to Tradewars. But only slightly. A derviation of it called The Kabal Invasion brings it closer. This is also still quite text based.

The graphical games are great. But I don’t think that they will completely kill the text based games. There is just something about those text based games which will continue to draw players. It may be the fact that they are actually text based. This leaves more to the players imagination rather than the coders imagination. I know this appeals to me so I’m sure it still appeals to others as well.