Role-Player's Vault
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Role-Player's Vault is a collection of role playing games, written by Samuel Stoddard and hosted on the RinkWorks web site.
As of 2005, the vault has two games available for play:
- Murkon's Refuge, a game where a group of heroes have to descend a labyrinth ten levels deep to defeat the evil archmage Murkon.
- Murkon's Vengeance, a sort-of sequel to Murkon's Refuge, where the player takes the role of Murkon, and has to ascend the labyrinth to the surface, killing parties of heroes along the way.
Both games are Wizardry clones played on the Internet via a web browser. Murkon's Refuge was originally published on RinkWorks in March 2002 and Murkon's Vengeance was published in May 2005.
Contents |
[edit] Technical details
The games run as CGI applications on the RinkWorks HTTP server. All interaction is done via HTTP, with the RinkWorks server containing all the game logic, and the client computer used only for the GUI.
The interface is 100% pure HTML, with HTML form controls used to make the player's choices. No Java, JavaScript or Flash is required or used.
The games automatically save the situation on every step. Thus, when a player feels he/she wants to continue later, he/she doesn't have to do anything special. The game will pick up where it left off when it is started again.
To provide for server failures, the games include support for snapshot files, which contain the current game situation and can be downloaded locally on the user's computer. When the server comes back up, the file can be uploaded back to RinkWorks and the game then continues from there. As of 2005, the server has not crashed once.
[edit] Murkon's Refuge
[edit] History
This is a brief synopsis of the Making of Murkon's Refuge page on RinkWorks.
Murkon's Refuge originally dates back to the 1980s. In his school years, Stoddard was a devoted fan of computer RPGs, and he wrote his first RPG, Swords and Sorcery, in BASIC on an Apple IIe.
Later, in college, Stoddard decided to write a better RPG. In 1993, he wrote the first version of Murkon's Refuge in C on a Unix computer. This Murkon's Refuge ran locally on the user's computer and used ASCII art to display the graphics in the game.
In 2000, Stoddard began rewriting Murkon's Refuge in C++ as a client-server game, and it was published on RinkWorks in 2002.
[edit] Story
This is a brief synopsis of the Murkon's Refuge Story page on RinkWorks.
For many years, the kingdoms of Peregham and Stiltshire were at war. King Lehowy of Peregham ordered his First Mage Anwyk Arisses to make him a magical diadem to win the war. Anwyk succeeded, but the diadem was stolen by First Mage Murkon of Stiltshire and his three comrades.
Corrupted by the power of the diadem, Murkon murdered his comrades and constructed a huge, labyrinthine dungeon ten levels deep, settling himself down at the end of the lowest level.
When King Lehowy heard of this, he called upon a group of warriors to brave the dungeon and retrieve the stolen diadem.
[edit] Game play
[edit] Characters
A player's party can include six characters. These can be male or female, of several different races (including human, elf, dwarf, troll and gwuil), and of the following classes:
- Knight
- Rogue
- Wizard
- Sorcerer
- Assassin
- Druid
Every class has a set of minimum requirements for the character's abilities. The requirements for Assassins and Druids are so high that new characters cannot become these classes. Once created, a character can later change his/her class, provided he/she meets the requirements.
[edit] Play
Murkon's Refuge plays like a simplified version of Wizardry. Every one of the 10 levels is a rectangle of 30*20 spaces, with walls forming a labyrinth of corridors. Making a map of the dungeon is essential for avoiding getting lost.
Various monsters inhabit the dungeon. These range from lowly orcs to powerful dragons. There are also four "boss" monsters which are amazingly powerful and hold vital key objects. The last of these is Murkon himself, holding the magic diadem.
A notable feature of Murkon's Refuge is that when a character dies, he/she is not deleted from the game, but remains in the party, in an unusable state. In town, a dead character can be resurrected, but at a great cost. Even if the entire party dies, they are taken back to the town they last visited, and can be resurrected if the player can afford it; if not, a completely new party must be created at the starting city in order to be able to get enough gold to the city where the first party resides so that they can be resurrected.
[edit] Notes
As of 2005, hundreds of players have completed Murkon's Refuge, many of them several times. This has led to fans of the game trying several different challenges, such as:
- Completing the game with only one character.
- Completing the game without ever visiting any other town than the first one.
- Completing the game without ever using magic.
- Completing the game by only using magic.
- Completing the game without ever changing a character's class.
- Completing the game without any character dying.
Some of these challenges have already been accomplished, while some are just too difficult.
[edit] Murkon's Vengeance
According to Stoddard, Murkon's Vengeance is Murkon's Refuge in reverse. The game uses the same engine as Murkon's Refuge but with slight modifications.
[edit] Characters
Contrary to Murkon's Refuge, the only character available to play in Murkon's Vengeance is the evil archmage Murkon. This character can develop his skills and acquire new items just like the characters in Murkon's Refuge.
The enemies in Murkon's Vengeance come in the form of actual player parties used in Murkon's Refuge from 2002 to 2005. Stoddard has only had the chance to use about 200 of the tens of thousands of parties that have been played, but if you're a veteran of Murkon's Refuge, you might well encounter one of your old parties.
[edit] Play
Murkon's Vengeance plays similarly to Murkon's Refuge, only you proceed the opposite way, starting from level 10 and working your way upwards to level 1. On each level, there is a preset number of player parties you have to kill. When all parties on a level have been killed, you can proceed up to the next level.
There are a few differences to Murkon's Refuge:
- When Murkon dies, he is not automatically transported to the previous city to be resurrected. Instead, time rewinds to the last time you used one of the many checkpoints scattered around the levels (including one that's always on the entry space to each level). Everything is the same as when you first reached that checkpoint, except that you have no monsters with you. If you haven't reached any checkpoints (you're at the beginning of the game, or close to it), you simply start over. A checkpoint can only be used to save your progress once, but you can rewind back to the checkpoint as many times as is needed, so you never really lose permanently.
- Murkon has the ability to summon monsters to help him kill player parties. These monsters follow Murkon around. However, they can't be directly controlled, but instead act on their free will in battles.
[edit] Notes
The idea of a heroic quest in reverse, playing the evil overlord, has been used at least twice before.
- The original Wizardry series included a game called The Return of Werdna, where the player took the role of Werdna, the main enemy of the previous game.
- The British software company Bullfrog Productions developed a role playing game called Dungeon Keeper, where the player's job is to maintain an evil presence in an underground labyrinth and kill off heroic parties.
