
Betrayal at Krondor - danso
https://www.filfre.net/2019/10/betrayal-at-krondor/
======
acjohnson55
It's a pleasant surprise to see such an in-depth write up of something that
was extremely influential on me. That was at the sort of young age where
things could blow my mind without me being at all cognizant of the rich real-
life backstoies that produced them.

I remember getting a demo of BaK on one of those demo disks that came with PC
gaming magazines. I was blown away by the immersive open-world 3D gameplay.
The battle and equipment systems were innovative and well designed.

Our local library didn't have the Riftwar books that inspired the game, but it
did have the Serpantwar saga that followed them. I'd eventually figure out how
to acquire books on my own and catch up with all the books that Feist
published, and I hung on until the end of the cycle, even though the books
plummeted in quality on the back half.

I also played Return to Krondor, with much excitement. It was a fun game and
better produced, but much more linear than the original.

Thinking about this reminds me of a time in my life when things were a bit
more magical. Information was accessible, but not too much so, and being a kid
with a meager allowance meant I had to have some hustle to follow the cultural
threads that intrigued me.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I played this gem when I was a kid, and I love Betrayal at Krondor dearly.
Having not read the backstory before playing the game, it was kinda confusing
at times, but game quality was awesome, especially compared to games bound to
rectangle grids (wizardry, lands of lore, eye of the beholder series). It also
did well for my English: the language was very rich with sprawling vocabulary.
10/10, the only games from the 90s that match my love for BaK are Star Control
2, Monkey Island and Full Throttle.

~~~
PostOnce
Star Control 2 is free now (and on many platforms):
[http://sc2.sourceforge.net/](http://sc2.sourceforge.net/)

It will probably surprise first-time players with its depth and breadth and
non-terrible UI (which you might expect in an early 90s game).

Save early and often, there are no autosaves.

~~~
pavlov
Here's the article on Star Control II by the same author (Jimmy Maher) as the
OP:

[https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/star-control-
ii/](https://www.filfre.net/2018/12/star-control-ii/)

Although I love Maher's "Digital Antiquarian", I feel his opinion on SC2 is a
tad unfair.

He basically criticizes the game for having a living, evolving game world
where you can lose simply by taking too long. That's one of the things that
originally blew my mind about SC2 back in 1992: it truly feels like a universe
that's not artificially made for the player. You're just one ship trying to
understand great forces that are in motion on their own, and will eventually
crush you.

~~~
danso
I loved that about SC2. Its so long ago though that I don’t remember if I
learned about the constraint from a FAQ or on my own. But given how mad people
were about a similar constraint in Fallout, I can’t recall the last time a big
adventure game had a world-ending condition dependent on the passage of time.

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
The difference with Fallout 1 constraint is that in SC2 you feel the galaxy to
be alive and breathing, with multiple events happen and influence each other.
While in Fallout you just have a timer. The world in Fallout 1 & 2 feels very
static, where nothing happens without your direct intervention.

------
IggleSniggle
> This is precisely the problem which the player of Betrayal at Krondor can
> all too easily run into. Not only does the game allow you to ignore the
> urgent call of its plot, but it actually forces you to do so in order to be
> successful. If you take the impetus of the story seriously and rush to
> fulfill your tasks in the early chapters, you won’t build up your characters
> sufficiently to survive the later ones.

I finally have my answer. As a kid, I really enjoyed this game, but never
understood why I would always get stuck partway through, with seemingly
impossible paths. Having played many point-and-click games as well as much
civilization, I assumed there was some puzzle I was missing (I was pretty sure
I had explored all the tactical ones). Turned out I needed to _restart the
game and ignore the objectives_

~~~
gre
I did the opposite. I looted and leveled for fun but didn't read the storyline
and got powerful but stuck. Played a lot but never beat it. My friend got
pissed at me for not reading the storyline! Fun times.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Ha! I played with a friend too, and always read all dialog out-loud (except
the loot-the-bodies one, that got old pretty quick).

------
xvector
I have read books where the authors have actually “played” the character
behind the scenes, taking dice rolls to decide critical events and rolling
with them, no matter how catastrophic.

It definitely lends the work this “internal coherency” that is mentioned in
the article. Feels much more _real_.

And being in a solid tabletop group has been great for my life. Not only do
you maintain friendships, but you take part in a shared story. It’s great, and
I’d definitely recommend it to HNers who have never tried it before. If
someone ever asks you, don’t turn it down - it’ll be worth it.

~~~
blotter_paper
> If someone ever asks you, don’t turn it down - it’ll be worth it.

I have enjoyed tabletop games immensely, both as a player and a DM. That said,
I wouldn't feel comfortable making the above claim -- I've also had horrible
experiences, including one session with a group I never returned to where the
DM kept having the only female player's character get raped. Like, three times
in one session. It was weird. Other times a DM can try to railroad players way
too hard and turn the thing into a short novel that gets read aloud with
minimal player interaction, or an overly placating DM can let one
inexperienced player run the game off the rails entirely by playing a
sociopathic cannibal who impulsively eats key NPCs without natural
repurcussions kicking in. I'm not trying to be a downer, but if somebody has a
bad first experience roleplaying they should be aware that not all sessions
are created equal; I've had all of the above horrible experiences as well as
many magical nights of collaborative storytelling, puzzle solving, and
tactical decisions with friends. It's a social thing, you need the right mix
of people to make it work, and the kind of game that one person enjoys might
be horrible for another person (Robin's Laws covers this last point well and
has good tips for finding the right mixture of elements for a specific social
group, IMO).

~~~
xvector
Sorry, for a moment I forgot how disgusting humanity can be.

------
friendlybus
I loved Feist's books as a early teen. Never got around to playing BaK, but
I've been surprised to see few people talk about Magician for how popular it
supposedly was. That book was formative for me and I can't get it out my brain
to this day.

~~~
simonh
Magician was super popular at the time, but having already read Tolkien, Anne
McCaffrey, Moorcock and a few others I found it more of a join the dots
exercise spotting where he pinched pretty much everything from. It was like
reading a whistle stop tour of fantasy fiction from the 60s and 70s. I did
read some of the later novels. The sequel where Midkemia was invaded by a
blatant clone of the Empire of the Petal Throne from Tékumel was fun.

That might come across as faint praise, which it is a bit, but like a few
novel series of the time, it was a toy box of fantasy fun. Most of the readers
of novels like this were never going to wade through all the source material,
but here all the basic concepts were in compendium form. They certainly had a
niche to fill.

~~~
friendlybus
Yeah I guess that's what Feist was talking about when he said he was
successful because he broke the rules. It makes sense that the work was a
mashup of previous works, it seemed clear that outside of his set pieces
things really got bogged down.

I read magician first and after that trying to read Lotr was going from a
carnival ride to a cathedral, long slow and overly rich.

The dizzying heights of individual expansion that pug/tomas got to over the
series has died with the 80s and thanos I guess. That scene in the colosseum
raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my mind, why the greatest hits
from magician have never been made into a more expressive media is obvious
financially but nags at me nonetheless.

~~~
sakisv
> That scene in the colosseum raining fire raindrops still sits vividly in my
> mind, why the greatest hits from magician have never been made into a more
> expressive media is obvious financially but nags at me nonetheless.

Ah the memories. That was indeed an awesome scene. You also reminded me of
some other scenes in that book:

\- Macros defending Elvandar all on his own \- Macros confronting Tomas after
the battle and Tomas realizing how powerful Macros was \- Pug Tomas and Macros
watching the creation of the universe at "A darkness at Sethanon"

On one hand I'd like to see them turned into movies/series but at the same
time I think I prefer not to "spoil" the world and the characters that I have
built in my mind.

~~~
vmilner
The parallel "... of the Empire" series is very good too, and has the
colosseum scene from a different character point of view.

------
jkoudys
I don't think a year has ever passed since this was released without me doing
a playthrough at least once. This article really shows why - it's about the
story, so it's not so different than having a favourite movie you watch every
year.

Of course, if the novel were based on my average game, the first half of it
would be Gorath wandering around the middle of nowhere sharpening a pile of
swords with hundreds of whetstones for a month.

------
Causality1
The "honesty" factor is the key for me. Every event in a novel is under the
control of the creator but that isn't so for role-playing games. It adds true
significance to everything and makes gaming sessions truly engaging to watch.
I've seen groups make it through months of hardship only to have a
particularly bad dice roll or stupid choice kill them all and plunge the world
into darkness. That kind of actual risk based on the cleverness of real people
has a flavor that cannot be replicated in any traditional fiction medium.

------
losvedir
Anyone read the Malazan series? I'm in the midst of it and the world building
is incredible.

I heard the author wrote the series based on DnD games he played. I imagine
he'd have to in order to keep everything coherent across all the races,
histories, religions, tribes, wars, etc. That said, while the setting is
fascinating, the writing seems to me to be at times a bit of a slog.

Definitely an interesting way to write. It was the first I'd heard of it.

~~~
AndrewStephens
I've read more than one book that is obviously the author's role-playing
campaign written down. Sometimes this can make for an interesting story but
more often it leads to action-packed but dull novels.

The problem with makes books (and films) out of games is that novel and games
have different aims, and creators skilled at one are not necessarily good at
the other medium. The typical game (tabletop or computer) is heavily action
based. There are exceptions, but typically the plot (where the characters make
impactful choices) is front loaded, happening during the introduction or even
just before the game starts.

How many computer games have the player show up just after a big event and
learn about it through recordings or notes of NPCs who are no longer there?
The player joins the plot at the point where the only thing left to do is kill
a bunch of things - basically the third act of a typical film.

The Malazan books were recommended to by an author but, like you, I found the
ideas much better than the writing, but the author did improve noticeably in
the second book.

[https://sheep.horse/2013/9/book_review_-
_deadhouse_gates.htm...](https://sheep.horse/2013/9/book_review_-
_deadhouse_gates.html)

------
MarcScott
Oh what an amazing game. I vaguely remember, playing all night once, until I
started to hallucinate in the early hours of the morning, and decided to put
myself to bed. To be honest I'm not sure whether I ever finished it.

I recently reread Magician, and it was just as good as I remembered it.

~~~
taurath
It was a fantastic escape in middle and high school to me.

------
jib
The spyglass and the spider took 15 year old me like a month to figure out.
Still think it’s one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played.

------
pingpongchef
I'd never heard of this game when it was released, but had played some of its
contemporaries like the Ultima series. When this article came out, I started
watching a Let's Play. I'm finding it to be quite enjoyable and I can see how
easily I would've been interested in it. I'm still in Chapter 1 but right away
I can see how the characters are much more developed than other games I'd
played. Glad to get a late chance at it rather than none at all.

------
jan_g
My young teenage self really, really loved this game. I was totally oblivious
to the shortcomings described in the article (digitized characters,
'disconnect' between main story and character building, etc.). Instead, I just
played and played, seeking new chests for new riddles (simultaneously curious
and fearful of not being able to solve it), new combats, new artifacts.

One of the few fantasy games that kept me glued to the PC monitor for logn
stretches of time.

------
cyanbane
Great write up. So many hours spent playing this game and trying to figure out
how to wring the last bit of himem to get it to run better.

------
vnorilo
Although I did read some of Riftwar, I was completely unaware of the
transliterary aspects of the game when it came out. I do remember being
impressed by the game though; it was ambitious and well executed and I think
one of the classics from that era that deserve to be remembered.

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nevster
Damn you! Whenever there's a link to the Digital Antiquarian, I lose at least
an hour of time!

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alasdair_
I bought Betrayal at Krondor (the book) when it first came out. The author's
foreword talks about the game in a fair bit of detail and also contains the
"you couldn't afford me" quote mentioned in the article, along with backstory.

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beilabs
Read most of Feists books back in the 90s. Picked up the PC version of the
game. Always seemed to crash on me, one of the drawbacks of OTA updates that
was missing from the CD-ROM era. Now Daggerfall...that was my jam.

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ajuc
Betrayal at Krondor was my first computer RPG. I didn't knew English well and
I was just stumbling around with dialogs, but the mechanics were obvious and
well designed and it was fun anyway.

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C1sc0cat
Interestingly I first encountered the DnD side of Mikedima before reading the
books.

My Rogue character I developed lived in Carse and had his main residence which
I designed in detail there

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rootw0rm
Excellent game, excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

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foogazi
Loved playing this game growing up - bought it on gog many years later and was
shocked by the old graphics

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macca321
Betrayal In Krondor, surely?

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hoorayimhelping
I love this game and play it every few years. It's available on GoG.

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busterarm
The wordlocks were the best part of this whole game.

Oh and the cd soundtrack.

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
Yes, I spent ages figuring out some of the puzzles (DARKNESS, anyone?).

It was also cool that they were in moredhel language, so once you lose Gorath
from the party, you have to rely on spells to decipher their runes. Or just
brute force them as is.

