Preamble

I feel like the prevalence of table top roleplaying nerds in the vicinity of university computers would give birth to the CRPG back in the 70s. The mechanical aspects of a lot of RPGs are effectively probability machines and as I've learned through developing spreadsheet character sheets and using VTTs, computers sure do make handling a lot of those numbers easier. Plenty of the games born of this time are still highly playable and have descendants with a great steal of influence - Rogue, especially, but I got hooked on Moria and Angband for a while. I could play those as a starting point for this but I'd love to have a bit of a break from Roguishness for a while.

Which probably makes my CRPG quest starting with Akalabeth: World of Doom a bit silly. The game I believe randomly generates dungeons from a lucky number, which I assume is a seed, set at the start of the game. A lot of my information is going to be coming from the excellent Ultima Codex wiki, as well as the Official Book of Ultima, the Prima Strategy Guide, walkthroughs, the manuals and feelies (of which I'm happy to say this series has plenty of) and what other tid bits I can get from elsewhere. Maybe if I can get all of this done I can reformat it a bit and make it into a video essay. Shoutout to the Spoony Experiment, who originally got me intrigued about these games and to Spiderweb Software, for taking inspiration from these games and getting me hooked on RPGs for life.

Released in 1979 for the Apple 2, Akalabeth didn't come to be known as Ultima 0 until 1996 when a fan-port called it that. When the Ultima Collection came out in 1998, it got a formal release for PC with all the other mainline games.

That said, as squishy as the canon of early Ultima is (with changing geography, sci-fi elements, plots across time and space, multiple worlds and friggen spaceship battles) it has been worked in. I'll be playing the DOS version, which has some additional features. These include saving and loading, some colour, some music from Ultima III.

Approaching Akalabeth

Art of a Doomed World

Akalabeth went through a few editions, but I will say some of the early art is very charming! Wow! 10 lucious monsters, I can't wait!

My opinion is that feelies aren't simply collectible tokens as I feel they sometimes get treated as but an important part of immersion. Boxart, posters, maps, coins, spellbooks and, more than anything, manuals are a huge part of a player getting brought into the world a game offers. For media with higher fidelity to life (Movies, especially) this is less vital but still very important - you get an impression of something in advance that can shape and inform your experience. For roleplaying games - computer and tabletop each - it fills in the gaps in your mind. It gives you a touchstone to connect you to a world unseen. A few evocative images will set the scene and allow your mind to do the rest beyond just getting you excited for a cool thing you might see. Art outwith the game heightens the art within the game. So, lets see what we got for the finalised cover of Akalabeth.

Oh sweet avatar, this shit is on. I am insane about this cover. The oppressive quality of the darkness, where artificial light is only granted by the glow of candles, constrasted against the luminous pentagram whose ethereal light casts no real glow and then the rising, broken magma of the body of the Balrog. Yeah, it is a Balrog - though they and D&D would have to change the names of such demons eventually (Balrons for Ultima, Balors for D&D) we're specifically going Durin's Bane on this. I really enjoy the contrast in forms too; the looming terror of the balrog, whose maw drips flame and the one who stands before. Are they cringing, fearful? Are they shielding themselves from the heat of the thing? I suspect the latter. The circle might be an attempt to contain or banish the beast but with the story we get, I think that could be a summoning. For that, we'll need to break out the tome that is the manual.

Speaking of which, some sweet and decidedly grisly artwork here. Skeletons are an early foe in the game. The simple wireframe of the art is serviceable but looking at this is so much more striking. The grime and muck of ages still clinging to the bones, the scabberous rust of the damaged blade, the splintering crack of the skull, the intensity of the man's gaze mixing fury and perhaps a touch of fear. That last part feels apt since you spend some of the early game hoping you can survive. I live for this stuff, I really do. The guy is giving strong Aragorn vibes too, which is a bonus. I'm fond of the crumbling stony title, too.

Crumbs of Lore

Okay so, whilst the later games have more indepth manuals and spell books, Akalabeth has all of 5 pgs in pdf (some of them doubled but they're fairly short). These cover some background, instructions, controls, etc. The game also covers the basics to get the player up to speed.

See, we have an evil wizard - Mondain - going around the lands of Akalabeth and wreaking havoc, as evil wizards are wont to do. He's been chased off but the monsters remain. Later editions add more to this in the manual - the land was peaceful and prosperous, going through a golden age until Mondain came along. The spare of the heir to the throne, he decided to make become Evil so he could take his brother's inheritance and probably rule the world. You know how it is with these wizards. He dug himself a dungeon and sent "thieves, skeletons and snakes" to go bother people in the countryside. I do personally love the inclusion of snakes as the idea of snakes taking orders tickles me.

Lord British, Champion of the White Light and our gamedev's avatar was pretty tired of snakes on his plains and chased him out of his dungeon complex. There remains work to be done though - the warlock is gone, the snakes remain. This is where the player comes in. We must visit Lord British, take on quests to slay monsters and survive to put down a Balrog. After that, we should be able to become a knight.

Also there's this guy.

God I love old RPGs and their weirdo monster art. Phenomenal little creep. I'm not sure what monster this represents - it might be an artist's interpretation of a Carrion Crawler due to the many appendages.

Mechanics of Play

Akalabeth is fairly straight forward mechanically but, like a lot of old CRPGs, it is fairly opaque. Fortunately some excellent work has been done to clarify the math of these by the Data Driven Gamer and Game File Hacking and I've found some additional bits and pieces on the Strategy Wiki Guide.

Stats

The character has a number of stats to keep track of in the game, as is typical for most RPGs.

Hit Points - HP seems to merge both experience points and standard HP. They're lost by taking damage from opponents and gained killing monsters and then leaving the dungeon. Doesn't seem to have a limit.

Strength - Damage is equal to 20% of the character's Strength (rounded down).

Dexterity - The character's Hit Chance is equal to (Dexterity - the Monster Level - Dungeon Level) x 4%. Data Driven Gamer gives a helpful example: For a Dexterity of 20, attacking a Thief (Level 2) on Level 5 is equal to (20 - 2 - 5) x 4%, thus 13 x 4, for a 52% hit chance.

Stamina - Stamina is the reverse of Dexterity and reflects your chance of avoiding being hit for meaningful damage. So, to repeat the above example, with a Stamina of 20 against that Thief, you'd have a 52% chance to avoid being hit.

Wisdom - Dividing Wisdom over 3 gives you the level of Monster necessary for your starting quest.

Gold - Used to buy Stuff. In the game, you only buy food, weapons, shields and magic amulets used for spellcasting. Replacement items are important as thieves can steal them and Gremlins will rapidly shred your food supplies.

Update - Gold gain from monsters is equal to their Level + the Dungeon Level.

Food - Not essentially a stat as listed above but a ticking clock. Every move on the overworld and every so many moves in the dungeon, food depletes. If you run out, you die. From what I've heard, this will usually kill the first time player if they don't realise they need to buy some at the start. You arrive in town desperately hungy.

Update - In dungeons, you consume 1 food per 5 moves.

Level - Lumping it in here, but the player decides the difficulty level during character creation. This will affect the HP of all enemies.

Classes

The classes are Fighter and Magi. Fighters may use any weapon but their spell chance is randomised. Mages cannot use Rapiers and Bows. Their Amulets apparently have a 25% chance to run out of charges and break on use but they are able to choose what spell they use.

This is a really raw deal on Fighters. Amulets are fairly affordable for how powerful they are and the damage of a sword will look pretty puny all the same as HP inflates with difficulty, monster and dungeon level. There aren't any magical weapons to even this out - the Rapier is the best you'd be getting for the game. I'll be rolling a Magi.

Items

We don't have a whole lot of variety on display in the shop. This will be our lot for the game.

Food - A death watch shaped like an item. Mandatory on pain of death.

Rapier - Melee weapon of deceptive allure. Not all that great in the long run.

Axe - Old dependable. Can be used at range which might be helpful against certain foes (Gremlins) but this costs you an axe.

Shield - Pitiable damage but gives you a 1 in 20 chance of being missed by the enemy, I think.

Bow and Arrow - Long range weapon. I believe it has a bottomless quiver so whilst it might be less damaging than an axe, it does have a cost effectiveness thing going for it.

Magic Amulet - The BFG of the game and the reason you probably want to play Magi. The spells are as follows:

Ladder Up - Summons a ladder that lets you climb up to a level.

Ladder Down - The Opposite of that.

Kill - A ranged damage spell. Deals up to Dungeon Level + 10 + Strength bonus damage. Very beautiful, very powerful.

Bad? - A random subspell that is usually terrible and requires me tofurther indent my post. Even if you're a Magi, you're going to have ro roll the dice on this.

- Toad - Turns you into a toad. All stats drop to 3.

- Backfire - Half current HP.

- Lizard Man - Turns you into a lizard man? All your stats are set to 250% their current value, rounding down. Wild. We love it. If you can, always turn into a lizard.

Oh, also, the effects are permanent. You can in theory become ever more Lizard if you can.

The only real downside to the Magic Amulet is the breakage chance and the fact that Lizard Man is only a 33% chance of occurring. You have just as much chance of becoming a Toad. Potentially losing a ton of HP also doesn't feel great but it is easier to get HP back than it is to undo the damage of frog tf.

The Dungeons

There are 10 levels of the dungeon and 10 levels of enemies but we'll get to them as we go. What appears is random I believe and monsters can appear on floors with a higher or lower level than their own.

Update - Oops! There are in fact 10 Levels of Monster, but the earliest some of them will appear is two levels of the Dungeon ahead of their own level. Thieves are very common on Dungeon Level 1 to begin with. There are, I believe, effectively infinite levels of the dungeon as they are randomly generated.

Enemy HP is equal to double the Dungeon level multiplied by Difficulty plus double the Monster's Level. I'm not quite sure how enemy damage works however, though once I get hit, I guess I'll know and come back to update this.

Update - Monster damage is possibly equal to the monster's level!

Two enemies are ultimately bastards and steal from you - Thieves and Gremlins. Thieves will steal one of a random object, Gremlins steal half of your food. Both have a 50% chance of doing this instead of an attack. As such, we'll try to avoid them as much as possible. General advice seems to be to ladder your ass away from Gremlins if you have no quests concerning them.

Controls

Akalabeth has a fairly simple keyboard control scheme where most inputs are letters standing for words.

So, if you need to Attack, Enter or check your Ztatistics, you can just remember the relevant key. This will as I recall become more complex in future games but I've played the original trilogy before and I've been trying to remember I have to Aim Wands and Zap Rods in Angband for a while so I can adjust. Not included are the sub-commands; for example, once you Attack, you have to decide on what to use which will lead to me using an Axe and then deciding to Swing it. Honestly, if my Strength increases, I'll just forego weapons. A few extra points of damage will make the difference but the less inputs to get an attack off, the better for me as a player.

Update - In the end I didn't need to worry about this; pressing A to attack, A for Axe and then A gain, it was content to keep swinging the Axe without a problem.

The Stranger

It is somewhat subjective if the Ultima games rely on a singlular protagonist. I've seen claims the Age of Darkness (Akalabeth through Ultima 3) might be one character and the protagonist of 4 onwards might be another. I've seen an unsubtantiated claim that in one manual the character was given the name Ravida in early editions. I choose to believe that the character is consistent as I feel it builds a rapport between the protagonist and the recurring NPCs in the world.

Whilst they will take on a new title later, for the early games this character is referred to as the "Stranger from Another World" or, more simply, "The Stranger". I really like this title, it comes with an air of mystery, so I'll be glad to use it for the protagonist of this.

Stats are randomly determined and I've settled on the best I rolled up with a nice, cosy low Wisdom. My Hit Points are a little low but they hopefully won't stay that way for too long. Somewhat concerned about my Dexterity but I'm hopeful that my Strength will make the difference, especially if I can boost it early. Fingers crossed!

Okay, that's the set up. I'll see if I can't begin my quest! Back soon.