Before I begin: There will be a separate [shorter] page that JUST lists the programs I use, so you can download them all in one place.
For a while in the 80’s and 90’s, video gaming was kind of the wild west. And as long as it was like that, it meant that some of the fixtures that we understand about gaming had made it into the landscape of the hobby.
Take, for example, quest journals or auto maps.
In the beginning – especially for RPG games, those weren’t present. The onus was on you to map and to keep your own notes about what you were encountering and to keep a kind of clue journal for yourself so that when you saw something that related to a puzzle, later, you could consult your “Grail Diary” and make sense of what you’d learned so far.
For an example of just such a case – where I’d have to keep track of something important, I’d like to offer up Ultima 2 as an example. Bad as that game was, it had one exemplary puzzle [that didn’t really go anywhere, but that’s kind of beside the point.]
In Ultima 2, there were landmasses dotted all around. These land masses were accessible through BOTH space AND time through time gates.
Part of the puzzle of that game was A) keeping a reliable map of each time period and B) noting which time gates lead to where and in which epoch of the game.
If the game had made meaningful use of this puzzle [it didn’t, really. Once you learned where the two most important spots were in the game, you didn’t have to sequence your way through any other time gates, ever again] then it would have necessitated strict note keeping and map making, because the game simply didn’t have a system to keep track of all of this for you. It was encouraged [and almost expected] that you’d do it yourself.
Since – especially this early on in this endeavour – I will be playing games that require this sort of fastidious and careful note taking, I want to share some of my process for that so that – when I post some of that sort of thing, it makes sense where it’s coming from and why I’m doing it.
The first order of business – even before starting up the game – is to set the graphics settings of the executable. I like to have the game window be large, but not full screen. In my current resolution, 1600×900 often does the trick. I can see detail enough that I don’t miss anything, but I can also add windows under and to the right of the main screen so that I can take notes.
This out of the way, I will make a point of reading the manual from cover to cover. If it’s an RPG, I might think about how to set up my party once I’ve done that.
Going back to Ultima 3, for example, one of my initial ideas for a party was to have some hybrid cleric/wizard types on hand so I could double up on their spell books. This didn’t work out well in that case, because hybrids were absolutely punished for making that choice. [In some cases, you could only get to half of the spells.]
![A page from the Ultima 3 manual showing Profession Characteristics. Each profession has a name, the best weapon type they can muster, the best armor type they can wear, which spell schools [if any] they have access to and what's special about that Profession. I'm singling out the druid, here, because while they can only wield maces and wear cloth, they have access to BOTH Sorcery and Prayers...but they take a hit, because they can only cast spells using "the greater half" of their Intelligence or Wisdom points. [So, if they had 20 intelligence, they could only cast spells worth 10 points, etc.]](https://lostwolfeslair.com/TIP/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/07_01_u3_professions.png)
In this era, the manual is important, not only for lore purposes, but also because it will tell you things about the game that you might not expect.
While playing SSI’s Wizard’s Crown, I had to KEEP consulting the game manual, primarily because the combat system of that game is INCREDIBLY convoluted. Even then, the manual didn’t go all the way to explaining the nuances of the system, but at least it kind of tried.
On rare occasions, I’ll take this information and condense it into a single-page reference sheet so I always have access to it. [Ultima 3 was a pretty massive culprit here. The IBM PC version had a GREAT in-universe booklet, but it didn’t explain anything about how to play the game and only BARELY hinted at the keyboard interface.]
This cheat sheet will be made in any number of other programs [LibreOffice Calc, perhaps or Writer if necessary] and then converted to a PDF using the built-in tools by those programs so that I can have it open while I’m playing.
![Sometimes, the supplemental information for games [especially old games] is just not there. In this case, I had to create my own list of keys that you could press to perform actions in Ultima 3. This isn't all the keys [that list would be silly], but I've at least shown A for attack, B for boarding vehicles and C for casting spells.](https://lostwolfeslair.com/TIP/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/07_02_u3_command_reference.png)
After I’ve read the manual, I’ll usually scour the internet for unaltered world maps. This just saves me a lot of hassle. Trying to screen capture and line up some of these games is notoriously difficult. If someone’s already done that heavy lifting, then it saves me from doing it myself.
This process may change at a future date, but for right now, I’ll open those maps up in Paint.NET and then create a second layer on the canvas. I do that so that I can set up an empty space as big as the map for notes I want to take on the map. Here, I will annotate town and city names, what I might find at points-of-interest and explain some of how to do instant-travel [EG: I may list teleporters and describe where they go.]
![While playing Ultima 3, the player will encounter various places on the map as represented by squares that the player character can step on. I've shown a spot at the beginning of the game, with some grass and water, but also a towne [the game's name for them] and a Castle. In this picture, I've just got here, so I haven't made a note of what the name of the Castle is and what the name of the towne might be.](https://lostwolfeslair.com/TIP/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/07_03_u3_original_starting_area.png)
![While playing Ultima 3, the player will encounter various places on the map as represented by squares that the player character can step on. I've shown a spot at the beginning of the game, with some grass and water, but also a towne [the game's name for them] and a Castle. In this picture, I've gone ahead and notated which place names I've encountered. [Castle British for the Castle and Towne British for the town.]](https://lostwolfeslair.com/TIP/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/07_04_u3_original_starting_area_with_annotations.png)
For actual dungeon maps, I’ve tried various solutions, but the one that works best for me is Grid Cartographer. It has a great set of icons and a pleasing [and mostly intuitive] user interface that makes drawing maps largely painless.
The very next thing I’ll do is make two separate documents. One as a raw text file that just suggests ideas I might have for things I ought to do, or places I should likely go for my next lot of clues. This first document is optional and often ephemeral. Sometimes, I cast it aside right after the current session, because it’s no longer necessary.
The second document, however, is bigger, broader and often lives inside a spreadsheet. [I use LibreOffice for this, but I could ostensibly do it in Google Docs, too, if push came to shove. [While I was traveling, I DID actually do it this way for Lands of Lore.]]
![My Libreoffice Calc "cheat sheet" of Cleric spells for Ultima 3. Here, I've listed that I'm making a note of the spell books, particularly the cleric spell list. Each spell has an associated keyboard key that I need to press to cast it. That spell has a more common name that you might call it [For example, a lesser heal is "Sanctu."] - for the sake of clarity, I've also listed the effects of each spell as well as noting the requisite mana points it costs to cast each spell. At the very bottom of the sheet, there are hints as to other notes I took in other sheets: I made a list of the mage spells and kept track of town clues, too.](https://lostwolfeslair.com/TIP/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/07_05_u3_cleric_spells_sheet.png)
Here, I will have different lists of separate items that need to be remembered: shop names, places and wares, for example. Or important bits of clue text that I need to mark off once I’ve pursued.
Each of these will live on it’s own sheet, so that it doesn’t clutter up the document.
Once play begins, I’ll make sure that I learn about the systems that underpin the game if I can. Does the manual not mention swimming? I’ll try that first. If I die, I’ll make a note about that [undocumented] behaviour.
I’ll also spend a lot of my first few sessions learning the map of the game – or, at least, the confines of the opening area I’m in.
Only after all this is done does any serious play commence, because now, I feel like I am equipped to tackle what the game is going to throw at me.
And that, then, is how I will approach these games for this venture.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them. I’m happy to answer where I can.