Any love for text based games among the Bethesda community? I've been an addict of the game Avalon: The Legend Lives for 8 1/2 years now and have recently gotten back into it after a bit of a break and the game's better than it's ever been. It's very cool to see where a lot of the blockbuster MMORPGs got their inspiration (apparently Avalon invented things like cooldowns and guilds and PVP skills).

From the website:

Avalon is the longest running online RPG in the world. It is a fantasy roleplaying game unlike any other having existed for over a quarter of a century and online for over 226,000 hours (a world record). It is a world where emotions run high and extreme passions collide. Featuring epic grand-scale PVP combat with over 3000 unique abilities, a realistic 3-D warfare battlefield conquest system (in which players can and have destroyed entire sections of the world), fully realised eco-systems, weather effect, virtual economies with trade and governmental political structures, it is one of the most immersive roleplaying games of any kind, anywhere.

I was kinda prompted to post by overhearing a big Skyrim discussion by a couple of Avalon players this morning. Made me wonder whether the love goes both ways!

I never played an online text based game like you describe, I should check it out.

As a kid i used to play tons of text based games on Dos. There was this one that was a star wars game that also had star trek ships and other things in it, and you started on tatooine, but i can never find this game again. I dont remember what it was called, and it was obviously not an official star wars game as it had star trek stuff in it, but it was really awesome.

Only played Interactive Fiction. I've seen other people play some MUD 13 years ago or so

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

>

X mailbox
Open mailbox
Take all
Close mailbox
E
Kick door

I played a few text games back in the 80s, especially https://www.mobygames.com/game/pawn comes to my mind, but I always svcked at them cause I didn't really know english back then

Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.

small mailbox: it's securely anchored.

The door is boarded and you can't remove the boards.

Kicking the door has no effect.

>

Not a pure text game, but a combo of text and nice static graphics (drawings), the King of Dragon Pass. I admit never having played it myself, but fell under its spell thanks to several fine YouTube LPs. My pick of the litter is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivCx-uh4A4Y. Be aware that Kikoskia has sound issues at the start and ends up having to skip (on the LP) part of the critical clan creation process. That one negative out of the way, he does a great job describing and playing the game.

I keep telling myself I'm gonna buy it at GoG, but for whatever reason never get around to it.

TADS engine can use both... Haven't really played any IF games for a long time

Pretty much a version of this. Though obviously it goes beyond simple item interaction commands! Combat is pretty intense (possibly due to the large amount of reading, or rather because of some games having beautifully written text).

I've played some hybrids, like BatMUD and it's ilk before.

I remember when I was...I think 17 I played this really fun hybrid, it was based on Diablo. Well, it was diablo, just you had to enter in "Attack X" or "Heal" etc. There was a small screen above the text where you would see what you were fighting as you moved through the dungeons. Played it once, never found it again though(was playing it on my uncles computer in his computer shop). It was quite fun from what I remember though.

BatMud is probably my favorite of text-based/ascii-based games though, had a lot of fun in that game and have considered going back several times.

While text based games bring my imagination in wonderfully, I have found I enjoy the graphics that games have now. I have tried a few text based games throughout my PC gaming life and just could not get into them, though I wanted to. I think this goes just a touch too far past what I find fun

Older NES/SNES (Crystalis or Zelda, anyone?) games with loads of text I enjoyed, but they had graphics to go along with the text

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition, and I love it.

Also you will die, a lot.

I have been playing Aardwolf since 1997, and they have been running since Dec 1996. It is owned and run by 1 guy, Lasher. He keeps a small dedicated team of Imms, maybe no more than 15 including himself. However the game has been contributed to by many in the community over the years as whoever wants a shot at building can do so, volunteer to be a Helper (something I've done for a long time), or just being an active community voice.

Reign of Grelok FTW!!

I have heard of this one! I may have to look more deeply into it

I played a few text-based adventures when I was young: I still remember the incredible graphics that my youthful imagination conjured up! But not much else.

I also played what I think was the original Adventure program on the college mainframe in my late teens but I don't think I got round to finishing it. Was that the one with the maze of twisty passages, all alike? God, that was irritating.

i had a ton of infocom games. enchanter sticks out as one that was pretty interesting.

...Colossal Cave Advebture by Will Crowther. He worked for BBN when they were developing the ARPANET. Besides programming he was a caver, and wrote the game for his kids to enjoy. It was the basic idea for the Zork games.

I think it was originally written on a PDP-10, wasn't it? I think BBN were big users of the 10, though my memory is typically random. Anyway, I should stop before I start prattling on about the magnificence of classic computers.

I wrote my text based game engine in Python on Windows 7

Youth of today, mumble mumble etc.

Good call! Yes, he did. Good book to read, if you haven't already, http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/0684832674. Ostensibly about the early Arpanet, but most of it concerns BBN.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition

I thought that site looked familiar! I came across it awhile back (1 or 2 years, maybe?). Hitchhiker's Guide On The Web. Awesome! Thanks for the link, for I did not have that site bookmarked, which I do now