Darklands - retro RPGing at its finest

[[JiF]Uncle Stinky]

So I downloaded Darklands the other day from the GOG.com site for $5.99. It's a 1992 role-playing game that is set in Medieval Germany. It has a very interesting character creation routine - you start out 15 years old, and choose a childhood (e.g., noble family, country peasant) which gives your stats and skills a certain boost in some areas. You can then pick a profession that advances your age by 5 years: e.g., monk, recruit or student, which in turn boosts your stats with emphasis on certain skills (e.g., monk gets a boost to skills such as Heal, Speak Latin, Religion and Virtue). While there are the usual tyypes of basic attributes (Strength, Endurance, Perception, Intelligence, Charisma) there are over 20 skills that will come into use during different parts of the game. You can keep assigning professions, but the catch is that after you age to 30 years, your attributes start to deteriorate. So someone might make an aged scholar with high Alchemy and Read & Write skills, keeping him in the back during combat while the younger and sturdier characters do most of the fighting. Just putting a party together is almost a game in itself. Generally speaking, you'll want someone to be your bruiser (good Strength and Endurance, and some high weapon skills), someone as your healer/religion guy (the monk described above), a leader (high Charisma and Speak Common) and finally an "ancient techie" with good Alchemy, Artificer and Read & Wrtie skills.

You are placed randomly in a city or town in Germany (my latest party started in Hannover), with zero reputation. Your goal is to make a name for yourself across all of Germany. You do this by fighting criminals in cities at first, building up local rep and gaining the money (pfennigs, groschen and florins) to buy better armor and weapons, and then striking out for other cities, or the countryside where you can take on witches' covens and Raubritter castles.

It's old-school, meaning things are very tough a first and you spend a lot of time fighting in the slums, healing in inns or the coutryside to gain your strength back, and then rinsing and repeating.

I'm at the point now where I can pretty easily take out the lower-level street gangs. I've got my 4 adventurers equipped with plate, chainmail and boiled leather, and wielding heavy cudgels, long swords and maces. My main goal now is to train my monk's Heal skill up to 30 so I can regain 2 instead of just 1 strength per rest. You do this by searching out the doctor in each town and assessing his skills; if they are good, you can train with him for a daily fee and possibly raise your skill a point. The first three doctors I met had either poor or modest skills; they couldn't teach my monk anything. I took a boat to another city, however, and found a good doctor that has got the skill up to 29.

In roaming around the countryside I heard about a mine being plagued by "knockers." It was threatening to close the mine and put the poor miners out of work. So I went down in the mine, killed a couple of kobolds and then ran into some kind of weird wizard. I threatened him, and he said he would give me a plate cuirass if I would leave the mine. I took it (hey, plate's expensive!), and the poor miners had to pack up and leave. Life's tough in Medieval Germany.