Eamon (video game)

Eamon, sometimes known as The Wonderful World of Eamon, is a game creation system and a role-playing adventure game series created by Donald Brown and released for the Apple II in 1980. The game is a text adventure similar to other early titles like Adventure (1976) or Zork (1980) and to later text-based multi-user dungeons (MUDs), though with many role-playing elements not available in other interactive fiction. Eamon software is non-commercial and is freely available in the public domain.

Premise

Eamon casts the player in the role of a free-wheeling fantasy adventurer who undertakes dangerous quests against numerous enemies to earn riches and experience. Home base is the Guild of Free Adventurers, an association of heroes on the mystical world of Eamon, a vaguely Medieval place awash in magic and populated with strange creatures. Most adventures take place in the dungeons, castles and forests of Eamon, though some occur on other worlds or in different eras. and The Lord of the Rings, Eamon generally avoids stories, situations or other game elements that are particularly serious or complex, instead seeking to create an engaging, genial mood through quick play and in-jokes. Individual adventures, created by a wide range of authors, vary from the artful to the campy.

Robert Clardy's Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure displays the same dragon artwork on its title screen as Eamon.

Gameplay

Brown encouraged players to modify and add to Eamon, and published technical information on the game to assist them. Eamon is notable for being one of the first adventure games designed to be modular, with expansion packs written by users forming an integral part of the game experience. A master disk called the "Main Hall" is used to manage player characters and to facilitate their transfer between individual adventures. The character retains his or her attributes and statistics from adventure to adventure, as well as up to four weapons.

The game's interface is similar to that of most other text adventures — the game presents the player with descriptions of the character's surroundings, including events, artifacts, monsters and exits, then prompts the player to enter a command. These commands include such things as moving in certain directions (NORTH, EAST, UP, etc.), readying weapons, attacking, getting or dropping items, interacting with characters, casting magical spells or checking inventory.

Players

All player characters in Eamon possess a name, plus the three physical attributes of hardiness, agility and charisma in varying quantities. Hardiness affects how much a player can carry and how much damage he can both inflict and withstand. A strength of 12, for instance, allows the player to absorb 12 points of damage and lift 120 (a fictional unit of weight used in the game). Agility influences the player's success using certain weapons and avoiding attacks, while charisma determines his ability to make friends and influences the prices he pays for supplies. Common attribute values for player characters are generally between 10 and 20.

Players also have varying abilities with five classes of weapons — axe, bow, club, spear or sword — expressed as a percentage. Scoring a hit in battle may increase the skill in the appropriate weapon class. An additional ability, "armor expertise", determines the extent to which the player's armor affects his chance to score a hit. The greater the expertise, the less the armor encumbers the player in combat. Players may wear leather, chain or plate armor, and can supplement this with a shield.

The final set of abilities describes the player's aptitude with magic. A player can hire a wizard to teach him four magic spells: "Blast" (which damages enemies), "Heal" (which helps to restore health), "Speed" (which temporarily doubles agility) and "Power" (a spell with unpredictable results). Various other spells are sometimes available in particular adventures, but cannot be used outside them.

All players begin with 200 gold pieces, which can be used to purchase weapons, armor, spells or other supplies, or can be stored in the bank. One earns more by collecting treasure during adventures.

A player character may die while on an adventure, either as the result of losing a battle or from some other poor decision or mishap. Though death generally spells the end of the character and all his skills and possessions, there are utilities one can use to "resurrect" the player.

Monsters

All non-player characters in Eamon, regardless of their form or disposition, are referred to as "monsters". The monsters that players must face depend on the style of the adventure and range from the conventional fantasy staples of dragons, goblins, orcs and wizards, to wild animals, zombies, mummies, ghosts, machines, other humans (both friendly and hostile) and many more.

Monsters share most of the same attributes as player characters. A key exception is that monsters have "friendliness" rather than charisma, a rating that along with the encountering player's charisma determines how the monster will behave toward the player. Friendly monsters may accompany the player through the adventure and fight on the player's behalf, while unfriendly ones may ignore or attack the player. Monsters also possess a "courage" attribute that determines how likely they are to flee from combat or pursue the player.

thumb|250px|right|A player-created map of adventure #5, "The Castle of Doom".

Adventures

At least 280 individual Eamon adventures have been written by various authors to work with the Eamon system. These adventures range from very simple, 20-room outings to complex works spanning multiple diskettes. With few exceptions, each adventure stands alone and does not depend on the user completing any others. Although a majority of the adventures are fantasy-themed, some adventures occupy contemporary or science fictional settings. Most adventures include some degree of customization, adding new commands or other special game features above and beyond those included in the base Eamon program.

History

Creator Don Brown first released Eamon for non-commercial distribution on the Apple II in 1980, an MS-DOS-based conversion of Eamon designed to add various enhancements and a more user-friendly interface for adventurers and creators alike while also retaining the flavor of the original Apple game. Black converted over half of the classic Eamon adventures to the Eamon Deluxe system and announced in 2012 that version 5.0 had been sent out for testing.

Version 5.0 is compatible with modern operating systems such as Windows 7 and Mac OS X using emulation software such as DOSBox and also includes a VI compatibility mode to make it more accessible to screen-reader programs used by visually impaired players. The converted adventures and latest updates remain non-commercial freeware and can be downloaded from the Eamon Adventurers Guild Online.

Eamon Remastered

In February 2017 the browser-based Eamon Remastered was released, making it possible to play Eamon online and save your progress between adventures. Currently, 39 adventures are available.

Eamon CS

In April 2017 Eamon CS was released by developer and adventure author Michael Penner. It is a version of Eamon ported to the C# programming language. It is playable on Windows, Android and Unix and continues to be developed and expanded. An iOS port is also planned.

References

External links

Eamon Adventurer's Guild Online
Eamon Wiki
Eamon Remastered
Eamon CS