Hacker Chronicles 2/HACKER2.BIN/1642.DUNGMR2B.REV

Text File | 1990-11-10 | 6KB | 110 lines

 DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT, VOL. II: CHARACTERS AND TREASURES

 The second in SSI's series of utility programs for the ADVANCED
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS gamemaster, DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT, VOL.
II: CHARACTERS AND TREASURES is designed to generate detailed player
or non-player characters and treasure hoards. This review is based
on the Apple II version.

 All character classes and multi-class combinations from the
original PLAYERS HANDBOOK and UNEARTHED ARCANA are available, as are
all magic items from the original DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE and
UNEARTHED ARCANA. The program has no provision for either ORIENTAL
ADVENTURES or the 2ND EDITION PLAYERS HANDBOOK and DUNGEON MASTER'S
GUIDE.

 The program disk is not copy-protected, and SSI recommends using a
commercial copy program to make a backup. The documentation check
that is used to deter piracy is no problem, as long as the
documentation is at hand. Because of SSI's annoying practice of
using a non-standard variant of DOS 3.3 for its Apple products, data
disks must be formatted from within the program, and saved character
or treasure files can only be edited with the provided screen
editor; commercial word processors will not even recognize the
disk.

 Character generation is accomplished through a series of menus. The
user begins by deciding whether to generate a single or multi-class
character, then selects from menus the class or combination, race,
alignment, and gender. If there is only one possibility available
for race or alignment, that menu is skipped, and a choice of
sub-races is given for Halflings and Elven Cavaliers. The program
then rolls up a set of basic statistics and displays them for the
user's approval. They can be accepted in the order displayed,
entered in a n order, or thrown out and replaced with manually
entered numbers. Finally, the user is prompted for the character's
level(s) and name. After all this information is entered, the
character's hit points, secondary skills, height, weight, languages
known, spell book (for magic-users and illusionists), weapons
proficiencies, and equipment are generated, and movement base,
THAC0, special class or race abilities, saving throws, and armor
class are calculated. The finished character sheet is available for
review or modification in the program's editor.

 Most of this is done quite well, but I had problems in several
areas. First, for some reason, low-level magic-users are given a few
third- or fourth-level spells to go with the first and second level
spells that they're entitled to. Second, the equipment generation is
done from a fixed database without any user interaction or reference
to character level. No magical items are given to even the highest
(20th level) characters, and only a somewhat generic "standard
equipment" list is prepared. Since most players have very specific
ideas about how to outfit their characters, this limits the
program's usefulness in generating PCs. The need to go back and
insert special items also limits its utility in generating
spur-of-the-moment NPCs. Finally, since any character used for more
than one playing session will need some updating, the inability to
use a word processor on saved characters is a serious deficiency.

 The treasure-generating portion of the program is a straightforward
implementation of the various treasure tables located in the MONSTER
MANUALs and DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE. The user can either enter a list
of one or more treasure types, or selectively generate items within
a specific class or treasure. A list of up to twenty treasure types
can be entered at once; the program then generates the complete
hoard, summarizes currency, gems, and jewelry, and displays complete
descriptions of magical items. If the user wants to generate items
within a specific class, the choice is between magic items
(subdivided into potions, scrolls, rings, rods/staffs/wands, misc.
magic, armor/shields, swords, and misc. weapons), gemstones, and
jewelry. For gems and jewelry, there is a choice between brief,
which gives only total value, and detailed, which also gives type,
size, and value for each item.

 The only qualms I had about this section were the fact the itemized
lists of gems and jewelry are not generated by the treasure-type
option, and the fact that there is no way to add items to the magic
items lists. The major strength of the first program in this series
(DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT, VOL. I: ENCOUNTERS -- also reviewed
here in TEG), is the powerful database editor. DM'S ASSISTANT, VOL.
II lacks such an editor or any other similar feature. While I can
understand that developing a comparable editor for the character
generation system might be overly difficult, there is no good reason
why one could not have been provided for the treasure generator.

 Overall, I was a bit disappointed by this program: first by the
lack of a database editor, then by the difficulties involved in
making use of generated characters (I had to print out hard-copies
and retype the information on my word processor). Also, while I
realize that many GMs are still using 1st Edition rules, TSR has now
almost completely halted its publishing of new material for them.
Although a program designed for 2nd Edition rules could be used
fairly easily to generate 1st Edition characters, the opposite is
not true. What DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT, VOL. II does, it does
fairly well, but there are many freeware programs floating around
that do the same thing. For a GM who is still using 1st Edition
rules and doesn't have the time or aptitude to write his own
character generator, this program is probably worth buying. For
anyone else, I recommend passing on it.

 DUNGEON MASTER'S ASSISTANT, VOL. II: CHARACTERS AND TREASURES is
published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and distributed by
Electronic Arts.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS [phone]