So, tell us about yourself...

[Jan]

Welcome to the forums, Mr. Take! Have fun with all the custom dungeons here - and enough time to play them!

[MrTake]

Yeah finding the time is the problem now. Gone are the days when I could stay up all night fighting monsters.

I'm from Glasgow originally,but I live in Aberdeen now. Small world.

Thanks for making me feel welcome

[Jan]

Maybe I'll got to Aberdeen to work /study at the University / Macaulay Research Institute next year (for about 6 months or so). I'll see - the chance is rather bellow average.

[beowuuf]

Yeah, we all seem to be hitting the age where time to sit down and burn through stuff is long gone. So many responsibilities (or so much media to consume) so little time!

Lol, that's just weird about Aberdeen! Make sure you stop them flattening out Union Terrace Gardens from me I used to live right in the centre of town, so was handy for everywhere. And the beach was never more than a pleasant stroll away!

[MasterWuuf]

Time
The four-lettered entity that coldly marches by,
with no regard to one’s opinions or schedule.

A late welcome to the forum. I've been too busy to get involved lately.
Oh well.
Stay up all night, playing games? Not that hard.
Working the next day? Yeah, times have certainly changed.
Odd, the fact that bosses have a problem with napping at work? (hee, hee)

[beowuuf]

At least you are still lurking!

[MasterWuuf]

At least you are still lurking!

Yes. I admit to lurking about...just a bit.

[dayday2008]

Lurking is fine. I've apparently been trolling on another game forum though I'd say I was just enthusiastic.

How is everyone?

I haven't played DM for a while since I put my amiga back in the cupboard. Instead I've been playing Red Dead Redemption for Xbox and might n magic gates to another world and phantasy star III on my PSP, good times!

[KayBee]

Hi Everyone!

I'm 36 and originally from Massachusetts, USA but now live in Spain. I played DM back in 1988 on my Apple IIGS. I even owned the DM CD (which I unfortunately no longer have--moved around a lot) and I think my favorite track on that was the Skeleton Dance, lol. I downloaded RTC 045 a couple of years ago and it was amazing how much came back to me without having to look up the hints. I did eventually, but it was weird how you can remember all that stuff after 20 years, lol. I forgot all about it again (more moving around) and that PC died so I was looking at stuff on my hard drive and came across it again..and here I am. I've downloaded a more current version and have completed around 6 games but each time I change it up a little so it never gets boring.

Nothing beats this old school game, it's my favorite of all time. I play DM more than any other game just like I did when I was a kid!

[Jan]

Welcome to the forums, KayBee!

If you have some time, you may try some of the dozens of customs dungeons made by people here. You won't regret this!

[Ameena]

Wheee, welcome to the forum - yeah, it's funny how you remember stuff like this, isn't it? My friend was replaying Monkey Island II a few years back and I was watching - then she got sort of stuck and neither of us could remember what to do next (we've both played it before at least once or twice each ). But when I was asleep/half-asleep/just waking up the next day I had a sort of weird dream which had a bit of that game in it, sort of (a bit we hadn't done yet), and I suggested it to my friend and she tried it and it worked :O. So it's like my brain went and dug up the memory while I was asleep and showed it to me and it sort of vaguely seemed right at the time so when we tried it in-game, wheeeee, progress .

[KayBee]

I forgot to mention..I even still jump in my seat when monsters surprise me, haha. I literally went "AHH!" out loud when some Wizard's Eyes caught me off guard.

I will try some of the customs out too, I've got the whole day to do nothing so I'm going to settle myself in and hack away through yet another dungeon.

[beowuuf]

Welcome to the forums! Yeah, it takes a while not to jump at some of the creratures. Coatyls, scoripions, purple worms. Those are the ones that scared me when I returned to DM, for aquite a while afterwards!

[Toufman]

Greetings,

I'm a 33 years old French lad leaving in Dublin, Ireland and I experienced the original DM back in 1989-1990 on a brand new Atari 520 STE (which now belongs to a computer museum of some kind). When I say "original" DM, I really mean a badly cracked version which would kill my party after 15 mins play

Thanks to this website and to the fantastic work of crazy developers like GG and PaulH, I re-lived the full DM-CSB experience again recently on Windows and just wanted to pay tribute to the community of people still involved with these FTL games and their clones.

I must admit the amount of information gathered on the DM Encyclopedia is impressive: kudos to ChristopheF for carrying the flag for so many years after the game was released... and still finding new items worth adding !!

So this is basically a "hello and thank you" kind of post !

On a sidenote... I agree that Mophus always looked all too satisfied with himself to be remotely trustworthy... That grin has haunted me ever since I first stared into his mirror in the Hall of Champions all these years ago...

I just wanted to get that out. I feel much better now.

[Ameena]

Woo, we're getting lots of new people lately - welcome to you too, then . Since you say you've managed to replay DM and CSB, have you then checked out any of the many custom dungeons various people have made? You might want to check them out - many of them branch out from what the original games could do, in terms of mechanics and monsters and so on, and you might find some that you enjoy . I understand that Tower of Champions is very popular, while Conflux may possibly be the hardest, hugest custom-made dungeon out there (as far as I know, anyway).
And yes, Mophus is freaky!

[Jan]

Welcome to our small community of People With Their Personalities Permanently Distorted By Mophus' Grin (hence PWTPPDBMG)!

[Gambit37]

Welcome ToufMan and Kaybee. Enjoy your time in our little corner of the web...

[Toufman]

Thanks for the warm welcome guys.

I have tried Conflux III recently and died quite literally waaaaay too often I would care to admit for my DM/CSB veteran's pride I also installed DSB and will probably venture myself into other custom dungeons when I get some spare time.
My recent hobby has been to challenge CSBWin with the worst reincarnated characters available in the Prison, instead of picking the best. I might just try to survive DM & CSB back to back with Mophus just for a laugh

[KayBee]

LOL Mophus is in my party right now. I named him "Stranger Danger" because I too think there's something up with his grin

[beowuuf]

Stranger Danger? Perfect! As you browse the forums, you may notice a theme that indicates many, many people here agree with you

[Jan]

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, most of them are banned from the forums right now...

Spoiler

(no, don't worry, I was just joking)

[Ameena]

Yeah - it's just Trantor who gets banned on behalf of everyone else
Where did that particular in-joke start, anyway?

[beowuuf]

Probably Ajaxchat, where all such memes came from

[Ameena]

Lol yeah, probably something like that . DIdn't someone manage to kick and/or ban themselves from there once? Well, I think it was back when we had Flashchat, but anyway, I think they ended up PMing one of the Mods who was online and in the chat at the time saying something along the lines of "Errm, I've just banned myself, can you unban me please?" .

[Sir Shard]

Well, where to start...throwing caution to the wind (and the fact that everybody here is doing it) I'll throw some details down.

My real name is James and I'm using the alias of "Sir Shard" here. Long story that. I'm most probably the youngest (I'm gonna assume) of you people here, being sixteen years of age, and you may think 'well then how does he know about "SO-AND-SO" huh?' well, I can say that I was shown at a reasonable age the Amiga. For some reason my parents still ahd it stored somewhere, and I would get my Dad to "go on about the various games". Dungeon Master was once of his personal favourites and he said that I should play it. So, when I eventually found a "missing cord" I played it, loved it (although give me an RPG and I'll kill it by playing it) and hated several aspects of the amiga version, which I think you guys might know about.

Anyway, I always troll the net whenever I can, and I found WinUAE. So I started emulating the amiga on my PC, a massive upgrade so to speak. I could go on about some awesome games on that system, but I should stay on topic. I sorta drifted off of Dungeon Master for awhile, a number of years in fact, before finding this site - of all websites - Moddb. Following the links, I found RTC and downloaded it. Being someone who hadn't finished the original DM, due to the amiga, I thought "I'll play and finish it". Sure enough I did, and when I decided to play through DM2, I enjoyed the import option.
Getting back on topic, I've spent numerous hours playing this remake, and with the added options for the original three, I've quite enjoyed it. Have been advising friends to play it/download it. I thought "why not join that forum, and maybe make people listen to my opinions to improve this...". I did have trouble getting activation, however, and was meant to have logged in last week.

So, I might put a few things down. I am am Amateur Writer, with a focus on Cthulhu Mythos and Cyberpunk sci-fi. I am also an Amateur Journalist, however haven't begun that yet. Apart from that, not much left to write about.

So, a few forum/game(RTC) related questions.
A/ How do I add my own picture as my Avatar? I have this custom DM portrait I want to use, but can't for the life of me work it out.
B/ Whats the difference between DM(original) and DM(rtc)?
C/ Why doesn't any of the basic custom dungeons I've downloaded so far (although I kinda have a gut feeling why) have the option to import characters/create new adventure?

Thought I'd also write down my part members; but I kinda forgot them (been playing Ravenhood 3 a bit too much!)

And to wrap it up, honoured to join such a large group of DM-ers!

[Jan]

Oh, welcome to the forums, Sir Shard! It's so interesting that so young people still play and enjoy DM - there really must be something about this game. You're definitely one of the youngest members here, although we do have some people under 20.

I am am Amateur Writer, with a focus on Cthulhu Mythos and Cyberpunk sci-fi. I am also an Amateur Journalist

Do you share your writings on the internet? I'd be interested. I love reading, I love reading sci-fi. I also love writing it, but not in English, lol.

I can answer at least your first question (Avatar). Go to User Control Panel - Profile - Edit Avatar. The picture must be somewhere on the internet. You can easily put the picture on some sort of free web or blog etc. (there are also specialised webs for sharing avatars) or you can ask someone on these forums (perhaps some of the moderators?) and I think they'd store it for you somewhere on their web space.

[Ameena]

Hey, welcome Yet Another New Person . Doesn't matter about your age - it's cool that some "younger people" are still getting into this stuff. I was erm...18, when I joined this forum back in 2003 (well, it was a different forum back then, then all the similar DM forums merged into this one). Please tell us if you have any silly/weird/embarrassing stories about your time playing DM - always good for a laugh .
As per your questions, Jan has already answered the first one, I see - as far as I'm aware, if you want to use a pic of your own choosing, you have to send it to one of the Admins and get them to change it for you (at least, that's what I had to do). Otherwise there's loads of DM/CSB character portraits and some other pics available to choose from.
For the second question, DM-Original is as close to the original version of DM as George Gilbert (creator of RTC) could get. There are some differences but it's still great . DM-RTC has some deliberate differences. Well, it has one, that I know of - the addition of the spellbook. This is to prevent people who've played the game before from doing things like casting Fireball from the first level of the dungeon. You'll find a spellbook on the floor on Level 1 (the HOC), by the stairs down to Level 2. If you put it in your hand, it opens - when you find a scroll with spell runes on it (I think the one for the Power runes is on the floor close to/with the spellbook), you have to open the book and click the scroll in it to scribe the runes there - only then are they accessible to cast.
And for the third option...I think custom dungeons are kinda standalone things and the creators can decide whether it's possible to import other parties. Otherwise people could just mess up their carefully-crafted storyline by importing some uber party and blasting everything straight away. Oh, and since it's also possible to create a dungeon and enforce starting characters (ie dungeon creator can put people in the party during dungeon creation so you don't need to go and recruit them - it's like DM2 where you start with Torham in the party already), trying to import a party into such a dungeon just wouldn't be possible if there was no space .
I think that should probably answer your questions, at least vaguely . Btw, you mention having played DM and DM2, but have you not got round to CSB yet? Heh, have fun there . And of course there are plenty of custom dungeons out there, as you know. They don't all use RTC though - some use, for example, CSBWin, and there's another clone out called DSB (Dungeon Strikes Back) though I don't know how many custom dungeons are available for that so far - I've not been following it and it's one of the more recent clones (relatively speaking - I think it's probably a couple of years old by now, or something ). Anyway...have fun here on the forums and in DM, or whichever custom dungeon(s) you're playing .

[beowuuf]

Welcome to the forums!

Antman and Mitch joined the forums at a younger age, but I think you are currently the youngest. It's always great to see an old game get new fans, especially given the march of time!

I follow Cthulhu Mythos stuff through APs though have not had the chance to play the RPG (tabletop or game), nor have I yet read really anything Lovecraft. Need to change that!

And yeah, to answer C), there are different engines, so some allow importing easier than others, and there is no cross importing. There are ways to import in to the CSBwin dungeons, for example, that isn't obvious. However many dungeon are balanced for the champions provided. RTC by default always lets you import all champions, however the difficulty can ramp up outside of the designer control and also the designer can have imported characters be dumped in a room that says 'no imports' if they wanted.

[Babe Bridou]

I realize I haven't properly introduced myself the first time I stopped lurking (six years ago).

Hi, my name is Thomas, I'm 32 and French, and I've always been fascinated by Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back. It's a fascination more than a passion, so it goes in "bursts" of activity - every other year or so I get a calling back to this game and try to figure out why it's still so incredible even by today's standards. Fortunately every time there is this place on the net where things happen and I can enjoy my "DM fix" by reading multiple years of history in a row, thanks to you.
I've very recently started my own software business, and given the amount of time that I can now spend on things I absolutely definitely want to do, there is this game I want to do, this magic I want to recreate in some ways that is - of course - the Dungeon Master magic.
I can't play right now, being on a mac but that gives me more time to work on my little game
I'm not ready to say yet if this might be a DM clone, remake, or a brand new game, but let's say that this thread is very inspiring. Here's to hoping that I'll be able to make it through this project before the hard reality of business requires my attention on other things.

Above all, have fun guys

[Sir Shard]

(ie dungeon creator can put people in the party during dungeon creation so you don't need to go and recruit them - it's like DM2 where you start with Torham in the party already), trying to import a party into such a dungeon just wouldn't be possible if there was no space .
.

Well, I managed to get my DM party all into DM2, so I am pretty sure you can sorta "overwrite them" so to speak. And someone mentioned CSB, I'm gonna take my DM/DM2 party through it when I've finished DM2 - have an awesome story write up I did after finishing DM to integrate my own characters into the storyline.
Anyway thanks for answering all my questions.

Ahhh, overwrite characters that are placed into the main game.