Ultima Stories

>uothief.com/links.html
Belan! That's the one, thanks!

Steve is my favorite Avatar, anyone else read that saga?

>All seven
Which seven?

You can't quite capture the intentionally obtuse nature of the Ultima series in a tabletop RPG, because the player can always ask the GM if his character would know something. I guess you could still include things like endless convoluted chains of fetch quests, or villains you can only defeat with a single weapon only available by trading with a single random prisoner in a dungeon, with absolutely no way to learn any of this before fighting the villain. But why would you want to?

I see what you fucking did there.

>or villains you can only defeat with a single weapon only available by trading with a single random prisoner in a dungeon

I don't like this plot device.
Like its okay if you break it out for a super major foe who has a reason to need such effort used on defeating them, but even then not if you keep using the same idea.
Also having it be logical and self-consistent instead of randomly get "Magic Sword" which kills "End Boss" because fetch quest.

Well, that kind of horseshit is what Ultima is made of. And it doesn't even have the excuse of being built to sell strategy guides or help hotlines. You were on your own to try to read Richard Garriott's mind in those elder days before the coming of Gamefaqs.

Well don't Sierra games have the reputation in their point-N-clicks of it being ridiculously easy to screw yourself over and render the game unwinnable with no warning?

Aw. Ultima VII and the androids were hilarious.

I dare to say tht was more fun than playing it, and I played both Ultima VI and VII.

>We need weaponized diaper stats.

Cause fear, no save. Lasts forever.

Was anyone else horrified to accidentally go full F.A.T.A.L. mode and fuck a sheep by clicking on it too many times?

...

>to accidentally go full F.A.T.A.L. mode and fuck a sheep by clicking on it too many times?
what

Load up serpent's isle and keep left-clicking on a sheep.

Programmers get bored, you know. Easter eggs are fun.

is this picture LOSS??

All Ultima is legit Veeky Forums

It's where all the serpent gates go.

>Well don't Sierra games have the reputation in their point-N-clicks of it being ridiculously easy to screw yourself over and render the game unwinnable with no warning?
Only one (King's Quest V) has the no-warning unwinnable state where the game just keeps on going for ages. DO NOT EAT THE PIE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

That said you die like a faggot one million times on average in each game. Often due to failing at pixelbitching a squiggly line you have to walk along exactly for some reason (ledge, lasers, magic forcefield, lurking predatory homosexuals).

No, there's a couple more, like not feeding the bird, or not garbbing the locket in the like 2 seconds you're in the Roc's nest.

Ultima Tabletop RPG:

Ultima Online skills or a class system? (I could see the shepherd being the beastmaster class, and the tinker being the artificer class. Balancing might & magic would be a pain, though.)

Cat. Mouse. Old Boot.

If you're not feeling some level of anger now, you never got deep enough in King's Quest 4 to encounter that little issue.

...Right.

That was the point. It was supposed to be hard to become The Avatar. Your second is mentioned in story; I believe, in one of the later works, that Lord British laments his people's (and his own) over-reliance on the Avatar's aid during crisis, rather than emulating him as a shining example of what they should be like. That occurs in Ultima IX; call it non-canon if you so desire, but the point is available still.

Roll save vs. weak poison or suffer -2 to rolls for the next day or so. (Lord British and Batlin have to make a save vs. death; failure breaks their invuln, enabling PCs to kill whichever.)

As far as I can remember, NPCs never recover from the dirty diapers.

My mistake...

>Oh, god. It's them again.
>You still remember the horrid stench of that diaper
>It took you a week to scrub it off, and people still give you ugly looks
>The thought of the greaselike stuff running down your face returns to mind...
>What if they have another one of those things?

"Say, why is Farmer John running from us still?"
"We'd better catch him if we want the Hoe of Destruction."

>Cat. Mouse. Old Boot.
no, that's KQV too. They actually run past you outside the pie shop, after you get the boot from the fuck-you desert.

The only Ultima games I've played are UO, Underworld and Pagan. Is the Black Gate a good entry into the mainline games?

Yes, they do. Two different kinds of games can be obtuse and frustrating.

It's a hell of a lot better than Pagan. The main issue is inventory management. A lot of important items are like 2 pixels by 2 pixels, and it uses the Ultima Online style of having to physically drag items around between containers rather than just listing them like every other RPG.

>seven games

Hey, now, both Underworlds were awesome.

>VIII and IX

I have spoken the unspeakable names, let Armageddon come.

>no black pearls

Shit. Nevermind.

>Cat. Mouse. Old Boot.
>If you're not feeling some level of anger now, you never got deep enough in King's Quest 4 to encounter that little issue.

GODDAMN IT I GOT A BAD HEART DON'T DO THAT TO ME YOU BASTARD

Next thing you know, you'll bring up the GODDAMN BABELFISH.

OH SHIT I DID FUCK

To be fair, how often did the Ultima world actually summon the Avatar to solve something they could solve themselves? In IV there was no crisis, in VI it was the gargoyles that summoned you to kill you, and in VII something was wrong with the magic and everyone was going insane so you were the only one who could use it safely. So it's not really that often, as far as I remember.

On the other hand, how often did Lord British have some peasant come to court moaning and crying about how his crop had failed or a goblin stole his goat and please summon the Avatar to fix it?

>Is the Black Gate a good entry into the mainline games?
Yes, it's pretty good. It's a two-parter though, with a cliffhanger ending. You have to play Serpent Isle to get the full story.

>GODDAMN BABELFISH.

YOU FUCKING FUCKED FUCKER BABELFISH!!!

In one of the Space Quest games, you can get infected with a Xenomorph baby during the final area and it won't kill you until an hour or two later with no warning.

I think a lot of it stems not so much from the summoning, but from the power disparity between the good guys and the bad guys when they do summon you.

Take U6. Britannia is apparently losing the war with the gargoyles, who have occupied all the shrines. This is in spite of the fact that the guards, on average, have better stats than you can ever achievea nd are mostly armed with crossbows; while the gargoyles mostly have boomerangs. If you cheat yourself a single guard into your party and send him in in solo mode, you can easily liberate pretty much all the shrines.

But noooo, they can't do that on their own, they just sit there and lose until you come along and save the day.

Or in BG, how long was Skara Brae under the control of a lich and burnt to a crisp? Alagner seems to know that everyone there is dead, and Batlin spoke to Caine's ghost "many years ago". Why the hell has LB done nothing?

These were the early days of video game world building and finding balance between the world the PCs was still tricky. Developers were using all kinds of cheats to prevent PCs from destroying their worlds.

Raise your hand if you fapped to the undressed paperdolls in U7 as a kid.

>>seven games
>Hey, now, both Underworlds were awesome.

True, but I'm counting traditional CRPGs, not these new-fangled real-time 3-dee shooting things in the first person.

>>VIII and IX

Literally who? And what's a Paladin?