Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Barbarian Prince also got a great fan-made redesign on BGG. BP was one of the first games I bought in this hobby.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Yes it did! I've got a file just stuffed with Barbarian Prince upgrades, errata, and redesigned tables. I still think it would make the basis of a very excellent solotaire hex-crawl system.

While I may be focusing on that particular game in this forum, I must say I love every one of the Dwarfstar games I could get my hands on (there are a couple that aren't available on that download list that I REALLY would like to play). My greatest regret from the '80's is that I didn't pick them up in the hobby shops when I had the chance. So many missed opportunities! ;-)

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Shadekeep, thanks for making this too!

I'd like to see a "right-click - choose color" on the boxes. I'd use this option to mark which boxes I have completed with a certain color. This way, I know how much left there is to do.

Maybe a bold/italic option in the text would be good too.

I do appreciate how quickly both this and the mapper work.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

At least if you're crafty, you can make good reproductions of 6 of the 8 games from the site posted above.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Good idea, a way to separate the "finished" from the "WIP" nodes. I'll probably add a little gadget in the free corner that lets you toggle the state. Need to update the save file as well to remember these changes.

Thanks!

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

I got a lot of use out of Delta Vee - its "pod" system was an indirect inspiration of the modular design rules and GURPS Spaceships.

Voyage of the Pandora was a cool solo game. They also did an interesting Stainless Steel Rat solo.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

I used Grav Armor as a tactical module for a major battle in my Traveller campaign when one player character found himself in command of a regiment-sized unit assaulting a planetary fortress. Worked very well. I did the same with Demonlord for a fantasy campaign; it had an excellent quasi-tactical setup that I borrowed and modified extensively to play out an entire military campaign with. I always wanted to try Star Viking but never got around to it.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Thanks for putting this up. I'll be interested in taking a look at how it works.

You can do a pretty extensive adventure with 120 nodes. Death Test was 167 paragraph nodes. Grail Quest was about the same, but had longer paragraphs for a significantly greater word count. Death Test 2 was huge with 287 paragraph nodes and about 15,000 words of paragraph text. My own Vampire Hunter Belladonna had 194 paragraph nodes, but was heavier on the story telling with about 16,000 words of paragraph text. (The longest paragraph solo adventures I'm aware of are the various book-length ones e.g., Fighting Fantasy and the extensive Call of Cthulhu solos)

So far, I think the pure paragraph adventure format with inset Melee/Wizard scale tactical maps has been most popular for TFT, with "strategic" movement handled strictly through text nodes whether you were moving in a dungeon (Death Test, Security Station, etc.) or through a wilderness (Grail Quest, Belladonna). This is more or less the same format used in the pioneering Tunnels and Trolls and the successful Fighting Fantasy adventures, albeit generally without a tactical map, in the GURPS Conan and Runequest solos and in most of the solos that were at one point a popular vogue for introductory adventures (I recall ones for Basic D&D, Star Wars, James Bond 007 in the 80s/90s. I think the Legends of the Ancient World adventures like Orcs of the High Mountain also use this standard format.

However, both SPI and Metagaming also did some hybrid formats where you moved about on a hex grid or area grid that was fully visible to the player and some or all hexes were keyed to encounters. I think Voyage of the Pandora may have been the fist to do this, and of course it was used in Treasure of the Silver Dragon and Unicorn Gold, and there have been other variations. I am not sure I like it as month as the pure paragraph format, but it adds interesting options. Finally, there is the "Chit Building" solo which SPI pionereed with its Citadel of Blood and Deathmaze games where you assemble a wilderness or dungeon by laying down tiles in a semi-random pattern as you explore each room.

SPI mostly used it for hybrid board-game rpgs, but the format might work well today for a high-budget kickstarter TFT game where the kickstarter funds an entire set of custom room tiles that you assemble to build your labyrinth as you explore it.

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Those were quite good as well (though I already had Delta Vee, since it was the tactical space ship combat system from Universe). The also put their version of Man-to-Man in Ares as an issue game; at the time I remember thinking it was kind of a cop-out since again, I'd already paid for that with my copy of DragonQuest, for which it was the tactical combat system. Ah well, many of the other games more than made up for it, in retrospect!

Re: Programmed Adventure Editor
 

Somewhat annoying, yes. I saw Delta Vee first as an issue game; I think I bought the separate version of Universe rather than the Box Set.

I've also liked Universe for sentimental reasons -- it inspired me to restart a moribund Traveller game (blending elements of both systems together and making up more of my own rules to fill gaps) that ended up lasting several years, which in turn encouraged me to design and write RPGs.

Another solo game from SPI Ares stable was Damocles Mission, which was sort of Citadel of Blood In Space, combining chit/tile building and paragraphs. It was interesting for SPI in being almost entirely non-violent, Archur C. Clarke-style Rendezvous With Rama-type science adventure . I found the concept good but the execution a little dry.