Ruin Zone
A nameless, deserted fortress stands alone, deep in the wilderness. Once upon a time, this was the center of a great kingdom surrounded by a forest without end, a vast swath of Town terrain that stretched the length of the map until, long ago, it was annihilated in a strategic-scale campaign. When the kingdom fell, its terrain type modified to Ruin; one day, centuries from now, it will change to Forest.
(Ruins can contain multiple specialized terrain types: Cavern, Corridor, Debris-Strewn Corridor, Door [Standard and Secret], Room [Large and Small], Stairway, Pit, Special.)
A) Dungeon
Under a wooden trapdoor in the courtyard, stone stairs lead downward into a narrow space smelling of earth. At first, tree roots poke through the ceiling and stray sunbeams come in through the cracks, but after a few hexes, sunlight and the sounds of the forest disappear.
Skeletons hang from manacles in rooms and corridors of damp stones coated with algae. Goblins, giant rats, vicious animals roam the otherwise empty halls. A false wall at the back of a cell opens to reveal stairs leading still farther down.
(There’s a picture showing the ruined hall; Lisa says the artist could stand to learn a little about stonework, not to mention where to place load-bearing elements.)
B) Tombs of Terror
Were these built at a later date? The workmanship is much finer, although poison spikes and mocking inscriptions ward explorers off from the graves of the honored, eternally pissed-off dead. In the Tomb of Lorac, there is a cache of gold and precious magic objects surrounded by the bones of luckless adventurers who came before you.
This is as far as the old kingdom builders ever dug, but a crack in the tomb wall gives access to the Glowing Caverns.
C) Glowing Caverns
A rough landscape of towering stalagmites and luminous, overgrown fungi. Colored crystals protrude from the cavern walls. A pool of shimmering rainbow liquid yields random magical effects—invisibility, telepathic powers, hallucinations.
Your pouches are now full of rubies and emeralds dug from the walls; you are all wealthy enough to live comfortably for the rest of your lives. You think fleetingly of going back, but no one mentions it aloud. Why would you? This is the best part of your lives—the four of you together against the darkness and the unknown, a quest that could last forever without your ever wanting to leave this basement.
D) Underground Stream
The distant sound of running water beckons you forward to the place where a swiftly running stream of black water has carved a channel in the stone that leads downward into the earth, through a series of narrow tunnels and larger chambers. An Ancient Giant Cave Pike swims just beneath the surface. Farther down, the stream becomes a river that drops then drops again, then cascades down into a cavern so vast you cannot see the far wall. A fresh breeze blows through it, smelling of salt water and carrying the sound of… crowds?
E) Goblin City
The Goblin City has always lain beneath the kingdom and was perhaps the secret agent of its downfall. You follow the river as it winds through crowded streets and markets to a dock where a skiff is moored, and the party stops to camp by the dark waves of a mysterious underground sea.
Probably everyone’s pretty tired by now, and outside the sun has long since gone down and you’re going to need a lift home, or else you’re going to have to ride your bike a long way on a cold March night, your back wheel sliding on wet leaves as you pass the lit windows of houses and wonder what it’s like, how you’d be different if you lived there. You’re way too much inside your head, and other people notice, but you won’t realize that for another ten years, maybe more, and by then maybe it’s too late.
F) Subterranean Ocean
As you cross the subterranean ocean, shadowy, enormous forms move beneath your boat, lit from below by phosphorescent algae. Nautical movement rules apply.
G) Maze of Wonder
Those who journey to the far shores discover the gemlike Maze of Wonder, where corridors bend at impossible angles and the rules of space and time become less certain. The monster population becomes more exotic—outré, whimsically lethal inventions out of rare rules supplements. Lorac himself lurks here, now an undead being of near-infinite power. He warns you to go back. He, too, was once a prince and a twenty-sixth-level magus, until he opened a portal to the Burning Worlds and was lost.
Here and there portals lead off into other dimensions, where you can fight angels or mutants or space aliens or Nazis for as long as you want to, but the quest remains here.
H) The Base of the World
Few indeed have seen the silent chamber at the base of the world, which is littered with the most flagrantly unfair traps available—soul traps, contact poison, portals leading into doorless chambers filled with water.
Each of you will find a hidden treasure inside, and it’s the one thing you always wanted. The royal signet ring; your master’s sword; a lock of hair; a seed to regrow the forests of your homeland. But now that you think about it, you’re not sure if your origin makes sense anymore. Has it been weeks since you left home, or months? Years? It’s getting late and everybody’s tired and you can barely remember what was said at the start that meant so much, about a girl in a muddy village or a third-level barbarian chief who threatened your tribe. Seems like inventory could just about buy that town by now.
Town Zone (2)
But when you get home, you find that everything has changed. While you were away the town grew into a sprawling city. They built walls around it, then the city expanded past them. It sent roads into the outlying fields, past new farms and over the borders to other lands. The old king died, and in your absence the false prince took the throne. He sent the kingdom deeper and deeper into debt until he in turn was replaced by a council of merchants, and that’s it for the royal family.
More time passes, and the palace you grew up in is now a museum. The forest is cut down; the city spreads along the river to the sea and establishes a port where ships come from all over the world and bear people away to countries you’ve never heard of. The ships bring back textiles and jewelry and gunpowder. New character classes appear, some playable and some not, artisans and musketeers and gangsters and astronomers, which are explained in still more supplemental rule books, Realms of Gold: Age of Sail and Realms of Gold: Sages and Scientists. You pack away the lock of hair, the signet ring, and the sword. All that stuff was long ago.
Decades go by, faster and faster, and now, of the original party, only the elf survives. He has aged only fractionally through the years, and his accumulated experience points have taken him far off any of the level charts. He spends the day lounging in cafés on the cobblestone street where the old tavern used to stand; he pays his rent with jewels and odd coins that ring strangely against the table. He owns a horse and carriage and half a dozen houses in town. He’s an eccentric guest at dinner parties, the subject of society talk and gossip. You—and somehow it’s still you—can invest in merchant caravans for profit. You can finance other adventurers if you want, for a share in the returns. You never marry or have children. You collect old books, a few of which make reference to your early adventures, but only as legends.
One day a hot air balloon passes over the city. It only costs five gold pieces to ride in it. An amusement for gentlemen and ladies of quality!
Sky Zone
You ascend. The Sky Zone was never meant to be playable, so now what? You scrounge up a Xeroxed page and a half of sketchy guidelines. Rules for movement, suggested cloud maps, lightning-strike table.
It’s raining hard outside the office this evening, too, there’s lightning here, too, and past nine o’clock it doesn’t feel like work. You’re hanging out late in the break room with Matt and Lisa and you’re trying to steal soda from the machine using adhesive tape, which doesn’t work but is hilarious.
The Sky Zone contains air elementals, floating eyes, yellow lights, storm giants. Giant Erl from the Legendary Adventures supplement in a cloud
castle. All areas of the Town, Forest, and Ruin maps are accessible. You find portals to all the elemental planes. You may reach the Starlight and Ethereal Zones from here.
You order new rules through the mail from an address in the back of Dragon magazine, rules not published officially, to describe galleons that sail between planets and starfish with arms that span continents. You resolve to reach the center of the galaxy, the center of everything, if you can, and that’s where the game ends, now not a game at all but a campaign that’s going to go on as long as your life does, no matter what you think of me now, because we are graduating from high school, from college, getting married, and now it’s time for all cards to be turned over, all items identified, all secret areas revealed. And now at last maybe we can score this thing properly.
A Selective Time Line of Video Game History
1971: The Chainmail tabletop strategy game is modified to include rules for person-to-person combat, rules that would ultimately be used in Dungeons & Dragons.
1975: Adventure (a.k.a. Colossal Cave Adventure)—the first text-based computer adventure game—is created by Willie Crowther and Don Woods.
1979: The first Choose Your Own Adventure book—The Cave of Time, by Edward Packard—is published. Adventure for Atari 2600, containing the prototypical video game Easter egg, a secret room showing the name of its creator, is released.
1982: The hit single “Pac-Man Fever” by novelty act Buckner and Garcia reaches number 9 on the Billboard chart.
The movie TRON is released.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, widely accepted as the most loathed home video game of all time, is released for Atari 2600.
1983: Ultima III: Exodus, often cited as the foundation for the computer fantasy role-playing genre, is released.
Realms of Gold I: Tomb of Destiny is written in Mr. Kovacs’s intro to programming class.
The movie WarGames is released.
Electronic Arts runs the famous “Can a Computer Make You Cry” advertisement in Creative Computing.
Realms of Gold II: War in the Realms is written at KidBits computer camp.
1985: The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is released in the United States.
1987: Realms of Gold III: Restoration is released.
1988: Clandestine for the Commodore 64, Black Arts’ first commercially published title, is released.
1989: Solar Empires I is released.
1990: Realms of Gold IV: City of Hope is released.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is released for NES.
1991: Black Karts Racing is released.
1992: Realms of Golf is released.
id Software releases Wolfenstein 3D, introducing the first-person shooter genre.
Clandestine II: Love Never Thinks Twice is released.
1993: Cyan releases Myst, an artistic milestone and the first mainstream hit on the CD-ROM platform.
Realms of Gold V: Aquator’s Realm is released.
Realms of Gold’s Worlds of Intrigue: High Society is released.
Clandestine III: Mirror Games is released.
1994: Clandestine IV: On American Assignment is released.
Realms of Gold VI: Far Latitudes is released.
1995: Clandestine V: Axis Power is released.
Solar Empires II: The Ten-Thousand-Year Sleepover is released.
Pro Skate ’Em Endoria: Grind the Arch-Lich is released.
1996: Tomb Raider, featuring the first successful female action hero in a video game, is released.
Clandestine VI: Deathclock is released.
Clandestine: Worlds Beyond (Limited Edition) is released.
Tournament of Ages is released.
1997: Clandestine VII: Countdown to Rapture is released.
Ultima Online, the first massively successful multiplayer-only role-playing game, is released.
Solar Empires III: Pan-Stellar Activation is released.
Founding member Darren Ackerman leaves Black Arts and founds his own studio, Vorpal, which will continue the Clandestine franchise.
1998: Mike Abrash publicly reveals the technology behind the Quake game engine in a talk at the annual Game Developers Conference.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of several games often referred to as the greatest video game of all time, is published.
Clandestine: World’s End is released.
Realms of Gold VII: Winter’s Crown is demonstrated at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
2000: The Sony PlayStation 2 is released.
2006: The Nintendo Wii, the first mainstream motion-sensing console, is released.
2008: Gary Gygax, principal inventor and popularizer of Dungeons & Dragons, dies.
AUSTIN GROSSMAN is a video game design consultant who has worked on such games as Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, System Shock, Flight Unlimited, Trespasser: Jurassic Park, Clive Barker’s Undying, Deus Ex, Tomb Raider Legend, Epic Mickey, and Dishonored. He is also the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible, which was nominated for the 2007 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. His writing has appeared in Granta, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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Also by Austin Grossman
Soon I Will Be Invincible
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Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
PART I: THE ULTIMATE GAME
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
PART II: THE FIRST AGE OF THE WORLD
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
PART III: THE SECOND AGE OF THE WORLD
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PART IV: THE THIRD AGE OF THE WORLD
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
PART V: CLANDESTINE, OR THE SPY WHO LOVED YOU
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
PART VI: THE SOLAR AGE
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
PART VII: ENDGAME
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
A Selective Time Line of Video Game History
About the Author
Also by Austin Grossman
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
C
opyright © 2013 by Austin Grossman
Cover design by Kapo Ng
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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