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Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your Microcomputer

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Source: 
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/write-your-own-fantasy-games-for-your-microcomputer/

(yes, it's my own blog)


I was searching through some old files on one of my storage disks when I 
came across this book again: Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your 
Microcomputer by Les Howarth and Cheryl Evans, with a program credited 
to Chris Oxlade, and illustrations by various people including Chris 
Riddell.

It was part of the series of Usborne Gamewriters’ Guides back in the 
80s, which consisted of multiple books like this, Write Your own 
Adventure Programsm, Computer Spy Games, etc.

If you aren’t aware about this kind of book, the actual main part of it 
was the program listing in the later half of the book. This kind of book 
was supposed to teach you programming by… literally having you type in a 
program command by command. Which was a way to get software out to other 
people when storage media for it were too expensive to include. These 
listings were in computer magazines all the time, I even saw a few for 
character generators and similar stuff in normal TTRPG magazines.

But it also gives you an explanation what those particular bits are 
supposed to do, and how to deal with the bugs you are certain to 
encounter when copying the listing into your own machine.

But before that it had to teach you what they mean with Fantasy Game 
(roleplaying games), what Dungeon and Dragons (TM) is, and how such a 
game is played, before then venturing into how they intend to translate 
this into a game where you are both Dungeon Master and player.

In the end this creates a sort of rogue-like.

But I find some of the implications of the text fascinating. For one it 
was so early in the development of CRPGs that they don’t talk about this 
being a game or role-playing game (in fact that term is never used), you 
are creating a fantasy game like DnD instead, and you are using the 
computer to run it. I know it’s just a small difference, but this 
doesn’t come from a position of consuming the game, you are CREATING it 
instead. It starts from the assumption that you are using this as a 
framework to do your own adventuring environment that is basically an 
extension of a tabletop game into computer space. A later chapter goes 
into explaining how to extend this program with your own creations. In 
other words, you are not supposed to be a programmer with this, you are 
a Dungeon Master who just happens to use the computer as a medium. Which 
I find a fascinating approach.

I also found this bit interesting:

You should name the document of your game rules and conditions your Book 
of Lore as this is the common name fantasy gamers use to describe this.

Book of Lore.

Now I can’t say I never encountered the name before, but I find the idea 
that this is a specific term that fantasy roleplayers use to describe… 
well, what exactly? A campaign Bible I guess. Maybe I should indeed call 
mine Books of Lore from now on.

Yes I know that lore has come to mean something else by now, but this 
was written in 1981, maybe this was actually a term a specific subset of 
gamers used.

By the way, according to the back of the book this book cost £2.25 (in 
2026 money: £9.75) when it was published, but according to the inside 
cover you could also have them send the program on cassette and save 
yourself the typing… for £5.99 (2024: £22.11)

Which would make the whole book pointless I guess. But computer stuff 
was expensive back then.

If you are interested in this, the book has been out of print for 
decades now, but Usborne made this and others available for free on 
their website a few years ago.

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Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your Microcomputer Gottfried Neuner <kyonshi@wilderland.ovh> - 2026-01-03 21:54 +0100
  Re: Write Your Own Fantasy Games For Your Microcomputer dozens <dozens@tilde.team> - 2026-03-20 12:50 -0600

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