~4 minute readQuarterstaff: Our first role-playing fantasy
Three months ago, a peaceful colony of druids vanished without a trace. As their crops lie overgrown and abandoned, a crossfire of rumors has descended upon the land, laying blame on everything from epidemic to mass homicide to demon worship. Scouting parties have been frantically assembled and sent forth to bring an end to all the hearsay, but none has returned. Now the local kingdoms, restless for news of the missing sect, have called upon you to venture into the depths of the lost Tree Druid colony, buried deep beneath a great oak tree. You must discover whatever foul secret lies within.
Graphics and sound
Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setnoth -— our first entry into the fantasy role-playing (FRP) genre and the first in our RPG series -— is role-playing adventure as you’ve never seen it before on a computer. You’ll read rich text descriptions of the places, objects, and creatures you come across. High-resolution graphics and digitized sounds reinforce the text, and your moves are tracked by a detailed onscreen map which your characters "draw" as they go.
You issue commands to your characters in full English sentences. And as in any FRP, the characters in your party develop and mature in a variety of specific skills, and fight according to a comprehensive combat system. Pervading the Quarterstaff universe at all levels is close attention to detail -— apparent in everything from the weight and bulk of objects they're carrying to the complex timetable by which hunger and fatigue affect the characters in the game. All these elements weave together into a game which is more akin to a "pen and paper" adventure environment than anything previously released on a computer.
Monsters learn from mistakes
As the game opens, you stand at the entrance to the Tree Druids' colony, ready to begin your underearth quest. As you progress, you meet many a curious creature. In Quarterstaff, monsters are not merely "deathbots," whose only purpose in life is to maim and destroy, but ordinary living things whose actions are guided by real life drives such as hunger, anger, and the need for friendship.
Monsters even learn from their mistakes and accomplishments through an artificial-intelligence learning system. Some creatures will react negatively to your party, resorting to combat and force. Others, however, will try to help your party, or even join forces with you; and so, though you begin the adventure with only one character, you're sure to quickly acquire a formidable band of adventurers.
Quarterstaff was originally designed, written and implemented for the Macintosh by Simulated Environment Systems, which released the game in 1987. The game immediately received rave reviews —- MacUser gave it a near-perfect rating of four mice, while Dragon gave it a perfect five stars, saying ‘Quarterstaff... is, in our opinion, among the finest fantasy role-playing games available for any computer system.” Despite reviews like these. which reflected impressive design and development. Quarterstaff ran into marketing trouble, and its distribution was limited. We recognized the game’s potential, and bought the rights to the product.
Includes hierarchical menus
We’ve spent months in collaboration with the game’s authors, Scott Schmitz and Ken Updike, and a slew of talented artists, writers and programmers in order to perfect the game. The first improvement was the implementation of a new Macintosh interface — one that allows the user to play the game entirely with the mouse, or to play entirely using the keyboard. Pull-down menus allow you to easily point and click your way through even complex sentences. We’ve included Apple’s hierarchical menus, usually found only in top-notch business products, to allow you easy access to your inventory. Of course, any command can be typed in via the keyboard.
Next, InfoImplementor Amy Briggs (author of Plundered Hearts) reworked and rewrote most of the game’s text to provide a greater sense of plot and continuity within the story. We also corrected a few grammatical errors as well. Computer artists were brought in to touch up the highresolution graphics and to design a special set of gorgeous color graphics which the game uses when running on a color Mac II.
New package and manual
Our infamous testing staff (which had recently been genetically altered so as to not require sleep) was unleashed on the program to perform exhaustive bug-whacking. After several dozen cases of Jolt cola were consumed over the course of a few months, the finished game emerged. Finally, a new package was conceived and produced featuring beautiful cover art by artist Ken Barr. Inside we put a brand new user’s manual and, as is our style, an assortment of mood setting pieces: a mystical parchment titled "The Path to Enlightenment," a wooden druidic coin and a dazzling color poster featuring the cover art.
The Macintosh version of Quarterstaff will be available in October, and will include the special color graphics for the Mac II. Versions for the Apple II GS and IBM will be available in spring of 1989. Watch upcoming issues for further information. All versions will retail for $49.95.
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
