Introduction

There is nothing like the first time.  The first time I sat down at my (now venerable) Commodore 64 and loaded up my first CRPG.  Back then I had a tape drive and the loading process was about an hour…but once Telengard loaded I had many an evening’s entertainment. 

Telengard was based of the old microcomputer game DND, which has had innumerable ports, recodes and remakes.  Telegard sort of represents the official apex of the game, but each of the variants offer something different (for better or worse).

Fast forward 30 years.  I was in a nostalgic mood and after a quick Google search I came across a faithful remake of Telengard.  I thought, “How good could it be?” or has time, technology and gaming tastes evolved too much to make it anything more than a few minutes of fond remembrance? 

Mechanics

Telengard is a rough interpretation of old school D&D save it does not bother with classes or anything else.  Your character is an uber adventurer cabale of anything.  Spells come along as you advance in level (6 per casting level) and some are more handy than others.  Like D&D spells come every few levels, but seems balanced well against what you should be going up against relative to your level.  Heck as a low level character I can readily cast turn undead (a first level spell) and take out 40^th level creatures. 

Your character gains experience by killing stuff and cashing in gold at an Inn.  So the need to go deeper in the dungeon is essential as those low level encounters will not put up much of a dent in your experience points. 

Other than spells you can attack or evade.  Attacks do improve with level advancement, evasion seems stats based.

The stats for Telegard are rudimentary:  strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma, intelligence.  When the random number generator kicks off when you are building a character there is usually something lacking in atleast one or two of your stats.  After taking a while to look at how the generation works it is very tough to get more than a state or two above.  Luckily encounters in the Telengard dungeon can improve your stats (or lower them).  For the most part intelligence, dexterity, strength and charisma are noticeable.  Charisma in particular as it can make the randomly encountered monsters like you and they might heal you or give you stuff.

Equipment in Telengard  is rudimentary.  Your character can have:

• Sword
• Shield
• Armor
• Ring of regeneration (hit points)
• Ring of protection
• Elven boots
• Elven cloak
• Potions (strength, healing)
• Scroll of rescue (teleports you back to the Worthy Mead Inn, a nice CYA)

More so than stats, equipment can make a tremendous difference in your character’s success.  Picking up a ring of regeneration or good protective item can reduce the need to go to an Inn or make it tough for like leveled encounters to harm you.   Quick teleports to harder level scan yield a quick reward, but make sure to bring a scroll of rescue along…

Game Play

Telengard is the apex of random tables.  Encounters are random and their treasure is also.  The fifty levels of Telengard dungeon sort of act as a guideline for what you might encounter plus or minus a number of levels.  For example on level one the range might be levels 1-5 on average, but level 50 might be 1-50.  The treasure has the same rough guidelines,  So a low level character might risk going down many levels to try and get a few good items before hunting in more appropriate areas for their level.  This tactic requires a scroll of rescue which will transport the pc back to the initial inn with all their equipment, but sans and gold picked up).  Everything is random, so your character could stay in one place and a veritable host of creatures and treasure will magically find you.

The dungeon itself is set, but as Telengard was made before the days of automapping and unless you have a keen memory or loads of graph paper (and plenty of time) then it is simply an exercise of wandering around, killing stuff, saving often and beating feet back to an Inn.  Inns are only on the first level of the dungeon, but a scroll of rescue, teleportation cubes and teleportation traps can allow for quick travel.  Other encounters in the dungeons in regards to set features include, pits, lifts, thrones (good for improved stats, $$$, teleportation and the loss of levels and status…its all random), fountains (hit point regeneration or losses) and puzzle cubes.

The monsters in Telengard are surprisingly sophisticated.  There are a good variety and each have their own qualities.  Demons are the worst as they are very tough, deal out loads of damage are resistant to spells.  Dwarves are mid range, they have lots of hits, deal out good damage but do not do anything special.  Gnolls are the lowest of the lot as they have low hit points and deal out very little damage.  Some creatures drain levels, breath fire, paralyze, or will simply steal a random item from your inventory.  The hit points of monsters are random, but seem to follow a trend depending on what the creature is.  Some tougher creatures might have 20 plus hit points per level others might have just a couple.

The one thing that makes adventuring in Telegard tough is spells.  Not that there are not loads of good ones, rather the spell points to cast them do not increase if you go a few turns without encountering anything.  Rings of Regeneration only effect hit points, which helps stem the use of spells for healing (though in combat each round does not have any regeneration).  When spell points run low, it is usually a good time to find a teleportation cube or whip out the scroll of rescue.  Luckily you can save ay any point in the game outside of an encounter, but that exits you out of the game and you have to reload.  Not a big deal, just a wonky step based on the age of the program.  While this is a PC game, it is a faithful recreation of the Commodore 64 version of Telengard and no windows conveniences exist.

Summary

Telengard is still an enjoyable game.  It is simple, but challenging.  There are a number of woogies in the game to exploit, but given the unforgiving nature of combat and wonky randomness this is more of a counter balance in my mind.  After finding the port of Telengard I have been playing it when I am bored or have a few spare minutes and do not have the time to play a game that requires such an investment. 

Strickly speaking it is not a CRPG, Telengard is more of an action RPG.  Your task is too kill everything you see and grab as much loot as you can find.  Bob and Dave from Knights of the Dinner table would love Telengard.:)  In Telengard’s defense it set up the model for which other games perfected (such as Diablo) years later.  It might not be the gold standard, but it is arguably the on of the originators of the genre.

 If you are looking for a pleasant distraction and harken for the old days of computer RPGS, Telengard is a solid little game that has legs even after twenty years.

If you want to download this remake: http://buildingworlds.com/telengard/

If you want the manual (a must): http://dnd.lunaticsworld.com/telengard.pdf