The gaming classic Daggerfall available for free

Those of you who have been me a while know that I once played the computer game Daggerfall. As an example of world building I found it amazing. Not only where the game so big it truly felt like you explored a whole world, the fact that your actions generated a reputation for you in the local area made it feel real. Your actions did have an impact on the world, without you being in the centre of the world all the time. Now I just learned that this game is available for free! If you visit the web home for the game series, you can try it out. While it might look a bit rough by the standards of today, I still think it could teach us something about world building for any roleplaying game.

What are Ken Rolston up to these days? Making huge computer games!

I just read an article on Gamasutra about the history of "CRPG"s. That alphabet soup is what you call roleplaying gaming when they show up on a computer. Most of them don't allow much roleplaying, but that's just to be expected.

The article goes though all the big classics in the genre and even classifies them based on their ancestry. Interesting idea. Among the other data collected on the games they also note down who designed what. I already knew Ken St. Andre designed Wastelands, but now I also know what Ken Rolston does these days. He designed Morrowind and Oblivion! Those who remember Ken's role in the Gloranthan Renaissance at Avalon Hill probably have fond memories of his work.

I still remember when Daggerfall was new, and all of us played it like obsessed. The game was huge, and you could basically live your life in that big world. We also found out that you sometimes had gotten a bad rep in a town, and had to move to another one, post haste. I loved that. How I wish Ken could be designing a Gloranthan computer game. That would get me into computer gaming again!