Zork 1-3 going open source

Very cool.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Does this affect the content within Zork? Could I make a Zork-based tabletop RPG? Or is it strictly about the underlying code?

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It seems to be explicitly only about the code:

This release focuses purely on the code itself. It does not include commercial packaging or marketing materials, and it does not grant rights to any trademarks or brands, which remain with their respective owners. All assets outside the scope of these titles’ source code are intentionally excluded to preserve historical accuracy.

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This is a bit unfortunate, IMHO. Do they really have plans to commercially use the Zork IP?

Neat!

Never got to play them, but love text adventures, so always wanted to give them a shot.

I have great memories of many hours playing these three games on Apple IIe computers with green screens in the school computer lab (after school activity) and on our home PC clone with its amber screen (exotic!). Some of the puzzles were that special kind of “how in the world was anyone supposed to figure that out?” so common in computer games of that era. One of my school friends tried to shame me for using hint books (remember those?), but I did not feel any obligation to waste time solving aggressively random puzzles the “right” way.

I think the Great Underground Empire was a pretty evocative setting that could be very useful for an old school dungeon crawl style of TTRPG, particularly if a slightly light-hearted tone is desired. Start with an ordinary dwelling and a secret entrance to a natural subterranean cavern system, expand with additional worked stone chambers, then add lots of tricks, traps, puzzles, gadgets, and mechanisms. Sprinkle in lots of clues that clever PCs can use to solve problems.

The GUE had relatively little lore or backstory to work with in the original trilogy of games, but that leaves the GM free to develop the history as they see fit. I imagine Gnomes or Dwarves who developed an underground empire by using advanced tunneling and clockwork mechanisms to master the subterranean environment, before succumbing to forces unknown. PCs could explore the area, hunt for treasure, and gather clues in order to learn what happened. Perhaps grues are not the only things lurking in the darkness. Perhaps there are some who would restore the Empire to its former glory...

I'm surprised that it is still so well known too. For my Senior Project, I assembled a small screen to a development board and programmed a dungeon crawl that was static images with text prompts at the bottom. One young student was playing around with it and said, "It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.", a reference I didn't get at the time, but his friends sure did!

Flying Toaster said:

The GUE had relatively little lore or backstory to work with in the original trilogy of games, but that leaves the GM free to develop the history as they see fit.

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The lore eventually gets pretty deep over time, as the Zork series is long and multiple other Infocom games were set in the same setting. It always has the kind of woolly old school D&D campaign setting feel, as some of it is just silly, while other parts feel extremely serious (while still resting on fundamentally silly ideas).

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

The lore eventually gets pretty deep over time, as the Zork series is long and multiple other Infocom games were set in the same setting. It always has the kind of woolly old school D&D campaign setting feel, as some of it is just silly, while other parts feel extremely serious (while still resting on fundamentally silly ideas).

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Speaking of silly, names like “Frobozz” and “Lord Dimwit Flathead the Excessive” always reminded me of the weird names and fake swears in MAD magazine, or the humor in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was a formative influence for me and everybody in my 1980’s D&D groups. I memorized whole chunks of dialogue and we all quoted it incessantly.

Zork very much has the same slightly wacky, genre-blending flavor as 1970’s gonzo D&D. Castle Blackmoor had mechanical war machines and (IIRC) a turnstile at one of the dungeon entrances, while the Great Underground Empire had Flood Control Dam #3. Both Blackmoor and Greyhawk featured crashed spacecraft! You see the same gleeful mishmash of anachronisms and clashing tones in D&D and Zork: medieval weapons and armor, steampunk technology and infrastructure, pulp adventure deathtraps, humor both clever and cheesy.

Flying Toaster said:

Zork very much has the same slightly wacky, genre-blending flavor as 1970’s gonzo D&D. Castle Blackmoor had mechanical war machines and (IIRC) a turnstile at one of the dungeon entrances, while the GUE had Flood Control Dam #3. Both Blackmoor and Greyhawk featured crashed spacecraft! You see the same gleeful mishmash of anachronisms and clashing tones in D&D and Zork: medieval weapons and armor, steampunk technology and infrastructure, pulp adventure deathtraps, humor both clever and cheesy.

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Funny, this is a very D&D thing (theme) to me, but I feel like it's missing from a lot of the "what is OSR" discussions I see.

By the way, I think Zork was free-to-play in Call of Duty: Black Ops. So it's not too dusty.

GMMichael said:

Funny, this is a very D&D thing (theme) to me, but I feel like it's missing from a lot of the "what is OSR" discussions I see.

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The gonzo elements are definitely there in the OSR. They’re not hard to find at all. I think most people in the scene realize the presence of gonzo in some foundational games/settings does not make it definitional to old-school gaming as a whole.

GMMichael said:

Funny, this is a very D&D thing (theme) to me, but I feel like it's missing from a lot of the "what is OSR" discussions I see.

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Oh, it's definitely there, alongside the grubby dungeons.

Anomalous Subsurface Environments is one of the most popular and respected of OSR dungeons, having originally come out for Labyrinth Lord.


And as for gonzo: