Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 7701009" data-attributes="member: 3285">In the<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3474-The-End-of-a-D-D-Campaign-Was-the-Beginning-of-Doom" target="_blank"> previous installment</a> we discussed the influence of the disastrous end to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and how it helped shape the beginning of the first-person shooter, Doom. But there was another character who influenced id Software's follow-up to Doom.  His name was Quake, and although he never appeared in his original form in the titular game, his magic arsenal was typical of a a high-level D&D character.[ATTACH=full]399344[/ATTACH]<h3>What's the Big Deal About Quake?</h3>Ryan Winterhaller describes the influence of Quake, <a href="http://www.1up.com/features/why-quake-changed-games-forever" target="_blank">which took Doom's innovations to the next level</a>:Where Doom launched the concept of first-person shooters over LANs, Quake took it a step further onto the Internet. And just like Doom, Quake was inspired by the same D&D campaign that id Software founder John Carmack created.<h3>The D&D Connection</h3>John Carmack was an avid dungeon master who worked on a massive Dungeons & Dragons campaign that included all of the id Software coders.  As described in David Kushner's <a href="http://amzn.to/2cn0PxE" target="_blank">Masters of Doom</a>, it included elements that would appear in both Doom and Quake:Originally, the game where Quake would debut was titled "<a href="http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_Quake" target="_blank">The Fight for Justice</a>":The idea was shelved. Co-creator John Romero describes the origins of what would eventually be Quake, which was the name of a character <a href="http://www.1up.com/features/why-quake-changed-games-forever" target="_blank">from a D&D campaign</a>:Masters of Doom elaborates on the objects that would debut in Quake: Eventually the team's ambitions outstripped the current level of gaming technology.  The released version of Quake strayed far from its original fantasy roots.  So what were these three objects inspired by D&D that never appeared in the game? We can make a few educated guesses.<h3>The Ring</h3>The ring of regeneration is the least mysterious of Quake's magical arsenal.  Quake debuted in 1996, before 3.5 edition, so it's likely that any inspiration Carmack took from D&D came from AD&D. Here's the AD&D version:There's also the possibility that the ring was a vampiric regeneration ring, which would make the character nigh-unstoppable:Given the non-stop action of first-person shooters, both types of rings were possible in the video game -- or even the possibility of upgrading the ring of regeneration to a vampiric ring.  If the ring is somewhat generic, tracing the cube's roots are not quite as straightforward.<h3>The Cube</h3>The Hellgate Cube likely had a parallel in the Hellraiser movies that first debuted in 1987. The cube in the Hellraiser franchise was known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemarchand%27s_box" target="_blank">Lemarchand's box</a>:Given its description as a cube, it was likely a Cubic Gate in Carmack's original D&D campaign. Here's the AD&D version:The Hellgate Cube was probably keyed to five different planes of hell. The Hellgate Cube, like the hammer and ring,  <a href="http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/Hellgate_Cube" target="_blank">never made it into Quake</a>:And what of Quake's hammer, arguably the most defining aspect of his magical arsenal?<h3>The Hammer</h3>The original idea of the Quake hammer was the <a href="http://quake.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_Quake" target="_blank">hammer of thunderbolts</a>:Sandy Petersen, the principal author behind Call of Cthulhu, also earned his video game chops designing seven levels for Quake. In this case the hammer's origin isn't a mystery -- it's obviously a hammer of thunderbolts -- or is it?  Here's the description of the hammer from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide:The description doesn't quite line up with Carmack's interpretation. It doesn't cause earthquakes or demolish buildings. There is, however, a hammer that is capable of "demolishing buildings"  known as the Mattock of the Titans. <a href="http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73631" target="_blank">Here's the AD&D version</a>:And yet the Mattock doesn't cause quakes. There is one magic item that fits the bill: a magical warhammer that does everything Quake was capable of, including being "throwable" and capable of causing "literal quakes" that "knock monsters back".  That weapon is the legendary Whelm, the a dwarven warhammer from the AD&D adventure, White Plume Mountain:Was this the "smoking hammer" so to speak?  There was only one way to find out.<h3>Carmack Responds</h3>I asked John Carmack about Quake's hammer and its possible connection to Whelm (as well as the connection of the Demonicron to the Demonomicon of Iggwilv). His response:There we have it. Like most DMs, Carmack likely took a little bit of everything for his campaign and tweaked the elements he liked, discarding the elements he didn't.  And of course, translating D&D to video game requires some concessions, so the original incarnation of Quake changed over time.That doesn't take away from Carmack's fantastic imagination, his coding prowess, or his ability to envision a world that could not be contained by video games alone. Quake may have never debuted in his own game in the original fashion of an epic-level D&D character, but his descendants would continue his tradition, most notably the fantasy first-person shooter, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexen_II" target="_blank">Hexen II</a>.SaveSave</blockquote>

Verification