The Bard's Tale (1985 video game)

The Bard's Tale is a 1985 fantasy role-playing video game designed and programmed by Michael Cranford for Interplay Productions and published by Electronic Arts for the Apple II. Set in the fictional city of Skara Brae, which has been engulfed in eternal winter and overrun by monsters due to a spell cast by the evil wizard Mangar the Dark, the game tasks players with assembling and leading a party of up to six adventurers to navigate the city's streets, sewers, and multi-level dungeons to confront and defeat him. The game was ported to the Commodore 64, Apple IIGS, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Mac, and NES. It spawned The Bard's Tale series of games and books. The earliest editions of the game used a series title of Tales of the Unknown, but this title was dropped for later ports of The Bard's Tale and subsequent games in the series.

In August 2018, a remastered version was released for Windows, followed by the Xbox One release in 2019.

Gameplay

The Bard's Tale is a straightforward dungeon crawl. The objective is to gain experience and advance characters' skills through (mostly) random combat with enemies and monsters. This is done while exploring maze-like dungeons, solving occasional puzzles and riddles, and finding or buying better weapons, armor, and other equipment.

When beginning the game, the player may create up to six player characters, chosen from among the following classes: bard, hunter, monk, paladin, rogue, warrior, magician, and conjurer. The classes sorcerer and wizard are available to experienced conjurers and magicians. On some platforms, the player can import previously created characters from Wizardry and/or Ultima III, which was somewhat revolutionary at the time of the game's release.

Of particular innovation to the genre was the bard, whose magical songs functioned like long-lasting spells and affected the player's party in various ways—such as strengthening their armor, or increasing their attack speed. A number of obligatory puzzles in the game were unsolvable without the use of bard songs. Each bard song triggered corresponding music while he played (some classical, some original).

Magic users were allowed to change classes permanently. The game manual describes a magic user who has mastered all spells from all four classes as "an Archmage, the most powerful being in the world of The Bard's Tale." However, Archmage status had no effect on gameplay other than having all spells available.

Casting one of the 85 magic user spells consisted of typing a four-letter code found only in the printed game manual. However, when using a mouse (in the DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh versions), the full names of the spells would appear in a list to choose from.

Combat is turn-based, described in text rather than shown graphically; there is no notion of moving characters around on a map during combat. Cash and experience points are distributed evenly to all surviving party members after a particular encounter is won.

Plot

The following text from the box cover summarizes the premise:

Long ago, when magic still prevailed, the evil wizard Mangar the Dark threatened a small but harmonious country town called Skara Brae. Evil creatures oozed into Skara Brae and joined his shadow domain. Mangar froze the surrounding lands with a spell of Eternal Winter, totally isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Then, one night, the town militiamen all disappeared.

The future of Skara Brae hung in the balance. And who was left to resist? Only a handful of unproven young Warriors, junior Magic Users, a couple of Bards barely old enough to drink, and some out of work Rogues.

You are there. You are the leader of this ragtag group of freedom fighters. Luckily you have a Bard with you to sing your glories, if you survive. For this is the stuff of legends. And so the story begins...

In the game, the player forms a group of up to six characters. Game progress is made through advancing the characters so that they are powerful enough to defeat the increasingly dangerous foes and monsters in the dungeons, obtaining certain items relevant to solving the overall quest, and obtaining information.

The fictional town of Skara Brae consists of 30x30 map tiles containing either buildings or streets (plus gates and magical guardian statues blocking certain streets). Access to one tower in the northeastern and southwestern city corner each is blocked by locked gates. The main city gates, which open to the west, are blocked by snow and remain impassable throughout the game. One street seems to lead south endlessly, by actually teleporting the party back to its beginning upon reaching the portion where the city walls would be.

Certain buildings within the city are special, such as the Adventurer's Guild, Garth's Equipment Shoppe, the Review Board (which is unmarked and must be found first, and is the only place where characters can advance in experience levels), various taverns and temples, and the dungeons. The latter are mazes of various kinds—cellars, sewers, catacombs, or fortresses—full of monsters and riddles, some guarded by magical statues that come to life to attack trespassing player parties.

The first dungeon is the Wine Cellar (1 level) of a tavern, which turns out to be connected to the Sewers of Skara Brae (3 levels) that in turn feature an exit that leads to the otherwise inaccessible southwestern corner of the city where Mangar's Tower, the final dungeon, is located. The tower cannot be entered without a key, however. In the sewers, numerous hints are found, including the name of the Mad God. Finding the Wine Cellar requires the party to order some wine at a specific tavern. There was a hint to this in the manual (Hint: The first dungeon is the wine cellar of the only tavern in town which serves wine. It's on Rakhir Street). However, this hint was not present in the manual included with the C64 release of the game. Upon ordering wine, the party is sent by the bartender to his cellar to fetch a bottle themselves. It is not actually possible within the game to obtain a bottle of wine, nor is it required to proceed. The undead-infested Catacombs (3 levels) beneath the temple of the Mad God, accessible only if his name is known (the player must type the password to enter). On the lowest level, a Spectre must be defeated to obtain an eye. If they possess the eye, a statue of the Mad God in Baron Harkyn's Castle (3 levels) will teleport the party to the (otherwise inaccessible) northeastern area of Skara Brae where the next dungeon is located; however, it is not required to proceed to the next dungeon immediately. If weakened too much from the fighting in the castle, the party may elect to leave the area via one-way portals instead at this point and return to the city and the Adventurer's Guild. Kylearan's Tower (1 level) can only be reached through the teleporter in Harkyn's Castle, requiring any party who wishes to enter to fight through the castle's three levels first. Kylearan the Archmage awaits the party at the conclusion of his tower maze and turns out to be friendly. He gives the party an access key to Mangar's Tower, the final dungeon, but they still have to circumvent the locked gates around the tower by going through the Sewers. Still reachable only via the Sewers at this point in the game, Mangar's Tower (5 levels) is the final dungeon that has to be overcome to reach Mangar and slay him, provided the party has acquired several items in the other dungeons which are required to best him. At one point within the tower, the party can acquire a key that will allow them to access Mangar's Tower and Kylearan's Tower from the city directly thenceforward, without having to move through the Sewers or Harkyn's Castle, respectively.

Development Michael Cranford developed the concept, design, and programming of The Bard's Tale and its successor game (The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight), with additional design by Brian Fargo (the founder of Interplay) and Roe Adams III. David Lowery designed the graphics, Lawrence Holland composed the music, and Joe Ybarra served as producer. Cranford stated that most of the game design was based on his and Fargo's Dungeons & Dragons gaming experiences. Cranford and Fargo tried to improve on previous games of the genre in many areas including graphics and sound, with Cranford pointing to the Apple version of Wizardry as an example of a game that fell short in his judgement. The Bard's Tale was originally going to be named Shadow Snare and was announced as a successor to Cranford's earlier game Maze Master which was published by Human Engineered Software in 1983.

Cranford is a devout Christian. He included references to Jesus in The Bard's Tale, and all but one of the city names in The Bard's Tale II are taken from the New Testament. After a falling-out with Brian Fargo, he was not involved in The Bard's Tale III and decided to go back to college to study philosophy and theology instead.

Cranford stated that they used a consultant during game development who suggested various ideas, including the city name Skara Brae, which was also used in Ultima IV—a surprise discovery after that game's release due to the consultant's work on Ultima IV as well. Cranford noted that they did not use the other ideas as the similarities could have been problematic.

Rebecca Heineman, who worked at Interplay at the time (then as Bill "Burger" Heineman), is credited in the game's manual for the "data compressing routines that allowed [Cranford] to pack so much graphics and animation", and according to herself also wrote development tools for the game such as a graphic editor and all ports to other platforms. Heineman became openly critical of Cranford in later years, saying in an interview that Cranford, after doing some last bugfixes, held the game's final version "hostage" to force Brian Fargo to sign a publishing contract that contained a clause by which the sequel game (The Destiny Knight) would be Cranford's alone. Brian Fargo confirmed this, but still defended Cranford.

Cranford in turn called Heineman's words "disparaging slant" and "fiction", noting that Heineman ("a storyteller with an agenda") at the time was (paraphrased) a loner who "sat isolated in a cubicle in the back corner of the room", wasn't involved in the company's business operations, nor deeply involved in The Bard's Tale, and therefore would not know all the details.RPG Codex.net interview with Michael CranfordForum posting by Michael Cranford, explaining his point of view As far as he (Cranford) could remember the situation, Brian Fargo would not produce a written contract for the game until near the very end of the development, and then only under pressure from Cranford withholding the final product. When he finally did, the contract was not what Cranford thought they had verbally agreed on when he had started working on the project, nor something he felt he could or would have agreed to at the onset. Although a compromise was found, Fargo asked Cranford to leave the company after The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight was finished. The experience contributed to Cranford walking away from game development to pursue a different career. Cranford said he later apologized to Fargo after learning that the attorney who had represented him had misrepresented several other cases to his clients and had apparently misled him into assuming the worst.

Cranford, Fargo, and Heineman have all since stated that they hold no grudges against each other over something that occurred when they were in their early twenties. Cranford and Fargo remain friends. When Fargo, through his firm inXile Entertainment, started making The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep on the original game's 30th anniversary, Cranford was invited to join the project and did contribute, while Heineman offered to create a 'remastered' edition of the original three games for modern operating systems.