Legerdemain - A major roguelike, right?!

[Omnivorous]

I've played Legerdemain alot lately, and it's stunning..I don't understand why I haven't heard of it before! It seems to me like it should be respected like, and be considered as "one of the big boys".

I mean, in some ways it's more like a RPG, but c'mon. It IS ascii, and quests/information is obtained by typing stuff manually. I have to be honest though, I haven't played it more than perhaps.. 30-40 hours alltogether, and I'd only count 10-15 of those hours as efficent, I mean, before that I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I didn't know if I could "trust" the game enough to pour that much effort into..

Some untraditional things are the saving-system. I think that's okay. That makes it possible to play Legerdemain as if it was a "coffee-break" RL, when it isn't.

I just think it has an amazing depth to it, the characters you meet, the stories and by all means - the presentation, and the way it seems just as well-polished (if not more) than ADOM and DCSS.

Have you played Legerdemain? Do you consider it a "Major RL"? Why/Why not?

[Fenrir]

It IS ascii, and quests/information is obtained by typing stuff manually.

That alone doesn't make it a roguelike. This game is out on the fringes of the roguelike definition, and therefore I don't consider it eligible to be a major roguelike, but you're right in that it is a great game and deserves attention.

EDIT: Fenrir sighs heavily. Last time I make such statements about games I haven't played much at all. Stupid me.

[Krice]

I think it's not a roguelike game so it can't be a major one. Right?

[Z]

It is neither roguelike nor major enough to be a major roguelike.

I do not like it personally (like, they did not combine the best of RL and the best of adventure, but rather the worst). I also do not get a roguelike feeling when playing it. Roguelike is not about ASCII. A roguelike feeling is when you explore the world while taking risks with your character, and this does not work for Legerdemain (no permadeath and no random dungeons)...

[Omnivorous]

Well what exactly makes a roguelike? I mean, ofcourse if you use rogue as an example you have the basics: randomly generated dungeons (although Rogue have some pretty basic pre-defined borders), random monster generation, permadeath..I don't know what else you'd put on the list, but a roguelike don't have to incorperate all these things in order to be considered a roguelike.

Sure, Legerdemain IS an adventure game. Several roguelikes can be considered rpgs, or adventure games, even though they are a roguelike. Even though I was mostly trying to be funny with the ascii-remark,  I want to say that ascii IS a red thread through the genre.

I agree with the remark about permadeath and randomly generated dungeons, I wish it could incorperate those elements somehow, but I have to say, since its gameplay revolves alot around talking and collecting pieces of a story, I suspect it'd be boring after afew characters if you had to start over each time (like ADOM has gotten for me).

Anyway I think it's an interesting debate, and I really love this game

[Z]

ADOM has a story, but it also has all elements of a roguelike, while Legerdemain des not. ADOM is a roguelike interleaved with short fragments of the story. If you start over each time, you need to do these fragments again, but this really takes almost no time, so it is not a problem (for me, maybe you are different). With a more complicated story like in Legerdemain, indeed, it would be probably a problem. It is a problem even now, because if you get killed in a dungeon, it is boring to try the same dungeon again. (And my character usually got killed, I don't know if it is a non-RL balance or it was just some error on my part.)

When I have been trying Legerdemain, I got to the pub, and then the overarching story was like "try to go somewhere, if you are not killed then return to the pub and go somewhere else, or the same place to hunt in this easy place again, if you are kiled (as you usually are) then awaken in the pub and try again or go look for an easier place". IMO that really loses the roguelike feeling.

[jim]

For me, Legerdemain excels in one major roguelike area: the prevalence of imagination amidst minimalism. The story is lovely, simply lovely, but the game requires that the player have two major areas of interest overlap: both a love of cerebral, psychedelic fantasy plot-work and the dungeon-crawler format. For me, this is a swing and a hit, but it's plain to see that this is not the case for everyone. Then again, I think enjoyment of roguelikes is predicated on a strange turn of mind, so it's really hard to gauge whether community acceptance of a roguelike (or roguelikelike) means squat...

For my part, I thought it was brilliant from the outset, but lost some of its luster toward the mid-game. I ranted to Nathan a bit during the beta stage about why the Boogadah were genius and Orcs were a terrible idea, but I think I might have been a lobbying group of one... as far as the actual game goes, I gave up around the area of the mole village / fairy castle because I didn't see where to go next, died every time I hit an insanity trap, and was losing track of all the plot threads. I still have the little poster map for registering, though


EDIT: I will definitely say here without any kind of apology that Legerdemain has more story than every other roguelike combined, easily. The only roguelike I've played that even comes *close* with quality of prose is actually Incursion (when you read info about the pantheon and races, you'll see what I mean), but Incursion is a distant, distant second in terms of setting and plot.

[Fenrir]

I will definitely say here without any kind of apology that Legerdemain has more story than every other roguelike combined, easily.

That may well be because ROGUE ITSELF HAS NO STORY. This only lends weight to the argument that Legerdemain is not a roguelike. ASCII RPG sure, maybe a good one, but not a roguelike.

[Krice]

Roguelikes could have a (strong) story, but it could affect replaying. You can already see that in games like ADOM where the first steps are always the same (maybe later also, I never went far in that game). You go into that damned small village and..

[jim]

I'm pretty sure we already ranted and raved about this with Chronophase, didn't we? Regardless, I'm fine conceding that it's not a Roguelike if it means that the discussions of the games being made (whether roguelike or roguelikelike) become more enjoyable and less fixated on whether or not the game's a roguelike.

http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=1371.msg9818#msg9818

Rogue itself may have very little explicit story (Get the Foo, Rodney!) but good roguelikes tell a story at least implicitly. They're stories about perseverance, a steady upward climb fraught with challenges, intrigue, battle, etc. I couldn't imagine playing these games if I only saw ascii characters in front of me. Quite the opposite: it's the use of minimalistic graphics that allows my imagination to flourish, and that's maybe #1 in what I like in a roguelike (which in turn is probably why I consider Legerdemain to be both a roguelike and good.)

[Psiweapon]

This game also has heretical schism potential...

But how the heck do I get out of the goddamned first maze? %D

Srsly, the idea of this game blew my mind right away, but I can't really assess the difficulty - first or second critter in sight kills me and that's all. Satori whispers could actually be useful, y'know.

[TSMI]

The only thing not Roguelikeish about Legerdemain is the lack of randomly generated levels. Everything else is there.

I think it's a fantastic game, probably my second favourite RL after ADOM. It will probably never be a major roguelike, because most roguelikes are plotless, mechanical affairs - and that's what most roguelike fans like.

[corremn]

The main problem with Legerdemain is if you stop playing it for a while, you forget what you were doing and give up the game. 
Since you cant play a quick random game, it does not have the roguelike appeal, although it looks and smells like a roguelike, I don't get the warm fuzzy roguelike feel. 

That said, just because it is not a roguelike does not mean it is not an awesome game.

But how the heck do I get out of the goddamned first maze? %D

The first maze is a little bit tricky at first, but like a lot of roguelikes it becomes easy soon enough.  I was first turned away by diagonal passages, I think It would be better without them in the first maze.  But is has been to long since I played so I can give any tips.

[Fenrir]

The only thing not Roguelikeish about Legerdemain is the lack of randomly generated levels. Everything else is there.

Except the permadeath. Randomness and permadeath are two defining qualities about the Roguelike genre. It is just an RPG without them.

[TSMI]

The only thing not Roguelikeish about Legerdemain is the lack of randomly generated levels. Everything else is there.

Except the permadeath. Randomness and permadeath are two defining qualities about the Roguelike genre. It is just an RPG without them.

No, those are your two defining qualities about the roguelike genre. Wasn't a concensus reached with this?

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation

So going through the high value factors for Legerdemain...

Random environment generation
Partial (randomly placed items and monsters)

Permadeath
No, even though the fact that places to save are so few and so far away from the areas you're likely to die that it feels very close to it.

Turn-based
Yes

Grid-based
Yes

Non-Modal
Yes, even though the scale outside of towns seems to change, the game play is exactly the same.

Complexity
Yes.

Resource management
Yes

Hack 'n' Slash
Partial - the NPC interaction elements are very important but the vast majority of the living things you meet are monsters to be killed.

Exploration and discovery
No. Difficult decision, because the dungeons have the same layout every game, even if exploring them is very important.

So that's 6/9. If you can't concede that LegerDeMain is *at least* a Roguelike-like, then you're engaging in some kind of weird restrictive purism that doesn't interest me or most players.