Hi. I'm posting this here because I'm not sure what other forum to post it on. If you know where it might stand a better chance of being answered, please let me know.

I've always wondered something about "The Bard's Tale" series. In BT1, Tarjan has been turned to stone. When you bring him his eye in Harkyn's Castle, he comes to life and you kill him. In other words, by the end of the game, he's dead. In BT3, he's suddenly referred to as Mangar's master, and he's very much alive and destroying the world. And when you confront him, he says something about how you "tricked him back in Harkyn's Castle so many years ago."

Did anyone else ever manage to make any sense of this? How was he tricked? And why isn't he dead? It seems if anyone tricked anybody, HE did by pretending to be dead. I'm confused.

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">Not sure the answer but you may be better off placing this in "Miscellaneous Games" may have a better chance of being answered. I have heard Bard's Tales I to III are pretty good. I found them free online so I may give them a shot later.</font>

[ 08-07-2003, 09:26 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Moved to miscellaneous

Pritchke-- They were good games, but I don't think you'll like them much now. The graphics and the game engine are both extremely dated. Also, the PC versions are feeble compared to the Commodore 64 and Amiga versions (PC sound was really bad back then, just boops and beeps.) The good news is, there MAY be a Bard's Tale 4. Brian Fargo of Interplay Productions has recently started a new company, and the first thing he did was acquire the rights to the Bard's Tale franchise, so who knows?

[ 08-06-2003, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Tarjan ]

I loved the Bard's Tale series... Those were the first games that kept me up till 5 AM when I had to get up at 6:30 AM to get ready for school...
My character in BT II led to a fantasy world of my creation which I use for my pnp gaming...
Anyhow, I imagine that Tarjan in BT I was merely the avatar of the Mad God and as such was able to die. In BT III you confront the real Tarjan. As for being tricked... I dunno. I never played the first game, so I don't know exactly what happened.

<font color = lightgreen>Don't forget that Tarjan is insane and megalomaniacal, thus to him being defeated must have been the result of some kind of special trick, not power and skill.

The Bard's Tale wasn't the first computer-based role-playing game I ever had, but it was definitely the best until the Gold Box series came out. If you can find them, whether in a compilation like I have or from a free game website, then add these classics to your collection. </font>

The Bard's Tale series is considered abandonware and can be downloaded from The Underdogs

I actually still liked the Bard's Tale series the best, even after the Gold Box series. Gold Box games were good, but the problem, for me, was the length of the fights. I think the first game to beat Bard's Tale, in my mind, was "Alternate Reality: The Dungeon." It was an extremely underrated game, but it was so advanced for its time. There was the ability to form alliances with different groups, to join guilds, and to have morality issues. On top of that, the game took into account tons of things like how drunk you were, how burdened you were, etc. And then there was the music and the smooth scrolling 3D... there was just a LOT of stuff in this game. A shame the series never got finished.

The other Bard's Tale beater at that time was Dragon Wars. It took everything that was good about BT, and added a far more developed story, better graphics, and maps that made some sort of logical sense (using Scry Site every five seconds in BT got a little tedious.)

Alternate Reality Rocked!!!!! Both 'The Dungeon' and 'The City'. I loved the intro with the spaceship beaming all the people up. Awesome stuff. Used to play it for hours at a stretch back on my Atari 130XE when I was 8. Ah the nostalgia... [img]smile.gif[/img]

FINALLY! Somebody else who actually remembers that game fondly! The City was pretty good (had better songs in the taverns), but The Dungeon, to me, was better because it actually had a solid goal. You could never really WIN The City because it was all just about improving your character for later installments in the series. Fun for a definitely, but not as rewarding as finally getting down to level four of The Dungeon and using that mirrored shield on the laser!

Now that you're gone,
Some will grieve on, on and on
I'll know you'll be back again
Maybe next time
Will be the time
You WIN


ah... the memories..