March 20, 2011 12:00 AM |

['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre. This time out - a look at initial entries Harris has compiled from an in-progress Roguelike encyclopedia.]

For a while now I've been working on a general encyclopedia of roguelikes, covering many games, general concepts, some specifics of the big games, and general items of interest.

It's still very much a work in progress. What follows, presented for general interest, entertainment, and maybe just a little education, is some excerpts from this document. (Included entries may not match their final form.)

AMULET (of Life Saving)

This particularly useful amulet instantly revives the player character when he is killed. The item is destroyed in the process. In Nethack, this also remedies whatever condition it was that caused the death. If run out of hit points it completely heals; if starved to death it fills the stomach, it reverses stoning, and so on. (There at least two exceptions to this: self-genocide and brainlessness.)

In the process, and in one of the many homages to classic Dungeons & Dragons the game offers, it drains one point of Constitution, although this is much less of a problem in Nethack since that statistic fluctuates with exercise. It still adds one to the player's “death count,” and in fact is the only way to do this without ending the game or being in either discovery or wizard mode.

In ADOM, Amulets of Life Saving only protect against running out of hit points.