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Overview
Action Castle is the first game in the Parsely series of text adventure-RPG-party games. It also contains the core rules for the series, which are not found in the later titles. The idea is that the GM will act like a computer running an old text adventure game such as Zork, while the players yell out text adventure commands like > HIT TROLL WITH STICK. The aim of the game is to become the king of ACTION CASTLE. The game is suitable for one-on-one play or a group of any size.
Production
The game comes as a lone double-sided page printed on thick colour paper (folded like a GM screen) for $5, or you can get the PDF version for a dollar. If you decide on the physical version, you can buy all six games in the series as a bundle for $30 from the publisher. After you've played the first one you'll want the rest, so the wise move is to buy the lot in one go. I went with PDFs so that I could print them out and scribble notes on them.
Action Castle has the Parsely rules on one side of the screen and the adventure on the other, so the physical format works well. (The later games have no rules page and have longer adventures, with info on both sides of the screen, which defeats the purpose of the format a bit.)
The text is small but readable, and there's a very good map of Action Castle on the adventure side of the screen. The PDF version I bought had the old scoring system (there's errata here on RPG Geek) but was otherwise fine. The adventure text has the game's key items underlined, which is great, but still wasn't prominent enough for my liking. I ended up printing out the PDF and taking to it with a fluorescent highlighter. The map has icons drawn on it to show where items are used or where the player can die.
In Play
I've run this game twice over the last two weeks, for a variety of different players. What I've found is that the game is very much pitched at text adventure fans. The GM should play through a short old school text adventure (such as our very own Requiem) before attempting to run this game, just to get the tone right. Like the GM, the players are going to sink or swim based on their level of text adventure skills. In my recent games, one IF nerd quickly solved every puzzle, while another floundered after forgetting about the INVENTORY and EXAMINE commands. My wisdom for you here is to remind the players of the basic commands at the outset, and to add a HINT command to allow for any necessary railroading. A player aid with common commands on it might be a good idea also.
The Action Castle adventure itself takes about 30-90 minutes to run through, depending on the size and skill level of the group. There are several places where the protagonist can die, so remind your players about the SAVE and RESTORE commands before the game kicks off. That's a lot of command reminding thus far, but I guess you can't count on them all having recently played a text adventure.
The included map and puzzles are very simple, but can still be frustrating. One or two needed items are hard to spot, and missing any of them makes the game impossible to complete. The adventure includes some good flavour text anticipating popular commands (for example, there's text to read if the player smells a flower). As the GM I felt like I had enough support to run this on my feet, and the simple map let me glance ahead without breaking the flow of the game.
The Parsely rules also include advice for dealing with large groups, adding humorous touches, and improvising authentic computer-speak. While the rules aren't strictly necessary for running the game (it's pretty self-explanatory if you know the genre), the advice is pretty good.
Conclusion
If you love text adventures and can find some time to refamiliarise yourself with them, this is a must-buy for a buck. You'll need at least one player who has a passing familiarity with the original computer games, then everyone else will quickly get the idea. Replay value with the same group is zero, but that's true of a lot of adventure modules. The quick playing time and the party game atmosphere makes it a game you can bring out on a board game night or at a con, so I can see myself getting a lot more play out of it as a GM. My only real criticism is that the difficulty level is inversely proportional to the IF experience of the table. 7/10.
(I.R. #8)
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Marshall Miller
United States
Medford
Massachusetts
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As an added piece of advice, if you do purchase all of them at once - only read Action Castle. After running it for others, someone else might want to run one. You definitely want to be able to be a player without having spoiled it for yourself by reading ahead!
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I wait until Kev runs them as geeklists, then I read through afterwards.
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Posted Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:45 am
