#its very difficult to do things in moderation its six hours non stop or nothing

[audipiu]

I want to redo this from scratch so I'm treating this more as a concept, but I liked the expressions so I guess I'm posting!

[morlock-holmes]

This anonymous article from the Washingtonian, (Which is apparently... a magazine? Of some sort?) “What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt-Right “ was being reblogged on my dash a few times and looking at some of the notes a lot of people were calling it propaganda without saying which side they thought it was propaganda for.

I think a LOT of people were so swayed by the “One Concerned Mom Speaks Out!” tone of the thing that they kind of missed the actual narrative.

I mean... If anything it’s kind of propaganda in favor of the alt-right, isn’t it?

Here’s how the author of the piece sums up the inciting incident in the story:

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s [The author’s son] mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.

Later there’s more, but basically the school authorities double down, Sam’s parents decided that if the authorities were that cruel and insane Sam needed to be in another school, and so they transferred him. Sam then starts getting into 4chan and reddit alt-right communities, who explain that what happened to him happened because of feminism gone crazy.

So, as a slight aside I have always thought since I was in high school myself that this kind of zero-tolerance, authoritarian crap is particularly cruel to inflict on growing children. A boy Sam’s age is trying to differentiate himself, see himself as an individual, and the authorities come in and go, “It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter why you did what you did, we will never care about that, we see you as a type and there is nothing you can do to convince us otherwise.”

This message would be incredibly dispiriting to anybody, but particularly to children.

Contrast, meanwhile, his experience on Reddit:

Soon Sam stopped trying to convince me to join his brave new world. He was so active on his favorite subreddit that the other group leaders, unaware that he was 13, appointed him a moderator. Among his new online besties, this was a huge honor and a boost to his cratered self-esteem. He loved Reddit and its unceasing conversations about the nuances of memes—he seemed in love with the whole enterprise, as if it were an adolescent crush. 

...

Eventually, Sam had to give up moderating for the most practical of reasons: Eighth grade ended and he was packing for sleep-away camp. He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him. To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid.

Sam and I both laughed about the absurdity of the situation, though he admitted he was nervous he’d be exiled from moderating. I asked him to read me the responses to his message. They were all of the ��Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me” variety—one of their most sophisticated and reliable colleagues was a middle-schooler heading off to Jewish summer camp!

Later, it was my turn to be surprised: They all contributed to a going-away gift for Sam and mailed an emoji-themed fidget-spinner to his bunk address.

Faced with new information that Sam has broken the rules, his school imediately brands him a predator, threatens to arrest and expel him, and responds with undisguised hate.

Faced with new information about who Sam is, his alt-right buddies are shocked, but then reiterate that they still care about him and value the contributions he has made to their community, and get together to express that to Sam.

I’d like to make a little list of what Sam gets from the alt-right in the narrative:

A group of people who have shown that they will support and value him, even if they find out new things about him.

People who listen and care about what he has to say

An explanation of what, exactly, happened to him and why.

Ideas about how he can protect himself and others from having that happen again in the future.

Allies and support for enacting those ideas.

His parents, by his Mother’s own admission in the article, were only able to provide fumbling efforts to provide protection from that particular school’s administration. His parents and their politics were totally ready to say that taking all that stuff about cucks seriously was pretty weird and dumb, his mother is totally ready to counter any statistics his alt-right buddies might have, but is completely and utterly unequipped to provide any of the other stuff I listed up there. There’s a moment where Sam explains to her what he and his friends think happened:

Sam pledged fealty to the idea of men’s rights because, as he said, his former administrator had privileged girls’ words and experiences over boys’, and that’s how all of his troubles had started in the first place. I’d never in my life backed the “masculinist” cause or imagined that men needed protecting—yet I couldn’t help but agree with Sam’s analysis.

The mother’s politics didn’t actually equip her with an alternate explanation of what happened; rather, she has to concede that his explanation makes sense, and having conceded that has no idea what to do with herself.

In fact, as the article ends she is only vaguely starting to come to grips with the fact that Sam needed the kinds of support I listed above:

“All I wanted was for people to take me seriously,” [Sam] repeated matter-of-factly. “They treated me like a rational human being, and they never laughed at me. I saw the way you and Dad looked at each other and tried not to smile when I said something. I could hear you both in your room at night, laughing at me.”

I struggled for a moment because I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. But I couldn’t deny his accusation. Behind closed doors, when my husband and I thought our children were asleep, we had often vented to each other about Sam’s off-the-wall proclamations and the bizarre situation we found ourselves in.

So I told Sam simply that I was sorry for making him feel bad.

I still think about his words a lot, especially when alt-right figures headline the news. But mostly, I wonder how I could have tried so hard to parent Sam through this crisis and yet tripped up on something as basic as not making my own kid feel small.

By the end of the article Sam is disenchanted with the Alt-right through, well, it’s not totally clear. The author of the article, by the end, seems to understand that Sam needed at least some of the things I outlined up there, but it’s not clear to me if she views the fact that her own politics were completely unable to provide them as an actual problem.

In fact, it’s not clear to me what she believes her politics are actually for. I know, I know, it’s not a philosophical article, but the question of “How much power do public school administrators have over their charges and what can parents do to counter them” is a nakedly, inarguably political question; after all, it’s about how a state-run institution should be run. And rather then turning to her own left-wing beliefs to contextualize and fight this decision, her solution is that her family has enough money to put Sam in another school.

Now, I’m not criticizing this decision, I think it was probably difficult, even brave. But it’s noticeable that her left-wing, non-culty politics don’t seem to have much to offer the next Sam, a Sam whose parents might not have private school tuition sitting around in their bank accounts. 

In fact, she seems to regard the fact that Sam’s alt-right buddies were able to offer up compelling narratives and give him hope of implementing a solution and reasserting his self-worth as, well, cheating. Isn’t that cult-like behavior? Politics aren’t actually supposed to help the Sams of the world contextualize the things that happen in their lives, and when they do, it’s awfully sinister.

This seems to be part of something that has heavily infected the American left. It’s a kind of unspoken philosophy that says, “Politics is for solving major problems, the rest should be handled elsewhere.”

Even when a question overtly connected to Mom’s politics crops up in their life, her politics have literally nothing practical to offer any of them. Her left-wing politics are correct it doesn’t matter if they’re helpful.

This is what I keep trying to get at when I say people are missing the point with Jordan Peterson. Yeah, a lot of what he says sounds factually rickety to me as well, but, well, when I spend every day wondering why I can’t seem to get my life together, simultaneously dreading it AND feeling like there’s no point in trying to change, how does having a more correct view of lobster biology help me out with that?

I mean, I’m not saying it can’t, I’m saying people won’t even connect the two. Look at the reviews of 12 rules and people will usually grudgingly admit that his self-help advice might be useful, but really, it will tend to rile up exactly the wrong kind of person, and anyway, what does any of this have to do with politics?

This is what I keep trying to get at about effective altruism, as well. It’s not that it’s wrong, it’s that by its very nature it will never be about providing me, personally, with any help, because it’s focused on stopping rogue AIs and mailing out malaria nets, fine causes but notice that, while Rationalists see “How can I stop a super-intelligent AI from destroying us” as a solvable problem “How do I make the kind of friends who will spontaneously check on me if I sound like I’m sick?” is completely insolvable.

To the extent that my existing faculties haven’t already made it happen, unfortunately there are no clarifying frameworks or advice better than, “Well, it’s hard.”

Rationalists are better about this than generic leftists but I also feel like that’s a low bar. Answers to the question “What can I do to concretely improve my life, and, for that matter, why should I even bother, what’s the point?” are becoming ever more disconnected from left-wing thought, and most of the concrete attempts to answer these questions are coming from the right.

I actually don’t think this is good, incidentally.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Holding On (Why is everything so heavy?)

Summary: The world keeps turning after Tony Stark’s untimely death. Peter is stuck in place.

Word count: 3.2k

A/N: Finished just in time to post before going to see Far From Home! I just really hope I can get in tonight or I won’t be able to until Friday. If there’s anything weird, it’s because I don’t usually write in present tense, and this has only been very lightly edited because I started it in the aftermath of Endgame and finished it on a whim yesterday, soooo.....

Content warnings: Grief and unhealthy coping in the way of non-graphic self-harm and one (brief) instance of suicidal ideation (blink and you might miss it).

=================================================

The first time he sees it not even a month has passed, and it catches him completely off-guard, knocking the breath from his lungs.

He’s walking casually down the street with Ned, desperately searching for some sense of normal, and it catches in the corner of his vision, stopping him dead in his path.

“Oh,” Ned breathes when he picks up what Peter is staring at. “You didn’t know.”

Across the street, at the corner of the park, is a memorial. Candles half burned, art work, photos, newspaper clippings. All of it of Iron Man.

Peter feels as though the rug has been pulled from under his feet yet again. He thought he was past this, but his eyes are burning, and he can’t stop staring, and the hurt surfaces anew. He only manages one word. “Why?”

Ned swallows, takes a deep breath, speaks the hard truth: “You’re not the only one hurting. He was their hero, too. This is how they cope.”

He wishes it wasn’t.

===========================================

The second time he spots one, he’s out on patrol for the first time since then.

The memorial is a spray painted mural taking up a good chunk of the side of a brick building, and he wonders who in the world managed to make it. He sits and stares -- for a few minutes, a few hours, who knows -- before shooting a web towards a building in the opposite direction. Queens is quiet tonight; he heads home early.

He slips in through his bedroom window even though he doesn’t need to anymore, and it’s only when the mask comes off that the grief hits him full-force once again. Two months have passed already, and despite that he knows grief has no timeline, he thinks he should definitely be passed the tears he can feel pressing and the tightness caving his chest in.

He doesn’t realize he’s not breathing until suddenly he’s sitting on the floor (how did he get there?) and May is crouched in front of him (when did she come in?), telling him to “breathe, baby; breathe. Everything’s okay. Just breathe.”

He does eventually, but he wonders if he really wants to.

===========================================

The third time one shows up, he’s getting dinner with May at their favorite Thai place.

It’s the smallest one he’s seen, sitting innocently in one corner towards the back. More candles, more photos, placed under a sign, the text in Thai. (He doesn’t know what it says, but he can guess.)

He says he’s not hungry anymore, and when May sees it too, she lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Peter.”

“I can’t help it. It’s not like I chose to lose my appetite just now.”

She doesn’t understand, he knows. He was there, and she wasn’t, and he can’t just move on like the rest of the world has.

Or, rather, maybe he could if he tried, but he’s tired. He can’t find it in himself to want to.

He knows she wouldn’t understand that either, so he forces down the grief and the guilt, and when their food arrives, he eats. When they finish, May pays the bill, and they leave, and still he shoves it all down. Maybe if he stuffs it far enough back -- sticks it in all in a box and buries it, he can at least pretend to be normal for awhile.

He decides that night that maybe numb isn’t such a bad thing to feel.

============================================

The fourth one is, even after four months, new. It would seem that the people of Queens haven’t given themselves enough even yet.

This time, he feels nothing.

It’s just another mural on just another brick building.

The night is quiet again, and he swings home from patrol early. May is out, and he thinks it’ll be nice to have the place to himself for a little while.

He slips in through his window, leaves his suit in a heap on the floor, and goes to hunt down something to eat in the kitchen as he pulls a t-shirt over his head. He can hear the distant whisper shoved in one corner of his mind escaping its box: “Kid, I know I’m practically made of money, but put that away properly, please. Take care of your stuff so it lasts, ya know?” He promptly ignores it, and puts on water for mac ‘n cheese. It’s way past dinnertime, but he doesn’t care.

Distantly, as he watches the pot, he wonders when he stopped caring about anything at all. The cork on his bottled-up emotions threatens to pop out, but he tamps down on it quickly. If he cares, that means he has to feel, and he doesn’t want to feel. If he doesn’t feel anything at all, then he doesn’t have to deal with the bad feelings either. It’s all or nothing, and nothing is decidedly better.

Some part of him knows that being numb isn’t really a good thing, but it is better than too much all at once. ...right? If only there was a way to feel the bad things in moderation, on his time, only when it was convenient.

But there isn’t.

He turns away from the stove and leans back against the counter. That’s when he sees it, and a whisper of a thought folds itself into his mind. He takes this idea, grabs it, holds onto it, mulls it over. There’s more than one way to feel pain, after all, and maybe if he can let himself a little of that, then he can feel a little of other things -- good things -- again, too.

No one would ever even know.

He takes two steps across the kitchen and opens the drawer where his aunt keeps the knives. He can’t control grief -- can only keep it safely bottled up -- but he can certainly control pain and when he feels it.

Numb isn’t so bad, but he decides measured pain is better.

==============================================

The fifth one he finds while avoiding Pepper.

He takes the long way home from school that day, knowing that she’s waiting at the apartment for him. Despite all other previous attempts on her part, he hasn’t seen her since the funeral. Seeing her and Morgan is just too much. But, apparently, his excuses to avoid her for months have finally run out, and he can’t avoid it any longer.

He can’t avoid it, but he can put it off as long as possible.

So he purposely stays on a stop past his, and plans to walk his way back as slowly as he feels he can get away with.

He turns the corner out of the station, and it’s right there in front of him. It’s not the largest he’s seen, or the most detailed, but it hits hard regardless. Painted on the side of the building is the Iron Man helmet and around it are painted the names of people he’s saved over the years. There’s a wooden sign standing next to it inviting people to add their name, to ask the shopkeeper for paint to do so, and he can’t help but wander over to read the names sprawled over the wall.

There are a lot, but he’s not surprised.

He wanders into the shop, and before he can think about it too much, he asks for paint. The man behind the counter smiles fondly if not a little sadly and hands him a can and a brush.

Finding a space as close to the helmet as possible, he squeezes in his name in careful white letters.  The man had saved him in more ways than one, and he knows he’ll have to bleed out the grief later, but he doesn’t regret doing this. It’s the only thing he can do.

He returns the paint and brush with a quiet ‘thank you’ and continues on his way home. He’ll be even later than he’d intended, and he knows May is getting worried when she calls.

“I’m two blocks away,” he replies, heart dropping into his stomach at the thought of facing Pepper. “I missed my stop.”  And he knows she’ll worry more at that because he has unintentionally missed his stop before, stuck in his own head, but he’ll deal with that later.

Pepper is sitting on the couch when he enters, and it’s only after he greets her that he realizes she didn’t bring Morgan. He’s grateful, though. Seeing her five months ago had been difficult enough, and he isn’t sure he would have been able to hold himself together right now if she was here.

He goes to drop his bag in his room, and he considers just not going back out. He does anyway.

May is nowhere in sight now, and he wonders why but sits across from Pepper without asking.

She doesn’t beat around the bush. “Tony had hoped that everything would work out, but he was also prepared for it not to.” She picks up a package wrapped in brown paper from beside her that he hadn’t noticed before. “I’m not sure what’s in here, but it’s got your name on it. I would have given it to you at the funeral, but… I didn’t find it until about a week after.” She stood and set it on the table in front of him. “I know this has been hard on you. You can open it when you’re ready.”

He picks it up, thanks her, and after she leaves, buries it in the bottom drawer of his desk.

That is one thing he knows for certain: he’ll never be ready to open it.

==============================================

The sixth he sees on purpose but not by choice.

It’s a Saturday, barely passed noon, when Happy shows up at the door. ‘Surprised’ didn’t even begin to cover it. At least Pepper has been texting him these last six months, but he had shared a pained look with Happy at the funeral and that had been it.

“Let’s go, kid. Put your shoes on. We’re taking a little trip.”

He’s too stunned to protest, and Happy doesn’t offer any more information during the silent car ride. He’s only more confused when they pull into a cemetery.

And then he sees it.

Tony may have been cremated, but that hadn’t stopped someone from erecting a monument here anyway.

Happy gets out of the car before he can protest, so he gets out, too. “Happy, why did you bring me here?”

Happy stops but doesn’t turn around to face him. “Because I’ve talked to Pepper, kid. And I’ve talked to your aunt, too. You’re avoiding this, and that’s not healthy. You’ve got to face this eventually.”

“I’m not avoiding anything.”

Happy spins around. “Yes, you are. You’re more or less ghosting Pepper and Morgan, and according to May, you won’t talk about Tony at all or go anywhere you know there’s a memorial erected. That’s not coping, Peter.”

Something inside him snaps. “So, what? I’m just supposed to pretend like everything’s okay? LIke I wasn’t there to hear his heart stop? Like it doesn’t kill me to talk about him? Because I can’t do that. I can’t!”

“No one is asking you to fake it,” Happy replies quietly. “But it’s okay to feel. It’s okay to be angry.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t have the right to be.”

“But you still are.”

“Why did it have to be him, Happy? Why did this happen at all? He should have just...left it alone! I don’t know! But it shouldn’t have been him!”

“I know, kid; I know.” Happy sighs. “I keep asking myself that, too. But that was just Tony. Couldn’t leave anything alone.”

He’s crying now, but he doesn’t care. He’s angry and he can’t stuff if down any longer.

He’s so, so angry, and he doesn’t know what to do about it anymore.

=============================================

The seventh time, he’s desperate.

A week has passed since Happy showed up at his door, and he decides that maybe the man is right, and he remembers the package Pepper gave him.

He’s still not ready -- not really, because he never will be -- but he opens it anyway.

It’s a leather-bound book, and when he opens it, he finds his mentor’s handwriting scrawled across the unlined pages. The only thing on the first page is “This probably isn’t healthy, but I don’t care. Because maybe someday it’ll all be okay again.”

He turns the page and his eyes grow wide because he doesn’t believe it. He turns another and another and another, and he finds the same on every page. It’s a book of letters, photos tucked between the pages. To him. From Tony.

He wants to look away.

But he can’t.

So he keeps reading.

He reads about their small wedding ceremony and finding out about Morgan, and Tony even tells him about all the projects he was working on. But they all end the same way: “Wish you were here, buddy. I miss you. -- Tony.”

He’s about halfway through -- Morgan is two now -- when he breaks.

The letter starts out normal enough, but when he gets near the end, it shifts. The ink is smeared and the writing is even shakier than usual, but he still manages to make it out.

“Having Morgan has changed me a lot. Losing you did, too. There are a lot of things I regret in my life, and losing you? Yeah, that trumps them all, kid. I never said it before, so I’m saying it now. You mean a lot to me, and I love you, Pete. Happy birthday.”

He curls up in his place on the floor, and he sobs because it hurts, and he just wants it to stop, but he’s not sure it ever really will.

He cries until there’s nothing left, until his eyes are dry and burning and his chest aches, but it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

When he can finally catch his breath, he sits up from where he had tipped over to lying down and picks up the book again and turns the page because it hurts but he still has to know what else Tony wrote in those five years.

And he reads more about Morgan and Pepper and the lake house and Tony’s projects. And they all end the same way: “Love you, kid. Wish you were here. -- Tony.”

He reaches the last letter, and he’s terrified to read it.

He thought he didn’t have any tears left, but by the end, he is definitely crying again.

“You’re better than I could ever hope to be. You had a future, and it was stolen from you so easily. But now… If this works? You’re gonna go places, kid. I just know it.

“We have a chance to get everyone back again. I have a chance to get you back again. I don’t want to lose everything I have now, but Peter…

“I would give ANYTHING to get you back.”

He reads the last line over and over and over again. Tucked between the pages is the photo of them with his SI certificate, and he cries harder because there’s nothing else he can do.

And then he’s running.

Out the door, through the apartment with May’s worried voice echoing behind him, down the stairs, out of the building.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, but somehow he ends up at the cemetary Happy brought him to last week, and his feet carry him all the way to the memorial.

He screams at the sky -- no actual words, just pure anguish, because he doesn’t have any words left to say.

He falls to his knees, he sobs until he feels like he might throw up, and he finds one word tearing through his lips over and over again.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why?”

But there is no one to answer, and he doesn’t expect anyone to anyway. After all, the only person who can is gone forever.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but here’s movement behind him, and after a moment Rhodey sits down next to him.

“Happy thought this is where you might go. May is pretty worried, you know.”

He doesn’t reply. He has nothing to say.

He thinks Rhodey will make him leave, but he doesn’t. Rhodey just sits with him in silence.

“Did you know?” he finally croaks. “Did you know why he did it?”

Rhodey sighs softly. “He’d been adamant at first to not even try, so, yeah, I did ask why he changed his mind. And, ya know, he looked me dead in the eye when he said, ‘I’d do anything to get my kid back. I know everyone who lost someone feels the same. We have a chance, and I can’t rest until I know.’” He pauses then adds, “I’ve never seen such conviction from him. He was a father who had lost his child. Nothing can stand in the way of that.”

He feels another tear break free and he whispers, “Then why don’t you hate? You and Pepper and Morgan and Happy? He did it because of me. It’s my fault.”

“No. The only person to blame is Thanos, and he already paid for what he did. It doesn’t feel like enough, and it probably never will, but putting the blame on you for his choices?” Rhodey sighs again. “Tony knew what he was doing. Can’t blame anyone for that -- not even Thanos.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.”

“Good thing that’s not what I was going for then. Sometimes the facts don’t make us feel better, but that doesn’t change them. We have to take what we know and somehow learn to feel better in spite of that.”

“What if I can’t?” He finally looks over at Rhodey.

Rhodey meets his gaze. “You will. It’s not easy, but you will.”

“How did you do it?”

“Who says that I have?”

He’s not okay, but, then again, maybe no one else is either.

=============================================

The eighth time, he’s there because he wants to be.

He has a framed photo clutched in his hands, and he’s a bit nervous, but he’s not alone. May and Pepper and Morgan. Rhodey and Happy and Ned. They are all there with him, and they give him strength.

He steps away from them and finds a space to add his photograph among all the other mementos people have left. It’s one of his favorites -- one Pepper took of them in the lab when they weren’t looking.

He takes a moment to take in the memorial itself, the words ‘Whatever It Takes’ etched into the stone over reliefs of both Tony and Natasha. His lips quirk up in something reminiscent of a grin as he thinks about what they would say if they saw all of this.

Despite his resolve, tears find their way down his cheeks. He’s not okay, but he’s not pretending anymore.

“Thank you for everything. You gave me a second chance, and I won’t waste it. I won’t.”

He won’t waste it. That’s all he can do, but maybe it’s enough.

[ciathyzareposts]

Black Crypt: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

The box prominently featured the Ram Demon, the easiest of Estoroth’s lieutenants.

               Black Crypt

United States

Raven Software (developer); Electronic Arts (publisher) Released 1992 for the Amiga

Date Started: 27 December 2018

Date Ended: 20 January 2019

Total Hours: 29

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Summary:

Black Crypt is a descendant of the Dungeon Master (1987) line. The player controls four characters of fixed classes (fighter, druid, cleric, and mage) on a quest to find four ancient artifacts necessary to defeat an ancient evil named Estoroth. Gameplay takes place across 28 levels of varying sizes, up to 40 x 40. Like its predecessors, it couples first-person, tile-based movement with fast-paced, real-time combat. Character development occurs by leveling and acquiring new spells and equipment, but (as with all games on the Dungeon Master tree) standard RPG considerations frequently take a back seat to a variety of mechanical puzzles involving buttons, switches, pressure plates, teleporters, and other navigational obstacles. Although fun, it breaks little new ground and thus offers few reasons to play it over the games that influenced it.

******

I should never underestimate my readers. I had resigned myself to putting together this final entry based on YouTube videos and had actually drafted a “Summary and Rating” without the “Won,” but Zardas came through. He did a bit of surgery on my save disk put together a save that worked out of non-corrupted parts of the disk.

Having found the four artifacts, I only had to solve a pressure plate puzzle on Level 13 to get access to the final levels, 27 and 28. The mechanical puzzles disappeared on those final levels, and they were small enough that I didn’t bother to map them.

Level 27 had a couple of conflicting messages, one suggesting that Estoroth couldn’t be damaged by magic, and one saying he could only be damaged with magic.               

     The “Reveal Truth” spell showed that the first message was the accurate one. Enemies on the two levels are completely immune to spells. That was a bit disappointing. I don’t know what purpose it serves to render that aspect of character development meaningless on the final level. 

On Level 27, I had to defeat six skeletal guardians. Their magic attack was too powerful for my party to withstand more than two blasts, so I had to waltz them to death. (For new readers, the “combat waltz” is a maneuver by which you attack then quickly side-step and turn before the enemy can retaliate.) I can’t see how it would be possible to beat them otherwise. All the videos I consulted online showed the players doing exactly that. I suppose I could have used two Potions of Invincibility on my front characters, but I was saving those for Estoroth.               

These guys were so hard I couldn’t stop for a screenshot without dying.

             I can’t remember if I mentioned in a previous entry that waltzing is a little harder in Black Crypt than other Dungeon Master clones, largely because the enemies don’t follow a predictable pattern. You can’t side-step until the enemy has already committed to turning and facing you; otherwise, he could easily go the other direction. For some players, this would mean simply adjusting their fingers and switching the direction of the waltz. For someone less manually dexterous like me, it means flailing randomly at the keys and, in a best-case scenario–running to the other side of the dungeon so I can catch my breath, settle down, and figure out a new pattern.

Once the guardians were defeated, I armed myself with the four artifacts and took a stairway down to Estoroth himself. At this point, I naturally forgot to use my Potions of Invincibility, but Estoroth was curiously easy. After I’d hit him just a few times with my melee weapons, the weapons began to sparkle. This was a sign to use their special attacks. It took a few tries to get the order right. Protector (the shield) protects the party from further damage; Soulfreezer (the staff) holds Estoroth in place; Vortex (the sword) opens a portal to another dimension; and Forcehammer (the hammer) sends him through.            

Sending Estoroth to hell.

         The endgame text is first a short paragraph:            

What made this banishment of Estoroth successful permanently?

          But afterwards, the player gets a scene-by-scene recap (about 15 scenes total) of the major game moments, including the various “boss” creatures defeated along the way: the Ogre, the Dracolich, the Medusa, the Possessor, the Ram Demon, and the Waterlord.            

In case we had forgotten.

          After one final concluding paragraph . . .                

The final screen shows the Black Crypt destroyed.

              . . . the party has the option to reload the final save and just poke around the dungeon. There really isn’t anything to do, but you can find the four ancient heroes’ skulls on Level 28, plus a few high-powered items.

I had a reasonable amount of fun with Black Crypt. It’s a clone, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with clones. Without them, we’d have about a dozen total RPGs, and half of those would be weird one-off French titles. Clones allow you to get started without any confusion, let you settle in to familiar territory with a contented sigh. And despite the term, no “clone” is a 100% likeness. It’s fun to see the different variations the developers take with a common template, like listening to a new jazz band improvise on a number you’ve heard a million times. Even when its worse, it can still be interesting.

But Dungeon Master-style games face a unique challenge when it comes to this improvisation, because they’re mostly about mechanics. They tend to feature framing stories–that is, stories that have few references in the game itself, and could easily be swapped with a different frame–and no NPCs. With an Ultima clone, even if the game plays the same as Ultima III or IV, you can still enjoy the new story and the variety of NPCs. Lacking such narrative options, a Dungeon Master clone has to rest all its improvisation on combat, exploration, and puzzles. That’s where Black Crypt falls a little short.             

Just like Dungeon Master, all I can tell about a weapon by looking at it is its weight. At least the door image is cool.

          Only in its somewhat extensive ending does Black Crypt really distinguish itself from its predecessors. Oh, its graphics and sound are marginally better, but these are the things that an RPG fan–particularly a Dungeon Master fan–ought to care about least. Some of its puzzles also went in different directions, but rarely to the game’s credit. More often than in Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder, I found it difficult to judge the results of various actions. I particularly didn’t like the invisible pressure plates. There’s little point to mechanical puzzles if you can’t see the elements that make up the puzzle. 

Meanwhile, Black Crypt fixed none of the problems that I had with Dungeon Master–inability to see equipment statistics and a needless food system among them. Even worse, it went in Eye of the Beholder‘s direction with character development, while offering none of Beholder‘s improvements, such as NPCs and side quests. The magic system is done a bit differently here, although in the end I found it neither better or worse than its predecessors. For all of these reasons, I expect it to GIMLET lower than Dungeon Master or Beholder.

1. Game World. As usual, we have more of a framing story than a backstory–a fact not changed by a few call-outs within the game (mostly in the form of messages from Estoroth that you find). The plot is derivative, and like most Dungeon Master clones, there isn’t much of a “world” here. But the levels are well-designed, with both textures and puzzles organized around themes specific to individual levels or small groups of levels. Score: 5.

2. Character Creation and Development. As noted, it takes a fairly major step back. You have to play four fixed classes. There are no significant choices during creation except for the portrait. Because the dungeon is linear and the number of enemies is mostly fixed, characters level at fixed intervals, and leveling doesn’t really do very much for them. I vastly prefer Dungeon Master‘s action-based leveling, in which each character can attain various levels in all “classes,” to Crypt‘s (and Beholder‘s) experience-based leveling. Score: 3.              

Using single classes and experience-based leveling was a regression.

             3. NPC Interaction. There are no NPCs in the game. Score: 0.

4. Encounters and Foes. There are about as many different enemies as the typical game of this genre, with about as much variety in strengths, resistances, and special attacks. Most of the monster types and portraits are original to this game (or at least not taken directly from its sources). I just wish they had names. As is my custom, I’ll also use this category to throw in a couple of points for the puzzles, which serve in the place of role-playing “encounters” in this sub-genre. As above, I didn’t always like them, but they were pitched at the right difficulty. Score: 5.

5. Magic and Combat. I’ll never love combat that relies more on manual dexterity than attributes and tactics. Dungeon Master at least provided a variety of different types of attacks with its weapons, plus hand-to-hand combat, plus a more useful in-combat spells system, plus the ability to attack from the inventory screen, plus other useful tricks, like the ability to swing around and use the two rear characters to attack the rear. Black Crypt‘s only innovations are to make waltzing (and similar patterns) more difficult and to introduce a different take on the spell system. It’s lack of buffing spells is also a negative. Still, it offers an arguably better experience than Eye of the Beholder, where you never got feedback on attacks, and waltzing made it possible to win with a single character. Score: 4.

6. Equipment. I liked the variety of equipment slots but almost nothing else. Looking at items offers less information than even Dungeon Master. I guess I’ll give a point for some originality with the “false” messages and the ability to right-click on most weapons for a special attack. Score: 5.            

As with most RPGs, I ended this one with plenty of unused equipment.

        7. Economy. As usual for Dungeon Master clone, none. Score: 0.

8. Quests. The main quest has some fun stages, with various boss creatures every two or three levels. It also offers a little nonlinearity in the order you approach Estoroth’s lieutenants, but it otherwise has no choices, no alternate endings, and no role-playing. In this it under-performs its predecessors. Score: 4.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Some improvements here. The game is still a bit too mouse-heavy for my tastes, but at least you can customize the movement keys. I feel like there were a few more sound effects and slightly better graphics than Dungeon Master, at least, but perhaps not enough to make a difference in the score. The auto-mapping system is a nice addition, and I like how it’s logically integrated with the spell system (even if it took me a while to figure out). Amiga-philes will want me to note that the game uses an enhanced graphics mode (“extra half-bright”) that allows for 64 colors instead of the usual 32, but even the original 32 colors is about 24 more than I can discern. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. It’s as linear as most dungeon crawlers, but at least offers some flexibility after Level 13. Unfortunately, the fixed character classes make it less replayable than its counterparts. Otherwise, difficulty and length were both good. Score: 5.

That gives us a final score of 37, just north of my “recommended” threshold, but below the 41 I gave to Eye of the Beholder and the 47 I gave to Dungeon Master. (I must say, reviewing my Dungeon Master scores, I was a bit generous in several categories and I think it would likely rate closer to a 43 if I rated it now. I didn’t have a lot of perspective during my first year.) Fans of this subgenre would argue (not entirely without a point) that perhaps it shouldn’t be faulted for lacking NPCs, a dynamic game world, and an economy, since that’s not what this subgenre is about. If it thus makes you feel better, you can think of it as rating closer to a 44 (and Dungeon Master closer to a 58) with those categories eliminated the rest of the values rescaled accordingly.             

As an Amiga game, Black Crypt was heavily promoted in Europe.

            Computer Gaming World offered a “sneak preview” of the game in the February 1992 issue, but it never seems to have offered a review. The preview, written by Allen Greenberg, is extremely positive. Nothing he says is wrong, exactly, but he suggests that the game is better than Dungeon Master, and I find it difficult to imagine any fan of this subgenre agreeing with that. In particular, he seems too infatuated with fairly modest improvements in graphics and sound. Greenberg sets up the review by suggesting there’s a war brewing between keyboarders and mousers, so I’m at least glad to see that the interface issue was heavily debated in the day. Amiga-specific magazines tended towards high scores, with .info coming in at a perfect 100 and Amiga Action giving it 93/100. Non-English Amiga magazines were, as usual, a bit more conservative, with scores in the 71-90 range.

Black Crypt was the first title from Wisconsin-based Raven Software, which still exists as a subdivision of Activision (it was sold in 1997) and is currently in charge of the Call of Duty series. The company’s co founders, Brian and Steve Raffel, reportedly began outlining the game in the 1980s. They enlisted two programmers, Rick Johnson, and Ben Gokey, and had a demo ready for the 1990 Gen Con, where it was picked up for distribution by Electronic Arts. (I had originally thought that Crypt owed its lineage to Dungeon Master via Eye of the Beholder, but the game would have been mostly finished when Beholder came out.) It was the first game for almost everyone on the team.

An Amiga-only game in 1992 was bound to make a small splash in the United States, which probably explains why the company abandoned the platform for future titles. At the same time, they also mostly abandoned RPGs in favor of first-person shooters, some with light RPG elements. Whether we ever see them again on this blog depends how I rule on games like ShadowCaster (1993), Heretic (1994), Hexen (1995), Mageslayer (1997), and Hexen II (1997), all of which are on my list preliminarily. Today, the company is better known for its Soldier of Fortune (2000-2003) and Call of Duty (2010-2017) titles as well as its work on later entries in id Software’s franchises including Quake 4 (2005) and Wolfenstein (2009).

Any RPG fan is going to want to read Jimmy Maher’s survey of Dungeon Master descendants, published a few weeks ago. Based on his review, we only have four left (at least until a more recent surge of “retro” games): Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993), Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep (1993), Eye of the Beholder III (1993), and Stonekeep (1995). (And maybe Liberation: Captive II [1994]? I’m not sure if it uses the same engine and approach as Captive.) It doesn’t sound like any of them are likely to outperform the original. It’s too bad that this subgenre never reached a true peak before it was subsumed by real-time movement in the vein of Ultima Underworld (1992), but given its forthcoming demise, I’m not sorry that it had one decent 1992 entry.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/black-crypt-won-with-summary-and-rating/