Moira is a dungeon style role-playing game first developed for the Plato system around 1975. I spent about an hour reading over the introduction and getting used to the game mechanics. The first word that comes to mind from this initial experience with the game? Daunting. The scope and size of this game is immense. The game introduces you to many more choices for your character than any of the previous games reviewed on the Plato system.
Whereas the previous games were heavily influenced by Dungeons & Dragons that does not seem to be the case here. The character attributes are different as well as the magic system in play.
Character generation is based on four skills and here is where the game moves away from the D&D influence. The four skills are Cunning, Piety, Valor, and Wizardry. Cunning allows you to trick monsters, open boxes and chests, and evade monsters. It is the primary attribute of thieves. Piety determines the rate and success of praying you can do and affects the casting of peacetime spells. It is the main attribute for Priests. Valor determines the amount of damage you can do in fighting and also can decrease the damage done to a character by monsters. Valor also determines which weapons a character can use. It is the primary attribute for fighters. Wizardry gives you skill in casting spells and is the primary attribute for wizards.
When you are creating your character you get your choice of four different number roll sets which never change. Each roll chooses one of the four attributes to assign a 10 to. The other two receive a score of 7 and the last attribute receives a 5. In this way, upon character creation, you have to decide if you want to concentrate on being a fighter, thief, priest, or wizard.
There are a number of first experiences in the game of Moira. The first one is having to choose your class: fighter, thief, priest, or wizard. In the previous three games reviewed your character was a hybrid of all of these and the wizard and priest spells were not differentiated like they are here. The next “first” was apparent when you entered the game.
The previous games were in an overhead perspective but in Moria you are shown a perspective of the walls and doors that you seem to walk towards and go through. This would later become a popular staple of the Wizardry games and many other dungeon crawlers that followed. You can see in the 3D perspective that Aragorn is currently in a Room and that changes to read Corridor when you are in halls.
Another first is the constant need for food and water. You can see on the left of the display that your food and water is closely monitored. This is something that needs to be monitored closely. There is a tremendous amount of mapping that you are going to be doing in this game and as you move around these supplies become depleted. The only way that you can obtain food is in the city from the Supply Store and then you need to get your water from City Well which is located in a completely different area of the city. If you allow either your food or water to go to zero you will die.
Another first is that Moria is not turn based but real time. I learned this the hard way. I was building my character up and mapping out the surrounding wilderness when I ran into a wandering monster. An encounter! Suddenly there was a knock at my front door and I got up to answer it. When I returned I found that the monster had hit me several times; doing over 100 damage; and I was killed. So be aware that if you are standing in the city or wilderness, or in an encounter, you must act. Your supplies will continue to be used and worse yet if you are in an encounter and do nothing your antagonist will still attack you relentlessly. Personally I find this aspect of the game to be highly inconvenient due to the amount of mapping that needs to be done to be successful. This is not a game then that you can multi-task with but requires your full concentration unlike turn based games where you can deal with real life issues then return when convenient.
Now I want to address why I would use the word daunting to describe Moria. The sheer amount of navigation and mapping which needs to be done. The mazes in Moria are organized into levels which are parts of different terrains. Two of the terrains are the City which you start in and the Wilderness. The city is basically a resting place for your character and a place where you can go to buy food & water, weapons & armor, and sell magic items. The Wilderness is a hostile area filled with monsters. The Wilderness can be thought of as an overland map however it has the appearance of a dungeon. When you map out the wilderness you are mapping out corridors with doors and rooms. Scattered somewhere on the Wilderness map are your entrances to the Caves, Mountains, Forest, and Desert. Those four terrains are much like dungeons that need to be explored. Each of the four terrains has a total of 60 levels! And the maps are huge! The city alone was 48 x 42 squares ( I did not bother mapping out the city) and the Wilderness map is 30 x 36 squares. The four different dungeon terrains are just as big in size and also 60 levels deep!
There are several ways to honor a player character in the game. The first is making it into the Hall of Fame with a high score. You score points for fighting monsters. Another goal that is more difficult to achieve is to become master of your Guild. If you choose to do so, you can join one of four Guilds in the game. For example, I was planning to join the Union of Knights. In order to make my way up to Guildmaster my Valor score needs to be at least 50. When I started the game my Valor was at 10. The more that you use an attribute the higher the attribute’s score becomes. I have only just now started to map out the Wilderness and already my Valor is up to 13. This is another first from the previous games. The last and most dangerous goal is to find the Reaper’s Ring. The ring is randomly placed on level 1 and then moves down a level each time it is found. It may be found in any of the four terrains, so the search may be long and arduous. I just recently checked and found that the last person to find the ring did so on level 55. This means the Reaper’s Ring is on level 56 of one of the four different terrains. That is going to require a tremendous amount of mapping and searching.
I have only spent about 2-3 total hours with Moria but you can already see the breadth and scope compared to the previous three games. The game seems almost impossible with all of the mapping that needs to be done and the amount of time and hours that are going to be needed to finish this one boggles the imagination. I may find myself in Moria for a very, very, long time.