TB RPG with no mapping, no notes, no mouse

[Jaguar]

I’m having surgery soon on my dominant hand and arm such that they will be out of commission for at least six weeks. I’m already used to gaming with speech recognition software that lets me click the mouse and activate keyboard commands, which works for most turn-based games. However, I won’t be able to do much mouse movement at all, nor will I be able to take notes easily or draw maps for older games that require it. So with that in mind, I'm trying to select a game to play during this period. I’ve listed some possibilities from my games inventory below, but I haven’t done research on many of them to confirm they meet my needs of: fully turn-based, no mapping, limited or no notes, no or very limited mouse.

Where only one game of a series listed, it is the next one I need to play in the series. I welcome any recommendations or thoughts you may have. The rankings are mine from my own games list, the higher the better. I've listed my concerns after the title of each game as applicable. I tend to take a fair amount of notes in turn-based RPGs, so that could actually be a big problem in this endeavor. I also recently completed Nahlakh, an old school all keyboard RPG that took me like nine months, so I wouldn't mind avoiding another humongous game right away. I have also included some traditional roguelikes below, but those can be a bit high stakes in terms of my voice recognition software mishearing me on something, so not sure if I would want to dive into one of those or not.

TB RPGs
Rank 4 to 3.5
Avernum 3 (kb only?)
Geneforge 3 (kb only?)
Nethergate Resurrection (kb only?)
Nox Archaist (kb only? Mapping?)
Ultima 5 (real time? mapping? lots of notes?)

Rank 3.4 to 2.8
Dragon Wars (mapping likely? Real time?)
Yendorian Tales Book I: Ch 2 (would skip 1st game; mouse? Mapping?)
Devil Whiskey (mapping? Real time? Mouse?)
Disciples of Steel (mapping? Mouse?)
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (mapping? Mouse?)
The Magic Candle (mapping? Real time? Mouse?)
Wasteland (mapping? Real time?)
Wizardry 5 (mapping likely?)
Bard’s Tale 3 (understand has automap, but can it be relied on for all purposes?)
Spirit of Adventure (mapping? Real time? Mouse?)
The Dark Queen of Krynn (goldbox games require some mapping in my recollection despite primitive automap)
Treasures of the Savage Frontier (see Dark Queen)
Dark Disciples II

Rank 2.7 to 2.3
Demon’s Winter (mapping?)
Escape from Hell (mapping? Mouse?)
Phantasie III (mapping?)
Star Command (mapping? Real time? Mouse?)

Traditional Roguelikes
Rank 4
The Curse of Yendor
Doom the Roguelike (mouse?)
Tales of Maj’Eyal (mouse sometimes needed?)
Rogue’s Tale (KB for most things)

Rank 3
Equin the Lantern
Golden Krone Hotel (this one could be good, no inventory, all KB)

Thanks!

 

[JFarrell71]

You never have to map. Depends on how good your spatial memory is.

For obvious reasons, you're more likely to find games that can be played without a mouse among older games. Those same games are not going to have built-in maps. So you kinda have to choose one thing or the other.

Good luck with your surgery, hope it goes well.

 

[bjon045]

I would recommend looking at using AutoHotKey (AHK) to set up macros for any games you plan on playing. For instance I used it for Bard's Tale 1-3 to minimise the actual clicking/typing I had to do. As an example:

They kind of look like this:

F1:: ; Press F1 to start macro
Send {a Down} ; Hold it
Sleep 36000 ; wait 36 seconds
Send {X} ; press the X key
Send {enter} ; press the enter key
Send {enter}

return

For Wasteland and BT1-3 I had macros to do the entire combat. I.e. one macro for fighting a single group of enemies, one macro for fighting multiple groups etc. The macros include casting certain spells like Magnar's Mallet, Nuke etc.

Automap is all that is required for the new bards tales. Gold Box companion does a perfect full automap for all gold box games (secret of the silver blades is flakey.

 

[daveyd]

Wasteland (mapping? Real time?)

Wasteland is turn-based.

 

[Stingray]

Ultima 5 is turn-based and doesn't support mice. I don't remember needing to do any mapping for it, but you will need to take some notes.

Afterwards, you could play Ultima 6. Still turn-based, but it adds mouse support that's optional. And from what I recall, you won't need to take as many notes.

 

[Carnifex]

I'd be another that would recommend the early Ultima's, great games and should lend themselves fine for what you're looking for.

 

[Zloth]

Nethack?

NetHack 3.6.7: NetHack Home Page

 

[JFarrell71]

Nethack?

NetHack 3.6.7: NetHack Home Page

Probably any true Roguelike (and some Roguelights), really.

One of my favorites is the much more recent Caves of Qud, and you can play that entirely with keyboard, and mapping and notes are in-program.

 

[Stingray]

Nethack?

NetHack 3.6.7: NetHack Home Page

He mentioned in his post that games like that would be too "high stakes" to play with voice recognition software. I assumed he meant that making a single wrong move (because a voice command didn't get interpreted correctly or whatever), could easily mean your whole game is over.

 

[JFarrell71]

He mentioned in his post that games like that would be too "high stakes" to play with voice recognition software. I assumed he meant that making a single wrong move (because a voice command didn't get interpreted correctly or whatever), could easily mean your whole game is over.

A quick re-mention of Caves of Qud in that context: it can be played like a normal ironman style roguelike, but can also optionally be played with saves.

 

[Zloth]

He mentioned in his post that games like that would be too "high stakes" to play with voice recognition software. I assumed he meant that making a single wrong move (because a voice command didn't get interpreted correctly or whatever), could easily mean your whole game is over.

Oh! I thought he was down to just one hand; I wasn't thinking about using voice software for it.

Also, I found the game to be much more fun when I made backups of my saves so dying didn't mean starting over. That cuts WAY down on the playtime and the pain of having to restart because of a typo/voiceo.

 

[Stingray]

Also, I found the game to be much more fun when I made backups of my saves so dying didn't mean starting over. That cuts WAY down on the playtime and the pain of having to restart because of a typo/voiceo.

Same here tbh, that’s the only way I ever won NetHack

 

[Jaguar]

Thanks everybody-I appreciate all the feedback. a few points:

1. I did play and beat Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup many years ago using pretty much exclusively voice software. But lately sometimes when I tell it to go left, it goes up instead I may end up just doing a roguelike because it meets everything but the "notes" issue. I don't think I would want to play a roguelike with any saving "cheats". I would have the same concern about the auto mapping in GoldBox Companion - I recall I covered it up somehow when I played the last one in the pools of radiance series. Probably too hardcore for my own good.

2. I do think that taking notes would be the hardest of all, which would be a big issue for games like Ultima 5 (in order to progress and not miss stuff) and frankly many "deep" games. Maybe it would be possible to run Ultima in a window and have another window open to dictate notes - I have not done that in the past, preferring to write everything down on my Remarkable 2 tablet (which is great for all notetaking and mapping on a grid, BTW).

3. I did set up macros in my voice software for Bard's tale 2 - agree they were very helpful.

One annoyance that you will sometimes see in turn-based games - game is mostly turn-based, but not entirely. For example, I don't know if Ultima 5 has the "pass" thing if you take no action for a few seconds - I feel like they dropped that starting with Ultima 4, but not sure. Also not sure if creatures on the map move even if you do not, but again I think they dropped that for #4, so I would be surprised if they reintroduced it in 5.

anyway, thanks for the thoughts!