Adventurer

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This is a Class A (gold star) article.
An adventurer in his natural habitat. (Gråborg, Färjestaden, Sweden)

An adventurer is a character controlled by the player who serves as the protagonist in adventures. An adventurer, like player characters in other fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, consists mostly of numerical representations of various skills and physical attributes; many of these are normally assigned at random, and some may improve through experience.

Adventurers in Eamon are members of the Guild of Free Adventurers and always leave from (and return to) the Main Hall in Evenhold when traveling. Other guild members sometimes appear as non-player characters in adventures.

Characteristics

Statistics

An adventurer has more detailed stats and characteristics than those normally assigned to computer-controlled monsters, though unlike monsters the adventurer has no textual description. The following is the minimum data that normally comprises an adventurer record:

Some variants of Eamon record additional data about the adventurer, such as handedness.

In the September 1993 issue of the club newsletter, Tom Zuchowski writes, "I would define a 'normal' character in this range: HD, CH, AG = 20; all weapon abilities = 50; armor ability = 20; all spell abilities = 70; gold = 10,000; two swords with 10% complexity and 2D8 damage ability; plate armor and shield."

Personal

Since players can create their characters in many different forms (man or woman, strong or weak, human or non-human), many specifics of the adventurer's life are necessarily vague and left to the player's imagination. Nevertheless, some personal details have been established by various authors over the years. The adventurer...

  • is considered one of the most able adventurers in the land.
  • enjoys the favor of the King, for whom the adventurer undertakes a number of different missions and quests.
  • sometimes has a romantic companion. In The Lair of the Minotaur this individual is identified as either girlfriend Larcenous Lil or boyfriend Slippery Sven, depending on the adventurer's sex. (In Picnic in Paradise the adventurer's date is similarly named either Heather or Magnum.) By the time of The Ice Cave the adventurer had been living in the forest with his girlfriend (now "Lovely Lil") for two years. Operation Crab Key describes the adventurer as having a "wonderful wife".
  • has an elder brother named Jollifrud, a retired adventurer who lives in the city of Fahrnor (Stronghold of Kahr-Dur). Jollifrud's daughter — the adventurer's niece — is Lady Mirabelle.
  • enjoys drinking.
  • lives in or near the town.

The adventurer also has many friends. Among them are...

Known adventurers

In adventures

Adventurers sometimes appear or are mentioned in published adventures:

In main programs

Eamon distributions often include pre-existing adventurers; the best known of these may be Sam, a strong character frequently provided on Eamon master diskettes. John Nelson noted in the May 1985 newsletter that the club had been including a capable adventurer named Galahad on the Master Disk for a couple of years.

Eamon Deluxe

The Deluxe adventurer equipped with a weapon and armor.

Eamon Deluxe comes with a number of preexisting characters from whom the player can select when entering the Main Hall (or alter with the character editor), including the following:

  • Leasuresuit Frank, named in reference to Eamon Deluxe creator Frank Black and the Leisure Suit Larry series of adult computer games.
  • Floyd the Barber, a likely reference to Floyd Lawson
  • Bill of Accounting
  • Nanock the Thick, an adventurer pictured in the August 1984 issue of the Eamon Adventurer's Log
  • Tom Zucchini, a reference to Eamon club president Tom Zuchowski
  • Tank Black (another pun on the EDX creator's name)
  • Zeus Hightower Flabbergibungander, a character who's name Black found particularly amusing when hearing it pronounced by voices of screen reading programs when testing the systems vi compatibility mode. Zeus also appears in the Eamon Deluxe conversion of The Beginner's Forest, where he ineffectively assumes the job usually performed by William Misslefire of keeping out experienced adventurers.
  • Dirk Gently

Eamon Deluxe also has characters built into its Dungeon Designer to test adventures with a range of characters of different strengths and genders. Unlike regular adventurer characters (and those created by the player), the Dungeon Designer characters can test multiple adventures at the same time; however, they do not get to participate in the Main Hall or raise their stats in the normal way, since their character statistics remain the same so that they can be used to test different adventures effectively. This set includes:

  • Hard Hat Mack, a weak character named for the video game
  • Stan, a medium-strength character
  • Sir Lunchalot, a strong, well-rounded character
  • Brutus, a super-tough character
  • Sally Van Weenus, a weak character
  • Wendy, a medium-strength character
  • Molly Millions, a strong, well-rounded character named for the William Gibson character
  • Jane MacMurderkill-Jones, a super-tough character

Previous versions of the Eamon Deluxe Dungeon Designer had a character in its line-up by the name of Zombi Sam, a reference to the popular Sam character from the original Eamon master; this character is not present in the current version and his slot is now occupied by Stan.

Expanded Master

The copy of the Expanded Master distributed by the Eamon Adventurer's Guild Online includes six preexisting adventurers:

  • Galahad
  • Junior Badnews
  • Hakkard of York
  • Wimpy
  • Tami Frater
  • (Ami Coneas)

The version attributed to the Big Red Apple Club includes several more:

In utilities

  • Testor of Bench, the default adventurer created by the Test Bench utility program.

In documentation

Player-created

Many people who play Eamon create their own characters, so the number of player-created adventurers generated over the years is likely very large. Visitors are invited to record their favorite adventurers below:

See also