Legend of the Red Dragon

Legend of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D.) is a text-based game written in Pascal for BBS systems as a third party door game. It was created by Seth Robinson of Robinson Technologies. The game is a role-playing game; the objective is to improve your skill until you are able to kill the red dragon that menaces your village.

A big part of the success behind Legend of the Red Dragon was the ability for other programmers to write and add in additional "modules" (called IGMs, or In-Game Modules) that could be added on to the game to give it some additional flair. Quite a few of the IGMs were buggy and could easily unbalance the game. Later in the game's life, after it was sold to GamePort, a scripting language, called Lady, was added for SysOps who didn't want to add IGMs.

The last version was 4.06. Seth had previously sold the game, and it's sequel, to GamePort and has since moved on to other small games for PC and mobile platforms. Seth Robinson's final version was 4.0b before he sold the games to Gameport. Around 1998, Gameport would eventually hire a programmer by the name of Michael Preslar to do several updates to bring the game up to date with version 4.06. His website can be found @ www.michaelpreslar.com.

Legend of the Red Dragon Universe

The game features three areas of skill concentration:

• Death Knight Skills
• Mystical Skills
• Theiving Skills

The game features 15 standard weapons:

• Stick
• Dagger
• Short Sword
• Long Sword
• Huge Axe
• Bone Crusher
• Twin Swords
• Power Axe
• Able's Sword
• Wan's Weapon
• Spear of Gold
• Crystal Shard
• Nira's Teeth
• Blood Sword
• Death Sword

The game also features 15 standard types of armor:

• Coat
• Heavy Coat
• Leather Vest
• Bronze Armour
• Iron Armour
• Graphite Armour
• Erdrick's Armour
• Armour of Death
• Able's Armour
• Full Body Armour
• Blood Armour
• Magic Protection
• Belar's Mail
• Golden Armour
• Armour of Lore

Legend of the Red Dragon II

The official sequel, Legend of the Red Dragon II: New World, was finally released after months of his advertising a game by the name of New World (which was not meant to be a LORD sequel, ironically). It was a major change from the first game, featuring full ANSI graphics which included a little "man" that represented your character. It featured a top-down view, similar in style to a roguelike.

The final release, version 1.02, of LORD II was in February 2001 by Seth Robinson before it was sold to Gameport.

Tournament LORD

This was a port of Legend of the Red Dragon capable of handling many players at once that Seth ported over to the MBBS/Worldgroup BBS formats.

The unlimited nodes versions of MBBS LORD cost $300 and came with 20 full color glossy LORD posters designed by Justin Martin. These posters could be used as prizes. Seth always signed one of the posters.

The Future of LORD

The future doesn't seem all that bright for the game, but there does seem to be several things that could possibly be in store for the original LORD. This includes a full-featured web version as well as a Palm version of the game. All of this is mentioned in the resume section of michaelpreslar.com.

Despite a lack of major support from Gameport, Legend of the Red Dragon remains a popular hit. The game remains playable today on BBSes that are telnetable and the game is often the spotlight of some BBSes, to help bring in visitors. The game has also spawned a web based clone called Legend of the Green Dragon, which has no relation to Legend of the Red Dragon except in concept.

External links

• Robinson Technologies - Seth Robinson's game company (http://www.rtsoft.com/)
• GamePort - Owners of L.O.R.D. and LORD II  (http://www.gameport.com/)
• The website/blog of the current programer of LORD (http://www.michaelpreslar.com/)
• LORD's Official Website (http://lord.lordlegacy.com/)