I Might As Well Admit It

For the time being, this blog is on official HIATUS. It's been a month since I have been able to seriously play Pool Of Radiance for the NES. I have played it a few times, but both times I have stupidly lost all my progress. So, just to let everyone know, for the time being, the blog is

C L O S E D  F O R  R E P A I R S

And, while the grass may be growing thick around the posts holding the sign up and the sign itself may be old, the paint peeling, and fading from years of sun, believe me when I say this:

I will be back. This blog is not dead- just sleeping for a while.

Thank you all.

I Swear, I Tell Ya

I either have the worst luck, or I am accursed by God. One or the other. Finally I get me the time and the inclination to fire up POR again (I been busy, I been stressed, I been freaked). I head into East Outdoors so I can head back TO Phlan, head through a gate and start mapping. But as I turn the river head, I find a cave where kobolds ( a large band of them) are sneaking in! So I head in and have some wacky adventures. All in all I got a lot of XP, some gold, and while I didn't clear out the cave complex I figured I better go heal up and come back rather than leave my withered corpses to rot in the darkness forever.

As I head back down to to the boat to head back to New Phlan proper, I am called upon to do some householdly chore. I set down my game controller and get up. The cat leaps onto the table, knocks the game controller onto the keyboard, and the game screen changes to a night time screen with the error message "Game Save Improperly Loaded".

And guess who didn't save the game before getting up, because he didn't feel anything untoward was going to occur? Iffen's y'all guess little ol' me, y'all is correct!

Sigh. Getting closer though. I will finish this game :) I am doing better than another blog I read, where the author's last post was cleaning out Sokal Keep, over two months ago. At least I am trying :)

At least I didn't have to cut down a shrubbery with a herring. That would have sucked.

My Parrot Would Like To Apologise

Life at my house has been a tad busy- haven't had a chance to actually PLAY the game since my last post and I didn't want my one or two readers to wonder what was happening. I'll be back in a day or so, promise ye, me hearties!

It's Been A Lot Of Wandering Open Spaces

There are some right odd fixtures on the landscape tho.

I've been spending the last week and some doing nothing more than wandering the areas outside of Phlan and trying to grind my characters up. Probably pointless to try and do things that way, but shucks. When I went to examine one of the other semi-interesting things outside, I found this block of text:

NEVER is a good time to see this. EVER.

So, not quite sure what I should be doing in the game at this point, I've been in a holding pattern of grinding. Not sure where I should go outside but trying to find a) nomads, and b) a kobold army. Haven't found either. Afraid to go back inside the city because Valhingen is too tough for me... Now, there are areas of Northern Phlan and Southern Phlan gates I could go through and check out... but again, not sure if I'd be wandering into a meat grinder or not.

Over the teeth and over the gums, look out tummy, here I come!

I dunno if I require more hand holding or not. I don't enjoy games where I am being led around by the nose throughout the entire bloody thing, but right now I don't know if I have the concentration powers to keep it together now that I have been booted out the front door and been told "The world is now yours. Take it in your hands and feast!"

This picture would fit in the dictionary under the definition of "swarming".

I think I'll head back into North and South Phlan and try mapping/clearing out those areas. If they are too tough for me, then I'll head back out here in the Wilds again and see if I can find those bloody nomads and kobolds again. Although, badass as I am against a party of 15 kobolds (they fall like wheat under a scythe) I don't think I'm tough enough to disrupt an entire kobold army.

My entire party had an attack of brown trousers when this guy popped up.

Still tho, even tho I am kind of in a confused muddle right now, it's still a moderately enjoyable confused muddle. Moderately enjoying myself stomping on monsters at the moment. I need to get back on track pretty quick however, because if I can't get a break, I'm going to start losing interest and THAT, my fine furry friends, would suck.

It's a pueblo! Run For Cover!

I still dunno what a quickling is, except for one thing about them: they are very very deadly.

HERE would have been an EXCELLENT time to have the control snakes spell.

Oh my God, the minotaurs HAVE US SURROUNDED

You should be able to tell from the last couple screen shots that the flora and fauna around Phlan is totally ridiculous- there is no way all these various types of animals, both intelligent and non, would live around each other. It's crazy. But then, most of these settings are and I guess that's part of the fun, isn't it? I'll see you in the next couple of days with an update on the gates into Northern and Southern Phlan.

Oh my good LORD- this is insane.

"I found another one!" yelled Fimu.

She was standing on a "mountain" of broken rocks, roughly 20 feet tall, looking out over the broken plain around them. She was pointing to a circle of vultures. "I can't say for certain, but with as many as we've found, I bet it's another party."

Figtle ran stubby fingers through his thick, coarse beard. Of course it would be. And so far that made seven they'd found and that was way too strange to be normal.

It's started yesterday afternoon- they'd stumbled upon vultures and wild dogs tearing apart a kill. But it wasn't some unfortunate beast they'd slaughtered and were eating. It'd been a party of five adventurers, the poor bastards. Two half elven males, a half elf female, a dead dwarf, and a gnome, all mostly torn to pieces and eaten.  Figtle and Ficle had talked it over whil examining the corpses. There wasn't much left to determine if it had been foul play or bad luck that had done them in but they'd all pitched in and buried what was left. It had thrown a pall over the evening, but that wasn't the worst- before the sun started to fall in earnest and they'd been looking for a campsite, they found another bunch.

Another five adventurers, same as the last. Two half elf males, a half elf female, a dwarf and a gnome. Cause of death was unknown but cause of making a nasty mess of their remains was obvious- Figtle and the rest had angrily killed a band of wild boars that had been messily and noisily eating the corpses.

It had been Fimu that had brought up what they'd all been thinking- She and her two brothers were half-elven, Figtle was dwarven and Thiffling was a gnome. Coming across one party of such odd makeup was odd, but twice was too strange to be a coincidence. What and who had killed them all?

Throughout the rest of the next day they'd discovered another five sites of dead adventurers- each of them containing two dead and partially consumed half elf males, a dead and half eaten half elf female, and a dwarf and gnome, both dead and mostly eaten. They understood the half-eaten state- the wilds around the city of New Phlan were untamed at best and filled to the brim with meat eating beasts. Anything dead and made of meat would be torn apart and devoured if left unguarded. But for each party to made up of the same types and numbers as their own bunch...

"If we didn't have to find those damned nomads I'd say we head back to Phlan," said Ficle, next to Figtle and looking just as worried. "This is all wrong."

Figtle agreed with Ficle, whom he was finding to be a very smart man under his half-elven foolishness. It was badly wrong.

It's A Vast Empty New World (Albiet Filled With Horrible Beasts)

He's very sharp- and I don't mean as in bright.

Well, I took Dirten and the gang out into the wild. And it's a pretty wild wild. It sure looks empty...

 

I'm a horsie on a boat!

But oh trust me- everything is hungry and wants to feast on Our Gang.

Even the piggies are carnivorous!

And let me tell you about the bloody piggies. I dunno if they do this trick in the PC version, but in the NES version, the Boars are like trolls on steroids. You can take down a piggy and it'll be dying and vanish- and then it gets back up! And the pic comes back and the Boar is now pissed that you made it die!

For the past 2 days Blogger has not been working correctly- I don't know why. I can't upload pictures, and the text formatting has been weird. I'm going to try re-blogging again in a day or two. Until thenm, Our Gang will be fighting horrid beasts in the forests around Phlan. See yez soon!

So, After I Loaded Up The Fresh ROM, I Promptly

saved state over my latest state. So my latest save became not with Dirten in my party and all the things I had mentioned last post, but rather, the title screen of the freshly loaded POR ROM.

F*ck me with a chainsaw.

Anyway, I managed to locate a backup that is... well, who knows at what state it's at? Dirten is still in the party, so it's after I cleared Sokal and got Dirten to join up, but Dayum. Whudded I havva do that fer? /*head slap*/

So, well, anyway. More frightening adventure to follow!

Hello! Sokal Keep Has Been Cleared, The CORRECT Way This Time

I don't see why not. 

Well, this time I tried things a little different. I went exploring the keep the same way that I did last time, giving the skellies the passcode every time they wandered up to see what I was up to. Every three or four steps. You can't say the skellies aren't dedicated to the point of being thoroughly obnoxious.

Grah. Got choice of plans for life insurance. Grush. Only pennies per day.  Gnnshh. You interested?

I fought the small army of ogres, hobgoblins and goblins in the central hallway leading to the center of Sokal Keep. This time most of the bad guys surrendered. Funny that- you'd think watching half of their party being violently and mercilessly murdered was influencing their actions. Weird. 

Remembering what happened last time when I reacted even halfway poorly when I saw dead things, this time I fairly offered the backs of my characters as end tables when a ghost sauntered by.

Excuse me, ghost being? Before I act hastily, I can cut the throat of the girl and you can use her corpse as a darling coffee table. I really want to make this encounter end well. (Female character in background- "Hey!")

When I found Martinez this time, I again erred on the side of caution, and this time instead of disintigrating over half of my party, he gave me info I already had and offered me treasure I had already looted. Hey, he tried. 

You give me this info after I already found the passcode outside in the dirt? Not very valuable info, was it?

After this pleasant encounter (We had cakes and tea, laughing into the night. All ended well, save for the corpse of the girl. Turns out we didn't have to murder her when we saw the ghosts. Oh well, you win some...) we went exploring. The only thing that happened was we caught crabs.

Well, scorpions, really. But the joke doesn't work if you say "we caught scorpions."

When we got back, it turned out that clearing out Sokal Keep was exactly what was needed when they wanted us to clear out Sokal Keep. Funny that. Tyranthraxus' popped up again. Well, his name did.

Who are these other losers? 

Got a right amount of XP we did, and a few of my characters hopped up in lvls- my fighter/cleric became a better fighter, and both of my fighter/magic users became better magic users. All the magic user spells suck at low lvl, but we have 'em!

Hotcha!

We met some bozo named Braccio over at the temple to Tyr on the east side of town (you know what they say about those Eastsiders- they stink, they drink, they steal. And that's the good side of town.)  He introduced us to some bozo named Dirten who managed to join our party. Hey- I'd been wondering why on Earth I couldn't hire an NPC and as it turns out there was a bloody good reason.

We had all caught crabs. B'DUM CHIK!

But with Sokal Keep clear, the docks are now opened and we can go many many different places now. Add this to the open space at the top of Castle ArgleBargle and that's a LOT of free choice open to me now.

Damn boy, you ugly. And ya wearing a funny hat. 'N' ya smell bad.

Next time, I'll see what's going on in Valhingen Graveyard, since I have to clear that place out as well. Many many missions now. I only heard ONCE about getting this once guy's fortune back- I guess I still have to do that but no one ever talks about it. I think they're all embarrassed they even brought it up.

Because they have crabs. Good lord, I don't ever let a joke die, do I?

I have achieved more than I have mentioned in this post. Things are looking up. My characters are horrified to learn that this Tyranthraxus is pissed at THEM but they still aren't the types to just back up and leave. I won't let them :) Free will- HAH! I spit on the concept!

See yez all again very soon!

See? Didn't even mention these guys in the normal text. I think someone else, about a different situation and in a different blog, mentioned due process. Feh- rumour and innuendo are enough to convict a man in THIS city!

I AM Going To Post More On The Game

but I also wanted to pop this in to let you all know one of the reasons I find posting difficult at the best of times. I use gaming and blogging as a crutch to escape from reality :) (it's true!) for many reasons, the largest being my wife's terminal condition. ONE of the many things she has a problem with is congestive heart failure. For those of you who don't know what this entails, the easy version is: when your heart doesn't push the blood fully out through your body, it begins to back up. You end up with excess blood and fluid in your outer limbs, then backing up closer and closer to the heart. When fluid backs up enough that it can't get out of the lungs easily, the excess fluid begins to leak out of the cells and into the air spaces of the lungs. You begin to literally drown in the fluids of your body. The outside symptom of this, one of them, is having a white frothy fluid build up inside of your lungs.

Last night, at 3:30 in the morning, my wife woke up coughing this white frothy fluid out of her throat.

She's "okay" now, but I'm losing my mind again. We're waiting to hear from her cardiologist and see what he wants to do.

It's things like this that make it hard to concentrate on any one thing, like POR for the NES :)  But no fear! I am dedicated to the concept of finishing this game before I turn older and greyer! In fact, I have more posts and more info to follow directly after this post!

Stay tuned, Sports Fans!

I Am Thoroughly Stunned, Unsure Of What I WIll Do Next

I was in Sokal keep. I had the password and the undead patrols were just walking up to me and then away. I fought the army og goblins, hobgoblins, and ogres easily. Crushed them. Got into the center of the keep. Found the Martinez (spectre)? Started the battle.

Now, I knew it was going to be a bitch. It's a "Boss Battle", they are designed to be pig-f*cking hard. What I DIDN'T expect was that after the battle, my 2 standing characters would end up being my ONLY characters. Figtle, Fimu, and Feyemoo all have death statuses (statusi?) of GONE. And they are- there are no ways to fix them, they are "GONE".

Now, if I get myself 3 new characters to go alongside the two remaining characters (both of whom have lost half of their lvls), there is no place to go to get XP for anyone appropriate to that lvl. My 3 newbs and 2 semi-newbs would get slaughtered everywhere they went. So if I just dropped those characters and got all new characters it's even worse- FIVE newbs would be worse off then the hypothetical party of newbs and semi-newbs.

So, really, the only thing that I can do right now is to START THE WHOLE GAME OVER FROM SCRATCH. Now, our dear friend the CRPGAddict may gleefully and happily do that sort of thing without even thinking about it. Shucks, probably all of you people that aren't our dear friend the Addict would simply start the entire game over from the beginning with all new characters without even a second thought.

I ain't all y'all :) I am at a crossroads. I can either a) Quit, drop the blog, go on and just do something else because I so sorry my brozzairs, I don't have the gumption necessary to just start over from the very beginning without a second thought nor care in the world. I suspect that had I bought this game back in the day and had this exact thing happen I would have packaged it all up and taken it back to the store.

Or I can b) work from a save I made just after) I went back outside the keep and got the password, and just before) I went back inside and suddenly found the game becoming "easy".

Is either/or my friends. Not sure what I want to do at the moment- I feel a complete mix of shock/outrage/calm over what a complete game-stopping hoseage I just received. If you could tell me what y'all think, it would be appreciated. Just leave me a comment, please, he'p a brother out.

Figtle Kicked The Skeleton's Skull Through The Makeshift Goal

and shouted "Score!" as Feyemoo jumped for it. When he missed he took a face slide across broken rock and pavement, screaming as he scraped his face down to the bone.

Figtle opened the picnic pack as Ficle cast "Cure Light Wounds", laughing all the while, at his brother. He poured a mug of draught from the keg they'd bought at The Busty Elf back in New Phlan. This picnic was what they needed to shake the horrors of Podol Plaza out of their systems.

"I wonder who all these guys were," said Fimu as she sat next to Figtle, a sandwich in her hand. She gestured at the piles of skulls all around them. Back when they'd first arrived at New Phlan this scene of ancient death and horror (hundreds of human skeletons lay in broken piles in the huge plaza they were playing Skull Ball- men, women, children, all dragged into the arena here and slaughtered, their corpses left to feed the birds and animals. Why? No records were found) would have paralyzed them in dismay. Now it was a place to relax while they picnicked.

"I don't know," said Figtle after draining his mug, the thick, highly alcoholic brew filling his belly. "Not too worried about it, to be honest. Think these guys will be busy a while?" He watched while Thiffling lobbed a pelvis from a broken second story building onto Feyemoo's head.

"Let me finish my sandwich," said Fimu, speaking with a full mouth as she gobbled quickly. "Then let's find a place while these morons play."

Figtle smiled and leaned back against the cold stone wall. Life was good.

Life Updates

I get to see this a LOT. It takes a stupid amount of time to get rid of them as well.

Well, sadly, I still haven't had a ton of time to do much. I just recovered from a scary time when I thought I'd have to reinstall Win7, and I thought I was going to lose a terabyte external drive, AND I couldn't get my comp's high speed USB ports to work. Happy days! Luckily, I am a semi-persistent bugger and I stuck with it. Everything is back to as normal as they get with me.

 

 

How can I stay angry with a guy as cute and happy as that?

So, I've made my way back to the main New Phlan map and headed to the docks. I still thank you, dear readers, for your help. I NEVER would have thought to go there. I knew that having been an active alcoholic for 23 years was going to get me. (I have been sober for 11 years now- awesome :) )

Luckily I can see the... faint... footsteps... ?

Sokal keep is tougher than I like. I'm back to losing half my party or more before I finish a battle. Slow lvluping that way :) Luckily I can pack up and haul ass back to New Phlan as often as I like which is good- my cleric still only knows Cure Light Wounds and that, dear reader, takes a lot of castings to bring someone from 4 back to 33 HP.

 

 

I'll let you kill me if it makes you look happier, okay?

So right now I'm slowly clearing out the Keep. I'll get back into the swing of things- life problems and computer problems got me away from the game long enough it's hard to give it the attention that it needs. And it needs attention, oh yes it does.

 

 

I would guess skeletons from the pic, but they are noticeably lax about matching pics to actual monsters.

Next posting should have me cleared Sokal Keep and feasting on that rich, sweet XP from the city clerk. That bitch.

Mi Zo Apologizo

I have not had any time to get anything done blog wise but this has recently changed. Just wanted to let you all know that I am back and the posting will again commence. Thank goodness. I hate not being able to play when I require it :)

This Is One Of Those "Pickle" Moments

I saved my game when I got into the castle, past the bugbear gates. I have been trying

and trying

and trying

to survive up here but it just ain't working. My easiest fight is against 1 normal human, 1 6th lvl magic user and 2 ettins. I die fast. The harder fights are between me and about 9 bugbears. I die even faster. Sadly, i did save my game inside the gate so I don't actually have a save I can easily go back to... except that I have been periodically backing up my saves, 'just for old times sake'.

My 'closest  to todays date' save is 6/26/11 and I am not quite sure how far back I am and i'll thus have to re-follow my steps, but I am clearly way over my head here. I need to head back to New Phlan, go to the docks and look for Sokal's Keep  ( a tip o' the hat to The Enraged Geek for the head's up- thnkx!).

So, tomorrow or so I'll let y'all know how I've been doing. I never would have thought of the Docks on my own. I forgot they were there. I do suck after all.

Scorpions Feast On Our Flesh

"

Shouldn't it read "Scorpions approach; you are hungry"? Right?  Should I- should I just reload now?  (Ans: No, reload when all of you are dead. Should be any second now.)

I stuck all my maps in MS Paint, into one MegaMap. Interesting, so far. If I can get it made smaller, I'll put the pic below this paragraph.

Left 2 right, top 2 bottom: Podol Plaza, Kuto's f**king Well, the slums, New Phlan. Then the cemetery, I believe, and the library. 

Anyway, so I decided to try out the area above Podol Plaza. This brought me to a castle!

It's like those castles in Germany! Except way uglier, and lacking in detail completely.

Now,they didn't mention this place at city hall, nor did the city commissioner tell me I needed to bust the place up, but I still thought hey- Sokal keep, Arglebargle castle... maybe these are connected in some way...

It's like those castles in Germany! Man, that joke can be recycled  forever, I bet.

So's I watch this guy in a wagon get into the castle through the gate (in the theatre of the mind's eye- all I could REALLY see was this:

It's like those cast- yeah, yeah.)

For the measly price of $250 GP I bought a wagon from a guy, then bribed a bugbear

He's all cute and fuzzy. He's adorable.

to let me in and son of a gun, in I came!  I discovered that north of this area is what I presume to be outside- I didn't walk around, I just ducked back in, but the ground is all white and there is no overhead map. Sss, sss, the sun, it hurts me it does. So right now I'm trying to find ways of finding mission objectives so I can build up some XP- fighting monsters is a mug's game with the paltry XP reward for random fights.

I'll get it worked out. This Tyranthraxus is screwed when I find him!

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The Need Of Money Makes Us Do Horrible Things

When Fimu didn't survive our last battle with ogres, I needed cash to bring her back because brother, money we didn't have. And it turned out I had a "manual" in Figtle's inventory. When I had it identified for $200 I could barely afford, it turned out to be a manual of "B" health. Hmmm. In the manual it turns out that is something that can improve your health by bumping up a stat (so I understand the less than helpful manual to mean). When I looked to see how much I could get for it, I could  get $25,000 GP.

Hmmm. $25,000 in cash right now, or a dead Half-elf who would stay dead but someone else would feel healthier?

I may kick myself, but we're not going to be short on cash for a while.

Wearily, Figtle Slammed his Sword Through the Ogres Chest.

Kaanus's beard, he thought as he dragged the chipped and slightly bent length of metal back through the ribcage of the now expired ogre. This doesn't get any easier. Which really wasn't true- the first time Figtle and the others had fought an ogre it took the five of them to bring it down and even at that, Ficle had had to use his magics to bring Thifling back to the land of the breathing.

Fimu'd killed her set of ogres using a spray of magic missiles, and her brother Feyemoo was still cutting the throats of the kobolds he'd put to sleep. Ficle was resting- using his flail to stave in three ogre skulls was very tiring work.Thifling wasn't to be seen but that was standard- his daggers,thrown from cover and shadow,had brought down another bunch of frightened goblins.

"God's beard," murmured Figtle, catching his breath. "We've become regular masters at this death business."

Hokey Smokes!

So, since the Plaza has become too dangerous for us at this time, I decided to check out this area just to the west of the Library. Can't be that bad, says I. Probably easier than the Plaza, says I. Piece of cake with ice cream, says I.

I enter a building in the map-area to the west of the library and inside I find this!

I hadn't realized I'd volunteered to be eaten at this particular restaurant. 

Ghouls! I try to turn undead (hey, it's a long shot but worth my time and money) and nothing.  Oh well, maybe they are not undead. But then the WIGHT attacks and unless I am thoroughly insane, a wight is something already dead. I learnt that by reading The Hobbit. Also by actually playing D&D, AD&D, and AD&D 2.0 when I were but a young one. (An aside- I like AD&D 3.5 much much better than the train wreck that is 4.0)

I got the color right, I just can't get the text shape right.

Anyway, the battle went about as well as you might guess- the wight and the ghoul paralyzed each character after every hit  and WAY too soon for my liking I got the

No caption is necessary or required.

screen.

So I am guessing I am in some kind of cemetery, maybe? The NES version is mighty mighty poor on text labels for anything at all. Anyway, I'm going to make my way back to the plaza and start work again there I guess, maybe make my way north of the plaza. I saw a doorway up there so I am guessing I can go that way.

See yez next posting!

p.s. Sorry if it seems like I am taking forever to play a game that probably shouldn't take this long, but with my schedule and my life, this is about as fast as I can get  through it.

p.p.s. Yes, Addict, it's actually spelled BASILISK. Whoops! Color my face red!

Where I Am Now

I finally managed to get out of Podol Plaza alive. A trifle shy on hit points, but we made it. When I got to the city hall, what I saw was enough to fulfill the requirements for the auction mission so we got a load of XP and  GP. Handy :) I can't finish exploring Podol Plaza however- I am not tough enough to handle all the fights right now and there are a lot- I am not given a choice to disguise myself any longer- so monsters are leaping in my face  every few steps to show me what for. Later I'll finish just to be completist.

I was also very tired the other night when playing, and something happened to my necklace of fireballs. It's just gone. I don't know if it ran out of charges and disintegrated, it ran out of charges so I threw it away, or I accidentally sold it at a shop. No clue. Went to use it earlier today and bloody gib-gab, the thing was gone! Too bad too, that thing was NICE.

So right now, I have to still clear Sokal Keep, visit and recruit some nomads, find Council Cadorna's fortune, and bust up an entire kobold army before before it joins with the enemy. Shucks, not bad- that easy baking for my five goof balls! :)

As a quick  by-the-by, their names are pronounced: Figtle = FIG-tul, Ficle = FI-cul, Fimu = FEE-muh, Feyemoo = F(eye)-moo, and Thifling = THIFF-ling.

Be good and I'll fill you in on our goings-on again soon!

This Is The Crazy You Have To Go Through

I just checked my people if they needed to lvl up after a successful Podol Plaza auction mission. It takes a metric butt-load of screens and button presses to check 5 PCs. This post is also pic intensive, but only so you will know the horror- the terror.

My sincere apologies if my posts look more incoherent than normal... I destroyed my normal keyboard, so I am using a rubber, waterproof, weird-chiclet-like-keys keyboard. No moving parts- you depress rubber buttons. The 's' key is missing so I have to be extra careful to depress the small diode in the hole and that is toughish, force me to artificial slowness. The space buttons are oddly shaped and easy to not press right. Wah, boo hoo, poor me. At least I don't live in India where they keyboards are made of rice and the children have to eat their keyboards at night or go hungry. Not sure where that came from.

Because this game is a NES game, I have a gamepad plugged in to play it with so as to be more authentic. When I enter the training hall, I am met with this screen.

1) Nice to know. Thank you, unnamed lady.

It takes a button press- either A or B, or a press on the D pad- to get this next screen.

2) One from column A, one from column B

D pad to my choice, then a press of the A button.

3) Good God man, you are ugly.

I D pad to my character of choice, press the A button. I choose Ficle.

4) Either fighter or magic-user, please.

I have to press A or B or D pad to get to the next screen.

5) Whoops, how about cleric instead? *blush*

I D pad, then press A at my choice.

6) Sir,I am not a tree.

I takes A, b, or D pad to get off this screen.

7) Probably. A good chance there is.

Another A B or D pad to leave this screen as well.

8) Yes or no, i would think.

I D pad and press A at my choice.

9) This is effectively step 3 again.

Here I either D pad and choose to start again, or B button to back out of this menu tree.

It's a lot of screens to check each and every character. Oh, and as a by the by, I have tried to hire an NPC here, and I dunno why but they won't let me. Why? Dunno. I have a slot open. I'm not too high or too low in  lvls, I think. If I can hire one later I'll fill you in.

But- but why?? Tell me the problem so I can fix it!