From the introduction:
Introduction
DungeonDelveXL is a fully-featured role-playing game written entirely inside Excel, using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) - the macro language that Microsoft bundles with its Office suite. I have used only internal Excel functions to handle all the graphics, and have not imported any external artwork. Which is good, because I suck at art. DungeonDelveXL contains all the features that you would expect of any other role-playing game: customisable characters; a large explorable world map; randomised dungeons and encounters; a wide range of monsters, spells and skills; a huge selection of items to collect; a detailed crafting system; and much more besides.
Playing the Game
DungeonDelveXL is built inside Excel, and as you open the workbook, you will be presented with a single sheet – the Main Form – which contains three options. You can either start a new game, save the current game (if you have one running) or open a saved game. Please note – the game data are stored in memory, and not on the sheet, so if you want to save your progress, YOU MUST SAVE YOUR GAME FROM THE MAIN FORM AND NOT THROUGH THE EXCEL MENUS – otherwise the progress will be entirely lost.
Loading and saving games is all pretty self-explanatory. However, since we don’t have anything to load or save yet, let’s start a new game.
Anyone familiar with RPGs will recognise the character creation process in DDXL. There is a fairly wide range of options to tweak, but they're a little bit different to what you might have seen before. I'm experimenting with a slightly different model for tracking your character's strengths and weaknesses. I think it works quite well. You can also (obviously) set your Name and Symbol. The Symbol is a (maximum) two character identifier for your character that will be used to identify him/her in battles. I deliberately didn't include gender on the character screen, so feel free to pick whatever name you want and customise your character further using the skills and attributes below.
The Races
There are five races in DDXL: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Goblin. The choice of race affects only the various modifiers applied to your primary abilities. For example, Orcs are much stronger than other races, but less intelligent. Elves are more intelligent and nimble, but less tough. Etc. I set this up so that all the racial bonuses add up to a net overall benefit of zero, so choosing the race you want to play is entirely a matter of your playing style.
You might think that this makes certain races only suitable for certain roles, but because of the way I have set up the abilities in DDXL, that is not necessarily the case. For example, Orcs may be strong and dumb, but they can still make passable magic users because they have decent toughness, giving them resilience to enemy attacks (and balancing the tendency for magic users to be a bit squishy). A higher strength means that they can also wear more armour (also counteracting the squishiness) without getting as heavily encumbered. Elves can make good fighters, because a higher agility corresponds to a better defence skill. Also, at high level the ability differences tend to even out once you have significantly better magical armour and weapons to boost your skills much higher.
The Abilities
The five major abilities are each related to many in-game skills and values. Primarily, however, these skills contribute in a few specific areas. They all start with a skill of ten, plus or minus the appropriate modifier from your race. Here's a list:
Strength - Increases physical attack skill and carrying capacity.
Toughness - Increases maximum HP.
Endurance - Increases maximum stamina and stamina regeneration.
Agility - Increases physical defence, and also slightly increases magical attack and defence.
Intelligence - Increases magical attack and defence.
You can choose to rebalance the points in these abilities as you see fit, though the total must always sum to the same value. So in order to increase one stat, you must first reduce another.
These stats are also used to measure your character's ability at some of the non-combat skills that they will learn over time.
The Classes
Choosing a class is also important as it will determine the skills and abilities that your character will gain as he or she gains levels. The classes available are:
Warrior – A strong fighter, with excellent physical attack and defence skills.
Barbarian – A reckless fighter with an Enrage skill. Stronger attack than the warrior, but weaker defence.
Priest – A magic user with a range of spells balanced towards the defensive side. Weak at physical combat.
Wizard – A magic user with a range of spells balanced towards the offensive side. Weak at physical combat.
Paladin – Half way between a priest and a warrior – some magic abilities but with passable fighting skills.
Warlock – Half way between a wizard and a warrior – some magic abilities but with passable fighting skills.
Thief – A nimble character with passable close combat ability, and a load of extra skills to help you through the toughest dungeons. The Thief is also better than other classes at finding hidden doors, traps and treasure.
Ranger – A long-range warrior, able to call a tame wolf to fight as a companion. Moderately strong in close combat but excellent at range (does not suffer from hit penalty due to range, unlike other classes).
Classes don’t affect your base abilities, but they may offer new skills that you can master. As opposed to most RPGs, the class you choose doesn’t affect the armour you can wear, the skills you can learn (except a few class-specific ones) or the weapons you can wield. It does affect the way in which your attack, defence, magic attack and magic defence scale with level (although not your stamina or hit points). Classes also alter the number of skills of each type (combat skills and non-combat skills) you learn per level, and which spells you can learn (if any).
The Primary Abilities
I do things a bit differently to other RPGs in this regard. Hit points are fairly standard – a measure of how much health you have remaining. If this drops to zero then you’re dead (sorry - no resurrection!). But Stamina is a bit different. It is a measure of how much stuff you can do in a single turn. And that applies to movement, skills, attacking and spellcasting. The stamina cost of certain actions is also affected by the degree of encumbrance that your character is suffering, with heavily encumbered characters forced to spend up to twice as much stamina per action as unencumbered characters. This can also be affected by spell effects on your character, such as Haste/Slow and being entangled/frozen. So heavily armoured characters may take less damage, but can probably do less per turn, too - unless they have a very high strength skill to avoid the encumbrance.
Experience is a measure of how much your character has learned so far. As experience climbs, it will eventually reach a certain value at which your character progresses to the next level. The amount required to reach each level increases with that level, making higher levels harder to achieve than lower levels. Gaining a level gives you more HP, more Stamina and more skill points. It also affects the attack and defence skills, with the number of points you gain being determined by your class.
The Character Sheet
Once you are happy with your character, you can start your new campaign. Click the button to generate your character, and you will find yourself in your home town, right at the north end of the continent in which DDXL takes place. You will have a party sheet open, in which you can check the characters in your group (just you for now) and the group's location and cash reserves. Each character can be active or inactive. You can have up to four active players at any one time. These are the players that will be taken on any mission with you. The rest will be left safely behind. There is also a button to open the crafting interface, if you are safely in a town. Any characters that have crafting abilities will have their available recipes listed here, and you will be able to make items of the relevant types, if you have the required materials.
Clicking on the "Character Sheet" button will show you the detailed character sheet for each character, in which you can modify the character's equipment, learn skills and explore the statistics that this character has built up.
The character sheet functions are mostly accessed by the various buttons scattered around in the relevant locations. For example, to learn a new skill, click on the "+" button next to a blank row. (There are a fixed number of rows for skills, so you can't learn every skill in the game - choose carefully). To increase the level of an existing skill, click on the "Plus" next to it, if you are not at maximum level and you have spare points to spend. Warning - neither of these actions can be undone later, so choose carefully!
Spells (if you have any) are learned separately in special buildings - see below. You can learn a maximum of one spell per level, though they can be cast as many times as you like, provided you have sufficient stamina. You can also choose to spend one of your spare spell slots on improving your skill with an existing spell. Specialised and Master level spells do more damage (20%,40%), have longer durations (50%,100%), confer more resistance (20%,40%), h