The Bard's Tale Trilogy

1. The Bard S Tale Trilogy Hltb
2. The Bard's Tale Trilogy Download
3. The Bard's Tale Trilogy Videos

• The Bard's Tale Trilogy is a chance for old fans to be young once again and for a new generation of roleplaying and dungeon crawler fans to discover why these games matter so much all these years later. Pick up the game and start your epic adventure today!
• Hello everyone, thanks for visiting. As you know, Bard’s Tale IV development is well under way, as is the original Bard’s Tale Trilogy Remastered!! With all the news blasting the community recently with the release of the backer beta, we’d like to encourage you to stay informed by following BardsTaleOnline. on social media. Twitter: @Bardstaleonline.
• The Bard's Tale Trilogy was intended to be the Tales of the Unknown series with three parts: The Bard's Tale, The Archmage's Tale and The Thieves' Tale. Contributed By: ZeoKnight 0 0 « See More or Submit Your Own!

The Bard's Tale is a fantasy role-playing video game franchise created by Michael Cranford and developed by Brian Fargo's Interplay Productions (1985–1991) and inXile Entertainment (2004–present).

The Bard's Tale Trilogy is a remastering of the classic 1980’s series, one of the godfathers of the RPG genre. Create an adventuring party in the first volume and play it across all three, creating a heroic story all your own! Bard's Tale Trilogy (Remastered) Maps - Bard's Tale 1 (in-game):: The Bard's Tale Trilogy was released in 2018 by Brian Fargo's comapny inXile Entertainment as a remaster of original versions from 1985 (1986, 1988). Remake was created by developers from Krome Studios with respect to the original game using Unity engine. Inspired by Apple IIgs / Atari ST version, the graphics of animated 2D.

Games[edit]

The Bard S Tale Trilogy Hltb

• Tales of the Unknown, Volume I: The Bard's Tale (1985): In the series' eponymous first game, the evil wizard Mangar has cast a spell of eternal winter on the small country town of Skara Brae to isolate it, and the group must find and defeat him to free the town.
• The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986; original projected title: The Archmage's Tale): To save the realm, the group must find the seven pieces of the Destiny Wand, reforge it (so that an Archmage from the group can become the legendary Destiny Knight), and confront the evil Archmage Lagoth Zanta.
• The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (1988; original projected title: The Thief's Tale): The mad god Tarjan, Mangar's master, has returned to Skara Brae and destroyed the city, though as it turns out this was only a small facet of his revenge. In their attempt to stop Tarjan, the group becomes embroiled in a war among gods across several dimensions.
• The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991), a game creation system that allows for the creation of dungeon crawl video games based on the Bard's Tale game engine
• The Bard's Tale (2004): Action role-playing video game created by Brian Fargo, and published by Fargo's InXile Entertainment; not a proper part of the original series. Brian Fargo only had the rights to the name but not to the content/stories of the earlier games in the Bard's Tale series at that point.
• The Mage's Tale (2017): A side-story game set in the Bard's Tale universe, developed by inXile alongside The Bard's Tale IV and released in 2017. Like other games in the series, it is a first-person dungeon crawler, but is built for virtual reality, featuring action-based spellcasting, rather than turn-based combat.
• The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep (2018): A proper fourth part of the original series was successfully funded as a Kickstarter project in 2015 by InXile Entertainment, and released in 2018. While continuing the story from the original trilogy, the actual gameplay was altered significantly and is arguably more similar to the 2004 game than to the first three games.
• The Bard's Tale Remastered Trilogy (2018): A re-creation of the original trilogy for modern computers, with updated graphics and user interface, bugfixes, and other improvements.

Books[edit]

Cluebooks[edit]

Official Cluebooks were published by Electronic Arts for the first three Bard's Tale games that expanded on the games' stories and added new characters:

The Cluebook for the first game (1986, ISBN1-55543-064-3) was written by T.L. Thompson as an in-universe document, the journal of a lord who had very nearly succeeded in solving the quest before finding that his party had lost crucial items. The party was implicitly wiped out just short of defeating Mangar but had seen to it that the journal would reach friendly hands.

The Cluebook for the second game (1987) was written by T.L. Thompson and David K. Similarly as a short story, narrating how a party of adventurers asks a wizard to foretell their (possible) future by means of a divination spell, if they should attempt the game's quest to find the Destiny Wand and defeat Lagoth Zanta. The resulting trance vision of the possible future reflects poorly on the character of the group's leader, who is also shown to get assassinated at the end, and it is implied that the group will thus not embark on the quest after all even though they technically succeeded in the vision.

The Cluebook for the third game (1988, ISBN1-55543-236-0) was written by David Luoto in the style of a novella. The protagonist, Arbo, is initially a lazy and useless squire who is 'volunteered' by his master to a party of adventurers at Skara Brae. The group proceeds to bring order to the dimensions and best Tarjan, and in the process form Arbo into a resourceful and responsible adult.

Novels[edit]

A series of novels based on The Bard's Tale were published by Baen Books during the 1990s. They include:

The Bard's Tale Trilogy Download

1. Castle of Deception, by Mercedes Lackey and Josepha Sherman (1992, ISBN0-671-72125-9)
2. Fortress of Frost and Fire, by Mercedes Lackey and Ru Emerson (1993, ISBN0-671-72162-3)
3. Prison of Souls, by Mercedes Lackey and Mark Shepherd (1994, ISBN0-671-72193-3)
4. The Chaos Gate, by Josepha Sherman (1994, ISBN0-671-87597-3)
5. Thunder of the Captains, by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1996, ISBN0-671-87731-3)
6. Wrath of the Princes, by Holly Lisle and Aaron Allston (1997, ISBN0-671-87771-2)
7. Escape from Roksamur, by Mark Shepherd (1997, ISBN0-671-87797-6)
8. Curse of the Black Heron, by Holly Lisle (1998, ISBN0-671-87868-9)

While they are listed here in the order they were published, some books in the series connect more than others, such as Castle of Deception and The Chaos Gate, Prison of Souls and Escape from Roksamur, and Thunder of the Captains and Wrath of the Princes.

As part of the crowdfunding campaign for The Bard's Tale IV, six novels set in the Bard's Tale universe were provided to backers in EPUB format in 2018. Three of them are novelized re-tellings of the first three games' storylines (different from the cluebooks, and with different characters) by Nathan Long, who wrote the storyline for part IV; these three novels frame the original trilogy within the larger story and redefined setting from The Bard's Tale IV and the Remastered edition of the original trilogy.

1. The Bard's Tale, by Nathan Long
2. The Destiny Knight, by Nathan Long
3. The Thief of Fate, by Nathan Long
4. Paladin, by Elizabeth Watasin
5. Promises made by Moonlight, by Mike Lee
6. The Song Thief, by Jason Denzel (features a magic-wielding trow by the name of Soriac, apparently unrelated to the Archmage of the same name from the original cluebook for the first game)

Reception[edit]

In 1996, Next Generation listed the series (referring to the first three parts of the original trilogy plus the construction set at the time) collectively as number 62 on their 'Top 100 Games of All Time', praising the all-in-one interface using multiple display windows and the unparalleled level of plot detail and development.^[1]

The Bard's Tale Trilogy Videos

See also[edit]

• Dragon Wars, known during development as The Bard's Tale IV
• Swords and Serpents, similar gameplay to The Bard's Tale and developed by some of the people from The Bard's Tale and Dragon Wars

References[edit]

1. ^'Top 100 Games of All Time'. Next Generation. No. 21. Imagine Media. September 1996. p. 48.