how did theme start?
If you're interested in reading about my *band background, I refer you to my homepage at the ToME Wiki. For the purposes of this page, suffice it to say that I had been playing ToME nonstop for several months before I'd discovered all that the official site had to offer - the fora, the mailing lists, the modules and scripts. I was getting bored with vanilla ToME, mostly because my characters kept getting killed off.
I tried a module (T-Plus), then another (Annals of Ea), and thought - hey, I could add something to my own copy of ToME, too. So I wrote an obscure little module which included the town of Dale on the Middle-earth map, and included some miscellaneous tweaks (too insignificant to speak of).
When I was done with the module, I proceeded to write my first ``Day in the Life'' (DitL) thread in the spoiler forum at the ToME site - I was play-testing Dale with a Wood Elf Archer. Now, DitL stories slow down gameplay, but what got me was that I'd been writing it as a fan fiction, and I realized that I was really missing a lot of the Tolkienian stuff in ToME. The game is by far the closest to Tolkien among all the other variants, but it just wasn't obsessive enough for me, I guess ... *laughs maniacally* ... so I made Theme.
what does theme change?
Here are some highlights, you can read the exhaustingly detailed list of changes, though. The most tangible of all changes, perhaps, is the relabelling and re-colouring of monsters - it's pretty much a completely rewritten monster list, and a monster_list.txt file distributed with the module is greatly helpful to veteran *banders who might be confused by some of the new colours and symbols.
removed
- Alchemy (the class, the skill, the Artifact Creation ability, and essences)
- DeathMolds
- Lost hobbit quest
- Zangband and CthAngband monsters, Angels, icky things, centipedes, kobolds, minotaurs, maulotaurs, and hippocampi.
- All references to Thunderlords, excluding the r_info.txt monsters and the related quests.
added
- Many new terrain features for towns, wilderness, and dungeons.
- Monster and player speech made more thematic all across the board.
- Completely new set of demons (major and minor) all in-theme, replacing the old D&D demons.
- Rivendell, the Brown Lands, Valley of Nurnen, Udun, the Dead Marshes, and other thematic wilderness locations.
- Over 200 monsters, plus over 60 uniques.
- 7 new dungeons.
- 4 new special levels.
- 26 new item types.
- 47 new ego-item types.
- 59 new artifacts, including 8 ultimate items.
- 13 new item sets.
- 12 new towns.
- 8 new store types.
- Rewrote store owner list completely.
- 4 new races, among them dragons with 6 subraces and demons with 10 subraces.
- 7 new classes.
- 4 new Valar, along with Priest classes for each of them.
changed
- Paper armour makes wearer sensitive to fire; fur cloaks grant cold resistance.
- Junkarts got a total facelift: they have thematic names now.
- Many monster colour and symbol changes to reduce confusion.
- Quite a few monster/player alignment changes.
- Many artifact names translated into Elvish, and artifact descriptions have been cleaned up and broadened.
- Wilderness map corrected a lot to fit the Middle-earth map, and made more dangerous.
- Caras Galadhon map redone completely (Lothlorien renamed).
- Maiar, Ents, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Wood-Elves have been modified to be more in-theme
- Rangers beefed up in an attempt to make them interesting to play.
what do players say?
Feedback about Theme has been - on the whole - positive, but don't take my word for it. :)
![[Theme logo - Collage of Lord of the Rings artwork]](logo.jpg){kind=logo}