Parhedros Fantasy Role-Playing Resources: On-Site Resources and Cool Links:

Are YOU Ready to Adventure?

Here are some links to a lot of useful sources of information on our games, and on adventure and role-playing games in general. Some of these links are on-site, and many more are off-site. We try to keep these links up to date, but sometimes it feels like the proverbial lady trying to sweep back the sea. If any of these links are broken, or if you have your own site you would like to see added, let us know!

Laurion's Resources for Parhedros: The Tunnels of Sethir
Laurion's Resources for the World of Parhedros
Laurion's Resources for Game Design
Links to Some Interesting, Innovative and FREE Games
Links to Some Interesting On-Line Gaming Magazines and Journals
Links to Some Interesting and Occasionally Outlandish Gaming Viewpoints
Links to Some Useful Download Sites for Games and Other Software

Laurion's Resources for Parhedros: The Tunnels of Sethir

Do you want to roll up your sleeves, and dig deep into the core rules and the game world of Parhedros? Then be sure to download your FREE copy of the 100+ page Parhedros Game Manual.
Have you seen the latest screenshots from Parhedros: TOS? If not, take a look at our Screenshots Gallery!
Have you ever wondered what goes through a game-designer's mind? Be sure to read the Designer's Notes and FAQ for Parhedros!
Did you know that you can customize the art and music in Parhedros: TOS? Read our Guide To Customizing Parhedros to learn how!
Want even more wallpapers, character portraits and main menu art for your game of Parhedros? Be sure to visit our Downloads Page or our DeviantArt galleries for Wallpapers and In-Game Art and Screenshots!

Laurion's Resources for the World of Parhedros

The Gospel of the Lilim describes the legendary origins of the faeries and the night demons. Be sure to read this for background on getting into the mind-set of a fey character.
Paredros is a game about magic, and we did a lot of in-depth research to get it right. Here is our own Annotated Bibliography on Magic, which points you toward some cool, interesting, learned and sometimes just plain wacky books about magic!
Fairies, fairies and more fairies! If you haven't had enough yet of fairies after playing Parhedros, then have we got a deal for you! Read some great books about fairies! Be sure to check out our Annotated Bibliography on Faeries!

Laurion's Resources for Game Design

Good puzzles can make a good game great, but bad puzzles can turn any game into coaster-ware. Check out our Guide to Making Great Puzzles!

Links to Some Interesting, Innovative and FREE Games

If you enjoyed playing Oblivion and Morrowind, then you might enjoy taking a look at one of the earlier games in the Elder Scrolls series. For a while now, Bethesda has been offering Arena as freeware on their website; download it here. You’ll also need to download the DosBox emulator to play the game in Windows.
If you don't care about eye-candy and graphics, and want to invest several thousand hours of your life playing a maddeningly addictive, old-school, tongue-in-cheek dungeon crawl, then NetHack is probably for you! Actually, everyone who loves computer role-playing games should learn about NetHack, since it and the other so-called Rogue-like games have had a profound inspirational impact on the commercial market for CRPGs, influencing such games as Diablo.
If you want to try NetHack but don't want to bother with the ASCII graphics, then you might give the Vulture's Eye project a look.
Speaking of the Rogue-like games, Rogue itself is no longer being actively developed, but Donnie Russell has coded some Windows ports of the game, both in the classic ASCII graphics format and also in a more eye-pleasing tiled version.
Moria was another of the classic Rogue-likes, but with a setting and monster-list lifted straight from the pages of Tolkien. You can still find some Windows-compatible versions out on the web, in places such as Moria and Beej's Moria Page.
Are you familiar with the very retro world of Interactive Fiction, or IF? Do you long for the days of the sort of quirky, delightfully geeky games that Infocom published in the 1980s? There are scads and scads of free IF games available on the net, and while most are very amateurish, it is possible to find some true gems. Be sure to spend some time browsing around the Interactive Fiction Archive and also Baf's Guide to the IF Archive! And if you are a total n00b to IF, then look at the Brass Lantern site for beginners.
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." Will Crowther's and Don Wood's Colossal Cave Adventure, a text game dating waaaaay back to 1976 and 1977, was the granddaddy of all computer adventure and role-playing games. Re-live the dawn of computer gaming by playing this historic game on-line here or here, or download a Windows-compatible version here!
Emily Short's tiny but complex IF game Galatea has shown us all what can be done to create life-like, interesting NPCs. There are plenty of versions of this game available on the web, such as this version running in a Java Applet. Ms. Short has also released some other fantasy-themed IF games that look interesting, but which I haven't played through, so be sure to look at her website!
If text-based Interactive Fiction isn't retro enough for you, then how about an online version of an ancient Egyptian board game called Senet?
Lots of wanna-be game-makers have played around with the Adventure Game Studio software, and have published their forays on the AGS Web-Site. The vast majority of these games are amateurish crap, but you never know when you'll stumble across something playable and even fun. And the price is right!
Lure of the Temptress was a very innovative, quirky and mostly fun point-and-click, fantasy-themed adventure game published in 1992 by Revolution Software. I remember being quite impressed by the idea of the Virtual Theater engine, which gave NPCs the ability to wander around and seemingly go about their lives. Owing to the generosity of the publisher, this game has been available as freeware since 2003. Try it out!
Princess Maker 2 is an unusual, manga-styled Japanese life-simulation game with a fantasy theme and strong role-playing elements. While the graphics are a bit primitive, and the game teeters on the edge of being oddly perverse at times, I still thoroughly enjoyed playing it! As so-called abandonware, the legal status of this game is too murky for me to figure out, but you can learn more at the Underdogs page for Princess Maker.
Leather Goddesses of Phobos was a fun albeit risqué text-adventure romp in the style of a 1930's pulp adventure serial. I mention it here because it broke new ground in the manner it enabled the player to select to play a gendered character, and then adapted the game to the player's choice. You can download the game at various places on the net, such as here. Make SURE you download a walk-thru too; you'll need it, owing to the way that Infocom used "feelies" to clamp down on piracy!
If you are curious what's brewing in the world of open-source gaming, be sure to keep tabs on the SourceForge database!
There are a lot of classic role-playing games available on the web, if you know where to look. Places like Home of the Underdogs and Game Downloads.

Links to Some Interesting On-Line Gaming Magazines and Journals

Gamasutra is one of the best on-line resources for information on game-development and the gaming industry.
A great on-line source of news and gossip regarding computer role-playing games and mmorpgs can be found at RPGWatch!
The Escapist is a slick on-line gaming magazine with some eye-opening issues. For example, here is an issue on the intersection of religious faith and games.
For gaming news and views with a view toward serving girls who game, be sure to check out GrrlGamer.
Loading... is the Official Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association; go here for interesting but stuffy academic articles on gaming.
The Digital Humanities Quarterly has published some fascinating and offbeat academic articles that touch on gaming. One that caught my eye recently was "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky"!
There are a number of great, even massive portals to all kinds of information and goodies pertaining to computer role playing and adventure games, to include: GamersHell, RPGVault and GameAlmighty.

Links to Some Interesting and Occasionally Outlandish Gaming Viewpoints

Have you ever become frustrated with puzzles or other elements that seem out of place in a game, and sort of spoil the mood? Then you'll probably enjoy reading Roger Giner-Sorolla's now-classic call to arms against bad puzzle design and other Crimes Against Mimesis in Adventure Games.
Games for Change is a community dedicated to using digital games to address social issues and press for social change.
Some moral crusaders and social activists would have us believe that computer games are the handiwork of the devil; well, Faithgames is a blog dedicated to addressing the religious dimensions of the gaming industry.
Do you remember Leisure Suit Larry with a fond chuckle? If so, then you simply have to check out Al Lowe's Humor Site!
Dungeons and Denizens is a clever and fairly well-produced web comic that parodies the fantasy role-playing genre. Be ready to spend several hours reading all the back issues of this very funny comic strip!
Speaking of funny and off-beat comics, who can forget the classic anti-Dungeons and Dragons comic tract by the Christian Fundamentalist publisher Jack Chick? You can read a copy on-line here.
We firm believe that Interactive Fiction has a lot of potential, provided that it is able to shakeoff a markedly purist tendency and grow beyond its roots to become not so much a medium as a style of delivering stories. At any rate, if you want to learn more about IF in a fairly rigorous, markedly purist tradition, then there is no finer place to start than D.G. Jerz's Interactive Fiction website.
SciFiMatters.com is a very useful collection of links on science fiction and fantasy in general, with a good selection of links to some interesting sites on role-playing games.