Blades of Exile

In the 1990's, Spiderweb Software released a series of PC and Mac-based role-playing games dubbed the Exile Trilogy (Exile I: Escape from the Pit, Exile 2: Crystal Souls, Exile 3: Ruined World.) Each of these games was worth playing on its own, but the sequel to the trilogy, called Blades of Exile, allowed the user to create their own adventures an addition to playing them.

All of the Exile games used a two-dimensional graphics set. Each of the games in the Exile trilogy could be considered long adventures, and could take many hours to complete. The Exile games used their own gameplay system, rather than relying on Dungeons and Dragons or other existing rules. The role-playing system was party-based, with a wide variety of classes and character skills needed for completion of the adventures.

Although it came with three small adventures, the highlight of Blades of Exile was definitely the Scenario Editor. A user could create huge worlds on their own, either using the default monsters and items, or developing their own. Since the graphics were simple images, they could be easily replaced or manipulated to give the created world a custom feel. The appearance of terrain, monsters and buildings could all be customized if the user had time to do so. Although each adventure was somewhat limited in how many of each tile type could be used at once, the tileset constraints still allowed for a high amount of creativity. The editor also used an event and flagging system to permit quests and other story-driven actions to take place.

The Blades of Exile games have since been re-released as Avernum (the first three adventures), and Blades of Avernum. The newer versions have updated graphics and work better with newer operating systems. The first three Exile games can be downloaded for free at the Spiderweb Software website, which includes a Blades of Exile demo, a Scenario Workshop for the scenario editor, and walkthroughs for the Exile games. Hundreds of user-created adventures can also be found at the Spiderweb site.