The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight

The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight is a fantasy role-playing game from Interplay Productions, released in 1986. It is the first follow-up to *The Bard's Tale* and marks the final entry in the series designed and programmed by Michael Cranford. Despite mixed reviews at launch, it won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1986.

Players lead a party of adventurers on a quest to find the seven pieces of the broken Destiny Wand in a land called The Realm. Mercenaries block their path. Victory comes after locating all pieces, defeating the Archmage Lagoth Zanta, and reforging the Wand. The character who reforges it becomes the immortal Destiny Knight. After an optional starter dungeon in Tangramayne, parties pursue wand segments through dungeons such as The Tombs, Fanskar's Fortress, Dargoth's Castle, the Maze of Dread, Oscon's Fortress, the Grey Crypt, and the Destiny Stone. Each dungeon contains a Snare holding a segment. Once all seven are collected, players face Lagoth Zanta in a final battle.

The game is set in The Realm, which enjoyed 700 years of peace thanks to the Destiny Wand, forged by the Archmage Turin, until it was stolen and shattered. The world includes a large wilderness and six cities: Colosse, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Tangramayne, and Thessalonica. Each city has taverns, banks, and dungeon entrances. Players can assemble a party of up to seven active characters at the Adventurer's Guild. Characters can be imported from *The Bard's Tale*, *Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord* (on Apple II versions), or *Ultima III: Exodus*, or created as a human, elf, dwarf, hobbit, half-elf, half-orc, or gnome. Monsters can also be added to the party indefinitely, a feature only temporary in the first game. Starting character classes include warrior, paladin, rogue, bard, hunter, monk, conjurer, and magician. Sorcerer, wizard, and archmage classes become available later. Archmages are a new class, requiring at least three levels in the four other magic-user classes to create. Attributes—strength, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, and luck—are randomly generated from 1 to 18 and affect gameplay. Empty slots can be filled with players or creatures through random encounters, spells, or figurines. The Bard retains magical singing abilities, with seven songs that aid the party.