First things first - Alas, Mike O'hara's Complete Bard's Tale Homepage has expired, but it has gone to Adventurer Heaven. We will indeed miss his page! Mike assurs us, " It's been a blast folks, but the site is closed. Forever."

"Finally, a place where you can find everything there ever is to know (and possibly more) about three of the most fantastic computer RPGs ever! The Bard's Tale series is a series of first-person games released by Interplay Productions, and developed by Electronic Arts."

In 1998, Mike started the Bard's Tale IV petition, which has now gotten over 225 signatures.

Mike's site was complete with Map Sections, walk throughs, a chat room, a Hint Of The Day, and a Michael Cranford info page.

Mike opened an online bookstore, in association with Barnes & Noble, where you can find, amongst other titles, the books written based on The Bard's Tale game settings!

Since July 3, 1998 27,359 minstrels have wandered his way...

"On August 16, 1999, The COMPLETE Bard's Tale Home Page closed its doors. Sorry for the disappointment but the web site is permanently shut down at Mike O'Hara's discretion. THANK YOU to everyone who has visited!"

Good luck, Mike O'Hara!


Bard's Tale is slowly and surely moving itself towards the Internet. Over the past month, there has even been talk of making a dedicated Bard's Tale web-server, complete with worlds to explore.

Our addition to Bard's Tale on the net will be "eBard", a program that will allow people to create parties and have combat with other characters across the Internet.


From the Main Menu at the top of the screen, you can select "Connect to BardsTale.com", which connects you to other players across the globe. Once connected, you can see other parties, and initiate a fight with any of them.

Instead of building an engine to create characters, and to have them gain experience points in order to raise their statistics, eBard just lets you type in your character names, Armor Class, Hit Points, Spell Points, and Class. You could create a party of archmages, and pick a fight with other online parties, or you could make just one character, say a lowly rogue, and try to take over the world! Once you engage in combat, all statistics become read-only, and can only be changed by the events that take place in the battle.

In addition, you'll be able to exchange words with the other party.

One drawback could possibly be that one super-human party created by one person could battle against an equally outfitted super-human party and the battle may never end! If someone has an item that casts Heal-All, they could virtually live forever! When you play against the computer, the artificial intelligent monsters don't usually play those kinds of tricks on you. My only problem was in a fight with a Doppelganger, who turned against me in battle. I couldn't kill him, and he couldn't kill me, so I had to restart the game. What a drag!

So far, I've figured out the programming side, like how to get the programs to talk to each other over the internet, and how to get the words to scroll. Next, I've got to add the entire character architecture into the application, like how all the different classes can use different items, cast different spells, and perform their distinctive actions.

If all goes well, a prototype of eBard should be ready to go by Thanksgiving, that people could download and test out.



You can contact me at WebMaster@BardsTale.com. Until next month, farewell fellow Bard's Tale fans!
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