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One change to fighting monsters was to increase the difficulty in combating them. In Dungeons & Dragons special weapons were needed to defeat some monsters, and this was formalized in the third edition. Well before the third edition, Questron did it first (2008:100).

Another option that didn’t involve combat was parley. Early versions of Dungeons & Dragons emphasized the importance of negotiating with monsters when the player characters were outmatched. Wizard of Zot included a bribe system. Temple of Apshai featured a similar system as well as Phantasie, but it has never been a popular recourse in games that emphasize combat. Pool of Radiance took parleying to new levels, giving different options to approach the dialogue: haughty, sly, nice, meek or abusive (2008:146). Bloodwych from Konami in 1989 extended this mechanic further to allies, who could have their ego stroked so much that the end result ranged from overconfident henchmen to flattered merchants offering a better deal.

Wandering monsters best exemplified the combat focus of CRPGs. Characters could encounter monsters just by sitting still, forcing the player to always be on the alert. It was less of an issue for CRPGs that did not have a rest mechanic—wandering monsters had a penchant for striking at resting characters, who in turn posted guards. Wizard’s Crown featured just such a mechanic (Barton 2008:107) and Bard’s Tale would attack a party in real time, ambushing players who were away from their keyboard.

Resting is intimately tied to the Vancian form of spell recovery; spell point systems tend to regenerate over time, thus obviating the need to rest to recover them. But there were other ways to threaten characters besides combat.

One common mechanic that appeared early was feeding adventurers. The simplest games used food as a form of healing. Starting with Akalabeth and through the Ultima series, food was critical to survival. If the player character ran out of food the game was over. Dungeon Campaign, Wilderness Campaign continued the trend, expanding the amount of food consumption to a much larger group, on the scale of miniature wargames. Rogue, Might and Magic, and Dungeon Master all featured this mechanic, either inflicting damage if the character didn’t eat or preventing him from healing (Barton 2008:236).

Dungeon Campaign, Wilderness Campaign featured another complication borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons—encumbrance. The careful accounting of weapons, armor, and miscellaneous equipment had a price, especially for heavily burdened characters hauling treasure out of a dungeon. Because the onus is on the player to tabulate every item’s weight and because there are significant disadvantages to being overencumbered, few tabletop gamers do a good job of keeping track of encumbrance. CRPGs have no such restrictions.

Another means of inconveniencing characters was through a fatigue system. Fatigue could be used to restrict movement so that characters couldn’t easily flee or fight for long periods of time. Temple of Apshai used this mechanic. In addition, Dungeons of Daggorath featured a beating heart that sped up during combat and movement. Taking too many actions too quickly would cause the character to faint (Barton 2008:81).

Vision is another means of inconveniencing characters. An adventurer who can’t see can’t detect approaching monsters, falls victim to traps, and has difficulty mapping a dungeon. Perhaps the best example of this mechanic was Wizard’s Castle, which used text descriptions of what the character could hear in the distance and icons on a map to display what he could see (Barton 2008:49). Sword of Fargoal and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain also featured a “fog of war” mechanic.

Speaking of mapping, automapping took a long time to arrive in CRPGs. In early games it was assumed that the players would draw their own maps in much the same way that a player would be designated a mapper for Dungeons & Dragons.

Perhaps the