Talk:Amulet of Yendor

What if the Amulet of Yendor came from Zork's Coconut of Qendor?

Removed text
This didn't really belong here, so I removed it:

Appearance in NetHack
In early versions of NetHack, the Amulet was guarded by the Wizard of Yendor, who has the annoying habit of coming back from the dead. Since version 3.1, however, the Amulet is held by the high priest of Moloch, and the player must obtain three special items to enter Moloch's Sanctum. These items are: the Book of the Dead (guarded by the Wizard); the Candelabrum of Invocation (guarded by Vlad the Impaler); and the Bell of Opening (guarded by the player's Quest nemesis). Having the amulet makes the game behave differently, for example monsters are generated as if the player were at the deepest dungeon level.

Origin of Name
Here is what I (Michael Toy, co-creator of this game) remember, I can't tell you this is the truth, but this is what I believe we were thinking when we chose that name ...

The idea was that the dungeon had been constructed by a wizard, and that the quest was to retrieve his lost amulet. In a weak attempt at humor, the all-mighty wizard who creates the dungeon is given the name "Rodney" spelled backwards. Rodney was selected at random, in an instant, as a very unlikely name for a powerful wizard. Through the brilliant (or so it seemed when I was 19), technique of reversing the letters of his name, this secret joke was now "hidden" in a very reasonable "fantasy sounding" name of Yendor.

I'm not wikipedia savvy enough to know how to present my own memories in a neutral point of view. Feel free to edit the entry and consider this comment as authoritative.

--Mtoy 17:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Michael - care to post this on a third-party location and provide a back-link so we can reference it? wikipedia frowns upon self-referencing (that is all facts should eventually lead to an external source).Garrie 05:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone heard of the Fantasy artist Rodney Matthews? My grandma gave me a book he drew called Yendor... (i found out later it is also the name he gave his son) and while searching the net to show this to a friend i have stumbled upon nethack yendor... considering this book must have been published in late 1970's i suspect it predates nethack... OK i never contributed to Wikipdia b4, do with this what you will, i will continue my search =) -Brendan Worth

Merge suggestion
I've suggested that this page be merged into Roguelike. This is a very minor topic and has no relevence outside of Nethack and other roguelike games. Any objections? James A. Stewart 23:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

it mentions KOL

Merge discussion closed with a consensus of do not mergeGarrie 00:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Do Not Merge AoY is not endemic to all Roguelike games. But it is singificant enough to be worth a mention (I've never played a game with it in, but I knew what it was) - isn't there also a game in it's own right? Garrie 05:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Lack of external references
The biggest problem for this article is it lacks external references. Given the number of Pokemon articles, having an article for an artifact that is used across a large number of Roguelike games shouldn't be a problem! At least this one has stood the test of time... try finding a Pokemon toy in the shops this christmas, rec.games.roguelike.nethack is still active.Garrie 06:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction
I see no contradiction in the article, and since there's nothing on this talk page about it I removed the contradiction tag. 71.79.203.203 22:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Whoops, forgot my login. The suicide forest 22:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC)