Rogue began her career in the Marvel Universe as a villain, a member of Mystique's Freedom Force, when Rogue absorbed the powers of the original Ms. Marvel, along with her memories and personality. X-Men and Avengers, the first team she fought against, hated Rogue, since Ms. Marvel was one of their best friends. Some time later, when Rogue realized she could not let Carol Daver's mind get out of her mind, she went to the X-Mansion, asking help to Professor Xavier. The X-Men could not accept Charles wish of making her a new member of the team, so he could help her properly. After a long talk about fraternity and past examples of that, the X-Men had a new member. In her first mission, she went to Japan, and helped Wolverine in a battle against the Silver Samurai and Viper. Wolverine had a special antipathy for Rogue, since Ms. Marvel was one of his best friends, friendship that began during Logan's time in the C.I.A. At the end of this fight, with Rogue severely wounded, Wolverine kissed her, making Rogue absorb his fast healing power.

Since then, Rogue became one of the most enthusiastic members of the team. When Xavier left to space, the treatment that he used to give Rogue so Ms. Marvel's persona could be dormant, vanished, and both women took control of Rogue's body in different times. In the X-Men, Rogue met Longshot and began a love triangle with Dazzler for the love of the alien. Rogue, as the other X-Men went to the Reaver's base in Australia, when the entire world though they were dead.

After Inferno, the X-Men faced Master Mold for the last time. To kill the enemy, Rogue opened the Siege Perilous, so it could be dragged into it. Rogue then sacrificed herself to be the one to take him across the line. After some time, all of the team had the same fate, reappearing in different places of the Earth. Rogue reappeared in the Australian Base, just to learn that her foster mother, Mystique, was dead. Desperate, she jumped out of the window, discovering that she no longer had Ms. Marvel's powers. The Reavers had taken control of the base, and the only way she could escape was to absorb Gateway's teleporting powers, going to the Savage Land. While this was happening, Carol Danvers also reappeared, separated from Rogue, on Muir Island, where the Shadow King took control of the people there. Flying away from there, she discovered that her separation from Rogue was beginning to take its toll: she was beginning to die, slowly decomposing. She went to the Savage Land, where both women fought until Magneto stopped the struggle. He took Ms. Marvel and Rogue to some chamber and saved only one of them: Rogue, with Ms. Marvel's powers but without her personality. At the first moment, Rogue had her powers blocked. She and Magneto began a love affair, while fighting Zaladane in the Savage Land. After they won, Magneto went away and Rogue went to Muir Island, now with her powers restored. There she was influenced by the Shadow King, but was saved by the X-Men and X-Factor. When the teams merged, she became a member of the X-Men Blue Strike Force. There she met Gambit, and both of them loved each other. When the crystallization of the Universe arrived at the mansion, Rogue kissed Gambit. When the time was repaired, Iceman in Key West found Rogue with Gambit's powers, memories, and some of his personality. Bobby helped her in this time, but she left the X-Men after a talk with Gambit, when she revealed that she knew Remy's dark secret.

Rogue began to work as a nanny, in a calm town, when robots of the Friend of Humanity attacked her, kidnapping her. Joseph saved her, and both of them went to New York help the other heroes against Onslaught. Since then, Rogue returned to the X-Men and had a magnificent Christmas present: Joseph, using the Z´Nox chamber as a block for his mind, allowed Rogue to touch someone for the first time in her life. After this, she and some other X-Men had an adventure in space against the Phalanx. Returning to Earth, Rogue kept having Remy's memories on her head, while spending some time captured in an old Magneto's base in Antarctica. There the X-Men discovered Gambit's dark secret and left him there, by the wish of Rogue. She returned to the mansion, more infuriated than ever. Things changed (if for better of worse is still unknown) when Gambit returned. Their love remains strong, but what of the consequences that this love brings?

All right, settle down you guys, it's time to play.

Hey Frank, give me that groove we worked up last night on the guitar, you know the way I like it.

Oooh yeah. That's the one. It gets me to singin'. And not just about any ol' thing. No, it gets me to singin' 'bout my favorite thing in the whole wide world...

-

There are computer games, and then there are computer games. And among them all, not a one quite takes the place Rogue, one of the great originals, holds in my heart.

The village elders have sent you into the Dungeons of Doom (revisited in Nethack) in order to retrieve the lost Amulet of Yendor, perhaps the most sought of all fabulous RPG treasure. In order to find it, the player must descend into the black depths of the earth, through twenty-six dungeon levels, while surviving lethal traps, discovering the secrets of ancient magic, and overcoming twenty-six different breeds of monster, from the lowly Emu up to the mighty Dragon.

The first thing of note about Rogue is that it is randomly generated. Every time you play, the game is created anew. Unlike practically any other roleplaying game you could find (except the venerable genre of Roguelikes, which originated with Rogue), the player is not on some static, unchanging quest, but in a different world every time a game is begun. And it is not just the mazes that are different. The same breeds of monster will appear on a given level from game to game, but their locations and numbers vary. And the magic items in each game are also randomized, and identifying their functions in such a way as to minimize ill effects and avoid wasting valuable resources is a major part of game strategy. In particular, it was Rogue which originated the Roguelike magic system, in which there are a wide variety of random magic items in different classes, in Rogue these are potions, scrolls, wands and rings, and each is differentiated to the player by its description (such as, orange potion, scroll titled "ILORA YEBINAM," mercury wand, moonstone ring). It is possible to find more than one object in the dungeon with the same description. The thing is, all items sharing a description share the same purpose, so once you figure out what one does you know all of that type. Some items can be identified just by using them, but sometimes this wastes the item in question. Some items can only be identified through extensive trial and error, and profound knowledge of the quirks of the game's magic system. There is one type of item, the Scroll of Identify, will infallibly identify one item type, but each can only be used once, and although common, you still never have as many as you'd wish.

The second thing about Rogue is fairly controversial, but is a logical consequence of the first. That is that death in Rogue is permanent. When you save the game, the current session ends. When you restore from that save, the game resumes, but the save file is erased. And when you die, the game ends. The upshot of this is you don't get any "second chances." When you die, that's it. On the next game you must start over, in a freshly randomized dungeon, with new randomized items. With a little thought it becomes obvious that allowing players to endlessly reload saved games opens the door for all sorts of cheating in a world such as this (try the random item, see what it does, reload and avoid any ill effects and keep the trinket). Still, people have become so conditioned to being able to reload their saved games that this turns off more people off of Rogue and its bretheren than perhaps anything else.

The third thing about Rogue is that it has no graphics. Or rather, for graphics it uses an ASCII representation of the dungeon, contents, inhabitants. The player is that little smiley-face character. Monsters are represented by letters of the alphabet, according to flavor. Rogue is so old that when it was created, this was really the only option concerning graphics. Tradition (and ease of implementation, and compatibility) has caused most Roguelike games to stick with the ASCII interface. Also, Rogue's interface has a steep learning curve, which in each key on the keyboard has as many as four different functions, depending of whether Shift, Control or Alt are pressed at the time.

And the final thing about Rogue is most interesting, and frustrating, of all. And that is that Rogue is hard. Really quite amazingly hard. Harder than Diablo, certainly. Harder even than Nethack, and that's damn difficult. It's not hard in the same way, for although Nethack is superficially a very similar experience to Rogue, it is full of so many options and choices and strategies and clever bits that unless you die on move one, you can never really be sure that it was the random number generator that did you in. The bad magic items in Nethack are also less damaging than the ones in Rogue, there is more magic in Nethack than Rogue, the early monsters are easier than in Rogue, and, on the whole, the average Nethack character improves in ability faster than the monsters improve in challenge. In Rogue, you have to rely on the magic items more than in Nethack, and there is no guarantee that the necessary stuff will show. And Rogue is an extremely hostile environment, one in which the monsters get stronger, usually, faster than the player can get better through equipment, level gain and other forms of improvement. At level 12 Trolls start appearing, which can give even good characters a run for their money, and on level 17 appear, for the first time, Griffins, which usually kill all but the most powerful when battled toe-to-toe, and not too long afterwards are found Medusas and Dragons, of which a single example of either can be a game-ender. At that point, Rogue becomes a game of stealth and evasion, and the design of the dungeons is such that evasion is not always possible. Finally, if by some fluke the Amulet is recovered down on level 26, there is still the very real possibility that the player will either be killed by monsters on the way up, or will run out of food (which doesn't get generated on the up trip).

These horrific odds would be unfair in almost any other game, but they aren't such a big deal in Rogue. Because, and this is the important thing that people who don't like Roguelikes tend not to understand, the object of Rogue is not to win. Rogue dates back to an era when most computer "games" were played until failure (such as Ms. Pac-Man or Galaga, which last until the player runs out of lives). The object of Rogue is not to win, but to get a high score, here measured in gold collected in the dungeon. Winning is still worth a score bonus, but one should never expect to win. Nethack has partially lost sight of this, allowing players to basically mint their own points by delaying their exit from the dungeon and killing more monsters. But in Rogue, each and every point is hard-won. Only gold matters for score in Rogue, and the only way to find more gold is to go deeper in the dungeon and brave ever greater dangers. Even if the player could mint his own points, the game's time limit (in the guise of the food requirement) would eventually put a halt to that.

So there you have it. Rogue. The origin of a genre. The utmost inspiration for Nethack and Diablo. And the damnedest hardest game you will probably ever play. I mean, gak.

rococo = R = room-temperature IQ

rogue

1. [Unix] n. A Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game using character graphics, written under BSD Unix and subsequently ported to other Unix systems. The original BSD curses(3) screen-handling package was hacked together by Ken Arnold primarily to support games, and the development of rogue(6) popularized its use; it has since become one of Unix's most important and heavily used application libraries. Nethack, Omega, Larn, Angband, and an entire subgenre of computer dungeon games (all known as `roguelikes') all took off from the inspiration provided by rogue(6); the popular Windows game Diablo, though graphics-intensive, has very similar play logic. See also nethack, moria, Angband. 2. [Usenet] adj. An ISP which permits net abuse (usually in the form of spamming) by its customers, or which itself engages in such activities. Rogue ISPs are sometimes subject to IDPs or UDPs. Sometimes deliberately misspelled as "rouge".

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

In Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the Rogue group was composed of the Thief and Bard classes, with the addition of the Ninja from The Complete Ninja's Handbook. The group was characterised by rapid experience progression and pick-and-mix abilities.

In the new Third Edition, the Rogue is the new name for the old Thief class, and is distinguished principally by having a skill number of 8 and the sneak attack ability, combined with a very nice skill list including a few exclusive skills relating directly to lawbreaking and the like. This device unifies the old percentile-based thief skills with the new skill system which replaced the old proficiency system.

Rogue (?), n. [F. rogue proud, haughty, supercilious; cf. Icel. hrkr a rook, croaker (cf. Rook a bird), or Armor. rok, rog, proud, arogant.]

1. Eng.Law

A vagrant; an idle, sturdy beggar; a vagabond; a tramp.

⇒ The phrase rogues and vagabonds is applied to a large class of wandering, disorderly, or dissolute persons. They were formerly punished by being whipped and having the gristle of the right ear bored with a hot iron.

2.

A deliberately dishonest person; a knave; a cheat.

The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise. Pope.

3.

One who is pleasantly mischievous or frolicsome; hence, often used as a term of endearment.

Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Shak.

4.

An elephant that has separated from a herd and roams about alone, in which state it is very savage.

5. Hort.

A worthless plant occuring among seedlings of some choice variety.

Rogues' gallery, a collection of portraits of rogues or criminals, for the use of the police authorities. -- Rogue's march, derisive music performed in driving away a person under popular indignation or official sentence, as when a soldier is drummed out of a regiment. -- Rogue's yarn, yarn of a different twist and color from the rest, inserted into the cordage of the British navy, to identify it if stolen, or for the purpose of tracing the maker in case of defect. Different makers are required to use yarns of different colors.

 

© Webster 1913.


Rogue, v. i.

To wander; to play the vagabond; to play knavish tricks.

[Obs.]

Spenser.

 

© Webster 1913.


Rogue, v. t.

1.

To give the name or designation of rogue to; to decry.

[Obs.]

Cudworth.

2. Hort.

To destroy (plants that do not come up to a required standard).

 

© Webster 1913.

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