ABSTRACT
Wasteland's excellent design team included bestselling novelist Michael A. Stackpole, the creator of Mercenaries, Spies, & Private Eyes. The game was set in a post-apocalyptic desert world. Stackpole designed some of the game maps himself, and farmed out maps to others, including Ken St. Andre (designer of Tunnels & Trolls) and fantasy artist Liz Danforth. Danforth is the wicked designer who created the “rabid dog dilemma.” You needed to kill the rabid dog to get out of a cave on her map. If you killed the dog, a little boy followed you and complained, "You killed my dog, you dirty Rangers!" Some players ended up avoiding the town where Bobby was, just to evade the nuisance of his constant accusation. Others heartlessly killed Bobby to remove the annoyance factor. Vince DeNardo, Computer Gaming World's art director at the time, restarted the game and kept saving and resaving the game until he could escape from the cave without killing the dog. As a result of such encounters, Wasteland became similar to Ultima IV as one of the few CRPGs that forced you to ask questions before you shot anything.
