Download Moraff's Stones

Moraff's Stones

Published: February 1, 2009 - Last update: February 19, 2013 - 359 downloads

Year: 1992
Genre: Strategy
Theme: Cards
Publisher: Moraffware
Developer: Moraffware
Perspective: Top-Down

3.5 / 5
4 votes

148 KiB

Description of Moraff's Stones

1992 saw the release of Moraff's Stones on the DOS system. A strategy game, created by Moraffware and distributed by Moraffware. If you like cards, download, install and enjoy Moraff's Stones!

Shareware buffs will no doubt have heard of Steve Moraff, author of a series of cult classic RPGs that bear his name. Moraff's Stones is the more obscure entry, not least because it is not an RPG. Rather, it’s a gambling game inspired by Moraff’s World-- and a fun one at that. You play a human who comes into one of the many taverns in Moraff's World, and you are invited to join in a game of Stones that a bunch of monsters are playing. Stones is a game where you trade precious/semiprecious stones around the table, trying to get the most valuable hand, or the most complete and valuable hand (you get a 100 silver piece bonus for the most complete and valuable hand). You continue playing until you are wiped out by cleverer opponents and don't have enough silver pieces to buy yourself back into the game. Although the game itself is little more than popular card games in disguise, what makes Moraff’s Stones very enjoyable is the fact that the game becomes more challenging each time you win. They start off pretty simple-minded and easy to beat, and even relatively friendly. But each time a monster goes broke and can't buy into the next hand, he (it?) gets replaced by a more intelligent and not-so-friendly monster. Eventually, you will be surrounded by backstabbing, hard-core gamblers at the highest levels of the game. The monsters will curse you, cheat, and do whatever they can to win. This real-life aspect adds a lot of atmosphere to the game, and make it much more fun. Definitely one of the most overlooked gambling titles ever made, shareware or not. Two thumbs up! Note: This download is the registered, special version of the game with Sound Blaster support, which lets you hear the monsters’ insults in digitized voices. Note: Although it doesn't say so on Moraffware's official website, all of the old Moraffware shareware games are still sold. Contact their sales dept. at the e-mail provided below for details.
Review by HOTUD

Captures and Snapshots

Screenshots used with permission from MobyGames.com

Comments and reviews

#6144

A Wise Old Man added this comment :

Luckily, neither are around to continue their sick perversions. About ten years ago, they were involved in a high-speed collision with an innocent telephone pole. The husband became a paraplegic when the steering wheel wrapped around him and severed his spine in four places. The wife, all 298lbs of 5'2" corpulence was shot through a 18" wide hole in the windshield, catapulted roughly 100 yards down the road, where her remains "splattered like a bomb" all over the roadside and into a ditch. Local schoolkids were finding chunks of her on top of fresh anthills for weeks until the county sent in a cleanup crew to remove what was potentially hazardous material; it turns out that during the autopsy, the coroner's inquest into just how whacked out on drugs the two of them were at the time of the accident also revealed the wife was HIV+.

And yes, when word got out of their demise, a bunch of the local sysops got together and held a celebration. The Noels were really some of the most complete and utter scum to ever operate a BBS, much less walk the earth

#6137

A Wise Old Man added this comment :

Bah. Steve Moraff hired a husband-and-wife team to do grunt work for his shareware games, and they got caught running a BBS that they used to pick up underaged boys for child molestation purposes. The husband also worked at the local school for the blind, and although no evidence could be gathered to prove it, he was suspected of having molested at least two dozen blind students during his employment as a janitor. The wife - known around the normal BBS circles as "The Sow" - may have drugged and molested as many as 50 of her BBS users, all under the age of 16.

Although thanks to plea bargaining and lack of evidence, neither served any jail time. But they did become the "darlings" of the furry party circuit, including the early Dragon*Cons when Ed Kramer was still actively involved and doing his own molesting. They were known for providing a lot of the after party "refreshments", from booze to pot to coke to heroin, and even helped in "recruiting" for the chicken hawkers who attended the cons..