The Game
The Bard's Tale III is a computer fantasy role-playing video game created by Interplay Productions in 1988 on Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS. It was designed by Bill Heineman, Bruce Schlickbernd, and Michael A. Stackpole. The game begins in a refugee camp outside the ruined Skara Brae, which replaces the now-destroyed adventurer's guild from the previous games. Besides the city ruins, the wilderness features a temple for healing, a tavern, and a number of special locations from where the party will embark on missions to other worlds over the course of their quest.
Code Wheel Copyprotection
The first two Bard’s Tale games used copy protection on the disk called: Pirateslayer. Bard’s Tale III:Thief of Fate used a code wheel form of copy protection with three independent layers. In the game when teleporting from the wilderness to the dimensions, players are prompted to enter a number in response to four pieces of information.
DOS re-release trivia: Interplay distributes a "cracked" executable file for the PC (MS-DOS) version of Thief of Fate. This is because they accidentally forgot to include the code wheel when they re-released the game as part of their Ultimate RPG Archives collection.