Designers Sould Play Old DOS D&D

[Croesus]

For someone who's never played these games, could you explain in which ways they captured the feel of D&D?

A few of the elements I still remember:

-1E rules
-Rolling up characters, picking classes, the temptation to use non-humans because they can multiclass all captured the feel of creating charaters in a tabletop game.
-Party based game. Sure you could run with fewer characters, but the game assumed the player would have a full, six-person party, with all the bases covered.
-Fragile magic users. Pity the poor wizard who got caught in the front lines with his pathetic d4 hit die.
-Powerful spells. Sleep ruled in low level fights. Later, hold person and stinking cloud were devastating spells. Fireball could clear a room. (I still have memories of a battle against over a dozen cloud giants, including cloud giant clerics lobbing hold person with abandon - a fun, challenging fight.)
-While there were many quests, the games were essentially "kill things, take their stuff, rinse and repeat".
-Lots of ecounter areas that were basically dungeons, even if the fluff was that the party was clearing an area of the city, or sneaking into an enemy stronghold.
-All the classic enemies - kobolds, orcs, ogres, even dragons.
-Many of the classic magic items, including a long sword +5 (which I think acted as a holy sword in the hands of a paladin - can't remember for certain).

I'd love to play updated versions of these. NWN 1 had a conversion of Pool of Radiance that was very good, but not quite the same feel, given that NWN isn't 1E. A pity these seem lost to time, since we haven't seen them released in years.

 

[amerigoV]

I wonder how well they've survived the ages. I've pondered giving them a replay, but decided I was probably better off playing some of the ones I missed that are more recent (never finished ToEE or NwN2, or played Icewind Dale 2 or Baldur's Gate 2, for example)

I was moving recently and found (1) my Commodore 64 (2) a TV I could hook it to and (3) PoR. I played just enough to find a DOS emulator and tried it on a real computer (C64 was slooooooooow).

I went into the ruins for a bit then got TPK'd in a frickin bar fight! Deadly!

 

[SkidAce]

In case you missed it..see what a member on these forums is doing?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ay-forgotten-realms-unlimited-adventures.html

 

[Kaodi]

There is actually a game out there now called The Legend of Grimrock which is a total throwback to the tile based Eye of the Beholder series.

But really, it would be great to see someone do a remake of some of those old games. Not just swipe the name for a completely different game like they did with Ruins of Myth Drannor. Though I cannot say that Phlan would make a horrible setting for a game that combined the swords and sorcery of the Elder Scrolls with the ruined setting of Fallout (though that would probably just be better as an Elder Scrolls game).

 

[ren1999]

For someone who's never played these games, could you explain in which ways they captured the feel of D&D?

Interesting question. When playing these games, I get a sense of the characters hacking their way through monsters quickly and looting all the mazes and dungeons.

Everybody understands their role. Clerics support the fighters in dealing damage and healing the party during combat, Wizards are protected and do heavy burst damage. Fighters hold the front lines and deal large damage to 1 opponent.

In order to win the game, you've got to keep healing and memorizing spells during an extended rest, usually after every encounter.

Spell advancement, memorization is very clear.

The entire D&D concept just makes very clear sense when playing these games. I really think that a Pathfinder/4th Edition Hybrid video game that mimics table top play is what is really needed in this stage of 5th edition development.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, none of the D&D games have clicked with me the same way the gold box games did. Part of that is, I suspect, a question of comparison. The games today are _very_ different from the ones back then.

And I tried to Temple of Elemental Evil, figuring it was the closest thing to it, but I got bogged down with... something... and never finished it. On that note, I think I don't finish nearly as many games now as I used to. Partially me, partially the games. A lot more games want you to talk and read your way through a book before getting to the action, or are more about a single character - or both.

So at some point I end up in a town with fifty people to talk to and twenty quests to navigate, and I save at some point unfinished... and don't go back for a long time.

Rambling. Too long, don't read. I'd have loved to see a 4e video game for comparison - I'm sad legal reasons spiked that wheel into uselessness.

 

[Spatula]

Ah, I loved the Gold Box games, and the ToEE game. The Bioware games and their derivatives had better stories, and great companions, but I was always fighting against the stupid real-time interface to get my guys to act the way I wanted.

I would have loved to see a 4e turn-based game. I was working on the engine for one for a long time, but sadly never finished it.

 

[Kaodi]

I still wonder if 4E would have been more succesful if it had not been the only edition outside OD&D and Basic to go without a timely video game using its rules.

 

[keterys]

I'm pretty sure 4E would have been a lot more successful if it hadn't:
* had its video games sunk by Atari
* had its online game table and tools sunk by another company
* screwed up its initial marketing to insult a lot of older gamers
* failed miserably on the GSL
* failed to work with established game companies and designers
* failed to come up with an initial offering that would please more conservative gamers (more recent offerings likely would have been more sellable)
Etc.

I think a half dozen minor changes to 4e, made after consulting with a bunch of established industry types to see what would be necessary to get them on board, would have made for a very different result.

 

[ren1999]

Amen, brother.