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Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
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<blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9280245" data-attributes="member: 6801060"><p><strong>Introduction (Part 1): What are the Gold Box games?</strong></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349044[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p></p><p>The Gold Box games are a series of CRPGs produced by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) using the D&D ruleset, under license from TSR, produced from 1988 through 1992. The informal nickname of "Gold Box" comes, pretty obviously, from their gold-colored covers, in contrast to other SSI D&D games, which were sold with boxes of different coloring (for example, the "Black Box" games of the <em>Eye of the Beholder</em> series). The Gold Box games all shared the same engine which set them apart from the other SSI D&D games, with exploration done in a first-person point of view, and then switching to a top-down third-person POV once combat started. This is in contrast to other SSI games, which stayed in either first-person or third-person views during game play. So exploration looked like this (using the default party included in the game):</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349045[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>and combat looked like this:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349046[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>This switching between the two POVs allowed both these pillars (Exploration and Combat) to be done smoothy and pretty intuitively. Combat, especially, was very similar to the table-top version, being turned-based and very like play using miniatures. In fact, it's closer in many ways than a lot of later D&D games that used real-time-with-pause gameplay, which in many ways alters (often for the worse) tactical play in combat. Here, for example, once you know exactly how big an area a <em>fireball</em> takes up, you can strategize and ensure you get the maximum number of enemies, and avoid, as much as possible, friendly fire on your own group.</p><p></p><p>The game consists of you controlling a party of up to six PCs (and using all six slots are recommended!), and maybe an NPC or two who are currently part of your group. With them, you do your typical D&D stuff - explore locations, fight foes, and gain treasure and loot. You gain experience by doing so, level up, and gain new powers.</p><p></p><p>The games use the original, 1e AD&D ruleset, with a few minor differences as the series started around the time the game was transitioning to the 2e ruleset. And it translated them over pretty remarkably well, given the limitations that CRPGs faced in 1988. You can play with most of the PHB races, play many of the PHB classes (although there are some significant absences), have a very wide set of spells to choose from, and fight a noticeably varied number of monsters and foes (the recent threads here about D&D's "core monsters" overlaps very closely to what you can fight in these games, with very few notable absences such as mind flayers).</p><p></p><p>The "core" Gold Box games were:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">A set of four games set in the Moonsea and Dalelands region of the Forgotten Realms: <em>Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, </em>and <em>Pools of Darkness</em> (commonly referred to as the "Pools" games, and the series I'm starting the play through with)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">A set of three games set in the Dragonlance setting: <em>Champions of Krynn</em>, <em>Death Knights of Krynn</em>, and <em>Dark Queen of Krynn</em>.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">A set of two games set in the Savage Frontier region of the Forgotten Realms: <em>Gateway to the Savage Frontier</em> and <em>Treasures of the Savage Frontier.</em></p><p></p><p>Each of the sets would allow transferring of characters from one game to the next, allowing a single party to go from level 1 (for <em>Pool of Radiance</em> - <em>Champions of Krynn</em> and <em>Gateway to the Savage Frontier</em> start you with some XP, so some characters might be level 2 or 3 at start in the latter two) all the way to potentially level 40 (although the Savage Frontier series ended before that point, letting you get only to level 12 or so).</p><p></p><p>The Gold Box games also included a game-builder called <em>Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, </em>which allowed people to create their own games using the engine, and two Buck Rogers games because the TSR president at the time, Lorraine Williams, owned the Buck Rogers IP and pushed it whenever possible. Since these three aren't D&D games as such, we won't be dealing with them here.</p><p></p><p>The games were very popular in their day, but advances in computer technology soon made them pretty obsolete (as you can tell by the screenshots above), and thus they were basically abandonware for quite awhile. GOG was able to gather them and their rights, and sold them off their site for years. More recently, Steam gained the right to sell them, and they can now be purchased through them. The games come with PDFs of the in-box booklets, usually a manual and a journal, as well as a representation of the copy protection codewheel, which had two wheels of Dethek and Espruar glyphs that you used to answer copy protection questions. Thankfully, the current games just skip that step, and you can hit Enter to continue when copy protection questions come up.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349052[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Also included are the PDFs for the cluebooks for each game, which were sold separately at the time. Given just how fiendishly difficult exploration could be, and how hard it was to find certain treasures and encounters, the cluebooks sold very well! And beyond all of these, the Steam versions also include a version of a fan-made UI and editing tool called Gold Box Companion, which will be the subject of my next post.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Demetrios1453, post: 9280245, member: 6801060"] [B]Introduction (Part 1): What are the Gold Box games?[/B] [ATTACH type="full" alt="A selection of covers for the Gold Box games"]349044[/ATTACH] The Gold Box games are a series of CRPGs produced by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) using the D&D ruleset, under license from TSR, produced from 1988 through 1992. The informal nickname of "Gold Box" comes, pretty obviously, from their gold-colored covers, in contrast to other SSI D&D games, which were sold with boxes of different coloring (for example, the "Black Box" games of the [I]Eye of the Beholder[/I] series). The Gold Box games all shared the same engine which set them apart from the other SSI D&D games, with exploration done in a first-person point of view, and then switching to a top-down third-person POV once combat started. This is in contrast to other SSI games, which stayed in either first-person or third-person views during game play. So exploration looked like this (using the default party included in the game): [ATTACH type="full" alt="Exploration view"]349045[/ATTACH] and combat looked like this: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Combat view"]349046[/ATTACH] This switching between the two POVs allowed both these pillars (Exploration and Combat) to be done smoothy and pretty intuitively. Combat, especially, was very similar to the table-top version, being turned-based and very like play using miniatures. In fact, it's closer in many ways than a lot of later D&D games that used real-time-with-pause gameplay, which in many ways alters (often for the worse) tactical play in combat. Here, for example, once you know exactly how big an area a [I]fireball[/I] takes up, you can strategize and ensure you get the maximum number of enemies, and avoid, as much as possible, friendly fire on your own group. The game consists of you controlling a party of up to six PCs (and using all six slots are recommended!), and maybe an NPC or two who are currently part of your group. With them, you do your typical D&D stuff - explore locations, fight foes, and gain treasure and loot. You gain experience by doing so, level up, and gain new powers. The games use the original, 1e AD&D ruleset, with a few minor differences as the series started around the time the game was transitioning to the 2e ruleset. And it translated them over pretty remarkably well, given the limitations that CRPGs faced in 1988. You can play with most of the PHB races, play many of the PHB classes (although there are some significant absences), have a very wide set of spells to choose from, and fight a noticeably varied number of monsters and foes (the recent threads here about D&D's "core monsters" overlaps very closely to what you can fight in these games, with very few notable absences such as mind flayers). The "core" Gold Box games were: [INDENT]A set of four games set in the Moonsea and Dalelands region of the Forgotten Realms: [I]Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, [/I]and [I]Pools of Darkness[/I] (commonly referred to as the "Pools" games, and the series I'm starting the play through with)[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]A set of three games set in the Dragonlance setting: [I]Champions of Krynn[/I], [I]Death Knights of Krynn[/I], and [I]Dark Queen of Krynn[/I].[/INDENT] [INDENT][/INDENT] [INDENT]A set of two games set in the Savage Frontier region of the Forgotten Realms: [I]Gateway to the Savage Frontier[/I] and [I]Treasures of the Savage Frontier.[/I][/INDENT] Each of the sets would allow transferring of characters from one game to the next, allowing a single party to go from level 1 (for [I]Pool of Radiance[/I] - [I]Champions of Krynn[/I] and [I]Gateway to the Savage Frontier[/I] start you with some XP, so some characters might be level 2 or 3 at start in the latter two) all the way to potentially level 40 (although the Savage Frontier series ended before that point, letting you get only to level 12 or so). The Gold Box games also included a game-builder called [I]Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, [/I]which allowed people to create their own games using the engine, and two Buck Rogers games because the TSR president at the time, Lorraine Williams, owned the Buck Rogers IP and pushed it whenever possible. Since these three aren't D&D games as such, we won't be dealing with them here. The games were very popular in their day, but advances in computer technology soon made them pretty obsolete (as you can tell by the screenshots above), and thus they were basically abandonware for quite awhile. GOG was able to gather them and their rights, and sold them off their site for years. More recently, Steam gained the right to sell them, and they can now be purchased through them. The games come with PDFs of the in-box booklets, usually a manual and a journal, as well as a representation of the copy protection codewheel, which had two wheels of Dethek and Espruar glyphs that you used to answer copy protection questions. Thankfully, the current games just skip that step, and you can hit Enter to continue when copy protection questions come up. [ATTACH type="full" alt="poolofradiance-thumb.jpg"]349052[/ATTACH] Also included are the PDFs for the cluebooks for each game, which were sold separately at the time. Given just how fiendishly difficult exploration could be, and how hard it was to find certain treasures and encounters, the cluebooks sold very well! And beyond all of these, the Steam versions also include a version of a fan-made UI and editing tool called Gold Box Companion, which will be the subject of my next post. [/QUOTE]
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