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Editorial The Digital Antiquarian on the Decline of the Gold Box Games

Infinitron

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Tags: Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday; Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed; Curse of the Azure Bonds; Eye of the Beholder; Eye of the Beholder 2: The Legend of Darkmoon; Eye of the Beholder 3: Assault on Myth Drannor; Gold Box; Pools of Darkness; Secret of the Silver Blades; Strategic Simulations, Inc.; The Digital Antiquarian; TSR; Westwood Studios

The Digital Antiquarian's slow-running chronicle of the gaming industry finally entered the 1990s last November. For today's article, he's decided to continue his four post series from last year about the history of SSI's Gold Box series, which extends into that decade. If those articles were all about SSI's unlikely rise to the top with the 1988 classic Pool of Radiance, then this one is all about their stagnation and decline as they milked the Gold Box engine with an additional ten games over the following four years. The Antiquarian does consider Pool of Radiance's immediate sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds, to have been a great game. He attributes the beginning of the decline to the third game in the series, Secret of the Silver Blades. I quote:

But by no means can all of the problems with Secret of the Silver Blades be blamed on high-level characters. The game’s other issues provide an interesting example of the unanticipated effects which technical affordances can have on game design, as well as a snapshot of changing cultures within both SSI and TSR.

A Gold Box map is built on a grid of exactly 16 by 16 squares, some of which can be “special” squares. When the player’s party enters one of the latter, a script runs to make something unusual happen — from something as simple as some flavor text appearing on the screen to something as complicated as an encounter with a major non-player character. The amount of special content allowed on any given map is restricted, however, by a limitation, stemming from the tiny memories of 8-bit machines like the Commodore 64 and Apple II, on the total size of all of the scripts associated with any given map.

The need for each map to be no larger than 16 by 16 squares couldn’t help but have a major effect on the designs that were implemented with the Gold Box engine. In Pool of Radiance, for example, the division of the city of Phlan into a set of neat sections, to be cleared out and reclaimed one by one, had its origins as much in these technical restrictions as it did in design methodology. In that case it had worked out fantastically well, but by the time development began on Secret of the Silver Blades all those predictably uniform square maps had begun to grate on Dave Shelley, that game’s lead designer. Shelley and his programmers thus came up with a clever way to escape the system of 16 by 16 dungeons.

One of the things a script could do was to silently teleport the player’s party to another square on the map. Shelley and company realized that by making clever use of this capability they could create dungeon levels that gave the illusion of sprawling out wildly and asymmetrically, like real underground caverns would. Players who came into Secret of the Silver Blades expecting the same old 16 by 16 grids would be surprised and challenged. They would have to assume that the Gold Box engine had gotten a major upgrade. From the point of view of SSI, this was the best kind of technology refresh: one that cost them nothing at all. Shelley sketched out a couple of enormous underground complexes for the player to explore, each larger almost by an order of magnitude than anything that had been seen in a Gold Box game before.

But as soon as the team began to implement the scheme, the unintended consequences began to ripple outward. Because the huge maps were now represented internally as a labyrinth of teleports, the hugely useful auto-map had to be disabled for these sections. And never had the auto-map been needed more, for the player who dutifully mapped the dungeons on graph paper could no longer count on them being a certain size; they were constantly spilling off the page, forcing her to either start over or go to work on a fresh page stuck onto the old with a piece of tape. Worst of all, placing all of those teleports everywhere used just about all of the scripting space that would normally be devoted to providing other sorts of special squares. So, what players ended up with was an enormous but mind-numbingly boring set of homogeneous caverns filled with the same handful of dull random-monster encounters, coming up over and over and over. This was not, needless to say, an improvement on what had come before. In fact, it was downright excruciating.

At the same time that this clever technical trick was pushing the game toward a terminal dullness, other factors were trending in the same direction. Shelley himself has noted that certain voices within SSI were questioning whether all of those little extras found in Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, like the paragraph books and the many scripted special encounters, were really necessary at all — or, at the least, perhaps it wasn’t necessary to do them with quite so much loving care. SSI was onto a good thing with these Gold Box games, said these voices — found mainly in the marketing department — and they ought to strike while the iron was hot, cranking them out as quickly as possible. While neither side would entirely have their way on the issue, the pressure to just make the games good enough rather than great in order to get them out there faster can be sensed in every Gold Box game after the first two. More and more graphics were recycled; fewer and fewer of those extra, special touches showed up. SSI never fully matched Pool of Radiance, much less improved on it, over the course of the ten Gold Box games that followed it. That SSI’s founder and president Joel Billings, as hardcore a gamer as any gaming executive ever, allowed this stagnation to take root is unfortunate, but isn’t difficult to explain. His passion was for the war games he’d originally founded SSI to make; all this Dungeons & Dragons stuff, while a cash cow to die for, was largely just product to him.

[...] All of these competing interests do much to explain why TSR, after involving themselves so closely in the development of Pools of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, withdrew from the process almost entirely after those games and just left SSI to it. And that fact in turn is yet one more important reason why the Gold Box games not only failed to evolve but actually devolved in many ways. TSR’s design staff might not have had a great understanding of computer technology, but they did understand their settings and rules, and had pushed SSI to try to inject at least a little bit of what made for a great tabletop-role-playing experience into the computer games. Absent that pressure, SSI was free to fall back on what they did best — which meant, true to their war-game roots, lots and lots of combat. In both Pool and Curse, random encounters cease on most maps after you’ve had a certain number of them — ideally, just before they get boring. Tellingly, in Secret of the Silver Blades and most of the other later Gold Box games that scheme is absent. The monsters just keep on coming, ad infinitum.

Despite lukewarm reviews that were now starting to voice some real irritation with the Gold Box line’s failure to advance, Secret of the Silver Blades was another huge hit, selling 167,214 copies. But, in an indication that some of those who purchased it were perhaps disappointed enough by the experience not to continue buying Gold Box games, it would be the last of the line to break the 100,000-copy barrier. The final game in the Pool of Radiance series, Pools of Darkness, sold just 52,793 copies upon its release in 1991.
In addition to telling the story of the Gold Box games, the article also contains two interesting asides. One about notorious TSR manager Lorraine Williams, whose ownership of the Buck Rogers intellectual property led to the two unusual non-D&D Gold Box titles featuring it, and another about Westwood's Eye of the Beholder games, whose success helped keep SSI afloat as the Gold Box slowly died. SSI would finally be forced to break out of their rut with the Dark Sun games, but that's a story for another day.
 

oldmanpaco

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. So, what players ended up with was an enormous but mind-numbingly boring set of homogeneous caverns filled with the same handful of dull random-monster encounters, coming up over and over and over. This was not, needless to say, an improvement on what had come before. In fact, it was downright excruciating.

The only thing I remember about that game was the linear trek from the town to the main castle/dungeon. Every few steps you had to fight hordes of Cloud/Storm Giants or something. Maybe there was a way to skip directly from one to the other but if there was either I didn't find it or it came later in the game.

Every once in a while I think about playing those games again but I don't know if I could take fighting my way through the giants again. Also PoD's clever idea of stringing back to back difficult combats is lame.
 

Freddie

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Very interesting article if I think of it in wider context. I mean could teleport hack be one reason why different 'schools' of what is an RPG can't find common ground?
And role of marketing in making decision to cut corners one reason why we still have trash mobs to kill in games... Some think it's absurd and tedious, some think it's part of experience. Of course each side try to rationalise their point of view, but could this really be one big influence that we still have trash mobs?

Absent that pressure, SSI was free to fall back on what they did best — which meant, true to their war-game roots, lots and lots of combat. In both Pool and Curse, random encounters cease on most maps after you’ve had a certain number of them — ideally, just before they get boring. Tellingly, in Secret of the Silver Blades and most of the other later Gold Box games that scheme is absent. The monsters just keep on coming, ad infinitum.

Despite lukewarm reviews that were now starting to voice some real irritation with the Gold Box line’s failure to advance, Secret of the Silver Blades was another huge hit, selling 167,214 copies. But, in an indication that some of those who purchased it were perhaps disappointed enough by the experience not to continue buying Gold Box games, it would be the last of the line to break the 100,000-copy barrier. The final game in the Pool of Radiance series, Pools of Darkness, sold just 52,793 copies upon its release in 1991.​
Edit: Somebody brofist Inflitron, this was awesome.
 

Dorateen

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Pools of Darkness was a masterpiece, a triumph, after the admittedly less than spectacular Secret of the Silver Blade. The Dragonlance trilogy and Savage Frontier titles specifically continued to advance the Gold Box engine with innovations that would have influence on other studios. Despite the author's fake claim that SSI's games after Curse of the Azure Bonds were designed to be just "good enough", the other titles were hailed with player and critical acclaim.

The Gold Box games didn't decline. The rest of the computer role-playing industry did.
 

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Pools of Darkness was a masterpiece, a triumph, after the admittedly less than spectacular Secret of the Silver Blade. The Dragonlance trilogy and Savage Frontier titles specifically continued to advance the Gold Box engine with innovations that would have influence on other studios. Despite the author's fake claim that SSI's games after Curse of the Azure Bonds were designed to be just "good enough", the other titles were hailed with player and critical acclaim.

The Gold Box games didn't decline. The rest of the computer role-playing industry did.

The DA put in a disclaimer for you:

By way of wrapping up today’s story, I should note that my take on the Gold Box games, while I believe it dovetails relatively well with the consensus of the marketplace at the time, is by no means the only one in existence. A small but committed group of fans still loves these games — yes, all of them — for their approach to tactical combat, which must surely mark the most faithful implementation of the tabletop game’s rules for same ever to make it to the computer. “It’s hard to imagine a truly bad game being made with it,” says blogger Chester Bolingbroke — better known as the CRPG Addict — of the Gold Box engine. (Personally, I’d happily nominate Secret of the Silver Blades for that designation.)
 

Volourn

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"which must surely mark the most faithful implementation of the tabletop game’s rules for same ever to make it to the computer."

No. Fuck no. Hell to the no. people who claim this bullshit should atcually play D&D pnp. Ignorant tools.
 

M0RBUS

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"which must surely mark the most faithful implementation of the tabletop game’s rules for same ever to make it to the computer."

No. Fuck no. Hell to the no. people who claim this bullshit should atcually play D&D pnp. Ignorant tools.
I thought Tales of The Sword Coast Sword Coast Legends was the most faithful implementation of the tabletop game’s rules for same ever to make it to the computer.

:EDIT:
Fuck, don't even know the game's name :P
 

MrBuzzKill

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Pools of Darkness was a masterpiece, a triumph, after the admittedly less than spectacular Secret of the Silver Blade.
Interesting, considering I've heard pretty much opposite opinions of people complaining that it was a drag. Can you explain a bit why you think PoD is great? Why do you like it?
 

Invictus

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I actually played Silver Blades before all the rest; a friend of mine got all 4 games on a sale and lent me Silver Blades while he played the others.
I actually found the game quite good and since it was my first experience with the combat (which I loved) I didnt mind the long repetitive grind at all (me coming from JRPGs it all felt very natural really)
After that I played Gateway to the Savage Frontier and all the refinements to the formula (automatic healing, spell memorization etc) made me love the series and things finally clicked for me and the Goldbox games
Did play all the way through Dragonlance games before I played the rest of the Pools series and frankly never felt burnt out of them at all.
The combat never felt unfair, tile based spells effects made it all feel so tactical and 3D like casting Stinking Cloud (maybe my favorite spell along with Magic Missle) positoning my chars around the fog and waiting for the enemy to move inside never got old
The Dreadlord story in particular felt just so oldschool D&D that he became one of my favorite characters and has been my avatar since joining the Codex
 

Dorateen

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Pools of Darkness was a masterpiece, a triumph, after the admittedly less than spectacular Secret of the Silver Blade.
Interesting, considering I've heard pretty much opposite opinions of people complaining that it was a drag. Can you explain a bit why you think PoD is great? Why do you like it?

Pools of Darkness had multiple thematic overland maps, including travel to other dimensions. It had some of the most challenging combat of the entire Gold Box collection. High level AD&D is not always handled well, in gameplay or presentation, but the introduction of spells, items, and monsters never encountered before make it a worthwhile experience. It is best appreciated having played the saga from the beginning. Starting with Pool of Radiance, Pools of Darkness reaches a crescendo in the struggle against Bane's power grab. The story is nonlinear, and has memorable episodes that resonate with the player with the way it connects content from the previous games.

The Moonsea series of Gold Box adventures is the most significant tetralogy in Western civilization since Wagner's Der Ring des Niebelungen and Pools of Darkness is its grand conclusion.
 

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Sad story-- Secret of the Silver Blades was my first gold box game. I remember my party getting disentegrated and petrified a lot, got tired of fighting multiple venerable blue dragons per encounter, ad nauseam, and gave it up. Buck Rogers was a glorious incline after that.
 

Grauken

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PoD was actually my first Gold Box game. Loved it then and it still do.That's how you finish a series, pull out all the stops and make it a true tour de force. And Moander map ruled hard
 

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Isn't it the long-standing norm in the English language, at least when it comes to writing historical articles?

If so then that's news to me, and I'm a native speaker. :obviously:

DA is a great article writer, but don't you dare argue with him in his comments, or suggest other people might have a conflicting point of view. :D
 

Infinitron

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Isn't it the long-standing norm in the English language, at least when it comes to writing historical articles?

If so then that's news to me, and I'm a native speaker. :obviously:

DA is a great article writer, but don't you dare argue with him in his comments, or suggest other people might have a conflicting point of view. :D

lol, somebody named "bryce777" has posted in there:

bryce777

April 4, 2017 at 12:08 am

This is why people who are not fans of a genre/subgenre simply should NOT EVER be reviewing them. This is simply the most abysmal article I have ever read, On top of that there is just an unreality to this article that is hard to conceive of where almost everything in it is the opposite of reality. Ultimately it reads like it came from someone who never played those games but simply looked at some old reviews and strung some BS together using other people’s minor bitching and then presenting it as if it were serious, carefully considered review of the actual games.

First off, by ANY measure the gold box series was highly successful and produced more quality games than virtually any other series ever produced. Not even Ultima and wizardry series put out as many QUALITY games as SSI did. This is the appropriate benchmark to for their success, the series of RPGs that actually overlap them – in fact they both lasted longer than the gold box series in at least some form, though much degraded by then.

Putting out actual GAMES and not shoveling the pathetic content of some hack writers backed up by a hugely expensive art and VO staff into our faces is also something that is missing today. What’s the real RPG? The garbage today that you forget ten minutes later or the RPGs from the golden age like this? As I said, this is what happens when you have someone evaluating a subgenre that obviously simply does not like it or understand it.

That said I will go point for point.

1. Silver blades as a nadir. What nonsense. There is absolutely nothing ‘excruciating’ about the game. Sounds like this is taken directly out of a Scorpia review, a reviewer who loved to complain about combat in games and also did not really belong as a reviewer for a game like this. She also complained massively about Darklands as well, Might & Magic and basically every RPG of the time. Basically it was like my mom writing reviews of the game, and honestly this article seems like it is just a cut and paste of the silly complaints she had – except accentuated much more than they originally were.

Silver Blades was not lacking in content WHATSOEVER. Contentwise it is actually one of my favorites of the series, surpassed only by the krynn modules and the amazing Pools of Darkness. The real dog of the series is the boring boring slog of the savage frontier series. It’s just boring and there really is just not enough content. It also railroads you a great deal.

2. Boring sexism trope. Another Scorpia annoyance/hilarity. I am sure these great covers sold a LOT of copies. When christians complain about nudity etc. it’s evil puritanism, but if we call it sexism then it is virtual eye rape. People want to be better than their reality, in awesome situations. So you see great covers like the M&M 7 cover with buff guys and beautiful women fighting a dragon. This is not eye candy for the men so much as it is supposed to present an alter ego for both men and women, and to show exotic locations and monsters to face. Amazing cover. Again, if you don’t appreciate this BASIC IDEA behind the appeal of RPGs, then really RPGs are simply not for you.

3. Complaints about less detailed encounters and special squares and games falling flat in comparison to the original. First off, the main nice thing of an outside map allowing you to actually EXPLORE is something that this article complains about. Again, obviously the wrong guy to be doing a review of an RPG like this.

Secondly, there is not really any meat in the plot to POR in spite of lots of little details. Did you really play these games even? The strength is the exploration and not some overarching story that forces you on and on from point to point. This is nice, because it allows you to concentrate on exploring and looting areas instead of feeling like someone watching a tv show like in today’s games, but it’s simply untrue to claim the game is more epic than anything that followed or that is has more story related content. Sure there are more handcrafted encounters…with endless orcs on and on and on. Really the best part is the beginning bit clearing the city and then they really should have streamlined things a bit from there, if anything.

At the same time though there is just not all that much main story content, so I can’t imagine what game the author was playing to come up with this. In most of the other games there is a very clear start to a plot, ie something happens, and it actually involves the characters.

4. TSR criticism. What’s the point of this? It is made out like some huge mistakes were made, but fails to deliver. I don’t think that is in any way supportable. Lots of great products were made, and products like Dark Sun and Spelljammer were AMAZING. You can’t force hollywood to make lots of movies on your IP, you will probably have to raise the millions yourself to do that. If it were so easy then we would see thousands of movies from people who kept their own IP instead of giving it away to some studio.

5. Gygax writing criticism. Yes, writing styles like HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard is terrible compared to second edition writing or generic awful fantasy writer of today. Again, wrong guy basically. If you can’t appreciate Gygax’s writing then obviously you don’t understand the basic flavor and experience that DnD was trying to impart. THIS is what made it initially so popular. TSR struggled to maintain this once Gygax was gone, but they still came up with lots of good new material. Unlike today where it is all pure garbage both in content and in mechanics.

6. Praising westwood. First off they made the terrible hillsfar already complained about earlier in the article. Perhaps if someone else made it it would have been decent. More importantly EOB series was a gimmick, and it never spawned much followup, and the sequels suffer much more from the complaints about sameyness and lack of content than the followups to POR. EOB 1 was good. The followups were bland and pointless and easily forgotten, and ultimately there’s just not enough meat to the gameplay to warrant playing a dozen games in the same vein no matter how good the writing and puzzles are.

7. High level DnD play meme. This annoying meme is very out of place here, especially using it to talk about 10+ level characters. This is really a 3rd edition issue, and in 1st and 2nd edition issues it does not really have the same impact. In 3rd ed your spellcasters become so ridiculously OP that it is just an exercise in sillyness. It is not a comment on getting less relative power advancement per level which obviously is the case when you reach 40th level as compared to 2nd level. Only in POD do you max out at super high levels, but there is more than enough challenge the whole game through in 2nd edition, because mages are always vulnerable to things like silence, breaking concentration and so on while these mechanics don’t really matter in 3rd edition.

8. Buck rogers criticism. So ‘most people agree’ combat is much less interesting? As I said, this sounds like it’s compiled from other sources or something. Buck Rogers games were GREAT. Combat is actually quite interesting, especially after you have played half a dozen Gold Box games already and are getting tired of the same combat system. There’s lots of interesting skills and attributes in Buck Rogers series, and quite a bit of tactics needed to make it through the harder battles. Chaff, zero G manuevering skill, jetpacks, rocket launchers and heat guns – who could ask for anything more out of a sci-fi rpg? Indeed no other one has managed to EVER deliver such tactical combat. TSR ‘coercing’ SSI to make these games was one of the best things to ever happen in computer gaming!

Jimmy Maher

April 4, 2017 at 6:19 am

As noted, “a small but committed group of fans still loves these games.” ;)

But seriously, thanks for providing some perspective on what hardcore fans see in these games, even if your points would have come off better with a less overheated tone and without the obsession with inclusion and exclusion. “People want to be better than their reality, in awesome situations” — a very insightful read on the appeal of these games.
 

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:D Is Bryce still 'one of us', or does he belong to the Internet now?

DA is a great article writer

bryce777 said:
This is simply the most abysmal article I have ever read

Well, hush my mouth!

You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you'll never get the trailer park out of the girl. Bryce is proving something similar about the Codex...
 

MrBuzzKill

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4. TSR criticism. What’s the point of this? It is made out like some huge mistakes were made, but fails to deliver. I don’t think that is in any way supportable. You can’t force hollywood to make lots of movies on your IP, you will probably have to raise the millions yourself to do that. If it were so easy then we would see thousands of movies from people who kept their own IP instead of giving it away to some studio.
At this point, the guy kind of lost me, I mean at this point it becomes clear he's an enormous fanboy of TSR that even tries to defend it against a fair observation about Gygax's quixotically ambitious, ill-advised forays that ended in obvious failure. By the way, the author was absolutely right about the reason D&D at that point wasn't suitable for movies - there aren't even any established characters, what the hell is there to make a movie about? It would only be remotely possible later with the advent of settings like Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Faerun etc.

I love rants like this because it puts me in a perspective. These guys* always bitch about how "old thing was so great and contemporary thing is shit", are they oblivious to the fact that literally every generation says that? "These damn kids" (*By "these guys", I mean myself as well, I also sometimes post rants defending old games and other stuff from the past I like, that I feel gets unduly criticized/unappreciated, but even I recognize that stuff wasn't nearly perfect). That's not to say some of his counter-criticisms weren't valid, they were, but he clearly goes overboard in the other direction. "Only fans of the genre should review the games"? Wat. Impartiality is overrated huh?

I'm reading the articles leading up to it and if anything, I have to thank the author for clarifying my vision of Gary Gygax. I'd thought he was this grandfatherly figure obsessed with RPGs and not caring about money/not knowing how to run a business (well, that part was right), but it turns out he was just as susceptible to nouveau riche and general human vices as anyone - collecting cars, being authoritarian and selfish, vain attempts at Hollywood, leaving his wife of 23 years, and being too stubborn and blind about the obvious synergy with the computer gaming industry.
 

Aenra

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but you'll never get the trailer park out of the girl

Ain't nothing wrong with trailers!

f5961abd207acc72b590d483b13bfe78.jpg


ec48207b77da1f0855c3b962cee89923.jpg


goddamm yankees, not knowing what's good for ya
 
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DemonKing

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I liked them all up until Pools of Darkness - it was ridiculous Monty Haul gaming at its worst - I was regularly leaving piles of +3 weapons and armour in the dirt because it wasn't worth the effort to keep and sell it and it was far worse than the kit my characters had by then. The final battle sucked too - you have to fight through a ridiculous horde of dragons and beholders and then they reward you with another wave of the same!

I actually enjoyed Secret of the Savage Frontier but I think Azure Bonds was probably my favourite (maybe because the class selection in Pools of Radiance was a bit limited). The Dragonlance games were also good. I can't remember ever finishing the Savage Frontier titles.
 

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