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Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

What are your favorite Gold Box games?

  • Pool of Radiance

  • Curse of the Azure Bonds

  • Secret of the Silver Blades

  • Pools of Darkness

  • Champions of Krynn

  • Death Knights of Krynn

  • The Dark Queen of Krynn

  • Gateway to the Savage Frontier

  • Treasures of the Savage Frontier

  • Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday

  • Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed

  • Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures (FRUA)


Results are only viewable after voting.

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,865
Some other videos: pc-98, DOS in 4 colors, MAC, appleII, NES




 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
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I can't find pics or vid of Sharp X-1 or pc-88

Music is annoying and goes over the sucky sound fx. Pics are goid though. Needs english translation
pEycmTM.jpg

uqZavKJ.jpg

H7BCGUm.jpg

YlRLlhh.jpg

CVEemhC.jpg

EiffyMN.jpg


Give her a smooch. Bebe...
 
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ProphetSword

Arcane
Developer
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Monkey Island


I did not get a VGA monitor until Pools of Darkness, which was the seventh Gold Box game I played and it was glorious. The previous games I played were these versions. Those cyan/magenta graphics bring back a lot of memories.


I was in the same boat as you were, except that I had a black & white monitor with a composite input to go with my CGA, so instead of sickly shades of magenta, I got a lot of shades of gray...which made everything look a lot better. I had played "Pool of Radiance," "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Champions of Krynn" on the C64 before switching to a PC, so thank goodness I didn't have to see "Death Knights of Krynn" or "Secret of the Silver Blades" like this.
 

mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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Combatfag: Gold box / Pathfinder
Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2


I did not get a VGA monitor until Pools of Darkness, which was the seventh Gold Box game I played and it was glorious. The previous games I played were these versions. Those cyan/magenta graphics bring back a lot of memories.


I was in the same boat as you were, except that I had a black & white monitor with a composite input to go with my CGA, so instead of sickly shades of magenta, I got a lot of shades of gray...which made everything look a lot better. I had played "Pool of Radiance," "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Champions of Krynn" on the C64 before switching to a PC, so thank goodness I didn't have to see "Death Knights of Krynn" or "Secret of the Silver Blades" like this.


It was always mysterious to me when PC gaming felt like a step backwards because of CGA. It was so hideous and games on the C64 looked better. It was a relief when I was finally able to get an EGA computer. I hated CGA then, I have a really hard time with it now. Even monochrome looks better imo.
 

Null Null

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
542
You really can't do much with four colors. Best choice I've seen is red, yellow, green, black--a lot of the pre-SSI games used that.

Someone needs to dig up the PC-88 Secret of the Silver Blades screenshots with the anime Vala.

I played Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn on the Apple II and on the PC. Biggest change I remembered was the Apple II had one save game per disk and the PC had up to ten, which made a huge difference. The sound on the Apple II was slightly better--I remember amusing myself by running into walls in Champions and hearing the crash noise.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
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Oct 3, 2015
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11,756
It was always mysterious to me when PC gaming felt like a step backwards because of CGA. It was so hideous and games on the C64 looked better. It was a relief when I was finally able to get an EGA computer. I hated CGA then, I have a really hard time with it now. Even monochrome looks better imo.
IBM designed the Personal Computer for the business market, meaning word processors and spreadsheets that didn't require much in the way of graphics, and therefore correspondingly designed CGA to be adequate for these purposes, not for gaming. IBM PCs didn't make substantial inroads into the home market, as opposed to the business market, until the release of EGA in 1984.

Those of us who had quality 8-bit computers, such as the Commodore 64, were far better off graphically than someone attempting to play games on an IBM PC with CGA graphics, and similarly those of us who owned the best computer ever created a Commodore Amiga were far better off graphically than those playing games on IBM PCs with EGA graphics. +M
 

Butter

Arcane
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Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.
 

The Limper

Educated
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Apr 24, 2021
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150
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Wishing I was back in Cheesesteak Heaven
Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.

Its a pretty easy game to max your level out, thats for certain….. and wh o doesn’t like slaying endless Driders?!
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
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Nov 23, 2016
Messages
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Need a big can of bug spray. I couldn't remember, so there are areas that don't exhaust their encounters?
 

KeighnMcDeath

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Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.

I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that. You could run into less mobs if facing a wall or dead end (camping trick) compared to a hallway, doorway, or open room.
 

Harlin

Educated
Joined
May 12, 2020
Messages
37
Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.

One way to get around this is to turn the difficulty level all the way down to minimum (and it really does have to be all the way). You can then get away scot-free from many random encounters.

Whether that's cheese or not depends on the person. Arguably, SSI intended it as part of normal gameplay, as combat XP does actually scale to combat difficulty. But that scaling isn't by much. It's like deliberately fighting extra kobolds in the Slums in Pool of Radiance -- the extra XP does exist, but is likewise a drop in the bucket.

Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.

I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that.

Statistics do affect number of monsters in Pool of Radiance, but the only two stats that have a strong direct effect are Strength and Dexterity. Current hit points matter, so Constitution has an indirect effect; and so do caster levels, so Intelligence and Wisdom specifically for single-classed magic-users and clerics respectively also have a slight indirect effect.

High levels, and powerful magic weapons and armor, cause much more of a boost than your statistics do, though.

Curse does do this scaling -- in like three places, and just barely. You'll likely never notice a difference if you are not stunt-running the game (i.e., either playing with fewer than 6 characters, or are speedrunning).

Other Gold Box games generally don't scale at all to your levels, statistics, or gear. I think that's because all other Gold Box games have difficulty levels, which typically affects both how likely it is you can evade a random encounter, and how likely you'll be disturbed when resting. (In the Buck Rogers games, skilll checks also sometimes matter a lot for this.)
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
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Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,865
I wanted to look at some intro char making for each entry:




I kind of hated these next two Krynn games:



The second one is like mega shit worse.
 
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Lt Broccoli

Educated
Joined
Feb 8, 2022
Messages
74
Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.

One way to get around this is to turn the difficulty level all the way down to minimum (and it really does have to be all the way). You can then get away scot-free from many random encounters.

Whether that's cheese or not depends on the person. Arguably, SSI intended it as part of normal gameplay, as combat XP does actually scale to combat difficulty. But that scaling isn't by much. It's like deliberately fighting extra kobolds in the Slums in Pool of Radiance -- the extra XP does exist, but is likewise a drop in the bucket.

Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.

I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that.

Statistics do affect number of monsters in Pool of Radiance, but the only two stats that have a strong direct effect are Strength and Dexterity. Current hit points matter, so Constitution has an indirect effect; and so do caster levels, so Intelligence and Wisdom specifically for single-classed magic-users and clerics respectively also have a slight indirect effect.

High levels, and powerful magic weapons and armor, cause much more of a boost than your statistics do, though.

Curse does do this scaling -- in like three places, and just barely. You'll likely never notice a difference if you are not stunt-running the game (i.e., either playing with fewer than 6 characters, or are speedrunning).

Other Gold Box games generally don't scale at all to your levels, statistics, or gear. I think that's because all other Gold Box games have difficulty levels, which typically affects both how likely it is you can evade a random encounter, and how likely you'll be disturbed when resting. (In the Buck Rogers games, skilll checks also sometimes matter a lot for this.)
I found the scaling in Pool of Radiance a great incentive to keep myself from choosing uber-powerful humans. Of course, the set encounters ignore this as far as I could tell. To my knowledge it is a shame it doesn't continue effectively in any of the other Gold Box Games. It is almost as if the developer in latter editions expected everyone to modify their stats to 18 for the party. I never stuffed around with the difficulty settings so it is interesting to see what effect changing the difficulty level does.
 

Null Null

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
542
Difficulty level mostly affects HP (novice=1/2, squire=3/4, veteran=nl, adept=5/4, champion=3/2); some games like Secret it'll affect your ability to run away from random encounters. Occasionally the number of enemies is affected (as in the boss fight in Dave's Challenge in Death Knights of Krynn). In the first few games it affected XP, but you only got a few more--they were going by the standard XP/HP formula in the 1e DMG. Goldbox, particularly near the beginning, was big on being tabletop-accurate--that was the whole point of the series, to play D&D on your computer.

The exact formula has been figured out, by Stephen S. Lee:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564785-pool-of-radiance/faqs/73869

It's 0.4*cleric levels + 0.8*mage levels + 0.5*(AC below 0) + 0.5* (THAC0 below 21) + 0.1*HP.

Yes, this means you can walk around with your armor unreadied and run into smaller enemy parties.
 

Bruma Hobo

Lurker
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
2,409
So, I started playing Champions of Krynn, and so far it sucks.

First of all, I've decided to not make perfect ubermensch characters since that's so fucking boring, so I limited my rerolls at chargen expecting the game to support my choice (otherwise it would make no sense to allow dice rolls at all). Well, here I am, struggling with my current party. While some of my characters who got lucky rolls are quite competent (my ranger has been carrying the game so far), my level 3 knight for instance has only 12 dexterity points, enough to eventually get promoted to the Rose order, but with 18 of THAC0 he's still not good enough to hit giant rats, which is bullshit. Even the weakest enemies in this game seem to have way too low AC.

The game offers little to no exploration, and the plot seems to be a linear epic tale about some war I know nothing about (I've never read a Dragonlance novel, and I doubt I'm missing out much), where the only way to advance the plot is through hacking and slashing all opposition. This is a huge downgrade after the original Pool of Radiance, a game with multiple quests to solve at once (some of them with multiple solutions), a lovely hub that offered a nice sense of place, and a charming and down-to-earth plot about recovering the old city.

Just like the original Wizardry, the game seems to be about pushing your party deep into a dungeon, forcing the player to retreat once resources get scarce to come back stronger, rinse and repeat till the dungeon is cleared. Unlike Wizardry though, this game isn't nearly as well designed, and it allows mutiple save slots to use inside dungeons, encouraging players to save often, especially when random encounters can start off with clerics casting Hold Person on half of your party before you can even move. Because of this, dungeon crawling isn't very exciting (in before the Champions of Self-Imposed Challenge call me a retard), nor my experience feels as unique as in a dungeon crawl in Wizardry.

Plot related battles can be interesting, but random encounters are way too frequent, extremely repetitive (it feels like I'm fighting the same group of sword-eating baaz again and again), and the parlay option has inexplicably disappeared, making things even worse. There's great relief once a map gets celared, but then that place becomes a wasteland with only plot-related battles available, which feels extremely artificial (in Pool of Radiance it made way more sense because of its plot). Loot is also extremely boring, the game drops the same old wortless garbage all the time, and I refuse to hoard that shit, so it all goes to waste.

Even the fucking UI feels worse than in Pool of Radiance! Now if I want to look at the area map or cast a healing spell during exploration I can no longer just press a single button, but I need to press the "Exit" button before that, and then I have to press "Move" to exit that menu, WTF. Hotkeys have also disappeared in the Hall menu, so now I've to press the arrowkeys several times to select each option, ugh.

Now, should I keep playing expecting the game to become more than what it already is? Combat's not necessarily bad (so far it's just too repetitive, but that could improve), but a game needs way more than a linear succession of combat encounters to be a proper RPG: It needs meaningful exploration, quests, puzzles, and/or well supported character customization options. In other words, it needs to be a player-driven adventure, and Champions of Krynn is definitely not.



TL;DR: Nice linear tacticool game, but this plays nothing like a tabletop D&D campaign.
 

Butter

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It's low level AD&D. The encounters are all going to suck. It's the same in Pool of Radiance and Baldur's Gate.
 

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