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Questions concerning Classic RPGs

Amerestatistic

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
101
Hi everybody. I've mostly just been lurking here for a while, and haven't had much to say until now. I just have a few questions about older RPGs since I'm trying to find and play some of the classics.

I currently have the Magic Candle (which I just started playing) Ultimas 6-7+serpent Isle, Wasteland, Knights of Legend, and Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams. So far I've only completed The Black Gate.

My first question: What can you recommend to somebody who would like to go back and play some of these games, but requires them to be accessible (well, as accessible as old rpgs can be...) and easy to get working on modern PCs? I'm only 18 and I didn't grow up playing them like I imagine a lot of you guys did, so keeping that in mind, maybe somebody can point me towards games that are good to start with...I'm afraid these generally don't include games where I have to draw my own maps, as I'm terrible at that.

A second question: I've tried to follow the discussions you guys sometimes have about what is and isn't an RPG. I'm wondering what do you guys think of the Ultima series? Are they role-playing games because they give you a wide and interesting world to explore in a non-linear fashion? Or are they adventure games with experience systems because you don't really get any significant choices outside of "Where do I want to go today?"

A third question: In another thread, somebody said...

"Wizardry VII, Crusaders of the Dark Savant was amazing in several respects. The sheer scope, grandeur, and compexity of the game they put on two floppies still boggles my mind. And the autonomy of the npcs.. Oh yes. There's something very cool about playing a game a second time and never meeting some of the npcs because a different npc killed them before you got a chance.That's just great."

This sounds intriguing, but first person dungeon crawlers don't seem that easy to get into, in my experience. Is this game relatively easy to figure out? Does it demand I do my own mapping, or is there some kind of automapping system? Is it commonly available as abandonware?

And now a fourth question. I'd love to find Darklands, but it doesn't seem to be available as abandonware anywhere, despite the fact that the only site that sold it (to my knowledge) seems to have been dead for months. (www.ultimatedarklands.com)

Is there a place I can download it? If not, is it being sold somewhere besides ebay?

Any answers would of course be greatly appreciated.
 

HanoverF

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MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Check ebay for Darklands, I believe the ultimatedarklands.com guy sells copies from time to time there
 

Psilon

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A lot of creaky DOS games work quite well under DOSBox. Though 0.60 supports protected-mode emulation, it's still incomplete. Basically, you can probably run DOS/4GW-extended games, but don't expect Crusader to work--I've tried.

If you need practice mapping, start off with something easy, like a Sierra adventure game. Then work your way into the featureless dungeons. Make sure to buy lots of quadrille paper.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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I was lucky enough to find my copy of Darklands for three bucks in a bargain bin at Electronics Boutique. It was the CD version even. I had read about the game on HOTU and was really wanting to play it. It's a kick ass game and you should definitely try to get yourself a copy. It practically covers everything that people on here have stated what they love in a CRPG. Graphics are old school, but I can already tell you are not letting that stop you. Way to go. :)

As far as where to get it other than Ebay, you might wanna try Chips N' Bits. I don't think they have it though. You may just have to wait until Ultimate Darklands comes back online. And they ARE working on it. :)

You might wanna try Daggerfall if you want a good first person dungeon crawler to get into. It sucks you in pretty fast. You can find it on Ebay as well or order a copy straight from Bethesda. You can find it on Kazaa as well though. Oh, and it has an automap feature, but man is it rough sometimes since it's in 3D and alot of the dungeons twist and turn and go up and down.

Another good series is the SSI Gold Box series. Some people will say otherwise, but they were good games. Especially the two based in the Savage Lands campaign setting.

The first couple of Ultimas were more like adventure games to me, but from three on, they were CRPGs in almost every aspect. There's my opinion on that. ;)

Also, you may wanna look into getting copies of the two Buck Rogers CRPGs that were done back in the day. Pretty decent titles.

There's alot more I can think of, but I don't wanna drown you with too much to start with. ;)

Hope all this helps. :)
 

Amerestatistic

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
101
As far as first-person RPGs go, is Dragon Wars a good way to go? Mostly I've just looked at the manual and character creation. The character creation seems very interesting, and the automapping should make travel a bit less disorienting, I imagine. There's a lot of skills, are any of them essentially useless or just not as useful as they might appear? I'm thinking things like the various types of Lore or Bureaucracy.

I'm familiar with the Buck Rogers rpgs, but haven't really tried either of them yet. Guess I'll try Matrix Cubed here soon. I would check Kazaa for Daggerfall but Kazaa hates me. Me and Kazaa have an understanding. Basically I allow it to occupy my hard drive, and in exchange, Kazaa allows me to download media using anything else except Kazaa.


I guess I'll have to resort to Ebay for Darklands, heh. But it sounds like it's worth it.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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Yes, it is. Very much so. And the artwork in spots it just gorgeously done. It was definitely a labor of love in it's time. That's why Darklands is in my top five CRPGs list. :)

Dragon Wars is a decent game, but it is best played AFTER playing the first three Bard's Tales games as it is pretty much Bard's Tale 4. It is playable alone though. It is a tough game at times though, so be warned. Some of the puzzles can be mindboggling, and the final fight.... woooo! The beauty of DW is the multiple paths you can take to finish quests or solve puzzles. Nicely done.

As far as Daggerfall goes, I have not checked to see if it's on Bearshare or not. You may wish to look there if possible. I personally recommend going through Bethesda as this game is worth the money. :)

Matrix Cubed is probably the better of the two Buck Rogers RPGs out there. And the beauty of both of them is the fact that they are extremely large.

Another game that I recommend, while not technically an RPG, is Elite. Wonderful game.
 

Amerestatistic

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
101
Otaku_Hanzo said:
As far as Daggerfall goes, I have not checked to see if it's on Bearshare or not. You may wish to look there if possible. I personally recommend going through Bethesda as this game is worth the money. :)


I might have to seriously consider it actually. Morrowind doesn't really appeal to me, but I guess some people actually consider it to be dumbed down from the level of depth in Daggerfall. But I don't know much about the game or what might make it better than MW, myself...

Matrix Cubed is probably the better of the two Buck Rogers RPGs out there. And the beauty of both of them is the fact that they are extremely large.

Yeah I just got Matrix Cubed, although I didn't have the time to really dive in. A question: Can someone tell me where I can download the manual? You can download the Log book at Home of the Underdogs, but I can't find the manual anywhere. It seems simple enough (Except I don't understand why I don't have any points to distribute amongst my career and general skills) but I'd definitely prefer to have the documentation if possible.


I figure I'll focus on Serpent Isle, Wasteland, and Matrix Cubed for now, and I'll definitely see about getting Darklands. Oh, a question about that: Do people have any problems running Darklands on Xp? If so, I followed the directions to make XP capable of running Betrayal at Krondor, so would that mean the problem is already fixed? I definitely don't want to purchase the game and then not be able to run it.




Another game that I recommend, while not technically an RPG, is Elite. Wonderful game.

I'm not familiar. I'll look into it.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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Morrowind's combat system sucks and has never managed to hold my attention for more than a couple of hours. That's all I gotta say about that. :P Daggerfall kept me up many times until the wee hours of the morning and, while not stellar, the combat is pretty decent.

That's a negatory on the manual for MC. Sorry. Even I don't have it. My copy of MC came with just the floppies and nothing else. There are other abandonware sites out there though. You may wish to look deeper.

I never had a problem running Darklands on XP. It installed and played just fine. BUT, I have had friends have problems getting it to run on their computers with XP. They were using Pro though, whereas I have Home.
 

Elwro

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Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Amerestatistic said:
My first question: What can you recommend to somebody who would like to go back and play some of these games, but requires them to be accessible (well, as accessible as old rpgs can be...) and easy to get working on modern PCs? .
Try both DarkSun games, especially the first one. IIRC They both work perfectly under W98, or at least in the MS-DOS mode.
 

Sharpei_Diem

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Dec 4, 2002
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We're here
another thing you can do is pick up an old computer emulator....I know there's atari ST and older Atari emulators (I have a couple) and commodore ones. They usually work fine and have the added benefit that alot of their games are legitimate freeware.

Just go to google and type the system and emulator. Any reasonable site you go to should have tons of stuff....Some of the games you could find available:

Ultima 3/4/5
Wizardry i -
Dungeon Master
Sundog (yeah, i liked FTL)
Bards Tale 1-
Zork 1 -
Leather Goddesses of Phobos (grin)
etc...

Another one you should look for is Betrayal at Krondor (for PC)...it's freeware now and you should be able to find a link somewhere...
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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Messages
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Location
The state of insanity.
Leather Godesses Of Phobos. LOL. What a fun game that was. ;) Too bad the sequel was horrid. Infocom has library sets of all their games available out there. If you don't mind text adventures, those are recommended as well. They pumped out alot of them back in the day and most of them are rock solid titles.
 

Petey_the_Skid

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 1, 2003
Messages
170
Location
Stanstead, Quebec
This is the best site for any wasteland help that you'll need, since you said you'd be playing it soonish, it has the manual, the paragraphs, several maps of the earlier towns and the wasteland(but not all of them), and some hints, cheats and other tips(including something like a 300 page walkthrough, if you really want it)

http://wasteland.rockdud.net/wasteland.html

Petey The Skid, Desert Ranger Wannabe

edit: Darklands should still be available, last i knew, UltimateDarklands.com forums were still up, and I'm sure you'll be able to order it from there.
 

Rosh

Erudite
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
1,775
For Ultima 7, one of the better CRPGs before CRPGs were coined (and going back to the landmark game of Ultima IV), I would suggest this utility. Baroque Dragon originally came up with the utility, which offered bare functionality but was still quite good. Others have expanded upon it quite a bit (including Exult). There's also a good MS-DOS mouse driver for other games here.

I would suggest the same be found for other games as many hack utilities for this reason. Moslo is sometimes okay, but may cause some problems. I never was a fan of those whose purpose was to load the CPU usage until the main loop of the program in question was going slow enough to be playable.

It always has chafed me how game developers then coded impurely and it was an item that pissed my prof off all the time when I would use a calculated clocking system on my early projects rather than use the main bloody loop time for some kind of artificial relative clocking. "You shouldn't put a calculated clock into everything, it takes up too much resources." "Yes, but at least I know I have a stable clock." I even chewed on my own friends for this reason.
 

Amerestatistic

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 12, 2003
Messages
101
Others have expanded upon it quite a bit (including Exult).

Yes, I forgot to mention that I use Exult to play U7. I play the rest on either DOSbox or I simply play them in XP if the speed doesn't feel overwhelming or annoying. I love Ultima 7, except for the fact that the ending felt strangely anti-climatic, considering the quality of the rest of story. You look forward to finally meeting Hook, Elizabeth, and Abraham and they only have a line or two to say each, which I thought was unfortunate. Perhaps Serpent Isle makes up for it?

That's a negatory on the manual for MC. Sorry.

That's unfortunate. I downloaded the manual for the original, which at least gives me a basic idea of how to play, so it isn't too big a problem.


Try both DarkSun games, especially the first one. IIRC They both work perfectly under W98, or at least in the MS-DOS mode.

Just downloaded Shattered Lands and it also seems to run fine under XP. Thanks.


This is the best site for any wasteland help that you'll need, since you said you'd be playing it soonish

Thanks. Considering the fact that I often get stuck in even modern RPGs, I'm sure this will help, heh.

another thing you can do is pick up an old computer emulator....I know there's atari ST and older Atari emulators (I have a couple) and commodore ones. They usually work fine and have the added benefit that alot of their games are legitimate freeware.

Heh. But I hate legimaticy. Actually I wouldn't mind getting a C64 emulator. I suppose I'll look into it.
 

ecliptic

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 11, 2003
Messages
915
Amerestatistic said:
My first question: What can you recommend to somebody who would like to go back and play some of these games, but requires them to be accessible (well, as accessible as old rpgs can be...) and easy to get working on modern PCs? I'm only 18 and I didn't grow up playing them like I imagine a lot of you guys did, so keeping that in mind, maybe somebody can point me towards games that are good to start with...I'm afraid these generally don't include games where I have to draw my own maps, as I'm terrible at that.

A third question: In another thread, somebody said...

[my own quip about Wizardry VII]

This sounds intriguing, but first person dungeon crawlers don't seem that easy to get into, in my experience. Is this game relatively easy to figure out? Does it demand I do my own mapping, or is there some kind of automapping system? Is it commonly available as abandonware?

In regards to Wizardry VII, yes it does have automapping after about the first ten or 15 minutes or so of gamplay. The quality of the generated map is dependant on the character's mapping skill who is using the map kit. So, if it's low, you only get squares where you've been, if it's higher you get walls labeled, doors, switches etc.
I'd say it's pretty accessable, although you'll be brutalized if you don't manage to find and read the manual (as you'll be SOL when trying to form a competent party). I do believe it is generally available as abandonware, don't know for sure though because I own it, and they also updated it for Win95 with Wizardry:Gold, although the lack of keyboard support drove me insane, it seemed otherwise pretty good, as it included hint files and complete dungeon maps in the online help.

As for other games I could recommend, Ultima VI is amazing, I loved Ultima VII, but U6 just sucked me in and I didn't come up for several weeks. You'll probably need to keep a notebook with important tips from conversations, what moonstone positions go where, and what potions do what, but other than that you should be all set. It seemed like every townsperson could be talked to indepth for about twenty minutes. An amazing amount of back story and love was put into that game.

I can also recommend the Dark Sun series, as if you get annihilated you can just make a party of custom characters and max their stats out. A great series! Just keep older saves around as some of the bugs were game stopping. I.e. a disappearing npc in Wake of the Ravager that had a critically important key on him.

One last recommendation, Ultima Underworld and System Shock. OH YES. Amazing games. Looking Glass were a fine company.

My only complaint about Daggerfall was that some of the random dungeons would take hours of wandering before you found the goal, as they were ridiculously large.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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ecliptic said:
My only complaint about Daggerfall was that some of the random dungeons would take hours of wandering before you found the goal, as they were ridiculously large.

Hehe. Nothing like spending an entire night's worth of gaming in one dungeon. :P There was an upside to that though: you were almost always ensured a fat amount of loot. The best way to handle the big dungeons though is with Mark and Recall spells. I always make sure any character I play can at least get access to those spells, whether through magic ability or through items.
 

ecliptic

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Otaku_Hanzo said:
Hehe. Nothing like spending an entire night's worth of gaming in one dungeon. :P There was an upside to that though: you were almost always ensured a fat amount of loot. The best way to handle the big dungeons though is with Mark and Recall spells. I always make sure any character I play can at least get access to those spells, whether through magic ability or through items.

Mark and recall were definitely required. :) I'm just talking like sometimes the goal item / creature would be somewhere that as best I could tell was inaccessable, or required walking into a stone door hidden in the rafters of a room at a depth of fifteen hundred feet, or every once in a while I could see the target item, but it would be stuck behind a region too narrow for me to get through. I had to get in the habit of making a save BEFORE I entered the dungeon that I could always go back to in case it proved unsolvable.

When I had to find the painting for the main quest I got so amazingly frustrated after six hours of wandering around the castle dungeon (in sentinel, maybe?) that I broke down and used a cheat to let me warp to it directly.
 

Elwro

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ecliptic said:
[
When I had to find the painting for the main quest I got so amazingly frustrated after six hours of wandering around the castle dungeon (in sentinel, maybe?) that I broke down and used a cheat to let me warp to it directly.
I remember this one... it's the only place in the game where you actually have to jump through a narrow window. It's extremely hard to do.
I liked the part in this dungeon when you had to dive underwater and discover a hidden passage only accessible by crouching.
 

Amerestatistic

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Messages
101
ecliptic said:
In regards to Wizardry VII, yes it does have automapping after about the first ten or 15 minutes or so of gamplay. The quality of the generated map is dependant on the character's mapping skill who is using the map kit. So, if it's low, you only get squares where you've been, if it's higher you get walls labeled, doors, switches etc.

.

Heh, interesting. Wizardry Gold appears to be available on Ebay. I might just try to find Ultimate RPG archives since it also has the Ultima Underworlds, and it'd be nice to have the manuals in book form.

Here's a weird question for you guys: A few of these older rpgs have a "climb" skill. Wasteland of course, Matrix Cubed and Dragon Wars as well I think. When did this skill disappear from CRPGs? It seems like it would be easier to implement well in modern games. Or has it actually been there in a few, more recent games? My experience with the genre is somewhat limited but I don't think there has been...

It might seem like a silly question but I'm curious about it.
 

Psilon

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Daggerfall had climbing. The ostensible reason for its omission in Morrowind was the relative lack of straight walls in Vvardenfell and consequent difficulty in getting the third-person animations to work.
 

Elwro

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Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Amerestatistic said:
[Heh, interesting. Wizardry Gold appears to be available on Ebay. I might just try to find Ultimate RPG archives since it also has the Ultima Underworlds, and it'd be nice to have the manuals in book form.t.
Well, chances are high that you won't need them fo the next 6 months, because that seems to be standard of how long Wiz VII keeps one addicted to the point that he doesn't want to engage in other complicated games.
 

ecliptic

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Climbing always seemed to be fairly useless, save an odd scripted occasion here or there, regardless of which RPG you it was in. Like science/repair in Fallout.
 

Otaku_Hanzo

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ecliptic said:
Climbing always seemed to be fairly useless, save an odd scripted occasion here or there, regardless of which RPG you it was in. Like science/repair in Fallout.

Daggerfall put climb to good use though. Probably the only RPG I know of that handled it well. If you want the true feel of being a thief in an rpg, then Daggerfall is da shit. :)
 

Psilon

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Not only that, but climbing and slowfall potions let you effectively give a thief levitation without relying on magic skills.
 

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