Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[SarcasticUndertones]

You've probably already though of this but, no chance of it running in dosbox?


When I think of the old Forgotten Realms games, Menzoberranzen always sticks in my mind, I think because all the pink-ish purple burned itself into my skull.

I'm pretty sure that there are locks that can be picked (of course knock works great) like the city with undead beasts roaming around. Eye of the Beholder and its like also had lock picking as mostly worthless as with Darksun games.

The Darksun games might not have been up to much, but the novels were pretty great.

 

[GarfunkeL]

The Dark Sun games are good, they are just combat heavy. You don't have much use for thieves.

 

[Dorateen]

Fighter/Druid/Thief multi-class character. Seemed like forever to level up that cannibal halfling.

 

[Sceptic]

The Dark Sun games are good, they are just combat heavy. You don't have much use for thieves.

Backstab is insanely powerful if used properly, and a Fighter/Thief can easily out-damage a Half-Giant Gladiator. The thief also opens up several alternative solutions to quests, including giving access to a small area that is otherwise inaccessible. It's not much, but coupled with backstab's power it makes running with one worth it, and actually quite fun.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I never bothered with backstab since positioning in them is such a pain in the ass. Preserver, Psionic/Cleric and two Half-Giant gladiators FTW.

 

[Malignant Manor]

The Darksun games might not have been up to much, but the novels were pretty great.

I was talking about lock picking. Shattered Lands was a great open world game. Wake of the Ravager was decent but very buggy and the mine chase sequence could take too long.

 

[SarcasticUndertones]

The Darksun games might not have been up to much, but the novels were pretty great.

I was talking about lock picking. Shattered Lands was a great open world game. Wake of the Ravager was decent but very buggy and the mine chase sequence could take too long.

Fair enough, I though it was a general comment. This is twice I've received support for this game, I think I'll have to check it out.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Looking at the poll now, after 86 pages, it seems clear that people have played Pool of Radiance the most - logical since it was the first GB game - and thus have voted it the highest. Curse and Pools also get plenty of votes, compared to Secret. Interestingly high-level D&D in GB games it not as badly viewed as it is with later iterations - plenty of people slam BG/ToB, NWN1 and NWN2 for horrid epic level gameplay - but Dark Queen of Krynn is the most popular out of the Dragonlance games and Pools of Darkness is the third most popular GB game.

 

[ProphetSword]

I think that's because as broken as D&D can be at high levels, the Gold-Box games managed to find a balance based on the fact that they didn't have a lot of the same spells available in the tabletop version of the game (Fly, Wish, etc), and there were very few ways to use the available spells in ways not anticipated by the programmers. With a limited number of spells, they were able to build encounters that challenged the party in just the right way. They were tough enough that you had to pull out some tough spells to survive sometimes while also attempting to preserve the spells you needed for future encounters in case you weren't able to rest.

This is something the Gold-Box games and Knights of the Chalice did quite well, actually. I haven't seen other games do quite as well with it. And I think it's part of the reason these games are held in such high regard.

 

[octavius]

The only thing that partly ruins high level GB games is the overpowered Delayed Blast Fireballs.

 

[Null Null]

Yeah...they had to make monsters immune to them, like Bits o Moander or Dracoliches.

But why did people like Pools and Dark Queen? They were just well done, IMHO. With Pools they probably learned from their mistakes in Secret and went back to being open-ended, plus people enjoyed all the mythology callbacks (half the NPCs from the first three games showed up in Pools, and bits like the trolls and ogres tossing things, the mines, and even Tyranthraxus get the nod).

Also they did the whole interdimensional thing well, with two entire alternate wilderness maps in Pools (making the other dimensions feel 'big') and the creepy Abyss with its wraparound geometry, mixed-up combat icons, and confrontation with the Dark Queen of Krynn. (Though at that level they really ought to let you fight her.)

 

[octavius]

For me: good encounter design and challenging tactical combat, especially when using my rest only once per day/dungeon rule and playing Iron Man light (only reload at party death).
DQK had just the right difficulty, I think. Pools was more uneven Marcus' Tower was too easy, while the whole Moander dimension ranged from frustrating to very hard. End battles of Pools were hard, but not unfairly so.

 

[Jaesun]

Have you played any of Ray's FRUA mods octavius ? He really keeps a tight hold on resting. I really like that.

 

[Neckbeard Shitlord]

Looking at the poll now, after 86 pages, it seems clear that people have played Pool of Radiance the most - logical since it was the first GB game - and thus have voted it the highest. Curse and Pools also get plenty of votes, compared to Secret. Interestingly high-level D&D in GB games it not as badly viewed as it is with later iterations - plenty of people slam BG/ToB, NWN1 and NWN2 for horrid epic level gameplay - but Dark Queen of Krynn is the most popular out of the Dragonlance games and Pools of Darkness is the third most popular GB game.

There's nothing at all wrong with high level DnD in 2nd edition. High level DnD just shows off the weaknesses of realtime with pause style gameplay, and the poor encounter scaling that these games suffer from.

If you play through the goldbox series one of the most striking things compared to games like these and even TOEEE is how glacially slowly the advancement comes. If you are going to kill a bunch of orcs to level up you are going to have to kill an amazing crapload of them.

This is not a flaw in gold box games, it is a flaw in later DnD editions that making advancement go very quickly and make advancing more powered up, and even more so in terrible encounter pacing. At really low levels though it's just incredibly boring to play DnD with realtime with pause due to the fact you can't actually do much of anything, so they rush you out to medium level very quickly.

There's also whining by some players about filler combat blah, so they make for fewer but more XP packed encounters.

The focus on DnD early on was exploring and finding loot, and often trying to avoid monsters. Now a lot of players concentrate on the story/LARP way more.

So it's not so much to do with DnD as the players themselves and the terrible way that games like BG II represent DnD and the very poor encounter design.

 

[octavius]

Have you played any of Ray's FRUA mods octavius ? He really keeps a tight hold on resting. I really like that.

Haven't tried them yet, but they are on my (very long) Play List.

 

[Metro]

Probably said it before but Pools was far too tedious to be considered among the best of the series. They just threw everything at you but the kitchen sink: 'here you go, guiz, another dozen Bits o'Moander, elder beholders, and pets of Kalistes.... nummy!'

 

[ProphetSword]

Can't be worse than Pool of Radiance throwing every low level encounter at you under the sun at every turn. "Here's another twenty-six orcs to slog through! Have fun!" Kind of goes back to their roots.

 

[Null Null]

Pool was intended to be an AD&D simulation as much as a game--that's why there are so many weird items like the Manual of Bodily Health and the treasures (Gold Statuette, 2 Fine Tapestries and 26 Huge Tapestries) that take up space in your item list. You could say that it was 'simulationist' and the later games moved in a 'gamist' direction if you're an RPG theory aficionado.

In AD&D, you can make a fight with 30 orcs interesting--you gloss over the 20 orcs stuck in back and describe the insults each of the 10 orcs in front hurls at the characters and then their death throes as each one goes down. In a computer game, you have to sit there while the computer gives each of them their turn.

You'll notice the later low-level games, Champions and Gateway, used fights with smaller numbers of more powerful monsters--baaz draconians, 3rd level humans, trolls, manticores, and so on--to make challenging fights for low-level characters.

 

[felipepepe]

Remember when I talked about asking some questions to TSI? David Shelley just replied to some and David Klein is trying to contact other ex-SSI bros to answer others, but I'll share this bit with you guys:

· Some items in Pool of Radiance, such as the Ring of Feather Falling, seem to serve no purpose at all. Are they remains of cut content? Were there bigger plans for the game?

Part of this was to have the volume of random items AD&D was famous for, and part was the hope to fit in uses for such things. We were on crunch time for half a year or so, trying to get the game out, so having an extra named ring was an easy add, but finding a place for it never proved practical.

· The original Neverwinter Nights is technically considered to be the sequel to Treasures of the Savage Frontier, but was there ever any plans to do a legitimate single-player sequel to the game to make that series a real trilogy? If so, can you share any details?

The Savage Frontier series was contracted out to Stormfront Studios, rather than fully developed in-house. The Pools series, Dragonlance Series and the Buck Rogers games (same engine) were all done 100% in-house. While envisioned as a trilogy, the Savage Frontier series was not making the sales, and so ended with two games. Internally, we decided to wrap up the Gold Box games with Pools of Darkness (in-house), while we ramped up to do Dark Sun, and a sci-fi RPG named M. This was a turbulent time for SSI and M ended up cut.

· Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures was released back in 1993, yet 22 years later there are still people creating and playing modules for the game. Did you ever imagined creating something so long-lasting? Why do you think it still attracts people after all these years? Did you ever play the fan-made modules?

Unlimited Adventures was one of the early use-generated content projects, and we were able to draw on a pretty solid engine and lots of content from the whole gamut of Gold Box games. I think the simplicity of the engine, as opposed to newer modable games, allows for a more manageable learning curve. And being AD&D certainly guarantees a solid following. Unlimited Adventures was Ken Humphries product, so I didn't have much of an opportunity to play fan generated modules.

· It's easy to see why SSI would want to make games based on AD&D, but why was Buck Rogers XXVC chosen as well? Was there plans to explore other licenses owned by TSR, such as Gamma World, Marvel Super Heroes, Top Secret/S.I. or The Adventures of Indiana Jones?

TSR's president at the time was a member of the Dille family, and they are very proud their grandfather created Buck Rogers. This personal connection led TSR to encourage SSI to add Buck Rogers games to the Gold Box engine. Flint Dille spent a fair amount of time in our offices, overseeing the creation, especially of the look of Buck and Wilma. There were numerous iterations, especially around Wilma's body dimensions.

None of the other licenses were seriously considered.

· No less than 13 CRPGs using the Gold Box engine were released from 1988 to 1992. From an insider's perspective, how things were during that time? Did the fans really get saturated?

I would say that fans began to tire of the engine as the industry moved to more advanced games and graphics. By this time the entire industry was facing challenges from console games and the expensive of new CD-ROM based titles. The notion of AD&D RPGs was still valid, but the engine needed a redo. Farming out the Savage Frontier to Stormfront did not prove to be enough of a cost savings to make up for declining sales. In the early years, the Gold Box games were the engine to massively expand the size of SSI, especially in terms of internal projects. Joel Billings really built SSI in the 80's as a publisher, primarily of strategy and war games. There were relatively few internal games made. Joel did Computer Bismark, then hired Paul Murray to do a series of strategy and RPGs, then Keith Brors came in (Wizard's Crown and on to the Gold Box engine). Creating the internal RPG team was a big gamble, which paid off with the massive success of Pool of Radiance.

SSI went from perhaps 30 to 70+ employees on the back of the Gold Box engine. When it became tired, the company struggled to reposition itself. Dark Sun and M had to be bigger games to compete, but management really wished they'd have the same budget as Gold Box. Also, as a publisher, the dynamics of the rising console market were wreaking havoc with cost of goods and inventory. It was at the cancellation of M and the revising of Dark Sun, that SSI jettisoned most of its internal development team, and positioned itself for eventual sale. The formula that had worked for a dozen years no longer made economic sense.

 

[octavius]

There were numerous iterations, especially around Wilma's body dimensions.

Yes, let's not lose sight of the important things...

 

[Gozma]

Hah, that Buck Rogers thing is a great chunk of gold to pan out of an interview. You can feel the guy rolling his eyes in the early '90s

 

[Jaesun]

Very cool felipepepe ! Now I wonder what the hell M was?

 

[felipepepe]

It would be a nice follow-up question. SSI doesn't exist anymore, so I doubt that any NDA is still standing...

 

[ProphetSword]

I wish he could have given more info about the question I asked about the Savage Frontier series (and to the question someone else asked about Unlimited Adventures as well). But, at least we know Savage Frontier it was originally intended to be a trilogy, and failing sales took that away. Kind of what I figured anyway.

 

[octavius]

Gateway was on top of CGW's list of best selling games for several months, so it must have sold well. That means Treasures, which was a much better game, sold poorly, which is sad. But I guess all but the ProphetSwords most rabid fans were tired of the Gold Box games by that time.