Thirty Year Anniversary: Pool of Radiance

[LordofSyn]

Grinding was the name of the game back when this released. It also used the camping spell mechanic for balance. It used to be annoying in tabletop too, but made sense.
Grinding was a feature.

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[octavius]

If you have to grind, then you need to play an easier game.

The areas had a fixed number of random encounters. Not sure what the trash mob complaint is about.

Gateway to the Savage Frontier, now that is a Gold Box game that was full of trash combat...

 

[mondblut]

Hail to the king.

 

[groundhog]

This is next on my list of games to play and I plan to eventually play through the whole series. Would the experience be improved by having a copy of the D&D rulebook (especially in regards to spells), or are the manuals sufficient and/or the don't the games follow D&D rules close enough to make it worthwhile?

 

[octavius]

The manuals are suffienct.

Only extra thing you really need to know is in regards to the sequels if you want to transfer characters.
You can have Paladin and Ranger characters in Curse of the Azure Bonds.
The class level limits for demi-humans are nice to know before you start, so consult the charts in the Pools of Darkness manual.

 

[JarlFrank]

Grinding was the name of the game back when this released. It also used the camping spell mechanic for balance. It used to be annoying in tabletop too, but made sense.
Grinding was a feature.

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Mandatory grinding has always been a shit mechanic, and I didn't find PoR to suffer overly much from it. There are lots of random encounters, sure, but you can run away from them, and once you've gained a couple of levels you can get through the game without grind, just doing the occasional random encounter and the fixed encounters, you'll easily reach the level cap without going out of your way to grind.

Other games of the time were way worse (like fucking Bard's Tale).

 

[LordofSyn]

Mandatory grinding has always been a shit mechanic, and I didn't find PoR to suffer overly much from it. There are lots of random encounters, sure, but you can run away from them, and once you've gained a couple of levels you can get through the game without grind, just doing the occasional random encounter and the fixed encounters, you'll easily reach the level cap without going out of your way to grind.

Other games of the time were way worse (like fucking Bard's Tale).

The OG Bard's Tale was such a great damn game. Never took itself seriously.

You can complain that grinding is a shit mechanic all you want. Back then, it was how games were made and it reflects the grind that can be found in tabletop gaming too. Grinding has its pros and cons just like any game mechanic.

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[JarlFrank]

I have a long-running (should be 5 years by now) D&D campaign running and our DM never threw grindy trash mobs at us, every encounter we get into is a meaningful challenge.

I don't get where your impression comes from that tabletop D&D is grind-heavy. Maybe you have a shit DM.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Yeah, if I threw a party of 36 orcs at my PnP players, they'd groan with boredom. I usually have 3-5 combat encounters per session and that's considered high by many players. I try to make them fun and challenging, not just trash fights.

In Pool of Radiance I think the issue isn't that there are too many fights, it's that they are unrewarding. Fighting party after party of goblins is no fun when they give miserable XP and paltry treasure. Blame that on the old 1E/2E XP tables though, where most of your XP is supposed to come from treasure.

 

[octavius]

grind.

Other games of the time were way worse (like fucking Bard's Tale).

Of all the CRPGs I've played I think the DOS version of BT1 was the only one where I felt that I needed to grind some levels, in order to survive the top of Mangar's Tower. When I played the Amiga version I was but a neophyte blobberer, so I guess I "grinded" inadvertently due to my slowness.

I think people use the word "grind" in different ways, though.
To me grinding is lingering in an explored area and provoke random encounter, or do the same fixed battles repeatedly (for example Wyverns in MM1, Cuisinarts in MM2), to level up and make the rest of the game easier, instead of pressing on and face the challenges.

Others seem to use it in the meaning "there's random encounter of trash mobs every second step", which just means the game has a too high encounter frquency (BT games, Wiz 7).

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, I found the BT series to have way too many random encounters, and that kind of gameplay is just tedious to me. They were more frequent than in the M&Ms and Wizardries, as far as I remember.

 

[Dorateen]

From the AD&D Monster Manual

ORC
FREQUENCY: Common
NO. APPEARING: 30 - 300

For every 30 orcs encountered there will be a leader and 3 assistants.

Pool of Radiance, faithful as always to the source material.

 

[octavius]

Heh, very different indeed from the squads of high level Orcs my party encountered last time I played the BG Trilogy.
Although I guess the Xvart village functioned like the old edition Orcs,