|
|
Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 2, 2008 0:12:55 GMT -6
Okay,
Let's talk about some REAL old school computer RPGs. Please share your memories of those fun but sometimes frustrating text-based or text and graphic based games like Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord, Temple of Apshai, Zork, and probably lots of others. I remember seeing the ad for Hellfire Warrior (which was an expansion for Temple of Apshai) in Dragon and having a burning desire to get that one.
|
|
|
|
Post by driver on Jul 2, 2008 0:41:03 GMT -6
I pretty much lived in the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. I went back and mapped out every level even after completing the game, although I'm sure there were some errors due to spinners and teleports. I didn't have as much fun with Knight of Diamonds or Legacy of Llylgamyn.
I enjoyed Bard's Tale, but nothing ever got me like Proving Grounds.
I saw the Apshai stuff in the Dragon but didn't have the machine to run it. One of my friends ended up getting it for whatever piece of crap he had, VIC-20 or something, and we'd sit there and watch each other grow old as we waited for it to load from tape drive. The ads made it look so awesome and I was pretty disappointed. The little books you had to read from had some cool bits, but I probably built it up too much based on the wicked ads.
I played Rogue a lot, too, and some of the Infocom games.
|
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 2, 2008 0:53:07 GMT -6
Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is old school (although more Gygaxian AD&D than Original). It likes big words and exotic terminology for armour and weaponry such as baselard, bascinet & camaille, heaume, bipennis (it's a two-headed battleaxe, folks  ) and even the bec de corbin and other polearms; it has exotic and out there monsters, a rather Gygaxian system and of course magic vs. technology (starships, meta-droids, creepy laser lance-wielding guys and even a laser sword, the ultimate in munchkinism). Wizardry VII. is wery much the definition of old school for me.
|
|
jochen
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 22
|
Post by jochen on Jul 2, 2008 0:56:56 GMT -6
I have Wizardry, the proving Grounds for my Commodore 64 but I never managed to really play it. I remember that it took me ages to have it running and when I finally had built my party and went down the dungeon I was a little too daring so I got a TPK. When loading the game again, I think I was not allowed to play these characters again for they were literally dead. Unfortunetely I became very frustrated with it and never gave it a second chance. But Since you played it with such great pleasure, maybe I should give it a second try.
But what charmed me at first sight was Akalabeth - World of Doom. I just LOVED to run down these corridors and hack-hack-throw-shoot-hack again. What I liked most was that if you picked the warrior class you could still use the magic-user's spells but witha a good chance of mishap. If you were lucky you were turned into a Lizard man. And this in fact again was a bug which made me win the game: If you got turned into a Lizard man over and over again, your Hit Points would increase insanely for no reason, so you could walk down deep and kick the Balrog.
|
|
|
|
Post by driver on Jul 2, 2008 1:10:26 GMT -6
When loading the game again, I think I was not allowed to play these characters again for they were literally dead. Unfortunetely I became very frustrated with it and never gave it a second chance. But Since you played it with such great pleasure, maybe I should give it a second try. We cheated pretty often to preserve our beloved characters ... as soon as a TPK was imminent, you can power down your machine and then use the R)estore utility to recover the party. There are also cheats that pump your characters with ridiculous amounts of gold and xp. That said, I later went through and completed the game "honestly" many times after the initial munchkinism of youth. "Honestly" still means grinding out XP by killing Murphy's Ghosts, and never visiting any dungeon levels other than 1st, 4th, 9th, and 10th, and casting Dumapic/Malor to bug out of the dungeon every time. But it's still better than I9ing your Bishop to 100,000,000 xp so you could cast Tiltowait on Bubbly Slimes.  |
|
|
|
Post by dwayanu on Jul 2, 2008 1:15:36 GMT -6
Proving Grounds was my favorite. Akalabeth was good, but I thought the Ultima series got better. I also enjoyed Might & Magic: Gates to Another World (or whatever it was called; don't recall whether that was II or III).
Temple of Apshai couldn't hold a candle to Rogue, in my experience.
|
|
|
|
Post by Zulgyan on Jul 2, 2008 1:28:18 GMT -6
Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is old school (although more Gygaxian AD&D than Original). It likes big words and exotic terminology for armour and weaponry such as baselard, bascinet & camaille, heaume, bipennis (it's a two-headed battleaxe, folks ) and even the bec de corbin and other polearms; it has exotic and out there monsters, a rather Gygaxian system and of course magic vs. technology (starships, meta-droids, creepy laser lance-wielding guys and even a laser sword, the ultimate in munchkinism). Wizardry VII. is wery much the definition of old school for me. Check this awesome vid out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkwJ8RtmUco |
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 2, 2008 3:38:46 GMT -6
It doesn't get any better than this. Ever. Thanks! ;D (My party was not so well optimised; I didn't have a faerie, and had the Maenad's Lance which I think is a bit looked down upon... and of yourse you had to have Ymmu's Paw, because it was, well, Ymmu's Paw, the coolest thing after sliced bread. In our group, completing Wizardry VII. was that special sort of achievement, a bit like the Tomb of Horrors, I guess. I was d**n proud of myself when, after two years, I finally got to the end. It is still d**n popular in Hungary; the W7 topic on the RPG.HU forums never seems to slow down.) |
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 2, 2008 9:12:36 GMT -6
Ahh, Akalabeth. Pick Fighter, get amulet, keep Transmuting 'til you were a Lizard Man, kick ass.
Ultima 1 rocked. I maxed DEX (25), the chose Elf, Thief, Female to get all the +DEX modifiers. Went into town, stole a Blaster and some armor. Went out and wasted monsters until I could buy an air car. Then I actually mapped all 32 dungeons!!
Phantasie I was fantastic (Phantasie II was awful, Phantasie II was also very good). It was like a cross between Ultima 3 and Wizardry, with fun dungeons and a nifty tactical combat screens. Highly recommended
|
|
|
|
Post by coffee on Jul 2, 2008 10:36:59 GMT -6
Proving Grounds was my crack. A friend and I played that for days, but never got past about the 4th level.
I did once have a very very accurate map of level 1. After reaching a pretty decent level, we went through the entire level casting "Dumapic" in each square. (That was a really weird level.)
One thing we did to amuse ourselves during the rather samey combat routine was change our characters' names. This led to the computer announcing:
Kobold chops at Wood -- and misses!
or
Orc swings at Air -- and misses!
(Well, we were young.)
I never played any of the others listed above, except for Zork, and that's not really a RPG.
|
|
|
|
Post by ffilz on Jul 2, 2008 10:40:39 GMT -6
I never really bit the computer game bug (though I bought a lot of them).
I did acquire and play many of the Scott Adams text adventures on the Apple II. I played some Zork at Bosklone and subsequent Boskones. I also played Adventure on MIT computers a bit.
Later I acquired Ultima II and played a LOT of that (fueled in large part by the company I worked for during the summer loaning me a Compaq luggable to take back to school to do more work for them). I ended up cracking the Ultima II data files (I may still have the maps I printed out). I even built a map editor for it. I could put any creature anywhere (and change whether the creature was neutral or not) and edit my characters (also with an editor). Through this hacking, I determined Lord British was un-killable (I gave my PCs the maximum number of hit points and healing potions).
More recently, I got hooked on Frotz and Inform to write and play text adventure games. I purchased the complete collection of Infocom games and toyed around with Zork, even running Frotz on my palm pilot to play Zork!
There was a computer game that I played a lot that a college friend introduced me to. One of the things we thought was super cool was that it had both a overhead view tactical combat mode and a "quick combat" mode. Using the quick combat mode you took somewhat more damage but combats completed almost instantaneously so it was great for fighting encounters that were now trivial. We really wanted to figure out a way to do the same thing in a table-top RPG. Dragon might have been in the title of the game.
Frank
|
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 2, 2008 11:45:58 GMT -6
Pool of Radiance/Curse of the Azure Bonds/Secret of the Silver Blades/Pools of Darkness (the Gold Box series) had Quick Combat
I liked the Vorpal Bunnies in Wizardry 1, and also the way monsters were generic at first, but as you encountered them more you got better at identifying them. What I didn't like was being lvl 12 after dungeon level 9, and needing to get about 5 more levels before level 10 was doable
|
|
|
|
Post by Zulgyan on Jul 2, 2008 12:07:24 GMT -6
|
|
Arminath
Level 4 Theurgist
WoO:CR
Posts: 150
|
Post by Arminath on Jul 2, 2008 12:18:01 GMT -6
Wow, thinking about my 'mighty' Commodore64 with its 'huge' 2 meg external hard drive takes me back! In those days the Ultima games (all the way to U4) and Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord were definitely my addiction when not actually gaming. Heh Heh...cutting edge tech back then...  |
|
jochen
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 22
|
Post by jochen on Jul 2, 2008 12:41:09 GMT -6
defenitely! Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar was the Elder Scrolls Oblivion of the mid-eighties. Richard Garriot was a true world builder. And do you remember the spell book which looked like an actual spell book with listing componenst for spells and the 'book of lore' which explained the world from a citizens view? Only a reference card in the box gave you a hint that it is actually a computer game. Oh and the cloth map....and the beautiful melody! You were really rewarded back then if you bought the game instead of copying cracked disks of the game. Pirates did not get the funny metal ankh |
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 2, 2008 13:14:46 GMT -6
Ultima IV was 'teh awesome'. When I finally finished THAT game, I had a true sense of achievement. I was also addicted to Bard's Tale - I've now done it all the way through four times.
|
|
jochen
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 22
|
Post by jochen on Jul 2, 2008 13:27:00 GMT -6
the "tales of the unknown" is a true classic. This winter me and a friend carried my C64 to his home to meet its comerade. We now meet every couple of weeks for a night to sit together all evening with our disk drives humming while smoking and drinking lots of unhealthy bewerages where in the meanwhile we simultaneously steer our parties through the catacombs. When we will have killed that Mangar, we will copy off our characters from our player disks to one shared player disk and then will form two parties and will have player versus player combats ("there is disorder in your ranks!"). The survivors of the battles will then form a new party with which we will go for the sequel of the game!
|
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 2, 2008 13:30:24 GMT -6
I'm a bit of a CRPG nut. At last count I had 242 of them. I have even finished some |
|
|
|
Post by castiglione on Jul 2, 2008 21:45:32 GMT -6
Eamon was my Kryptonite back in the day.
Old-school text-based RPG. Only four magic spells but they got the job done.
I played the poop out of this game.
The Star Wars based adventure was kind of lame, though. The storm-troopers couldn't shoot worth poop.
|
|
Arminath
Level 4 Theurgist
WoO:CR
Posts: 150
|
Post by Arminath on Jul 4, 2008 22:41:17 GMT -6
defenitely! Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar was the Elder Scrolls Oblivion of the mid-eighties. Richard Garriot was a true world builder. And do you remember the spell book which looked like an actual spell book with listing componenst for spells and the 'book of lore' which explained the world from a citizens view? Only a reference card in the box gave you a hint that it is actually a computer game. Oh and the cloth map....and the beautiful melody! You were really rewarded back then if you bought the game instead of copying cracked disks of the game. Pirates did not get the funny metal ankh Yeah, they don't make games of that depth anymore - alot of bells and whistles, but the Quest of the Avatar was something that took you beyond the norm for RPGs at that time. I used the books for that game for an actual D&D campaign and handed them out to the players...it was like magic... |
|
|
|
Post by driver on Jul 5, 2008 18:34:41 GMT -6
The Ultima "Pagan" installment was a huge letdown, even without the system-crashing bugs. The Avatar was expected to run around town looting people's houses.  |
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 5, 2008 20:22:24 GMT -6
Yes, Pagan was a severe disappointment
The first time I ever experienced terror in a video game was playing FTL's Dungeon Master on 1987. When those scorpions as big as a house come screaming out of ambush and you are out of mana and turn to fly for your life...
|
|
|
|
Post by vladtolenkov on Jul 6, 2008 17:07:34 GMT -6
So I was wondering if anybody ever brought any stuff from these games to the tabletop? ;D If so what was it?
|
|
|
|
Post by driver on Jul 6, 2008 17:14:06 GMT -6
So I was wondering if anybody ever brought any stuff from these games to the tabletop? ;D If so what was it? I've used Wizardry for inspiration before, and I'm probably putting the Blade Cuisinart and Murasama Blade somewhere in the Wilderlands. One of my planets is nicknamed "the Crystal Planet," which is an unintentional shout-out to Starflight. |
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 7, 2008 3:43:00 GMT -6
So I was wondering if anybody ever brought any stuff from these games to the tabletop? ;D If so what was it? Look no further than my short adventure in Fight On! #1... ;D |
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 7, 2008 7:32:46 GMT -6
My outdoors encounter in Fight On #1 was inspired by Micropose's Master of Magic.
|
|
|
|
Post by badger2305 on Jul 8, 2008 21:17:06 GMT -6
My outdoors encounter in Fight On #1 was inspired by Micropose's Master of Magic. Oh, man, Master of Magic was and is one of my absolute favorites. I must admit to having a preference for playing the True Race (ahem), um, I mean, Halflings on Myrrn, with the Warlord option picked. Nothing quite like super-elite enchanted adamantine hobbit slingers - "ka-THWOK, ka-THWOK!" Ahem. I've become giddy with nostalgia. |
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 8, 2008 23:32:36 GMT -6
Yeah, MM was the best of the Civilization clones. Too bad it doesn't like my new PC, because I'd totally play it today.
|
|
|
|
Post by makofan on Jul 9, 2008 7:48:13 GMT -6
melan - are you using WinXp or Vista? I run it at home on WinXP no problem, but it might be in DosBox or VDMS; I could check. My problem with MoM is I can play it on impossible level with all sorts of different strategies and always win, so it has no replay value any more - now I'm playing MOO2 on Impossible Huge Galaxy 8-player
|
|
|
|
Post by Melan on Jul 10, 2008 0:27:10 GMT -6
Windows XP; DosBox didn't work for me. Or was it only the sound? Hm.
|
|
) and even the bec de corbin and other polearms; it has exotic and out there monsters, a rather Gygaxian system and of course magic vs. technology (starships, meta-droids, creepy laser lance-wielding guys and even a laser sword, the ultimate in munchkinism). Wizardry VII. is wery much the definition of old school for me.
