Revisiting the Gold Box games

Originally Posted by Thrasher
There should be mail order service that will print your docs for you for cheap. Business opportunity for someone.

Wouldnt work because the shipping would end up caosting more than the actual service and people wouldnt use it

Shipping in th US is a hell of a lot less expensive than printer cartridges.

Yesterday, while I was cleaning out the Gargath Keep, I stumbled on a few enemy soldiers gambling with dice in one room. The game offered me three choices: Attack, Leave, or Join Them. Well, of course I joined them. Can't turn down a game of dice, now can I? Have a short break with a "friendly" game of dice with the enemy soldiers, what a nice change of pace, eh?

Sure enough, I lose heavily. The game even tells it to me in those words, "You lose heavily." Undaunted I try a few more times. My luck's gotta change soon, isn't that what all gamblers think when they're losing. Same result. "You lose heavily." I'm starting to think, there's something fishy going on in here (well, that was my first thought before we even began, but money's not a something I'm short of in this game, so what the hey). Thinking of my options, I'm reminded of this classic movie scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uepFO4psgKE

But being short of beer, I opt to go for the "blowtorch option" right away. In other words, drink later, kick arse now. After I put my former gambling buddies to where they belong (i.e. the graveyard), the game laconically tells me: "You find out the dice were loaded." Well, no shit, Sherlock!

Now, dear students, you're task today is to find the funny thing in the following picture (taken right after clearing Gargath Keep, BTW). Hint: Red Mages reach level 6 at 50,000 XP. (The game's trolling me, for sure!)



Right, off to Sir Dargaard's tomb next. Loving this game!

Originally Posted by Lurking Grue
Now, dear students, you're task today is to find the funny thing in the following picture (taken right after clearing Gargath Keep, BTW). Hint: Red Mages reach level 6 at 50,000 XP. (The game's trolling me, for sure!)



Right, off to Sir Dargaard's tomb next. Loving this game!

I believe in AD&D you couldn't get any exp past your next level, you had to 'level up' (or actually in vanilla rules you had to go to a trainer and spend like a month to gain the level, but I don't know any groups that followed that rule)

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Shipping in th US is a hell of a lot less expensive than printer cartridges.

The problem isn't the shipping, its the copyright issues.

Originally Posted by wolfing
I believe in AD&D you couldn't get any exp past your next level, you had to 'level up' (or actually in vanilla rules you had to go to a trainer and spend like a month to gain the level, but I don't know any groups that followed that rule)

This. You'll want to go back and train as soon as you have the XP to gain a level or you might waste experience.

This is more of an issue in Pools of darkness (where you gain a lot of XP on every map) and the games were you encounter undead level drainers (PoR and DKK spring to mind). In the first case you might end up losing out on levels, in the second your experience will be reset to the minimum needed for the level you were at…

I hated fights against wights, vampires and other draining crap.

Thanks for the info guys, that's very good to know. I foolishly believed that any excess XP would've accumulated as normal and been kept after the level up. I really should have read the manual more thoroughly… Fortunately I was done with the Gargath Keep and going right back to "the base" to train (i.e. level up) when that screenshot was taken.

I must say (again), the old AD&D rules have so many strange rules. I kind of wish they'd gone with another ruleset from Ye Olde Times called RuneQuest. That being said, it would've resulted in a totally different game, so maybe not. Strange as it is for me, being one who prefers skill-based systems over class-based ones, (A)D&D fits CRPGs and especially dungeon crawls pretty well. If only these games would have the refinements of the 3rd edition rules. Yeah, I know they were like 10 years in the future when CoK was made, but one can always dream. Oh well, CoK works just as fine as it is. Just rambling again. Back to the dungeons.

The rules are part of their charm, I think. May be nostalgia talking though. I certainly prefer them over the oversimplified rules in most modern games though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31GB36YtBT8

A little nostalgia

Originally Posted by Thrasher
The rules are part of their charm, I think. May be nostalgia talking though. I certainly prefer them over the oversimplified rules in most modern games though.

I wish the rules were more consistent, though.
There were always some small, undocumented rule change (or in some cases probably programming errors) from one game to the next, which was annoying.

Yeah I hated how they kept "refining" the Goldbox rules and mechanics of the games, I distinctly remember the "Move" button in PoR series; they changed it from game to game. I think the finest, most refined experiences where not from DQoK but the Savage Frontier games…those where pretty vanilla but oh so much fun and old skool

Originally Posted by wolfing
I believe in AD&D you couldn't get any exp past your next level, you had to 'level up' (or actually in vanilla rules you had to go to a trainer and spend like a month to gain the level, but I don't know any groups that followed that rule)

you never played with us.

It came down to having to level up between modules. Technically, the group could decide to leave and come back if the DM was up for it. He'd then restock it while we were gone.

Its really the thing I dislike most about modern RPG's, this epiphany level up system. With cRPG's you could really enforce it.

Originally Posted by Carbon
Yeah I hated how they kept "refining" the Goldbox rules and mechanics of the games, I distinctly remember the "Move" button in PoR series; they changed it from game to game. I think the finest, most refined experiences where not from DQoK but the Savage Frontier games…those where pretty vanilla but oh so much fun and old skool

Treasures was good, but Gateway had the worst encounter design of all the Gold Box games except the second Buck Rogers game.

Never played the Buck Rogers games buddy, the whole "fireball rocketlauncher" deal turned me off, besides by the time they came out I was a bit feed up with the Goldboxes.
I remember Gateway beign quite fun Octavious what was wrong with the encounters?

Originally Posted by Carbon
I remember Gateway beign quite fun Octavious what was wrong with the encounters?

Read all about it:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index…rontier.70723/

Ah ok, it sort of got lost in the blur. I do remember that the features of Treasures (reinforments etc) where pretty good additions. I actualy spent today cleaning up my gameboxes and ran across almost all my Goldbox game…although I seem to have mispaleced the manuals of most of them The copies you used Octaviuos are hey the Amiga games (they must look nicer) with no copy protection? where could I download those?

Originally Posted by Carbon
Ah ok, it sort of got lost in the blur. I do remember that the features of Treasures (reinforments etc) where pretty good additions. I actualy spent today cleaning up my gameboxes and ran across almost all my Goldbox game…although I seem to have mispaleced the manuals of most of them The copies you used Octaviuos are hey the Amiga games (they must look nicer) with no copy protection? where could I download those?

Get them here:
http://www.lemonamiga.com/

Except for the Buck Rogers games I still have my original Amiga versions of all the Gold Box games. But I played the DOS version of the Savage Frontier games since DosBox is faster than the Amiga emulator, and by 1992 the Amiga versions didn't look much better anwyay.

Much obliged buddy thanks!

I'm still waiting for more Darklands and Darksun games. Sadly both game worlds are discontinued and more than likely wont be resurrected.

Darksun was actually brought back with 4E. The only good thing that 4E did, actually.

No word on any licensed games though. Seems like everyone is going gaga over the Forgotten Realms still, even DDO opened a planar rift to escape from Eberron into FR.