CRPG Book - Released

Amazing, this is a real work of art!

I remember reading a fairly long article that I think was called "A History of Crpg" on the "Gamasutra" webpage a few years ago and how impressed I felt by that work. However, that absolutly pales into insignificance compared to this.

Hey, congratulations! I'll have to check it out.

Congratulations Felipe Pepe - a big Thank You for all the work!

I wonder if you could prevail upon the Watch or the Codex to help with taking orders at the worst possible price for printing, with a sort of Groupon sliding benefit as the group reduces the unit cost? People could post in a thread to "order", much as they do to enter giveaways, and the boss could keep a list of who's paid up to discourage flakes.

Flakes? Among middle-aged gamers? Never!

Congrats on releasing the book

On page 24 a teacher writes about having students play games from yesteryear. Now if you're older like I am and that pisses you off… wait, there's more. One such class assignment is to play Ultima IV. Let that sink in a moment. A CLASS ASSIGNMENT to play Ultima IV. This really pisses me off. Man, I grew up in the wrong era.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
On page 24 a teacher writes about having students play games from yesteryear. Now if you're older like I am and that pisses you off… wait, there's more. One such class assignment is to play Ultima IV. Let that sink in a moment. A CLASS ASSIGNMENT to play Ultima IV. This really pisses me off. Man, I grew up in the wrong era.

@filipepepe I didn't know it was you that gave out the Fallout assignment, so its interesting that you followed up with Ultima IV.

You might have got better results if you eased them into it like most people did at the time - by playing Ultima ]I[ first.

But the feedback from the one student is very much like the problem my wife's cousin is having with her high school students (advanced english no less) where they have to be coddled really badly.

I also had that problem with the 4 year university I taught at 6 years ago - the students conspired in every class to not read the text book.

I'm not an expert but afaik there are printing services where the books are printed (with ISBN and everything) on demand when someone orders them. The honorarium for the author is quite low of course. But it's more or less risk free.

Gratz! That thing is really massive.
Great overview. I also like the desity of screenshots.

The CRPG Book has been uploaded to the internet archive for posterity.
https://archive.org/details/crpg-book-1.0

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
@filipepepe I didn't know it was you that gave out the Fallout assignment, so its interesting that you followed up with Ultima IV.

I'm not the author of that article.

Nice work on the book it’s a well done and valuable resource. But the order of that list is yikes. Dark Souls over Baldurs Gate? Gothic 1 is #26?

Congrats, Felipe. This is a true joy to read and a real walk down memory lane for me. This masterpiece is too good to leave in PDF format.

Congratulations. Looks like a lot of hard work, but I don't know of anything else like this. A true labor of love.

Amazing! Would definitely buy this if it were published!

My CRPG beginnings date to Hellfire Warrior from 1980, which is mentioned on a side caption on page 43. My dad loaded it up on a cassette tape for me to play on an Atari 800 when I was 7 years old in 1982. I didn't fully get hooked into RPGs until the late 80s though. That was on a C128.

Originally Posted by felipepepe
I'm not the author of that article.

heheh - I should the fine print closer.

So far, I like what I read. There's some surprising insight in some of these articles I didn't know about and they manage to pack it into the space they are given.

On the Plato rpg's is there space to talk about how the source code of these early games was so easily stolen?

When I first played dnd in the 80's we were convinced the game was an open source Apple ][ game - and these versions were in BASIC. I wouldn't be surprised if Garriot thought the same thing as he rewrote the thing from scratch repeatedly until it became Akalabeth.

Is Empire the first MMOG, and not AoL NWN which has been annointed as such?

Took a quick look today, and it appears rather comprehensive with a lot of ancillary contextual sections. Nice job felipepepe!

Hope to find the time and place to properly read this.

I don't think my iphone would work.

Mainstream media noticed it:
https://kotaku.com/massive-book-abou…-fr-1822796892

Appearing on a site that doesn't like PC much, I'd say it's a compliment.

Yeah, it even reached the gaming media in Norway. Excellent work.