CRPG Addict FAQ

What is this blog about?

This blog is about my personal journey (roughly chronologically) through 50 years of computer role-playing games (CRPGs). I play each game and discuss its strengths and weaknesses, its place in the history of RPGs, its influences, and just what it's like to play the game today.

Who are you?

I call myself Chester Bolingbroke on this blog. (I use a pseudonym because my profession would not intermingle well with my hobby.) I'm just a guy in his 50s who teaches college. I have no professional experience in the computer gaming industry.

Then why should I care about what you think?

I really have no idea. People seem to like my blog, though.

Why are you doing this?

Ever since I was introduced to my first RPG (Questron) in the mid-1980s, I've been addicted to computer RPGs. I play them far more than I should, often sacrificing elements of work and education. I primarily started this blog so I'd have something tangible to show for all the playing I do.

But I started the project--going through all RPGs in chronological order--before I started the blog. I did this as a way to experience new RPGs, because I found that I kept playing a small selection of them repeatedly. When I won Rogue, I posted the screenshot to Reddit, and someone suggested I start a blog. I found I really enjoyed the process of writing about games. In particular, it makes me feel better about playing bad games.

How do you have time to play all of these games? Aren't you neglecting your personal life and family?

I have no children, and I have few other hobbies. I can play in the middle of the night, when my wife, Irene, is asleep; on airplanes; in hotel rooms and hotel bars; and lots of other places that I find myself between work and personal obligations. But it's still inescapable that I play and blog more than I should. "Addict" isn't meant metaphorically.

How many people contribute to this site? Has the author changed over the years?

All right, let's get this out of the way:

• There is only one of me.
• There has only ever been one of me.
• This blog has been run by the same person since it started in 2010.
• If I allow a rare guest posting it is explicitly marked as such.
• I otherwise play all the games that I analyze.
• I play them all the way through.
• I do not take screen shots that represent my progress through a game from other sites or other players.
• I put in all the hours that I report that I put in.
• If I use cheats or shortcuts, I explicitly say so.

 

Lots of other people "contribute" to this site as commenters, though, and they often do a better job than I did with the main entry. Read the comments.

What do you consider a "computer role-playing game"?

  

In March 2022, I revised my definition of a role-playing game as follows: A role-playing game is one in which character development is the driving mechanic of gameplay. Specifically:

      

1. Throughout the game, the character must become stronger, more resilient, and more capable of overcoming the game's challenges, including combat.
   
2. Such character development must be separate from inventory acquisition.
3. Such character development must not consist solely of improvements to maximum health.
   
4. Players must have some control over the rate or details of development.
   

     

The last two points excludes games whose only form of character development occurs at fixed points in the game, such as the ends of missions or chapters, plus games in which all characters hit the same development milestones throughout the game and thus end with the same skills and abilities as every other character played by every other player.

     

Games that meet these criteria but otherwise seem like they belong in other genres are probably hybrids, and hybrids do meet my criteria.

My definition prior to March 2022 had three criteria:

   

1. The game must feature character development.
2. Combat success must be based in part on intrinsic attributes and not just player reflexes or weapon statistics.
3. The player must have a flexible inventory of equipment he can wield, equip, unequip, sell, drop, and trade.

I decided that #2 was inherent in #1 and I was never rejecting a game based on #3 because I regarded just about anything as "equipment." Still, in older entries you might see references to my "three rules" or "three criteria."

      

What's this list? How do you determine what games you play?

I compiled a master list of CRPGs based on several sources, including Wikipedia, MobyGames, GameFAQs, and submissions from readers.

To appear on my list, the game a) must have a single-player campaign (no pure MMORPGs or MUDs), and b) it must have been released for a personal computer, in c) a Latin alphabet language. Console games do not appear on my playlist unless they also had PC releases during their original release schedule (generally within 2 years of the console release). Exceptions made and ambiguity resolved at my discretion.

Why no console games?

The list of computer RPGs is already long enough and I have to have some way to keep it manageable. I tend to like computer RPGs more than console RPGs, and emulators replicate the console experience less faithfully than the computer experience. Bottom line: it's my blog, and that's what I decided. That said, I have occasionally thrown a console game into the rotation, and eventually I'll probably pick up the best representatives of the sub-genre. These console excursions are exceptions, however, and making such exceptions does not obligate me to make more exceptions.

I know of a game that isn't on your list. Should I tell you?

No. I'm sorry, but too many games nominated by commenters have turned out not to be RPGs. I regard several online sources as authoritative in this regard, predominantly Wikipedia and MobyGames. If you know of a game not listed on one of these two sources, please take the time to submit an entry to those sites. (Make sure you are using the appropriate site's definition for what constitutes a "role-playing game.") If the site already lists the game but not as an RPG, and you think it is wrong, please submit a correction. Either way, I will find the game on my next scan of the site and add it to my master list.

What order do you follow?

Chronologically by year of original release, then with all games in a particular year randomized. Eventually, I'll get to a year when we have good data on specific dates of release, and I'll go in that order.

But you're not going in chronological order! Your posts jump all over the place in years. Why?

New games get found and added to the master list all the time. It seems like I'm always trying to catch up. I thus tend to alternate games from my "current" year with recently-discovered games from older years.

 

You seem to be losing time. Are you ever going to get caught up to the current year?

God, no. That isn't even really the purpose of my blog. There are plenty of sites that discuss current RPGs. I'm perfectly happy if most of the RPGs I'm writing about are a couple of decades old. 

 

What are BRIEFs? I keep seeing the term.

I call an entry a BRIEF when I'm rejecting a game as an RPG, or when I can't play it more than a couple of hours because of a technical reason. I offer what I can and move on. These games do not get numbered and do not count towards my win/loss statistics. I still want to write about them so that readers don't repeatedly submit questions asking why I haven't covered a particular game.

     

I see you have an "upcoming" list, but then you keep writing about games that aren't on that list. What kind of schedule do you keep anyway?

     

Fair question. This is what I generally try to do:

     

1. Compose the "upcoming" list with games from my "current" year and games from years I've already passed through (without knowing about them at the time).
2. Post four entries in a row covering the games on my current list (the ones with arrows next to them), spaced about every 2.5 days apart, alternating at least two games. If I win a game, I advance the next game on the "upcoming" list to the current list.
3. Every fifth entry, pull a random game from a grab-bag list of games I haven't played yet, ones I rejected, ones I played and abandoned, or console games. 
4. Sometimes instead of #3, I do a "special topic" entry.
   

     

Those looking for a hard-and-fast, predictable system will have to look for it on other blogs. Sometimes I just don't feel like doing what's next on the list.

     

Why don't your entries ever have links to your source for the games, and why do you never discuss those sources?

       

The games I play come from a variety of sources. I buy them when there's a legitimate source selling them. I sometimes get them directly from the developers. I own some of them already. And yes, some of them I "pirate." Confessing to general piracy is the furthest I'm willing to go; I'm not going to publicize every specific act that I commit by linking to the sources of those pirated games.

    

It's also against Blogger's terms of service to link to illegal content. This is why I don't allow links to abandonware sites even in the comments.

 

What is this GIMLET I keep hearing about? Why do you rank and score these games?

The GIMLET is an indexed scoring system that I developed a long time ago. I was looking for a way to categorize and quantify what I like about games, so I designed the 10 categories to roughly balance what's important to me.

It has the illusion of being objective because it results in a number, but it's still a very subjective system. My scoring hasn't always been consistent over time, and of course plenty of other players value different things about RPGs. A lot of readers don't like the GIMLET--don't like any attempt at all to rank games quantitatively--and I encourage them simply not to read those "final rating" posts, or at least not pay attention to the numbers.

It's important to understand, though, that the final score is not like modern reviews, where an 80 is quite bad, or some kind of college grading system, where 70 is failing. It's intended to have lots of room for improvement, and it's likely that no game ever published would score 100. On the GIMLET scale, I start recommending games with a score of around 35. A GIMLET of 50 or above is a very good score--held by only about 10% of games.

It's also important to understand that the GIMLET ranks games as they are now, not as they were at the time. It's intended to compare games from wildly different eras. If I rank a 1988 game with a 60 and a 2014 game with a 50, it means I honestly enjoyed the 1988 game more despite its age.

You're playing the wrong version of this game! You should check out . . .

Yes, yes, everyone has their favorite platforms from their youth. I'm always--always--going to choose the platform that offers the easiest experience emulating the game, and that's almost always going to be DOS (if it was released for DOS). I don't care if the Amiga version has better graphics or sound or the Atari ST version has a special alternate ending. I welcome comments on the differences that other platforms offer, but I'm not going to switch to one unless the DOS version has bugs that make the game unplayable or unwinnable.

I'm definitely not going to play the same game on a second platform. No, not even "just to check it out." Not even to "fully document" it. My list is already long enough.

How can I support your blog?

1. After fighting it for years, I finally set up a Patreon account in 2019.

2. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. You don't have to watch anything. The subscription alone helps me meet YouTube's threshold for where they allow me to have ads.

3. Consider buying my book if I ever release it.

You make a lot of typos. Do you want to know about them?

I know. It really annoys me. I write and edit professionally, so it's also a bit inexcusable, and it's getting worse as I get older. Yes, I want to know about them. You may e-mail me or put the correction in the comments for the article. If you do the latter, please understand that I will delete the comment after making the correction, so if you have other things that you want to say about the entry, please leave them in a separate comment.

  

I have several dedicated readers--LanHawk, Gabor, Busca, and occasional others--who send me corrections some time after my entries are published. Without them, I'd sound a lot more illiterate than I currently do.

Any other preferences on commenting?

I don't moderate or censor comments. I only delete spam, links to commercial entities, or anything that's particularly lewd or vile. But since you asked, here are some comments that I wish people would occasionally re-think:

• Anything that begins with the words "actually," "eh," "not really," or otherwise completely dismisses what the previous person has said. That fills me with incomprehensible rage.

• Comments in which the commenter clearly hasn't read my other posts on the game, or even the post he's commenting on.

• Comments that just regurgitate stuff I've already covered in the postings.

• Comments that address issues already answered in this FAQ.

• Spoilers. "Previews" of material coming up in a game I'm just beginning to cover are spoilers. Spoilers don't have to be explicit answers to puzzles; they include anything that robs me of the experience of finding something for myself. (I prefer not to "find" horrid bugs, so those aren't spoilers.)

Should I bother to comment on old games?

Yes! I get an e-mail with every comment. I love to hear more discussion on games long gone by, especially if there were unanswered questions or outstanding issues.

What software do you use to make your maps?

Microsoft Excel. I adjust the row and column widths until they make squares, then use the border-drawing tools to add walls, doors, secret doors, and such. Letters and symbols in the cells annotate treasures and encounters. I like the way this works except there isn't a good border style for a door.

Do you allow guest posts?

Most e-mails I get asking this are from wholly unrelated writers who clearly haven't even read my blog. No, I don't want your guest post on time management, social media, or job interview skills. Screw you for wasting my time.

As for guest posts on games, I have not solicited them so far, but it's an idea I'm considering for the future. I'd still play all the games myself, but I might offer guest posts on alternate perspectives, different platforms, or games that I abandoned before winning.

I/my company am/is working on a forthcoming RPG? Will you play it and tell me what you think?

I hate having to say no to this, but no. I get too many requests like this, and I just don't have time for them all.

Will you help me promote my game on your blog?

Generally, no. I don't allow direct advertising or facilitate it. I might mention your game/remake/Kickstarter campaign/whatever if it has some direct relevance to a game I'm currently playing.

Is Skyrim really your favorite game? Did you really call it "the best RPG you had ever played"?

     

No and technically yes, but no. People keep repeating this based on an entry I made way back in 2011. I did say in that entry, "The game is fantastic--perhaps the best CRPG I have ever played." However, it is important to keep in mind:

• At the time I am updating this FAQ, that was 10 years ago. Including those I wrote about for my blog, I had played maybe 75 games at that point; I have played almost 500 now.

• I was writing two days after Skyrim was released. I only had about 10 hours into the game and its flaws had not fully become apparent. In subsequently postings, I was measured and even critical about aspects of the game.

• Over time, it became clear that I look for different console experiences than computer RPG experiences. I wrote about this in relation to Final Fantasy. I've only played Skyrim on the console, and thus I no longer believe it's a good idea to compare it to computer RPG experiences.

     

I still think Skyrim is a fun game, and I look forward to the next installment of The Elder Scrolls, but it is not my favorite RPG. If it amuses you to use this "fact" to sling feces, however, I can't really stop you.

Any more questions about the blog in general? Write to me at crpgaddict@gmail.com!

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