It Should Have Been an RPG

Confession time. My lack of entries over the last week has not been because of my usual excuse--work--but rather because all my free time has gone into Red Dead Redemption 2. It's an absurdly large, long, and addictive game. I've been on break all week (no one schedules anything the week of Thanksgiving), and what with the snow and cold here in New England, it's been tough to convince myself to leave my couch and fireplace to go play old RPGs in my office.

Some of you will see my enjoyment of this game, and perhaps even its medium, as a betrayal of the interest that we share. But I can enjoy action games on the console, too. I look for different things when I'm sitting on the couch than I do at my computer. 

That said, it's hard not to play Red Dead Redemption 2 and not wish it had more RPG elements, like character development (a few upgrades to max health, stamina, and "dead eye" don't really count) and a more tactical approach to combat. The game is extremely "realistic" in that a headshot brings down every enemy, which renders all the work you put in to getting better weapons somewhat meaningless. A player would have little problem making his way through the game with just the starting revolver. Yes, this is more "realistic"--it's always a bit jarring when I nail a super mutant in the head with a rocket launcher and it doesn't kill him--but still anathema to an RPG lover.

What Redemption does extremely well--far better than its predecessor--is the game world. There's no question that it would get a perfect 10 in that category if I was rating it on the GIMLET. Most of my joy in the game has come from simply wandering around the enormous map and finding cool things. Some of them are side quests, but a lot of them are just little vignettes. Almost every abandoned cabin has some kind of story to tell, and graphics and sound have advanced enough that you don't need explicit text to tell you what happened. I went to one cabin where there were half a dozen corpses, a couple clearly having collapsed at the dinner table. A hole in the chimney had poured poisonous carbon monoxide into the house. Another cabin had dead flowers on the doorstep, decorated for the arrival of the owner's new bride--only she never made it. His cart is found crashed at the bottom of a nearby cliff, a note on his body indicating that he was headed off to pick her up at the train station. There are dozens of scenarios like this. I can't believe the detail that the developers put into St. Denis--a fictional version of New Orleans--with dozens of back alleys, courtyards, and terraces that have no purpose to the plot and most players will never see.

An ongoing mystery concerns the disappearance, 15 years prior, of a visiting princess. She was 5 then; she would be 20 today. I learned about the enigma from a newspaper article. Later, a random camper in the wilderness told me he was obsessed with the story and heard there were some clues to be found in the town of Van Horn. I spent hours searching Van Horn, heard some cryptic things from a guy in the tavern, found some of the princess's likely belongings in the pawn shop. I'm not even sure this is a real quest--not sure it's even solvable in the game. But simply wandering around looking for clues was more fun than I have in the typical RPG with quest markers leading you from plot point to plot point.

One of the parts that I like best are all the animals. As you discover them, a compendium fills in information. You don't have to kill them; you can study them from afar with binoculars. They act about as realistic as any animals I've ever seen in a game. Beavers come out at dusk from their dams and head into the forest for wood. Deer cautiously approach riverbanks to get a drink. Cougars and wolves stalk deer. Eagles swoop down to lakes and carry away fish. If the only mission in the game had been to observe every animal, it would still be enormously fun.

Another thing it does particularly well is in the area of enemies. I'm often challenged by foes in RPGs, but it's rare that I actively fear or hate them. Redemption has some foes that I go out of my way to avoid, and some that I go out of my way to kill. The prime example of the former is a clan of creepy cannibalistic hillbillies in the northeast corner of the map, an area clearly meant to represent Appalachia. The whole part of the world is dreary and depressing. There are ruined coal towns with unemployed hobos asleep in every alley and a mining town where everyone has black lung. But the worst part is wandering into the woods at night and getting attacked by a group of overall-clad lunatics. You don't camp out in this part of the world.

Not all of the monsters are human. The swamps of Lemoyne--a stand-in for Louisiana--have alligators everywhere. I can't count the number of times I ended up between an alligator's jaws while I was searching for orchids or egrets or some other quest item that you can only find in the swamp. Unfortunately, it's dishonorable to just shoot every damned one of them. Then there are the wolves. When he reviewed The Grey (2012), Roger Ebert wrote, "When I learned of Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a helicopter, my sensibilities were tested, but after this film, I was prepared to call in more helicopters." I feel the same way after about six unsuccessful attempts to get through the same mountain pass.

On the hate side, the world is full of rival gangs with whom you develop extremely legitimate grievances. Plus, there are lots of racists. Interrupting a KKK meeting with a stick of dynamite never gets old.

The story is fun and compelling, but it bothers me from an RPG perspective how little control I seem to have as to its direction. You have control over a thousand minor things--whether to intervene in a scene of domestic violence, whether to suck the poison out of a snake-bitten victim, whether to shoot the shackles off a runaway convict--but not in the big story moments. I've said repeatedly that actual "role-playing" and "choices" aren't a necessary part of a definition of an RPG, which is true, but they are perhaps part of the definition of a modern RPG, and the lack of any meaningful input into the direction of the story really makes this game's genre clear.

(I should mention that I'm only in Chapter 5, so it's possible that things change.)

This isn't the first time I've played a non-RPG and wished I could change its genre. I felt the same way about the first Red Dead Redemption. Just like the sequel, it had an excellent game world, NPCs, main quest, side quests, and inventory, but little-to-no character development or attribute-based combat. Dishonored and its sequel might just qualify as RPGs in a technical sense, but I wish they'd gone a bit further in those same RPG elements. L.A. Noire--another Rockstar title--left me desperately wanting an RPG in the same setting. 

This phenomenon--wishing non-RPGs were RPGs--isn't a modern development for me. I had the same feeling about Pirates! when it was first released; give me the same game but with some character attributes and an inventory! I remember thinking that Airborne Ranger (1987) would have been better if the character had just gotten a little stronger in between missions. I remember wanting to earn experience in Doom. 

These fantasies may be misguided. Perhaps these games are perfect the way they are, in their natural genres, and attempts to turn them into RPGs would ruin the balance of gameplay that they already achieve. Nonetheless, the desire is there. What games have you played that you wished had taken more of an RPG approach? 

We'll return to the usual program shortly, I promise. Happy Thanksgiving! 

Plot Continuity Across Sequels (ft. Crusaders of the Dark Savant)

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is the first game for which this import process has implications beyond character attributes and equipment.

                     

If a developer allows meaningful choices in the game, how does he reflect the consequences of those choices in sequels? This question grows more and more pertinent as the years pass, and meaningful choices become a greater expectation among RPG players. Indeed, it is common on today's blogs and discussion forums for players to insist that meaningful choices--affecting the direction of the plot and the ending of the game--are an essential part of a role-playing game. Such a claim ignores most of the history of RPGs, in which the only choice most players had was whether to attack with a sword or an axe, but I'm willing to allow that true role-playing choices might become an essential characteristic of a twenty-first century RPG.

The issue becomes pertinent for essentially the first time in Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992), a sequel to a game in which the player's choices could produce one of three different endings. This isn't quite the first time this happened, but previous "alternate endings" were either just creative deaths (i.e., ways of not winning the game), such as the "bad" endings of Dungeon Master (1987), Ultima V (1988), Pool of Radiance (1988), or The Magic Candle (1989), or alternate paths that funneled to the same basic ending, as in the Quest for Glory series (1988-1992), Dragon Wars (1989), Sword of Aragon (1989), or Disciples of Steel (1991). Prior to Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990), the only game I can think of that offered true alternate ways of winning the game was the roguelike Omega (1988), and it didn't have a sequel. Slightly earlier, however, Phantasie II (1986) and III (1987) chanced some introductory dialogue depending on whether the party was created or imported, reflecting the player's choice to have finished the previous games at all.

Phantasie III has Filmon say that Nikademus would "never suspect you" if you're a new party. If you're imported, he tells you that he chose you because you'd already defeated his minions before.

          

I haven't played a lot of games post-1992, but my read is that alternate endings aren't necessarily common even through the modern era. The Elder Scrolls games, excepting Daggerfall, basically just have one. The Infinity Engine games may have offered a lot of roleplaying in between the beginnings and ends, but they all ended basically the same. There are some notable exceptions--Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series all come to mind--but I'd be surprised if more than half of modern RPGs, no matter how many branches they offer along the way, end in more than one place.

On the other hand, even games that don't offer multiple endings tend, these days, to include significant player-influenced changes in the world state between the beginning and the end. The main quest of Skyrim might end in the same place for everyone, but along the way either the Empire or the Stormcloaks won the war, the Dark Brotherhood is either destroyed or has just assassinated the Emperor, the Thieves' Guild either revived or hiding in some sewers, the world either plunged into eternal night or not. These are not factors that will be possible to ignore in any sequel just because every player "defeated Alduin."

So now that The Elder Scrolls VI is at least partly announced, what is Bethesda going to do? Based on previous games, there are several options:

1. Adopt one set of possibilities as canon. This option renders many players' choices meaningless, but it's easiest on the developers. It also tends to fit with what most players did by default anyway. So although you can end Baldur's Gate with any of about 20 NPCs in your party, the developers figure at least 50% of us are going to have played with Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, and Dynaheir, and Baldur's Gate II begins accordingly. In a less-obvious use of this option, most sequels assume that the players finished all the side quests and expansions in the course of winning the previous game, and thus have no problem introducing NPCs, enemies, and objects that some players may never have encountered (e.g., the player of Ultima VII Part Two starts with the Black Sword even if he never played the Forge of Virtue expansion to the first part). The developers basically have to choose this option if they want to include the game as part of a larger universe along with films and books.

            

A line in Skyrim assumes the player finished the Shivering Isles expansion.

           

2. Set the sequel so far away in time and space that it doesn't matter. Based on player choices, the world state at the end of Oblivion might look quite different from one Hero of Kvatch to the next, but 200 years later, during the events of Skyrim, no one cares who was head of the Fighter's Guild in a different province at the end of the Third Era. Similarly, Fallout IV makes no references to the choices made by the protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas because there's no communication between Nevada and Massachusetts, and both places have their own problems.

3. Account for all the possibilities. This one is pretty rare, and insane when it happens, but it's featured quite notably in Oblivion and Skyrim to explain the events in Daggerfall. Depending on player choices in that game--the only Elder Scrolls game so far to offer multiple endings--the giant golem Numidium is activated in support of one faction (or not) and political boundaries are reconfigured to the favor of one or more factions. To deal with all possibilities, future games feature a book called The Warp in the West that basically says at the end of Daggerfall, time "broke," Numidium was seen at multiple places, all possibilities occurred, and a trio of gods had to intervene to untangle the mess, resulting in a stable political state among four new kingdoms. 

In a less dramatic option, games after Morrowind don't take a stand on whether the Nerevarine killed the gods of the Tribunal. They're gone, sure, but maybe they disappeared on their own.

(As an aside, one of the things I love about the Elder Scrolls lore is how many distant past events can be interpreted as if they were the results of multiple player choices retconned into the same kind of a "warp" that the developers used to explain the end of Daggerfall. Take, for example, the many conflicting characterizations of Tiber Septim. Who was he originally? Where was he from? Was he the noble hero who united an empire or the lecherous villain who seduced Barenziah and then forced her to abort their love child? Did he become a god? What about the events at Red Mountain? Did Vivec kill Nerevar? What happened to the dwarves? The implication is that major characters of Tamriel's past, like Tiber Septim and Vivec, were player characters whose stories could have gone multiple ways. Their games just haven't been developed.)

4. Dynamically adapt the plot and world state of the sequel to reflect the player's choices. This is the rarest and most admirable option, and I can't think of any series that does it better than Dragon Age. The games certainly have their flaws, but attention to player choice isn't one of them. Inquisition is particularly well done. Choices both major and minor in the two previous games determined everything from the leaders of nations to the specific NPCs the player encounters, and where. (If you didn't play the previous games, you just got defaults.) The effects on the world state, the available NPCs in the game, and the direction of the plot are significant enough that players who made different choices in Origins and Dragon Age II face very different games when they get to Inquisition. (I should also note that this dedication to adapting the world state extends to the minor expansions as well as the major titles; both Awakening and Witch Hunt for Origins start very differently depending on choices made during the main campaign.) I understand that the Mass Effect series offers the same attention to this kind of detail.

              

The "Dragon Age Keep" web site lets you set the world state from the first two games, greatly enhancing continuity as you begin Dragon Age: Inquisition.

                     

While I characterize Option 4 as the most "admirable," it's also somewhat understandable when developers don't take it. It greatly expands the amount of content that they have to create, much of which will never be seen by most players. It's probably unsustainable across more than three games; certainly, it's hard to imagine Bioware accounting for all choices in Inquisition plus the two previous games if they make a fourth one.

On the other hand, it's horribly disappointing for the player to start a sequel and find that his choices in the previous game are ignored. Some games adopt a compromise between Option 1 and Option 4, using player choices in previous games to tweak a few variables (which might affect dialogue options) but otherwise offer the same gameplay experience. I seem to remember Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II going this route, changing a few scenes based on the result of some (clumsy) dialogue options at the beginning, but otherwise making some assumptions about how the first game progressed.

It's easy to think of Option 4 as the most advanced option, and thus the one we expect to see later in the development of RPGs. In fact, if it was going to be commonplace, its best chance was in the 1990s, just as meaningful choices became more common, but before reacting to those choices meant significant chances to graphics and voiced dialogue. A developer can afford to be generous with simple text adaptations.

And thus we begin Crusaders of the Dark Savant with three separate sets of opening scenes, each with different text, but sharing many of the same graphics.

             

All opening narratives show this scene, but they all use different text depending on whom the party is with.

        

If the party ended Bane of the Cosmic Forge having rejected the queen, overseeing the suicide of the vampire king, and heading off into space with a friendly dragon named Bela, they soon find that Bela has made friends (over the radio) with the Umpani, a race of intelligent pachyderms. He relates the story of Guardia and the Astral Dominae and warns the party of the other factions seeking to possess it, including the Dark Savant and his T'Rang allies. They arrive at Guardia at the same time as the Dark Savant. Bela drops the party off in the forest to start looking for the Astral Dominae while he himself chases after the Dark Savant to find out what he's up to.

           

Bela talks about his new friends.

          

If the party ended Bane by trying to take the Cosmic Forge only to be intercepted by the android Aletheides, Savant begins by having Aletheides explain that he's been sent to retrieve the pen by the Lords of the Cosmic Circle. He relates the threat to the universe now that Guardia has been discovered, and he enlists the party to accompany him so they can find the Astral Dominae before the Dark Savant. Since he has to return to the Lords with the Forge, he drops off the party in the woods on Guardia and then takes off.

          

Aletheides lays out his plan.

         

If the party ended Forge by killing everyone and boarding Bela's ship on their own, they're soon swallowed up by the Dark Savant's frigate. The Savant clearly states his intention to challenge the Lords of the Cosmic Circle and "end their stranglehold on the Destiny of the Stars." He demands that the party assist in his search for the Astral Dominae and has them fly to Guardia on a T'Rang ship, where again they land in the woods to begin their adventure.

            

The Dark Savant offers no chance to object.

           

Finally, if the player didn't complete Bane at all--or didn't play it--the game assumes that they're treasure-seekers who found the Cosmic Forge in a temple on a random world. Just as in the second option, Aletheides reaches them just before they take the pen and enlists them in his mission. As with everyone else, the party begins in the woods.

Although all parties start in a forest, they're different forests, on different maps, and thus begin the game with quite different experiences. And because my understanding is that Savant is quite nonlinear, they probably continue with different experiences as well. What I don't yet know is whether choices made in Bane affect anything in Savant other than the backstory and starting location. Do the various factions begin predisposed to like or dislike you? Does Bela show up again if you didn't kill him? Those types of adaptations would be admirable, but perhaps a little too much to expect this early in the era.

I was able to download other players' saved games to experience the different beginnings above, but in 1992, I would have been out of luck. Knowing that there were different beginnings to Savant would have made me eager to re-play Bane, independently of what I thought of its replayability as a stand-alone game, the same way that Inquisition has made me want to replay the previous games in the Dragon Age series. Thus, we see that good attention to continuity can increase the replayability of not only the current game but previous ones in the series.

Continuity of character is, of course, a separate consideration from continuity of plot. It is also far more common. We saw it as early as 1979, with the ability to move the same character among multiple Dunjonquest modules, and most classic game series--Wizardry, Ultima, Phantasie, The Bard's Tale, the Gold Box games--have allowed you to continue the same character or party across at least one sequel. There was even a period in the mid-1980s when you could move the same characters between franchises. As a kid, this was far more important to me than it is now. Today, I find that such games either reduce imported characters to the point that they're hardly better than new characters or they're so overpowered that they ruin the game. A few franchises--the Gold Box and Baldur's Gate come to mind--have done a good job achieving balance, but on the whole I like that the modern inclination is to retain the universe but start each game with a new hero.

In that spirit, for my "real" Savant party, I'll be starting over from scratch with a new set of characters, partly because I enjoy the early levels the most, and partly because the game assumed I did that anyway (I must have screwed up something with my saved game in Bane). We'll pick up with the adventures of the new party in New City after a detour to investigate the German Die Dunkle Dimension.

In the meantime, which continuity options do you prefer? What games best exemplify them? What other methods have you seen for reflecting player choices across the game's universe?

   

   

Video Summary of the Early Era

For years, I've been interested in doing more with video. I've been toying with creating video summaries of the various RPG eras. Although my primary medium will always be these text postings, sometimes it's tough to convey the sense of a game with screenshots alone.

Well, it turns out I don't need to worry about it. YouTuber RPGBirdy has just published the first video in an anthology, each covering several years of RPG history. The first covers 1975-1981, and it uses some screenshots (with my permission) from my blog. 

          
Excellent work, and I look forward to the next one!

A CRPG Glossary

I wasn't able to get anything else written over the last couple of days, so it's time to reveal my long-in-progress CRPG Glossary, just now published as a "page." Regular browser users will see it as an option on the side-bar in the upper right. Mobile users will see it the drop-down box at the top of each entry, just under the header (it is set to "Blog" by default).

Because commenting on a page interrupts the "Recent Comments" feed, you can use this entry for comments on additional terms that should appear in the glossary. I seeded it with a couple dozen entries to start, but it's far from complete.

There are plenty of other places to get "real" definitions for these terms, so some of the entries will--in the manner of Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary--unapologetically reflect my particular perspective.

Mindtrap: A Game That Could Have Been

           
Over two years ago, a reader named Keith alerted me to a bunch of Apple II games that weren't on my master list. One of them was Mindtrap: The Quest of the Seven Diamonds, which immediately set off alarm bells when Googling didn't produce a game of that name. Nonetheless, the disk images existed, and Keith e-mailed them to me. I wasn't able to get very far with them, so I cast about for some more information and ultimately found a new disk image with a readme file, which filled in some of the background.

Mindtrap was never a game, just a demonstration written by a talented programmer at Origin Systems in the late 1980s. The idea was to blend the graphical exploration and role-playing of the Ultima series with the "unlimited interactivity" provided (or at least theoretically provided) by text adventures like Zork. To do this, the creator programmed an interface unlike anything I've ever seen. To get around, you move with the UIO/JKL cluster--in hexes rather than squares--but when you want to do something more elaborate, you hit the ENTER key and type a more detailed set of commands at the parser. The plan was to recognize about 3,000 total words. Hitting ENTER again on a blank line returns to movement mode.

To play the game, you need one knight, one cleric, one mage, and one thief. For some reason, this group has been exiled to a planet called Yriearth, in a city called Belsaena, from which their first quest is to escape. Unfortunately, the text doesn't give any indication why the game is called Mindtrap or what seven diamonds has to do with anything.

        

Character creation. I don't believe I've ever seen "deftness" or "affinity" before.

            

The creator of the game was John Miles, who was at Origin in the late 1980s, with programming credits on titles like Ultima V, Ultima VI, and Martian Dreams. We'll see his later work on Eye of the Beholder III (1993) and Dark Sun (1993). In the readme file, Miles made up a pseudonym for the author and said he died "from complications arising from Bachman's Syndrome," referring to Stephen King's famous nom de plume. He also made up a backstory that related the game to the Ultima universe, with the four characters having been exiled to Yriearth for collaborating with Blackthorn, but in an e-mail exchange with me, Miles admitted that this had never been part of the original pitch. Ultimately, Origin rejected the approach, but Miles kept the disks in a drawer and sent the images to the Interactive Fiction Archive in the late 1990s, hoping some developer might be inspired by the interface.
                

Arriving in the game. The writing is solid.

          

I tried to play a bit, but I couldn't get far because the commands that work are undocumented, and using dialogue-based commands, which are pretty important, produces an error message. I would say that the concept needed a bit of work. There's a good reason that most iconographic games offer simple single-letter commands for common tasks like opening doors and talking to the NPC standing next to you. Having to stop and type OPEN CHEST every time would have become tiresome. Of course, it's possible that the final version could have found some shortcuts. I also don't like that you can't look at specific objects by indicating a direction. I don't know for sure what the icons are depicting half the time.
         

If I can't donate, I'm going to steal.

        

On the positive side, I love the detailed text descriptions of rooms as you enter them. (In classic Infocom style, you can toggle between "brief" and "verbose" to have those descriptions come up every time, or not.) Abstract iconography can only convey so much. There are very few games, even in the modern era of crystal-clear graphics, where it wouldn't be occasionally useful to have a textual description of what you're looking at.
         

Another example--so much more interesting  than just looking at icons bustling around.

           

I also like the idea of being able to use a text parser to engage in complex interactions with the environment, although a clever programmer can make a lot of things possible without going so far. Ultima V and Ultima VI are already extraordinarily interactive games without having to go beyond the 26 letter keys. Nonetheless, a text parser would definitely allow for more complex puzzles and would have fit well with Origin's tradition of free text for NPC dialogues.

If any developer out there wants to carry the idea forward, I can promise that I and John Miles will play it.

1986/1987

   

Since I retracted my "DOS/Windows-only" rule, functionally in 2012 and explicitly in 2013, prompting the dual lists off of which I now work, we've had some great games--plenty to make me happy that I took that step. I got to play all the Robert Clardy and Stuart Smith games. I was exposed to Galactic Adventures, an important step in the SSI line. I wrote about some of the earliest Japanese RPGs, plus plenty of German ones. I was exposed to John Carmack's early gaming efforts via a series of diskmag titles for the Apple II. I finally covered Questron.

By a certain point--we're almost there on my "later" list--the rule would have been moot anyway, as DOS and Windows became the dominant operating systems and other platforms were discontinued. My 1992 list has 65 games, and only 6 of them do not have DOS or Windows versions. 

Where we find ourselves in 1986, and likely more so in 1987 and 1988, is an era in which most good games had DOS ports. In the late 1980s, the Apple II and the Commodore 64 were waning as the dominant American gaming platforms. Only the Amiga was offering serious non-DOS competition. Most of the titles that didn't have a DOS port were from B-list publishers that couldn't afford it, or foreign publishers offering game for niche audiences. We have, in short, passed the area in which a game that I pick up because of my "rule change" is likely to be very good. I've run through a dozen 1986 titles since returning to the year last September, and only one of them--Phantasie II--has crossed the "recommended" threshold of around 35. Most of the rest have been dreck, with no chance of unseating Starflight as "Game of the Year."
    

It's been so long since I played Starflight and Might & Magic that I could have happily played them again.

    

The more interesting question is why I selected Starflight in the first place. It only had one serious competitor: Might & Magic. While there were elements to like about The Bard's Tale II, Larn, Shard of Spring, Roadwar 2000, Phantasie II, and even Swords of Glass, Might & Magic and Starflight stand so high above the others that to pretend they had a chance would just be cruel. The two competitors excelled in different areas, too: Starflight in its world-building, NPC interaction, and exploration, Might & Magic in its approach to combat, inventory, character development, dungeon construction, and quests.
    

The real best game of 1986?

   

In the first "yearly transition" posting that I wrote, I retroactively assigned "Game of the Year" status to earlier games. Of my 1986 choice, I said:

  

1986: It's a tough choice between Might & Magic I and Starflight. The former took the best of Wizardry and improved on it, creating a series that would churn out fantastic games for 20 years. The latter is an ahead-of-its-time science fiction game with an incredible plot and extremely memorable NPCs and encounters. In terms of sheer influence, I think I'd have to go with Starflight.

   

I wonder now what I was talking about in the last sentence. Might & Magic produced 9 sequels and countless imitators. What is the influence that I saw, in contrast, from Starflight? Did I think it affected later science fiction RPGs? If so, I don't think I've encountered one yet that shows a clear Starflight influence.

Nonetheless, although I'd probably make a different choice today, I don't think the choice was so obviously wrong that I want to reverse it. I'll leave the 1986 "Game of the Year" as Starflight for now, but I'll have done a disservice to the Might & Magic franchise if it doesn't earn the title for at least one of its releases.

I don't see a lot of common themes among the 1986 games, but there are two curious developments:

• SSI! The publisher released four RPGs this year--Rings of Zlifin, Shard of Spring, Roadwar 2000, and Phantasie II--all of of which offer a very different approach. This is the first time we've seen four CRPGs from the same publisher in the same year (Epyx came close with 3 per year between 1980 and 1983). It will go one better with 5 in 1988 and then exceed that with 6 in 1991 and another 6 in 1992. SSI will, in fact, occupy the top spot for "most CRPGs published" every year from 1986 all the way through 1994, the year it was sold to Mindscape. All the way through 2007 (the latest my spreadsheet goes), no company breaks its record.

• France! As I remarked in the last transition, we're in a brief "golden age" of French RPGs. I looked at four in 1986--Fer & Flamme, Les Templiers d'Orven, and Tera--and failed to get a fourth (Le Fer d'Amnukor) working. The three games from this year don't have a lot in common, but in general France has shown a curious immunity to the trends of the past. Orven is the most derivative of these titles, and even it showed some starkly original elements that would be unfamiliar to players of Wizardry. I can't even fathom what previous RPG experience influenced the developers of Fer & Flamme and Tera, and I already know that one 1987 title--Le Maitre des Ames--has a similarly untraceable lineage. We'll soon see if the same is true of the other two: L'Anneau de Zengara and Omega: Planete Invisible.

   

French RPGs continue to be just ineffably odd.

    

Boosted primarily by Starflight and Might & Magic, the average GIMLET score for a 1986 title was 27.89, only slightly higher than 1985 (27.56) but nonetheless the highest so far. It is not inevitable that the average score increases with the year: 1984 (20.50) was lower than 1983 (22.94), which was lower than 1981 (23.90), and so far 1991 (33.32) is lower than 1990 (36.15). The minimum score for 1986 (13) was the highest of the 1980s thusfar, as was the maximum (60). Overall, this makes 1986 a pretty good year. It just doesn't seem like it lately because I've been sweeping up the detritus. I played the good stuff during my first year of blogging.
     

I'm looking forward to the pipe-smoking rabbit-horse again.

    

1987 is going to see me revisiting a few titles to which I gave slapdash attention the first time around, including Alien Fires: 2199 AD, Le Maitre des Ames, and maybe even Braminar and Wizardry IV. Beyond that, we see a few themes:

• The growth of the Mac-only RPG. Regrettably, I couldn't play the first one: 1986's OrbQuest (couldn't find it); in 1987, we'll have Quarterstaff, Scarab of Ra, and The Dungeon Revealed. I want to play the former before I get to 1991's Shadowkeep, but it's been a pain to emulate the Mac so far.

• The last gasps of the ZX Spectrum. I'll have to endure this platform for exactly two more games: 1987's The Kingdom of Krell and 1989's Tower of Light. After that, the UK firmly joins the Amiga world, with most titles having DOS ports.

• A couple of new countries. 1987 brings the earliest known Australian RPG (Doc the Destroyer) and the earliet known Finnish RPG (SpurguX). The latter, a roguelike involving a hobo looking for a bottle of brandy, promises to be a barrel of laughs, at least if I can get the translation working.

Between new games and revisits, I'm starting the year with 29 games. Naturally, some will fall to the definition axe. The list is total chaos. I basically know what to expect from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon and The Eternal Dagger (both sequels to games I've played), but that's about it. The rest of the year is full of titles I've never heard of (e.g., Habitat, Land of Spur, Skariten, Tower of Myraglen) mostly from developers I've never heard of (e.g., Compile, Asgard, Balistic, Beam). An awful lot are independent, which makes me anticipate a series of one-offs in which I grudgingly try to say something nice. But at least one, Deathlord, promises to be epically long.

I've been toying with reaching the end of 1991 on my "main" list and then just staying there until I get caught up on my secondary list. That's currently about 80 games, but it'll likely be only 60 after I get done hacking and may be less than 50 by the time I actually reach the end of 1991. If I could do that, I'd feel better about writing more "special topics" postings or even the occasional one-shot on a console game. I'll make that decision in my "1991/1992" transition, but I'm happy to take opinions.

In the meantime, let's leap into 1987 with a second visit to the uniquely bizarre Alien Fires: 2199 AD.

Gold Box: Spells and their Uses (Part II)

A spellcaster slays a mage with a high-level mage spell.

    
I have extensively praised the Gold Box combat system for the tactical fine-tuning that it allows. It is a culmination of several years of experimentation at SSI, beginning with non-D&D titles like Galactic Adventures and Wizard's Crown, proceeding through several iterations in Shard of Spring, Demon's Winter, and The Eternal Dagger before the developers managed to hit just the right balance.

But the combat engine alone wouldn't be anything without, first, the strengths and weaknesses of the various foes that you encounter, and, second, the long and complex list of both cleric and mage spells. As we saw with Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, the same engine without spells is a little boring.

Because I admire the system so much, I am a little distressed to find myself, in my eighth Gold Box game, adopting an extremely predictable and rote approach to combat and spellcasting. Most combats in Pools of Darkness have consisted of two phases: a barrage of "Fireballs" and/or "Delayed Blast Fireballs" to clear as much of the map as possible, followed by "mop-up" by my fighters. Occasionally, enemies will present themselves in a line perfect for "Lightning Bolt," but I otherwise end up rarely or never using the vast majority of spells. There are entire spell levels that I never cast except in buffing.

In general, I feel that the two "Fireball" variants, since they continue to improve in damage with the characters (unlike, say, "Ice Storm" or "Cone of Cold"), are vastly over-powered.  And between my three mage characters, I have more than a dozen of them. It creates a situation in which if there are more than a few enemies still on the screen, almost nothing is a better choice than a fireball, and if there are only a few enemies left on the screen, I don't need spells at all because my fighters can take care of them.

I previously considered the different uses of Gold Box spells in a January 2013 post. Rather than tack on to that one, I've decided to offer a recap of the entire list from a Level 30 perspective.

Cleric Spells

Level 1. By the time you get this high, there aren't many Level 1 cleric spells that still do any good. "Bless" still gives a slight boost in combat and it certainly doesn't hurt to cast it pre-combat. "Detect Magic" is useful for figuring out what items to take post-combat, but a lot of classes have this. "Protection from Good" remains the most idiotic spell in the entire Gold Box repertoire; any player that bothers to memorize this should retire from the world of RPGs. The only thing I use regularly in the Level 1 list is "Resist Cold," which is an important buffing spell before cold-based foes, although it doesn't seem to offer any protection against "Ice Storm."

Level 2. "Hold Person" occasionally performs, but most enemies have high tolerances to it. "Resist Fire" remains an important buffing spell. I keep one "Snake Charm" in reserve at all times just in case. I probably don't get enough mileage out of "Silence 15' Radius," but it seems to fail on every opponent I cast it on. I know you can cast it on your own party members and then run up to enemy spellcasters, but that seems like a lot to micromanage.

Level 3. This level is primarily occupied with spells that cure conditions you almost never encounter, including "Cure Blindness," "Cure Disease," and "Remove Curse." There are also "Cause" versions of these conditions, but they offer so slight an advantage that simply having the cleric execute a physical attack seems like a better idea. "Prayer" is still an okay pre-combat buffing spell. I keep one of each of the "cure/removes" on hand, just in case, but most of my Level 3 slots go to "Dispel Magic," which I often have to use to counter enemy "Hold" spells.

Level 4. One or two "Neutralize Poisons" remain vital, and I memorize "Protection from Evil 10' Radius" for pre-combat buffing. "Sticks to Snakes" remains in the top 5% of dumb spells. I give most of these slots to "Cure Serious Wounds," though I never get that low in my cure spells anymore since I have so many "Heal" slots.
      

"Dispel Evil" shows up as an encounter option. This occasionally happens with spells, most often "Knock" and "Detect Magic."

   

Level 5. I keep forgetting that "Dispel Evil" is cast on a character, not a summoned creature. I wish you could cast it pre-combat. I very rarely run out of "Heal" spells at the sixth level and have to get to "Cure Critical Wounds" at this level. Obviously, it doesn't make sense to cast "Raise Dead" once you have "Resurrection." The damage spells at this level--"Cause Critical Wounds," "Flame Strike," and "Slay Living"--perform okay, but my characters are typically capable of physical attacks that do more damage, and a lot of creatures seem to resist them.

Level 6. There are only three cleric spells at this level: "Blade Barrier," "Harm," and "Heal." I need to experiment more with the previous two because they sound pretty useful. "Blade Barrier," in particular, could be used to channel creatures on the battlefield. I give almost every slot to "Heal," though, which often makes the difference in long combats.
    

Navarre "Heals" himself, hoping to survive a battle with Rakshasa.

    

Level 7. "Resurrection" should be the most useful spell at this level, but the Gold Box implemented the rule by which resurrected characters permanently lost a point of constitution. I'm not willing to sacrifice this unless I simply can't win a battle without losing at least one character, so I reload instead of resurrecting.

"Restoration" is obviously mandatory when you've been level-drained by vampires and wights. Now that my characters are above Level 24 and seemed destined to hit their caps before the end of the game, I don't dread level draining as much as I once did.

The two offensive spells at this level are "Destruction" and "Energy Drain." "Destruction" seems to work tolerably well, but you have to be within melee range, and enemies often save against it. I really don't understand "Energy Drain" at all. Based on the manual's cryptic comments and a little experimentation, it would seem to drain levels from the enemy--but only like one at a time. It's certainly not enough to make a difference in combat.

Navarre destroys a land-shark.

Mage Spells

Level 1. Only two spells remain relevant for higher-level characters. "Magic Missile" keeps doing more damage with every character level, almost no one is immune to it, and it casts instantly, making it one of the best single-target spells in the game. I also try to keep enough "Enlarge" spells on hand for every character for pre-combat buffing.

Level 2. "Mirror Image" remains a decent buffing spell. "Strength" is outperformed by "Enlarge." I keep a "Knock" on hand just in case my thief fails, and one "Detect Invisibility" for pre-combat buffing. I keep hearing about the virtues of "Stinking Cloud," but I have trouble getting it to cast in the right location, and in any event it's hard to imagine prioritizing it over a mass-damage spell. In general, there are far more available slots for this level than you could possibly need.

Level 3. The best spell level of all. "Fireball" remains relevant even after you get the "Delayed Blast" variety (which casts instantly); "Lightning Bolt" still does a great job on lines of enemies (and, like "Fireball," improves with the caster's level). Fortunately, there are alternatives to "Invisibility, 10' Radius" and "Protection from Evil, 10' Radius"; otherwise, I'd have to spend a couple slots on those. "Blink" showed up as an option at some point--Secret of the Silver Blades?--and I completely missed it. It makes the character "blink out" of existence after he's acted in a round, meaning he can't be targeted by enemies. I wish you could cast it before combat.
    

"Lightning Bolt," for whatever reason, slows down iron golems.

   

Level 4. I don't get a lot of use out of this level. "Charm Monster" and "Fear" hardly ever work; "Confusion" doesn't really do much of value. "Fire Shield" is a decent pre-combat buffing spell. "Minor Globe of Invulnerability" is trumped by the Level 6 spell. "Fumble," which targets only one character, is a waste of time. I spend most of my slots here on "Ice Storm," which unlike "Fireball" doesn't improve with the character's level, but almost no one is immune to it and it does a good job disrupting spellcasters.

Level 5. Lots of good stuff at this level. "Cone of Cold" and "Hold Monster" both perform reasonably well. "Feeblemind" seems like a good idea, but it usually fails and I don't have a lot of patience for spells that target one enemy at a time--not in a series of games where you almost never face just a few really powerful enemies. "Cloud Kill" doesn't cast far enough away from the caster, it screws up the terrain, and it doesn't really work on foes of this level. A new buffing spell introduced in Pools called "Iron Skin" helps a bit in melee combat.

One real star of Level 5 is a new spell called "Fire Touch," which you cast on one of your characters and he does extra fire-based damage with every melee attack. (Before I figured out how it worked, I spent a couple of embarrassing combats casting it on enemies instead.) I found that it's worth memorizing a few of these for an extra advantage in tough battles.

Level 6. There are three instant-death spells at this level: "Death Spell," "Disintegrate," and "Flesh to Stone." They fail more often than not. Since the ultimate outcome of the three spells is the same, it would seem to me to make the most sense to memorize the one that offers enemies the worst saving throws, but the manual isn't very explicit about that. "Globe of Invulnerability," which protects against Level 1-4 spells, is an absolutely essential buffing spell, but you only need one at a time. (I wish I could cast it on other characters, not just the caster.) One "Stone to Flesh" on hand doesn't hurt.

Level 7. "Delayed Blast Fireball," a more powerful version of "Fireball," casts instantly, penetrates "Globe of Invulnerability," and improves with the level. It's probably the most useful spell in the game. Because of it, I haven't experimented much with "Power Word: Stun," which affects only one creature--but doesn't paralyze him the way "Hold" does. Overall, it seems like an under-powered spell for the level. "Mass Invisibility" is theoretically a good buffing spell to ensure that enemy spellcasters can't target you until you act, but I find that it often just doesn't work. Maybe those enemy spellcasters have "Detect Invisibility" or something.
     

Hoping "Delayed Blast Fireball" takes care of a bunch of medusas and basilisks before they can gaze.

    

Level 8. Pretty worthless spells for such a high level. "Mass Charm," as someone pointed out, only works on humans, who you rarely face en masse in this game. I only recently learned that "Mind Blank" affects a character, not an enemy, protecting him from mental spells, so I added a few to my buffing list. "Otto's Irresistable Dance" is a good candidate for the dumbest spell in the game. It affects only one creature and doesn't do much but reduce his AC by 4 and make him fail saving throws. Again, you rarely face small groups of individually-powerful foes. If you did, this would be a lot more useful. "Power Word: Blind" strikes a target blind, I guess, but the manual offers no information about what that actually does. I guess it probably damages his THAC0. Why it's a higher level than "Power Word: Stun" is a mystery. Seriously, unless I see a statistics table showing that these Level 8 spells have a much better chance of working, I can't imagine why "Hold Monster," three levels down, wouldn't be a vastly better call in any circumstance.

Level 9. Only three spells at this level, but they're all reasonably cool. "Meteor Swarm" is the least impressive of the lot. It casts outward, away from the caster, so he has to have an unobstructed view of the enemies. It's very hard to target, since it ends up firing three bursts. It does only 10-40 hit points per strike, and doesn't improve with leveling. In short, it vastly under-performs the "Fireballs" of lower levels, but it's useful for some enemies (e.g., rakshasa) who are immune to lower-level spells.

"Monster Summoning" appears in the Gold Box titles for the first time and works pretty well. It summons two fairly high-level creatures, which you can then use for attack or just to re-shape the battlefield. You have no control over what it summons; it seems to be somewhat context-sensitive, summoning the types of creatures that would otherwise be found on the same map.
   

In Moander's realm, the spell logically summons two "Bits o Moander."

   
"Power Word: Kill" does its job when it works, but I find that enemies save against it more than 50% of the time.

Druid Spells

Rangers get druid spells up to the third level. Since rangers are pretty good physical attackers, a spell has to be pretty valuable, or castable outside of combat, to waste an action on it. Those criteria immediately eliminate "Entangle, "Faerie Fire," "Charm Person or Mammal," and "Hold Animal." Many of the other spells the ranger gets are outperformed by superior mage and cleric spells, including "Invisibility to Animals," "Cure Light Wounds," "Cure Disease," and "Neutralize Poison."

That leaves only three useful druid spells. "Detect Magic" does the same as the cleric and mage spells of the same names, but as the only useful first-level druid spell, it makes sense to have the ranger memorize this one and free up the associated spell slots in the mages' and clerics' books. "Barkskin," a Level 2 spell, simply improves armor class by 1, but as you can cast it before combat, it doesn't hurt to add it to the buffing list.

Commenters have said good things about "Protection from Fire," a third-level druid spell, which supposedly works different from the cleric's "Resist Fire." Instead of improving overall resistance to fire, the spell actually absorbs fire damage until it dissipates. The total number of points it can absorb is 12 x the caster's level, which is pretty high at my levels. On the other hand, the manual says it only works this way for the druid himself, and anyone else it's cast upon, it simply acts like "Resist Fire." I have to experiment more with it.


Two themes come out of my experimentation with the full list of AD&D spells at higher levels:

1. By Level 15 or so, characters have so many spell slots that you almost never reach too far down in the bag. If the game had offered less frequent resting and re-memorizing, that might have preserved some of the tactical tension of the early Gold Box games. As it is, I can't imagine ever running out of enough mass-damage spells that I'd resort to "Stinking Cloud" or "Confusion."

2. The games don't feature enough high-powered single foes. It would have been nice to mix it up so that instead of 20 Drow or 15 dragons, all with around 60 hit points, we occasionally faced a trio of high-level fighter/mages with hit points in the 200-300 range. This would change tactics considerably and make some of the individual spells ("Feeblemind," "Power Word: Stun," or heck, even "Otto's Irresistible Dance") more important. I know, I know, blah blah blah, AD&D rules, yada yada.

3. The so-called "high-level" spells are really pretty pathetic.

Overall, it's hard not to feel that the higher-level spells are a bit disappointing compared to the lower-level ones. And the lack of cleric spells above Level 7 is a bit sad, but I guess that was canon for AD&D1.

Guest Post: Why the Economy Sucks in the SSI Gold Box Games (Part 1)

In the midst of my experience with Pools of Darkness, I thought it was time to offer this guest post, written by frequent CRPG Addict commenter OldWowBastard. Aside from the overall title, I found Bastard's article a great primer on the development of D&D games and the adaptation of tabletop rules to a CRPG format.

I edited the content and provided the images, so if any errors remain, that's on me.

****

Why the Economy Sucks in the SSI Gold Box Games
Part 1: Examining SSI's adherence to AD&D rules
by OldWowBastard
   

When it came to "riches" and "making your fortune," this advertisement for mercenaries certainly didn't lie.

   
Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) acquired the license to create officially branded AD&D computer games from TSR, the owners and creators of D&D and AD&D, in the mid/late 80s. Of the products created by SSI between 1987 and 1995, the "Gold Box" series of games (so named due their distinctive gold packaging) was the most popular. Between 1988 and 1993, 13 games were released in this series.

SSI created ten of the Gold Box titles in house. A series of 4 is set in the Forgotten Realms: Pool of Radiance (1988), Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989), Secret of the Silver Blades (1990) and Pools of Darkness (1991). They also created a series of 3 games set in the world of Krynn: Champions of Krynn (1990), Death Knights of Krynn (1991), and Dark Queen of Krynn (1992). The SSI series is rounded out by two Buck Rogers XXVc adventures--Countdown to Doomsday (1990) and Matrix Cubed (1992)--and a Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures construction set (1993).

An additional series of two Forgotten Realms games, Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991) and Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992), along with an early MMO that was run on AOL, Neverwinter Nights (1991), were created by outside studios, using the SSI tools, under license from SSI.

This series of games is generally regarded by RPG and CRPG fans as one of the best adaptations of the AD&D 1st edition style rules. Their adaptation of the AD&D 1st edition combat system in particular is well executed. To the point that, despite the aging interface and older style of presentation, many still find these games very enjoyable. 

Unfortunately, as many fans know, there is one glaring flaw in these games: they essentially lack any sort of useful economy. Money, in almost every game in the series, is essentially useless, because of the fact that the party is given copious amounts of it, at every turn, as a reward. Unlike most other games of the era, there is simply nothing worthwhile to spend money on. In an average play-through your party will throw away literal mountains of copper, silver, gold and platinum.

My goal, in this article, is to examine the how's and why's of this situation, and to essentially assign responsibility for this state of affairs as I see it. During the course of this post we will discuss several points about these games. SSI's company line that they were forced to use the rules as written, the changes made by SSI to the written rules, how money sinks were avoided, and how they clearly followed treasure tables, while ignoring written rules in the DMG that were supposed to be used in conjunction with said tables.

Let's begin.

0. A quick discussion on the origin of the rules

It makes sense to review the origin and purpose of the AD&D 1st edition ruleset, and do a quick review of the versions publicly available when these games were released, prior to any deep dive discussion. At the time, the general perception of D&D/AD&D, and the commonly accepted playstyle, were heavily shaped by all of the available versions.

It was quite common, in active play at the time, for the rules from the disparate rule sets to be intermixed as “house rules”--especially since at least one of the systems “suggested” that one start with Basic and then move to 1E.

0.1. OD&D

Dungeons and Dragons was originally released in 1974 as a boxed set of 3 booklets. This ruleset is generally referred to as OD&D, or the LBBs (an acronym for Little Brown Books, as the three booklets were brown and fairly small in size). It was originally attributed to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. This game was initially, essentially, an expansion of the Chainmail wargame/mass combat rules released by Guidion Games written by Gygax and Jeff Perrin in the early 1970s.

One of the original "Little Brown Books."

   
This was a fairly bare bones release. Combat rules were omitted, and referees were instead supposed to use systems from the parent game, Chainmail. In its earliest form, the game only had three classes: fighting man, magic user, and cleric. Hobbits, dwarves, and elves were included; the former two were only allowed to be fighting men, while the latter could be a fighting man or magic user, per the player’s choice at the start of each day.

Every aspect of this ruleset, from syntax to rules descriptions, assumed the reader had an extensive background in wargaming. Miniature sand table scale was often used in place of specific ranges or areas of effect, for example.

Very little direction was given to the DM (then just called a referee) in terms of creating a campaign world, lore, or story. He was supposed to instead just build a dungeon and stock it with an assortment of traps, treasures, and monsters.

If one wanted to attempt overland exploration, the referee was instructed to use the hex map from Avalon Hill’s Wilderness Survival game, or another similar pre-generated map, and simply utilize the wilderness random encounter tables. Said tables included fairly deadly challenges, so this was generally considered an option for higher level characters.

0.2. OD&D Supplements

OD&D was quickly supplemented as the initial rule set exploded in popularity.

Its first supplement, Greyhawk, introduced the thief and paladin classes and added new combat rules that allowed referees to run the game without owning a copy of Chainmail.

Its second supplement, Blackmoor, added the druid and assassin classes and included the first pre-made scenario. This supplement contains one of the first appearances of the term "Dungeon Master."

Eldridch Wizardry and Gods, Demi Gods and Heroes added psionic rules and stats for deities and heroes, respectively.

By the time the last supplement was released, most of what would become the core of AD&D was in place. A few classes still not in the game officially (ranger, monk) had been detailed in Dragon magazine (TSR’s AD&D magazine) or the Strategic Review (its predecessor.)

0.3. Holmes Basic

By 1977, D&D had become fairly popular, but as the rules were spread around a boxed set and 4 supplements, it was a bit unwieldy for the novice.

Dr. J. Eric Holmes essentially volunteered to re-write the game for a “younger” audience, in a single package, which resulted in the version colloquially referred to as the "Holmes" edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Technically, it is the first product that was titled Basic Dungeons and Dragons.

This version was released shortly before AD&D 1st edition and is essentially a bridge between OD&D + Greyhawk, and AD&D 1st edition. It is a re-write and distillation of the OD&D rules, plus the Greyhawk supplement and monsters from a few other sources. It includes the thief class from Greyhawk but omits the paladin from that supplement, for example. It only covers levels 1-3 and instructs players and referees to graduate to AD&D after that point.

0.4. AD&D 1st Edition

By 1976 or so, OD&D had been widely adopted and heavily extended by third parties. Gygax was frustrated to receive letters from campaigns that had characters with levels in the 100s, capable of defeating entire pantheons of gods.

This frustrated TSR; having seen the success of Judge’s Guild’s adventure modules and campaign info, they had plans to release similar supplemental published materials for DMs. These materials were difficult to produce if a baseline for the game did not exist. A module for characters level 8-12 would be useless for a DM in a campaign that had characters in the 100s, and allowed characters to surpass those levels in a single encounter.

D&D tournaments at gaming conventions had become quite popular as well, so there was a desire to better codify the ruleset in order to facilitate easy tournament DM-ing.

Primarily due to these factors, AD&D 1st edition was created.

 

The Dungeon Masters Guide leads off the first edition rules.

    

As this edition was written on a fairly rushed schedule, rules are often explained in a contradictory or unclear manner. Disparate sub-systems are utilized to resolve similar situations, often because the writer or creator of sub-system A did collaborate with the creator of sub-system B.

This is a drastic contrast to something like the D20 system when most actions boil down to “roll a D20, add bonuses, try to hit a target.” Some of those flaws are examined in a bit more detail in the body of this work.

It is worth noting that there is also some evidence that AD&D was created to split the product line, so TSR could stop paying royalties to co-creator Dave Arneson. Arneson brought suit against TSR for royalties and, by all accounts, eventually won a “per book” royalty rate for all AD&D 1st edition products.

0.5. B/X - Moldvay/Cook

By 1980, Dungeons and Dragons had experienced a massive surge in popularity due in part to the hysteria surrounding the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert.

AD&D 1st edition was completed with the release of the Dungeon Master’s Guide in 1979, but early acceptance was not universal, and as the rule set was built for tournament use, it was a bit complex to DM. As a result, with the influx of new users, there was a clear need for a new ruleset that was easily understandable and teachable. Moldvay/Cook was written to fit this niche.

In most cases, rules are influenced by OD&D and AD&D but are presented in a clearer and more concise manner. Subsystems tend to be minimized, and the language used is geared more towards elementary or middle school aged readers, as opposed to the “high Gygaxian” (complex prose that mixed old English and obscure wargaming terms with actual colloquial English) used in 1E.

It was fairly common for people to use the “meat” of the rules from this system (e.g., how to adjust combat and exploration) while using the “fun stuff” from 1E: spells, classes, monsters, magic items, and so forth.

0.6. BECMI

After the success of B/X, and with the impending release of the D&D Saturday morning cartoon, TSR decided to revamp the “Basic” D&D line one additional time in 1983. This resulted in the release of the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters, Immortal) set of boxed products.

These releases featured high-quality illustrations by Larry Elmore, with interior art by Elmore and Easley. This was the origin of the iconic “Red Box” D&D Basic Set, which was the first product released in the series. It was a fairly massive step up in presentation for the D&D or AD&D line, by the standards of the day.

Initially, the rule set was identical to Moldvay/Cook up until the Companion set. Beyond that, TSR introduced new material (e.g., the immortal rules, weapon mastery, proto-"prestige" classes) or massively re-written versions of OD&D or AD&D rules. The Basic and Expert sets were essentially a re-presentation of the B/X versions of those products, albeit with the introduction of a "solo" adventure to allow one to learn to play without a group.

This product line was the most common introduction to D&D or AD&D for most people in the 1980s. As with B/X, it was fairly common for 1E DMs, in the mid- to late 1980s, to incorporate combat, surprise, and exploration from this edition, alongside the classes, spells, weapons, magic items and monsters from 1E.

1.0 Rule changes

SSI has always stated that their license with TSR required them to follow the AD&D 1st edition rules. Their stance is that any issues with the economy were endemic to the rule set. From the CRPG Addict’s discussion with SSI Producer Victor Penman (contained in a posting on Champions of Krynn):

I asked Mr. Penman about [the problems with the in-game economy], and he attributed this problem mostly to the AD&D rules, which gave experience rewards based on both enemy hit dice and the amount of treasure collected…. TSR required SSI to use official rules for both experience and treasure… Penman somewhat brusquely told me that, "Following the rules and providing XP were our concerns, not what people spent money on."

Unfortunately, this statement is heavily inaccurate as SSI modified the AD&D core rules substantially in order to fit them into the paradigm of the game they wanted to make. Changes were made at several levels in order to adapt a table top, human moderated experience, into a computer based, pre-programmed experience. In some cases, rules were changed as their written implementation would not work in actual play. The rest of this article examines the many changes that SSI was not afraid to make to AD&D 1st edition rules.

1.1 Combat

Arbitration of combat in AD&D 1st edition has in practice been performed incorrectly more often than it has been performed correctly. This is due to several reasons, including the complexity of the rules, their general incompatibility with "heroic" roleplaying, and the fact that many of the rules used to arbitrate combat are documented in the DMG in a manner that is simply not clear or well organized.
     

Combat in a CRPG allowed implementation of more complex mathematics than pen-and-paper players were willing to put up with.

   
For a quick illustration of the “complexity” statement above, I will direct the reader to the ADDICT document, which comprehensively details how to accurately arbitrate the surprise and initiative rules in AD&D 1E, when all of their apparent inconsistencies have been accounted for. This document is 20 pages, including footnotes, and it details nothing beyond “which side is surprised at the start of an encounter” and “what order to actions occur in combat, in the course of a round."

Rules of a complexity to require a subsequent 20-page long companion document to explain are built to spill, and were obviously rarely, if ever, run by the book in actual play.

As noted above, combat in the Basic versions of D&D available commercially alongside AD&D 1st edition was substantially less complicated and easier to run. Those rules allow for a simple “roll a die, the side with the [higher|lower] number goes first” for the purposes of determining initiative, for example. Much simpler than the aforementioned 1E rules.

As a result, many players substituted B/X or BECMI rules with AD&D combat rules, as their approach to combat was substantially clearer and streamlined.

Many of the combat changes made in the Gold Box games resemble a B/X or BECMI rule set approach, and they ignore rules that were key to combat pace and feel in AD&D 1st edition.  Several of these changes are outlined below.

1.1.1. Moving into melee/charge

As written, a character may not move into melee range and attack an opponent in the same round, without using the "charge" maneuver. Charge provides the victim with a to-hit bonus, opens the charging party to some special attacks, and removes the ability of the user to use dexterity-based armor class modifiers. When charge is used, the combatant with the longest weapon strikes first, regardless of initiative.

To counter, the combatant receiving the charge may “set” a spear or pole arm to receive the charge; if they successfully hit the charging opponent, the weapon will do double damage. This makes charge into a somewhat risky maneuver. This becomes additionally risky, as the receiving combatant with a spear or pole arm “set” to receive a charge will also strike first, unless the unit initiating the charge is using a longer weapon.

Alternatively, a character or monster may choose to move into melee range without utilizing a charge. If this option is taken, no attacks may be made by the moving party as the round is spent closing into melee range carefully while fending off any "attacks of opportunity."
   

Karnov has no problem charging and attacking the pyrohydra in one round.

   
SSI completely ignored these rules in the Gold Box games. There is no charge maneuver. Characters can move into melee range, without an attack of opportunity by their opponent even if said opponent has a longer weapon, and then perform a standard melee attack. [Ed: is the ability of characters and monsters to "Guard" in the SSI games related to rules about charging and setting weapons? Or was this a separate action in the tabletop rules?]

Given the risk associated with a charge, this change has a dramatic impact on the pace and nature of combat. One can move into melee multiple times in a round, if multiple attacks are available, in an SSI game. One cannot do so in the rules as written. The written rules allow a set of units effectively to block access to a more vulnerable unit; without those rules, it becomes easier for units to target vulnerable foes without a chance of impediment. Thus, these changes drastically alter the feel and flow of combat.

This was likely done because the average CRPG gamer would have seen that set of terms as unacceptable. “I have to move to the monster and just sit there a round before I can attack?! Wtf?!” would likely have been a common reaction.

Most AD&D 1st edition players ignored that rule as well. BECMI and B/X allow one to move and then strike without a charge, and that was generally the accepted play style.

As a result, in terms of "popular play style," the SSI modification was truer to a standard experience. It was however a clear and obvious example of a drastic change to a very basic rule to improve the gameplay experience.

1.1.2. Item/treasure breakage

Another important rule that was omitted is the concept of item breakage during combat. In AD&D 1E it was fairly easy for magical items and treasure to get destroyed in the course of combat.

"Cone of Cold," for example, was developed specifically by Gary Gygax’s son Ernie, because he was sick of ruining all of the treasure they’d find when he’d cast a "Fireball" at a group of opponents.

Per the table on the 1E DMG page 80: "Metal, soft or Jewelry" saves against a Fireball on an 18-20 on a d20 roll. So, with RAW, anytime you’d cast a fireball you have an 85% chance of melting any gold or jewelry on the target. It only fails its save 5% of the time vs. "Cone of Cold" or "Ice Storm," though.

It should be noted that this applied to everything. A character caught in a "Fireball" had to roll for any money on his person, any jewelry, any armor or weapons.

Metal, Hard, saves 75% of the time, with a +5% bonus per +1 on a magical item, but that still means over time you’d lose a lot of treasure, and personal weapons and items, to fireballs. Even a +4 or +5 suit of armor would, statistically speaking, get blown to bits by the twentieth-ish fireball that hit you, since they would still fail a save on a 1 d20 (5% chance).

These rules were, it should be noted, generally not used in "standard" play. It’s pretty cumbersome to make 7+ die rolls, per character, per fireball. As a result, most people would not have expected them to exist, and their exclusion is understandable.

It should also be noted that the BECMI and B/X versions of D&D did not include this rule. I cannot find them offhand in OD&D, but it has been stated that Gygax used them with that ruleset, so I may simply have missed them or they may be in the parent Chainmail rules.

Whatever the case, there is simply no mechanism whatsoever for breaking or destroying player inventory or treasure in the Gold Box titles.

My spellcaster prepares to destroy the enemies and, according to the rules, most of their stuff.

   
1.1.3. Firing missiles into melee

In the rules as written, it was somewhat difficult to hit a specific target when firing into a general melee. Specifically, one was not allowed to pick the target and instead the target hit would be diced for.

Essentially, the DM was instructed to assign a value to each unit in melee, based on size, and then roll to determine which combatant was hit based on said value. An example would be two medium sized combatants and a large one in a combat. DM would assign a value of 1 to each medium target, and 2 to the large one. He’d then roll a D4, 1 indicating medium target 1, 2 indicating medium target 2 and 3-4 indicating the large target.

Therefore, in a melee of 4 friendlies and 4 hostile opponents you would have a 50/50 chance of hitting an ally, if you fire into said melee.

In the Gold Box games these rules were removed, and you can target any combatant within range with missile fire.

1.2. Monster reactions

Rules for resolving how non-plot-based, wandering monsters react to PCs in AD&D 1st edition are covered in a few tables in the DMG. These tables are heavily based on dice results, and while there is room for player action, good or bad dice rolls can have a stronger effect in many cases than player action.

In SSIs Gold Box games, most of the time monsters will attack immediately. In the cases they do not, there are a few different potential options.

1) Party is presented with a basic yes/no, attack/run, set of binary options. In some cases, you are provided a legitimate fight/do not fight option and can bypass said combat. In others this is more accurately a "fight this now, or come back later" choice as said combat must be completed in order to clear the area and/or progress the plot.

2) Party is presented with an "attitude" menu, do they react Haughty, Sly, Meek, Nice, Abusive? Monster response is pre-programmed to those cases, it appears. Monsters respond as programmed. In Pool of Radiance, for example, acting "abusive" towards lower level humanoids will generally make them flee.
    

Encounter options in Pool of Radiance replace what was supposed to be a more flexible system.

    
This is drastically at odds with the system presented in AD&D 1st edition. The system presented in AD&D 1st edition would allow most parties to avoid those "truly" random encounters. Any monsters not specifically angry at the PCs current incursion can potentially be convinced, or die-rolled, into a neutral or even potentially positive stance.

Gary Gygax himself often stated that avoiding combat was preferable to combat, in D&D. This is supported by several facets of the game. An easy example is the fact that gold and treasure XP is often much higher than the XP acquired from killing monsters.  

One can see why this system was adapted, as the permutations possible in the written system would be almost impossible to arbitrate or control properly in a game. In an organic situation, the DM can simply play the role of the monsters and react to the PCs accordingly.

Programming a similar set of reactions would not have been a real option in the late 1980s. This process requires human judgment to be applied in a very situational manner. There are also no accommodations in the Gold Box engine to allow complex player interaction with monsters. There’s no “I give the orcs 300 gold and tell them to not bother my party of Level 6-9 heavies” button.

Due to those programming limitations, and the inability of a “digital DM” to accommodate those types of plans, SSI simply ignored these rules and re-wrote them to fit their engine. Although understandable, it is nonetheless a dramatic re-write of a rule that is very core to the source game.

1.3. Classes

AD&D 1st edition includes several classes that were not included in the Gold Box games. Assassins, illusionists, druids, and monks simply do not make an appearance in this series. As many know, the paladin and ranger are not present in Pool of Radiance, the first game in the series, as well.
    

Even a late entry in the Gold Box series omits several canonical classes.

    
I've never seen a reason provided for this specifically, but when you look at each class there are some issues with each that prevent an easy translation into a CRPG.

It’s easy to see how the illusionist's spells are a bad fit as they require human arbitration and player DM interaction to work properly. Spells like "Phantasmal Force" are the bread-and-butter of the class, but are wholly open ended. Do you cast "Phantasmal Force" and make a dragon appear to breathe fire on a pack of orcs, causing them to save vs. magic or die from heart attacks? Use it to create an illusionary magic item to bribe them with? A majority of the illusionist's spells fall into the “tell me what you’re going to do with this” category, in a way that was not parse-able by systems in 1988. It’s a class that demands creative play, and that is simply not possible in a CRPG context, with 1980s resources.

Druids have a number of odd open-ended abilities; one example is a 3/day shape shift into "any" animal form (within size limits) that again would be nearly impossible to program around, especially in 1988. They also have a spell list that is similar to the cleric, but different, with a number of more wilderness-oriented spells. Many of them are summoning spells or, essentially, follower-acquisition spells. Based on a deep look at the 1E druid, a lot of their power comes from their ability to collect animal “henchmen” or summon animals which would have required additional programming to accommodate.

Since memory-per-disk was a limitation, including the druid's and illusionist’s additional spells would likely not have been possible.

Assassins were likely omitted due to the nature of their primary special ability. Essentially, they can assassinate a target, on a successful D100 roll, based on their level and the target’s level. This ability as discussed in the DMG (p. 75) indicates that the ability works for a PC assassin as follows:

1)  The assassin’s player details the assassination plan to the DM

2)  DM takes a few environmental and situational factors into account; for instance, does the target trust the assassin, how well guarded is the target, are they impaired or asleep when the attempt occurs.

3)  DM then consults a table, cross checks the assassin’s level vs. the target’s, and modifies the percentage chance of success based organically on factors from item 2 above. There is no written guidance on how to arbitrate those modifications other than “you may adjust slightly for optimum conditions” and “you must deduct points if the intended victim is wary, takes precautions...”

4)    Assassin PC rolls a D100 and needs to roll under the % determined by the DM in step 3. If they succeed, the target is successfully assassinated. If they fail this roll, there is no guidance on how to arbitrate the failure, other than “weapon damage always occurs and may kill the victim even though ‘assassination’ failed.”

This ability is quite open-ended, and the rules seem to hover between it being an all-encompassing ability (e.g., the D100 roll includes every step of the assassination) or a more limited one (e.g., the D100 roll is to kill the target only, other factors do not matter). While the rules for modifying the role seem to indicate it is an all-encompassing roll, the “Weapon damage always occurs...” addendum seems to indicate the opposite.

Due to the complexity involved on either side, and the potential for plot disruption, I can see why this class was exorcised.

Lastly, monks have some open ended abilities like druids that would be hard to arbitrate. At lower levels they are somewhat useless, they cannot wear armor, and they do not get dexterity modifiers to AC. This prevents them from being a front line fighter, as they’re very easy to hit and do not have a large enough pool of hit points to make up for their lack of AC. Their unarmored AC and open hand damage, which both improve per level, become unbalanced around level 7, and then later become game-breaking by Level 14 or so.

These classes are a core part of the game, but they were exorcised completely. A massive change to the rules.

1.4. Races

AD&D 1st edition, in the original form, had at least one playable race that the SSI games omitted: the half-orc. To this day, I have yet to see a reason or justification for this. In my own mind, I cannot find one. This race was removed from AD&D 2nd Edition, which was released shortly after the first Gold Box game, but the reason for their omission is simply unknown.

Programmatically, I cannot see how including the half-orc could have caused any problems outside of minor memory overhead, particularly since there are half-orc NPCs and enemies in the game. Their lack of inclusion as a PC race is simply puzzling.
   

If this bandit leader can be a half-orc, why can't I?

   
They were dropped from 2E, apparently due to TSR’s desire to reduce parental and religious backlash against the game, and as this product came out so close to 2E it is possible they were omitted for similar reasons.

Half orcs were brought back into 2E with the release of the Book of Humanoids player’s book. Regardless, they were omitted here which is a clear change to the rules.

1.5. Spells

The following sections detail changes in the adaptation of the spell system to the Gold Box titles.
   

1.5.1. Missing spells

AD&D 1st edition, as written, contains a plethora of spells available for your spell casters to utilize in the course of role playing. Some, like "Fireball," are holdovers from the game's wargaming roots, and therefore were included as they are easily administrable in a combat situation, and are generally created wholly for that.

Many others, however, are substantially less destructive. Some are only useful in specific situations, when utilized by a good player.

In the Gold Box games, a majority of the spells involving travel, enchanting, divination, or really anything outside of the combat game and combat resource management portion of the game, are omitted.

In many cases the number of spells omitted per level exceeds the number included. This is exacerbated if you count the spell lists in Unearthed Arcana as “canonical,” which technically they would be.

Again, any justification for their exclusion would be pure speculation on my part. Many of the omitted travel spells would be game-breaking in the exploration portion of Gold Box games. "Fly" or "Teleport," for example, both really break something like Secret of the Silver Blades. "Teleport without Error" breaks any geographic barrier that could be thrown at you.

Why hike through miles of Ice Crevasses when your mage can just cast "Teleport without Error" and bam, you’re at the Dreadlord’s castle, in his boudoir, and he’s staring at you in his Lich undies with a confused look.

Many divinations could be game-breaking as well. "Speak with Dead" would allow a plot bypass in any “we need info from this guy” situations. "Contact Outer Plane" would as well. "Clairvoyance" spoils the encounter behind the door in front of you. [Ed: But including it would have solved one of the most frustrating issues with Gold Box combat: you don't know it was time to buff until you've already stumbled into combat.]

In a tabletop game, the DM has to find ways to work around this stuff, if they would break the game. Or you allow them and work around it. In a CRPG, it would be impossible; hence, their omission.

1.5.2. Spell Books

In AD&D 1E, magic users needed to access their spells in written form to study them. Said spells were written in either standard or travel-style spell books. These were heavy items, with limited spell capacity. In the context of a normal game, it would be quite difficult for a traveling magic user to have access to every spell he or she had written down.

Loss of a spell book, or several spell books, would be a major crisis as the character would need to somehow re-acquire their lost spells and pay for new books. This would likely require substantial expense and adventuring time.

Spellbooks from enemy spell casters become useful items in this context. Need to learn "Fireball"? Kill that mage that just cast it on you, take his spellbook, and read.

This concept of the spellbook as an inventory item, or series of inventory items, was hand-waved in the Gold Box games and was simply omitted.

1.5.3. Spell components

In 1st edition AD&D, many spells require an additional material component to cast. In some cases, these components are somewhat trivial in nature; for instance, the primary component for "Fireball" is a bit of bat guano. In other cases, they can be somewhat expensive. "Raise Dead" requires a 1,000-gold-piece gem.

These were completely omitted in the Gold Box games.

Including them would potentially have been simple. A store or two could have been devoted to spell reagents/components a la Ultima IV, and/or they could have potentially been harvestable from downed foes.

That said, the first game in the series was created when disk storage was exceptionally expensive. Their inclusion would have incurred a cost at several layers, and was likely not considered worthwhile as a result.

These components are often hand-waved by DMs when they’re not exceptionally expensive in nature. So their omission is understandable.

1.5.4. Magic item creation

Magic Item Creation in AD&D 1st edition is allowed, and is a very valid money sink. That being said, the rules in the Pre-3.x versions of AD&D/D&D are much less codified, and structured, than the ones you would find in 3.x+, Pathfinder, et al.

A DM is first instructed to force the players to pay a sage or high level character for the initial formula for any magic item created, be it a potion, weapon, armor, wand, or other item. As written, the processes involved in creating magic items are simply not known to common folks.

From there, we have a ton of very loose procedural rules. For potion creation, a lab must be built at a cost of 200-1000gp, plus a 10% upkeep cost. Potions generally cost 200-500 gp to create and require rare and hard-to-acquire substances. A list of suggestions for various potions is provided: troll blood is a potential ingredient for a Potion of Extra Healing, for example. Said list does not cover every potion detailed in even the 1E DMG, so most of this is left to the DM to determine.

Mages from levels 7-10 can only brew potions if they pay an alchemist for assistance; mages from 11+ can brew them without aid. There are no rules listed to allow clerics to brew potions.

Scrolls can be scribed by any spell caster 7th level or higher. In this case, the rare ingredients are used to make the ink used to scribe the scroll. Suggested items to make said ink really are not purchase-able and require the mage to gather them from downed foes, in most cases. The rules required to make said ink are codified well, unlike the potion ingredient rules.

There is a chance of failure per spell scribed, modified upwards by the spell level, and downwards by the inscriber's level. A failed attempt means the entire scroll is ruined, and any ink already used is wasted.

Other items have much more vague guidelines involved. Essentially they instruct the DM to make up the costs on the fly, depending on the item the player wants to build. A Ring of Protection, the book's provided example, would require a masterwork-quality non-magical ring as a base. 5000gp is given as an example cost for a "base" item.

Mages need to use the "Permanency," "Enchant an Item," and/or "Enchanted Weapon" spells to make items with a +x factor, such as a Longsword +1.

In other cases, the mage would need to cast spells into a desired item then “seal” it in with a "Permanency" spell. In most cases, the spells required to enchant an item with a specific trait are basically left up to the DM to determine.

Between limited spell durations, and failure chance, there was an odd balancing act in place with this process. Enchanting a +5 weapon, for example, would be tricky due to the time limit and long casting time of "Enchant Weapon" and "Permanency." Additionally, a player was not told during the enchanting process if a step failed, and would instead be told at the end. Basically this kept PCs to the creation of +3 or +4 weapons/armor, unless they were exceptionally lucky, or very high level. Spell memorization limits came into play here was well.

As a result of this balancing act, the mage performing the enchantment would often need to cast some spells from scrolls. This would likely require the mage in question to pre-scribe the scrolls needed for the enchantment, incurring additional time or monetary costs.

For clerics and druids, the rules are absurdly simple and much clearer: pray daily, at a special altar, and there is a 1% cumulative daily chance of the item being empowered by the cleric's deity. So by day 50+ or so you're pretty much set.

Regardless of the item made, or method, any non-scrolls or potions made incur several days of inactivity on the part of the creator. 1 day/100xp value of the item is suggested. This is a fairly bad penalty, as a Mage that creates a Staff of the Magi, for example, would have to rest for 150 days afterwards.

More complex items are explicitly excluded from creation. Any of the Manuals that provide XP or improve stats cannot be created, nor can items like the Hammer of Thunderbolts. There is little codification as to which items are supposed to be excluded. This is again left to the DM to determine.

It is a bit disappointing that these rules were excluded from the Gold Box games. In Curse of the Azure Bonds, for instance, a sage in each town might have sold a magic item recipe for a high price. You could then undergo the required steps to make that item, if it seemed worthwhile, burning more money in the process and perhaps taking the mage character out of commission for part of the gameplay. [Ed: I'm thinking of a system that combines the way weapons and armor are created in The Magic Candle with the way characters must leave the party to work regular jobs.]

That being said, this is a completely understandable change. As-is, a mage does not have direct access to "Permanency" until they can cast 8th level spells, so it’s omission outside of Pools of Darkness and Dark Queen of Krynn is in line with the games' own power curve. If they had included a magic item creation process in those games, they would have also needed to provide "Permanency" scrolls.

These games also had memory restrictions that forced them to include text in an external manual; I cannot imagine they would have had room left over for an item creation sub-game that would have involved collecting “parts” from fallen foes.

1.6. Experience from story/plot actions

In Champions of Krynn, SSI started to include experience rewards for completing plot points. These were often rather substantial XP rewards and in later games are quite essential in the overall leveling process.

In the AD&D 1st edition rules, there is no precedence for this. As mentioned in the 0.x sections above, AD&D 1st edition is really just a distillation of the 1974 D&D rules, with the 3 supplements added in. OD&D circa 1974 was a game of exploration, not story. Story happened because of the exploration, but characters were in the dungeon because it was there, not because of a plot justification.
  

A character gets experience for talking his way out of combat. This isn't supposed to happen.

    
OD&D was a sandbox game and AD&D 1st edition, when written, was not modified to be a story-centric game. As a result, Gygax did not consider or include rules for XP rewards due to plot points. XP was given for defeating foes, gathering treasure, gaining and creating magic items, and a few other edge cases.

One could argue that the XP rewards for treasure, since they were only given once the treasure was successfully brought back to civilization, were used as a meta reward to include any plot-specific XP gained in the course of said acquisition. This is my personal belief as well based on my interpretation of the rules; 1 xp per gp was simply used as a blanket reward for successful adventuring.

AD&D 2nd edition did include rules for story-based XP rewards as the game had evolved into more of a story-telling game than a sandbox dungeon/wilderness exploration game. It should be noted that AD&D 2nd Edition core rules do not provide XP for treasure as a baseline. They do acknowledge that as a potential optional rule, but even in the suggested optional rule description, xp is supposed to be rewarded for gold at a ratio lower than the 1:1 that 1E had. They recommend 1 xp per 2-5 gp in those cases.

As SSI included story rewards, they did not stick to 1st edition rules.

1.7. Unearthed Arcana omissions

In 1985, TSR released the Unearthed Arcana expansion volume for the AD&D 1st edition rules. This volume detailed several new character classes (cavalier, barbarian, thief-acrobat) expanded existing classes (notably the ranger and druid), introduced weapon specialization into the game, added several character races, increased the level caps and class options for non-humans, and added a number of new magic items and spells.

Of all of the rules introduced in this expansion, the only things included in the Gold Box games were a small handful of spells and a few magic items (most notably Dart of the Hornet’s Nest). All character-related additions were ignored. All additional classes, all of the additional races, the increased racial class level caps, weapon specialization, new armor and weapons, along with the majority of the aforementioned added spells and magic items.

There is some logic to this. UA was generally considered to be unbalanced, was play-tested minimally, was released when TSR was cash-strapped, and was heavily “errata’d” in Dragon magazine. Both the cavalier and barbarian were re-tuned in at least one Dragon article each, to bring them in line with “normal” characters.

While the omissions might therefore make sense, it's worth noting that at the time, AD&D 1E’s core rules really only consisted of Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, 3 books of monsters (Monster Manual 1 and 2, and the Fiend Folio) and Unearthed Arcana. Leaving the majority of an entire book of rules out of these games is a big omission as a result.

1.8. Weapon proficiencies

In AD&D 1st edition, characters are given a small number (2-4 depending on class) of weapon proficiency “slots." These are used to select in which weapons the character is proficient. Non-proficient weapon use incurs a to hit penalty of -1 to -4 (based on class). Characters gain slots as they level, which allows them to become proficient in new weapons.

As briefly mentioned in 1.7, Unearthed Arcana introduced weapon specialization. This system allows fighters and rangers to spend a second proficiency slot on a weapon, which then bestows a faster attack rate, and to-hit and damage bonus. Essentially, they are given +1 to hit, +2 to damage, and their attacks per round with said weapon increase by 1 step, allowing 3 attacks every 2 rounds at level 1 or 2 attacks every round at level 7, for a standard melee weapon.

These rules were wholly omitted in the Gold Box games. This does make some sense as the pre-Unearthed Arcana system is a “penalty only” type of system. Specifically, there are no advantages to being proficient in a weapon, but there are substantial disadvantages in being non-proficient in a weapon. This type of system is generally frowned upon in modern game design. Regardless, its omission is worth noting as it is a clear rules change.




In summary, SSI was not above making significant changes to the AD&D first edition rules in adapting them to the CRPG medium. Thus, slavish, contractually-mandated dedication to the ruleset cannot justify the broken state of the economy. While most of the changes above resulted in a better CRPG experience at best or a neutral result at worst, changes to rules regarding training, "Monty Haul" gaming, placement and prevalence of treasures, among others, conspired to create a series of games in which money becomes more of an encumbrance than an asset after the first hours of the first game. In the second part of this article, we'll look at the specific treasure-based factors that resulted in a Gold Box economy that fundamentally sucks.