Pool of radiance

[hiddenbit]

#11093

I’m new around here and I don’t consider myself “seasoned” enough to make any kind of suggestion to you guys, but, as far as I can see in Previous Months and here in the suggestions list, I can’t see any of the Gold Box games, which I find a bit surprising.

To be honest I have played only the first game, Pool of Radiance, so I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject. However I enjoyed the game so much that I believe it is well worth a month dedicated to it and I won’t be wasting anyone’s time.

Pool of radiance is a cRPG released in 1988 by SSI and was one of the first computer games that was based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. The story goes like this: The city of New Phlan has fallen into ruins. The city council recruits heroes to help restore the city by clearing areas that are now inhabited by monsters. You (a group of up to 6 heroes), seeking fame and fortune, take up the city council’s proclamation, progressively fight your way freeing neighboring areas until you face the great evil behind all this.

At the beginning of the game you get to create your party. You choose between classes (i.e. fighter, mage, cleric, thief etc), races (human, elf, dwarf) and gender. Each hero has some basic characteristics: strength, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity and charisma. Obviously, depending on the class, some characteristics are more important than the others. The game rolls random numbers for each of them but also allows you to manually set these values as you wish.

The graphics of the game look kind of dated, even 25 ago when I first played it. The main screen is divided in 3 areas. The upper left is a first person, pseudo-3d, perspective where your party moves in a grid based movement. On the upper right the party members are listed along with their current hit points and armor class. The bottom part of the screen is used by the game to print text messages that describe your surroundings or let you know the result of actions you take.

But what really stands out in the game, and the rest of the games in the series, is combat. Combat is turn-based and takes place in an isometric perspective view which takes up about half the screen. Each of your characters and the monsters act in turns which depend on the character’s speed. Each character can move and/or attack, cast spells, shoot arrows or just wait/guard/skip his turn. The morphology of the battlefield depends on the area you are in. If you are fighting inside a building there will be rooms and walls. If you are fighting in the wilderness there will be trees and other obstacles. All these can be tactically used and can affect the course of each battle. For example if you are facing archers you can move your characters behind walls or in another room and force the enemies to follow you and lead them to a melee instead of ranged fight.

The characters advance by gaining experience points by winning fights. Apart from fighting monsters you can either get yourself mixed up in a tavern brawl or visit the training hall. When enough experience points are gained, each character then in order to advance to the next level needs to visit the appropriate trainer depending on its class. All trainers are found in the training hall in the civilized section of New Phlan.

Despite its age the game manages to offer a lot of areas to explore along with many small details that enrich the world and fuel the imagination. In each block you step you can search for secret passages and treasure. As you progress the game and acquainted yourself with more npcs you discover more about the story but also about the impressive amount of lore the writers and developers managed to put into so little storage space. Story and lore are heavily augmented by the manual where the game refers you for little stories and detailed descriptions that otherwise would be awkward to fit in the game’s large font. I remember at some point you get the chance to disguise your PCs which gives the advantage of moving in some areas incognito and save the party from many fights. Of course, although there are some hints, this possibility is not evident and is left to the player to realize and take advantage of.

Exploring the areas is really fascinating and if you decide to draw your own maps it can become really addictive to map every little corner and search for every possible hidden passage and treasure.

Anyway I’ll stop my rambling here. This isn’t some obscure rare game and you can find a lot of information and reviews on the internet which will offer a much better description than mine.

[Pix]

#11094

We’re happy to get suggestions from anyone. Getting around to them is another matter. It’s a fair point though, we really should do a gold box game some time. I own a few of them but I’ve never actually played any of them yet so it would be nice to put that right at last. The nearest we’ve gotten was Eye Of The Beholder.

2026 is already booked up but we’ll certainly consider it when we get round to picking for 2027.

[Evil Taco]

#11096

I’m just like DGC – I also haven’t played a Gold Box game and it feels like it would be high time to get around to it!

I hear there are great quality of life mods to the game!

[butterburp]

#11104

If you get the right version of POR and configure it right, you can get Tandy sound. I have yet to figure out how to do this successfully…last time I tried, I think I gave up and just listened to a Youtube video that had the opening music.

Non-DOS tangent: the Windows release c.2000-ish was a sight to behold, at least externally. The collector’s edition even came with dice, if I remember right. I never got too far along, but I heard the game itself was a drag.