What RPG are you playing right now?

[Ack]

Hey, and now Revenant is done. I flirted with the possibility of playing Albion, but the controls didn't immediately click, so I decided to peruse my RPG library a bit. Now I'm caught up in playing Gorky 17, which is a horror-themed tactical RPG where I'm up against some tough monsters, set encounter locations (so no grinding), and limited items. It's one of those games that makes you pay for each missed hit and screwed up move, so be sure of every move you make before you make it.

[MrPopo]

I'm hip deep in SSI's output. Secret of the Silver Blades has really upped the ante with regards to mapping. Pool of Radiance used straight 16x16 maps, Curse of the Azure Bonds got more clever by making a map have a more interesting shape while still fitting within a 16x16 grid; think of things like instead a 8x32 map with automatic teleports when you try to pass through a screen boundary, and a couple that used 256 squares, but a ton of teleports at doors to make some kind of weird shape. Now Secret has a few gigantic maps (if you plot them, they're something like 150x50) but they still cleverly fit within a 16x16 map from a data file perspective. It involves a ton of reuse of rooms and clever room shapes and keeping track of your position state to set what the endpoints of a door teleport are. On the plus side, the in game interface still displays your coordinates properly as if it was one giant map, so I can use that to map it out by hand. On the minus side, I NEED to map it by hand because Gold Box Companion sees just a single 16x16 map that you teleport around on all over the place.

[marurun]

I'm really looking forward to your thoughts on Champions of Krynn, should you desire to play it. I never got far on the Forgotten Realms side because the early parts of PoR are so challenging.

[Ack]

Yeah, I am also very curious about your thoughts. My only experience with Pool of Radiance was the hideously broken remake from the early 2000s. I own so many of these games but just haven't gotten to them yet.

[MrPopo]

So the one from 2001 is not actually a remake; they were just banking on the name but it's a completely different story.

My plan is to keep going with the Gold Box stuff until I run out or I finally close on a house and can access more than my Surface as a gaming machine. Once I finish the four Moonsea games I'm going to do the two Savage Frontier games, then the three Dragonlance games.

[marurun]

What? Don’t save Dragonlance for last!

[MrPopo]

I have to; gotta do Forgotten Realms first so I don't have to worry about the back and forth of the small but significant mechanical changes.

[Ack]

I have to; gotta do Forgotten Realms first so I don't have to worry about the back and forth of the small but significant mechanical changes.

Well, if that is the case, how would you compare these to Might and Magic 1?

[MrPopo]

Compared to M&M1, these games are easier to navigate and have more interesting combat. The maps are 16 by 16 and don't have all the crazy switchback stuff that M&M1 has. There's also very few traps, since it's going deeper into D&D specifically and the mechanics of how the Thief class works. The opening is still a game of whiff whiff whiff, but every AD&D game suffers from that (as they didn't adjust early game to hit until 3rd edition). There's also a stronger system of sidequests. It's definitely more approachable than M&M1.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I never posted about it while I was playing, but I just finished Lunar: The Silver Star. My daughter watched me play (minus the level-grinding) and enjoyed it immensely. Would like to transition to Eternal Blue soon, and perhaps Sanposuru Gakuen after that. Good times.