DavesGaming

Gold Box Games is the general name for a series of CRPGs released by SSI from 1988 to 1992. The first game, “Pool of Radiance” is certainly the best known, and it was revolutionary in a way when it came out.
Maybe I should soften that a little. It was not revolutionary in terms of graphics. It looks much like other games of its era. Its not even revolutionary in terms of how it plays as a game. The sort of turn based, menu driven game engine was pretty common in 1980s CRPGs. Gold Box games did it all very well, but were not revolutionary for this. But what I think was revolutionary was an official licensed AD&D computer product. So many other games before then, from Wizardry to Ultima to Bard’s Tale were sort of D&D knock offs. And I don’t mean that to slam any of them, I certainly spent many hours and had a ton of fun with those other games. I may eventually do write ups of some of them here, eventually. But for those of us who were playing a lot of D&D it was beyond awesome to have something that was just like the game we played with friends. An AD&D computer game was much closer to a D&D simulator than those other games were.
Especially when my job (first job in a 33 year career as an air traffic controller) transfered me away from my long time gaming buddies in 1989, Gold Box games let me play MY favorite characters in all new adventures.

Which is all a long way of saying, these games had a huge impact on me even beyond the pure hours spent on them.

As I understand it (mostly from Wikipedia), SSI winning the bid for the AD&D license was a bit of a shock at the time. They were not the biggest developer. Apparently their staff jumped from 7 to 25 just from this one deal. That sounds like a small company to me! But they were already well known to me. They were known for doing wargames, and I loved their games Warship, Battle Cruiser, War in the South Pacific… They had even done some fantasy games, Phantasie, Questron, Wizard’s Crown were also games I’d played.
So I was well familiar with them. Back in those pre-internet days (for me), I wasn’t as up on industry news. When I happened to see Pool of Radiance, an official AD&D product, from SSI at a mall Babbages, I grabbed it and almost ran to the counter. This was awesome!

SSI’s idea was to build a game engine, that would support a number of adventures. And utilize AD&D game mechanics as faithfully as possible. This was still in the AD&D 1E era, so there are some differences from 2E which is maybe more familiar to modern gamers because of Baldur’s Gate (1 & 2).
Looking back on it all these years later, some of the things they implimented and some of the things they did NOT impliment seem a little odd. But the games played very well, and I can only wish the later IE games used some of this…
Things like, being reduced to zero or fewer hit points did not mean dead. They used the “bleeding out” rules, that meant you could survive to a certain number of negative hit points. You would loose one hit point a round until dead, unless someone took their action for the round to bind your wounds or cast a healing spell.
There was also the “sweep” attack, fighters above 1st level got one attack *per level* against foes with less than 1 hit die, that were within reach. So things like Goblins and kobolds, your front rank fighter could probably cut a swath through them in a hurry.
Also, coinage had multiple denominations and carry weight. You learned quickly not to bother picking up Copper Pieces. Although when you did get to a shop you could convert everything to its most efficient coinage (platinum was worth 5 gold). When you got very wealthy you might buy jewelry or such just to make your wealth easier to carry.

One thing NOT included, was weapon proficiencies. Its funny, in later IE games how to use your proficiencies is one of the biggest areas of planning for a new character. But in Gold Box games there simply are no proficiencies. If your character class can use a weapon, you can use the weapon. End of story. Of course that means no specialization, but remember specialization was never a part of core 1E rules anyway. Its first official appearence was in Unearthed Arcana published in 1985 (so yes, it was available to SSI had they meant to include it. But it was not core, and back in the ’80s many hard decisions were made on what to include, and what not to).

You do get to modify your character portrait and in-game avatar, from a limited number of choices. The character portrait part was dropped after Pool of Radiance, but designing your avatar was always there.

Also in that first game there were no sub-classes (Paladin, Ranger). You chose from the main four (Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief); and you chose a race (be careful! Level limits were shockingly low in 1E). Sub-classes were added from the second game (Curse of the Azure Bonds).

So what are these games like to play now? Some familiarity with vintage gaming may be a requirement. The graphics are very crude, and the menus/inputs are not always intuitive. Players who moan about the limitations of AD&D are in for a shock, the game engine is a FAR bigger barrier than the rules set.
I tried to restart Pool of Radiance a few years ago. I’ll say it defeated me. Baldur’s Gate simply looks so much better and is so much easier to use its not even funny. It is staggering the level of improvement in the 10 years between these games.

But you know, I loved these games for many years. So I’m going to try again. The biggest change for me, may be the presence of AI art. Even if the game play is primative, I can bring the world and characters to life in a new way. So that’s what I’m going to try.
My plan is to play all the Gold Box games. Maybe not all at once? We’ll see. I’m an old retired guy just goofing around now. If I decide its not worth it, I’ll stop.

But for planning purposes, here’s what we’ve got:

1st Series
Pool of Radiance
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Secret of the Silver Blades
Pools of Darkness

2nd Series
Champions of Krynn
Death Knights of Krynn
The Dark Queen of Krynn

3rd Series
Gateway to the Savage Frontier
Treasures of the Savage Frontier

Unlimited Adventures – build your own Gold Box game! But it also includes its own stand alone adventure.

Buck Rogers Games
Countdown to Doomsday
Matrix Cubed

A few comments. TSR published a Buck Rogers sci-fi RPG based closely on AD&D rules. So this was an easy adaption by SSI. I played the first of these and liked it very much, but my interests had moved on before the second was released. In theory I might play these, they are available from GoG. But no commitment!
The 3rd Series of AD&D games were by a different developer. SSI licensed Stormfront Studios to do them. I always saw these as the most sophisticated of the Gold Box. New features like weather effects on movement and combat, and story things like an in-game romance. And fresh, different looking artwork. I almost wanted to just start with these two, but I’ll wait and see.
One funny thing, back in the day I played on a C64. All versions came out at about the same time. Except Amiga versions came out years later, when I had an Amiga. They were improved, faster, better art. I loved the improvements on the Amiga versions. Now, with GoG games running on DOSBox, I’ll be back to the original PC versions of the games. So they will be more primitive even than the last time I played them.