Temple of Elemental Evil is great D&D game, probably one of the most faithful recreations of the pen and paper rules.  It's made by the company that made Ancanum, which was formed by the people that made Fallout.

Temple of Elemental Evil is for you if you prefer strategy over hack and slash. The engine is just pure gold for anyone who likes D&D/PnP RPGs. Wish I could say the same about the setting and story though. 

I'd get an eternal orgasm if someone managed to remake Baldur's Gate 2 on ToEE's engine...

Temple of Elemental Evil is for you if you prefer strategy over hack and slash. The engine is just pure gold for anyone who likes D&D/PnP RPGs. Wish I could say the same about the setting and story though. 

Temple of Elemental Evil is directly based on an AD&D module of the same name written by Gary Gygax himself.

Check out Jagged Alliance 2.  It's not an RPG per se but there's tons of RPG elements such as training your characters, an incredibly deep weapon system, and managing resources.  The story is filled with dark ironic humor but the main focus is the battle system which plays out similar to Fallout but is built for dozens of units fighting at once and it's much more action oriented.

Check out Jagged Alliance 2.  It's not an RPG per se but there's tons of RPG elements such as training your characters, an incredibly deep weapon system, and managing resources.  The story is filled with dark ironic humor but the main focus is the battle system which plays out similar to Fallout but is built for dozens of units fighting at once and it's much more action oriented.

I was just gonna say this. One of the best games of all time in my eyes.

i hear shadowrun on SNES is much like fallout.  has anyone played this?

Uh, no. 

It's kind of hard to explain.  It's your standard RPG with random battles and stuff but combat is freetime and involves moving a cursor over enemies and clicking on them until they die.  The storyline involves a lot of investigation work; asking people random questions, picking up items and showing said items to people.  It's an "okay" game that gets real good in the end but the first 5 hours or so are SLOOOOOOOW because you're ridiculously underpowered, there's tons of grinding involved to actually kill stuff, and you have no money to buy any equipment.  Once you're actually able to afford other runners (temporary party members, you pay them but they leave your party after a while so it gets annoying) and you learn magic and get better items, the game gets better.

The Genesis version suffers from much the same problems as the SNES version (slow slow slow starting up) it follows the Shadowrun rules much more closely.

If you're into 16-bit RPGs, I recommend Rings of Power.  Real underrated game.  I think it's actually the largest 16bit RPG in terms of lines of code.  It's difficult starting up since you don't get the strategy guide and map that came with the retail version so I recommend reading a faq that tells you how to get the sextant.  The rest of the game is class.

Ah yes the legendary Fallout series I've still never completed them....try Jagged Alliance 2.

After much obsessive playing, I've pretty much completed the Fallout games.  Now I'm very addicted to the gameplay and in search of something similar.  By similar I mean turn-based combat, with D&D style rules.

Well if you want to talk about D&D-style rules, D&D games are a pretty good place to start.  I'm a big fan of Neverwinter Nights 2 which is a pretty clever blend of nerdy D&D-style number crunching and fairly interesting directed storytelling and progression.  It's more engaging than many D&D games which usually try to get by entirely on the fundamental joy of creating and powering up characters in the rigidly unfriendly D&D system because you have a real story and party members with real stories (who are cleverly designed to represent each of the D&D character classes so you actually end up building a custom party of any variety of character classes you want even though your supporting party members are all pre-built).

But if you like Fallout, you will also like Arcanum.  It's basically the same game except it has an even *more* inventive setting and is a little more ambitious in terms of stuff to do.  Unfortunately the combat is just about as polished as Fallout's (which is to say that it's really really sloppy), but character-building and fighting is really fun even though it's amateurish.  However if you play the game it's pretty important that you track down some of the better gameplay fan mods because they correct things that the designers never got around to patching (bankruptcy) like some spells being underpowered and the entire category of firearms being completely useless.

If you're into 16-bit RPGs, I recommend Rings of Power.  Real underrated game.  I think it's actually the largest 16bit RPG in terms of lines of code.  It's difficult starting up since you don't get the strategy guide and map that came with the retail version so I recommend reading a faq that tells you how to get the sextant.  The rest of the game is class.

Wasn't that the game with the hidden boobies?

Yeah, that does sound kind of lame (Shadowrun). 

Hold on, there.

I'm in the middle of a Shadowrun playthrough right now (Genesis version) and it's actually pretty decent. Like Marcus said, the beginning is slow because you're weak, and poor, and everything costs money and is stronger than you. But it's actually a great game that requires a little patience, exploration, and investigative work. It gets addictive because of all the things you can do and all the attributes you can raise; hacking, sneaking into corporation HQ's to steal things, freelance work, getting good with gangs, and all that. You have to know what you're doing though, because they just throw you in this huge world, and Decking (it's called the Matrix, but not like the movies) is a entirely different ballgame with entirely different rules. I suggest heading over to GameFaqs and grabbing a walkthrough if you plan on getting into it, but once you do, it's awesome.

Protip: Decking and stealing data from the Matrix is the absolute fastest way to make a boatload of money. 

Jagged Alliance 2 is the coolest fucking game from that era. If you haven't tried it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Every aspect of it is sweeta$$, from its story, to its characters, to its gameplay and maps.

If you can't tell, I love it. Long before the thought of combining RPG WITH RTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! was considered revolutionary, JA2 combined RPG, RTS, and turn based strategy into one game that felt completely polished.

Basically you hire mercenaries (which is your RPG-style party), equip them with guns and shit, and attempt to liberate a third world country under oppressive tyranny by clearing various towns and military bases of the national army. Once cleared, the towns can be turned around your side, workers can be hired to help you raise more cash, and your own militia can be trained to defend it from the national forces. Your cash can be further invested into more teams of mercenaries and better equipment.

All the mercenaries are loaded with character and personality, some of them fan favourites like Ivan, the stereotypical Russian demolitions expert. They are all skilled in different areas of combat, like being medics or sharpshooters, heavy weapons, demolitions etc. Combat is turn based and strategic. You've got 'action points' or whatever JA2 called them which can be expended for moving your character, crouching or going prone (which makes you harder to hit and lets you shoot better but also makes moving slower). Stuff like cover, line of sight, flanking, it all comes into play. If wounded, your characters will even bleed, leaving blood trails and requiring medical attention (bandaging) to stop the steady health loss. When there are not any enemies in the immediate area, the game switches to a real time mode to let you explore and scavenge the map for supplies. It all feels intuitive and cohesive. Even hiring mercenaries and buying equipment is cool because you do it all via a ingame computer with a web browser and shit, visiting different websites to buy stuff which is then shipped to your nearest airfield (assuming you've conquered one, mercenaries are paradropped in) Like someone said before me, the game is full of dark humour and the writing is generally top notch stuff.

So yeah play JA2.

Jagged Alliance 2 is the coolest fucking game from that era. If you haven't tried it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Every aspect of it is sweeta$$, from its story, to its characters, to its gameplay and maps.

I'm a big Silent Storm fan and JA2 sounds pretty much exactly like it but probably with worse graphics and better writing.  You mentioned that the characters all have a lot of personality;  I remember in Silent Storm that yes every recruit has his own personality but they basically boil down to various racial stereotypes and it's unintentionally hillarious when your Russian medic screams in a thick (phoney) accent "CANNOT STOP BLEEDING, NEED MORE BULLETS!!"  Awesome game though.

I'm a big Silent Storm fan and JA2 sounds pretty much exactly like it but probably with worse graphics and better writing.  You mentioned that the characters all have a lot of personality;  I remember in Silent Storm that yes every recruit has his own personality but they basically boil down to various racial stereotypes and it's unintentionally hillarious when your Russian medic screams in a thick (phoney) accent "CANNOT STOP BLEEDING, NEED MORE BULLETS!!"  Awesome game though.

Well yeah, they have personality insomuch as racial stereotypes are personality. It's not like they all have twenty scripted pages of backstory or anything. Still, most if not all are sort of CHARMING in their own way.

What's not to love about a burly blackman named Blood?

The Exile/Avernum series are fairly good indie, traditional RPGs. The worlds are massive, there's tons of nooks and crannies to search, and there's pretty good writing (albeit a little too much of it.)

Also, Planescape: Torment can't be reccomended enough as long as you're willing to look past the somewhat flawed gameplay and slow start.

The Exile/Avernum series are fairly good indie, traditional RPGs.

I was really surprised by how good Avernum 4 was.  I don't think I played past the demo (the demo is like 5 hours long or something and made me feel like I had enjoyed enough of the game).  The combat is pretty good and it really highlights how much more fun Fallout would have been with a better combat system.