When you think Dungeons and Dragons video games, you probably think of one of two things: games based on the Gold Box engine from the late 80s and early 90s like Pools of Radiance and Unlimited Adventures, or the games based on the Infinity Engine from the late 90's and early 2000 like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. And if you're anything like me, you think these games, and D&D in general, sucks!

I guess I should elaborate a little bit. I've always been completely baffled by D&D mechanics. THAC0, saving throws, 3d6, rolls, hit die, resistances; an entire lexicon of nerdy gibberish that is indecipherable to all but its hunchbacked devotees who have spent years rolling for that magic 18 (PS - I understand that the computer takes care of all of this in D&D video games, but the stigma still stands, especially when you look at your character's statistics screen and see a page and a half of text about racial penalty resistance modifier dice throws). But even more than the archaic gameplay that requires a math degree, I dislike the unimaginative fantasy worlds and stock plots these games have. Every elf is a nature dick, every dwarf is a surly alcoholic (that really cares deep down...), every orc is hellbent on destroying human civilization but is too stupid to do it, and everyone is white (except the one greedy Arab merchant and the one monk from the mysterious east who views these westerners as barbarians but knows he must fight to secure peace).

Not that the games I'm posting are stunning contrasts to the problems I just listed, but I do think they're GEMS IN THE D&D ROUGH! Most of them only borrow concepts or small pieces of the D&D formula to make something exciting and creative. The one that I feel is most similar to the D&D standard is Warriors of the Eternal Sun, which still has fun gameplay and uses an interesting setting. So put on your hardhats, because we're going into the darkest bowels of the D&D franchise to find some of its most obscure and interesting games (that was the worst sentence I have ever written (emphasis on the word bowels)).



Al-Qadim - The Genie's Curse[/b]


"Bwahahaha! I'm a freakin' genie! Allakhazam! I live in a genie bottle! I'm the genie master!" That's what I would say if I was a genie.

I probably should have posted this game last, because it's definitely the best game I'm going to talk about, but I'm the kind of guy who his eats dessert first. I'm not really sure what qualifies Al-Qadim as a D&D game. The game drops the standard Dungeons and Dragons battle mechanics and adopts a more action RPG system, making it play more like Zelda than Neverwinter Nights. Your character, who you get to name, wanders around a neat Arabian-like world performing quests and rubbing genie lamps (not really) to find the missing princess.


Just showing off the necessary game element of transforming into a parrot.

The story is pretty neat for a D&D game! You've just become a full-fledged corsair, or pirate-warrior, and are returning home for your wedding to the princess. You are the son of a wealthy merchant who is quarreling with another merchant. In the midst of securing a truce between your father and the other merchant, you are informed that your family's genie has attacked your bride-to-be, the princess, at sea and has destroyed her ship. You are sent out on a quest to find the princess, find out why your genie attacked her ship, and to clear your family's name. Although the game features some combat, the game has much more emphasis on clever puzzles and well-written dialogue. Dungeons are fun to explore because they were short enough to not be tedious, and it is neat to wander around towns and talk to people because the characters you meet are genuinely interesting and the dialogue is very good.


This is one of the game's puzzles. You don't actually need to swing your sword to solve this puzzle, but I thought it would make the picture more interesting.

I also want to mention the graphics. Although this game came out in 1994, the graphics are still pretty good! Everything is very colorful and the animations are fluid, making the game very pleasant to look at. The only thing that's kind of annoying about this game is that it can be a little tricky to turn around in combat, but once you get over this it is a very enjoyable game. You can download it here.



Warriors of the Eternal Sun[/size]


Do you remember that guy named Gelatinous Cube who used to post at GW a couple years ago? I thought his name was really weird until I fought a gelatinous cube in Warriors of the Eternal Sun.

I feel a little bit like a hypocrite for posting Warriors of the Eternal Sun after typing up that introduction about why I don't like D&D, because it pretty much fits the bill of a typical D&D game! That's not entirely true, but it doesn't deviate too far from the norm! In WotES, your entire city is teleported into the middle of a strange new world during a battle with some goblins. The king tells your group of adventurers to explore your new world and find allies to help defend the city from enemy attacks. As you explore the world, you eventually find out that the world you used to live on is actually hollow and you've been teleported into the center of it, which is actually a museum of cultures and animals that would have otherwise gone extinct on the surface (which is strange because you basically commit genocide on every other culture you come into contact with). The setting is actually kind of neat, but it doesn't really matter that much since there's barely any dialogue or character interaction.

The game is divided into two perspectives, first and third person. In third person perspective, you explore the overworld like you would any other third person RPG. When you run into enemies, you enter combat mode, which is like standard D&D combat. Each character gets a turn to act, and their action includes movement, casting spells, or attacking. The game enters the first person perspective when you enter a cave or dungeon, and this is when the game gets a lot more interesting! Combat is played out in semi-real time in first person (you hit a button to make each character attack) and is much faster paced than the third person, but is also a lot less strategic.


Fighting a guy.

This game also has the most ridiculous soundtrack of any game ever. I'm not kidding, it seriously sounds like Manowar did half the songs for this game (one song even features DOUBLE BASS DRUMS). Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that listening to faux heavy metal being played on a Sega Genesis sound chip is pretty strange! I don't think I'm allowed to post a link for this game because it's for the Sega Genesis. Just do a google search for "Warriors of the Eternal Sun rom". It's not too hard to find!



Stronghold[/size]


Welcome to Dwarf City! I'm a dwarf!

You know that other game called Stronghold? The one with the 3D castles or whatever? I've never actually played it, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing like this one. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are no games like Stronghold and like Al-Qadim, I'm not even sure what qualifies it as a D&D game. Stronghold is a city building game similar to Sim City, except with dwarfs and elfs and wizards. Also enemies, but I'll get to that!

The world of Stronghold is made up of tiles, and each tile is made up of four plots on which you can build structures. Most structures only take up one plot, but some take up two, and a few even take up all four. The most essential structures are your city's castles, and if you lose a castle, you'll never get it back. At the beginning of the game, you create your city's leaders by rolling their stats (I'm not sure if they actually do anything though?), choosing their class, and then building their castle. Castles produce units that have the same class as their leaders, and if you lose your castle, you'll no longer be able to produce units. Unlike most real time stategies, though, buildings don't directly produce units. Units arrive at your castles only when they know their needs will be met (shelter, food, weapons, etc.). You'll need to constantly build new farms, houses, markets, and other buildings as your city expands to attract new units. You can also click on your units to talk to them and see how they think you're doing.

Depending on what mode you're playing in, the world might also be populated with enemies that attack your city. These guys are dicks!!! Combat can be pretty confusing until you're used to the magnet system in Stronghold. You can't actually control your people, which means that you're not doing any fighting; your dudes are. You can watch as your units automatically battle enemies, and they are very well animated so it can be pretty interesting. When you're ready to attack an enemy castle, instead of directly ordering your units to attack, you group them together in a tile by using the magnet bar (see that bar underneath the big triangle in the picture?), which calls all available units to that square.


It's cool if you have no idea what's going on in this picture.

Stronghold can be tough the first few times you play it, especially during the winter when all of your people complain constantly (I'm homeless, I'm starving, I'm unemployed). The manual is included in the download link, so definitely read it if you play it! Of all the games that I'm posting about, this is the one I recommend the most. Even though I think Al-Qadim is a better game than this, I think you should try Stronghold just to see how it works and is executed. I think the idea of Stronghold is really neat, but it also probably could have been even better (not that it's not pretty cool already). I also want to point out that for a game that was made in 1992, these graphics FRACKIN' RULE (each class has their own style of architecture, which is doubly cool)! You can download Stronghold here.



Dark Sun: Shattered Land[/size]


Dark Borat the half-giant fighter/psionicist punches a yellow thing on the outer thigh. Good work!

Man. MAN. This should be the best game of all time. I'm serious, this really should be the best game ever. The problem is that it's not. Dark Sun has basically the best premise for any game: you live on a planet that is completely desert. There are barely any natural resources or water, so people constantly war over what little there is. They are herded into city-states where they are made slaves to work on giant pyramids for insane sorcerer kings who are trying to turn into dragons. As a result of the harsh conditions of the desert planet, people have evolved powerful mental psionic abilities in order to defend themselves. Your characters start out as gladiatorial slaves in the wizard Tectuktitlay's arena, but escape and try to rally together an army of escaped slaves to kill the sorceror king. So why does this game not live up to its ridiculous plot? Glitches!

The world of Dark Sun is really, really neat to explore. There are a lot of pretty interesting characters to talk to, and while the dialogue isn't nearly as good as Al-Qadim's, NPCs are still worth interacting with and there are a lot of really unique scenarios and quests in the game. Although the overall objective of Dark Sun is to rally together an army to resist Tectuktitlay, the game is very open ended and you're free to go about this and explore the world however you want. Visit slave villages, fight castles of bandits, go inside a temple inside of a dead dragon's body; the world is really something worth seeing, which isn't something most video games can claim!

The combat is also pretty passable for a D&D game. It's fairly standard fair, each character has a turn to move and attack, but there are a lot of touches that make it more interesting to play than Gold Box games. Everything is neatly animated with very nice graphics, making battle great to watch. You can also play as completely ridiculous races and classes like half-giants, muls (I don't even know what a mul is), and thri-keens, who are these weird insect people who have a million arms and can attack a million times in combat, making them better than any other race.

As I mentioned earlier, the biggest problem with this game is glitches. Everything I've described sounds really great, but none of it works right at all. Character sprites disappear in combat but still exist, making it impossible to fight back. Dialogue trees mess up all the time. If you don't do certain things in exactly the right order, sometimes you can mess up the game (not to the point of unplayability, but the scenario or quest you're doing will not finish properly). The whole game feels very unpolished, but if you can get over this (and save often) you will have a very neat world to explore.


This guy's teeth aren't mustard yellow, he's actually wearing a grill. A grill+1.

Sooooooo try this game if you're willing to put up with a super neat game that you have to reload every once in a while. I kind of exaggerated how bad the glitches can be, but they are really frustrating. The music is also absolutely horrible. I think this game has the worst music I have ever heard in it, so just turn it off and listen to something else. You can download Dark Sun: Shattered Land (and it's sequel, which I played for 10 minutes and sucks) here.

So there you have it, those are the four good D&D games. I bet you're wondering why I know so much about D&D games if I don't even like them! As a kid, my dad used to buy these bundle packs of D&D games for cheap and I would occasionally play them. Aside from the ones I listed above, I thought most of them were pretty horrible! Aside from Warriors of the Eternal Sun, you should run these in DOSBox, which you can download at www.dosbox.com. If you have any trouble with DOSBox, feel free to ask because I'm pretty good with it. As a close friend of mine, gamesmasterjasper says: game safely.

Semper games.

the problem i have with most D&D games is the extreme learning curve. pretty much you either GET IT or YOU DON'T. to get far in most of them you need to know all the D&D garbage, i remember in one of the early D&D games i played i equipped an armour and had no idea if it was better or worse than the last one because i didn't understand AC fully. some of these games seem hard to understand but i am probably going to check out stronghold because it seems the most user friendly.

i used to really like warriors of the eternal sun when i was small but i forgot it's name! i'm gonna download it and play for 10 minutes.

i know absolutely nothing about dungeons and dragons and i didn't even know there were dungeons and dragons games. it's one of those things in the whole geeky universe that i was just never interested in for some reason, like lord of the rings. i dunno why but i always felt adverse to dungeons and dragons.

edit:

you were right, the scenario for warriors of the eternal sun is really cool. it's probably the best scenario i've seen for justifying the whole band of merry warriors go from place to place fighting evil bullshit! i have forgotten everything about this game almost.

edit:

i died.

Funnily enough it took me a while to understand THAC0, but once I worked it out (The lower your AC, the better) I play Icewind Dale, which would come under the Gold Box thing (Unlike Icewind Dale 2, which runs off another version) and I have to say, most of those character personalities are failed (Including the Orc one, they are just hell bent on destroying ME but too weak to do it   ​   ) But I have to agree, that sometimes, those mechanics can be confusing, but it's easier to start playing now. Although, I can make a big contrast between 4th and 3.5th, they have changed THAT much! I view 4th as a dumbed down version, and 3.5th is the most refined.

Out of all those games, the only one I have played is WotES, I haven't played much, 'cause I decided to run headlong into a fight and didn't find a control sheet on the web for it anywhere >.< I most likely won't play any of the others, I enjoy crushing EVERYTHING in my wake on Never Winter Nights or Icewind Dale, due to the character import system (Which makes the game a chain of Make new character -> Play through game -> Import -> Rinse -> Repeat from step 2)

I used to play Ultima Underworld 2 as a kid but I didn't understand anything because it was in english and the only reason I liked it because it was kinda fun and looked cartoonyish and cool and GASP it was 3D.

All the Baldurs Gates and Neverwinter Nights I never got into, due to TOO MUCH text and the most generic fantasy settings ever. To me they were really boring.

Really good read, thanks chef. This got me through like 15 minutes at work, you're the best. I'll check these out later.

i used to really like warriors of the eternal sun when i was small but i forgot it's name! i'm gonna download it and play for 10 minutes.

yeah! i remember renting it as a kid and only getting to those first caves and dying constantly. i was pretty horrible at it and it so i'm not really sure why i liked it. i decided sort of on an impulse to download it again a couple weeks ago (i think to revive my interest in video games!) and it turns out i was just really bad at it and it's pretty neat.

I enjoy crushing EVERYTHING in my wake on Never Winter Nights or Icewind Dale, due to the character import system (Which makes the game a chain of Make new character -> Play through game -> Import -> Rinse -> Repeat from step 2)

why? what's fun about this? playing the same game over again with the same characters, only slightly better. that's pretty awful man!

man you guys suck dnd is pretty easy to figure out once you understand the charts but the manuals always do a pretty bad job at explaining things.

2nd edition was a mess especially with the way THAC0 worked and AC being negatives (and a penalty to your saving throw actually increased it while a bonus lowered it AAAARGH BACKWARDS SHIT).  The original Baldur's Gate is what got me into the table top game.  I had no idea what the fuck I was doing and wondered why I kept dying but I eventually cracked open the college sized manual and basically figured out that the lower your AC and THAC0 and the higher every other number was the better you were doing. 

3.5 basically refined things to near perfection but then 4E came along and fucked everything back up again.  It's basically Dungeons and Dragoncraft except with pen and paper but most of the game is supposed to be played online through DnD insider gimme a break.

Anyways, I guess I'm in the minority here (literally olol) but I like numbers.  I guess I'm really left brain centric but looking at numbers gives me a massive hard on which probably explains my love for roguelikes.  The more numbers and random options a game presents me the more fun I have with it.

Oh yeah, while people stereotype the game as a thing for nerds huddled in their mom's basements with the light's off it's really just a fun party game and social interaction tool.  While you always have your Tolkien fantasy tropes (like haughty Elves and shit like that), the game tries to promote creativity by motivating you to improvise and use your imagination and the official licensed adventures are actually pretty new and daring (not 4E though Jesus Christ the first published adventure is DEFEAT THE DARK EVIL and every piece of art in the book is either of a female in bikini armor or a male wearing 500 pound spiked platemail but can still move with the greatest of ease in it). 

In the end, it's basically like playing cards or pool with your friends except you play in a make-believe world with made up personages.  Whenever I play with my friends we usually bust out drinks, talk about current events, and rag on each other.

Oh and the Gelatinous Cube is a staple of every wizard's dungeon.  It's not nearly as humorous as the BLACK PUDDING or OCHRE JELLY but they're fun to fight.

I also recommend Stronghold.  Great game.  It's like an expanded early version of Tower Defense.

that's dark sun 1. you start out as a slave and you have to escape from the arena pens. i tried playing dark sun 2 a little bit more but it is really awful. the huge character sprites slow the game down so that it takes a million years to get anywhere and they look pretty dumb too. but even more than that, the game loses the sense of urgency that dark sun 1 had. what made dark sun 1 really neat was that you were on the fringes of civilization, you were in the middle of the desert looking for anyone to help you fight the sorcerer king. when you managed to find people, most of them were too busy struggling to survive to help you out. dark sun 2 takes place in a pretty boring city and loses the sense of dire that made the original really interesting. you're not in the desert fighting against your environment, there is no evil army on the horizon. i didn't get that far (i didn't leave the first screen!!!) so if someone who's played it wants to correct me, go ahead, but it just seemed sort of awful.

why? what's fun about this? playing the same game over again with the same characters, only slightly better. that's pretty awful man!

The same reason that Ratchet's Replay mode is fun, the pleasure of being able to slay practically every enemy I see, and the fact the the hard mode for it REALLY is ahrd mode (In a party of four I have, one is a bard, and he dies pretty much everytime I walk into encounters) That and it means that if I have a 20th level character, I can walk round town killing all the people and get away with a few hitpoints of damage, and a great boost towards being the evilest bastard alive.

That and in NWN all enemies are boosted to still provide you a challenge (Except bosses, which are a fixed level, stupidly) as my Rogue/Assassin found out, after I rushed into a largfe group of heavy hitting Zombies, which I can't sneak attack (FECK), whereas my low level characters encounter weak zombies which take a magic missle or two to take down, although the bosses are a pain in the ass at low level (Still can't kill one boss, which must be a few levels over my Sorcerer, who is level 6 now)



So I guess it's the cheap thrill of mass owning, and the ability to put it on higher difficulties with a chance of surviving.

The DnD arcade fighters are awesome.  I also recommend everyone try out Temple of Elemental Evil on the PC.  It's pretty much unplayable without the latest patch but it's a really good game (and of course Troika let you marry a gay guy and the game received a lot of flak for that).

Realms of Arkania is also a good series based on Das Schwarze Auge, a table top game famous in Germany (WHAT A NONSENSE).

yeah man, i almost mentioned it because those arcade games ruled. i remember going down to the arcade with friends and tearing those games up every couple of weekends. i think i was always the thief but i can't remember! but yeah, i decided not to talk about it because four seems like a pretty ideal amount for each of these i do. i've got a couple more planned, i've just been super busy lately and haven't gotten around to doing them!

also marcus, realms of arkania - star trail is probably my favorite game!!! but i'm pretty sure that's why you mentioned it. it's not really d&d or anything, but i guess it's kind of similar and if you really, really want to play an awful, ancient crpg you should pick it up. i'll probably talk about it in a later edition of this.