Hearing the gang talk about Mass Effect and other games made me think of the good old RPGs. Does anyone remember the golden age of RPGs, the end of the 90s’? Games like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, System Shock 2, Deus ex and Fallout.
Those games were pretty much the beginning of today’s Mass Effect and Fable. Also you can get almost all of them to run on your old laptops and what-have-you. There is also a cool site Good Old Games that is stocking up on the classics.
I still play them every now and then. Are there any other old-school PC RPG fans?
They did, it is called Deus Ex: Invisible War and it isn’t all that good. Also, Deus Ex 3 is in the making and hopefully it will return to Deus Ex 1’s goodness.
Do I remember them, are you kidding me? I still remember Ultima 4! Oh, that was an awesome game… But going back to the time period in question, the late 90s. Let’s see, Baldur’s Gate, yes, I loved it. I liked Fallout, though I found it a bit buggy and my computer could barely keep up at the time. Never played Deus Ex or Planescape.
I played some earlier Square stuff too, earlier Final Fantasy things and Chrono trigger, and Zeldas, of course.
I’m with you, Pike. Computer RPGs really need to get off my lawn.
When I get a chance, I’ll expand more on the subject. But if anyone wants to get into a paper & dice RPG system now, I would HIGHLY recommend the Savage Worlds game system. It can be used in just about any genre: fantasy, superheroes, western, sci-fi. Anything.
I use it with Deadlands: Reloaded, and I love it.
The beauty of learning Savage Worlds is that, if you doing a Pirate genre RPG campaign for example and you want to switch to lets say a Superheroes RPG campaign, you can do so easily and you and your players don’t have to learn a whole new game system.
My first RPG was Dragon Warrior for the NES and Final Fantasy 1 on the same system. Of course, back then, it was just Final Fantasy, since no one anticipated there would be about a dozen more in the next two decades.
Ah, if only I knew the difference, I might still have both legs. My buddy was hollering “Lucky! RPGs!” And I was looking for my twenty sided dice. (bad joke, I know. I will make up for it with one my RPG pics that is probably more humorous)
Edit: Not a UFO, but glare off the window. My camera was new at the time, and I couldn’t figure out how to take off the flash.
Computer RPGs don’t suck. Whether or not there’s role playing involved is totally up to you. Sean and I have been talking about this a lot lately, and we might need to pull it into one of the podcasts. Though I enjoyed computer RPGs before (D&D Heroes, Baldur’s Gate, BG2, etc.), I didn’t really get into them until I started role playing with 'em. I don’t make decisions based on necessarily winning the game but rather what I think my character would do. Sean does this even more than I do.
But for a recent example, I’ve been playing Chrono Trigger on my new DS (thanks Audra!). At one point I recognized that one of the guys we were fighting was the dude that off’d Frog’s brother. I actually took three separate tries to make sure that not only a) the dude died, but b) Frog was in my party, and c) Frog delivered the death blow. Why? Because my character would’ve done that.
This really caries into games like Fable 2. You can try to game the system, or you can just decide who your character is and make decisions the way your character would. Guess what? It works way better and it’s truly role playing.
I loved playing Star Frontiers and Traveler when I was a kid, but I haven’t played a tabletop RPG in 20 years.
a) This is sad.
b) I can’t organize a game for Audra.
I was hoping to smoke out someone in the Dallas area who might be willing to put one together, but since that’s not a possibility, would any of you be willing to put together a game to be played via, say, TalkShoe over maybe one evening a week for a couple of weeks? If one of you would be willing to run the game, I’d be willing to set up all the TalkShoe mess – and even record and output the events if any of you would like high-qualit copies.
I do love those good old games. I did in fact buy Fallout 2 from Good Old Games. I haven’t played it as much as i would have liked but that is one of my favorite games of all times. i must admit that i did love the great games of those times. But the games i am most reminiscent of were the Sierra Adventure games.
The first game i remember buying for my Tandy 1000 S.X. was Kings Quest 3: to Heir is Human. I played that game so much and it was so hard…at the time. Actually i remember playing Kings Quest 1 on my dads PCjr. it was on a cartridge that slotted in next to the dos cartridge that was always in the computer because it did not have a hard drive. I remember the thrill of beating Kings Quest 1 becasue i always had to start from the beginning every time i died because there was no way to save the game. Me and my siblings all ran into the streets yelping with joy when we finally beat the game. But Kings Quest 3 was the first game i purchased. From then on out i was a total Sierra junky. One of the biggest disappointments of Christmas past actually came out of getting the wrong version of Kings Quest 5. i got it from my uncle and i was so super excited. it was one of the coolest gifts i got for that year. I tore into the box so i could start playing it only to discover all the disks in the box were those “new fangled” 3.5 inch disks. My Tandy 1000 SX only took the 5.25" disks. I was devastated, I broke down in tears. I had to wait the 7-8 weeks for us to send off the stupid little disks to Sierra and them to ship me the proper big ones (i think i got back like 18 disks or so…which would all fit onto a wristwatch now.)
I couldn’t get enough of the Space Quest 3. I made a paper-mache art project or something like that for class in i think 5th or 6th grade. i chose to make the Monolith Burger space station from the game. It was to this date one of, if not the coolest things i have ever made (the runner up would be the Butcher shop/slaughter house diorama i made for Spanish class). It had all the proper aliens and the Astro Chicken video game cabinet it it.
But i think my favorite Sierra roleplaying game was Hero’s Quest 1 (later dubbed Quest for Glory) I played thru that game so many times. Each time a little differently. I remember it as one of the first games that you could have a different story line each time you played thru the game.
On a non-Sierra note. I love the some old school NES games. My favortie game was Crystalis which i think as 10 times better than Zelda. I had D&D Pools of Radiance but got stuck with a bad save game that i could never overcome.
Back in late 97 or 98 i got into downloading shareware and Demos from Happypuppy.com i remember a gaming series called Neophyte (i think) that was a lot of fun it was kinda like Dragon Quest (also a fun series).
I really dug playing Buck Rogers RPG games on the PC at my friends house in the early 90’s. It was like the D&D games at the time, much more of a Strategy turn based RPG when it came to combat.
I actually really miss those days of the Turn Based RPG.
First of all, thanks for spell thot “correctly” :). Yeah, I’m sure that Computer RPGs don’t suck, and I haven’t played ANY kind of computer game in so long I’m not one to judge anyway. I guess my point is I’m think Computer RPGs are such a different, and I’d say such a lesser, RPG experience then a person to person RPG that I have hard time think of the two in the same category.
Ahh…if I were ThotFullguy in my 20s or early 30s, I’d be all over doing this. I’ve had experience GM-ing RPGs (in person) and doing board games online. But, alas, ThotfullGuy of today in his 40s with the house, job and family — well, I wouldn’t want to commit to something I don’t have time to devote too. I’d be happy to advise though.
Pike’s right, it is like riding a bicycle. I have a group of friends that get together only 5 or 6 times a year to game (sometimes RPGs) and it comes back to ya.
Everyone read and understand the rules system you’re using. (Although only the GM would really need an intimate knowledge of the rues.
A way to post a map of the strategic area the adventuring party is in—like a map of the forest and mountain area where the group is going to adventure or whatever.
It would be nice a web page that everyone could to do see everyone’s character stats —so both the GM and players are litterally “on the same page” as to what characters could do.
It would be nice have some sort of “tactical map” that players and the GM (or maybe just the GM) that could be updated often and easilty to display move by move what where characters are as they (using the D&D example again) move through the dungeon. Players would only see the part of the map that they’re in at the moment or have already moved through.
Holy craap. You guys already have me thinking about this for real!
