Presumably no one's mentioned Nethack or Angband because everyone knows them.

Would old console games like Zelda count?  They sure as hell leveraged D&D's popularity to make their mark on popular culture.

I sometimes played Nethack in its ascii form, on various linux/unix workstations 10-15+ years ago.  It was an amusing fun timewaster at the time, which wasn't a mud/mush/moo.

I never really got into Zelda or other fantasy-like video games on the original Nintendo.  I only had a few games for the Nintendo, like "Kung-Fu Master", Super Mario Bros 2, Hogan's Alley, etc ...  I didn't really play it much after awhile.

Quote from: Cole;435411Wizardry VI - Bane of the Cosmic Forge was my favorite of the series, though, regrettably, there were no hippos in that particular installment.

Crusaders of the Dark Savant has space-faring, musket-brandishing rhinoceri, though, which is only one of the reasons why it is my favourite old school CRPG. :cool:

Dark Savant is also very "AD&D" - there is even a strong Gygaxian preference for obscure polearms and weapon nomenclature (it is not a short sword, it is a baselard, and it is not a plate helmet, it is a heaume).

Quote from: Melan;436308Crusaders of the Dark Savant has space-faring, musket-brandishing rhinoceri, though, which is only one of the reasons why it is my favourite old school CRPG. :cool:

Dark Savant is also very "AD&D" - there is even a strong Gygaxian preference for obscure polearms and weapon nomenclature (it is not a short sword, it is a baselard, and it is not a plate helmet, it is a heaume).

Definitely! Dark Savant was a very promising game, but also seemed like many of the adventure areas, etc., were not very well filled out...I think the game suffered from its developments schedule, see also, rerelease as wizardry gold, etc., without things being fixed. It was a really attractive, ambitous game, I just think gameplay was better in 5, 6, or 8

Oh gawd, Dark Savant...wandering monsters EVERYWHERE. Hellfire, you'd search the corpses of the wandering monsters for loot, and inside the corpses would be MORE wandering monsters.

I went pretty far in the before just giving up.

Quote from: Doom;436339Oh gawd, Dark Savant...wandering monsters EVERYWHERE. Hellfire, you'd search the corpses of the wandering monsters for loot, and inside the corpses would be MORE wandering monsters.

Quote from: Cole;436310Definitely! Dark Savant was a very promising game, but also seemed like many of the adventure areas, etc., were not very well filled out...I think the game suffered from its developments schedule, see also, rerelease as wizardry gold, etc., without things being fixed. It was a really attractive, ambitous game, I just think gameplay was better in 5, 6, or 8

Yeah, there were entire huge areas that were sort of empty except for crazy powerful monsters - like the entire Greater and Lesser Wilds, or the areas around the seas. I remember trying to figure out what the cross-shaped clearing in one of the wildernesses was for... since it had one (1) square that looked like cobbled road, but there was nothing in it. It does have an interesting vibe to it, though - as if Lost Guardia was really about small pockets of intelligent life in a vast wilderness. It sort of worked, even though it can be viewed as flawed from a critical perspective.

On the other hand, it also had spaceships, spells, complex and rewarding character-building (which computers really excel at), cool puzzles, diplomacy, amazons on rocket sleds, demon summoning, strange semi-philosophical puzzles, a sky city with glass walls, the **LIGHT SWORD**, a nuclear hand grenade (sort of), climbing up on mountains and one of the best computer game villains (plus lots of memorable NPCs). Crusaders was also extremely, bitterly, irrationally hard. Today, that would get a game written off as badly designed, plus there are all sorts of trainers, walkthroughs and forums where you only need to ask to get help. We just had to deal with it, which isn't about us being manly men for completing a computer game, just a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when you actually got through a stage of the game, like defeating the Shadow Guardian or finishing Rattkin Ruins. By God that felt earned.

I don't know if something like that could still work, but if that crazy guy in his bomb shelter ever finishes Grimoire, I will be lining up cash in hand to buy a copy. Yeah I will.

Quote from: Melan;436560Yeah, there were entire huge areas that were sort of empty except for crazy powerful monsters - like the entire Greater and Lesser Wilds, or the areas around the seas. I remember trying to figure out what the cross-shaped clearing in one of the wildernesses was for... since it had one (1) square that looked like cobbled road, but there was nothing in it. It does have an interesting vibe to it, though - as if Lost Guardia was really about small pockets of intelligent life in a vast wilderness. It sort of worked, even though it can be viewed as flawed from a critical perspective.

This is what my problem with the game boiled down to. There was just too much "blank" space. I remember that weird little cross clearing/stone square too!

QuoteOn the other hand, it also had spaceships, spells, complex and rewarding character-building (which computers really excel at), cool puzzles, diplomacy, amazons on rocket sleds, demon summoning, strange semi-philosophical puzzles, a sky city with glass walls, the **LIGHT SWORD**, a nuclear hand grenade (sort of), climbing up on mountains and one of the best computer game villains (plus lots of memorable NPCs).

Certainly there's a lot to love. I'd love to play a tabletop RPG set in Lost Guardia as a setting. All of the various races were cool in their way. I remember thinking it was kind of a wasted opportunity that you couldn't recruit Gorn or Dane or Rattkin NPC party members in the inns.

QuoteI don't know if something like that could still work, but if that crazy guy in his bomb shelter ever finishes Grimoire, I will be lining up cash in hand to buy a copy. Yeah I will.

Haha, so would I!

Quote from: Peregrin;436362

It's a digression, yes, but it would be a cool feature to have a sublevel of a mega-dungeon that was contained in an extradimensional space inside a wandering monster. That sublevel would, of course, have its own wandering monsters. Maybe each round of combat with the original wandering monster, you would make a wandering monster check to see if any monsters wandered out of its mouth to encounter the party.

That place actually exists in Final Fantasy VI. There is an enormously powerful wandering monster that also functions as a mobile mini-dungeon somewhere in the game world. A recruitable character lives in it.

God bless Japan for thinking of everything.

Quote from: Melan;436568That place actually exists in Final Fantasy VI. There is an enormously powerful wandering monster that also functions as a mobile mini-dungeon somewhere in the game world. A recruitable character lives in it.

God bless Japan for thinking of everything.

I had forgotten about that!

Gogo the Mime.

Quote from: Melan;436568That place actually exists in Final Fantasy VI. There is an enormously powerful wandering monster that also functions as a mobile mini-dungeon somewhere in the game world. A recruitable character lives in it.

God bless Japan for thinking of everything.

Also Disgaea and its item worlds: every equipment comes with an embeded 100 levels dungeon packed with monsters. Japan is really the mother lode of wandering monsters.

I played for a little while Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance game back in the 90s. The graphics sucked, the game was riddled with bugs, but it was an original mix of strategy and RPG.

Quote from: Hairfoot;436046Presumably no one's mentioned Nethack or Angband because everyone knows them.

Or because they seared them from memory?

Christ, the hours I burned on freakin' Angband.

I failed to get into Neverwinter Nights the first couple times I tried it... but once I got a bit farther it became a lot of fun. The later installments where you get out into the countryside were MUCH more moody had sidequests to discover and explore... I liked that at night it gets really dark outside and more dangerous. The first time I ran into a troll out there was actually pretty scary.

Lately I've started playing the Final Fantasy series... because I never touched one before and have only heard of their vast fan following... but damn, the first two at least are very repetitive and... kinda like work. Grind, grind, grind... grind some more... get a word bubble from the princes... grind, grind, grind. I'm not sure I've got the will to continue on to the third one...
I enjoyed Zelda, the Golden Sun series, Summon Night, the Mana series... but the FF stuff is leaving me wondering why they are so popular.