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It's difficult to overstate just how influential D&D was in video games, I don't think there's anything else remotely at that scale. Ultima and Wizardry would i
by TillE 3y ago
It's difficult to overstate just how influential D&D was in video games, I don't think there's anything else remotely at that scale. Ultima and Wizardry would inspire the creation of the first JRPGs, and on it went. Maybe it's partly because D&D was becoming popular among nerds just as personal computers were becoming semi-affordable.
And it's not even just RPGs, literally any game with the concept of experience points and levels ultimately owes some small debt to Gary and Dave.
- mtillman 3y agoEarly DnD CRPGs are really good too IMO. Eye of the Beholder 2 & Ravenloft were great.
- D13Fd 3y agoEven before those, the gold box games were great too. Pool of Radiance, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, all of the Krynn games, etc.
- livrem 3y agoStill grinding my way through the Goldbox games. Same party as I started with in Pool of Radiance ~1995 is now somewhere halfway(?) through Pools of Darkness. Not sure if I am going to try to complete the rest of the Goldbox after that, or continue with something more modern. My queue of CRPGs to play "once I'm done with the Goldbox games" is getting ridiculous. Put all the games in a git repo, scripts to launch the games in Dosbox, all the game-files and documents installed from GOG (originally the ones from the old Wizworx CDROM). Version-control is great, since there is a limit to number of saves in the game. And keeping notes of every thing I do, every time I load or save, really helps keep my sanity in the branching alternative time-lines that are created when savescumming through a CRPG.
- aidenn0 3y agoCurse of the Azure bonds was IMO the best.
- Keyframe 3y agoWizardry was the shit, it's an understatement how influential that series was.
- GuB-42 3y agoIt is interesting how Western and Japanese computer RPGs both take inspiration from D&D, but how they went in completely opposite directions. Western RPGs focused on the player character aspect, offering a lot of freedom and very little characterization. You are the adventurer and this is your story. The downside, compared to tabletop RPGs is that the story is limited as computers can't react to every situation like human GMs can. Japanese RPGs focused on the storytelling aspect. Trading freedom for a much better developed story. You are not a player character anymore, you follow another character in a story. What they have in common is the combat and XP system, though the D&D connection is usually made more obvious in the Western RPGs. For example dice rolls are often made explicit, whereas in Japanese RPGs, you may only see the final result of your actions.