|
Sisyphus: Cursed I am, twice cursed, for cheating death: once by chaining dread Thanatos, and again through the aid of my wife. Now, I must push this boulder uphill in the pits of Tartarus, only to have it roll back to the bottom of the mountain as I come near the top. Chokes: Hold my beer.     Let's Play the AD&D Gold Box Series! Q: What the—didn't you just try to do one of these? A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TMOMTtAMBI Q: Okay, fine. What's on tap this time around? A: For your viewing pleasure, I'll be going through SSI's Gold Box series! For those of you that didn't own a computer in the '90s, these games are a baffling watermark on the RPG scene. Could be high, could be low. I've played through them, and I still can't tell. Gold Box games are notorious for their ridiculous combat scenarios. And yet, I can't stop playing them. I think I may have an addiction. I could seek counseling, or I could just play them for people online and take up even more of my free time. Yeah, that last one sounds good. Let's do that. Q: So, this is a series? How many games are in it? A: There's things like Hillsfar, Dragonlance, etc. that are technically Gold Box—or at least use the same engine. For our purposes, we'll be doing the main lineup of Forgotten Realms, which is:  Pool of RadiancePhlan (yes, that's really its name) is in shambles, and they need someone to fix it. They've got money. We like money. Along the way, we discover a boss monster literally named The Boss. Hilarity ensues.  Curse of the Azure BondsThe party wakes up one morning with a bunch of blue tattoos and no memories of how they got there. The local cleric nearly scorches their arms off when he tries to remove them. In the process of finding who did it, we discover some very unpleasant side effects. Hilarity ensues.  Secret of the Silver BladesOur merry band of jerks gets flung into the cold northeast mountains, where a horde of monsters is melting their way through a frozen mine in search of... something. Whatever it is, it's definitely powerful and definitely hostile. Eventually, we come face to face with it, and hilarity ensues.  Pools of DarknessBane, the God of Very Large Amounts of Evil, is pissed at us. With the help of a famous AD&D sage, we start the long fight back. Multidimensional hilarity ensues. We'll be doing all of them on the Amiga (emulator), since that's by far the least buggy and highest quality versions. Q: Uh. Four games? What's the run time on these things? A: About 40+ hours each, I reckon. Q: Chokes. Chokes, this is a bit ambitious. A: Sure is! That's the beauty of it. It's going to take me at least a year to get through these. I don't have to put in one single solitary ounce of effort to update in a timely manner. If I'm working on it right up to the death of the forums, great. If it's just me shouting into the void by the second game, then so be it. I put it here, you can stuff it into your eyeballs or not. Either way, I'm going to finish this. Just don't expect it to be any time soon. Q: What happened to the Dragon Warrior 3 LP, anyway? A: Just didn't work for me. I liked the characters well enough, but the game itself doesn't suit my style. The Gold Box series should work great, though: thoroughly episodic, lots of empty space to fill with snappy dialog, and a massive amount of very, very boring content to comb through for gems. This should go much better. Or won't. Definitely one of the two, though. Q: Okie doke, I'm on board. So, here's my suggestion. I was thinking a half-elf fighter/cleric/mage named Bartholomew who— A: Let me stop you right there. This time around, our party members are preselected. I've already done a cursory runthrough with this squad, and they click very well in both skills and personality. Plus, I've already recorded like a fourth of the first game. I just have to write it up. Q: I can't help but notice you didn't talk about who was in the party. A: I did not. Q: There's something you're not telling us. A: There is. Q: Hmmmm. A:  Anyway, enough preamble! Time to load up Pool of Radiance, smack champagne across its hull, and send the SS Titantic on its merry way! (And I shouldn't have to say it, but no goddamn spoilers you dorks!) Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jun 18, 2020 |
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 03:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:25 |
|
Wow, what's it do?
Its symbolic Frank, Things don't always have to do things. Now, help me plug it into the wall.
|
Pools of Radiance, Chapter 1: Hey Now, You're an All-Star Hoboken, New Jersey. 2145 AD. /Update%2022/64-chapter16_35.jpg) /Update%2022/65-Justine-Avatar.png){kind=avatar} !/Update%2022/66-Aldo-avatar.png){kind=avatar} Justine? Did you feel that just now?/Update%2022/67-sternn-avatar.png){kind=avatar} Was that an invitation?  Ugh. Never mind./Update%2022/40-door.png) VWORP VWORP There it is again! Hey, somebody lose a door or somethin'? 'Cause this one ain't attached to anything.Final Dungeon, Dilithium Organic Nacelle Group. 381 AD.   Fear me, minions   we do FEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAR MEEEEEEEEEE VWORP VWORP ...? oh god, please help usJust Outside of Reeve. 4:23 PM on a Tuesday.   Well, we did it, everyone. The Archfield Baramos is finally defeated. I'm glad we were finally able to work out our differences, Swindle. Likewise. I think I'm grown as a person in many unspecified ways. Yes, it turns out the real adventure... was the friends we made along the way. VWORP VWORP ...did you hear that? Nope Nuh-uhn CYAAAAAAAAAAS Hey, wait! ... Dammit.Moonsea by New Phlan. Date and time unspecified. I'm out of jokes, leave me alone.  Hrf... blrg... Where are we?  Urg. Hanover? You all right? I'm good, boss. Just dizzy. What the hell just happened? Um, hello? ...hi? Hi. I was wondering if you three knew what was going on. I was with my friends a little while ago, and... ...now you're here. Like the rest of us. Woah. Who are you guys? I could ask you the very same thing. In fact, I'm gonna. Who are you guys? ...there's only one of me.  Jesus, five minutes in, and I already hate all of you. Everyone shut up except for somebody who knows what's going on. Hi, everybody! I'm Rezen! ... Oh no. No. NO NO N—   Welcome, everybody! The Gold Box series is serious business for serious RPG people, so we're going to need a seriously powerful party.  Unfortunately, we're fresh out. Oh well, these six'll do! Three may already be recognizable since I Wizardry: Captain Lincoln F. Sternn, Justine Thyme, and Hanover Fiste Final Fantasy Legend 2: Heather DiMarco Final Fantasy Legend: Rezen Vox Dragon Warrior 3 (abandoned): Shanna Paper Sorcerer (abandoned): ????? This being AD&D proper, I don't feel a whole lot of compulsion to explain mechanics up front. Just grab a weapon and swing the sharp pointy bit at the enemy. Cast a spell every now and then when you're in deep poo poo. Repeat. I'll explain the pertinent guts of it as we go along, but if you've ever played any RPG in existence, it was inspired by the very system driving this LP. I don't know why I'm writing this, anyway. Admit it: all of you nerds have been part of a D&D party at some point in your lifes. Since Pool of Radiance came first and is the least modern, we only have basic classes available. This will make things a little tricky later since my goal is to go coast to coast, but I've got some aces up my sleeve on that front. We're going to take these six and get through all four games, transfering from game to game as we go along, or die trying. Well. Figuratively. We're going to die trying regardless—and multiple times. That's just how we roll. Anyway... in addition to class, we need an alignment. They don't really matter for the purposes of the series so long as they're not evil. I'm just gonna go ahead and spoil things: the big bad of PoR will give us a chance to join him at the end, and if any of your guys are Evil, they automatically select yes. We do not want that to happen. We're the good guys, even if marginally. Beyond that, there's not much of a point in describing the alignments. You can look them up on your own if you don't already know them by heart. Hanover: Chaotic Neutral Fighter Justine: Lawful Good Fighter Heather: Chaotic Good Fighter Sternn: Chaotic Neutral Thief Shanna: Lawful Good Cleric Rezen: Chaotic Good Mage Some of you that were here for Wizardry may argue Justine is Chaotic Good instead of Lawful Good. Two things to bear in mind here: she was a Lord (basically, a Wizardry Paladin) in that series, so I'm carrying that over, and I also don't give a gently caress so gently caress you. All right! Let's get back to the antics!   Hey, thanks! Glad to be here. Wherever here is. Hmm. I'm not familiar with those gods. Hey, don't look at me. S'all a blur of medieval vowels.  The pub?! Lead the way! Oh. That's not as much fun. Let's be honest. Everybody in there is drunk, too.  Thanks! See ya around. So... Rezen, was it? Yup! Great. Hi. So, now that we have a sec, I was wondering if you could tell me who the hell you are and what the hell we're doing here Whatever it is, I bet it's totally bogus. Like, the last time I saw you, our entire nacelle almost blew up. Yeesh. You lead some kids into the core of a dying planet once, and they never let you forget about it. Uh, boss? ? I'm, uh... kinda stuck here. With the bigness. Oh, right. I mmmmmay have kinda-sorta tampered with our genetics on the way over. You what?! I had to adjust for the reverse-polarized mana field on this planet to make sure we didn't turn into goop. You should be fine! Except for muscles over there. What's your story? I have no idea what's up with your DNA. I got a condition. That doesn't answer my question at all. You think you'd be used to it by now. You'd think. C'mon, let's get gear! Shopping?! I'm starting to like this adventure already! No coffee, though. Oh boo. ??    Lay it on us. Hmm. It's not, like, totally terrible. Suit up, everybody. It's on me! What? What's that? Free gear? That's what I heard. Count me in! wh gg hkAD&D is stat porn, and our first objective is to buy gear. We have just enough starting gold for the basics: banded mail, long swords, and shields for the fighters; banded mail, shield, and flail for Shanna; studded leather and long sword for Sternn; a dagger and some darts for Rez. This gets us down to AC 2-3 on our front line, which isn't great, but it's better than running out there in our skivvies. Also, mages flat don't get armor in this game—not even robes. If you want to drop their AC, you have to find magical clothing they can use. In the meantime, they'll want to hide behind a wall or perhaps a conspicuously placed party member. Armor in AD&D doesn't absorb damage. It just makes you harder to hit. AC (Armor Class) is absolutely our primary concern this early in the game, followed immediately by THAC0 (To-Hit AC 0). The former makes enemies' attack rolls harder. The latter is our base to hit other people. They're ranked on a scale of 1-20, and lower is better for both. We get a handful of bonuses here and there for our starting stats, too, which is why Shanna has the lowest AC out of all of us with the same gear. The magic formula is: 1D20 against (THAC0 - AC). Equal or higher hits. On success, we get to roll our damage. Long swords are 1-8 damage against most targets. (More about this later.) Flails are 1-6, and daggers/darts are 1-4 ish. Again, we get an extra point here and there for our fighters being strong, which makes a lot of difference early on. It won't matter as much in later games, but it's still nice to have. It's also possible to hit a so-called "natural 20" (i.e. rolling an actual, unmodified 20) on your THAC0 roll, which doubles the damage a character does. I'm pretty sure the game takes this into account and bumps up the damage, although there won't be any sirens and bells going off to alert you. Oh, there's one more wrinkle to all this: encumbrance. An unencumbered, unarmored character can cover 12 squares of movement a turn. (That's gobbledygook right now, but it'll make sense later.) Banded armor reduces this down to 9. Plate mail reduces it further to 6. Beyond that, if you're carrying too much stuff, your movement gets cut in half. Got all that? Of course not, that's a billion different rules just to say how far you can run. Get used to it. Not to worry, though! I'll handle the math. All you need to know is, our fighters will be able to move 9 squares, and everyone else will get 12. Anything less than that is going to put a serious crimp in our fighting style. Also, plate mail is expensive as poo poo. So, that's one more reason not to invest in it.  All righty! We should be good to go. No. I'm not going anywhere with you. Agreed. You ambushed us, took us away from our friends, and haven't even told us why. Ugh fine. So, here's the deal. I'm a dimensionally hopping demigoddess who saves worlds as a hobby. Headband over there is a bloodthirsty valley girl who rules over a hellish nightmare dungeon with an iron fist. ...that's not making me feel any better. Me either. Like, I can't imagine what they're getting up to while I'm gone.quote: The point is, I'm trying to kick the evil baddies out of this realm, and I'm not gonna be able to do it solo. I need an experienced team of meatshields to back me up. ... Elites. I said elites, and not that other thing I said. gently caress this. I'm going to start punching you in the face now, and I'll stop when you take us home. Hey! Leave Rezen alone! Yeah, that's the other thing. You can make with the facepunching all you want, but we're kind of stuck here. On second thought, you hold. I'll punch. Guys, I'm really sorry. It turns out magic works completely different than I thought it was going to, and... well... DOOR's not working, and I don't have access to my esper abilities. Great. All the beter to punch you with. Please. Everyone. We can't undo what's been done. Rezen, if we get your powers back, will you be able to take us home? Yes, probably! ... Hey, did you know they're paying people to kill things? With actual gold? Killing them with the gold, or killing them for the gold? ...yes? Well, hell! I'm in. Omigod, killing things?! I'm in! Well, someone has to be the adult, or none of us are going home. I suppose I'm coming along. Hate all of you. Hate. So much hate. You remind me of someone I know. And I hate them too. Wow. Not very organized. Yes. One of us will have to write these down, or we're going to forget important details. Forget what now? Huh? What? Who? What? Never mind. *scribble*One interesting quirk about the Gold Box series is the Adventure Journal. Included with every game is a big-rear end instruction manual that not only contains various rules and monster profiles, but also entries for Proclamations, Tavern Tales, and Journal Entries. Besides saving wear and tear on your spacebar, it gives the writers extra time and space to produce something higher quality than four lines of pixels on a dodgy computer screen. It also serves as a minor form of copyright protection, although there are far more direct ways that we'll see. Since Shanna's the only one in the party who can tie her shoes without forgetting what she's doing or where she is or what her name is, she'll be our designated Lorekeeper. I'll post pertinent entries from her journal as we go along, starting with: Proclamation LXIV posted:Be it known that the council is interested in acquiring information as to the disposition of various formerly-living entities rumored to be harassing honest citizens in the vicinity of Valhigen Graveyard. A reward is offered to any person who shall travel to said graveyard and return an eye-witness account. lol formerly-living Proclamation LXXVIII posted:Be it known that the council is offering a reward to any person or persons who can provide information as to the disposition of several council agents who have been sent to investigate the unseemly happenings in the vicinity of Valhigen Graveyard. yeah I don't need to do this one, they're real real dead Proclamation CIX posted:Be it known that the council is offering an inducement to any individual who shall serve in the rescue force for the mercenary band of Taimalg-the-Invincible which has disappeared inside Valhigen Graveyard. also dead Proclamation LIX posted:Be it known that the council is interested in reclaiming the remaining blocks of the city of New Phlan. To reclaim said blocks they must be first cleared of monsters, vermin, and other uncivilized inhabitants. To this end the council is offering a reward to any person or group who is responsible for clearing any block of the old city. Oh hmm.  Proclamations serve more as side quests. Our main missions will come straight from the tap in city hall. Get ready for Phlan's ridiculous bureaucracy.  Yeah, that's not at all suspicious. I mean, look at us. Can you blame them? Hi! I'm Rezen! I'm Sasha. And I don't care.    Which one of those is gonna be easiest? The slums, I guess. I wouldn't really know. Adventuring's another department. I just hand out quests. Sounds like a thankless job. I don't mind. Kind of hard for dead people to thank you. What? What was that? I said, "Good luck out there!" No you didn't. No. I didn't. ...alls I'm sayin' is, you can stand out here shouting obscenities at the top of your lungs, or you can join the adventure and shout obscenities at the top of your lungs. At least you won't get arrested if you come with us! I promise nothing. Argh, fine. But after we're done with this, you get us home, and you never bother us again. Deal. Hey! Here's the entrance to the slums! Clear the way! Heroes comin' through.  Dead men walking! We got dead men walking here! ... I'm feeling less good about this by the second.Next Time: Slummin' It Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Nov 18, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 03:28
|
|
|
Zeroisanumber posted:Spectre Snare, bitches. The answer is hold person, to this and any other question
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 04:02
|
|
|
NewMars posted:Does this mean lucklaran is right out then? Oh so it’s a Wednesday. Got it.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 15:10
|
|
|
FeyerbrandX posted:Prevengers: Inconvevably Large Number Fight is go. I know this is a pun on infinity war but MAN, you have no idea how right you are.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 15:13
|
|
|
FeyerbrandX posted:You should have gone for the head, boy... I mean a little lower, I guess the neck to be more specific. The metal plate isn't just a beauty mark. Frank would use the Infinity Gems to get himself a hoagie and then hand them off because it would be way too much effort to use it for anything else
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 22:21
|
|
|
loving love Fiona Apple posted:Ah yes the Chokes Cinematic Universe it includes both The Lady and somehow the entire compute!'s gazette lp and I stand by that assertion
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 22:39
|
|
|
apple willie bard's tale run when
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2019 22:39
|
|
|
Bogart posted:Isn't Pools of Radiance the game that would uninstall everything in the folder you put it in? Is that a spoiler? I don’t think so but it would massively ratchet up difficulty for fights. There’s other things later on that I’ll go over. They’re not spoilers per se but there’s no sense in ruining a hilarious surprise. Nemo2342 posted:I just hope you use the incredibly overpowered magic items to break the game over your knee. Hahahaha HAHAHAHAHA oh no you’re being serious 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 01:21
|
|
|
Arcade Rabbit posted:So. Computer RPG series I've never heard of based on a type of D&D I've never played. The screen has more empty space than relevant information, the actual player view of the world is a small window compared to everything else, the dialogue is an eye-searing green in a font I can barely make out, the game has already vomited all-manner of numbers on me that will receive no explanation beyond Chokes' well-made additions, all alongside some obtuse DRM protection disguised as player engagement. And this is the pretty version. If I were feeling particularly masochistic, you could've had this instead: 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 04:01
|
|
|
Jason Sextro posted:So there was a version that looked worse than the PC! I'll not have you besmirch the good name of glorious sixteen-tone ega
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 04:44
|
|
|
Pool of Radiance, Chapter 2: Slummin' It Today on the Gold Box LP, we'll tackle our first mission. How very exciting! Our job is to clean out the slums next door to New Phlan. To say it has a monster infestation is a bit of an understatement. Random mooks aren't anything a well equipped party can't handle, but there are scripted fights here that are... not meant for Level 1 adventurers. You, of course, have no way of knowing that without a walkthrough and will suddenly stumble across a army of Level 5 monsters that will kill you very, very dead. Fortunately, I know where those are and can avoid them as necessary. First things first: we need to get our less squishy members up front.  This is the camp menu, which is available any time you're not fighting. There are a myriad of options available to us, but the one we care about right now is (A)lter -> (O)rder.  After reshuffling, this is what the lineup looks like: fighters up front, cleric behind, thief and mage in the back. Sternn will actually serve as a decent enough front line guy over the course of the game, but currently, he's restricted to cheap leather armor and is not going to have a very impressive AC. That's very bad right now. Anyway, that should get it. In we go!  Aaaaaand they immediately know we're here. Like, don't look at me. Maybe it was the big lug up front? Naw. I'm agile for my size. Well, I certainly didn't pull a conspicuously placed tripwire to see what would happen, if that's what you think. ...why would we? Exactly.  Ack! Ack! It's finally combat time! Bet you didn't expect this view, did you? Combat in the Gold Box series is far more advanced than "put cursor on Fight, mash A button." You'll have to move your guys around on a real battlefield, pick attack options, and plan your moves ahead of time. Granted, once everybody meets in the middle it's just a big ol' flailing of swords, but tactics like choke points and kettling will not only help but be goddamn necessary by the time we're deep into this game. This is just six adventurers against four orcs in a swordfight, so there's not much to look at yet. Attacking is done by either selecting "(A)"ttack and fiddling with target selection keys or just moving into an enemy. The latter takes the least amount of keystrokes, so that's what I end up using. Later on, we'll actually have to aim at things, but it's not exactly rocket science. (Assuming you know what said things do.) Here we gooooooooo  Working out some anger issues? It's either them or you guys. EAT PUNCH YOU SUMBITCH BLOOD GLORIOUS BLOOD  Huh. Is there anyone on our front lines that isn't a rage-filled stab monkey? Hey, you picked us. Fair point. Victory!  Having vanquished our foes, we get access to any loot they were carrying. Most of the time, the loot is crap.  For example, these orcs are carrying 96 silver. That's literal pocket change in D&D. Here's the breakdown of material versus value: 10 coppers -> 1 silver 10 silver -> 1 electrum 2 electrum -> 1 gold 5 gold -> 1 platinum There's no good goddamn reason for all these coin types except to massively increase your encumbrance and make it impossible for thieves to sneak up on people. (Turns out you can't hide in the shadows when you sound like a piggy bank getting thrown into a brick wall.) It's complexity for complexity's sake trying to masquerade as worldbuilding, and it just drives me up a wall. Besides, the only coin type we're really interested in is platinum. Except for bits and pieces we buy at the start of the game, most of our transactions will be in plat. Oh, well. It's our first loot, so we might as well take it. Hitting (S)hare distributes the money as evenly as possible amongst our guys. After that, we exit the loot screen, and we're back to exploring mode.  Oof. Need a healer here. Right, let me just cast Heal. ... ... ... ...something usually happens by now. Aw, crap. I forgot to tell you guys how magic works around here. That would've been nice to know before we got into combat... I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached! Don't tempt me. In order to cast spells in AD&D, you first have to memorize them. In classic D&D, you also needed spell components. If you didn't have either, tough poo poo, no magic for you. Mercifully, this game won't bother with spell components. I'm fairly sure it's because the coders didn't want to put in the extra work, but it's a dumb mechanic anyway, so I'll take it. Memorizing is still a pain, though. First, you go to (M)agic -> (M)emorize and crack open the ol' spell book.  Here's Shanna's. As her magic comes from The Gods™, she gets each spell tier in one shot. As always, non-console RPG spells are a mixed bag of monstrously overpowered killshots, situational gadget buffs, and downright pointless filler. Currently, Shanna can cast...
We pick Cure Light Wounds and Detect Magic off the menu for now. Random encounters won't require a lot of stats fuckery, and healing is far and away the most important thing. Now, over to Rezen.  Unlike clerics, mages have to scrounge for spells. You can pick up a few as you level up, but you're never going to learn everything without scrolls. When you see spells you don't know on a scroll, do not use it. Save it until you're high enough level, then use the (S)cribe option to save it to your spellbook. After that, you can memorize it as normal and cast it all you want. If you have spares or are really desperate, scrolls also let you instacast high level spells that you normally wouldn't be able to access. Of course, there's a cost in efficacy, so no hurling sweet sweet 100 HP Delayed Blast Fireballs unless you earn it. Early on, you'll pray for magic user scrolls to drop. By the end of the game, you'll have scrolls coming out of your ears, most of which overlap. (The spells, not the ears.) It really is feast or famine. Here's the spells Rez knows right now:
The worst part of all this? As a Level 1 mage, Rezen only has one spell slot. We're going to make it Sleep, and it's going to stay Sleep for quite some time. That spell is the only way we'll survive the first part of this game, and we'll be casting it over and over again, so we might as well get comfortable with it now. Cool! Now that we've our spells picked out, all we have to do is (R)est and let it—  ...good gravy. In case you can't tell, that's not minutes. That's hours. The next unit up is days. (Want to hear something really sobering? Without a cleric or stupidly high constitution, you heal back 1 HP per day.) It's absolutely ludicrous, especially since you have to stop between fights and get your spells and HP back while you're out in the field. Assumedly, your guys just plunk down for seven hours straight and throw a kegger. Never mind that the big bad is beyond the next door and can clearly hear you the entire time, or that the entire fate of the world rests on your taking bold and immediate action. We're union, and we're taking our break whether you like it or not. In actuality, this is another ridiculous AD&D mechanic that I am going to happily ignore for plot purposes. As far as I'm concerned, topping off takes a matter of minutes, not hours. It's never going to affect us except for age, and it'll barely be noticeable by the time we get to the end of Pools of Darkness (knock on wood). It's a dumb idea with dumb execution and I'm going to handwave the entire thing away. Oh, and don't think you can just plop down anywhere you like, because monsters can interrupt your rest. You can be memorizing your spells for four hours straight, which I assume means squinting at your spellbook so hard blood vessels are bursting in your eyeballs, when suddenly a couple of kobolds stumble over your foot and interrupt those last 15 minutes. Your memorization attempt fails! Ha ha, gently caress you! There are occasional safe zones you can rest in to prevent that from happening, but you have to earn most of them. It's just the worst. Okay. Everyone set now? I'm not entirely clear what god or goddess I just prayed to for these spells. I'm sure it'll be okay. Just stay away from anything that sounds gutteral.    Well, I wouldn't say surprised.Kobolds are another monster we'll see around here. They're not exactly priority threats and only do 1-3 damage if they hit you. Still, a gang of them can cut you down before you realize what's going on, and it's not like we have a lot of HP to start with.     We beat them down pretty quick and leave their literal pennies behind.  Okay, for reals this time: everybody ready? Nope. Nah. Can I go home yet? Blah. It's like kidnapping a bunch of six year olds. ...um... Yeah, now that I hear myself say it, it wasn't a great analogy.  Gag me. All of these rooms totally look the same. Wish we still had that Federation database we got all those Proving Grounds maps from. Sorry, Justine. When Hanover and I hacked into it, we had no way of knowing something like this could happen. Don't beat yourself up over it. It's not like any of us could've predicted this. Right, which is why I stole these maps from the weapon shop while we were there. Oh you precocious scamp. That's me!Since it's not very exciting looking at the same five textures all LP long, I'm going to skip the wandering and jump straight to points of interest. Not pictured (unless something notable happens) are random encounters. Boring or not, there's a very compelling reason to fight these. I won't spoil it until the end of the mission, but for now, just know we're stumbling across little pockets of resistance here and there and stomping them down.   Hmm. According to the map, there's something behind this door. S'probably treasure. Or a monster. Treasure? Did you say treasure? Or... a monster. What's that? More treasure? Gimme gimme gimme WAIT NO  Go away, you can't have them whoopsie Like, now's probably not the best time to tell you she's a total kleptomaniac. Wish I could say I was surprised.Despite the party's misgivings, it's just a bog standard four orc fight. Whatevs. We ice these dorks and then take a look at what they were arguing over.  Oho! Now here's something worthwhile: a cleric scroll! Happily, cleric scrolls don't need Read Magic and work right out of the box.    This is the worst treasure in the history of treasure. Well, at least it saves us some camping.Yeah, two casts of Cure Light Wounds is... not overwhelming. We use it to patch up our guys and continue on our merry way.  Here's where we're heading next. And here's something that happens on the way there!    *checks pulse* He's fine—just unconscious. Yeah, I didn't think we'd get that lucky.When one of your guys wipes out, there's three states they can be in: Unconscious, Dying, and Dead. If your HP is within a certain range below zero after the final clobber, you're out cold. After the fight, casting a Cure spell will pop the character back up on their feet. In the unfortunate event that the cleric is the one who eats poo poo, you'll have to wait around a full day for them to heal a hit point on their own. You can also pay a Temple to cast Cure Light Wounds on them, but most of them time, you'll be rear end-deep in some Unfathomable Dungeon of Evil Badness and won't have a whole lot of options available. If you take too much damage on your last hit, your character is noted as "bleeding." You now have a handful of rounds to select (D)one -> (B)andage from the combat menu. Any character can do so from anywhere on the battlefield, which I don't understand the physics of, but whatever. Bandaging changes one dying character's status from Dying to Unconscious. It does involve giving up an action in the heat of battle, and your dying buddies usually won't croak on you in one or two rounds, so you may want to wait for an opportune moiment before you start patching people up—or, at least, defer duties to someone who's not doing much of anything. (Read: the mage.) Once the fight's over, they're Unconscious, so they can be brought back to their senses just as before. If you just eat a tremendous, massive amount of damage over your HP and Constitution buffer, you're Dead. Dead, obviously, does not fix itself. You'll have to take someone to a Temple to get resurrected and it'll cost that person a permanent Constitution point. I'm not even going to get into the more hilarious statuses, like Stone, Poisoned, or Gone. The stuff required to undo them (except Gone, you're right proper hosed if you get that one) is generally high level and only available in the temples, which you'll have to pay for. Much later on, your cleric(s) will pick up the needed spells themselves.  Okay, this looks like the next mark on the map. Shouldn't we go in, I don't know, more cautiously? I'm sure it'll be fine! What's the worst that could happen? WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—  —OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE He does that a lot, I take it? Just about every gol'dang day. Here, we have some goblins training with their local Goblin Leader. We're grunts at this point, so he's not wrong about us being good competition. Goblins aren't that much different than kobolds, but there's a lot of them, and that Leader in the back has a bow. Fortunately, we have an equalizer. Draco dormiens nunquam titilandus! ... ... ...what? Oh right, you guys do magic differently here. ZAPPO Nice work! That buys us time to clean up over here. Or we could do... THIS! STABBO ... Is that ethically justifiable? I think it's under the "don't start none, won't be none" doctrine. Sounds right to me.  Paralytic spells (like Sleep) change a target's status to Helpless. They can't act or move, but more importantly, one hit and they're down. HP doesn't matter, armor doesn't matter,  . Just boom and done. Once again, I will remind you that Sleep doesn't have a savings throw—just a restriction on how much HP the combined targets have.This is why spells like Sleep and its later cousins are so goddamn important, and we're going to be spamming them far deep into the series. With six people against slavering hordes of evil and no area effect damage (yet), we need something to level the playing field. We're going to be constantly slitting the throats of the helpless and overmatched, but my stat sheets still say "not evil" at the end of the day, and that's what counts.  We wipe the floor with the rest, taking little to no damage. Strategy!  With a little help from Shanna, we also locate some dope new armor for Sternn. Although it hasn't been identified yet, this is a Leather Armor +1. Armor +X lowers your AC (yes, it's confusing) beyond what normal armor would do. In addition, magical armor is lighter, so you can cover more squares. The real story here, though, is that thief abilities only kick in when you're wearing Leather or less. Studded Leather doesn't count. Thus, anything that's +X Leather is worth its weight in platinum. Not too shabby for our first major fight!    (Private Residence. Do Not Enter.) We're going in anyway, aren't we? Ehn. These kind of signs are more of a suggestion. Omigod, I feel the same way! ... ... ...well, someone say something. Hi! Can we steal your stuff?  Well that was mean. Let me try! Sternn, he just kicked us out. Don't worry. I've got... charisma.   Oh, this is gonna be great. Didn't I just get rid of you? This time's different! I'm nice!   You six look dumb enough to do it. What do you say? I stopped listening after "pay" and was already nodding my head. Great. Head to the Old Rope Guild. There's a booth in the back. Tell the man inside that Ohlo sent you. What's this guy look like? I'M NOT PAYING YOU TO ASK QUESTIONS, WAGE SLAVE ...is this an improvement over the last interaction or not?This is Ohlo. Ohlo is a Level 3 Mage and a huge jerk, but he has magical gear and cash. We love magical gear and cash. So, we're going to run a fetch quest for him. We haven't gone over this yet, but in some encounters, you can (P)arley. This gives you a choice of speaking styles: (A)busive, (H)aughty, (S)ly, (M)eek, and (N)ice. It's a charisma check with modifiers based on what you pick, although some options will automatically trigger further conversation, and some will flat out start fights. For example, it's possible to piss off Ohlo by being abusive, refusing to leave, etc...  ...but you really don't want to do that. Play nice, accept the commission, and don't come back until you've got his stuff.   Stand back, team! I can pick locks! *smoosh* Great job as always, Sternn. Really good stuff. Well, at least it can't get any worse. Hey, what's over there?  ew ew ew grody Great job as always, Rezen. Really good stuff. Shh. Shhhhhh. ... Hear that? Hear what? There's treasure here. I can feel it. Look around, you loon. There's nothing but hay and mystery animal poo poo. There's only one way to be sure. What— Like, just let her go, Justine. You can't stop her when she's like this. Muscles! Gimme a hand here! You got it, boss! ...  Ha! Told you!  Another option available from the field is (S)earch. Sometimes, things are going to seem conspicuous, or you'll have intel going in that there's hidden stuff, or you just want to toss the place because why not. Enable Search mode, and then wander around as normal. If you move over a hidden treasure stash, you'll uncover it. You shouldn't keep Search mode on all the time, though. For one thing, it burns 10 minutes a step instead of 1. For another, it massively increases chances of a random encounter. (I mean, you are looking harder for them.) Plus, it's dumb to spend days wandering around a single map looking for loot. There are some unexpected places to find treasure, and I'll be using a walkthrough to dig them all out, but you're not really missing much if you don't comb every square inch. When you're in a room with a special description, search it thoroughly. If you're told treasure is in a certain spot, go looking for it. Otherwise, don't worry about it too much. Anyway, for pushing three keys, we get some gems and gold, a +1 short bow, and ten +1 arrows. More importantly, we get 200 XP. Woo hoo!    Okay, everybody. Try to blend in. legalize it mon   *takes notes* ... the temple over the river is run by some hot-shot orc ... *scribble* Omigod you are such a nerrrrrrrrrd This is the only way we're going to keep our facts straight. It's totally pointless. Like, they're not even giving us anything to go on. Yeah! We can't just act on random "oh this monster over here did a thing" rumors. We need something specific— ... there is a secret treasure room in the NW corner ... WHAT So much for blending in.  REVEAL YOUR SECRETS TO ME, WALL, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES Lemme handle this! HRRRGH *foomf* OMIGOD THE WALL ATE HIM IT'S A MIMIC AAA AAAAAAAAA   See? It's just an illusionary wall. HELP HELP THE BACK HALF OF MY BODY'S GONE Walk all the way through! Seriously, how do you stay so calm dealing with these idiots? Gods only know.  For the heroic and strenuous task of walking through the world's most obvious secret door, we're rewarded with another +1 Short Bow, another twenty +1 Arrows, and a metric assload of jewelry and gems. More importantly, we get 1173 XP. That is a stupid amount of experience—almost half what's required for our fighters to hit Level 2. Well, there's nothing left in here. We should head back and see if we qualify for training. Maybe we should let Rezen keep searching? She might find more treasure. IT'S MINE ALL MINE YOU CAN'T HAVE IT Rezen. That's a broom closet. Put down the laundry detergent. YOU'LL HAVE TO PRY IT OUT OF MY COLD DEAD HANDSNext Time: Looking to Train? Good Job! Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Oct 1, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 05:39
|
|
|
Nemo2342 posted:I mean, I've watched the speedruns for some of these. There are at least 2 items that (if duplicated using tried and true CRPG trickery) can just wreck certain fights. Ooooh. Yeah if you dupe items this thing gets silly in a hurry, especially once you get a certain mysterious jar of dust mite excrement. I will not be doing that, however, because it’s cheating and Lincoln Fitzgerald Sternn would never cheat. Never. Picayune posted:Ohhh man. The Picayune of yore spent ages shepherding a carefully-curated party through all four of these games - and then absolutely could not beat the final battle of the last game. Yeah there’s no margin for error here. If I’m not careful about how I handle mid game we could end up stuck and stall out during Pools. 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 14:50
|
|
|
AweStriker posted:I do like the writing but I kinda can't put a name to anyone's sprite except Rezen. An unfortunate side effect of the gold box character sprite engine is that everyone looks the same to a certain extent. Rez’s personality and sprite (she’s the only one in a robe) helps with that. Kliff posted:Say, how hard would it be to post the party's statlines so we can play along if we want? This may be what finally gets me off my rear end to try to go further than the slums. I can do that! I have something queued up in my brain as an in universe excuse to show off stats so I might as well deploy it next update. Although man o man are you in for a surprise when you try Sokal Keep DO NOT DISCUSS THIS FURTHER ITT THANK YOU Nemo2342 posted:You pulled out The Bishop in the Wizardy LP, I have no doubt you'll deploy whatever means necessary to save the universe. I mean I’d rather do a clean run through but if I’m that close to the finish line then yeah, by any means necessary 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 17:00
|
|
|
Also it helps that Hanover’s sprite is voiced by Roger Bumpass. You can either use the version from Heavy Metal or Squidward. Your choice. That being said my life’s goal is to get Roger Bumpass to do Hanover’s fake freak out in Squidward’s voice. Hope springs eternal.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 17:05
|
|
|
Mechanical Ape posted:Despite the jank and annoying 1e rules, I've always dug PoR's premise of reclaiming territory from monsters, along with the fact that you actually can do that -- clear out a neighborhood and, by God, monsters will stop appearing in that neighborhood. nice spoilers  (I actually don't care that much since we were gonna get to it next update, and I'm not picking on you specifically since it was bound to happen, but try not to do this stuff in the future guys!) But yeah, all of PoR is basically counting down the scenarios until you finally get Fireball. One of the things I've always really liked about Gold Box is that, except for Blades which is horrible filler slog, everything's divided neatly into autonomous quests you can do in any order. It's like the Mega Man of RPGs! Slums Man! Keep Man! Castle Man! And you'll get completely owned if you do them in the wrong order, too!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2019 19:06
|
|
|
AweStriker posted:I'm taking a third option and making him PROFESSOR MEMBRAAAANE!!! Man, I keep forgetting just how goddamn much VA work Rodger Bumpass has done in the past also I forgot Eugene Levy did Sternn in the movie findin out all sorts of things today
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 03:52
|
|
|
DGM_2 posted:
There’s nothing wrong with that section. Heather is commenting on Sternn being dead.  DW3 is DOA unfortunately. Like I said in the OP, it just bored me. This ones got legs though. And I’m unsure about PS, I was going to give Llewyn and Co. a proper sendoff during this one but now I’m on the fence. I gotta be honest with you, this feels a whole lot like my swan song. Maybe it’s just because I’m revisiting so many past characters, but still.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 06:34
|
|
|
Jason Sextro posted:I just hope you can survive the boredom gauntlet of Secret of the Silver Blades so you can get to the absolute insanity of Pools of Darkness. Jesus yes, SSB is such a slog. Who on Earth thought making everything a 64x64 map with zero content was a good idea?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Also last night's adventures were hilarious and the game is once again molding itself around the LP. Gonna try to have next update out by the weekend. That should take care of most of the Slums.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 15:30
|
|
|
Kliff posted:Okay, be honest, how many times did Sternn die this time? Up until this point, we've only had one KO and it was Unconscious instead of Dying/Dead. This will change.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 19:43
|
|
|
I am so pissed last night's escapades are going to be like a month or two down the road on updates because it has the single most hilarious moment so far and probably the defining moment of this LP.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2019 19:43
|
|
|
Jason Sextro posted:I think the most it can get is 9 though, in a 3x3 grid? I mean 9 low-level monsters with a single first-level spell is nothing to sneeze at, by any means. 9’s the limit per cast. I assure you. Also, update tomorrow. The Slums have a poo poo ton more content than I realized, and combined with going over basic mechanics, I’ll need to split it into two updates. Things will pick up speed shortly after as we get to missions with purposes other than seek and destroy all life.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2019 06:46
|
|
|
Reiska posted:Oh man, I was just looking through the LP archive about two weeks ago wondering if someone had ever LPed these games because I've been playing through them (on PC unfortunately, I'm too attached to Gold Box Companion) and I was very sad that no one had. Hell yeah. Good job coming up with the concept. I keep forgetting who came up with Heather (Rabbi Raccoon?) but I think they’d get s kick out of knowing she made Rezen’s
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2019 18:04
|
|
|
Pool of Radiance, Chapter 3: Looking to Train? Good Job! Today on the Gold Box LP, we're continuing our quest to clear the Slums of its filthy subhuman trash. In the process, we'll gain a few levels, make a few friends, and maybe—just maybe—have some laughs along the way. Welp! Let's get to stabbin' things!  Well, we're not dead yet. That's something. That's the spirit! gently caress off, Sternn. That's the spirit! Ooh! Whazzat! Hmm? That thing! On the map! Rezen, I really don't think we should— Looks like more treasure to me. LET'S DO THIS poo poo     Hey, Frank. You ever feel like, I don't know, we're in some sort of game? Nah, I've never felt that. You? LAUNDRY DAY BITCHESThis fight's around the corner from the way out, and we're good on HP and spells, so let's just pop over and get it out of the way. I mean, it's not like we're massively outnumbered or anything!  Oh. Hmm. Remember what I said about getting swarmed? This is about 25 kobolds and a kobold leader. The latter isn't too big of a deal, having an extra HP or three and an actual weapon. Same lovely THAC0, but if you roll enough times, you're bound to hit something—and we've got a die-and-a-half of HP per character on a good day. No worries, though. We'll just manuver Rez behind our wall of fighters and cast—  ...oh. Hmm. In case you can't tell what you're looking at, there's no (C)ast option down there. Rez is out of spells. I completely forgot to memorize hers while we were taking care of Shanna's.  That's going to make this fight very, very painful.She's not necessarily useless, though. For one thing, mages can do... this!  kapow hrkDarts are a really lame weapon that depend on a mage's already horrible THAC0 and only deal 1-3 damage, but a few points here and there against bottom tier monsters are helpful. Here, Rezen picks off an already-wounded kobold and save Justine at least a little bit of grief.  Oh right! Also, if you manage to kill something with your first dart, you'll sometimes get an extra turn! I believe this means you're firing multiple times and get to redirect if your first shot kills, which is true of all ranged attacks. It's a nice surprise, but we won't be seeing it all that much since ranged weapons are kind of useless right now. When our aim gets better (and we have some more compelling targets), we'll see it a lot more.    You'll see we slid Shanna over to take Sternn's place on the front lines. Squares on the battlefield no longer count as occupied when you have an unconscious/dead party member in them. Apparently, you can just stand on your friend's face after they keel over and everything's cool. Obviously, having Sleep here would've been phenominally helpful. But! There's something else in the combat mechanics that will bail us out.  There, you ruined our lunch break and took our stuff. Happy now? ...are you sure we're the good guys? Y'learn to stop asking after a while.You may or may not remember me talking about Morale when I mentioned Bless earlier. It's useless for friendly NPCs, but it's incredibly important against enemy NPCs. Basically, every fight begins with an enemy Morale rating between 1 and 100. (Higher is better.) On top of that, situations can alter the score before the fight starts. For example: getting a jump on the monsters will impact their Morale negatively, and pissing them off will increase it. With most human enemies, they'll fight to the death because they're  Anyway, loot! You can't see it, but magic item at the bottom is a Bracers AC 6. If you have an AC higher than 6 and put them on, your AC will go down to 6. Otherwise, it won't do poo poo. It's useless for fighters, but it's one of the few ways for mages to lower their AC.  We slap them on Rez, and with the extra AC point from her Dexterity, she's down to AC 5! That's not too shabby for a first-level mage, but we can and will do better. Just not right now.  Nice night for it. If by "it" you mean "kicking in doors and stealing people's stuff." Why wouldn't we? There they are!  hrkKeep in mind, Justine has 9 HP total. That is... a substantial hit. Our opponents may suck at their job, but it's easy to forget just how fragile all our guys are, let alone Sternn.  Pictured: two casts of Cure Light Wounds healing exactly 2 HP. Thought I was kidding about that, weren't you?  All right, no worries. Just need a bit to get my magic b—  Sorry. Okay, just need a bit to get my magic—  Okay. Going to do it this time. Just need to get my m—   ghdalghdf Like, you're not very good at this. Old dogs and new tricks, I suppose.One of the many annoyances of early Gold Box is the process of healing. Unless you want to rent a room and wait like four months for them to heal up on their own—and you don't—the process is:
It's annoying now, but it's going to get super obnoxious once our guys break 15 HP or so. Cure Light Wounds only heals 1-8 and, as stated before, the game hates you and will give you more ones than anything else. Due to wonkiness with the programming, if you can successfully complete one heal/memorize cycle in the wild without being interrupted, you should be able to do it as many times as you want as long as you don't leave camp. That being said, there are some areas where we'll get ambushed or just flat won't be allowed to rest now matter how hard we try. It's a very irritating mechanic all around. Later games would add a menu option to make the process much less painless, but for the duration of PoR, we're stuck doing it manually. Blaaaaah  Also, the game hates Justine. Like, a lot. Sternn has gotten one-shot a couple of times, but Justine has soaked up the vast majority of the damage. As if she didn't have enough problems with Sternn in her life...  Anyway, we eventually make it back to the Slums exit. It's night, though, so everything's shuttered. We'll have to wait until daybreak. This is the other thing the (R)est command is good for: killing time. In the Gold Box series, God flips off the light switch around 5:00 PM and then flips it back on at 12AM. I'm not sure what time zone we're in here, but I do know there's a clock in the lower left of the status window, and we can use that to calculate how long until the sun comes up.  Three hours should do it.  Ta da! Note that you have to take a step forward for the day/night to change, so it can be extremely confusing when you wait for like 4 days straight and the night doesn't change. Maybe that's Iceland's problem: there's just one guy hanging around in his house waiting for the sun to rise. Just go outside, dude! You're holding everyone up!  So, like, what are we going to do with all this jewelry? Beats me. Wear it? Ew, no. It does not go with my outfit. We probably oughta get rid of it. It's evidence. Right! We need a fence, pronto! Or we could sell them a shopkeeper? ...and then we can use them as a patsy! Great angle, Shanna. ...thank you? Nope.There's some important things to know about shops. One is money-changing. If we pool all our guys' funds...  ...you can see we've got way too many coins. Most of it's chump change, and we need to get rid of it. We could toss it in a gutter somewhere, but a better method is to wander into a weapons store, pool your funds, and then buy something cheap. 4 Darts are great for this, because they're 1 GP, and your mage will probably need a refill anyway.  The shopkeep will automatically sort your coins for you...  ...and return them back in non-lovely form! Not a GP lost, and you've managed to reduce your encumberance by multiple factors. The other thing we'll need is the (A)ppraise command. If you're carrying any gems or jewelry, you'll get this menu:  You can then request one gem or piece of jewelry off the pile be appraised. Once you have the value, you can (S)ell or (K)eep. (S)ell speaks for itself. (K)eep puts the item into your inventory, where you can sell it normally for the same price it was appraised at. This is helpful, because some items are worth... more than others.   In essence, jewelry is a cheap way to keep thousands of gold lying around without encumberance. We've got about 5000 gold's worth, and we go ahead and dump all of it. We'll need it for the next step.   Hmm. "Rouges." They put it in quotes? Like, right on the sign? Thieves around here must be really bad if they can't figure out basic innuendo. Hey, where do the amoral con men train? I'm not seeing it anywhere on the directory. I guess we'll never know.  'kay, well. This is fun and all, but imma do a level! Oh what is this crap. I wouldn't take it personally. I don't think any of us have enough. Hey, everybody! I just talked with the trainer, and I can cast more spells now! Oh, sweet. I'm gonna go get some more HP.  Everyone hits level 2! Except Rez, which isn't that surprising. Mages get some pretty ridiculous spells once they start hitting tier 3 (which happens around level 6), so they level up painfully slow compared to everyone else. Here's the comparison for level 2: Thieves: 1,250 XP Cleric: 1,500 XP Fighters: 2,000 XP Mages: 2,500 XP Thieves rocket up in levels, but they don't have nearly as many combat abilities, hit points, or attacks. I've never understod why Clerics level up so fast, though. They're actually good fighters with enough magic gear, and one of their early spells is easily the most broken thing in all of D&D combat. This is also why we dumped our jewels (tee hee): Training is 200 plat per level. That's one thousand gold, in case you forgot conversion rates. We won't even notice this cost later on, but right now, it's prohibitive. You need that northwest treasure room to afford training, and unless you get levels 2 and 3 off the launch pad pronto, you are not seeing the rest of this game.  Oh yeah, there's also bad news. An unfortunate side effect of leveling up is that random encounters scale to match it. Fortunately, fixed encounters will stay the same, or things would get really get ugly.  What's next on the menu? Beats me. Ohlo? No thanks! I don't like caramel. Yikes.  Here we are: the Old Rope Guild! Now to pick the lock... Is it a good idea to let Sternn take care of the map? Ehn, it'll be fine. What's the worst that could happen? *click* Ha! Got it!    why do we never learn. whyWhoopsie! Made a wrong turn, and now we're doing this fight completely unprepared. About 20 goblins and 12 goblin leaders are now at our throats.   This is a major problem, because those goblin leaders have bows. We're facing 24 arrows per round, and we don't have the HP right now to soldier through that. We need to do something, fast. Fortunately, we have a secret weapon. omigod omigod omigod THERE'S TOO MANY OF THEM I'M FREAKIN' OUT HRGH Wait. We can do that? Sure? Just swing extra hard!    Wow. That's way easier. Yeah. Why didn't we think of this before? Once your fighters hit level 2, they get the ability to sweep. Sweeping allows you to attack one small humanoid per level in a single move—and it just so happens that goblins count! This is going to make the encounter much more tolerable, albeit still tough. We deploy our stun lock to help with the arrows...  SLEEEEEEEEEEEP zzz...and while we've still got about 12-15 shots per round to deal with, we're in much better shape.  Acceptable losses. I like Rez, but she's already delivered her one sleep spell. We bandage her up and should be f—   ...oh. Okay, that's not good.  That's even less good.  Fortunately, we've thinned out their numbers enough that morale checks start failing. Still, we came really close to eating poo poo on this one, and I've got to pay more attention to where I'm going.  We don't even get any magic gear for our trouble. t We do go ahead and grab a long bow and some arrows for Hanover since he doesn't have a magic bow like the rest of our front line. Never know when it'll come in handy! it won't come in handy We get everyone back on their feet, and we're ready to continue. Note that we can take as long as we need to memorize/heal here. After a scripted encounter, you can usually plunk down and restock without being interrupted. It's a nice courtesy.   Well, this was a colossal waste of time. Nah. There's treasure under the floorboard over there.  How do you keep doing that?!  If "apparently empty" wasn't the biggest tipoff in the world, this is probably not the game for you. The +1 Shield is a big deal here. We give it to Justine since she's apparently a magnet for damage, and it drops her AC to 2. After this, we hightail it back to town and get Rezen up to level 2. She gets an extra Sleep spell now! Plus, that scroll had Magic Missle on it! We immediately add it to Rez's spellbook. Magic Missle is one of those spells literally every D&D mage needs to know. Right now, it's terrible, but the amount of damage it does scales to level. Around end game, it'll make more sense to keep a pile of them memorized. Still, any time you can add a spell to a mage's spellbook, it's a win!   Okay. This should be the Old Rope Guild. Are you sure? ...yes? But are you... sure? Looks pretty obvious to me, boss. Or maybe... that's just what they want us to think. Oh, no. I'm not doing this again. Here's the Old Rope Guild. The already-useless (A)rea (automap) command doesn't work in here, the layout is confusing as hell, and any random encounters you find will get racheted up a notch in difficulty. It's nothing we can't handle, but if this is your first time in the game and you're wandering around bumping into walls and constantly getting mobbed, it's not good times. Anyway, we head east and find...   This is a bit bigger than a "booth." Maybe Ohlo paid him enough he could afford an upgrade. Sure. Seems as likely as anything else around here. Hi! Ohlo sent us. Oh. Be right back. There, tell that jerk we're square now. Oh, and a little bit of advice: get out of here while you still can. There's things lurking around out there. What kind of things? Like, are we talking things things, or just things? Things. Ah. I somehow know less than I did when this conversation started.Note the last part is something I added. You don't actually get a courtesy of a warning, and you do not want to wander around in here aimlessly, or you'll stumble across a fight that's for Level 5+ characters. I have no idea why it's here other than to troll you and then kill you. It's such bad design that it has to be on purpose, which is just mean. Anyway, we drop off Ohlo's package...  ... If I knew it did that, I would've totally kept it. Now, Heather. I'm sure fetching an item like that comes with an equally impressive reward. ... See ya, suckers!!This weapon is a +1 polearm, which means we don't even get to use a shield while it's equipped. Moreover, it does utterly lovely damage: 1D6+1. 2-7 is less than our long swords are doing right now, and we get to use shields with those. Ohlooooooooo Oh well. Completing this side quest gets Shanna up to Level 3, which is absolutely critical for the rest of this section.I'm going to leave off here abruptly, because I need to split this into two chapters. The Slums have a lot more content than I remember. When our commissions go from "kill everything ever" to specific success criteria, updates should be much less dense. Until then, tune in next time, when you'll hear Justine say: ...lemon curry?Next Time: Home Invasions
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 06:00
|
|
|
Scaramouche posted:You know if you'd asked me if I read any Chokes McGee threads I would have said "eh, probably. Old screenshot RPGs right?" I really really wanted to put Trog in there alongside Hanover, but the core Wizardry squad is a package deal, and we wouldn’t have FFL2 representation otherwise. This whole thing is going to be a massive self important ego trip and I love it already
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 08:18
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:The last LP of this game I watched on Youtube relied a lot more on missile weapons. When I was playing, I barely used them. Guess it depends on play style. I personally hated that you have to spend time un-equipping the bow and re-equipping the sword & shield whenever you run out of arrows and there's never enough ammo around when you need it. I was going to skip hirelings and duels because I don’t find them interesting or useful, but once we hit our cap, you bet your rear end I’m showing the worlds most lethal drunken pit fight
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 08:36
|
|
|
DGM_2 posted:Then where's our Paper Sorcerer representation? I strongly considered it, but ultimately, Willow would be considered Lawful Evil by D&D standards. Pretty much all the Paper Sorcerer crew are Evil, as well, so they'd hitch a ride out of here at the first opportunity regardless of what state the world is in. The last thing I want is to have to fight Llewyn and Willow on top of the endgame bullshit. Tylana posted:Do you at least default to re-memorizing the same spells, or is that only later Gold Box?] lmao nope. pick 'em from scratch, every time. PoR has some of the best and tightest quest storylines but man does it show its age. Even Bards' Tale's interface was better than this.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 15:34
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:Cool. Looking forward to it. As for duels and hirelings, yeah, they're not useful. Since you're skipping them, I can cover the mechanics in a few paragraphs. If I can please get your permission, I'll do it next post. Sorry, no screenshots, I no longer have this game. Just the memories. Oh right missed this! Yeah, knock yourself out. I cut the Training Master out of the game for this very reason, so that's probably a good place to start. Hierlings are so very useless. And almost all of them are evil, simply because the game doesn't want you bringing extra buddies for the final fight. It's so dumb
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 15:37
|
|
|
Narsham posted:That one Rope Guild fight can be won, fairly reliably, once your wizard hits 3rd level and has selected the appropriate spell. People say this, and yet. Anyway that's enough of that, we'll get to that fight later and it'll be a running gag for a bit.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 17:22
|
|
|
Reiska posted:Not today! Pretty good!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 17:22
|
|
|
Neophyte posted:I didn't mention in my last post because it hadn't come up yet, but "$NAME SWEEPS...." is one of the only other things I remember from when I played these on my 486 DX/50 or whatever the hell I had then. TRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIPLE POST I am reasonably certain PoR is the only game in the series that doesn't allow you to alter character stats before you get rolling. Our guys are good at their jobs (well, statwise), but not god tier. And since we won't be rerolling every game... welp! It should be fine as long as I keep a better eye on constitution this time around. Last run through I used Raise Dead a lot without remembering the consequences, and by the time we got to PoD, Hanover had basically shrunk back down to his normal size e: it doesn't help that, for stats fuckery purpose, everyone's a human. I made the mistake of making Rezen an elf first playthrough, and without getting into something I'll point out next update, that was a mistake.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 17:25
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:Hirelings, overall, are a bust IMO.There are some fights in the game where you may want extra bodies, but beating them anyway is a nice challenge. I did it, and I look forward to seeing Chokes do it too. wanna catch me brawlin' burly
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2019 23:08
|
|
|
DGM_2 posted:What happens if the entire party is evil? Is just an automatic game over? Yup! 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 06:18
|
|
|
DGM_2 posted:Bad design, developers. Don't pull that crap. Evil doesn’t pay, I guess!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 14:52
|
|
|
Pool of Radiance, Chapter 4: Home Invasions Today on the Gold Box series, we'll be finishing off the slums. Ish. I mean, we're not going to 100% clear them for a bit, but that's not going to stop us from trying! OR WILL IT  Here we are back at the Training Hall. Our previous misadventures are enough for Shanna and Sternn to pick up Level 3.    Rez, of course, is still level 2. womp womp As mentioned previously, Shanna gets all her spell tiers in one chunk—and she's cracked Tier 2! Let's take a look at some really good spells and some really, really, really bad spells.
Hmm, let's see. What did I forget? Oh, right. There's:  HOLD PERSON Remember what I said about the Helpless status? Sleep is still the most ridiculous way to cause it, but Hold Person is a goddamn mainstay of our offense, and they just hand out three of them right off the bat. The amount of Hold Person spells we can memorize are only going up from here. I'm not spoiling anything when I say that 90-100% percent of our Tier 2 slots are going to be Hold Person for all four games. When you cast Hold Person in combat, you can select up to three targets. The range is pretty decent, too: we're talking 4x4 radius at least, so you can reach over the front lines and stun mages if need be. If Hold Person sticks, the target is put in Helpless state. It works on any normal sized humanoid, which—as we'll see later on—is extra helpful. Back into the slums we go!  ...lemon curry? Shyeah. I don't know what kind of cooking they do around here, but it's seriously grody. Ugh, even the smell's making me sick. What is taking Rezen so long? Beats me. It's not like we have anything to buy. Y'seem pretty put out by that. Duh? Shopping is my life. I thought that was the glory of honorable death on the battlefield. Psh, no. That's just my job. Love what you do, and you'll never work a day in your life. That's what I always say. I know, right?! Hi, guys! About drat time. Where were you? I got caught by a sketch artist on the way back. Check out these cool caricatures I got!  Hmm. Not bad. Why am I wearin' a helmet? I'unno. Artistic license?  Omigod. I can't even. Seriously, that's terrible. It doesn't look anything like me. What the—I look like I'm 50! The hair color isn't even right! You'd think they could tell the difference between a blonde and a brunette. I'm not even a brunette! At least, I wasn't until someone thought they knew my genetic code better than the gods did... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hold up. If you're not a brunette, what is your normal hair color? Green. ...that's an option where you come from? ...that's not an option where you come from? Did you get a drawing too, Rezen? Wha? Oh, yeah. It's... I dunno. It's okay. Heh, I'm sure. C'mon, let's see how bad they mangled your face. oh come the gently caress on I can't help it! I'm very photogenic!During character design, you not only get to customize your character icon, but your portrait, too! It's super dumb, they all look terrible, and the feature would never be used again after PoR. Still, I thought you guys would get a kick out of me getting as close as I could. Also, people in the thread requested stats, so there you go. The character sheets are back from Level 1, but besides HP, your stats don't change as you level up. I'm sure one or more of you are going to come flying in here telling me how I'll never be able to beat the games without four fighers with 18(00) strength and two fighter/cleric/mage/thief/chef/tailors with intelligence of 18 but here's the thing: I don't care, shut up. For one thing, we'll be up to our eyeballs in strength boosting gear and spells near endgame. For another, the only important stat is strength, because it affects damage and THAC0. We'll get more than enough armor to make up for a point or two of AC, and while constitution is somewhat important to get extra HP, it's going to turn into rocket tag by the time we're pushing 40s-50s anyway. You'll note that everyone is a Human with a single class. This isn't just a storyline gimmick, but a very important mechanic for later games. Playing a race other than human in Forgotten Realms will net you some extra stat points during creation and a whole lot of compelling reasons not to do it. For example: elves can't be resurrected. Period. They die, they're dead. Too bad, get a new party member. You can imagine how unpleasant this surprise was during LP dress rehersals. There also appears to be some sort of spellcasting cap, or at least a bug, because Rez stalled out at level 9 in Pools of Darkness and there's absolutely no level cap there. What the gently caress is it with Rezen and not getting stats in RPGs, anyway? Maybe she needs to start taking vitamins or something. Non-human classes can also multiclass, which also sounds really cool ("Quick! Make Shanna a Mage/Cleric so she can be a Sage!"), until you realize all your experience is split between the classes automatically ("Oh gods why is she still at level 1"). On top of that, multiclass characters definitely have a level cap. And on top of that, PoR is bugged when it comes to multiclass characters. I don't know all the details, and it may just be my imagination since everyone plays multiclass in FAQs, but I've never gotten one over Level 2. Maybe it's just because I get frustrated and give up early. I don't know, and I don't care.   *tinker* *pick* Sternn? I think we should at least, like, come up with a battle plan... Pfft! What could possibly— No. *yank* Hmpf. Seriously. I don't know why the rest of you don't learn, but we're not going in there without magical protection. All of you sit while I get spells right. Who the gently caress put you in charge? Oh, I'm sure you've met him. His name is Mr. Hold Person. Wh— Now, all of you shush. There. Bless, Protection from Evil, and Hold Person. Now all I have to do is perform the proper rituals, aaaaand....  Man. There's just something about you guys that the universe hates. —at? Back just in time! Oh, great. Is time skipping forward again? "Again?"  Good news, everyone! The random encounters are escalating further! A standard goblin fight now includes a small mob and four Goblin Leaders. Even better, we're surprised, so all our fighters are going last! At least the Leaders are up front where we deal with them right away. Quite a great deal of sweeping, camping, and healing ensues, and we finally get Shanna's buffs memorized.  Protection from Evil will go on Justine, because the game still hates her, and Hanover, because Hanover. Bless affects everyone. After that, we give Sternn the go-ahead to open the lock.   Yeeeeah. Your home.  Squatters' rights, I guess.  Around 25 orcs and four orc leaders are on the menu for today. Orc Leaders are basically comparable to Goblin Leaders right down to the bow, but they can't be swept. That makes this fight a pain in the rear end... or would, if we didn't have  HOLD PERSON  Oh man. I love it when they can't fight back. We have a lot in common, you and I. Remember: I said Hold Person works on any normal-sized humanoid. If it's one square tall, not undead, and even remotely person-shaped, Hold Person will stop it in its tracks. We immediately knock out the leaders, which makes the rest of this more tolerable. As does this.  All right, all right. I'm impressed. Dang straight. Hey, they lined up in a 3x3 grid. What did they think was going to happen? Besides the obvious benefits, creating a wall of Helpless orcs severely hampers the rest from attacking us. We knock out a huge chunk of their army, and the rest surrender quickly. Easy peasy, and not a drop of damage taken!  We get ~400 XP for our trouble, which is pretty good. But, more importantly...   Apparently, all those Orc Leaders were carrying +1 Broad Swords. We also get +1 Chain Mail and a +1 Flail. +1 Chain Mail is basically Banded Mail, except with a max move range of 12 instead of 9. We give it to Heather, because magic armor is so in this season. Meanwhile, the +1 Flail makes Shanna a little more useful in combat. Clerics actually aren't bad mid-level fighters, but early on, their THAC0 is appreciably terrible. If we can get our mitts on some magical weapons for her, so much the better. On the way out...   Hey! I want my fortune told. You know it's a scam, right? And I can respect that.  See? She just shits out some deep-sounding contradictions and everybody thinks she's got magic powers. Her aura is literally projecting from her body. It's a light trick! Justine Thyme. Speak not ill of the gods' power. ... Okie doke! Thanks for the info. Hey, before we go, I have to ask. Why are you living out in this shithole? Low property values. And I can respect that, too. Plus, the neighbors are kind. ... You... you mean the orcs? Oh, yes! The Orcingtons are such a nice family. Trevor and Yvonne and their 25 kids... you don't see families like that living under one roof any more. Really warms the heart. ... Looks like we got a witness to take care of, boss. Don't you dare.Yes, that's [A]ttack down there in the options list. I'm not going to pick it because 1) that's really awful, what the gently caress and 2) there are Consequences™. If you get your serial murder on, you get no resistance, a few coppers, and an ominous message that "the gods have taken notice of your actions." What that means is, you can never rest in the Slums again without getting jumped by monsters. I don't know if it carries over to other sections of Phlan, but I'm not about to find out. Back to town after all that, and we grab level 3 for our fighters!    But still no level up for Rezen. gently caress EVERYTHING EVER ARGHOur fighters can now sweep 3 monsters a strike! Which would have been really, really helpful for that goblin fight and is absolutely worthless for fighting orcs. Sigh. One more fight to take care of...   Oh no you don't. Not this time. Everyone ready? Hell yeah. Let's do this.     You have got to be kidding me.  We're looking at about 36 Orcs and two Orc Leaders. The good news is, they come prepackaged into a convenient choke point, so we'll probably only deal with 4-5 at any given time. The bad news is, those two Orc Leaders have bows. With our THAC0 being what is it, their buddies will mob up and slaughter us before we can outshoot them. Since our fighters are at Level 3, we have a good amount of HP. We're just going to have to soldier through while Rez backs us up with—   ... rip in peaceFantastic. Rezen managed to get a single sleep spell off and immediately got merked. This is one of the problems with mages: they're almost always glass cannons, hence the strategy Shadowrun lovingly dubs "geek the mage." We'll have to roll up our sleeves and hack our way down the hallway until they either run out of arrows, orcs, or both. But it's okay, because just before Rez went down, we started casting...  HOLD PERSON  Shanna can lock down about 9 orcs or so in addition to fighting and killing them straight up. Beyond that, our THAC0 has also started creeping southwards. You can already tell the difference.   Between this and our front line being able to soak up projectiles, the fight goes a lot smoother than it could've. It just takes a lot longer to hack our way through without a second cast of Sleep.   A few minutes later, we've whittled their numbers down to about a fourth, and the rest throw down their weapons and beg for mercy. Not bad! Only ~100 XP, though, and no magical gear. Still, those were just the guards. Let's heal up and see what's down the hall!   Oof. Oh, shake it off, you big baby. Ooh ooh look at me! I'm Justine! I have blonde hair, a huge man jaw, and treat everyone with naked contempt to hide my internal strife over the man I love being a morally compromised narcissist! ... Hey, what are you guys talking about? Shut up, Sternn. 'kay. ... ...so lonely...   I CAST MAGIC MISSLE It hits. Make your damage roll.  Ooh, sorry. Looks like a 1. The adventurers barely feel it. Man, this sucks. I could do better than this in real life.  You just had to go and say something, didn't you?This is our introduction to large enemies. Anything that takes up more than a square is considered large, and will mostly consist of giant humanoids: gnolls, ogres, Big Show, Shaquille O'Neil, etc. There are also larger monster types that take up two horizontal spaces, and really super duper large enemy types that take up a 2x2 area. As you can imagine, all of those will not be fun to fight. Fortunately, we're quite a ways out from seeing any of them. Large monsters change the amount of damage your weapon does: some not appreciably or at all, some dramatically. We lose a point off having broad swords, but having 2-7 base damage instead of 2-8 isn't that bad. We'd much rather have long swords, though. The range jumps from 1-8 to a whopping 1-10. Later on, we'll see weapon types that can do even more than that. They're all two handed, though, and we need our shields right now. Anyway, it's a moot point. Because we can cast... HOLD PERS—  Oh for poo poo's sake. lol ownedThe moral of this story? Don't be so quick to hit Target when aiming, because the square always centers on the caster in between. Anyway, despite Shanna's massive self-own, we manage to Hold the hobgoblin in the back as our first action. Heather murders the poo poo out of one of the gnolls...   ...and Rez stuns another hobgoblin and gnoll with a single Sleep spell.  That ogre hits a ton and has a pretty hefty amount of HP, but it's still academic from here.   Victory!  No magic gear!  No treasure, either! Congratulations, that was a complete waste of time! I mean, I guess we stopped various monster factions from uniting to take over the Slums. Or, maybe we really did just interrupt their D&D session. I don't really care. It's the last fight in the Slums we're going to do for a while, and I'm going to consider this part complete. Hooray. We did it, everybody. We cleared out the Slums and absolutely didn't ignore a fight in the Rope Guild because it's incovenient to the narrative.   Welp, that's the Slums. Where to next? If I'm reading this right, this door will lead us to a giant letter B. Will you give me that Sheesh. Touchy. Okay. Up ahead is the water district of the old city. I assume they want us to liberate that block, as well. Great. So, what else are we gonna kill? Omigod, I thought you'd never ask!Next Time: From a Well, Actually Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Oct 7, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2019 03:27
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:Poor Orkington family... I LOLed at the monster D&D session. And I don't blame you for waiting on that one Rope Guild fight. We are literally unable to do it right now without a TPK and trying to do it will become a running gag over the next few updates. (I know there's a way to, but I don't have that level of patience.)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2019 04:34
|
|
|
Alpha3KV posted:I just found this LP, and it seems entertaining so far. Some of the things I find most fun about this series involve the dirty tricks some others were talking about, like item duping and "accidentally" catching hirelings with good gear in sleep spells. On a somewhat related note, I was able to finish my most recent play through the first game last year with evil characters, since each PC gets a choice regardless of alignment. Looking forward to more of this. On further review, it appears that this is correct. Whoops! I still stand by picking Shanna as the healer over Willow, because Rez is a spaz and everyone else is morally dubious as best. We need a conscience or this party was going to implode before it even got off the starting line.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2019 04:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:25 |
|
|
Reiska posted:On another note, I'm deeply looking forward to being able to point to your LP as proof that you can beat these games with relatively normal stats, since basically every resource on the internet claims that beating Pools of Darkness is a fool's errand without cheaty stats. As you said, in AD&D 1e, most stats don't really matter except at the extremes (you need 18 intelligence to cast 9th level wizard spells and you need 18 wisdom to cast 7th level cleric spells, for instance.) My own runthrough of the games I've been working on has only relatively mild stat cheating (I raised all of my characters' constitution to 18, and a few other stats to 16s or 17s for various reasons), and does use GBC to enable me to take a multiclass half-elf through all four games without her becoming horribly gimped by the end. (Getting 1/3 EXP will probably still gimp her a fair bit, I'm betting.) There's only one thing I absolutely require to get to the end of Pools, and I'm still not sure how I'm gonna get there. a second mage As stated earlier, getting across the finish line is going to require dual classing, and I have to be really careful how I time those and which moves I make or we're gonna be permafucked. There's a battleplan. Will it work? Who can say!  I'll hit the hex editor if I have to, but I'd rather go through clean.e: I take that back. I know how I'm going to get there, but it's going to be near nonsensical plot wise. Oh well!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2019 15:53
|
|