What are some video games that are *very* close to emulating PnP RPG rules down to the letter, both for the better and worst?
Picture related. Goldbox games are amazingly close to 1st edition rules, and their combat is probably the most accurate D&D game ever, NWN and Baldur's Gate eat your hearts out.
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Try Temple of Elemental Evil with Co8 mod. The most accurate represantation of 3.0 rules in vidya
>their combat is probably the most accurate D&D game ever
Why, yes, it IS tedious busywork that in no way reflects realty or genre.
Hey, buddy? Fuck you.
I'm very upset, and definitely retract my previous entirely correct statement.
No videogame has ever come close to actually emulating the experience of an rpg. Rules that are made for the tabletop are made specifically to be run with a human at the helm driving the experience.
Attempting to emulate tabletop games by using their rulesystems in a videogame is effectively trying to emulate the experience of driving a car by placing a steering wheel on your bike.
Games that rely complex simulations for their experience, in my opinion, are a better analogue to a tabletop session, but as we all know complex simulations all have their limits as well.
Temple of Elemental Evil.
It just so happens that ToEE is living proof of why you shouldn't do that, or at least should make sure to do it with a system that isn't massively flawed. ToEE would be an alright game under different rules and the effort that went into it is great, but it is absolutely tanked by how fucking terrible core 3E is and how little Troika went out of the way to correct for the issues it causes.
OP said rules, not experience.
Pretty much going to be the Gold Box games and ToEE. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor also comes close.
But, though they're more "accurate" to the rules, all CRPGs (Western of Japanese) are essentially all about emulating the combat of PnP RPGs, since that's the simplest and easiest part to implement. Individual CRPGs differ in how much of that combat system they emulate (real-time/1st person/3rd person CRPGs usually fall on the "less" side of the spectrum).
Your choices are predefined in CRPGs. And at best they make good, story rich, squad tactics games. At worst they're masturbatory grind fests with no difficulty worth speaking of.
So far, there's nothing that even resembles actual tabletop, and "RPG" in a video game sense is a misnomer.
I'm genuinely disappointed that we never got any Gold Box-style games for 4e. It's such a perfect fit.
Knights of the Chalice runs on 3e and it's actually much better.
But yeah, 3e is a horrible, horrible system no matter how you look at it
>shit failgrim image
4e had the best combat rules, fuck the haters
The single-player Drakensang games. Specifically Drakensang and Drakensang 2: River of Time. (NOT Drakensang online), are an extremely faithful adaptation of The Dark Eye tabletop rules. It's a shame they came out in English at a time the RPG they were based on wasn't available in English, leaving many Anglophone gamers hopelessly confused by what is a somewhat counter-intuitive game system.
It's still miles better than D&D.
And before them, there's the Realms of Arkania trilogy, which also faithfully reproduces the Dark Eye. As a result, they're rather baffling to play.
I'm so glad Ulisies Spielle is finally localizing the Dark Eye in English.
I actually came to know about the Dark Eye RPG through this CRPG I played on ye olde Amiga. Schwarze Auge: where men have Asterix moustaches and women... wear less.
I played the fuck out of this as a kid. I never quite got THAC0 though
Do you want an explanation?
Final Fantasy 1-6 captured the classic D&D feel pretty nicely.
Gog is selling like 22 old D&D vidya for like $30 bundle
Goldbox
Ravenloft
Darksun
Eye of the Beholder Trilogy
Basically any of the D&D MSDOS games.
Do you have experience with the old Schwarze Auge games renamed as Realms of Arkania in the US? Star Trail is the one I'm most familiar with but I know there were two others. How are they at implementing the system if you know?
yes
No I don't unfortunately.
>nobody will use modern technology to make a gorgeous new AD&D 1/2E game
>instead we get pic related and the shitty Baldur's Gate "expansion"
Why live
Alright. THAC0 only seems obtuse, but it's not that complex.
It's an acronym of "To Hit Armor Class 0", because AC ranged between 10 (unarmored) to -12 (dragons) in AD&D. THAC0 starts at 20, and then goes down as you level. Seems counter-intuitive to some folks, but I don't mind it.
The two fastest methods of calculating whether or not you hit an opponent's AC in AD&D are:
THAC0 - d20 roll = AC you hit, and
THAC0-(AC) = result on a d20 that you need to hit.
Consider, for example, a THAC0 of 13.
13-(-3) = 16. You need to roll a 16 or better on the d20 to hit an enemy with -3 AC.
THAC0 can be modified by high Strength (for melee attacks) or high Dexterity (for ranged attacks). Let's say our example character has a Strength of 17 (which gives him or her a +1).
13-(1-3) = 15. I generally put modifiers like the Strength bonus where AC is culculated, because THAC0 is subtraction. Otherwise you have to do things like this:
(13-1)-(-3) = 15. Which is messier, and I'm not a fan of it. I prefer the formula below (which I used in the examples above this one):
(THAC0)-([modifiers]+/-[AC]) = AC hit
You can substitute any THAC0 and any AC, and the formula works. It's a bit of an extra step from say, 3rd edition where AC is mostly static, and you're just adding bonuses together. Hopefully this demystifies it some. Those old AD&D games are worth playing.
*(THAC0)-([modifierd]+/-[AC]) = Number needed to roll to hit, rather
The other way could be expressed as:
([THAC0]+/-[modifiers])-(d20 result) = AC hit.
In Third and later editions, a high number for your attack bonus means you're better at hitting things, and a high number for your AC means you're better at not getting hit.
But in First and Second, you want those numbers to be LOW.
You see, the original D&D inherited a lot of mechanics from war games- the kind with tanks and ships. In many of those systems, "Armor Class" meant "You have to roll greater than or equal to this number in order for your shot to hurt"- but in others (including some ancestors of D&D), you were instead trying to roll UNDER.
THAC0 came about when the designers realized that not all people should be equally good at hitting things. It stands for "To Hit AC 0" - Rincewind the Ineffectual might have an THAC0 of 15, meaning he would have to roll 15 or better to hit something with AC of 0. Meanwhile, if Cohen the Barbarian has a THAC0 of 2, he would be nearly guaranteed to hit the same target. Note the switch back to trying to roll OVER a number, although old-school D&D still has plenty of situations where you're trying to roll under a certain number.
If your target has an AC other than zero, you subtract number from your THAC0 to find the number you're trying to beat. If Rincewind came up against a target with AC 5, he would only need a 10 to hit it.
KotC isn't better because of the system, it's arguably worse there, it's better because of encounter design that isn't throwing a thousand mooks at the party every time you turn a corner and making a constant effort to surprise the player and take them out of their comfort zone.
bump
thats not true i played drakensang at it time and the game came with a total explanation of how your character work and a talents/spells sumary.
SSI gold boxes were such a let down. Everything else in the genre had a more usable display. The rules differences were similar to "house rules" at the time, and rather enhanced the challenge of the game. I tried gold box once, quit during the first combat. Saved up all my snowshovelling money for that shit, too.
You are correct sir. If only the rest of the system had been so engaging and thoroughly thought out.
Sadly, it was confined by the brand.
The Ultima series. They've got highly interactive open worlds, turn-based combat that takes place on the same screen that movement does, class-based character creation, open-ended quests...
Basically, it does everything that a tabletop-esque video game RPG would do.
thats because 3.5 rules are shitty, thats why the game is shitty.
If you try to emulate the taste of shit while making a cake, the closer you get to it means it will taste more like shit
>turn-based combat
turn based combat is a bug of rpgs not an feature, like old era black and white movies.
DM mode in Sword Coast was a really neat idea, to be honest
black/white is a feature of that era of filming, not a bug
Someone needs to Pathfinder it... but, you know, actually make it good
Actually, THAC0 wasn't necessarily built out of the idea that different attack progression was necessary; that already existed since 0e, only in the forms of the attack/to-hit matrices. THAC0 was primarily an attempt to get rid of the already existing attack tables, for whatever reason, presumably because it scared beginners.
>black/white is a feature of that era of filming, not a bug
They made films in blacka and white because the technology didnt existed yet to do color fielmds
Crimson Shroud.
>attack tables, for whatever reason, presumably because it scared beginners
If the old attack matrix scared beginners, I think seeing Rolemaster (aka Excel: the Role-Playing Game) would have reduced them to gibbering wrecks.
And yet, people still make black and white films because they convey a certain tone throughout the film.
Turn based combat is superior to real time anyway. It lets you decide placement and attacks rather than relying on reflex. I seriously doubt X-Com would be better in real time.
It's also a pain in the ass to look up every time you fight. THAC0 is easier because you can do a small calculation on the moment of the die roll and know what you hit, rather than borrowing the DM's book, and looking up the page with the attack matrices.
Or asking the DM to look them up.
>And yet, people still make black and white films because they convey a certain tone throughout the film.
I was not talking about recent black and white movies obviously, only about the movies made when color movies was not possible
There is one attack table like that to every weapon?
Holy fuck, even sword path glory has only tables to slashing, stabbing and impact weapons.
But has a table for each specific body area, this for each type of damage.
Advanced book, that I never saw, problably has problaby tables for attacking the back, side and obleque side of characters
There's one for a shitload of weapons, unarmed combat, etc. In fact, there's one book simply for those tables - it's called Arms Law & Claw Law. It also had huge critical tables for every sort of weapons. check the table, see the letter code - for example, a result of 15CS would mean 15 points of damage to the enemy and a Slashing (S) critical of (C) severity. The crits went all the way from "you make an extra paper cut, enemy takes +1 damage" to "you put an arrow through both of his kidneys, the enemy dies on the spot after 3 rounds of agony".
What tabletop games would be easy to make into video games, and which would be hard?
Which RPGs would work well as video games, and which would not work so well?
I'm on it, user.
...
>Requires high density (1.2 MB) disk drive
I love old games
Is there anyway to play those games on a modern computer? I actually inherited one (floppy, instructions, mailorder leaflet and all), but obviously I can't play it.
Assuming the disk still works, you'd need a floppy drive and a computer that has DOS on it. I don't know if you could install using DOSBox via floppy drive, but maybe? I've never tried it.
The other option is to copy the disk contents to the hard drive and attempt to install from there.
GoG has all the old SSI titles, if none of those are an option.
Then just play the original Final Fantasy.
Its just ToEE with some pizzazz.
Tactics is my favorite game, and Crimson Shroud was pretty good (keep getting lost after putting it down for a week and having to restart) but they're kind of their own deal, not an adaptation of anything.
Depending on your computer's motherboard, it's possibly to simply bung in a 5 1/4" floppy drive (I'm assuming it's a five-quarter), then install the game from there and run it using Dosbox.
Then there's this:
which enables you to hook a 5 1/4" floppy drive to a modern computer through USB.
In any case, you'll need the drive, so it's hunting time.
Dominions is the only game where the mechanics felt like you were really rolling dice.