Tolkien may have given contemporary fantasy gaming its good looks, but it was Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons that gave it a mind and a soul. Mario only wishes he were so influential. Name a game beyond the genres of puzzles and sports and you'll likely find some vestige of D&D's touch, whether it's the obvious connections such as customizable character classes and experience points for leveling or more commonplace elements like hit points, weapon upgrades, and inventory slots.
For all that, Dungeons & Dragons itself was a little late to the video game parties. Countless early games spawned from developers' memories of good times with the pen-and-paper game around tables in the 1970s, but in the late '80s the franchise started shouldering its way through the crowd of imitators. At times it even managed to push its way to the front and achieve greatness. We've compiled a list of the best of those efforts, ranging from the humble Pools of Radiance to the epic grandeur of Baldur's Gate II.
If the average game player knows about Dungeons & Dragons Online, it's likely because of its status as the first MMORPG to prove that free-to-play payment plans were viable alternatives to the then-dominant subscription model. That's a shame, because Dungeons & Dragons Online's appeal runs far deeper than that. It captures the essence of the series' rules more effectively than latecomer Neverwinter, and its emphasis on instanced group content at the expense of world exploration delivers a fitting homage to the dungeon romps that define D&D in its primal form. It's tempting to balk at developer Cryptic's decision to set it in the comparatively obscure universe of Eberron rather than in the beloved Forgotten Realms, but such concerns seem petty once you see the detail Turbine put into its maverick massively multiplayer world.
Champions of Krynn may find its origins in Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman Dragonlance novels that were so popular in the '90s, but it ventures off on its own by following the gallant Sir Karl on his medieval animal rescue mission to protect a bundle of dragon eggs. Most of that's hidden in the journals; the grid-based based combat is the true star here. Champions of Krynn excels not only because it slams you with challenges but minutes past the loading screen, but also because it allows for an character creation system that's robust enough to handle the trials in the right hands. Good thing, too, as the gameplay was usually satisfying enough to make up for graphics that seemed better suited for games made five years before.
Shadow Over Mystara is deceptively simple. It debuted near the end of the glory days of 2D arcade beat 'em ups like Final Fight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a cursory glance suggests that it's but a reskin of such sidescrollers with the D&D name stamped on top. Yet its depth reveals itself in the action. Dungeons & Dragons staples such as equipping dropped gear and learning new abilities reveal themselves as the levels unfold, and hidden rooms and alternate endings shake up the traditions of its straightforward genre. Capcom's Tower of Doom gave us similar novelties only three years before, but only Shadow Over Mystara achieved such a perfect balance of action, variety, and graphic prowess. Small wonder, then, that it still commands a significant following today. At least we no longer have to shell out all those quarters.
Long before Mass Effect 3, Eye of the Beholder sparked the frustration of players who believed its ending didn't justify the effort needed to reach it. Not that the quality of the generic story was anything really warranted such outbursts; instead, the unrest sprang from the unique way in which we experienced it. Eye of the Beholder's name plays both on the plot and the simple fact that it let us experience D&D experience from a first-person perspective for the first time. It was also staggeringly beautiful for the time (and you know what they say about beauty). Even now, it warrants attention as its battles aren't limited to tripping over random encounters; here, enemies hunt you, forcing you to keep an eye out lest they impale you from behind.
Disregard the fact that the title's kind of a cheap attention grab; Dark Alliance resembles its PC counterparts about as much as Gandalf resembles Dr. Who. Were it not for sidequests and a ruleset grounded in the recently released third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, it could almost pass for a graphical update of 1985's Gauntlet. Surprisingly, such simplicity works. Dark Alliance may have a throwaway story (although voiced by such worthies as John Rhys-Davies and Jennifer Hale) and little customization for its three classes, but it came into its own with a smashing cooperative mode that recalled the best aspects of Diablo. Too bad the music seemed to feature two or three tracks stuck on repeat.
There's a sad story behind the creation of Icewind Dale; it shows Black Isle studios stepping back into the safe design that worked so well for the Baldur's Gate series after the creative triumphs and financial failures of the Planetscape: Torment. At times you can you almost sense a touch of vindictive menace in its structure. Icewind Dale favorites combat as much as Planescape: Torment dismissed it, and at times its ludicrously tough battles against undead swarms seem to ask, "Well, if you like combat so much, let's see how you like this!" And many do like it; most love it. It's proof that, deep down, all a lot of us what to do is bury axes in the heads of ice trolls.
"Go for the eyes, Boo," the ranger Minsc said to his pet hamster, and it still makes us laugh 16 years later. It's hard to remember how groundbreaking such exquisitely crafted characters like Minsc and Xzar once seemed, especially when viewed from our age of The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption. No longer were heroes mere stat bgs who spouted fantasy cliches; they were real people, and they loved and hated you depending on how you treated them.
But Baldur's Gate isn't just a triumph of story; it showed us that strategic placement in combat soundly trumped (and complemented) the old routine of watching whose numbers win first. Innovation seemed to ooze from every pixel arranged with the help of brand-new Infinity engine, right down to the initially controversial practice of dumping turn-based combat for a system that let you pause before unleashing all your party's moves. Seems like such a silly thing to worry about today, doesn't it?
4) Neverwinter Nights
No, not that one. The original Neverwinter Nights from 1991 may have represented the baby steps for the MMORPG genre (and an fairly compelling reason to crack open those AOL CDs), but it was BioWare's 2003 release we remember best. The official story may never have reached the highs ofBaldur's Gate despite the help of lush graphics and one of composer Jeremy Soule's best early scores, but the game came into its own with a toolkit that allowed players to play Dungeon Master and craft D&D adventures of their own. It was wonderful despite a steep learning curve, and at times the toolkit scenarios outdid anything professional developers had managed to date. As for BioWare itself? It still managed to produce a story worth of Baldur's Gate with its Hordes of the Underdark expansion in 2003.
It all started here. With Pools of Radiance, the dizzying rules and settings of pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons leapt into the monitors of Commodore 64s and Apple IIes for the first time, and the franchise's era of aptly named "gold box" games kicked off in earnest. Only a few small differences separated its first-person views and overhead maps from existing RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry, but it was the stuff under the hood that matter. For the first time, we knew that a game could have all the rules of the pen-and-paper RPG while losing none of the fun. As hard as it may be to believe today, players worried that the actual D&D ruleset would prove too tedious for a video game--a worry that evaporated the moment most players got their hands on it.
If video games were indie albums, then hipsters would cite Planescape: Torment to establish their cred. It's what T.S. Eliot may have made if he'd ever tried his hand at game design, and it thrives on a heap of broken images. Empty suits of armor spout glum philosophy, creatures pour in from gates leading to all incarnations of the D&D universe, and it all centers on a tattooed chap called the Nameless One with a killer case of amnesia. (You've probably never heard of him.) The wonders Black Isle achieves with the story remains the real draw; the painless combat sometimes only seems to exist to justify calling it a game. But here you'll find Gygax's world at its most bizarre and beautiful, and even now it holds its own against the most epic of today's tales.
Baldur's Gate II enjoys a position among video game RPGs today that's not unlike the position enjoyed by Shakespeare in English literature; it's been called the best for so long that it feels like heresy to dispute it. Fortunately, it warrants the praise. Baldur's Gate II is everything that Baldur's Gate was but pushed just short of excess. The detailed yarn of your struggle to find the deliciously evil mage Jon Irenicus only could take up 100 hours of your time; pursue the side quests, and we're talking about time commitments that could suffice for learning new languages or mastering guitar as well as some modern rock bands. (And that's to say nothing of the expansions.)
And we say it's worth every minute. The battles are tough and rewarding, the story darts in a hundred different directions while seldom losing focus, and it still stands toe-to-toe with flashier rookies like Dragon Age: Origins--which, in fact, was meant to recast the same experience of for a new generation. A triumph.
Leif Johnson is a freelance writer from Chicago who loves RPGs and has a beard worthy of his Viking name. You can watch him posts photos of snow on Twitter at @leifjohnson.
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