Old D&D Games on Steam: Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor

 

There are a lot of old D&D PC games available on Steam these days but one that no one was really asking for is coming back in two weeks! Yes, that buggy disaster from 2001 will finally be available to purchase again! I don't know that it was technically unplayable for everyone but once people started talking about truly special gems like this one would you risk it:

The Infamous Installer / Uninstaller Bug:  Data Loss / System Wipe: The most notorious bug in the game's original launch version involved the uninstaller. If the game was installed to a directory other than the default path on the C: drive, running the uninstaller could mistakenly target and delete critical system and personal files across the drive, sometimes rendering the operating system unbootable. A patch was quickly released by Stormfront Studios to fix this catastrophic error.

"Quickly" - is it ever going to be quick enough after a game has wrecked your hard drive?

'member computer game boxes? Big art on the front, big hype on the back? So much more satisfying to pick up and hold and read and then think about on the drive home.

I remember a lot of hype around this when it came out. We were riding a wave of really pretty good D&D computer games with the infinity engine games from 1998 onward with Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape:Torment, and their various sequels and follow-ons. This one looked a lot like those games but it used a new engine plus it was turn-based if I remember right, not pausable real time. 

There was also a tabletop tie-in: Attack on Myth Drannor!

Presumably the Attack on Myth Drannor happened in the Ruins of Myth Drannor so it was all cross-compatible. Then you could see future sequels like "Return to Myth Drannor", "Defense of Myth Drannor", "Elfstones of Myth Drannor", etc.

Look it even says it can be played as a tie-in to the computer game. Not sure how that works exactly but it is officially stated on the back!

I never acquired or played the game as the bad experiences sounded bad enough to me and I'm not a fan of buying a game and then having to wait out a long debugging process on it. It hit the bargain bins pretty quickly and haunted them for years. According to the Steam entry ...

The re-release comes with a full suite of enhancements:

• Runs smoothly on modern hardware
• Fixed numerous original game bugs
• Widescreen support, including 4K
• Sharper visuals
• Improved UI with the addition of the action bar and tooltips
• Adjustable combat animation speed
• Optional "Legacy" mode that preserves original gameplay and visuals
• Full controller support
• Reworked camera control
• Customize the scope of the enhancements with the in-game settings
• Other Quality of Life improvements

We wish you good luck on your quest to stop the sorceress and the dracolich from ruining Faerûn!

Well, OK. That all sounds ... fine. I think the reception of this will depend largely on price. Is it a $10 game? I might try it - after 25 years of bug fixes! More than that? Well, we will have to see. They did just release a demo for it so maybe I'll give that a spin.

I might need to go find that "Attack" module too now just to see if it has anything useful for my maybe-someday FR/Dalelands/Myth Drannor campaign that's somewhere on the "Future Campaigns" list.

Dungeons and Dragons and Warcraft

 

I admit I was not expecting to see this. Similar things have existed before but it's been awhile ...

The first edition from 2003

The second edition from 2005

It's an interesting concept. Notice the title on the first edition and the lack of "World of" - this was from 2003 and so pre-dates the whole WoW tidal wave of 2004. We had already had 3 games + expansions and there was clearly a lot of lore in and behind these games, then WoW came along and blew things wide open, and that plus the 3.5 D&D update got us to a second edition and a new title for the game. The wiki has much more information on it so I won't bog down here.

If you were there you might remember that this was not the first MMORPG to make the jump to tabletop:

circa 2002

And yes they did an update for it titled Everquest II which had launched in 2004 as well. There were multiple books here and it's probably pretty interesting if you're heavily into EQ lore. There is a wiki for this as well.

I don't own any books for Warcraft (or Everquest). I wasn't into either game when they came out (though I had played a lot of Warcraft and WarCraft II in prior years) and I was busy running and playing third edition Realms, Greyhawk, Kalamar, Scarred Lands, and homebrew stuff so I did not feel like I needed another setting. If someone else had wanted to run it I'm sure I would have given it a whirl but it never came up. 

Since those days I have had some pretty lengthy runs in WoW (and in EQ2 for that matter). As popular as the game got I am a little surprised it took another 20 years to get a tabletop RPG version of it. Even if they hadn't piggybacked on D&D and made their own version or licensed it to some other system - honestly some version of Pathfinder seems like a great candidate for that - I thought years ago that there was enough of a potential player base in the dedicated WoW fandom that it could be viable. Now in 2026 or 2027 here it comes. 

Being a leaked book it's hard to tell what it's going to encompass just yet but I'll speculate a bit. 

• Azeroth has a ridiculous amount of lore built up at this point including various world-ending threats which honestly makes it a pretty good fit for the over the top power levels of modern D&D at even low-medium levels. I don't think we have a system-fit/setting-fit problem here.
• I think there is enough information and enough space in the setting that you could publish a series of books, say one on each of the major continents of the world, and really crank out some great setting detail. A lot of your D&D players would love it, and a lot of WoW fans would love to have a nice big full-color hardback detailing places in the game after 20 years of build-up. 
• There are enough WoW/MMO system quirks you could also put out a supplement of some kind talking through some common MMO concepts for PC's as well as discussing how to do Boss Fights in a tabletop game the way WoW does them. Then you could close it out with a big section of well-known classic WoW bosses and examples of how they would work on the tabletop using those mechanics described earlier. 
• Rather than the geographical approach you could take a timeline approach and after getting a basic Azeroth book out there you could publish a book on say, the Legion Invasion: Timing, impacts on the world, new monsters, and then something like a plot point campaign (from Savage Worlds) to let players deal with the invasion, push back, and then finally defeat it. This would also let you work in some regional details as each expansion like this tends to focus on a specific area of the world. This would be more like the approach MWP was taking with Marvel Heroic doing things like the Civil War and Annihilation events, which I still think would have been a great plan. 

Anyway - there's a lot of what they might or could do. What do I think they will actually do? Probably not much of any of those. Every other campaign setting for D&D during the 5.0 & 5.5 lifespan has gotten 1 or 2 books, period. I don't know that WOTC wants to open up to a multi-book ongoing product line for a licensed setting, even for WoW. A smaller company might see this as a good base to build an entire game line around. I think WOTC will see it as a nice one-time add-on and then get back to the main focus and the next one-off supplement. I don't like it but that seems to be how they operate these days. I'd love to see them do more but I don't think it will get that level of attention or effort. I suspect that it will be one or two books, maybe a slipcase deal like Planescape or Spelljammer, and it will mainly focus on tweaking D&D classes and PC abilities to WoW, mainly through subclasses, plus some lore, plus some monsters. It won't be bad, it will just be way less than what a lot of people would like. That said I would be happy to be completely wrong here.  

So how interested would I be? 

Would I play it? Sure. If one of my crew said they wanted to start up a new D&D WoW campaign I'd be up for that.

Would I run it? Well, I'm not sure I'm the right guy for that, but if my crew all thought it sounded cool and asked me to, well, yes. If you can get most of your players to ask you to run a game that you are even moderately interested in then you have to grab that opportunity.

So I'll be watching this one with some interest. Hopefully it's a solid effort and makes some people happy and adds some interesting things to the game.

The 10th Anniversary

 

Golden Griffon goes to work

Well today marks ten years since the shutdown of City of Heroes. Yes, we have the game back now and have for a few years but it's not quite the same as when it was a going concern. My post last year covers most of my thoughts on this but in the year since I have spent more time on the current version with Homecoming and it is better - they've made a lot of enhancements this year and I've had a ton of fun playing it with my friends. Halloween, especially, was a blast this year. 

A league gangs up on Jack-In-Irons

I'd say the only downside now is going to happen with anything that you do with friends and family over a long period of time: remembering what all was going on back when and occasionally being reminded how much has changed over the years. It's not a negative, just a side effect of sticking around for a long time. It's easy enough, relatively speaking, to keep a video game going, but it's impossible to return to a particular place and time in one's life ... we've had some moments though. 

I'm just glad it's back and still going strong.

Phurious Pharoah takes one for the team here. Witches...

9th Anniversary of the City of Heroes Shutdown

 

I haven't noted this every year and yes there is a version of the game back online for a good two years+ now but I still felt like mentioning it this year. Homecoming and the others are great and they have added some new stuff to the game but it's not quite the same. 

I'm not sure why it feels different but it does on some level. With none of the old characters or supergroups carrying over there was some loss even after recreating many of them. It's a different crowd these days. The loss of the old forums that were such a repository of knowledge and a ton of fun. A lot of it may just be life changes over the past nine years. Time and life march on, tastes change, people come and go ... it would probably be different now even if the game had never shut down but it did so we had a clean break for almost 7 years for things to drift.

This is certainly not intended as a complaint about the revival - far from it! I was super happy when we were able to log back in again and I'm still glad it's around even if I do not play as much as I did those first six months it was back. It's nothing but a positive development. 

I am a little disappointed that we don't have "more". We have the original game with some enhancements but I was really hoping we would have "Paragon City: The Next Generation" by now. None of the successors have launched with an actual game nine years later and none of them have anything more than an alpha/beta/early adopter type option. I was pretty optimistic about them in 2012 ... I am far less so these days. 

Some of the in-the-moment posts:

• 30 days before shutdown
•  The End
• Thoughts a few days afterwards and looking at other implications
• One year later
• Two years later 

City of Heroes - Analyzing my Character Choices

 

Golden Griffon (Brute) over Talos Island

A bit of introspection today - what kinds of characters have I made in this new incarnation of Paragon City?

Melee Types:

• Tankers: 10
• Brutes: 11
• Scrappers: 10
• Stalkers: 1

Well that's weirdly even. I was more of a Scrapper Guy than a Tanker in the old days, then once Brutes became a hero side option I dove into those pretty hard. For those not as into the game Tanks are the strongest defensively, Scrappers are the strongest offensively, but Brutes are almost as good as both of them in both categories. The "fury" mechanic for Brutes makes them probably the easiest class to play as they are almost a s tough as a Tank, and they gain damage output every time they hit someone -or- get hit by someone. They are quite a bit of fun because they feed directly off of doing what they are supposed to do. I like all of the melee types though. 

Stalker is a bit of a specialist, more about sneaking through enemies than a straight up fight but they are enjoyable for a change of pace. My one in play is a Crow homage so he's very much a theme character. I never played them in the old days so this is an area I ought to explore more.

Amazing Aluminum Man (Blaster) over Steel Canyon

Ranged Types:

• Blasters: 11
• Corrupters: 6
• Defenders: 3
• Sentinels: 4

Not a big surprise - my main is a Blaster and I tend to create a version of him on each server which pumps that number up a bit. Corrupters are a better fit for some concepts and I have explored a few different directions there. Defenders are great on a team, less so solo so while I do have a few and have some ideas for more they will always take a back seat to the first two. 

Sentinels are the new archetype on Homecoming. They were a concept in development on live and then completed between then and now. It's a ranged combatant primary power - like a blaster - but the secondary is a defense set which is something entirely new. It's an "armored shooter" type which actually fits my original concept for Aluminum Man better than Blaster, but I've been playing him as a blaster so long I can't change now. I did recreate American Ironhead as this type and he's been a lot of fun. I have a fire blast/fire armor character that's been pretty amazing too. 

Utinni Utinni (Robot Mastermind) wishing he could see over the counter... 

The Specials:

• Mastermind: 5
• Controller: 3
• Dominator: 2

I did not play a ton of these in live and that seems to have continued. Masterminds are a lot of fun so there will be more at some point but I don't really want to duplicate the primaries right now. Theming matters so I would rather run one of them up to max level before I try running the same thing again. 

Controllers are cool but I am not a huge fan of running them solo - they are way more fun on a team, even a two-man team, so I tend to only run them with friends which keeps the numbers down. 

Dominators... their powersets are the trickiest for me to reconcile as a character. I get an occasional idea for them, and they are fine for solo play, but they just don't speak to me like a lot of the other options do. 

Conclusion

Well I'm sure all that says something about me but I'm not sure exactly what. I will say one of the reasons to have a large slate of character options is that whatever mood I'm in I probably have something that fits it perfectly. Charge in and bash heads, fly around and snipe, team up ... there are lots of ways to go - and I'll be going for a while longer. 

Finding Some Fun - Back to City of Heroes

Aluminum Man vs. the Giant Donut

So when it came back last year I played it damn near daily for about 4 months ... then I just burned out on it ... to the point I barely touched it until last month. having more time at home though, and having run through some other options to the point of near burnout - namely World of Warships and Command & Conquer Remastered - I kinda fell back in love with it again.

Hammer O Justice and Blue Aluminum Man team up for ... justice!

While many of my friends are still out on it, a few have come back with me so that we are getting in some decent team time again. Yes I do have a ridiculous number of characters but this round I am not making new ones, just levelling up the ones I made last year.

Son of MacGruff dispenses some Street Justice

I've also discovered the oddly comforting feeling of running into some of the same NPC's and running the same missions we were running ten years ago. There are multiple levelling paths in City of Heroes so you usually have choices as you climb the ladder but there are some favorites along the way. Since everyone had to recreate their characters there have been some moments of deja vu here and there as we find ourselves having flashbacks to live with the same characters running the same missions. There's some nostalgia, sure, but it's also fun to re-acquaint yourself with something that is unchanged after a minimum 7 year gap. A lot of other things may have changed but Paragon City is just as you remember it.

Ten years later Fusionette still needs rescuing over in Faultline

There have been some updates - there are new powers and power sets, tweaks to some existing powers and archetypes - even a new archetype: the Sentinel -  costume updates, and lots of quality of life stuff. Vidiot maps is still an extremely useful add-on (and has been updated), MIDS is still there for power-building (also updated), and the forums are new but still an incredibly helpful resource for learning the game, or re-learning when memory fails.

"Hey Hammer! I bet we can take that Rikti ship!"

So if you're bored at home or in a superhero kind of mood come check it out!

• Downloading
• Setting up an account
• FAQs on getting started

If you get on and get interested message me here and maybe we can team up!

Ack! Maybe we can just wait 'em out!

Old Habits Die Hard

The fact that I first read this as "Amazon Echo Show 8 hit dice touchscreen" probably says a lot about how things work in my head.

The Last Month of the First Half of 2020

...hopefully we're almost done with all that ...

Where to begin? Such a weird year. I was actually running and playing in games again and then ... POW! Nope!

Two college kids doing school from home full time, one working more (delivery), one working a lot less (retail).

Friends isolating so the only way we see each other is online. Tabletop simulator is interesting, Lords of Waterdeep is a really good group game, and we've played a lot less of the MMORPG option than I thought we would - even City of Heroes. Thank god for Steam sales, GOG sales, and the Total War series of games, especially Warhammer 1 & 2. I might be a little obsessed these days.

Working from home full time ... I worked from home a few days a week already so all I really did was slide that control over to "max" and have more time to do whatever I wanted to do. It was not a tough situation here, especially compared to a lot of other people.

RPG Talk:

As all of this hit and shut everything down I had decided it was time to push the Pathfinder 2E tryout campaign into something real. I had been running it using Frostgrave as a model for the setting and while everyone was having fun it was not all that conducive to a long term campaign - it's kind of limiting as far as social activity and general downtime fun when you're in a giant uninhabited frozen ruined city and the nearest outpost of civilization is a village like the one  in "Hardhome" in that great episode of Game of Thrones.

I had high hopes for it but quickly realized that by fairly strictly following the structure of the miniatures game's background I had crippled the potential in a lot of ways. Even worse, when I thought through what I could do to improve things it quickly turned into my Phlan campaign with more snow being the main distinction. What can I say? I kind of have a template for running a ruined city D&D game and I didn't really want to repeat myself just yet.

So I poked through the stacks and realized there was a fairly obvious thing to try: What if it's not a ruined city? What if it's a living breathing city full of interesting situations? now I've thought for a long time the next time I ran a city campaign it would be Waterdeep and all of those nice supplements they've put out covering it over the last 30 years. Nope!

They ran a kickstarter a month or three back for a D&D 5E version  of it but if I'm running it for Pathfinder 2E then I don't really need that do I? I can convert from the book that's been sitting on my shelf for 10+ years now just as easily!

So that's the plan for the Big Fantasy Game that I always seem to be running ... well, once the restrictions lift and everybody feels comfortable gathering again. More on this later.

The plan is to run a game weekly but sometimes that's not schedule-friendly so to allow some of my players to lighten the load I'm considering running two games, alternating weeks. For the second game I presented a few options but we settled on Star Wars, FFG-funky-dice-Star-Wars because I want to give it a real test. I'm adapting one of my old ideas so the actual work is small and feels like a lot of fun as I look back through it. Setitng it in the Clone Wars era opens up a nice set of options, including active Jedi types, and with official FFG support material it's pretty damn easy to put together.

Oh and now there's a 9th edition of 40K coming soon too - I'll save that for Friday.

Obsession of the Moment: Paragon City Returns

So many heroes reborn ...

Adamantium Man returns!

Phurious Pharoah returns!

Draco Rex returns!

Not all of my time has been sent with old friends - some new ones have turned up too - more on that later.

Just getting to use that "City of heroes" post tag again has made me smile so it's been an amazing few weeks.

Not-40K Friday - Resurgence! - Aluminum Man Flies Again

I was going to start posting about 40K again but the big thing this week is definitely not 40K here.

For current details look here - it's a few posts down on this page.

Some fun information here.

The Amazing Aluminum Man RETURNS!

It's true ... all of it ...

Go here for details.

Beginning Year 10 of the Tower

I started writing here in 2009 as an outlet for my game related-thoughts and that's continued every year since. Last year was a terrible year and posting fell way down, but as I climb out of the hole I intend to keep the blog here as a part of my online life. I'm still running games, I'm still playing games,  so I should have some things worth sharing. I figure 2-3 posts a week will put me back where I'd like this to be so that's the goal for this year.

Currently I'm mainly running 5th Edition on a regular basis finishing up a retro-run of Keep on the Borderlands. We could have gone in several directions but this is what my players wanted to play! It actually started in 2017 then had a long dry spell and picked up again this year and has become the main game - we've even managed something approaching a regular every-two-weeks schedule! As we wrap this up we do have plans to move into the next chapter of the 5E retro tour ...

Besides D&D, in the last six months I've run sessions of ICONS (first run in years - yes!), the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG (Starter kit - looking forward to the full game), and Labyrinth Lord (Barrowmaze - lots of fun).

For the future I'm hoping to keep the D&D game going and work in a once a month Supers game somehow too. We will see. I'm sure the plans will change - they always do!

I'm still playing in Paladin Steve's Kingmaker campaign. After 4 years we are 10th level with only one character death! It's still fun and all of the original players are still playing.

I'm also playing Variable Dave's new 50 Fathoms campaign! I say new - it started in November and has run consistently since then. I have to say it is a lot of fun finally playing Savage Worlds - not just running it.

Miniatures-wise I've pretty much let Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Frostgrave, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Attack Wing, and Armada fall by the wayside. The focus is on 40K, both playing it and getting some of those armies perpetually "under construction" finished - at least to the point of having a painted, playable, 2000 point army. I'll post more about that on Friday. I do hope to work some of those other games back in to some kind of rotation throughout the year but for now it's all about the GrimDark Far Future.

Boardgames-wise I've played more Smash-Up this past year than anything else. It's a good game, especially with kids.

Online I take occasional dips into Star Trek Online but I'm mostly playing World of Warships. It scratches a historical itch and is a lot of fun to play, especially when I have a group of friends playing it too.

Anyway there's the state of things as the year begins. I'm looking forward to getting back into the blog and everything else that goes with it.

Member City of Heroes?

Member 2012 when they shut it down for no great reason? Aluminum Man remembers ...

Four years ago today it all came to an end.

Still haven't found anything quite like it.

Someday ...