Do I need mapping software or graph paper to play these games?

No. While mazes are large, they are also flat and don't contain interactive visual elements. Travel is fast, and it's pretty easy to get a feel of the place. Backtracking is kept to a minimum by design. Mapping is just too much work for too little gain.

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Which game should I play first?

Radiance and Curse are very good, but dated really badly: awkward controls, bad graphics, and rather hard on top of bad rules.
Gateway has good controls (the cursor finally works!) and nice graphics; it's also easier.
The main attraction of FRUA is, of course, custom adventures. If you're new to these games in general, you should probably start with a regular title to learn the basics.
Death Knights of Krynn is great, but to get the most of it, you'll have to start with Champions.

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Should I play the series in order?

For the two Forgotten Realms series (Pools and Frontier), you don't have to. The stories are standalone, and later installments have only vague nonspoilery references to previous ones. (As in, if you can export a party from a sequel, it's pretty clear they didn't die and the world wasn't destroyed in the previous game.) Curse (compared to Radiance) offers new character classes, so you might wanbt to charge party composition between games.
In Death Knight of Krynn, however, an important subplot relies on you having played Champions (and the magic items are nothing to sneeze at).

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How do I choose options in Radiance and Curse? None of the buttons seem to work!

If a letter in a word is highlighted, press it to choose that option. If nothing is highlighted and the options are arranged vertically, try Home and End. In combat, the numpad allows for diagonal movement. Read the manual.

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What's the best party composition?

Depends on the game. In AD&D, nonhuman characters have level limits (refer to the manual for details) and penalties to Strength, so the best party consists of humans (but you can rectify it with a hex editor or third-party programs, in which case, all bets are off). As for classes:
You will need a Cleric to heal the party (except the Krynn games, where Knights are immensely overpowered as both healers and front-line combatants).
In Radiance and Curse, you will need a Thief to backstab certain powerful enemies.
You will need heavily armored frontline combatants to shield squishy mages and kill magic-resistant monsters.
You will of course need Mages (I'm not going to spell it "magic-user", it's dumb), but Mages require spell scrolls for faster progression, and there are only so many of them in the game.
The end result looks more or less like this if you don't change classes for human characters:
Radiance: fighter, fighter, thief, cleric, mage, mage.
Curse: paladin, paladin, thief, cleric, mage, mage.
Blades & Pools: paladin, paladin, cleric, mage, mage, mage.
Krynn: knight, knight, knight, cleric (to be replaced with yet another knight after 2/3 of Champions), red mage, white mage.

Female character have extra penalties to strength, so use a hex editor to win a decisive battle for women's rights.

If you do change classes (not allowed in Krynn), the most powerful party in a game would be one which makes the most use of dual-classing to advance around level limits, with Ranger-Mages being the most powerful combo.

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These rules are dumb!

I know =) A number of tools were created to make them more tolerable (or you can use a hex editor). This advice assumes you're keeping tool use to a minimum.

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Is there any game content which depends on the races and classes of my characters?

There's an optional Mage quest in Gateway and an optional Knight quest in Champions. I don't know of anything else.

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I want to add a Paladin to my Curse party and I can't do it.

Assuming you have five or fewer current members, one or more of them are evil and the paladin is being a stuck-up asshat. A hex editor will help to change his mind.

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I can't create an Evil character!

You're playing Krynn. Try a hex editor or a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

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Can I play a Black Mage in Krynn?

Yes. Normally, black mages would get low-level spells sooner, but that particular advantage will be negated by the complete absence of black scrolls. And at higher levels, the level progression chart favors the white mages. So don't play a black mage except for the lulz (there's no extra hidden content or anything.)

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What about dual classes? Those were neat in Baldur's Gate.

Dual classes are sorcery and I don't recommend them for a first-time player -- you should know when to persevere and when to cash out. The Krynn games don't have dual classes -- they have Knight orders, and of course your character should be Rose, so get promoted at the earliest opportunity.

If you do dual-class, check the level limits in each game and plan around them. Human Ranger-Mages provide the most bang for the buck, since a Ranger-Mage who gained the ability to cast Mage spells as a Ranger can later cast Mage spells as a Mage in heavy armor. Look at level-dependent benefits (attacks and spells) for each class in the manual to decide when it's best to switch (e.g. Rangers get two attacks per round at level 15).

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My paladin gets awesome stats from the get-go, but my mage ends up a loser, no matter how many times I reroll! What gives?

In AD&D the tabletop game as it was meant to be played, you would roll stats and see which classes, if any, you qualified for. The high requirements on the paladin class (for instance) were supposed to make paladins rare and special. In these games, you pick a class, and the game generates a set of stats enough to qualify you for said class, and the higher the requirements, the better the stats.

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In this case, can I generate a Paladin, then change his class to Mage?

You can do better. You can Modify a character after generation and set whichever stats you like, up to allowable maximums. Max out everything.

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Isn't that cheating?

18-00? Haha lol nope. (For real cheating, use a hex editor to set everything to 25.)

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Isn't it better to play with "realistic" stats for roleplaying reasons?

Don't. You won't get any points for "roleplaying", the game will simply screw you. You will need each character to have the highest possible main stat, and the stats which don't matter don't matter so you might as well have them at 18, too.
If you think the game is too easy, try adjusting the difficulty in the Encamp menu (for games which have variable difficulty).

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I found this awesome magic item and the battles are laughably easy!

Careful, it probably has limited charges.

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Yay, +5 items for the whole party! I'll just drop all that old stuff...

DON'T.

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I'm stuck!

Try looking for secret doors in suspicious places via Look or enable Search. Elves, if you're using tools, are good at noticing secret doors.

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This one fight is pure murder! I tried to avoid battles as much as possible to arrive at peak condition and I get killed anyway!

Some battles feature a variable number of combatants depending on external factors. There might be quests you can complete to find allies or whittle down enemies to a manageable number (before the battle actually begins, of course).

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I can't get my thief to backstab!

Do this:
Position the thief and another character around the enemy, diametrically opposte each other, and set them to Delay (not Guard!). After all other combatants acted in the round, delaying will switch between these two characters. Have the other character attack the target in melee and the target will turn toward him. Then attack with the thief.
(You can also do it without delaying if you can tell which direction the enemy faces -- if the assistant strikes first and the enemy doesn't get a turn in between, or if you can tell who the enemy just struck in melee.)

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My character was perfectly healthy and suddenly fell dead in combat. What gives?

Two possibilities:
he might be actually dead via a death effect - too bad, reload
or he might be poisoned (by, say, a giant centipede) - cast Neutralize Poison on the body before the end of the battle.
Unconscious PCs don't get experience points - the pool combat experience is divided between conscious characters, and quest XP ("congratulations the party gains experience!") is simply lost. (But don't worry, the XP budget of each game is unlimited -- although winning the game without anyone ever falling unconscious can be a fun challenge.)
Reduce the game speed via the Speed option in combat or Encamp-Alter outside of combat to be able to read combat messages.

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My character actually died. Should I reload or try to raise them?

Reload, no exception. Death inflicts permanent penalties. (This means non-raiseable elves aren't substantially worse than humans where death is concerned, but if you have an elf in the party, you're probably using a editor tool, so you already don't care.)

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I accidentally set a character to Auto and I can't take control of them again!

Win a battle, but don't end it just yet. Set everyone to Auto, then press Esc while the game is cycling between party members. (Or use the Gold Box Companion.)

[TBC]

Help, I'm being slaughtered by spellcasters!

For low levels, you should break their concentration by landing a hit on them each round, or (last resort) while they're in the process of casting. Bows and arrows (which attack twice per round at long range, for fighting-types) and Darts (useably by everyone except clerics, thrice per round, at short range) are good for that. At high levels, spam Delayed Blast Fireball.

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I can't cast spells!

If you have memorized spells (have you?), you've probably been wounded last round.

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How do I memorize spells?

Read the manual. Note that certain later games automatically queue up cast spells to be re-memorized, and in earlier games, you have to manually pick spells all over again. In Champions, look for the respective full moons at the top of the screen for bonus spells.

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I can't equip a bow!

A bow requires two free hands. Do you by any chance have a shield equipped? Otherwise, only fightey classes can use composite long nows, and thieves can use the crappier short bows. Mages and clerics cannot.
(Bows and darts are low-level weapons. With the exception of the Fine Long Bow which makes use of the strength bonus, they become useless in late game. )

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I can't hit a monster!

It's probably immune to normal weapons. Use plussed weapons and spells. Or, better yet, reload - if you've run into a weapon-immune monster while not yet having magical attacks for the whole party, you've probably screwed up.

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My character was charmed!

There's quite a number of options:
- charm him back
- beat him senseless, then bandage (be careful not to kill him outright, and don't backstab!)
- cast Dispel Magic (but note that Dispel Magic is a third-level spell, and Charm Person is first level)

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Can I reach this square in combat? Trying to count squares manually is annoying.

Before exiting the Move option, you can rollback the movement by pressing Esc. So just try walking to where you want the character to be and see if you actually make it. (For the record, it's 1 movement point in each crdinal direction and 2 movement points every other diagonal step. Don't forget you can move diagonally!)
Keep in mind that enemies get free attacks when you move away from them, and cancelling the movement doesn't cancel the effects of the attack. So if you plan to move past a warrior to reach a caster, you have to count those squares.

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My character can only move three squares per round in battle. What happened?

They're likely overloaded. (Money has weight, too - put it in a Vault in town, or create extra cargo mule characters, temporarily add them to the party and give them the money.) Normally, a character can move 12 squares, less with armor. Non-enchanted plate armor (also, crappier heavy armor such as scale, but why would you wear it?), including Solamnic Plate, cuts your speed to 6. Boots of Speed double your speed (to 12 with Plate and 24 with Leather or nothing at all, yay rocket mages).

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Aim doesn't work!

Your target is probably "invisible". Theoretically, you can cast Remove Invisibility, but a much better option is just attacking in Melee with Move via the numpad and/or employing heavy artillery.
On the other hand, the way the AI works, invisibility on your party can be very powerful.

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What are the good spells?

Cure spells and Heal: power your Fix option, useful in certain protracted battles, and can be cast manually outside of combat if you're can't rest safely.
Detect Magic - cast through the loot menu after an important-looking battle to detect magical stuff.
Sleep - close range, disables a 3x3 square of low-level humanoids, after which they can be instakilled with a single attack.
Magic Missile - (after Sleep becomes useless) reasonably fast, long range, passable at neutralizing spellcasters.
Charm Person - can charm a low-level enemy or your ally. A gamble for you, but very dangerous in enemies' hands.
Hold Person (cleric): three paralyzing attacks at mid-range (can be aimed at the same or different targets).
Stinking Cloud: makes a 2x2 area dangerous to be in or walk into. Combatants in in risk becoming "nauseous" (disabled) for short periods of time, and can be instakilled once they do. Works on monsters, good for taking out the trash in Curse.
Dispel Magic removes enemy spells. Rarely used in scripts. Loses its usefulness after mid levels, except in Queen, where it's into endgame good for removing pre-existing enchantments from certain enemies.
Knock opens closed doors and so is useful on those exceedingly rare occasions (like, maybe once in DKK?) when bashing fails.
Remove Curse: use on those extremely rare occasions when you equip a cursed item to unequip it.
Fireball: strikes all squares on the screen except three in each corner.
Ice Storm: strikes all targets in a 5x5 square except the four corners.
Lightning Bolt: strikes several targets in a straight line away from the caster, staring with the one you aim at, reflects off walls.
Restoration: cures negative levels and may be bugged, adding extra hitpoints until the range overflows and you're walking with 3 hp at level 28. Use a hex editor if it happens.
Delayed Blast Fireball: an instant and more powerful fireball. Best spell in the game.
Meteor Swarm: fireball for hipsters.

Various buffs are only useful when mass-cast before a particularly tough battle, and for that, you need to know when to actually expect one, down to the square.

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What about Haste?

Haste is easy mode and ages characters. It's like the Cheater label in Heroes II. Meh. Potions of Speed also age characters.

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What are the good items?

Permanent equipment with plusses. Bracers. Rings of Protection. Rings of Invisibility. Plate and Solamnic Plate. Boots of Speed. Fine Long Bow. Olin's Quarterstaff. Footman's Dragonlance.
Wand of Ice Storm. Dust of Disappearance. Darts of Hornet's Nest. Vorpal Sword. Plussed helmets in the Dark Queen of Monty Haul.
Healing potions and wands which require a mage to wield are basically useless.

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How do I earn money?

You don't have to. Except the very beginning and a couple scripts, money is meaningless in these games. Just have some spare cash on hand ot pay for training and ID.

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Monsters drop too much stuff! How do I know what's worth picking up?

Use Detect Magic when you're looting (magic items will be asterisked), and watch out for overpriced items when you're selling loot. Sold items are gone forever. Shopkeepers in the games are honest scammers and will pay you a tiny portion of an item's cost, which still boils down to quite a lot where magic items are concerned. So if shields normally sell for one coin, but this one suddenly sells for 1250, DON'T SELL IT.
Equipped magic items' plusses are visible on character sheets even when the items aren't identified, but checking just about every piece of equipment is unfeasible.

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I found this awesome item. How can I get more of it?

Characters which aren't party members are stored in separate character files. When you remove a character from party, if a character file with the same name already exists, you're asked whether to overwrite it or not. So you can give a rare item to a character, remove them from party, reload a save, remove that character without overwriting and without the item, then add them back.

Nice FAQ, but I don't agree with everything.

[i]The end result looks more or less like this:
Radiance: fighter, fighter, thief, cleric, mage, mage.
Curse: paladin, paladin, thief, cleric, mage, mage.
Blades & Pools: paladin, paladin, cleric, mage, mage, mage.
Krynn: knight, knight, knight, cleric (to be replaced with yet another knight after 2/3 of Champions), red mage, white mage. [/i]

In Pool of Radiance I'd use some multi-classed characters for several reasons.
There is low cap on the XP in the game, so single class characters will reach max level long before you finish the game.
At low levels you need every Sleep and Cure Light Spells you can get.
But you also need a single class Mage to get the all important spells like Stinking Cloud and Fireball ASAP, and a single class Cleric to Turn Undead.
Also, single class Thieves are rather useless. Fighter/Thieves are much better; they get better THAC0, more attacks at levels 7 and (if human dual class) 13, and they can use shields.

I'd recommend the following party:
Dwarf Fighter/Thief
Human Mage
Human Cleric
Human Fighter
Half Elf Cleric/Mage
Elf Fighter/Mage (Elves get bonuses with Long Sword and Longbows, and can cast magic spells while wearing armour)
You can also fill out the party with a Hero or two hired from the Training Hall. They are a great help in the beginning of the game.

When transfering to Curse of Azure Bonds, ditch the two last characters since they won't be able to advance much further, and you no longer need so many character to cast low level spells.
Replace them with a Paladin and Ranger instead.
Both the original Fighter and the new Ranger can later be dual classed to Mages if they have the right stats. The Ranger can even cast magic spells while wearing armour, so a dule classed Ranger/Mage is the single most powerful character IMO. When I finished the last battles in Pools of Darkness my Ranger/Mage was the last man standing.

And I must say I really don't like your Krynn party. Some diversity is more fun.

[i]What about dual classes? Those were neat in Baldur's Gate.

Dual classes are sorcery and I don't recommend them for a first-time player -- you should know when to persevere and when to cash out. The Krynn games don't have dual classes -- they have Knight orders, and of course your character should be Rose, so get promoted at the earliest opportunity. [/i]

It's better to promote only to Knight of the Sword. They have the same spell casting ability as the Knight of the Rose, and they advance quicker in levels. The only possible benefit to a Knight of the Rose is better Leadership.

[i]In this case, can I generate a Paladin, then change his class to Mage?

You can do better. You can Modify a character after generation and set whichever stats you like, up to allowable maximums. Max out everything.

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Isn't that cheating?

18-00? Haha lol nope. (For real cheating, use a hex editor to set everything to 25.)

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Isn't it better to play with "realistic" stats for roleplaying reasons?

Don't. You won't get any points for "roleplaying", the game will simply screw you. You will need each character to have the highest possible main stat, and the stats which don't matter don't matter so you might as well have them at 18, too.
If you think the game is too easy, try adjusting the difficulty in the Encamp menu (for games which have variable difficulty). [/i]

Lots of qustionable advice here.
Maxing out stats will make the games too easy, and items like Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Gauntlets of Dexterity will become worthless.
Also, in Pool of Radiance the game will throw larger amounts of enemies at maxed out characters.
If you enjoy a challenge don't max out the stats.
Instead give max Wis to Clerics and max Int to Mages, as they need that to cast the highest level spells.
For the others Dex is the most important stat, since it governs both missile THAC0, AC and most importantly, Initative.

[i]My character actually died. Should I reload or try to raise them?

Reload, no exception. Death inflicts permanent penalties. (This means non-raiseable elves aren't substantially worse than humans where death is concerned, but if you have an elf in the party, you're probably using a editor tool, so you already don't care.) [/i]

Instead of Raise Dead (which don't work on Elves and lower CON by 1 for others), you can use the Resurrect spell/scroll/Temple service.

Why did they do that? (This is a serious question. Why did the developers of the Gold Box games penalize female characters?)

They were staying true to the 1st edition AD&D rules.

Seriously, that's not SSI doing something new or screwing female characters over. The rules also limited non-human males to less than 18/00 if they were entitled to exceptional strength. 2nd edition did away with that except for Halflings who had a racial penality to strength and thus couldn't get 18.

So, why did the rule exist in 1st edition in the first place? Also, why did SSI go along with such a stupid and sexist rule?

Also, do female characters get anything in return?

Are you trolling?

No, I am asking a legitimate question (or rather, in this case, *two* legitimate questions).

Knights are so ridiculously OP that there's no reason to use another warrior class. Kender are decent in the trapdoor battle and that's it. Thieves are useless -- no 255 hp drow lords in the game; knights are best at fighting dragons and draconians, including enchanted ones. Multiclasses don't have a leg to stand on in Dargaard, not to mention on the red carpet. Sure, we sang songs about that one time a Majere cleric turned three liches in the tunnels at Hawkbluff, but so what? And moral satisfaction. It'd be one thing if the orders were equal and you could just take a pick, but Rose is the top tier. "High Justice". Whoa. This is an aesthetic/design consideration, which ultimately stems from the question of fairness. To play a game with challenges and feel good about it, rather than like a total loser who wasted hours of precious lifetime, a player needs to acknowledge the supremacy and fairness of (arbitrary and often bad) rules. And blatantly random stats in a long power fantasy game with persistent characters aren't fun. So e.g. gauntlets of ogre strength for a warrior simply make up for not rolling long enough / being lucky. (I give them to a wizard to whack weaksauce monsters in random encounters.) The same goes for other gear. "Whoa, my AC is -3... but it could've been -5 if I rolled better". Nope. (I would've accepted a points budget or stat packages, but rolls just suck.)
And stats which don't matter, don't matter. If it makes no difference what my wizard's charisma is, why not Zoidberg?
Oh, and this.
trollface.png By the time Resurrection is available, a dead character is like the only practically achievable failure state. If corpses are an acceptable outcome, there isn't much of a game left.

1) 1st edition was made in the late 70s iirc. The fact that the rule was eliminated in 2nd edition was fairly progressive for the time. Stuff like the (in)famous Barbarian poster/cover art was not considered subversive due to the woman being displayed as a possession of the man, but rather for the very skimpy clothing worn by both of them.

2) Faithful adaptation of the source material.

3) I think they did in basic D&D but not AD&D 1st edition, and that was a bonus to charisma. Because boobies.

A lot of things have happened to the overall perception of females in western societies in the 30-40 years since the D&D books used for these games were originally created. In the credits for the 2nd edition PHB, the only females are 3 (maybe 4) of the typesetters and 1 of the artists (out of 11 artists). In the general thank you section 30-40 people are named, only 1 (maybe 2 due to an abbreviated first name) is a female.

It's a set of rules made by (mostly) men primarily for men and boys. At a time where women weren't as valued for their skills as they are now.

You seem to have missed many of the finer points of the Gold Box games, but of course that's a hazard when you max out stats and focus on only a few of the classes.
Yes, Knights are definitely the best single class fighter type.
But you can also have Elf Ranger/Clerics and Elf Fighter/Mages which are just as strong in a series that does not penalize demihumans so much. Your comment about multiclass character is just plain wrong. The only real weakness of Elf multiclass characters is that if they die you can't Resurrect them, which makes them risky characters if you play Iron Man.
Thieves are pretty useless in Dark Queen of Krynn, but a Kender Cleric/Thief is a good character in the two first Krynn names. Taunt is like a free Prayer spell, and a Kender Cleric/Thief is actually the best character against the Skeletal Knights in Death Knight of Krynn, if using a magic Hoopak for backstabbing.

I didn't get your last comment about Zoidberg and trollface. Explanation?
FWIW my YouTube video was put up to show that yes, it is possible to beat the Mulmaster Beholder Corps without using the Dust of Disearance, thanks to very poor AI.
I didn't have a suitable save game when the question arose, so I used another player's characters.

Wrong. 18-00 is literally ogre strength which has nothing to do with real life. If the designers and playtesters had half a brain between them, they'd have given female humans a penalty to the strength stat. (which would be a shitty rule for a game, but at least it wouldn't 've been offensive from a math standpoint.) Because it was a dark time when people used mind caulk instead of statistics, and shitty rules appealing to RAELIZARM reigned unchecked.

Why do you think demihuman level limits exist? Because nonhumans are "better" and live longer, and since the world isn't packed full with level 400 elven archmages, level limits "must" exist. But, of course, a tabletop campaign only lasts this long, so either your elf character keeps being better than everyone else, or can't play the game while the humans proceed into demigodhood (so you start playing something else). Either is bad for a collaborative storytelling power fantasy. But hey, it was written by the same guy who wrote that if your player wanted to play an unusual race (ilke, a hobgoblin or a lizardman), you should seriously offer them a motherfucking gold dragon, then slaughter the whole party for being munchkins. Or if the game has random psionics and someone honestly rolled really well on a table and got Disintegrate at will as a 1st level character. Slaughter the whole party, that'll teach 'em! (Rather than, you know, not put Disintegrate at will in a table at all.)

And yes, this is AD&D 1e I'm talking about, as in, the ruleset these games are based on. The random harlot encounter table is one of the better things about it. Licensing. SSI made some decent strategy games, so I think we can rule out incompetence. Sure, an extra dose of sexual harassment from the whizzard himself, if you ran into him at a con.

It was in the computer games because it was in the original rules, and TSR was anal about SSI not deviating from the rules.
It was in the original rules probably because in real life males tend to have higher STR than females. Maybe that's unfair, but that's life for you.
You talk as if 18(00) is the only STR males can have.
There's a whole range from 18(51) to 18(00).

There is absolutely no need to max the stats of characters to 18/18(100). First, there are advantages only for specific classes, for example only fighters benefit from very high constitution. Second, most battles are not that difficult and the games can be won with an average party. Third, a game with all characters having exactly the same stats is kind of dull.

Personally I always roll till I get acceptable results and then use the modify feature to adjust a few points here and there.