Vogel's games are IMHO the best balance of "old school" style gameplay with more modern design principles. I'd say that Avernum: EFTP or Avadon: TBF are as good a place to start as any, though IMHO my favorite game remains Avernum 6.

Might want to check out Might & Magic III-V. Also The Magic Candle 2 and 3. All are VGA, and all are fairly interesting.

Anybody looking for a suggestion on a "blobber" style RPG, in my opinion, the two best ever made are Might & Magic IV&V (which are actually one big game) and Dragon Wars.

Both are sold here on GOG for cheap even without a sale.

If you can live with REALLY old-school graphics, they're both just amazing.

I mean, so are many others, but those are the two best. :)

There's a game called Lords of Xulima, and while there are many things about it that could be improved, the lockpicking and trap disarming minigames are probably the best I've seen since Krondor. They get harder as the absolute difficulty of the lock/trap increases, but easier as your skill increases. It's part luck and part player ability (more ability for the locks than the traps, but still a mix for both), so if you don't invest in the skill, you can still succeed, though it will be a difficult process and you'll probably use up several lockpicks or accidentally set off the trap. UnderRail uses flat skill checks for traps, locks, and computer hacking. Enough to succeed? Always. Not enough? Never. Another viable approach to prevent scumming.

Either of those might be worth at least looking at, if you are as you sound a fan of older style games.

My grand niece, again. We played it for a while, and figured it was far too linear, despite supposedly offering multiple paths to a goal, and far too unforgiving. But yo're right, the lockpicking and trap disarming were interesting. I just wish the game hadn't put so many high level gatekeepers (relative to the player's level) in every path to narrow choices to just one. Pretty game, too.
I'm not seeing Dragon Wars on GOG.

I really enjoyed Geneforge 1, and have been slowly playing my way through the original Exile series games.
Really one of the joys of Spiderweb games for me coming from the classic gold box games/Wasteland 1 was the ability to copy NPC dialogue & plot relevant data into a in-game notebook; so you really don't have to make physical notes.

Another series of games to consider is Infocom's huge catalog of text-adventure games. Note taking is mandatory, death is almost certain, yet you won't feel like you're wasting your time playing them. GOG has a few Infocom titles, thanks to ebay I was able to find the motherlode of Infocom titles, Masterpieces of Infocom CD-ROM, which had 95% of all published infocom text adventure games.

https://www.gog.com/game/dragon_wars

I thought it sounded familiar...! It's just been so long. Thanks for jogging my memory!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I will definitely pick some of them up.

Now does anyone have any suggestions for how I can find the 100s of hours I will need to play these games?

Found this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/650670/discussions/0/2217311444333384160/

Incline is the opposite of "Decline" - something that happened to RPGs and gaming in general around 2000 and lasts to this day - simplification of gameplay, dumbing down stuff to make it more accessible to wider audiences. Incline would mean that this trend is reversed. Although it can refer to other phenomena. Incline is roughly a synonym for "renaissance".

Just be aware that the wrong sort of minigame can cause accessibility issues. For example, a game that is otherwise turn-based should not have an action minigame. Also, minigames that rely on color or audio cues should be avoided, as they could cause problems for colorblind or deaf gamers.

(Note that I consider this a bigger issue for minigames than the game itself; when a person, who would otherwise be able to enjoy a game, is unable to get past a minigame, that can be extremely frustrating for the player and can make the player unable to reach the later stages of the game which the player would otherwise be able to enjoy.)

Edit: Why is this post "low rated"? What did I do wrong here?

Thanks for the link. I feel like I've been enlightened by Cleve:
I see. Decline is gradual process so I assume Cleve is now going to release more and more games and they are going to be more and more complex and inaccessible, right? Otherwise it wouldn't be really incline but just one blip, one exception that would be reminiscnece of goold old times but wouldn't save us from dumb modern games like WItcher 3, Divinity Original SIn, Pillars of Eternity or Legends of Grimrock.

Excuse me for going off on a tangent here but, in which way is Divinity: Orginal Sin dumb? I haven't played the other games you mention albeit Pillars in which case I have to agree with your statement.