I recently bought an external hard drive and copied my GOG games over to it, in case anything happens to my (extremely fragile) old computer. I've tried running the newer GOG games off it, such as MM7, and I can run them easily via the game-launching icon in the game's folder.

However, if I want to launch an older DOS game, such as World of Xeen, I get a folder full of app files that I need to drag onto the DOSBOX icon to launch from there, rather than a sort of Autorun button. These app files don't always contain all of the game.

Is there an easier way to do this? Can I create a shortcut to launch the games from there? Any help would be appreciated.

I am running XP, so that method works for launching the app files. However, I still miss out on some stuff, such as intros and in-game movies which aren't included in the file. For example. Lands of Lore crashes when I launch it via this method, presumably because an opening cutscene isn't on that app. Thanks for the advice, but I'm looking for a way to have the whole game accessible from one shortcut, as the GOG games usually do when you install them to your hard drive.

Take a look here for another thread on how to create the shortcuts (even if it is to add them to the Steam Client), or re-read what Gremmi said. He doesn't tell you to run the lands.exe, he tells you to run DosBoxLandsOfLore.config using DosBox.

Oh, I see. So do I go into "Properties" of dosboxLOL1.conf and select "Opens With": DOSBOX? I'm nervous to mess around with the file unless I know what I'm doing.

The dosboxLOL1.conf has all the settings for what dosbox should emulate, and at the end, on the [autoexec] section, it has the commands to execute with dosbox. As far as I understood the link by Gemmi, opening this with dosbox should work fine, but if you are not sure about it, make a copy of the file, so you can restore it if it messes up.
Alternatively, look for D-Fend Reloaded, or another gui for DosBox.
P.S. sorry for the semi-vague answers, but DosBox isn't really something I am that familiar with. If you wait a bit, you'll probably get a bit better answers.

Why don't you reinstall the games on your new hard drive? The installer creates the proper shorcuts for each game.

Maybe this link will help you: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxShortcuts
I used those instructions to create a GOG-like shortcut for One Must Fall 2097 recently.

Oh, dear. This didn't work, and now the PC is set to run all conf files with DOSBOX. Better try to install it fully on the external hard drive, then.

I took Omega's advice and just reinstalled the stuff, re-pathing the shortcut to the external hard drive. Will take a while to install them all, but hey, it works. Thanks.

For a somewhat related question, to copy over my saved games, can I just copy and paste them into the data/save game file?