My first foray into the realms of dungeons and dragons game play was this remarkable little series; in the early 90's on my IBM PS2. I remember even before that, in the late 1980's when my oldest brother; with his Robert E. Howard books, and shelf of vinyl records of 1970's rock (Rush, Led Zeppelin) handed me over his dungeon masters guide to breeze through. He was my hero; whatever he thought was cool; became my lifetime definition of cool.

I didn't get to play tabletop until I joined the service and met a group of friends who played 2nd edition dnd, which was royal fun; but even that group met because two of us were talking at the hospital about the goldbox games, which drew in a third, who heard the words "stinking cloud" and came out to investigate.

These games have given way to others like the infinity engine games and...well...nothing came after that; strike that; MMO's came; and thoroughly washed away all my memories of what fantasy gaming was about. Then all of sudden, instead of a forgotten realms romp; it was all about "raid night"; and hours of grinding through pointless tasks.

10 years gone.

Now I'm creeping into my mid-40's and I see this little website GoG, selling all my old favorites of the days of old. Baldur's Gate II will always and forever be unseated as the greatest PC game I've ever played, in a lifetime of gaming, it is matchless; but these goldbox, wow, they have a claim as well for that title, especially Pool of Radiance.

I guess I just want to say thank you to GoG, and it's incredible to play these again, although now, to speed through things, I do use the clue books, I sometimes feel guilty about that; but thanks for those too.

1.) A little not well known feature can be found here:
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Go to other issues and select as Problem type kudos / positive feedback, I know they will enjoy it ;)

And for using the clue books: I used to play them when I was young without (although I DID buy at one time the complete clue book for the gold box series, just in case!!! If I could remember were I left it though :O ;)

Never used it in the old days, but nowadays I admit, Yes I do use them sometimes as well :O
Are we getting worse or what? ;)

But sometimes I think that was also the charm of those old games, no automapping, no deluxe feature, just plain hardcore ;)
Not really fitting for RPG, but you ever played xenomorph? Huge maps and no automapping, friend of mine and me played it together, one was playing the other one was drawing ;)

http://www.mobygames.com/game/xenomorph