Pool of Radiance

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Pool of Radiance, released in 1988, was the first of a long series of computer role playing games that shared a common engine that came to be known as the "Gold Box Engine" after the gold boxes in which most games of the series were sold. The games were based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules licensed by TSR, and were sold by the software company Strategic Simulations, Inc. Earlier games in the series were playable on the Apple IIe, the Apple Macintosh the Commodore 64 and the IBM PC. Later games in the series were released only for the Macintosh and the PC.

The story revolved around the mythical city of Phlan, which had been overrun by forces of evil. The city had originally held off many attacks, but the forces were marshalled by a dragon which was believed to be possessed by a powerful spirit named Tyranthraxus. The object of the party was to clear the old city of its maruading inhabitants, so the people of Phlan could rebuild and repopulate the areas.

The "Gold Box Engine" had two main features. Outside of character creation, game play took place in a screen that displayed text interactions, the names and current status of your party of characters, and a window which displayed images of geography, and large or small pictures of characters or events. When combat occurred, which was often in these games, you switched to a full screen combat mode, in which player character icons could move about to cast spells or attack icons representing the enemies. All the games typically involved long dungeon crawls, and were heavier on combat than on role playing.

The Gold Box games formed a number of series in which you could move characters who had finished one game to the next one in the series:

The Forgotten Realms series:

Pool of Radiance

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Secret of the Silver Blades

Pools of Darkness

The Dragonlance series:

Champions of Krynn

Death Knights of Krynn

Dark Queen of Krynn

The Savage Frontier series:

Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Treasures of the Savage Frontier

In addition, characters from "Pool of Radiance" could be imported into Hillsfar, a game based on an entirely different engine, and then exported into "Curse of the Azure Bonds."

Finally, the memory of these games is kept alive by Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures, or FRUA for short, released in 1993, which was an editor that allowed players to create their own stories using a version of the Gold Box engine. An active community grew up around this game, including hacks that expanded its powers and its graphics abilities.

External links

The Magic Mirror, repository for all things FRUA: http://frua.dns2go.com