Retrospective: Pool of Radiance

My late childhood and early teen years coincided not just with the ascent of fantasy and science fiction in popular media but with the (likely related) ascents of RPGs and video/computer games. By the time I first encountered roleplaying games, there were already serious efforts to combine these two hobbies – and my friends and I were very interested in seeing what they had to offer. That's why we greedily snapped up Wizardry and Telengard and Adventure and many more, all of which we enjoyed but none of which fulfilled our dreams of an electronic entertainment that truly brought the fun of a fantasy RPG to a console or desktop.

There were many reasons why we felt this way, most of them related to the technical limitations of computers in the early to mid-1980s. Another reason was that none of the computer or video games at the time made use of a rules system as complex as that of most pen-and-paper RPGs, which had a negative impact on their depth of play. Wizardry was a solid step in this direction, which is why I loved it, but it was still sufficiently primitive in the scope of its rules that it couldn't hold a candle to Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop roleplaying game.

This largely remained the state of affairs until the late 1980s, when advances in both computer technology and program design saw the rise of increasingly sophisticated offerings. By this time, I was away at college and, while I didn't have a desktop computer of my own, many of my friends did so. It was through one of them that, in the Fall of 1988, I was first laid eyes on Pool of Radiance. Produced by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI), Pool of Radiance was the first official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons computer game. Unlike the AD&D-branded Intellivision games of earlier in the decade, this one made use of the actual AD&D rules available at the time. This was a huge selling point to me, since all previous fantasy computer games used their own rules systems, which, as I noted above, were much less robust. 

The other thing that caught my attention was that Pool of Radiance was not a generic fantasy game. Instead, it made use of the then-new official AD&D setting of the Forgotten Realms. I'd been a fan of the Realms since I first encountered Ed Greenwood's articles in the pages of Dragon, so the use of the setting in Pool of Radiance was also a point in its favor. Further, the overall scenario of the game was designed not by the staff of SSI but by a team of RPG designers working at TSR, among them James Ward, David Cook, and Steve Winter. TSR fanboy that I was, this last fact assured me that, with Pool of Radiance, we were finally getting the goods: an honest to Crom digital adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons rather than a knock-off.

As one might expect, the centerpiece of Pool of Radiance was its character generator. The player is given the ability to generate up to six characters for use as his party of adventurers in the game. Ability scores are generated randomly, though the player possesses some capacity to alter them according to his preferences. Characters can belong to any of six races (human, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, and halfling) and any of four classes (cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief, with demihumans given the opportunity to multiclass). Though representing only a portion of AD&D's full possibilities – there are no sub-classes or half-orcs, for instance – everything included in Pool of Radiance works the way it ought to in the tabletop version of the game. This was not a version of the game simplified for computers but the Real Deal™.

The game assumes the characters have come to the city of New Phlan and entered into the service of its council to reclaim the Old City, which has fallen into ruin and is now inhabited by a variety of monsters and evil humanoids. As the characters venture into these ruins, they gain experience and treasure, which enables them to explore ever more dangerous – and lucrative – areas. In time, they become sufficiently powerful and accomplished to move beyond Phlan and explore other locales that likewise would benefit from their presence. In short, Pool of Radiance is a good translation of the structure of most D&D campaigns into computerized form. 

The game's scenario is not groundbreaking or revolutionary in any real way, but it is nonetheless quite enjoyable, precisely because it is so similar to many people's experiences of playing AD&D. This similarity is buttressed by the inclusion of myriads of little rules and game elements, like saving throws, spell selection, magic items, and even demihuman level limits. To play Pool of Radiance is to play AD&D, albeit one that lacks the social interactivity that is, in my opinion, the foundation of why roleplaying is such a fun hobby. Even so, the game had a lot to offer and my friends and I spent far more time playing it than we probably ought to have.

In the decades since its release, computer RPGs have become vastly more sophisticated and immersive than was Pool of Radiance. Everything from their graphics, scenario design, and rules implementation have advanced by leaps and bounds, strengthened by improvements in technology and years of experience. Because of this, I doubt I could go back and play Pool of Radiance (or any of the many SSI AD&D computer games that followed in its wake) with any enjoyment. Yet, there's no question that this game was an important milestone in the development of the CRPG genre and for introducing a wider audience to Dungeons & Dragons – quite the legacy, if you ask me.