As the world’s first fantasy role-playing game on the table, Dungeons and Dragons has had an immeasurable influence on the design principles, gameplay, and progression mechanics of video games and computer/console RPGs around the world. If a game has character levels, experience points, turn-based combat, or fantasy archetypes like the Cleric or White Mage, it’s generally a descendant of D&D. Within this vast library of video games inspired by D&D is a smaller, but still impressive collection of official Dungeons and Dragons video game RPGs; apart from famous contemporary titles like Baldur’s Gate and Never Winter Nightsthere are more obscure games like Polish of Radiance or dnd that were very outstanding for their time and transformed the way the gameplay and graphics of fantasy computer RPGs are designed.
The first generations of video game consoles and home computers became available around the same time as the earliest edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Many early video game programmers and designers were also big fans of early D&D, and used the rules and premise of the first RPG as inspiration for the templates of their own genre-defining games. The 1976 Text Adventure Game Colossal Cave Adventureone of the earliest works of interactive fiction, replicated the perilous exploration of maze-like dungeons so common to sessions of old-school D&Dwhile that of Richard Garriott D&D influenced game from 1979 Akalabeth: World of Doom the whole kickstart Ultimate franchise of computer RPGs. In the 1980s, there were a plethora of video games featuring D&D in their DNA – the sorcery series, villain and other Roguelike games, console RPGs such as: dragon quest and Final Fantasyetc.
Between all these early D&D inspired video games, there were titles on console and computer that were official adaptations of the Dungeons and Dragons table game. With the official blessing of D&D‘s parent company Tactical Studies Rules, Incorporated, game developers published a surprising number of licensed D&D video games throughout the 1980s, 1990s and all the way up to the modern day. Not all of these video games are at the level of D&D cRPG classics like Planescape: Tormentbut they did play an important role in the growth and updating of D&D and computer/console RPGs in general.
1970s – The D&D adaptation called dnd that started it all
In 1974, back in the pre-edition days of Tabletop Dungeons and Dragonsa team of computer students at Southern Illinois University uses the PLATO cross-college computer mainframe to develop a game called dnd, or ‘The game of dungeons’. While not an official D&D adaptation, the creators of dnd countless gameplay features borrowed from original D&Dbrewed some rule changes to better reflect the single-player gaming experience, eventually creating a surprisingly advanced RPG that pioneered many of the features inherent in modern RPG video games (according to an RPG Fanatic interview with dnd‘s makers – not the makers of Dungeons and Dragons – now hosted by the Internet Archive) – monster-filled mazes with multiple levels, searching for gold, items, weapons and magic, enemies with elemental weaknesses/strengths, powerful bosses, and so on.
1980s – D&D Intellivision Games & Gold Box Computer RPGs
In 1982, video game developers worked on the Intellivision video game console with TSR, Inc. to be the first official video game adaptation of the Dungeons and Dragons RPG called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain. The gameplay of this action/exploration title alternated between open-world exploration of an Overworld map and dungeon-crawling segments where a player icon with a bow would explore a maze filled with monsters, items, spare arrows and fragments of a long-lost crown. Just a year later, another Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Intellivision (the console line currently in legal trouble) called adaptation Treasure of Tarmin was released, changing the gameplay to a 1st-person dungeon-crawling format and introducing gameplay features such as collections of new armor, weapons, foods and magic items, along with the turn-based combat and level-up mechanics from table top D&D.
Around the mid-1980s, when computer RPG franchises like Sorcery, Ultimaand The Bard’s Story took the gaming scene by storm, TSR gave developers at Strategic Simulations, Inc. a license to develop their own computer RPGs based on tabletop system and settings D&D. The main SSI game, Polish of Radiancewas one of the first computer RPGs to actually translate Dungeons and Dragons in a virtual format, allowing players to create parties of fantasy heroes with different race and class combinations, then send those heroes on adventures to defeat monsters, collect treasure, talk to NPCs, level up and explore the ailing city Phlan in the forgotten realms to revive . The success of Polish of Radiance inspired a slew of Gold Box computer RPGs for the Apple II and Commodore 64, each of which gave players the ability to transfer character data from previous games to the new ones. Dark Queen of Krynnput in the Dragonlance D&D universe, was a particularly popular entry.
Towards the end of SSI’s partnership with TSR, the company’s developers came up with a: Dungeons and Dragons RPG adaptation built around a new game engine, set in the apocalyptic D&D institution called dark sun. Though clunky by modern standards, the top-down world exploration, inventory management, and mix of real-time and turn-based tactical game mechanics set a precedent for a certain future isometric RPG series created by BioWare.
1990s – Baldur’s Gate & Modern Isometric D&D RPGs
Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Disco Elysium – there’s no shortage of modern RPGs that try to recreate the look and feel of the iconic, genre-defining D&D games created by BioWare and Black Isle Studios in the 1990s and early 2000s. The common features shared by the best isometric computer RPGs include: an isometric pseudo-3D perspective, real-time combat with the option to pause the game and issue commands to party members, cast spells and skills with unique tactical applications, role-play segments built around multiple-choice dialogue trees, and recruit capable NPC adventure party members with fully formed personalities, agendas, and side- quests. This mix of party-oriented, dungeon-crawling RPG and RTS gameplay made it original Baldur’s Gate a big hit among D&D fans and video game players, and inspired a whole host of others D&D computer RPGs built using BioWare and Black Isle Studios’ internal Infinity Engine – Baldur’s Gate 2the Icewind Dale series, and the infamous weird Planescape: Tormenthailed by many as one of the best computer game stories ever written.
This Infinity Engine D&D games, along with all D&D adaptations for it, inspired a whole new generations of 3D D&D computer RPGs – BioWare’s Never Winter Nights series, the Dungeons and dragons online MMO, and the Dark Alliance action games. Baldur’s Gate 3under development by Larian Studios and built on the rules of the fifth edition for Dungeons and Dragonshas given players an unprecedented amount of freedom when it comes to overcoming challenges, creatively solving problems and making meaningful decisions.
Source: RPG Fanatic (via the Internet Archive)
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