Gold Box: Pool of Radiance

I've known for a while that the old TSR Gold Box DOS game Pool of Radiance was available for play online. I finally checked it out last night, and played around with it a bit more today.

I played it, and the first of the Dragonlance Gold Box games in college. Back then, we just messed around with it, except for one friend who really got into it and played through all three Dragonlance games (there were three, IIRC).

I remember having fun with the character creation and customization more than anything. Yes, it looks so primitive by today's standards. Even by the standards of 1988 (when the first game was published) I think it looks a bit blah. But I was thrilled that I could remake my own D&D characters in the game. Of course, we quickly realized that you could just max out each character's stats, and why not? The game is tough enough as it is.

Playing it now, I'm finding my way back into it, but there are a few things I'm probably missing by not checking out the manual. Like I once combat starts, monsters can lose morale and flee or surrender, but there's no way for my characters to do that that I can see. I haven't tried moving "off the board" yet, maybe that would do it.

And I'm thinking of restarting. I realized that a party of six Half-Elf Fighter/Cleric/Magic-Users might be optimal. Slow advancement, but lots of cure light wounds and sleep spells. Maybe one Fighter/Magic-User/Thief, because I'll probably need a thief later on.