I have very little experience With Dungeons & Dragons outside of the odd video game or two. Take Baldur’s Gate 3, for example, which is so beloved that nearly everyone’s grandma and even their pet dog is likely to have played it. Nearly all my friends adore playing D&D. Unfortunately, I was never raised in an environment that tipped me in that direction. It’s foreign territory to me. Intimidating, even!
My first encounter with D&D was a computer game developed by Stormfront Studios called Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. My father came home one day and gave me a jewel case with the most amazing cover I’d ever seen. The imagery of the sorceress in particular captivated me. Every villainess I’ve ever written for my private writing likely owes at least something to the aura exuded by this woman. It was a new game. I was excited to play it! I installed it as soon as I could.
I would hazard a guess that if you know anything about Ruins of Myth Drannor, it’s probably the same fun fact that’s parroted everywhere on the Internet. Even to this very day, people will make new threads asking if anyone else knows that this game is capable of destroying someone’s life, as if somebody didn’t make the exact same post four hours earlier. Yes, very well. This is a road that I too must cross.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room. Yes, this is the buggy game that also wiped your system files if you uninstalled it. I’ve got more to say about it than that, I promise. But yes, goodbye, Windows. Goodbye, precious C Drive. Hope you didn’t install it on your parent’s computer with all their work documents or whatever. I’ve read so many stories about this game’s uninstaller wrecking havoc. I read a post once about a LAN party where the game got uninstalled from every PC. I giggle a little every time I think about that one.
So what’s my story? Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t actually have one. My copy of the game was one of the patched ones. The disc already came with version 1.2 on it, I believe, so my younger self that loved to sit through game installers for the pure novelty never suffered consequences for it. In fact, I have never experienced any of the major soft-locks that people post about online. Only the minor ones!
The big thing with Ruins of Myth Drannor is that no matter where I look, it appears overwhelmingly the case that people passionate about D&D games simply loath this one. I’m not equipped to get into specifics, but my understanding is that the game has an awkward implementation of 3rd Edition D&D rules, having originally been designed for 2nd Edition, leading to odd design choices that drive people bananas. They wanted this to be the first game to do 3rd Edition. Executive meddling strikes again?
It’s not hard to see why people are unkind to this game. If it doesn’t replicate something you enjoy very well (on top of being user hostile and a safety hazard to the C Drive), then you’re well within your rights to be disappointed with your purchase. It’s completely understandable. I, on the other hand, had no experience with D&D. I had a patched game. Even the uninstaller was fixed. I was given only the jewel case with two discs inside it. I didn’t even know it was a sequel to something. I had zero preconceptions.
I started the game. Some movie files started playing. Apparently, there’s this thing called a Pool of Radiance that’s back and causing problems. Some mages are talking about stuff, but I can’t parse a word they’re saying. Low volume and no subtitles does that. Apparently, my party is getting sent somewhere called Myth Drannor to help another band of folks in trouble. What followed was one of the most dull and lifeless experiences I have ever had to this day in my entire history of gaming.
Hours and hours of trying to whack an orc with four party members who keep missing their attack five times in a row. Entering the first dungeon of the game, only to end up spending entire weeks in there watching zombies shuffle back and forth for no reason during their turns. There were barely any NPCs to talk to. It was nothing but pure dungeon crawling. I never made it out of that dungeon. Even today, I have yet to escape.
You know what? This might be strange, but I kinda love that on some level. Hear me out.
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is not something I play when I am looking for a captivating narrative. It is not something I seek out when I am looking for what people consider to be a good video game. This is not a game I recommend to friends unless they know exactly what they’re signing up for. I would much sooner revisit the game’s novelisation (a fun read!) than actually spend every waking hour trying to beat it. Which I would like to do someday. Just not at that level of commitment!
It is, however, a game that I come to when I’m in a certain sort of mood. The kind of mood where I want to just sit there and get deep into something and simply be. Maybe I don’t need to feel excitement. Maybe I just want to wander around until I find something interesting and let my imagination go wild. What if I’m not itching for cutscenes and character interactions? What if I just want to push myself to persist in this strange, hostile environment, just to see what tiny bits of lore I can scrape together?
Anyone who knows me understands that I’m a big video game history enjoyer, but even just in general, I love digging deep into the inner workings and history of things I get into. I simply can’t help myself. I need to know more about the thing I’m spending time on. I want to know what made it the way it is. Ruins of Myth Drannor had me hooked for two different reasons: I wanted to know why the game was like that, but I also wanted to learn the history of all those monotonous halls I was running through.
So I did a mixture of things. I kind of devoured every official online source related to the game that I could. I spent a lot of time flicking through the same few pages on the official website and reading through threads on various forums. This was also how I got spoiled a character survived all the way to the end of game. They can’t be dead if they have a player model, right? Not to mention the strategy guide doesn’t even try to hide it.
Playing the game itself was just pure stubbornness. I was sort of in archaeology mode. The combat was slow, every room looked nearly the same, and there was very little in the way of stimulation. Here and there you’d still get a couple of messages from the Dungeon Master pop up explaining some context. Depending on your classes, you might get even more crumbs than expected. I just kept chipping away through the barren halls. I had to find something to tell me more of the dungeon’s history eventually.
The quest logs were unhelpful, but the flavour text filled my mind with vivid imagery. Coming across the hint of a sidequest would add it to your journal. It only gave you just enough of a breadcrumb to guide you. I spent many years wondering about this mysterious witch named Borea. Would I ever meet her? What would she do? What caused her to suddenly disappear? I promise you the answer is nowhere near as exciting as what my brain came up with, but that’s the power of being left to your own devices.
The big thing when you start the game is that you’re trying to pick up on the trail of the party that came before you, eventually leading you to pick up where they left off, figuring out what this bizarre new cult and their sorceress is up to. You kind of forget about this very easily when you eventually realise the first dungeon of the game will take up much longer than an hour or two of your time. In fact, it’s separated into around five floors, all of which are as gigantic as each other. I’ll remind you again that I never made it out. To a lot of people, this one singular dungeon is the entire game.
I was not exaggerating earlier. You really do spend a lot of time watching undead creatures shuffling back and forth, reloading encounters that feel unfair or, heaven forbid, restarting your entire file because you accidentally soft-locked yourself and you were only saving into one slot. This has never happened to me, but it could very easily happen to you! Just the other day, my party was trapped in a tiny space because two characters got stuck in a gap and my other party members couldn’t move past them. Your party members couldn’t walk through each other!
There is actually a mod somewhere out there which alleviates this, and it’s something a lot of returning players are married to. It’s essentially a speed-hack which makes the game run at increased speed at the toggle of a hotkey. Some people swear by using save editors to create characters with stats that make more sense to them, outside the confines of the game’s own systems. I haven’t bothered much with either of these things for the simple reason that the struggle is kind of the point for me.
Ruins of Myth Drannor is bug-ridden and filled with confusing design choices. The unique multiplayer mode was short-lived, having been partially dependent on GameSpy servers to function. It felt as though most people either never played the game or only talked about it as though having a war flashback. You have to dig for this game’s story, and it will be hours, perhaps even days before you find a new sizeable portion of it. None of this mattered to me, at least on a practical level.
The whole game is about traversing ruins. It is quite literally in the name. Whatever this place was meant to be, whatever this game was meant to be, doesn’t really matter. The fact is I’m here right now and what I see is what I get. I have to navigate this derelict world with just the right level of curiosity and stubbornness. As far as I’m concerned, the game’s lack of polish is a core element of its narrative. I am journeying and fighting through the ruins of the game just as much as the dungeons of Myth Drannor.
Every part makes up the whole. The second Pool of Radiance isn’t just a video game to me. It’s a dead, abandoned world I can revisit on a whim and put under a magnifying scope. A soft-lock tells me about the game’s troubled development. A suspicious gold trail leading to enemies tells me at least one game developer had a sense of humour. The amount of objects I could destroy but otherwise not interact with got me researching what features were cut from the game, leading me to an old IGN article.
Another major step towards the recreation of tabletop roleplaying is the fact that just about every object portrayed in Pool of Radiance can be manipulated. Need to get at something on the wall that you can’t reach? Try pushing a table to the location and stand on it. Worried about a monster that’s chasing you into a room? Shut the door and then block it with whatever’s at hand. This same push for realism is found in the games use of the third dimension. If you can get the high ground during a fight, by standing on a table or by climbing a few stairs, you’ll earn a +2 to hit.
Trent C. Ward
I promise you absolutely nothing Trent wrote there is possible to do in this game.
I am not the only person who has a soft spot for this title. I have seen people with extensive knowledge on it that know how to do a solo run or otherwise done a Lets Play series with over 400 videos. There is one unavoidable fact, however, and that is that we all know we’re the odd little ducklings that nobody can relate to. I took the liberty of going through the Video Game History Foundation’s digital library to source any mention of this game I could find. Let’s read through some of these, shall we?
I am ashamed that the infernal game ever sucked up space on my hard drive. Its taint has already spread across my house, infecting everything I hold dear, and it still remains. I would have played skeet with the game off my roof, but I might have missed, and some other poor fool might have picked it up off the ground and made the same mistake I did. This game isn’t even coaster-worthy.
It wouldn’t be right to force it through the garbage disposal. This game couldn’t have been any worse if it had come with a shipment of anthrax. Don’t even touch it with a 40-foot pole. I’d rather wipe my ass with sandpaper for the rest of my life than play Pool of Radiance.
Computer Gaming World, Issue 212
Playing any of these games was like skydiving while locked in a portable toilet—you couldn’t dodge the crap. With all the number two being excreted, which game was number one? It was a tough call, but Ubi Soft’s Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor seized number one—and sprayed that number one all over everyone and everything.
Computer Gaming World, Issue 213
At least one person mentioned liking the game, though!
Sure, the game had problems out of the box, but I wouldn’t call it Coaster of the Year.
Actually, I’m about to start my second time through the dungeons of PoR! I’d put it one step up from Wizards & Warriors and a step down from Icewind Dale. For anyone longing for the good ol’ days of Wizardry or the original gold box games, PoR is a step in the right direction.
What happened to never reviewing a game until you’re finished playing it?
Computer Gaming World, Issue 212
I mentioned earlier that the game has a novelisation. Until I find time in my life to do nothing but play Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, this remains the only way I’ve been able to see the game’s events play through to the end. I do recommend it to anyone who needs something fun to read. Don’t expect anything world-changing. Just enjoy seeing what Carrie Bebris did with the setting. It was a fun ride for me!
But what if someone wanted to play the actual game today? The situation has actually been somewhat dire in this regard for decades. It seems that with each new version of Microsoft Windows that comes out, this game becomes a little more broken. I myself remember that at least on one version of Windows, my party members became invisible. Nowadays, people use the dgVoodoo 2 wrapper to make sure they run into as few problems as possible. There’s not much in the way of fan fixes or mods. In all the time that has passed, the game has had nearly zero attention paid to it.
Things are changing very rapidly, however. As of writing this exact sentence, the game is having an updated release by SNEG coming out on both Steam and GOG in just a couple of hours. I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up posting this just half an hour before it launches. I would call it a race against time, but I’m just having fun here, really. I honestly didn’t know it was coming out that soon, and I’m really hoping that it sticks the landing!
The game’s title screen has read the final 1.14 version to me for decades. It is an extremely strange feeling to see that number go up to 1.19. Having sampled the Steam demo, I am pleased to say that this version of the game just simply works. Even on my end as a Linux user, it just works. No messing around with dgVoodoo and patch files. No fear of the game harming your files. You can just play the silly game! There’s been a multitude of quality of life features added, as well, some of which are incredibly timely.
I mentioned earlier in this post that I got stuck in a tiny area because my party members couldn’t walk through each other. Well, as it turns out, SNEG has an added an option in the menu to allow your characters to do just that. Does this mean that you are reading my Bluesky posts, SNEG? If so, who are you? Come speak to me! I am joking around, of course. That said, I’m iffy on the new dialogue box they use for conversations, and it’s bizarrely my one major gripe with the demo.
I’m not sure if it’s the background or the choice of using the original font in bold (or both!), but I have a lot of trouble parsing the text. I’m fine with the original game, but I now find myself squinting or looking closer to read. It’s uncomfortable! There’s no option to revert to the old style without switching to Legacy Mode, where the text looks crusty without any smoothing applied. SNEG patched in an option to change the font size in the demo, and while it’s helpful, it still doesn’t hit the sweet spot. The new dialogue box also centres itself on the screen, covering up the very NPCs you interact with.
At any rate, I suppose I’ll find out how this new version holds up very shortly. I’m curious to see how new players respond to it, as well as what new stories people will share of their past playthroughs. Something I’d love to see is more veteran players sharing tips on trivialising encounters and whatnot. Discussion on this game is incredibly scarce, and I’m always hungry. I’d also love to know if the multiplayer mode has been restored or not. It would be cool, but I”m guessing not. I won’t be holding my breath for that one.
Now, what to close off on? Oh! I know a good one. Despite my unfamiliarity with this genre, I got used to playing Baldur’s Gate 3 very quickly. Want to know why? Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is turn-based. There is an active time component, but you can disable it so that turns last forever. In fact, the new version coming out right now has the timer disabled by default. Transitioning from Pool of Radiance II to Baldur’s Gate 3 came incredibly naturally to me because they felt the same to me! I had training!
