In an era before any player facing a minor roadblock on the glory road could promptly search up a flawless walkthrough, the virtual dungeon master would resort to trickery to stop the faint of heart and feeble of brain from pawing through unearned lore in the printed Adventurer’s Journal.  Behold – bogus tavern tales!  Is that a Zork text adventure reference? In my Gold Box game?  And I never did encounter any philanthropic insect-men or dwarf hordes.

Nor did the party encounter a race of evil dragons aside from this wyvern being pestered by thieving kobolds.

This has to be the most abrupt total party wipe of all.  And they were winning!  Hat’s off to the developers at TSR for this solitary crash in more than 35 years of adventure.  Well, aside from the incident with too many Ioun stones leading to the spontaneous appearance of pink Berserkers.  But that’s a tale for another day.

On the trek through the hedge maze of Valjevo Castle, the party picked up a +5 weapon and a few extra rings of protection +3.  These, along with a Wand of Paralysis and a little extra something Silencio picked up in the Temple of Bane, allowed the intrepid adventurers to make short work of Tyranthraxus and his guards.  The demon’s reign of terror was ended!  Now the band is off to Tilverton for some much needed rest and relaxation …

I rescued this gentleman in the Cadorna textile house.  What kind of city bureaucrat has an assistant named “Skullcrusher” anyway?

After reaching level 2 and actually testing import into Curse of the Azure Bonds, I was dismayed to find that almost none of my party could successfully dual class! It turns out my original research was mostly correct – characters may not dual class to or from paladin and are only allowed to dual class to ranger from cleric. Furthermore, as per 2nd edition rules, I should have ensured any character destined for duality had both 15 in the prime stat of his or her birth class AND 17 in the prime stat of the new class.

Back to the drawing board!

Now Woodward, eventually to be a fighter/magic-user, will take the place of Mina and Parsifal will become a fighter/cleric as originally planned.  Dunn will dual class to fighter/magic-user last.  And now with at least two decent mages in the mix for Secret of the Silver Blades and Pools of Darkness, the party can afford to have a multi-class, elf fighter/magic-user/thief.  Hopefully a lot more versatility in Pool of Radiance will make up for a bit less power later on.  Will the party be up to the (Dave’s) Challenge?

Here we go again, this time with an all-new party now that I’ve learned characters MAY in fact dual-class into Paladins and Rangers in Curse of the Azure bonds, so long as they meet the strict attribute and alignment prerequisites. Curse of the Azure Bonds gives you the minimum required attributes on new character creation, but NOT when dual-classing an imported character. Some adjustments:

* Zamis is no more; replaced by Erythrina the Human Magic-User
* Ery’s slot on the front line is taken by Mina, the Human Fighter who will dual class into Ranger when the party migrates to Curse of the Azure Bonds

To ensure successful migration to the new classes in Curse, a few characters will need considerably higher attributes than otherwise standard for fighters.

Parsifal: at least 9 INT and CON, 12 STR, 13 WIS and 17 CHA. Exceptional STR and 17+ CON would be nice to have.

Mina: at least 14 WIS and CON, 13 STR and INT

Finally, I’ve decided to switch to the standard PC-compatible version 1.3 of Pool of Radiance for easier installation and to pick up a few minor bug fixes. I’ll miss the hearing the same Tandy music score that plays at the start of every single combat… sadly, the Tandy music was removed at some point around version 1.1 or 1.2. I can only assume by that point SSI decided maintaining a separate build just for a brief song on the aging Tandy platform wasn’t worth it. Fear not, rousing Adlib tunes … tune… will return in Secret of the Silver Blades!

The trolls will be dealt with another day.  Having silenced the alarms in the slums, the party collected the commission and set sail for Sokal Keep.

Searching outside the gates revealed an elf skeleton and parchment containing several words of Elvish.

The party defeated the first random encounter – 2 giant scorpions – and camped for the night.  Fortunately this gave Torel a chance to memorize 2nd level cleric spells, which I had neglected to do after reaching level 3.

Somehow in the course of transferring the party’s progress to a vintage Tandy 1000 TX and back to a modern PC, the Pool of Radiance save game files became corrupted and the party’s inventory was wiped clean!  The Gold Box Companion toolkit was used to bestow upon our hapless adventurers gear comparable to the vanished equipment so that the quest might continue.  Weapons and armor +2 and bracers AC 4 all around!  To add a bit of panache, Parsifal was given a two handed sword +1, +3 vs undead in place of a shield and Torel, who previously wielded the party’s most powerful weapon, was given a Mace +3.

Ready for battle, the party ventures forth into the slums of Old Phlan…

Surprise!

The company met its untimely demise at the claws of the trolls in the Old Rope Guild.  Attempt number two, with hirelings, bit the dust almost as fast.  Next time: higher level Magic-Users and Stinking Cloud!