I’ve Decided …

… to play the AD&D Gold Box games next, starting with Pool of Radiance.

As usual, I had a detailed thought process when trying to settle this. First, I listed out all of the categories of games that I wanted to play, which were: Adventure games (Spellcasting, Leisure Suit Larry, Rise of the Dragon and others), Strategy Games (a big list here), Small RPGs, which included the Gold Box AD&D games, Bigger RPGs (Bloodlines, Fallouts, and so on) and finally Hidden Object games (I bought a big collection of these at Staples a while back and have installed some of them but haven’t really played any of them). I ditched the last category pretty quickly, as I have tons of other things to do if I just wanted something to do for an hour or so.

Now, knowing that I’d have about two days of about three hours apiece to play games, I started assessing the categories. I’m still on an accomplishment kick, so that was important, but I also wanted to have fun playing the games. So, the adventure games would allow me to finish more games … but they were also the least interesting as they had limited role-playing potential and the way I play would end up almost being just games that I walk through as if following the story. Strategy games, on the other hand, wouldn’t be things that I’d formally finish, but they’d be fun and easily the most flexible, as I’d be able to make progress even if I only had an hour. Big RPGs would be the deepest and so potentially the most fun, but I’d have to play for the full time to make progress and would only be able to finish one or so between now and the end of the year. Small RPGs kinda split the difference, as they are small enough to be finished but big enough to have more to them.

I eliminated Big RPGs next. I want to play some console games when I go on my two remaining vacations, and plan on redoing my schedule in January, so I might be able to get through one of them in that time and would want to play them during my vacation if I was playing one of them. So that didn’t make sense.

So, it came down to the category that was the best for my sense of accomplishment vs the category that was the most flexible vs the category that kinda did a little bit of everything. So, then, it came down to the games. And of the games on the lists, the games that I most wanted to play and finish were the Gold Box AD&D games. So, finally, that was what I went with. We’ll see how well that works out.