Now these are my Gold Box games. Or, er, game, singular, I guess, since they came in one box. This is SSI’s Dragonlance Limited Collector’s Edition (1992). I got this on clearance the day after Christmas in 1993 and had a transcendent time playing through them on the school break between the holidays. I didn’t finish all three in that time; I definitely remember herding the guys I walked to school with into the computer room at one point to show off how good the graphics were (even though, in Dark Queen, they were pretty much just pixel art versions of Dragonlance paintings).

As with Pool of Radiance, looking back through this box and the Adventurer Journal for each game, I am realizing that this is the Dragonlance I love, and when I kind of complain about the RPG material, it’s because it doesn’t measure up to these games. Which is kind of funny, because what I can recall of the stories isn’t great (not that Dragonlance is like high art). There are definitely monsters in the videogames that aren’t supposed to be in Krynn. And in the final game, you explore the other continent, Taladas, and it feels just, entirely divorced from everything that made Dragonlance feel Dragonlancey, despite fighting Takhisis at the end. But they work. They feel like games at the table, even.

I think Death Knights of Krynn is maybe my favorite, because the NPC questgiver from the first game comes back here as an undead warrior. It also has this really interesting thread of story in the Journal (part of the copyright protection) about a town full of undead that isn’t in the game but was entertaining and mysterious anyway. One of the games has a puzzle sequence that involves a candle and finding the correct path through a market that I definitely lifted for my actual games. Oh, and the clue books! You could buy them from SSI and they gave you maps and room descriptions like a D&D module. When I got this, they were out of the Death Knights cluebook, but someone there was nice enough to photocopy it and send it to me free of charge.