Game 215: Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991)

    
Pool of Radiance, the first Gold Box game, still holds the position of #3 on my top-rated games list, despite three game years, five actual years, and 158 games since I played it. Although subsequent Gold Box entries never quite rose to the level of excellence as Pool, the engine is so good that they were destined for high marks, and Curse of the Azure Bonds, Champions of Krynn, and Death Knights of Krynn can all be found in my top 20. Even Secret of the Silver Blades is comparatively high-ranked.

But of these games, only one of them--Champions of Krynn--has given me the experience that I so love in a Gold Box title: starting a new, low-level character and slowly building my way upward. Rising from Level 1 to Level 8 is really the best part of any D&D game, especially in this early era, where there were no special perks or abilities awarded to high-level characters. Getting 3 more hit points and an 11th third-level spell really isn't quite as exciting as acquiring "Fireball" for the first time or a second attack per round.
   

More about combat in a later post, but I wanted to point out that even early in the game, I was able to do this. I love this.

   
I am thus excited to be starting Gateway to the Savage Frontier, one of four Gold Box titles in 1991. We've already seen Death Knights of Krynn and we still have Neverwinter Nights and Pools of Darkness coming up. This is the apex of the Gold Box titles; 1992 will have three (including this game's sequel), and 1993 will have the last one. A particular bonus for me is that I've never played this one before at all, whereas I'd had previous experience with Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn.

The "Savage Frontier" in question exists in the Forgotten Realms, north of Baldur's Gate and the Sword Coast, and south of the Spine of the World. It includes cites that we'll be revisiting in detail in another decade, including Neverwinter, Port Llast, and Luskan.
   

The game's territory, from the Adventurer's Journal.

   
The party is presented as a group of caravan guards who have just arrived in the city of Yartar after escorting a shipment of mithril from the dwarven Citadel Abdar. Rumors abound of increased raids by orcs and trolls coming down from the mountains, but the trip is uneventful. After a night of celebration, in which they are apparently drugged, they awake in the morning to find their rooms burgled and all their equipment and gold stolen, including a "fine magical sword" with a "gold-braided handle" that one of the party members "used to slay the griffon at Longsaddle last winter." Only a couple emergency stashes hidden beneath pillows remain. The desperate party sets out to buy new equipment, find a new employer, and hopefully track down the thieves.
   

"Dear Diary: this SUCKS!"

    
There are no surprises in character creation. Humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, and halflings can be male or female clerics, fighters, magic-users, thieves, paladins, and rangers--with the usual second edition race/class restrictions. [Edit: I misspoke. The series uses first edition rules, but in any event the race/class restrictions are the same as the previous games.] Unfortunately, the Frontier series keeps the race-based level caps, but it's not as much of a deal-breaker here as in the Pools series because there's only one more Savage Frontier title. I took a look at the charts for Treasures of the Savage Frontier and saw that dwarf fighters and elf magic-users can get near the maximum level for the game, so those race/class combinations are viable for this series.

Characters start at Level 2 with 3,000 experience points, which I guess makes more sense for role-playing reasons than a bunch of single-digit-hit pointers making a living as caravan guards. Attribute rolls are generous, never lower than 11 and rarely lower than 13. It isn't hard at all to get 2 or 3 scores at 18, and if you're a particularly pathetic worm of a player, you always have the option, present in the series since the beginning, to "modify" a new character to give maximum attributes all around. The manual continues with the absurd fiction that players might want to do this "to match a favorite [tabletop] AD&D® game character."
   

A fairly generous random roll.

   
The game provides the usual options for customizing the character icons, and I'm no better at it than I was at 15. My color blindness plus general impatience with all the different parts and colors means that I typically create either ugly icons or just set everything to the same color. I wish these games would randomize the default icons so that you don't feel like you have to adjust something to keep everyone from looking the same.
   

I generated random numbers and cycled through the color buttons the appropriate number of times to generate this icon for a cleric.

   
Before creating my final party, I tried two experimental parties that just didn't work. I tried six fighters, intending to dual-class them to other professions as they were needed, but I forgot that only humans can dual-class and thus messed up my intended composition. I then tried an all-mage party, thinking it would be a challenge and I could rely on temples for healing, but it turns out that you don't have enough money at the outset to even afford a couple castings of "Cure Light Wounds." I think challenging parties are possible if you already know the game and can optimize your progress accordingly, but for a first-time blind play the games really are balanced for the traditional party of a couple of fighters, at least one cleric, and at least one mage. I went with a human paladin, a human ranger, a dwarf fighter/thief, two human clerics, and an elf mage.

The game begins in the inn in Yartar as the party wakes up hungover and bereft of any equipment, although they all have 35 platinum pieces. Fortunately, an armory is right across the way. After sitting it out for every game since Pool of Radiance, the ridiculously long list of every obscure weapon makes a comeback! We've got fauchard-forks, military forks, bo sticks, jo sticks, becs de corbin, ranseurs, spetums, and four different weapons with the word "guisarme" in them. It's too bad my all-fighter party didn't work out; I would have had each one specialize in a different polearm. Still no helms or boots, though.
  

   

Yartar turned out to be a standard 16 x 16 Gold Box map, but with a bunch of inaccessible squares, some of them filled with water, and some just walled off. There are a large number (annotated in light gray on the map) that are inside buildings where you get kicked out after dealing with the encounter right inside, so you never get to explore the whole thing.
    

My map of Yartar.

   

Among the buildings, we have the standard armory, training yard, temple, vault, inn, and a small shop selling holy water vials, silver mirrors, and flasks of oil. This is the first Gold Box game to upgrade to VGA graphics, and it shows in some of the NPC portraits, but they're not astonishingly better. There are a few more details in the environment, such as windows next to doors and more detailed wall textures.
  

The game offers a few more details, but the environments are still pretty nondescript.

  

A tavern and the "Three Rivers Festhall" weirdly offered only options to fight or leave. Fighting put me in easy combats with trios of bandits who delivered only 7 experience points and a handful of silvers.
  

Why even have taverns if these are the only options?

   

Now, this entire time, I'd been assuming that Gateway came after Death Knights of Krynn because Death Knights was still on EGA graphics. But Death Knights also had a couple of interface upgrades that aren't here in Gateway, including not cycling through your own party members when you hit "aim" and ending combat immediately after the last monster falls instead of forcing you to finish everyone's turn. Those were welcome additions to Death Knights, so I'm sorry not to see them here. I'm guessing the issue is that both games were developed in parallel, Death Knights by SSI and Gateway by Beyond Software (later Stormfront Studios), and they didn't share all their upgrades. One weird addition in Gateway: "Fix" now causes spellcasters to re-memorize spells instead of just healing party members.
  

Graphics are notably better even in throw-away scenes like this.

  

Yartar provided only a few clues as to the developing main quest. On the street near the inn, I ran into a little guy named Krevish getting beaten up by thugs. When I helped him out in a brief combat--easy enough for any of my parties--he joined my party as an NPC and led me to his mysterious unnamed "captain," who said if I really wanted to help the region, I should head up to the city of Nesme and put a stop to a trouble-making Cleric of Bane. Once again, there seems to be no reason to play an evil-aligned party in a Gold Box game.
  

Already the party gets an NPC.

   

There were a number of other encounters throughout town that gave some more hints as to the troubles in the region. Someone's been raiding boat traffic on the river, almost eliminating commerce in and out of the city and cutting down the need for new barges. There's talk of trolls and orcs roaming the land. These bits of invoices are delivered in the classic Gold Box journal entries, which are getting a bit old by 1991. Surely, the developers could have programmed the text into the actual game (although this admittedly would have cut down on the ability of the player to reference the entries later).
   

I talk to the leader of Yartar on-screen....

...and in the associated journal entry.

  

So the next step after Yartar seems to be heading up the river to Nesme. Gateway re-introduces overland travel in the Forgotten Realms for the first time since Pool of Radiance (Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn both had it, but it was only meaningful in Death Knights). Two steps out of the city with my first party, I was attacked by hill giants and slaughtered. I was distressed to see the full-party death screen:
 

   

What happened to the monsters rejoicing?! If you're not going to change the screen to something more interesting or meaningful, why change the one message that has characterized the Gold Box series since its inception?

Anyway, hill giants seemed pretty advanced for any early party, so the second time I tried, I left the city by renting a boat. On the river, I was attacked by ankhegs. I braced myself for another slaughter, but they weren't as hard as I expected.

I reached Nesme almost by accident. The cities are not well-depicted on the tiny overland map, or perhaps it's my color-blindness hurting me again. At best, they're tiny little dots.
   

Can you see it?

   
Nesme was in chaos. Signs proclaimed a 100-gold piece reward for every troll slain in the ruins east of town, and a guard captain pointed me the way there, warning me about their regenerating power. I'm not sure I'm ready to take on trolls.
  

   

In a random building, I met "Longtresses" Alaraun who claims she recently seized the city from some corrupt priests of Waukeen and has employed barbarians to keep the peace (several parties have attacked me on the streets). A group called the Riders of Nesme told me they longed to attack the trolls gathering on the Trollmoors but they were afraid to leave the town in the hands of Alaraun's barbarians. In the stable, a stableboy said that someone's been stealing horses. The harbormaster complained about giant frogs overrunning the warehouses on the east side of town and lizardmen raiding livestock on the west side; I later encountered some of both.
   

She doesn't look like the sort of person to hire barbarians and take over a town.

   
A tavern again only has options to fight or leave--what happened to ordering a drink or listening to some tales? Several party members can already level up, but I haven't accumulated anywhere near the 1,000 gold pieces necessary for that. I found a Ring of Protection +2 worth 15,000 gold after the battle with the Banites (see below), and if I don't find a treasure haul soon, I'll have to sell it just so I can level up.

In a building behind the temple, I got a message that "Kraken spies attack!" and I had to battle three ninja-looking dudes. I have no idea what "Kraken" is. A secret door from their building led to a room where I found a hiding Priestess of Waukeen who thanked me for rescuing her before the assassins, probably sent by "Longtresses," found her. I have no idea who's good and bad in this Alaraun/Waukeen scenario.
   

Character portraits have a different style than previous entries. They're simultaneously more realistic and more cartoonish.

   

Through a secret door at the back of an abandoned exterminator's shop, I interrupted a meeting between lizard men and orcs. The passageways led to a hidden Banite shrine, where I faced several orcs and clerics. The parties were small and easy to subdue with "Sleep"; I had forgotten how useful that spell is in the early stages. The final battle of the map was with a fairly large group of orcs, lizardmen, and two clerics, but the clerics were capable of casting nothing more dangerous than "Curse."
   

The final battle of Nesme.

   
The Banite cleric burned a bunch of papers just before he died, but I recovered one letter that suggested that the Zhentarim (an evil mercenary company that rules Zhentil Keep--I had dealings with them in Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds) were behind the recent orc/troll uprising. The Banite Clerics, normally allies of the Zhentarim, were feeling taken for granted and thus planning to throw a wrench in their plans. The letter-writer had asked the evil cleric to meet him in an abandoned temple in the city of Silverymoon.
   

   
In a nearby room, I freed three prisoners--who turned out to be Zhentarim. They thanked me as they fled. The journal entry ends with my party feeling conflicted: "Because we knew the Banite to be evil, we had slain him--the one man who could stop the Zhentarim's plan for the conquest of the Savage Frontier....We had been searching for a mission. Now, by accident, we had found one. We would have to save the northern Realms ourselves."

Here's an odd statistic: there are only 62 journal entries in the adventurer's journal, and I've already encountered 16 of them, or 26%--and that's not accounting for the fictional ones that the journal always contains. Is it possible that I'm already a quarter way through the game after two cities? Or do the entries get sparser as the game goes on?

I leave you here, with my next destination probably Silverymoon, or I may just explore the world. The plot seems a little less polished than some of the previous games, but perhaps it will come together in the next sections. Not a mind-blowing game just yet, but a typically satisfying Gold Box experience.

Time so far: 4 hours
Reload count: 2 (full parties)