Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD-ROM Core Rules

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD-ROM Core Rules is computer program designed as an accessory for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, originally published in 1996 and updated in 1999.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD-ROM Core Rules
Original author(s)TSR, Inc., Wizards of the Coast
Developer(s)Evermore Entertainment, Inc.
Initial release1996
Stable release
2.0 / August 1999
Operating systemMicrosoft Windows 3.1/95 (1.0 version), Windows 98 (2.0 version)
TypeRole-playing game accessory

Publication history

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD-ROM Core Rules was published by TSR, and produced by Evermore Entertainment with Victor Penman as Project Manager, released as a CD-ROM for PC only.[1]

In 1999, Wizards of the Coast released new CD-ROM titled Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Core Rules 2.0 Expansion.

Contents

The AD&D CD-ROM Core Rules contains several rulebooks, both in Rich Text Format and as Windows Help files, including the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Player's Handbook, the Monstrous Manual, Tome of Magic, and Arms and Equipment Guide. It also includes a Key Topics book which summarizes the main AD&D rules and an Instructions booklet, which explains how to use all of the rest. Hypertext links have been created for all of the main entries and rulings.[2] There are a number of extra features, including the character generator, and tools to enable a user to update characters created with the disc and enter the details of a character which has been created using the traditional method.[2] For the DM there's a tool which enables a user to quickly create non-player characters, a handout generator, a treasure generator based on the standard random treasure tables, a monster generator, an encounter generator and a map builder.[2]

2.0 version additionally includes Dungeon Master Option: High-Level Campaigns, Player's Option: Combat & Tactics, Player's Option: Skills & Powers, and Player's Option: Spells & Magic.

Reception

Paul Pettengale reviewed the AD&D CD-ROM Core Rules for Arcane magazine, rating it a 5 out of 10 overall.[2] He began the review by speaking about how many books are needed to run a game of AD&D, stating that "The prospect, then, of having all the main rulebooks on a CD-ROM is rather appealing, providing, of course, you've got a PC handy when you're playing your session. Few Dungeon Masters play with a PC on the gaming table [...] which seems to be a fundamental flaw with the whole premise of the Core Rules disc."[2] He found that "the text is very easy to read, being presented in a large enough text size to make it clearly visible even on smaller monitors. Naturally, you can print the books [...] and sections of each".[2] Pettengale found the books "relatively easy to navigate, thanks to the hypertext links" but noted that there's no search feature - something I expected to find - which is a massive disappointment; because of the size of the files, it can take an age of scrolling to find precisely what you're after, even where hypertext links have been included. [...] This is a clumsy way of finding information, and TSR could have made it a lot easier."[2] He also found that "Another omission, which is perhaps inevitable given the format that the text has been presented in, is that there are no pictures in the books at all. This is fine, more or less, as far as the DMG, PHB and Tome of Magic are concerned, but illustrations are extremely useful when it comes to describing monsters that appear in the MM, and the Arms and Equipment book states right at the beginning that everything in it is illustrated, when in fact this is quite clearly not the case [...] Because of the lack of illustration, it has to be said that the rulebooks as they are presented here on CD-ROM can be used as no more than an addition to the paper versions. If you've only got the CD-ROM, you're going to have a hard time running AD&D."[2] Pettengale looked at "the other features that the disc offers for added worth" noting that the extra features are "primarily designed to make a DM's life easier" such as the character generator which he found to be "an extremely fast way of rolling up a PC - the whole process, including proficiency choices and the purchase of equipment, can take as little as ten minutes (when done using the basic books, the creation of a 1st level character can usually take as long as two hours, so that's a big time saver). All of the dice rolling options are presented, so there's plenty of flexibility built in, though there's no way that you can 'cheat' - most DMs will let a player reroll a dice or two throughout the character generation process, especially if a Hit Points roll turns out to be a 1. Nevertheless, this is a very handy feature and, providing you don't use the excellent Skills and Powers sub-rules [...] which aren't included as an option [...] it will probably be used time and again."[2] He also commented on the DM tool to quickly create NPCs: "I suggest you use this only for creating 'general' NPCs if you've got a major, long-standing villain to create, it's best to do it yourself" and the map builder tool which "sounds more interesting than it actually is - the maps you create with it look pretty poor".[2] Pettengale concluded the review by saying "Overall, I'm not terribly impressed with the AD&D CD-ROM Core Rules. It had a lot of potential, but that potential hasn't really been capitalised on. There could have been splendid illustrations of all the monsters included, but this is not the case; there should have been a search feature for locating rulings in a hurry, but this isn't the case either. Yes, some of the tools are jolly useful, but they aren't the kind of things you can do yourself with pen and paper and a bit of time. I can see myself using it, though only occasionally [...] So, buy it if you've got money to burn, but this is not an essential purchase for all PC-owning DMs by any means."[2]

In a review of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CD-ROM Core Rules for Pyramid #22 (November/December 1996), the reviewer described the product as "an amazing achievement - easy to use, thorough, complete and incredibly useful".[1]

gollark: So it's a random 4-byte string?
gollark: That actually probably *would* put it in the range of practical bruteforceability, since there are only 4 billion possible 4-byte values and anything you're doing by hand can't be *that* slow to run on a computer.
gollark: That's, er, 4 bytes.
gollark: Also also, things involving just scrambling the alphabet and using that fixed "scrambling" for each letter of the input are vulnerable to stuff like frequency analysis.
gollark: Also, the fact that it mixes up the alphabet a lot isn't exactly very relevant, since the vulnerable bit is probably how it, well, generates the "scrambling" in the first place.

References
  1. Pyramid Pick
  2. Pettengale, Paul (November 1996). "Games Reviews". Arcane. Future Publishing (12): 64–65.
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