Yeah, I is making a thread for fanatics of the Bard's Tale series to come together and talk about this neat-o series of RPGs.

I quite like the games. So much in fact that I'm trying to write a BTCS with the help of someone else on another forum but he's apparently been kidnapped by aliens.

Anyways, post here if you like these games.

Well, I played BT1 a lot back in the 80's, despite having the cassette-version. Perhaps it's time to give it a try again, does anyone know if there's a sd2iec-compatible version somewhere?

I also tried BT3 on the amiga a few years later, but it sucked. Too many monsters everywhere.

Oh, and does Dragon Wars count? That's a really great game (except for non-random, repeating monster-encounters), and IIRC it's supposed to be the unofficial BT4.
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Played the first Bard's Tale on tape, which was a chore... Got quite far into 3, mapping a few levels.
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I never knew the games were made available on tape to be honest.

And I thought BTI had slow loading times on disk.

Just the first one. And it was rewritten a bit to help; static images instead of animations with the main program being one load, and you only load each dungeon level in (takes a few seconds for each). So it wasn't THAT painful unless you rapidly switched levels frequently.

And then there was the infamous party editor... allowing you to clone any item you got in the game to give to all valid members.
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Heh, I remember the Datasette from the Vic-20 days. Used that thing until the C64 came along then forgot about it.

I played the first one on cassette as well. If I remember right, it took me over a year to complete! It still remains as one of my finest gaming experiences.

I have all three of them on the Amiga now, courtesy of the pile of goodies my mate gave me, along with Dragon Wars. I also have them all, plus the Construction Kit, on PC... but I can't get them to work for anything. Shame, I'd love to have a dabble with the CK.
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Is it me, or is the BTCS a little lacking in power?

I know about DOSBox, but I cannot use DOS in any way, shape or form. I'm simply DOS-illiterate.
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I never really liked the Bard's Tale which was released on the C64, but on the Amiga it was and still is one of those games that I will always feel very strongly for.

I've been playing The Bard's Tale for years and once my UAE emulator starts working on my Linux system once again, then I will spend more time with it.

I love Bard's Tale!
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This was one of my favorite games but I can't get it to work. I'm trying BT1 now. It asks me for the character disk. I understand that's side 2 (what I have is full of "NM##" files). So I insert side 2, the drive whirs.... and the damn thing continues to ask me for the char. disk as if that's not it. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I've googled this but the only pages I can find relate to BT3.
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I spent half a year with Bard's Tale 3 back in 1988. Played the C64-version in fall and winter back then, and I sometimes miss those days. It was a special and sometimes also dark time for me. Almost every evening I've had my adventures with my party, ventured far into these dimensions to gain experience and items of value. A friend of mine did the same.

Oh, those were the days!
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Oh man I love these games. There is a simplicity to them that is super addictive.

I also love the feeling of going deep into a dungeon not knowing if Im going to step on a pit and die or get attacked by a bunch of Dark Vampires around the next corner and my spell points dwindle down...

I played Bard's Tale II Destiny Knight over an entire summer when it came out, I think I was about 12 or 13 at the time. I remember many nights of my Dad coming in telling me to go the bed and I noticed the sun had come up again

Some friends of mine used to bring their C64's over and we would have all weekend sessions.

They dont make em like they used to.

Im currently doing a playthrough of this game again using the CCS64 emulator.

What's everyone's favorite game in the series?

I'm a big fan of the Bard's Tale series. I've solved all three through to completion many times over the years, on just about every platform I've got.

Question for those that have played Destiny Knight on the C64. Do traps work for you?

Im playing it using CCS64 and Traps never do anything for my party and I cant seem to figure out why.

If it works for you; What emulator are discs are you using?

Bard's Tale 3 was probably the first computer RPG I ever played, and I loved it. Wasteland, incidentally, was probably the last. (Unless you count Monster's Den)

I fired up Bard's Tale 1 for the first time a year or so ago, but was rather disappointed to discover that it was impossible to startup with level 1 characters; you had to use the pregens, or at least, nick all their stuff and give it to level 1s that you created. That annoyed me so much I didn't play it any further.
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Level 1 can be hard, needing to run away a fair bit. The only concession I ever made was to nick the Fire Horn from El Cid to give to my pregens, that helps if you suddenly get caught by 9 gnomes or similar!
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BT II was great, but BT 3 was even greater! They didn't include new features because EA didn't want them and published them in Dragon Wars.
I loved the Amiga version's graphics, but the spell directory (scrolling lots and lots) was very tiresome.

I used the cheat function a lot, you know copying characters on other discs, getting their gold, saving your characters but not the characters you got the gold from, so you can get it again and again

I used another cheat on BT3. You could enter the mad god's dungeon in Skara Brae, teleport down two levels (if I recall), go to Brilhasti Ap Tarj's small level, and kill him as many times as you want (going through the dungeon once again after he's dead). With sufficiently high level characters you can do this easily and gain much experience.