Some would say that playing Dungeons and Dragons on a computer is perverse. I feel that way sometimes, because D&D is, at its heart, a game of imagination. It's structured storytelling, using the rules as a framework around which you build castles of dreams. That takes the flexibility of a human mind. But since we can't always get enough minds together for a good game, people have been trying to play D&D on computers as long as there has been D&D.

According to Wikipedia, there have been 85 official or semi-official D&D-branded video games over the past 40 years (and yes, the first one was in 1975.) The classic run of AD&D computer gaming was between 1988 and about 2005, although a licensed online MMO has been puttering along since 2006. A port of the smash 1998 hit Baldur's Gate has been successful on the iPad, though, showing that there's a hunger for great D&D gameplay on post-PC platforms.

In honor of the game's 40th anniversary, I consulted with some of the other hardcore D&D nuts in the Labs, Jamie Lendino (my dungeon master from 1985 through the mid '90s), Matthew Murray, and Sean Carroll, and we came up with our list of the best 10.

Pool of Radiance (1988)

There were plenty of D&D-like games you could play on home computers before 1988, but none of them had the actual D&D branding. Still, though, the Ultima series, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, Wizard's Crown and others scratched gamers' RPG itches. Finally, D&D creators TSR licensed the game rules and brand to well-known developer SSI for a series of games known as the "Gold Box" line.

Pool of Radiance was the first one: it had official D&D classes, races and alignments, a pretty detailed turn-based combat system and even annoying little D&D quirks like having to remember to memorize spells. I remember at the time thinking that the mechanics were a lot more complex than in other computer RPGs of the day, which had its pluses and minuses - it was great if you liked detail, but lousy if you liked to speed through combat. Hey look, it's a gameplay video! (Image from Wikipedia.)

Champions of Krynn (1990)

Most gamers' introduction to the Dragonlance world came not from games, but from novels: the first D&D-branded novelizations were a line of mid-80s fantasy pastiches that gamers ate up like candy. (Several characters in the early campaigns I played with Jamie Lendino were named after the Dragonlance world of Krynn.) By 1990, the idea of a computer game set in the richly realized world of the Dragonlance novels was a no-brainer: thus Champions of Krynn, a Gold Box game that threw in Dragonlance-exclusive races, classes, and monsters. The three-year-old Gold Box engine was getting a little hoary by this point, though, so a change needed to be made. There is a startlingly complete series of gameplay videos for this one. (Image from Wikipedia.)

Eye of the Beholder (1991)

Not all of the great D&D games were heavily plotted overland adventures. The D&D lineage includes DragonStrike, which was basically an assault flight simulator, and Eye of the Beholder, which was a hardcore dungeon crawl. Eye of the Beholder was to some extent a response to the seminal Dungeon Master, a dynamic and much talked-about dungeon-crawl adventure on the Atari ST. Just as Pool of Radiance took ideas from previous SSI games like Wizard's Crown and stamped D&D forms on them, Eye of the Beholder did the same for the dynamic dungeon exploration game. This gameplay video gives you a good picture. (Image from MobyGames.com)

Neverwinter Nights on AOL (1991)

Full disclosure: I never played this. But wow. Neverwinter Nights, in 1991, was the first graphical online MMO. Everquest? World of Warcraft? They all came from this root. This shouldn't be confused with the later Neverwinter Nights, or the much more recent, hack-and-slash Neverwinter. Hey, want to watch a gameplay video? (Image from YouTube.)

Baldur's Gate (1998)

The official D&D computer games reached their peak for me with Baldur's Gate, which had a new graphics engine, a rich implementation of the second-edition AD&D rules, and a heck of a plot. Baldur's Gate was full of characters and quests, with the textual richness of interactive fiction but state-of-the-art graphics for the time. It's widely considered one of the greatest computer RPGs of all time, and it's since been reinvented into a successful "Enhanced Edition" for iPhones and iPads. Get it, if you can handle the insanely complex control system. IGN rated it 9.4 because, duh, it's like the best game ever. IGN also has a gameplay video of the recent mobile version. (Image from IGN)

Games 5-10

Planescape: Torment (1999)

The best-written and best-plotted D&D computer game, Planescape: Torment was set in a lesser-used fantasy world and featured a nameless, immortal protagonist questing for his identity. If you preferred roleplaying over hack-and-slash combat, this was the game for you - it was full of conversation and relatively few mandatory battles. Where most D&D games went for pure high fantasy, Torment also mixed in some horror elements to excellent effect. IGN rated it a 9.2 and said "it's got enough depth to keep you entertained for a very long time ... and perhaps most importantly, it's a hell of a lot different than anything else that's ever been released." There is an extremely extensive series of gameplay videos on YouTube, natch.

Icewind Dale (2000)

Almost like a response to the plot-heavy Baldur's Gate and Planescape games, and based on the same Infinity Engine, Icewind Dale was second-edition AD&D adventuring for people who liked to beat more things to death. I'm including it here because in my mind, the second-edition AD&D rules were by far the best, and the Infinity Engine was the best way to play them. IGN gave it an 8.8. Maybe it's no Baldur's Gate, but "despite the somewhat cookie-cutter story, the game will have you playing long into the night the whole time saying to yourself, "Just one more dungeon, just one more dungeon!" Relive the hacking and slashing with one of the many gameplay videos on YouTube.

Baldur's Gate II (2000)

Another Infinity Engine hit, an immediate sequel to Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate was a great game. Lots of people loved it. Baldur's Gate II offered a new story with somewhat smoother combat and a less buggy multiplayer mode. IGN rated it a 9.4 and begs to differ with my dismissive treatment, saying, "It redefines attention to detail, game balance, longevity, and spit and polish. It's not overbearing in its creativity, and it's not paper thin. In the end, it's simply a superb role-playing experience–one of the best." This review video can give you more of the picture.

Neverwinter Nights (2002)

D&D computer gaming in the 21st century, by and large, has meant Neverwinter Nights. Also produced by Bioware, Neverwinter Nights was a game but also a framework for massively multiplayer online gaming and a snap-in system for more than a thousand add-on modules. Because of its flexibility, you can do heavy roleplaying or heavy hack-and-slash here. Back in 2002, IGN rated Neverwinter Nights a 9.0 and said, "Neverwinter Nights is good, very good, even brilliant in some aspects. There hasn't been a night for the past week and a half that I haven't stayed up to well into the night (and early, early morn') beating orcs, minotaurs, and hobgoblins." Check out more in this gameplay video.

A very similar sequel came out in 2006 to update the graphics, but both Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 suffered near the end of their lifespans from having pretty elderly-looking graphics. The Neverwinter Nights saga came to an official end in 2012.

The spiritual successor, a 2013 online-only game called Neverwinter, suffers from too much emphasis on action and the use of the much-derided, dumbed-down D&D 4.0 ruleset.

The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003)

The last of the great single-player D&D RPGs, The Temple of Elemental Evil was a dramatization of a classic paper-and-pencil D&D module in one of the original D&D worlds. Everything was complicated and thoughtful about Elemental Evil - there were a ton of optional skills and complex, turn-based combat, just like "real" D&D should be. This game was fan-service for hardcore, long-time D&D aficionados, so of course I loved it: it was just like playing the tabletop game, but in the comfort of my own home and without having to deal with other people. IGN rated it 7.5 and said "the digital version of ToEE lives up to the fame of the original pen-and-paper module," but knocked it down a few points because of widespread bugs. There's a long series of gameplay videos online.

Further Reading

PC Game Reviews