Join the CRPG Club

You have likely heard of book, wine, or movie clubs. But, as a reader of RPGamer, you might find more interest in our new gaming group, the CRPG Club!

Over the last decade, GOG and Steam have released many older role-playing games, enabling them to work in new Windows environments. This has made playing retro games on your favorite laptop or computer easier than ever!  Because of this, and their deep libraries, a solid argument can be made that the computer leads the pack as the best retro machine of all time. In an effort to demonstrate that one of our RPGBacktrack hosts, JCServant, brings you the CRPG Club, where we play computer role playing game from the way back when, right up through yesteryear. Each month, we dive into classics of varying ages and types, while working our way through series, as well. JCServant will share his experiences with articles here on RPGamer, and during our new CRPG Club segment on the RPGBacktrack podcast. Most importantly, you can join in on the games and discussion! Lucky individuals may even win a free game or two.  Read on for more details.

“Month of” Rotation

Each month we rotate out various games, and we try to break up series so we don’t play them all in a row. For 2019, we start off with a classic JRPG, Final Fantasy VI. We will proceed through the rest of the year by tackling a couple of Gold Box games, knocking out the Witcher and Half-Minute Hero series, as well as diving into a couple of games from the Sacred series. You can find all of these games on GOG.com or Steam.

• 2019 (Year of the Witcher)
  • January — Final Fantasy VI
  • February — Secret of the Silver Blades
  • March — The Witcher
  • April — Sacred Gold
  • May — The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
    
  • June — Half-Minute Hero
  • July — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
    
  • August — Pools of Darkness
  • September — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansions
  • October — Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming
    
  • November — Sacred 2
  • December — Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

On a side note, for the full Witcher experience and imaginary bonus points, feel free to read or listen to the Witcher book series this new year as well! Most will want to read the short stories first, and then dive into the other books in order of release. The books take place before the games, so you may wish to read them before starting the games.

CRPG Club Rules

There really are no hard or fast rules. You can play all of the games on the list in order, or you can skip around. You can take longer than a month on some and zip through others. You can talk about them on Twitter using the hashtag #CRPGClub, chat on Discord, or use the comment section below! Really, this is just an excuse for us to play some awesome CRPGs and talk about them with each other and our friends.

Prizes!

Share your experiences on Twitter using the #CRPGClub tag, or chat about it in our CRPG Club discord channel. For doing each of these, you are entered into JCServant’s monthly drawing to be able to choose one of the games listed below. If you share on both Discord and Twitter, you get two entries for that month into the drawing!

Current GOG.com Grab Bag

• Saints Row 2
• Battle Realms + Winter of the Wolf
• Torchlight
• Heroes of Might & Magic II
• Heroes of Might & Magic III
• The Witcher 1 & 2
• Xcom: Enemy Unknown Complete
• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
• Ember

Current Steam Grab Bag

• Defense Grid
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Portal
• Rise of Nations
• Rome: Total War – Collection
• Sanctum 2
• Witcher 1 & 2
• Trine 2

Good luck, and happy gaming!