The first Lands of Lore was a fairly good dungeon crawl (and one I should have thought of in my earlier post). The sequel was from that period where publishers were trying to destroy… er… rework RPG and adventure game sequels into what they thought would work for then modern players. See Ultima 9, King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, Zork: Nemesis, Crusaders of Might and Magic, and the original PC Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (the console one isn’t remotely the same game and is an okay, but short, action/RPG) for other examples.
Comments, in no particular order:[ul][]I’m whistling the Quest for Glory theme song right now, and somewhere on my shelf I have the box from when it was called Hero’s Quest before trademark issues forced the name change. I loved 1, enjoyed 2, suffered through 3, adored 4, and never tried 5 due to the change in playstyle.[]Darkstone, the Diablo knockoff, was definitely fun. One cute trick in that was to pickpocket monsters - you’d get a random magical item, which for 95% of the game was stronger than anything you’d normally find in a dungeon.[]Fallout: Tactics was a game that I wanted to love so very very much but couldn’t force myself past the fourth or fifth mission.[]In the same vein, I wanted to love Ultima 9 so much that I bought a GeForce card the week they first hit the market (Dec 99, sometime) just so I could enjoy Ultima 9 the way it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, a good video card doesn’t make up for bugs, bugs and more bugs.[]Might & Magic VI, eh? I’ve got no particular reason why I shouldn’t try that. I only played 1-3 and then gave the rest of the series a pass. I’ll add that to the list.[]Betrayal at Krondor is one of the greatest games in history, not only for the gameplay, but also for Feist’s writing that he contributed to the game, and especially for the soundtrack. Better than anything else I’ve ever heard.[]Regarding MMOs, I segued from Everquest to Star Wars: Galaxies to City of Heroes/Villains, and while I still have an active subscription to COH, it doesn’t really scratch my itch any more.[]Sam & Max … I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never played S&MHTR. I should probably shaddap and go play that now.[/ul]
I had to install the level 127 cap to make a tech character playable. There’s just not enough points to make a decent tech char at 50, the char has to have too many stats maxed out to make things, and then use things. For instance, mastering a gun requires putting points in Perception as well as Gunsmithy and Intelligence. And if there’s not any points put into Dexterity, then the character won’t be able to fire often, and then there’s Strength, so the character can carry enough bullets and loot, then the character’s a pain to play. However, once you’re able to make the Ultimate Armor and Ultimate Weapon, you can kick all kinds of ass, but you do need to be higher than 50th level. Besides, I always reach 50th level well before I’ve played more than a third of the game. A magic character is quick and dirty, just need to get the third level Fire college spell, and maybe a few other small spells, and you’re set, just need to find all the magical goodies scattered around. I never actually got to level 127, never needed to, but having a well-built dwarf tech was FUN.
Arcanum is a great game, but it could have been so much better.
Well, I brought them up because they share obvious points of influence with traditional tabletop RPGs, not least because they can both create a narrative with a coherent plot and value as a story over the course of the game. I think what text adventures lack in character building they make up for in plotting (not plodding, hopefully) and general storytelling.
Ha! Yes, exactly. But not just for games: There is a BASIC interpreter for the z-machine. Download the gzipped source archive here. The z-machine was invented in the late 1970s (1979, according to Wikipedia) and bytecode (the general term for this technique) dates back to the 1960s, when p-Coded Pascal was in widespread use. Probably earlier than that, but that’s the earliest specific example I can think of.
Back in high school (1983-84), I used to play a delightful little freeware/public domain text adventure on the Apple II. It was called “Eamon”. Eamon was a modular game, in that “Eamon” itself was just the engine. You’d pop the main Eamon floppy into the drive, load the program, and then take it out and insert another floppy containing the adventure. And there were hundreds of user-written adventures out there. The main diskette included all the tools you needed to design an adventure.
While it was fun to play, Eamon did convince me of one thing: mazes have no place in text adventures. To wit:
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>north
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>north
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>west
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>up
>YOU CAN’T GO THAT WAY
>west
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>west
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>south
>YOU ARE IN A MAZE
>you don’t say
>I DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT
Phase42: You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. 
The first text adventure, ADVENT, was also called Colossal Cave because it was based on a real cave system Crowther was familiar with. (Bedquilt Cave, as a matter of fact.) It ended up being very maze-like but was saved from the fate you describe because every room was described in some detail. In fact, mazes figure prominently in some well-regarded text adventures, all of them due to ADVENT.
So it’s possible to do mazes well and make them interesting. The game you were playing just sucked.
Bah. Two things:
[ul]
[li]Bytecode does date to the 1960s, but p-coded Pascal was invented in the 1970s. O-coded BCPL (BCPL being an early precursor of C.) dates to the 1960s.[/li][li]Colossal Cave wasn’t an alternate name for ADVENT. It was the chief location within ADVENT.[/li][/ul]
Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but you could try Blue Byte Software’s ‘Albion’.
Icewind Dale 1+2 are available on Gametap. It’s $10/month, but has another 700 games or so on it. Besides those, also on the service, or at least go buy it if you haven’t played it, consider Planescape:Torment, one of the greatest RPGs made.
The OP mentioned Pool of Radiance. If you haven’t, play ALL of the games of the series, especially since the characters carry over. There are two series, the POR one as well as the Knights of Krynn series.
Dragon Wars is another great oldie that was similar to Bard’s Tale graphically, but offered in at least a couple of situations multipe solutions to puzzles.
I haven’t played them and really want to get my hands on them, but the Gothic series has been touted as outstanding open gameplay, although the very newest one, 3, seems to need patching.
Lastly, don’t ignore the Might & Magic series. It is unashamedly hack & slash with puzzles that are very much out of place but still welcome. Of note, M&M 4+5 combine to create World of Xeen which incorporates not only the two games, but also opens up some extra dungeons. This too is on Gametap, but if you can track down a copy with actual paper maps, so much the better (I have all of the maps of all of the M&M games as well as the Ultima ones, yay geek).
Avernum 4. Classic RPG stuff, brand new game, free demo. Give it a go?
Dragwyr, I removed your link because what that site is doing is illegal; in fact, they even admit it themselves:
From their “About” page.
Actually there’s three series in the Gold Box games. The “Pools” series is Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pool of Darkness. The Krynn series is Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and Dark Queen of Krynn. Finally there is the Savage Frontier series which is Gateway of the Savage Frontier and Treasures of the Savage Frontier.
Related games to the Gold Box series are Unlimited Adventures which essentially gave players the toolset used to create the Gold Box games, the original Neverwinter Nights which was online play only with AOL so it’s very unlikely that someone could dig it up though a fan project that I haven’t heard of would not surprise me, and the two Dark Sun games which featured play extremely similar to the Gold Box games only with the interface greatly improved. The Dark Sun games were Shattered Lands and Wake of the Ravager.
Check the OP, E-Sabbath, I did try my hand at Avernum. 
Thanks to everyone for their recommendations - I’ve decided to go with Sam & Max: Culture Shock for now. Yeah, it’s not a RPG, but the other game that I’ve been playing nonstop has been DefCon, which I highly, highly recommend to everyone.
Even though you didn’t like Avernum, give the Geneforge games a try, from the same publisher . There should be demos available of all three (with a 4th coming out soon).
I’m halfway afraid to post such a ‘modern’ RPG here, but you really should check Gothic and it’s sequel, the aptly named Gothic 2, out. Those are modern greats, and even the third - recently released Gothic 3 - has about half a dozen more soul and vibe than Oblivion has. The problem with Oblivion was that it was a fantastic sandbox with great technicalities, but little tilt and heart. Pity.
So,
- Gothic
If you like it; Gothic 2 & Gothic 2: Night of the Raven
If you aren’t discouraged by the very tough difficulty, I highly recommend Gothic 3 to you, but that’s fresh and hardly classic.
With adoring RPG love,
Gukumatz