Unlimited Adventures, sometimes called Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures or FRUA/UA, is a RPG Game Maker released in 1993 by SSI, which allows to create RPG games in the "Gold Box" style, much like Pool of Radiance or Secret of the Silver Blades. The game's system is based on Dungeons & Dragons (and is apparently a mixture of the first and the second edition). The basic world given to the player is based on the Forgotten Realms role-playing game setting, but this is in no way binding.
A small but vivid community was quickly born; despite FRUA's age and the fact that SSI doesn't exist anymore, the community still exists, albeit smaller than before. The number of designs (FRUA games) available goes into the hundreds. With the development of 'hack' programs which allow to remove most limits and modify many things which are normally unchangeable, there have been games created with entirely different themes, including Sci-Fi, oriental or even contemporary settings.
The Magic Mirror
is THE repository of FRUA designs, resources and knowledge. A mirror of the Mirror is available here. There's also a forum.
Can now be purchased from either Gog.com or Steam as part of the collection Forgotten Realms: The Archives Collection Two.
Dungeon Craft is an attempt at a much-improved remake of UA for modern systems.
This game/program exemplifies the following tropes:
- Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Due to 1st-edition D&D rules.
- Art Evolution: Comparing the oldest designs to the newest ones shows how much the community has progressed. (It also helped that computers themselves developed during all these years, allowing easier graphics editing and the like.)
- Artificial Stupidity: Unless you have a paladin in your party, the NPCs that join during the game will all be computer-controlled... and they can do rather dumb things sometimes, such as wasting their turns by randomly casting "Dispel Magic" at enemies without magical buffs, or using "Silence" (prevents spellcasting) against enemies who have no magic abilities.
- Character Alignment: As any D&D game, FRUA features alignments on the lawful/neutral/chaotic and the good/neutral/evil axes.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: Averted, as movement rate decreases with increasing encumbrance.
- Divine Intervention: The "in-universe" explanation for the test mode's "instant victory" button in battles: "The gods intervene!"
- Experience Points: It's D&D, after all. You get points both for defeating enemies and for finding treasure, and module designers can give the PCs free experience with a special event, too.
- Faux First Person 3D: Used in the "dungeon" levels (despite the name, these are used for anything from cities to forests to actual dungeons).
- Game Breaking Bugs: There are quite a lot, unfortunately, and part of becoming a FRUA expert is learning how to work around them.
- Game Mod: Creating these is the whole point, but the hacked designs go a step further. There are even entire "worldhacks" which change the game extensively, moving it from Medieval European Fantasy to a Wuxia or superhero setting.
- Game Over: "The monsters rejoice, for the party has been destroyed!" (Originally from Pool of Radiance.) Or, if you died outside combat, simply "The entire party has been killed!"
- Locked Door: You can use doors locked with keys, but there are also "locked" doors (that need to be bashed or picked by means of a skill roll) or "locked wizard" ones (can only be opened with the Knock spell). Note that the regular "locked" doors are no real obstacle, as the player can reroll over and over until he manages to open them.
- Monty Haul: Many badly made designs shower the characters with money. One design in particular (From Beggars to Heroes) was content to throw thousands of money at you for the meekest reason. (For example, as poor beggars in the starting town, you can walk around and meet an unlimited number of rich people every few steps who will shower you with riches every time.) Oh, and you get experience for these, too.
- Old Save Bonus: You can import the characters from one design to another (if you know how). Designers are expected to always give the player an opportunity to save the game (and thus, the characters) just before the design ends.
- Overworld Not to Scale: The "overland" levels, which are simply a big map over which you move the token that symbolizes you party.
- The Six Stats: Uses the classic six stats of Dungeons & Dragons.
- Universal Poison: Neutralize Poison and Slow Poison reverse death by poisoning, although there are subtle differences in monster immunities that can come out in monster versus monster battles.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Averted — you can pick up enemy equipment after every battle, unless the designer specifically turned it off for this battle. Not that it's very fun to pick up tons of useless flimsy helmets and maces off these goblins' corpses...
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: In campaigns you can have scripted battles with friendly units on your side for the battle, but it generally doesn't ACTUALLY matter if they actually survive the battle. And if you send them out to intentionally get them killed, their stuff drops after the battle for you to loot.
Notable games made for FRUA include:
- Curse of the Fire Dragon - An epic fantasy adventure which can readily compete with some of the finest old-school RPG's.
- An Oriental Alphabet Primer - A horror story told through word usage examples in a school textbook.
- Legacy of the Dragon - The player takes on the role of an infant red dragon.
- The Sect - You face an evil sect gradually taking over your land. Epic in scale, and contains a bit of A Nazi by Any Other Name (the bad guys say 'Heil', burn books, and exterminate people by fire) in the vaguely medieval-German setting.
- The Realmnote - Ray Dyer's massive series of conversions of classic D&D modules (don't let the small, fluffy, long-eared narrator fool you). An introduction module introduces players to the setting and provides an overworld map that directs players to modules they can transfer their characters to (and has nine mini-adventures of its own). The website suggests three preferable orders to play the modules in, all concluding in a final journey around the Realm, culminating in an onslaught of giants, a battle against a huge dragon (mini-adventure), and a visit to some tomb or something. There are also three more traditional multi-module campaigns in the setting: The Realm Campaign, The Far West, and, released in March 2017(!), an entire D&D campaign ported into the Realm setting, the beginner's campaign Thunder Rift. Dyer has also created ports of the Gold Box games Pool of Radiance and Secret of the Azure Bonds.
