Uploaded March 2014 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Redfang's ending for the Harvest of Horrors campaign.

Blood & Magic is a computer game released by Interplay in 1996. It was the first real-time strategy game to use the Dungeons & Dragons license.

The basic units of the game are the Basal Golems, which are created at the Bloodforge. They provide mana for the production of new units and can be turned into buildings or monsters. When four are placed on a foundation, they may transform into a mystical site dedicated to the kind of magic the player's choosing. Placing a Basal Golem adjacent to a friendly mystical site will allow them to change into a different creature, based on the type of mystical site. The player automatically is only able to use the weakest transformation, and can unlock more by researching. Researching costs experience, which is gained by creating or transforming Basal Golems, creating or destroying structures, casting spells and slaying enemies.

While this approach is original compared to the usual Dune-like system where the player had to harvest or mine resources, it brings its own set of problems. There are no limits on Basal Golem and almost no limits mana production (the only one being that a player can not have more than 300 mana at one time) and the stationary Golems are much easier to protect than moving harvesting units meaning that unhindered exponential growth can easily occur. Also, not having to protect supply routes means less opportunities for strategic thinking, as does the lack of any defensive structures (with the exception of passive walls).

The most egregious deviation from normal RTS gameplay is the extreme micromanagement required for the collection of the game's resources.[1] The golems charge mana individually, and collecting the mana requires a continuous cycle of selecting individual golems and clicking a "transfer" button (or, alternatively, the right mouse button). Golems will eventually transfer mana on their own if they reach their maximum capacity and are left unattended for a long period of time, but this severely impacts their efficiency.

The game's pacing is similar to that of vintage RTS games like Dune 2 and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. By comparison, the gameplay is very slow compared to Warcraft 2 which came out the year prior.

The game single player game consists of five regular campaigns of increasing difficulty followed by a world conquest (a long campaign during which the player conquers all 15 maps and then challenges the gods themselves). In all regular campaigns the player can choose one of two sides of conflict. To unlock the next campaign, the player has to finish the current campaign at least once. The storylines of all campaigns are typical fantasy tales (without any explicit AD&D references), although each campaign has its own take on the genre. The stories are told between battles by a narrator voice (often in verse) and illustrated by gradually uncovered pictures.

(From Wikipedia)