You’re right about Wizardry originating XP as incremental character progression.

I didn’t write that list, I copied it from a blog that I linked to in the post.

the unmodded releases of the dungeon crawlers lack automapping and that’s a hard pass, though I’ve been known to bother to mod museum-piece CRPGs before.

I kinda wish that I’d played Wizardry or Bard’s Tale on emulator back in the late ’90s when I would have had the interest in mapping them, but I don’t want to do it now. I think that expectation was another first for Wizardry, and it came with graph paper. I dislike that the Bard’s Tale remake makes you choose the entire set of “old school options” or entire set of easier options, because then I can’t play the other oldschool settings with an automap.

All of the old D&D licensed games come with a plugin that includes an automap if you get them on Steam. If you get them on GoG you can still use that but you have to download and install it.

How is the NES port? Does it require one to buy a pad of graph paper?

I haven’t played it but I think you have to map it yourself. People liked the improved (but still simple) graphics and the fact that it has music. I think it might be a little easier too.

In Japan there were SNES and Playstation releases of the first three games on one cartridge with new graphics and music. I think the SNES version, like the new remaster, has a map activated by the spell that originally just told you how far you were from the stairs. The Playstation version has a full automap with more information than is in the other versions. I don’t know if this is a mod, but you can toggle those between Japanese and English.

Don’t know if it’s worth the time for you, but this video goes through some of the different versions:

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