I am really 77 years old (DOB 12-25-1944) Graduated from HS in 1962, from Ohio University (the one in Athens, not Ohio State) in 1966--our commencement speaker was former president and WWII hero Dwight Eisenhower, and after graduating I served time in Vietnam in 67 and 68 (want me to tell you about the Tet Offensive?) I'm a writer, been published in both the Romance (yes, at my age) and horror genres. Check my stories out online under my name G. Jennings (FINDING MIMI and BUTTERFLY STREET) Was a Dungeon Master for many years. I live in a tiny town in rural NW Ohio with my wife, adult daughter, four grandsons (6, 5, 2, and 1) two very spoiled dogs (a Puggle and a Pug) and two cats. Also did a ton of grad work at Bowling Green State University. I've been a teacher (English and Special Education) a corporate communications specialist, and I currently provide services for disabled adults. Need any more detail? Why the suspicion? I never got squat free from this site. Not all of us seniors sit around drooling in our rocking chairs. I love wearing my favorite tee shirt where I work in Lima, Ohio--the one I had made that says "It's not just that I'm old--your music really DOES suck!" Gets me a lot of laughs and a few dirty looks from Millennials and Gen Zers, like I give a rat's butt, because it's true--today's trash (OMG. Billie Eillish and Cardi B?) on the airwaves is for the most part garbage compared to the great stuff from the 60s, 70s and early 80s...I love going on Youtube and watching the young'uns react to the music from our era and finding out mom and dad and grandma and grandpa were way cooler than most of them will ever be. LOL...

Thank all you people for the help. It is much appreciated.

Jerry

Welcome,

Galactic Civilizations is a decent MoO clone, maybe also try Imperium Galactica II.

As for Phantasmagoria, though I never played it, you might want to try the Gabriel Knight games as the creator Jane Jensen worked with Roberta Williams at the start of her carreer and those adventures share the same Sierra vibe.
Also check out Cognition.

If you're looking for games similar to those you've already mentioned, I can't recommend Arcanum enough. It has magic, steampunk, all the old school D&D races (although it uses a much more flexible leveling system, rather than restricting you to a given class) and a great storyline. And it's also currently on sale.

And btw, I was born in 1966. So you're not the only older gamer on this site, by any stretch of the imagination.

https://www.gog.com/game/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura

The store recently revamped its search engine by adding some additional filters and improving the existing ones, which is quite convenient and can be useful for what you are trying to do.
For instance, here you have all the RPG and strategy games released up to the year 2000:
https://www.gog.com/en/games?genres=strategy,rpg&hideOwned=true&releaseDateRange=1980,2000
Just tinker a bit with those options and see what comes up.

GOG is one of the best places to buy downloadable copies of older DOS and Windows games, and they do generally try to make them as easy to play "out of the box" as possible; however, depending on what games you may buy, you might still have to install some dependencies such as older versions of DirectX; sometimes a game will install such a prerequisite as part of the game's system requirements, but sometimes it'll expect you to have taken care of it yourself.
More generally, you'll need to try to make sure your computer meets all the minimum system requirements. However, if you're mainly going to be looking for games from more than a decade and a half ago, you probably won't have to worry too much about this (though always at least check that it's supported on Windows 10, as there's a small number of older games here that are unsupported on some or all of the last few editions of Windows).

One more thing to bear in mind is that games that came out about 20+ years ago typically came with pretty meaty printed manuals -- some of which you would NEED during play to pass in-game copy-protection checks. Obviously, physical manuals do not come with downloadable games. :P So you'll need to make sure to download the digital versions of the manuals for such games (these are often available in your library as separate downloads, though sometimes they are in the game's folder after installation) so you can use them if necessary. (Some of those games sold here have been altered to neuter such any such checks, but it's pretty much on a case-by-case basis.)

Also, don't forget to check out GOG's selection of free games (click "Store", and check the box on the left side of the screen that says "show only free games"; I tried to post a direct link, but GOG's forum software stinks, and I'm too tired right now to fart around trying to remember how to make the hyperlink display as such). Many are demos for more recent games, but there are also quite a few older commercial titles that were later made indefinitely free. (Given that your account was created nearly a decade ago, I'm sure you already have some of these in your account, as all new accounts back had a selection of freebies auto-added to their libraries.)

Welcome. DOS games (that are emulated using DOSBox) like Master of Orion should almost always work right away, I believe. You should have a very good shot with most old games on GOG in general (GOG tries to ensure games run right away), but unfortunately GOG can't guarantee a game will always work right out of the box 100% of the time. If you have issues, try browsing and asking in the game forum for help (search bar bottom left here: https://www.gog.com/forum) or/and contact GOG Support. (unfortunately Support is very busy so it may take some time to get a response) If push comes to shove you can ask in the General Discussion forum if the game specific forum is basically "dead" / you don't get a response for some time. And there is a 30 day refund policy if Support is unable to help.

(Also, on each game page, check the "Works on" section on the right for the list of OSes that GOG has gotten the game working on; in your case, make sure it mentions "Windows (..., 10, ...)". It doesn't guarantee the game will work right away on your system, but it shows that they've had luck on their test machines for that OS so it improves the odds.)

https://www.gog.com/en/games - on the left side, under "PC games / All Games..." if you scroll down you'll find a Release Date slider, if you specifically want old games. It sounds like you bought an office computer, but you shouldn't have trouble playing non-modern games (except maybe the graphically-intensive ones like Crysis).

Consider browsing this range of years from 1980 to 2000: https://www.gog.com/en/games?releaseDateRange=1980,2000

If you want to, you could try out some of the free games here. You might like Eschalon, Lords of Midnight, Doomdark's Revenge, the Ultimas that are free, etc. (note that game demos are mixed in with the free complete games):

https://www . gog.com/en/games?priceRange=0,0&order=asc:releaseDate

(sorry, the above URL breaks on the forum, but try copying it into your browser and removing the spaces before and after the period) :P