More on SWORD COAST LEGENDS: Campaign Tools & Starting Races

Some more information about Sword Coast Legends has emerged. MMORPG.com interviewed D&D's brand director, Nathan Stewart, and Dan Tudge, the president of n-Space (the video game company behind the upcoming game). They mention that the Neverwinter Nights comparisons are warranted and discuss DM tools, starting races, and other tidbits. (thanks to Jeremy for the scoop!)

Some more information about Sword Coast Legends has emerged. MMORPG.com interviewed D&D's brand director, Nathan Stewart, and Dan Tudge, the president of n-Space (the video game company behind the upcoming game). They mention that the Neverwinter Nights comparisons are warranted and discuss DM tools, starting races, and other tidbits. (thanks to Jeremy for the scoop!)

One interesting quote from Tudge on the campaign tools is this: "The DM is fully capable of customizing experiences and significantly altering a player's adventure by changing encounters, placing traps, spawning monsters, creating quest NPCs, generating secret areas, locking doors -- all in real-time. We also have deep campaign tools that enable DMs to build near limitless campaigns for their players (more on that later!)." It's the last part that's really interesting.

Also of interest is Stewart's confirmation that "The Forgotten Realms is the universe that we at Wizards of the Coast are focusing our storytelling in for the foreseeable future", which may disappoint some hoping for adventures set elsewhere after Princes of the Apocalypse comes out.

Regarding the video game's content, Tudge says that "At launch, SCL features Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, and Human races. Again, this decision comes down to our focus on quality and our team discipline with regard to scope. We are planning to release more races post-launch. I know I want to play a Half-Orc, my sons want to play Dragonborn and my wife a Teifling - so we can probably expect to see the Teifling soon after launch!"

You can read the full interview here, which includes some fascinating stuff about how "n-Space and Wizards of the Coast are very well aligned strategically". That's the more unusual, little known definition of "fascinating", of course.

SCL2.jpg

 

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Uchawi

First Post
I like the concept but execution is everything. You have to maintain enough eye candy (map making tools and tiles) for a diverse experience, while making it simple for the DM to modify. My biggest challenge with online games is using a tool like fantasy grounds. It takes too much time to prepare the maps, tokens, etc. The second challenge is having compelling adventures, which applies to both tabletop and online. They would need a perfect storm of having the ability to create content, availability of prepackaged adventures, and ease of use as a DM to get me involved. But overall, it would solve a lot of problems with trying to find a tabletop group. But I may already be expecting more than the product intends to offer.
 

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Sonny

Adventurer
Check out the portfolio of nSpace. A long list of handheld ports and licensed shovelware, including some Olsen twins games. Hopefully they have a good game in them, but I suspect they were chosen based on their ability to quickly deliver finished products.

They got a influx of Bioware employees a couple of years ago - in fact three of the five people leading the project have worked on titles like NwN, Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age 1, and the Mass Effect series.
 

Sonny

Adventurer
More evidence that this game will be a linear dungeon crawler and not a RPG many people expect it to be.
Unless there is a huge surprise with the "deep campaign tools" the DM will be limited to placing objects on already preexisting maps.

And of course there is the DLC bloat incoming. It is highly unlikely that a RPG Neverwinter or Baldurs Gate style would lock races and classes behind DLCs. But for a dungeon crawler it is fitting.

However, as huge fans of the Sword Coast region, the opportunity to set our story there was simply too much to pass up. DMs, on the other hand, are free to build campaigns anywhere within the Realms they choose.

Having a map creator/editor isn't surprising, unusual, or that deep when it comes to content creation tools for PC games.
 



TarionzCousin

Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
I'm always disappointed when an official press release contains misspellings.

The correct spelling is "tiefling." It's pronounced "tee-fling." For more info, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tiefling

/rant

Having extensive DM powers sounds great to me. If the game is great, I wouldn't care if they set it in Whimsyshire.
 

Dire Bare

Legend
"Annual stories"....sounds like 1 mega-adventure per year is in the mix, and FR is to be the setting for those. It doesn't rule out other campaign settings, but it probably rules out large-scale games/adventures set in them (unless those setting blow stuff out of the water sales-wise, perhaps).

I'm pretty sure the annual stories they are talking about are for the tabletop game, which the video game will mirror. Just like Neverwinter does currently. (if you already got that, sorry)

It doesn't bother me at all, because the Realms is awesome and makes a perfect "standard" D&D setting, which is what I want for most licensed D&D games. Plus, I've been playing video games set in the Realms since the Gold Box series, so it's home. Besides, who in their right mind really expected anything different? Of course WotC and their partners will be setting most of their stories in the Realms, I never expected otherwise.

While I would love to see a Dark Sun, Ravenloft, or Eberron game, none of those settings have the interest and sales power (for tabletop or computers) that the Realms does. And it doesn't mean we'll NEVER see a game set in a non-Realms setting, it's just unlikely. Or at least, few and far between. Also, the current NWN and Neverwinter communities have built tons of adventures set in various D&D settings, including homebrews, I don't see why that can't continue with Sword Coast.

It'd be great if WotC and partners could put out tons of games, tabletop, computer, and otherwise set in all of the classic settings plus new ones . . . but that just isn't even remotely realistic.
 

Jiggawatts

Adventurer
I just want to know what year in DR the game will be set in. I'm much more likely to pick it up if set in the 1300s than the 1400s.
 

Paraxis

Explorer
Pretty sure they will set it at the most current point in time, WoTC has said they want to tie in the big story adventures across multiple platforms. The dragon queen stuff is already in Neverwinter MMO, and the Elemental Evil one is going to be introduced as well.

So I would imagine they want the future story lines to be able to go into this game game too, one of the reasons I bet it is set in the realms. They want the organized play, the big adventure paths, and the video games to all be able to be doing the same stuff essentially.
 

Nebulous

Legend
Interesting. So they're going to play fast and loose with the crunchy parts of 5e. That's fine with me actually. I mean, the game could be either really great or really bad, but i don't think that will have anything to do with whether fireball does 8d6 damage or not.
 

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