D&D General The longer I play Baldur's Gate 3 ...

[MarkB]

I think I'd prefer focused supplements rather than the apparent threat of microtransactions as a way to bring in more revenue.

I remember the bad old days of 2E and 3E bloat myself, but "hey, this game is a huge hit and it was created in such a way to get us a large part of the way through our development process for a book based on it" is a pretty conservative bit of additional content. They could even make it digital-only and not have to worry about printing or distribution issues.

The "huge hit" part likely took them by surprise, so the earliest they could have been expected to react and start dedicating significant resources to it would have been around October to November last year - in a year where they already have most of their development efforts dedicated to this year's major new releases. It seems unlikely that they could have a product adapted, playtested and written up any earlier than around now.

And even then, there was no guaranteeing the game's ongoing popularity. Plenty of games are flash-in-the-pan affairs, great while you're playing them but soon over and offering little replayability, their short-term popularity soon eclipsed by the next AAA release. Even if they dedicated significant resources to rushing a product through, there'd be no guarantee that there would still be an audience for it by the time it hit the marketplace.

 

[Stormonu]

I think in the early editions it would have been a no-brainer and we probably would have seen multiple supplements, a novel, some minis and an adventure spin-off that probably would have been very naff. Like Pool of Radiance in 3e.

However it just doesn’t seem to be 5e’s style of release to pump out a book of spells, items and rules off the cuff. We’ve had what two books like this in 10 years. I just can’t see them releasing a book like this so close to 5.5 release. It’s an anti-bloat system carefully drip feeding rules in.

Yeah, Pool of Radiance seems to be the last one they did.

It would be nice if they could tag or allow someone to put something together on DM's Guild or the like. I know some people have already been working on it and probably has it out on Homebrewery or somesuch, but someone who could actually collaborate with Larian and get everything - including maybe some sections of lore about Baldur's Gate and such would be nice.

If they've got time to do Eldraine and Minecraft monsters, seems like they could have had someone do this.

 

[Meech17]

I feel like overall there was a big fumble here.

June 2022, the Magic the Gathering set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate came out. It kind of flopped. It was largely a set that got glanced over because the second it launched they were showing off Double Masters, which was coming out just like a month or two later.

"Why spend money on this D&D commander set when they are putting out a set with a lot of really expensive reprints and commander staples right around the corner?" Now MTG players are talking about how great of a set it was in hindsight and how it was slept on and everyone missed out on it. (I didn't.. I made an Izzet D20 Tribal deck with Wyll as the commander. It's my most played)

Then come spring of last year, Honor Among Thieves comes out. Everyone who watched it generally has good things to say about it. My girlfriend who had never played D&D at the time really enjoyed it. I thought it was great (But I have horrible tastes in movies.. I kind of like the first D&D movie.) However it didn't perform. Not quite a flop, but sadly we're probably not getting a sequel.

Then last fall we get Baldur's Gate III and it goes friggin gang busters.. I figure WOTC probably didn't expect anything of it, and were just happy to cash the licensing check.

But all three of these things should have come out together.. I mean, they all had to have been in development at the same time right? You'd think there would have been some cross over.. Why no Edgin MTG card? Why didn't any of the Baldur's Gate characters have cameos in the movie? Could you imagine how many tickets they would have sold to Critical Role fans if Matt Mercer showed up for nine seconds in a muscle suit with a hamster?

The MTG set should have come out this last summer, paired with a set of Baldur's Gate modules for Adventurer's League. Then BG3 in the fall.. Then the movie would have been primed to be a holiday block buster.

I'm probably wrong, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as someone who has really enjoyed all three products.

 

[MarkB]

I feel like overall there was a big fumble here.

June 2022, the Magic the Gathering set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate came out. It kind of flopped. It was largely a set that got glanced over because the second it launched they were showing off Double Masters, which was coming out just like a month or two later.

"Why spend money on this D&D commander set when they are putting out a set with a lot of really expensive reprints and commander staples right around the corner?" Now MTG players are talking about how great of a set it was in hindsight and how it was slept on and everyone missed out on it. (I didn't.. I made an Izzet D20 Tribal deck with Wyll as the commander. It's my most played)

Then come spring of last year, Honor Among Thieves comes out. Everyone who watched it generally has good things to say about it. My girlfriend who had never played D&D at the time really enjoyed it. I thought it was great (But I have horrible tastes in movies.. I kind of like the first D&D movie.) However it didn't perform. Not quite a flop, but sadly we're probably not getting a sequel.

Then last fall we get Baldur's Gate III and it goes friggin gang busters.. I figure WOTC probably didn't expect anything of it, and were just happy to cash the licensing check.

But all three of these things should have come out together.. I mean, they all had to have been in development at the same time right? You'd think there would have been some cross over.. Why no Edgin MTG card? Why didn't any of the Baldur's Gate characters have cameos in the movie? Could you imagine how many tickets they would have sold to Critical Role fans if Matt Mercer showed up for nine seconds in a muscle suit with a hamster?

The MTG set should have come out this last summer, paired with a set of Baldur's Gate modules for Adventurer's League. Then BG3 in the fall.. Then the movie would have been primed to be a holiday block buster.

I'm probably wrong, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as someone who has really enjoyed all three products.

That's with 20-20 hindsight, and an assumption of far more cooperation between three different companies in entirely different industries than would ever have been possible.

First, you'd need to know that both the movie and the game would be good, which was never anywhere near certain.

Then you'd have to ask a movie studio to coordinate their schedule to your convenience, when their primary concern was dropping this far-from-sure-thing movie at a point when it would be cheap to release but would still stand a chance of gathering an audience before being eclipsed by other films.

Then you'd have to ask a videogame publisher to coordinate their schedule to your convenience, when their major concerns were getting the product feature-complete and with minimal bugs in time to roll it out for the autumn game releases while worrying about it being eclipsed by Bethesda's heavy-hitter Starfield.

And then finally you'd have to hope that the fans of the movie and the fans of the videogame, the vast majority of which have never played either D&D or MtG, will be interested enough in a themed card set to drive business up to the extent that would be needed in order to compensate for whatever you had to spend in order to coordinate these three disparate projects.

 

[Malmuria]

I think the fiddlier bits, from what I've seen, can mostly be adapted by using good 3D scenery (I know, I don't have the budget or space for that either) or by adapting mechanics that require tracking things like lightning charges to roll-to-refresh, similar to how 5E dragon breath weapons work.

The real BG3 effect, if there is one, will be to open up more players' minds to the idea that you can do a whole lot more in the game than just what's on your character sheet, a trap a lot of people, especially newer players, fall into.

Yes, you can absolutely set fire to the web bridge the giant spiders are on.

Sure, you can stack up all those crates and use them to climb on the roof, although if you do it wrong, you're going to fall and get hurt and/or make enough noise that someone comes to investigate.

You absolutely should scout out before you move into an area and come back to the area later, with higher level characters and/or good tactics, before taking those enemies on.

Want to redecorate the BBEG's lair with smokepowder barrels that you keep in your "camp" that you can access at anytime, you absolutely...hmm, wait...that might not work

 

[Meech17]

That's with 20-20 hindsight, and an assumption of far more cooperation between three different companies in entirely different industries than would ever have been possible.

First, you'd need to know that both the movie and the game would be good, which was never anywhere near certain.

Then you'd have to ask a movie studio to coordinate their schedule to your convenience, when their primary concern was dropping this far-from-sure-thing movie at a point when it would be cheap to release but would still stand a chance of gathering an audience before being eclipsed by other films.

Then you'd have to ask a videogame publisher to coordinate their schedule to your convenience, when their major concerns were getting the product feature-complete and with minimal bugs in time to roll it out for the autumn game releases while worrying about it being eclipsed by Bethesda's heavy-hitter Starfield.

And then finally you'd have to hope that the fans of the movie and the fans of the videogame, the vast majority of which have never played either D&D or MtG, will be interested enough in a themed card set to drive business up to the extent that would be needed in order to compensate for whatever you had to spend in order to coordinate these three disparate projects.

I know it's unfair to judge history through the lens of hindsight.. But I can't help think someone had to have seen these three products all centered around the same IP launching in an 18 month window and not suggest trying to squeeze that window down to like six months. I'm sure cross promotion would have helped..

Supposedly MTG sets are developed on timelines of usually 2 years before releasing.. So WOTC probably didn't have much faith in the Baldur's Gate set after the first D&D set was met with middling response.

But still.. It seems obvious.

I guess that's why that saying about hindsight exists..

 

[nyvinter]

But all three of these things should have come out together.. I mean, they all had to have been in development at the same time right? You'd think there would have been some cross over.. Why no Edgin MTG card?

There was but only as a Secret Lair Drop. At least the BG3 characters were in a set.

And apart from the "Dungeons and Dragons what?" factor of the movie, it came out in a weekend with Super Mario Bros just around the corner as well as at the tail of a pandemic close-down. A rock and a hard place — even if it still did at least as good as Tenet two years earlier and Quantum-mania a few weeks later no-one is limiting their budgets.

 

[jgsugden]

Things to consider:

1.) I've seen a lot of suggestions for implementing BG3 elements into a product, but changing them so that they work better with 5E. We essentially already have most of it - there isn't much of anything in BG5 that doesn't equate to something in 5E that is built for the 5E design. Explosive arrows come from the Arcane Archer. Brewing potions rules are in Xanathar's and the DMG. Do you want a light emitting longsword with the finesse property that deals radiant damage ... ? Sun Blade. You want to be able to gather up a bunch of barrels of explosive material to sneak near a bad guy and then blow them up? Portable Hole.

We seem to be forgetting that Larian did the exact opposite of what you're asking to see: They took D&D and translated it into a video game - and tried to keep the essence of D&D in everything they did. Now you want to take the video game out of it - which means to translate it back to what inspired it. Some fits are better than others ... but in the end, all you're really getting if they make a BG3 supplement is the use of the BG3 names ... everything else you've essentially got in one form or another.

2.) They have been very clear in their design choices through the last several editions - and one major goal has been to reduce accounting and tracking of information. They realize that most groups do not track food or arrows. They designed 4th edition to essentially reset between encounters (outside hps and dailies). They want the game to be less intimidating to new players, and that requires them to keep it simple. We added back some complexity between 4E and 5E as they thought they went too far ... but they do not want to go overboard. There is a reason why advantage/disadvantage replaced almost all bonuses and penalties. They would not add back in a lot of +1/-1 tracking into the game ... and a surprising amount of BG3 makes use of those types of mechanics.

3.) BG3 is not a balanced game. It uses items and combos to enhance PC power at the higher levels to give you more of an epic PC feel while your characters are still 12th level. A non-optimized BG3 party will struggle in Act 3 in normal mode. An optimized one will find Act 3 fairly easy (combat wise - some puzzles can be a challenge if people do not resort to Google). When you are about to finish the game, imagine taking the 4 12th level PCs in the game and then put them up against a 5E 'by the rules' 12th level party. If you optimized your BG3 party (which is not terribly hard to do), you'll find that BG3 party is insanely more powerful.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I feel like overall there was a big fumble here.

June 2022, the Magic the Gathering set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate came out. It kind of flopped. It was largely a set that got glanced over because the second it launched they were showing off Double Masters, which was coming out just like a month or two later.

"Why spend money on this D&D commander set when they are putting out a set with a lot of really expensive reprints and commander staples right around the corner?" Now MTG players are talking about how great of a set it was in hindsight and how it was slept on and everyone missed out on it. (I didn't.. I made an Izzet D20 Tribal deck with Wyll as the commander. It's my most played)

Then come spring of last year, Honor Among Thieves comes out. Everyone who watched it generally has good things to say about it. My girlfriend who had never played D&D at the time really enjoyed it. I thought it was great (But I have horrible tastes in movies.. I kind of like the first D&D movie.) However it didn't perform. Not quite a flop, but sadly we're probably not getting a sequel.

Then last fall we get Baldur's Gate III and it goes friggin gang busters.. I figure WOTC probably didn't expect anything of it, and were just happy to cash the licensing check.

But all three of these things should have come out together.. I mean, they all had to have been in development at the same time right? You'd think there would have been some cross over.. Why no Edgin MTG card? Why didn't any of the Baldur's Gate characters have cameos in the movie? Could you imagine how many tickets they would have sold to Critical Role fans if Matt Mercer showed up for nine seconds in a muscle suit with a hamster?

The MTG set should have come out this last summer, paired with a set of Baldur's Gate modules for Adventurer's League. Then BG3 in the fall.. Then the movie would have been primed to be a holiday block buster.

I'm probably wrong, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as someone who has really enjoyed all three products.

It's a bit weird that there is no starter set that ties into either the D&D movie or the Baldur's Gate game. Instead we have characters from the 80s cartoon on the box...and they're not even in the adventure!

 

[wicked cool]

This game would have made a Better adventure than 90% of the adventures out there
Forget the party npcs and forget the magic items (although some would be good). I can’t spoil anything but there’s a lot to like