Big question is how long this licensing deal is for. BG3 took 6 years.
D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 will now be releasing August 3rd on PC and September 6th on PS5, increased level cap, race & class details and more
- Thread starter CommodoreKong
- Start date
Big question is how long this licensing deal is for. BG3 took 6 years.
Unlimited Adventures, Neverwinter Nights, and Solasta did have TONS of full blown adventures made by ambitious fans, but I admit it takes a certain alchemy and coincidence for all the factors to line up and create an adventure haven like those games.
Mod Note:
Could you... not, please?
Like, this is a bunch of nerds talking about videogames on a messageboard. It doesn't call for defiance. It doesn't call for being confrontational. It doesn't call for humans to be more aggressive at each other to be right.
If they are wrong, they are one more person on the internet that is wrong. Big whoop. Big fat hairy deal, right? So let's not make it one, please. Thanks.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Everyone does DLC these days, it's part of the business model. Not doing so is throwing money away. That's why Larian are talking about the level cap being 12 AT LAUNCH, there are so many races and classes AT LAUNCH. They already have the DLC planned.
They don't have a licence for a BG4, and WotC aren't going to agree to one that doesn't use the current (i.e. ONED&D) rules.
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Paul Farquhar
Legend
Solasta is tile based and very limited, it really can't do much more than stick a bunch of monsters in a room for the party to fight. But even then, it takes days to build anying meaningful. I know, I've done it. NWN was designed as a user friendly toolset from the top down (which is why the game it shipped with was so bad). Despite it's age it's far more powerful than the Solasta toolset. You can program characters who remember what your character has done previously! But even so, you are talking weeks to create even a small adventure. Again, I know because I've done it.
The fantasy that "if I had the tools I could create my D&D adventure in BG3" is just that - a pure fantasy. It's equivalent to saying that if you had a hammer, chisel and block of marble you could create Michael Angelo's David. Except that instead of genius level skill what you need is a dozen or so full time employees working for a couple of years.
Sorcerers Apprentice
Hero
1D&D is supposed to be backwards compatible though, so you could make a BG4 using the new rules that still lets you import your party from BG3.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
It's not, so far as a computer game is concerned. The classes and races and in BG3 would need to be completely redone to be anything like the classes in OD&D. I mean, they haven't even been changed in line with Tasha's, they are still using the original version of 5e rules that were in place when development started, because it's a lot easier to change stuff in a PnP game than on a computer.
I'm very glad so many people have put in the massive time and energy to create those great adventures, then. Fingers crossed in the hopes that BG3 has a robust enough system that it inspires similar reaults!
Paul Farquhar
Legend
You are not getting the point. You are talking about a hundred/a thousand times the amount of man-hours to do something in BG3 than in Solasta or NWN. No one who isn't getting paid for it can afford to do that.
And "tools" are irrelevant. BG3 is quite easy to mod if you know a bit of basic coding. But there is a big difference between creating some new armor or making everyone think your drow is a dragonborn and creating an adventure. Look around the room you are in. Imagine creating and positioning every item in the room by hand. Now repeat that for every room in your town. Eventually an AI might be able to do it for you, but that is a whole different project.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
Honestly (and I'm probably going to get strong disagreement on this), I think one of the biggest things holding back even the best game building software (like NWN) is too much reliance on the mindset and assumed skills of software design and coding.
A couple examples (may not apply to all systems, but is typical):
-Changes tend to be automatically applied, rather than relying on a save or apply feature. This assumes a higher level of competence than should be assumed, and is different from how most software for typical consumers operates.
-Insufficiently accessible UI. They should have lots of drag and drop functionality, better organized menus, etc.
What is really needed is an end user accessibility consultant with limited (though not zero) software design skills. They need someone to periodically look at it and give meaningful feedback on what is not as straightforward as it should be.
The systems could also be designed to do more out of the box, without any scripting or involved scripting-like design. While AI might help with it, it shouldn't be necessary.
For instance if you are setting up dialog options and other results of interactions with an NPC, it should pop up a visual flow chart where you can click to make new nodes, drag lines between them, and have other simple buttons you click to apply various functions (like giving or removing items, XP, quest stages, etc).
If you are setting up a trap, there should be a bunch of presets with easy to apply options. So you might grab and plop down a Proximity or Activation trap. When you plop down a Proximity trap, a sidebar (or floating box connected to the trap) could have a slider that lets you change the size of the triggering region and a few buttons (circle, rectangle, line) that you click to choose. The sidebar or box would also have buttons for damage type, and for amount of damage, or special effects like teleporting to a location, applying a condition, etc. (The special effects may need to open a separate box when clicked to show buttons with the various options, but the rest should fit in the sidebar or floating box). You always use visual buttons, and either include text with them, or have text appear when you hover.
And the whole thing needs to be that easy. And it really can be. I think people are probably going to be skeptical because they haven't seen it done right before. (I'm even willing to put my money (or in this case, time) where my mouth is and do the job myself of being such a consultant (free to start and prove it's possible, though I wouldn't work free forever.))
But it is always going to struggle as long as the people making it are primarily making tooks for their own use. They need to be thinking "How can I make this tool so accessible and good at what it does that I put myself out of a job?" (which it wouldn't actually do) and be willing to put in the effort to actually listen to the consultants and do things in ways that are inefficient for themselves.
Obviously, most toolkits that are attached to a specific game aren't going to want to spend enough resources to do that. (Maybe making a paid tool would be a better option.) But even dedicated game design software doesn't really do what I'm talking about. Various software has bits and pieces of what is needed, but it really needs to all be put together; and it's probably going to work best if it is built to go with an actual game and popular RPG system (assuming an RPG design toolkit here).
So that's what the issue is. I've played around with these enough to see how they could be made much faster and easier so people could just basically think of the story they want to create and quickly make it happen, rather than having to spend enormous amounts of time messing with the software to figure out how to do it and painstakingly implement it.
A couple examples (may not apply to all systems, but is typical):
-Changes tend to be automatically applied, rather than relying on a save or apply feature. This assumes a higher level of competence than should be assumed, and is different from how most software for typical consumers operates.
-Insufficiently accessible UI. They should have lots of drag and drop functionality, better organized menus, etc.
What is really needed is an end user accessibility consultant with limited (though not zero) software design skills. They need someone to periodically look at it and give meaningful feedback on what is not as straightforward as it should be.
The systems could also be designed to do more out of the box, without any scripting or involved scripting-like design. While AI might help with it, it shouldn't be necessary.
For instance if you are setting up dialog options and other results of interactions with an NPC, it should pop up a visual flow chart where you can click to make new nodes, drag lines between them, and have other simple buttons you click to apply various functions (like giving or removing items, XP, quest stages, etc).
If you are setting up a trap, there should be a bunch of presets with easy to apply options. So you might grab and plop down a Proximity or Activation trap. When you plop down a Proximity trap, a sidebar (or floating box connected to the trap) could have a slider that lets you change the size of the triggering region and a few buttons (circle, rectangle, line) that you click to choose. The sidebar or box would also have buttons for damage type, and for amount of damage, or special effects like teleporting to a location, applying a condition, etc. (The special effects may need to open a separate box when clicked to show buttons with the various options, but the rest should fit in the sidebar or floating box). You always use visual buttons, and either include text with them, or have text appear when you hover.
And the whole thing needs to be that easy. And it really can be. I think people are probably going to be skeptical because they haven't seen it done right before. (I'm even willing to put my money (or in this case, time) where my mouth is and do the job myself of being such a consultant (free to start and prove it's possible, though I wouldn't work free forever.))
But it is always going to struggle as long as the people making it are primarily making tooks for their own use. They need to be thinking "How can I make this tool so accessible and good at what it does that I put myself out of a job?" (which it wouldn't actually do) and be willing to put in the effort to actually listen to the consultants and do things in ways that are inefficient for themselves.
Obviously, most toolkits that are attached to a specific game aren't going to want to spend enough resources to do that. (Maybe making a paid tool would be a better option.) But even dedicated game design software doesn't really do what I'm talking about. Various software has bits and pieces of what is needed, but it really needs to all be put together; and it's probably going to work best if it is built to go with an actual game and popular RPG system (assuming an RPG design toolkit here).
So that's what the issue is. I've played around with these enough to see how they could be made much faster and easier so people could just basically think of the story they want to create and quickly make it happen, rather than having to spend enormous amounts of time messing with the software to figure out how to do it and painstakingly implement it.
