About six weeks ago, I mentioned an upcoming 5E-powered video game called Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Developers Tactical Adventures have been in touch, so I asked them a few quick questions about the upcoming game, wich will be coming to Kickstarter soon.
What can you tell us about the world in which this game takes place?
We will be giving more information on the world fairly soon (we plan to introduce our lore during our Kickstarter). We cannot reveal too much, as we want discovering the world of Solasta to be part of the final experience. That being said, Solasta is a High Fantasy universe where players will find most of their favorite playable races, with one notable caveat: they may behave / interact differently than you think, as an ancient cataclysm forged Solasta to its current state.
You might also be interested to know that one of writer is Graeme Davis, one of the original author of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in 1986 - and that he won the Best Writing ENnies at Gen Con this year!
You mention some character types such as a Darkweaver Rogue and a Mountaineer Fighter. Which 5E classes and races can we expect to see in the game?
We would like to include the races and classes found in the System Reference Document of the OGL – though we may not be able to include all of them for our first game. Note however that the SRD only details one subrace per race and one archetype per class, so we will be adding more of those according to our own lore - hence the Darkweaver & Mountaineer. currently we have 4 races / Classes available on our Website: Human / Dwarf / Elf / Halfling, and Fighter / Cleric / Wizard / Rogue. More will be added through Kickstarter.
How much of the 5E ruleset made it into the game, and how much did you need to change for the new medium?
I actually wrote an article about that particular topic. Long story short I would say that we want to include as much as possible of the ruleset. Some successful games included 70%-80% of the rules, we want to try to go as high as 90-95%. Not because we are fanatics, but because these rules (such as flying and lighting) create interesting gameplay situations. We do not want to pretend to be smart and replace the rules with our own just because. We want to limit rules adaptation to when there is no other choice for the video game media. For example, when vision distance represents 20 monitor screens (longbows…), we have a problem and must adapt it so that the gameplay and visual feedback stays consistent.
Is this game a single-player game or just multiplayer?
We want to focus on building a solid single player campaign first. Multiplayer would be great, but we are a small independent team and we have to remain realistic.
Is the combat turn-based or real-time?
It is turn based, as in my opinion it is the sole way to properly adapt 5E rules. For example, main action, bonus action and reactions do not make sense if you have a real time with pause simulation. Exploration are real time though, with reactions pausing the game.
You mention the term "verticality" a few times when describing the game. Could you give us a couple of examples of what you mean by that?
Our Gameplay Director has written an article about this topic. In a nutshell, verticality encompasses a number of 5E features, ignored or poorly adapted in other games: climbing / jumping / flying, shoving enemies, using ropes or climbing kits, and much more. To enable all these cool features, we built a 3D simulation based on cubes where most games use a plane which is extruded vertically in some place.
This game uses the 5th Edition ruleset as its core; are you utilizing the Open Gaming Licence?
Yes absolutely. This is a great initiative, which allows all fans to develop or play 5e content. The content of the System Reference Document (SRD) is massive, as it contains 400 pages of character classes, race, monsters, spells, items, etc.
Could you speak a little on the challenges involved with transcribing the 5E rules to a video game environment?
When I started playing 5E on tabletop, apart from having a blast with my friends, I realized that this was the best edition so far to adapt on video game. It surprised me that no one managed to do it correctly, so I guess this was the inception for the creation of the new studio. As I started developing our prototype, everything seemed to make sense and was easily integrated. The only issue we had so far, and which required some adaptation, concerned the lighting and vision system. When playing a team of four adventurers, a video game applies some constraints in terms of art direction, feedbacks, etc. (We wrote an article about that particular issue here).
There have been very few video games which leverage rulesets like 3.x, 4E, 5E, and so on. Do you have any thoughts on why that is?
I would say it requires passion. There are many great game designers / developers, but sometimes reskinning your game with a license and fighting with the franchise to adapt it will disappoint everyone. I’ve been playing D&D for 30 years, I am not trying to reinvent it - we are doing our best to replicate the same experience, but in a video game.
Here's a quick gallery of some character art!
What can you tell us about the world in which this game takes place?
We will be giving more information on the world fairly soon (we plan to introduce our lore during our Kickstarter). We cannot reveal too much, as we want discovering the world of Solasta to be part of the final experience. That being said, Solasta is a High Fantasy universe where players will find most of their favorite playable races, with one notable caveat: they may behave / interact differently than you think, as an ancient cataclysm forged Solasta to its current state.
You might also be interested to know that one of writer is Graeme Davis, one of the original author of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in 1986 - and that he won the Best Writing ENnies at Gen Con this year!
You mention some character types such as a Darkweaver Rogue and a Mountaineer Fighter. Which 5E classes and races can we expect to see in the game?
We would like to include the races and classes found in the System Reference Document of the OGL – though we may not be able to include all of them for our first game. Note however that the SRD only details one subrace per race and one archetype per class, so we will be adding more of those according to our own lore - hence the Darkweaver & Mountaineer. currently we have 4 races / Classes available on our Website: Human / Dwarf / Elf / Halfling, and Fighter / Cleric / Wizard / Rogue. More will be added through Kickstarter.
How much of the 5E ruleset made it into the game, and how much did you need to change for the new medium?
I actually wrote an article about that particular topic. Long story short I would say that we want to include as much as possible of the ruleset. Some successful games included 70%-80% of the rules, we want to try to go as high as 90-95%. Not because we are fanatics, but because these rules (such as flying and lighting) create interesting gameplay situations. We do not want to pretend to be smart and replace the rules with our own just because. We want to limit rules adaptation to when there is no other choice for the video game media. For example, when vision distance represents 20 monitor screens (longbows…), we have a problem and must adapt it so that the gameplay and visual feedback stays consistent.
Is this game a single-player game or just multiplayer?
We want to focus on building a solid single player campaign first. Multiplayer would be great, but we are a small independent team and we have to remain realistic.
Is the combat turn-based or real-time?
It is turn based, as in my opinion it is the sole way to properly adapt 5E rules. For example, main action, bonus action and reactions do not make sense if you have a real time with pause simulation. Exploration are real time though, with reactions pausing the game.
You mention the term "verticality" a few times when describing the game. Could you give us a couple of examples of what you mean by that?
Our Gameplay Director has written an article about this topic. In a nutshell, verticality encompasses a number of 5E features, ignored or poorly adapted in other games: climbing / jumping / flying, shoving enemies, using ropes or climbing kits, and much more. To enable all these cool features, we built a 3D simulation based on cubes where most games use a plane which is extruded vertically in some place.
This game uses the 5th Edition ruleset as its core; are you utilizing the Open Gaming Licence?
Yes absolutely. This is a great initiative, which allows all fans to develop or play 5e content. The content of the System Reference Document (SRD) is massive, as it contains 400 pages of character classes, race, monsters, spells, items, etc.
Could you speak a little on the challenges involved with transcribing the 5E rules to a video game environment?
When I started playing 5E on tabletop, apart from having a blast with my friends, I realized that this was the best edition so far to adapt on video game. It surprised me that no one managed to do it correctly, so I guess this was the inception for the creation of the new studio. As I started developing our prototype, everything seemed to make sense and was easily integrated. The only issue we had so far, and which required some adaptation, concerned the lighting and vision system. When playing a team of four adventurers, a video game applies some constraints in terms of art direction, feedbacks, etc. (We wrote an article about that particular issue here).
There have been very few video games which leverage rulesets like 3.x, 4E, 5E, and so on. Do you have any thoughts on why that is?
I would say it requires passion. There are many great game designers / developers, but sometimes reskinning your game with a license and fighting with the franchise to adapt it will disappoint everyone. I’ve been playing D&D for 30 years, I am not trying to reinvent it - we are doing our best to replicate the same experience, but in a video game.
Here's a quick gallery of some character art!
