D&D 5E Dungeonscape Lives!

[Ramius613]

If it is internally funded, then it is internally funded. You don't get revenue until you start selling, and that means you've finished at least some phase of development and have a product folks will buy.

So, given the blog post that Ramius pointed out, the most likely story seems to me to be, "We didn't get to a sell-able point before the holidays. We'd run through our funding, and WotC wasn't willing to provide further funding. So, the agreement was terminated. Now, if we wish to continue, and get some return on the money and effort we already sank in, we need a kickstarter."

It wouldn't be the first time a blown deadline made business agreements go south.

Well according to another interview I read back around Gencon, actually I think it was the interview with Morrus, they were planning a three phase roll out with the character builder being the first part of the release. Also if you are judging their tool on just the web based character builder, you're missing a lot of what the tool was designed to do. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any more of what they were bringing.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I won't buy into this edition or any other unless it is accompanied by a great digital aide.

I find this rather amusing because I am in the opposite camp: I no longer have interest in tabletop rpg material that REQUIRES digital support to not be a major PITA.

 

[casterblaster]

Table top RPGs should never require digital tools to be played so I am with ExploderWizard. I find it distracting to have tablets and phones and laptops at the table cause it never fails someone will surf the web or check FB instead of paying attention to the game. Luckily my small group is old school and prefers pencil and paper.

 

[casterblaster]

Shouldn't WOTC have some sort of relationship with BioWare? Why not seek a game company to make the tools, after most crpgs have a character creator built in just not fully fleshed out. Baldurs Gate pretty much ran the 2e rules set.

 

[DaveMage]

If you ask, you may have to pay. If someone comes to you, you get a cut of the revenues from licensing.

WotC may feel as you do that digital tools are unnecessary with this edition. If they get a good offer, they'll listen, but if not - oh, well!

 

[Mistwell]

I don't understand the ill will towards Trapdoor. It's just a business deal that fell through - it happens. They seem like good people who will go on to produce something in the RPG field, why wouldn't people wish them luck in that?

 

[Dannager]

Shouldn't WOTC have some sort of relationship with BioWare?

Okay, let's pause there for a moment.

BioWare is BioWare. There was a time, 15 years ago, when a partnership with the Dungeons & Dragons brand made a lot of sense. Those days are gone. BioWare makes industry-defining games now. They own two absolutely mammoth RPG properties (the Mass Effect universe and the Dragon Age universe) that are practically a license to print money at this point. They employ upwards of 1,000 people across four studios. Producing a D&D AAA epic roleplaying game wouldn't even make sense for BioWare, to say nothing of how utterly wasted they would be on something as technically trivial as a character creator (and I mean that in a very relative sense; a strong character creator is a technically challenging project for a small studio, but it is a blip on the Gantt chart for a titan like BioWare).

Why not seek a game company to make the tools,

Because a game company would be wasted on building a tabletop digital tool set. The challenge in building a character creator is not the sort of challenge that a game development studio seeks out. Their high-level developers would have nothing to do (there is no exposed set of systems to design; they're implementing someone else's). The teams responsible for textures, models, rigging, and animating would have nothing (meaningful) to do. There is no opportunity for sound design. There is no call for balance passes. There is nothing to write (in terms of fiction/scripts). It is a job for an engineering team with web app experience, and not a whole lot else. There is nothing about this project that requires the team responsible for it have the skill sets used specifically to develop video games.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I don't understand the ill will towards Trapdoor.

I don't find it all that mystifying myself. There's a miasma of free floating frustration surrounding the entire topic of D&D's digital suite. Trapdoor doesn't need to do much wrong to get slimed with it; a big setback or two, followed by an overly vague announcement, is enough.

(Of course, to explain isn't to justify: I too wish 'em all the luck in the world, and I sincerely hope they make something I can wind up using, because they seem like good people.)

 

[Nebulous]

From the front page news:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/conten...-DUNGEONSCAPE&postid=6450201#comments_6450201

I'll repost what I commented there.


Maybe I'm being dim, but i don't really understand the schism between what WotC wanted and what Trapdoor was trying to produce. If I understand correctly, and i might not, Trapdoor wanted a way for individuals to write adventures and then freely distribute them among fans using their software as the distribution vehicle. I assume that this could include maps, art, maybe even sound bytes, virtually any and everything someone would need to run an adventure.

As a side effect, this would dig sharply into WotC's ability to sell official adventures?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't find it all that mystifying myself. There's a miasma of free floating frustration surrounding the entire topic of D&D's digital suite. Trapdoor doesn't need to do much wrong to get slimed with it; a big setback or two, followed by an overly vague announcement, is enough.

(Of course, to explain isn't to justify: I too wish 'em all the luck in the world, and I sincerely hope they make something I can wind up using, because they seem like good people.)

I wish them luck, but since WotC took the high road of "We wont discus it" they should too... between making them "Theives in the night" and now saying they ""Saying you can write your stories, but not share them, is the wrong way to do it" I think they need a leason in professionalism...