D&D 5E How To Make a Good D&D Videogame

[Parmandur]

Oh, man, I've wanted an epic fantasy Crusader Kings style game for a while, that would be so sweet.



One great example of a tabletop RPG property bring put into a PC game is King of Dragon Pass; pretty much nothing of RuneQuest rules in there, but brilliant use of setting.



I think the best way to do D&D video games would be to follow a similar tactic as they are doing with the board game line: not copying the RPG as such, but using the settings and tropes in another genre.



Until such a time as Hasbro buys Ubisoft (or Ubisoft buys Hasbro), ot some other AAA company, there will not be a AAA D&D game. Nobody who doesn't own the IP is going to sink the money into it.

 

[iserith]

I'd like to see an X-Com approach taken with an established D&D setting. For example, manage a fledgling "Adventurers' Guild" on the outskirts of Luskan. Venture into the ruined city with your squad, play a randomly-generated turn-based mission, then return to your guild and invest your treasure into new recruits, gear, healing, feat training, extensions to your guild HQ, and so on.

A lot like the new Mordheim game, basically. But D&D.

Check out Darkest Dungeon.

 

[iserith]

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is on sale for 33% off right now and is amazing. http://store.steampowered.com/app/373420/

Thanks, bought it last night and installed it. Will try it out this weekend!

 

[iserith]

It depends which ones you already have, if any. Baldur's Gate (40% off) and BG2, probably the extended editions which work best with modern PCs, are very good and have some good mods available that are easy to install. Both Kotor games are available too, and they're among the best cRPGs to use a D20 system engine. I'd also suggest having a look on GOG, who not only have most of the same games but also have the old Gold Box games and Plnaescape: Torment.

Thanks. I've played almost no video games, just some MMOs in the early- to mid-2000s - shocking for a gamer, I know. I'm more of a tabletop enthusiast. So I'll check them out.

 

[Will Doyle]

Check out Darkest Dungeon.

Yeah, I love darkest dungeon, and it definitely scratches that same itch. I prefer combat on a tile map though.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, I love darkest dungeon, and it definitely scratches that same itch. I prefer combat on a tile map though.

As an aside, what are you writing for 5e these days? Glitterdust was in my view the single best adventure ever written for D&D 4e. Ran it several times for a few groups.

 

[SkidAce]

I'd like to see an X-Com approach taken with an established D&D setting. For example, manage a fledgling "Adventurers' Guild" on the outskirts of Luskan. Venture into the ruined city with your squad, play a randomly-generated turn-based mission, then return to your guild and invest your treasure into new recruits, gear, healing, feat training, extensions to your guild HQ, and so on.

A lot like the new Mordheim game, basically. But D&D.

This would be fantastic.

 

[Will Doyle]

As an aside, what are you writing for 5e these days? Glitterdust was in my view the single best adventure ever written for D&D 4e. Ran it several times for a few groups.

Thanks, that means a lot!

Over the last year or so I've written a few expeditions for the Adventurers League. My latest one is the upcoming Epic for season 4, which is running at Winter Fantasy.

 

[seebs]

51% is a low score for a video game review. Anything under 70% I probably would not buy.

This is a non-sequitur. "51% of reviews are positive" is not a "score" in the sense that you're talking about. That said, it's still pretty low as a percentage of users who are positive about it.

But there's games I've liked that only 50-60% of players were positive about. Whereas an actual review score of 50-60% is pretty much always horrible.

 

[Reinhart]

[MENTION=6701872]AaronOfBarbaria[/MENTION]: The problem is that Sword Coast Legends isn't terrible. Because in this day and age, truly terrible games aren't avoided. Instead they're spectacles that generate reddit discussions and ridiculous videos on twitch. Sword Coast Legends is just somewhat mediocre and not what many players wanted. It's marketing hyped a lot of players up and then disappointed many of them.

Of course, I understand what you're saying. It would make sense if not for the facts. We're simply not living in the market reality you think we are. The vast majority of games on Steam have a majority of positive reviews. In fact, 50% of Steam games have an 80% or better rating. By the time you drop to a 66% rating you're worse than 75% of Steam games. That's not from a random sample, that's from an API census that includes even those mediocre games and apps that less than 1,000 people play. And in these days of the "indie apocalypse" those cheaper wannabe garage games are making up a larger and larger share of that population.

So it just doesn't add up. There aren't that many bad games the people overlook. In fact, I've found the opposite to be true: Games that people overlook tend to have mostly glowing reviews from the few hundred people who actually care about them. I suspect many of them may seem over-rated to people like you and me though. It just takes an extraordinarily mediocre game to not get at least a "mostly positive" review on Steam.