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

[Eejit]

The only problem would be the social column, but most games lack that anyway. I cannot think of any good way to emulate the D&D style of the entire party having social interactions.

The Storms of Zehir expansion for NWN2 did that about as well as is possible in a CRPG, though of course it's still more limited than TT play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How to make a good D&D videogame?

Spend an amount of money and time on writing it comparable to the amount you spend on its visuals. Preferably on an author that's worth the money.

And I don't mean "writing the code" for it. I mean the honest-to-god writing. Too many companies think they can get away with making anything--a movie, a TV show, a game--where the writing is an almost-unnoticeable fraction of the costs.

A game where making an awesome story gets as much attention as making an awesome image does...well, there's never a guarantee of quality in anything. But I feel pretty damned confident that the games produced would be WORLDS better, most of the time. I mean, how many video game writers--who have just as difficult a task as a screenplay writer, if not moreso--get paid anywhere near what most screenplay writers do? Even in comparison to the expected/typical gross for a "successful" videogame?

 

[Zaran]

For me, what a D&D game needs is the ability to make my characters from my tabletop game. I play video games to help me pass time between my trpgs

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Not an easy thing to do and one has to think of the priorities.
The only cRPG i've ever played that come close to DnD in both rule set and interface is probably ToEE. It had both the setting, the rule set and the mechanics of a core PnP game. However is it my favorite iteration of a DnD game? Surely not. Even though i play turn based games and love some of them (Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, the X-Com series), this particular version of DnD, though adequate and enjoyable, fell short of other contemporaries.

Baldur's Gate in example, with its simultaneous turn execution (pause and play) was for me far more entertaining and an overall better computer game then ToEE. Even beyond that, IWD though smaller and weaker in the grand story line and character interactions, was setting, artwork and atmosphere wise better then BG. Especially the fact that you created your entire party (yes i know you could do this in BG as well by starting a MP game, but it just "felt wrong" doing it).

NWN on the other hand, did extremely well in its modular design, which allowed for many user custom based adventures/modules.

So how to proceed in making the best "faithful" version of DnD? I'd say depends on what you want to achieve with it. If it was purely up to me, i'd either go the BG way or the X-Com/JA2 way. Depending on the "elegance" of the execution. But either way, i would try to stay as true to the basic rule set as possible. I actually adored the high lethality of the BG1 and i think it represented 2E fairly well.

 

[RotGrub]

I think most developers of virtually all products aim to maximize profits and/or market share. If as you say making a D&D video game true to the D&D rules would be making the game less profitable then it sounds like a bad business decision to stay true to the rules regardless of how much doing so would cause purists to nerdgasm.

Yes, they would have to be willing to make less money. Sadly, the D&D licence isn't open enough for smaller game companies or indie developers.

Taking a look back at SSI's gold box games and you begin to realize that the idea of the D&D video game was all new. They had no reason not to create a turn based game that worked just like D&D. Now, there are too many competing interests.

 

[Lanliss]

Not an easy thing to do and one has to think of the priorities.
The only cRPG i've ever played that come close to DnD in both rule set and interface is probably ToEE. It had both the setting, the rule set and the mechanics of a core PnP game. However is it my favorite iteration of a DnD game? Surely not. Even though i play turn based games and love some of them (Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, the X-Com series), this particular version of DnD, though adequate and enjoyable, fell short of other contemporaries.

Baldur's Gate in example, with its simultaneous turn execution (pause and play) was for me far more entertaining and an overall better computer game then ToEE. Even beyond that, IWD though smaller and weaker in the grand story line and character interactions, was setting, artwork and atmosphere wise better then BG. Especially the fact that you created your entire party (yes i know you could do this in BG as well by starting a MP game, but it just "felt wrong" doing it).

NWN on the other hand, did extremely well in its modular design, which allowed for many user custom based adventures/modules.

So how to proceed in making the best "faithful" version of DnD? I'd say depends on what you want to achieve with it. If it was purely up to me, i'd either go the BG way or the X-Com/JA2 way. Depending on the "elegance" of the execution. But either way, i would try to stay as true to the basic rule set as possible. I actually adored the high lethality of the BG1 and i think it represented 2E fairly well.

I think what might work, if a bit long winded, would be to have the party elect a Speaker at the beginning of a social encounter (though the choice could sometimes be made for them. When only one of them speaks the language of an NPC for example.) After electing the speaker, they are given a multitude of choices, on which the Speaker can confer with the party for which is the right choice for them, and the ease of getting that choice to work depends on the Speaker's charisma. There will also have to be "always succeeds" choices, like "We will help you for free", in case the party has no high charisma PCs. Of course, if it is a game being run by a DM, the DM can just choose how the NPC reacts to what they say.