Sword Coast Legends: Campaign Creation Tools

For those curious about the campaign creation tools in Sword Coast Legends, here's a long (nearly an hour) video delving into them. It features Design Director Tim Schwalk and Community Manager Ash Sevilla.

[video=youtube;PfJjKsYvQZA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfJjKsYvQZA&feature=youtu.be[/video]
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[TheSwartz]

The more I see of SCL, the less impressive it gets. Exceedingly limited creation tools, seemingly (but not proven) limited-to-no modding ability, lacking the full range of core 5e content...

I'm feelin ya. As someone who has ardently been defending this game and is still really looking forward to it, it's getting harder and harder.

I'm afraid that the release on consoles is more revealing than we were led to believe. This is looking more and more like a very dumbed down version of what many of us were hoping for much more than their hyperbole would make you think otherwise.

I'm still hopeful that this will still be a fun game at least, but it's starting to get hard.

 

[Quickleaf]

Video highlights

Anybody watched the full video? I'm just wondering if there's a breakdown of the highlights for those of us who don't watch many videos and definitely don't want to watch a whole hour.

I'm really curious how Sword Coast Legends turns out, considering how much the 2015 "brand" seems to be relying on it.

I just watched it, here were the highlights:

Sword Coast Legends - Dungeon Building - Sewers of Daggerford 58:21
Design Director Tim Schwalk and Community Manager Ash Sevilla.

They plan on making this an ongoing series, focusing on converting a scenario from Ash’s own face-to-face 3.5e game.

Personally, I didn’t like their approach - too DM vs. player, too hack'n'slash, e.g. “traps without reason”, “a table you can search for”, not much story content - so beware of my bias.

They also acknowledge community desire for tile-by-tile map creation, and state that is something they’re looking into after launch. It is one of the things they “didn’t have time for" but want to implement tile-by-tile map creation down the line.

Instead the game launches with random dungeons with parameters you can change to shape the dungeon, and once you’re happy with a dungeon you can save it. Size & Complexity are among those parameters. Size determines basic number of tiles. Complexity determines number of branches and amount of looping. Loading up each (medium complexity) random dungeon floor took about 6 seconds on loading screen.

There are outdoor zones and transitional areas.

Placeable objects can be given custom text descriptions that PCs can click on. They can also be set to be discovered at a certain search DC. Only one description per object. Objects cannot be scaled.

During dungeon building you can make the scenario as hard or easy as you like.

Monsters can be customized. Tactics appear to be built-in according to monster type - example was archers vs. snipers, archers would flee if approached in melee, while snipers would hold elevated position even if approached in melee.

Gave an NPC some words to say - but no example of dialogue options to interact with him. In REAL-TIME, you can turn NPCs hostile (or turn monsters friendly).

You cannot create cut-scenes.

Dungeon-sharing is a feature. They are looking into balance issues so that campaigns can be shared across groups without TPKs and to accommodate DMs rewarding players.

Boss monster was created with +6 levels higher than PCs, and they implied that he will be killable at that level advantage, but a TPK is possible. Suggested the DM would need to manage the combat in REAL-TIME for balance.

Emphasized that this was a working build, so there were bugs that have since been ironed out since they are moving so fast.

Next week: more in-depth in customization & more on quests / quest chains.

Next next week: run some players thru the dungeon.