Dragonlance WotC Teases Possible Dragonlance Video Game

WotC CEO Chris Cocks may have just teased a Dragonlance video game, amongst others. Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, he made reference to the over 100 D&D video games of the past, and indicated that 6 new D&D video games will be coming out in the next 5 years -- Dark Alliance and Baldur's Gate 3 being the first two.

Previous Dragonlance video games​

Dark Alliance centers around Drizzt Do-Urden. BG3 is set around the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. But he goes on to talk about others:

"In one game you might run a thieves guild and traverse the Thieves Highway of Waterdeep, in another you might marshal dragon hosts in the war-torn world of Krynn. In still another, you might explore the very origins of the D&D universe in real-time combat. The brand's richness is an enabler of tons of amazing game experiences so rather than a challenge, we see it as an amazing opportunity."

There have been several Dragonlance video games before. Cocks says that video games are "core to our brand blueprint and how we plan to expand our audience", pointing out that the video game market is an order of magnitude larger than the tabletop gaming market.

Read more at the link below.

Video games are "core to the future of Dungeons & Dragons"

The popularity of Dungeons & Dragons is unlikely to be news to members of the games industry. Aside from the fact that …

www.gamesindustry.biz

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Dark Alliance? Feels like so many other video games from the 90s--just the D&D IP for something not like D&D at all in a style that seems lower budget. Not to knock on those game, because some of them are good, but DA feels like a $9.95 game from the online store. It feels like a modern version of DragonStrike (the dragon flight sim game) or Blood&Magic, as far as capturing the feel of a D&D game.

I just wish they were remastering the first two Dark Alliance games to release with this. I spent many, many hours of couch co-op playing those two games on my PS2.

 

[Azzy]

So here I was excited to checkout The Dark Queen of Krynn and this was the game play view. What a let down!
Did people actually play this?

View attachment 138327

Yes, and we liked it. Uphill in the winter....

Seriously, though, that one screenshot doesn't really show you much. The combat was isomorphic, turn-based. The game (like the others in the Gold Box series) were awesome.

 

[AmerginLiath]

I’ve commented on numerous occasions how I half-expect WotC to use any Dragonlance project as their vector for mass combat and war rules (possibly even something akin to a domain system, inasmuch as most of Krynn’s major characters are lower level than in places like Faerun — 1st edition hard-coded that the Gods removed characters from the world if they reached 18th level — so Tier 3 and 4 characters could be leading armies instead of exploring dungeons). Especially with the setting’s narrative tropes (more of a comment on epic romantic fantasy than railroad adventure plots, but touché), you could more comfortably switch between those modes and scales of storytelling more easily than in standard 5e campaigns. Mentioning the property in this fashion here just makes me think of that again…

 

[Orius]

It will be interesting if we do start seeing other settings in D&D videogames - other than Planescape Torment, it's been all Forgotten Realms for a long time now, unless I'm forgetting something.

IIRC, DDO was Eberron.

 

[Keldryn]

It doesn't follow the rules system all to closely and also, because of Larians Origin system the party is a bit more wacky and illustrious than a typical D&D group.
A daywalking vampire spawn, a shar cleric with memory loss, a magic item draining chosen of Mystra in danger of exploding, a Githyanki soldier, a warlock and (optionally) you.

They sound a lot more like the party members from Planescape: Torment than the ones from BG and BG2 (in terms of not being a typical D&D group).

 

[Blue Orange]

So here I was excited to checkout The Dark Queen of Krynn and this was the game play view. What a let down!
Did people actually play this?

View attachment 138327

Yes, in 1992.

Look up its predecessors, Champions of Krynn and Death Knights of Krynn. Computers are a lot more powerful than they used to be.

 

[Bitbrain]

It would be very fun to see a brand like Total War trying to tackle something like a War of the Lance game. It won't happen because of their (very successful) partnership with Warhammer, but the concept I'm sure could be very successful.

A Dragonlance video game, if the world of Krynn is presented as D&D’s War Fantasy setting, would be so awesome!

EDIT. forgot to quote.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Yes, and we liked it. Uphill in the winter....

Seriously, though, that one screenshot doesn't really show you much. The combat was isomorphic, turn-based. The game (like the others in the Gold Box series) were awesome.

And the gold/silver box games were among the most accurate translations of the actual rules that have ever been done. In this case it was AD&D. The only other one that compares for accuracy is Temple of Elemental Evil (3.5). They are more accurate than Neverwinter Nights 1/2 (3.0/3.5), which were reasonably accurate themselves.

 

[Henry]

Honestly, I’m not sure I could play a Gold Box AD&D game any more - the graphics are a little TOO limited by comparison and some of the minor mechanical annoyances (for the sake of accuracy to source material) would probably bug me now, but I TOTALLY PLAYED THE HELL out of those games in my teens and twenties for days, when I had far more money than time.

After I beat them, I’d then used hex editors to cheat on characters in the gold box games all the time, because their character save file formats were stupidly simple to understand.

 

[Dire Bare]

The game is very well supported online. Frankly, I could never get far without dying. I should reinstall it....

Also, does Solasta not count as one of the games?

Solasta totally counts.

Nope.

Solasta is not one of the upcoming D&D games referenced in the OP. Solasta uses the D&D 5E rules, via the OGL (which, I didn't think you could do) . . . but is not a licensed D&D game.

That's not to say it's not a great D&D-style game . . . I've barely started the game, my computer isn't handling it well, but I've enjoyed my gameplay so far.