Game News Baldur's Gate and NWN 3 are coming...

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Personally, I'd say that the core essence of fail in 4 ed is that it's just fightfightfight with the Planes, alignments and skills having sodomized to death.

 

[FalloutBR]

"Atari then moved on to its own internal brands, such as the Dungeons & Dragons franchise Neverwinter Nights and the long-dormant Baldur's Gate. Developed by BioWare and published by then-D&D rights holder Interplay, the 1998 original Baldur's Gate is considered one of the best role-playing games of all time. Former Interplay staffers at Obsidian Entertainment developed Neverwinter Nights 2 using technology created by BioWare, which made the original Neverwinter Nights. It is unclear who might develop the new Baldur's Gate; reps for Obsidian, which just released the latest NWN2 expansion, declined to comment. "

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6201815.htm ... es;title;1

Please, let the whole financial crisis take Atari down before they give birth to the first person ARPG monstrosity that's going to be BG3...

 

[Shannow]

- Drizz't, Cattie-Brie, the Seven Sisters, Shandril Shessair, Cadderly and the Harpers are all dead. (Okay, so that one is just hopeful speculation.)

- Lathander was actually Amaunator all along, which may have taken his priests and worshippers slightly by surprise since, aside from having the sun as their symbol, the two have zero in common.

Drizzt lives. Bruenor and Catti-Brie are dead. Dunno about the rest.

Didn't I release Amaunator to oblivion in BG2?

Anyway: I agree with Demonking. 4th ed isn't D&D anymore. There were some things that sounded idiotic but also some stuff that might not be bad. Just very different from D&D.
And a setting that had giant space hamsters can live with bear necros
http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm

 

[mondblut]

Fallout meets DnD LOL.

Holy shit...

Old news. It is called "Dark Sun" :D

 

[Mic Turner]

Meh... couldn't they just leave the FO die from boredom and just focus on Eberron?

 

[doctor_kaz]

D&D 4E sounds like shit to play PnP, but it sounds like it might make for an OK CRPG. 3E was the best rules set but the system is butchered so badly for RTwP computer games that it hardly matters.

 

[Disconnected]

4E is pretty fun actually. Since the first edition of AD&D, the game shifted focus somewhat from being rules of living room dungeon crawling, to being a role playing/simulation game. 4E undid that in a major way.

It's not a terrible loss though. Both the role playing & simulation aspects of D&D always sucked, so in a way, less is more.

Where 4E really fucks up is:

Too much secondary shit going on in combats. Large (10+ figs, depending on levels) encounters are a pain in the ass to keep track of.

Official settings incorporated directly into the core rules. This is pretty fucking bad. A/D&D were fantasy. 3E was high fantasy. This time, it's FR or Fuck Off.

But otherwise it's pretty good. If we hadn't sold our collective soles to AD&D2ed, I'd probably go for 4E. The rules, while unlike anything previously D&D, are logical, consistent and perfectly simple. Gameplay is fast & uncomplicated (assuming small encounters), and sort of incorporates all of the best elements of AD&D and Hero Quest. If you're looking for a living room crawler, 4E is about as good as it gets (to my admittedly less than perfect knowledge).

If you're looking for a solid role playing framework though, 4E is even more full of fail than previous editions.

 

[hiver]

Im glad DnD isnt about role playing anymore.

Maybe we could finally have a system that is.

 

[JarlFrank]

- Drizz't, Cattie-Brie, the Seven Sisters, Shandril Shessair, Cadderly and the Harpers are all dead. (Okay, so that one is just hopeful speculation.)

- Lathander was actually Amaunator all along, which may have taken his priests and worshippers slightly by surprise since, aside from having the sun as their symbol, the two have zero in common.

Didn't I release Amaunator to oblivion in BG2?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaunator

Gamewise, he is considered to be a deceased deity.

Yeah, he should be dead...

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Care to elaborate?

I am not into the details, just that "the most notable of which include the death of the goddess Mystra and her Weave, and the subsequent Spellplague. The Spellplague is a phenomenon which occurs with the decomposition of the Weave, and either kills or drives spellcasters mad. In addition, the Spellplague affects the environment and the natural world, causing calamitous events, including giant statues coming to life and rampaging, violent earthquakes, the corruption of various beings into monsters, and the collapsing of some regions of the Underdark."

If you do not want to move a copy from inventory and so giving Hasbro money just look for a torrent of the books if you want to see how they turned FR into a Eberron clone (at least I read people saying that about now the new FR are like).

It's okay, though, the Sword Coast stayed the same!

 

[Disconnected]

Im glad DnD isnt about role playing anymore.

It was always a combat game first. AD&D and later editions just added (mostly inadequate and flawed) RP/sim rules. 4E almost entirely ignores the RP/sim dimension.

Maybe we could finally have a system that is.

I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple of hundred published & fairly polished systems/frameworks for RP'ing, ranging from hardcore simulation'ist systems to guides for Freeform gaming (if you don't know what that is, I envy your ignorance). If you're not just bitching about D&D, try ranting a bit about what you want of a system. I know the Codex is mostly cRPGers, but I'm reasonably confident there's a broad enough selection of PnP'ers here to at least point you in the right direction.

 

[Shannow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaunator

Gamewise, he is considered to be a deceased deity.

Yeah, he should be dead...

After the party returns the depleted rod, Amaunator and his followers, renewed in their faith, depart.

I'm pretty sure they don't just "depart", but finally find an end to their existence.
Gamebanshee only mentions the reward and I'm not interested enough to look for another walkthrough. OMG, BG2 is not canon!!!!

And who the fuck wrote this:

Magic in all its forms was under the exclusive control of Mystryl, and Amaunator had no lawful right to interfere in any way, even when a magical catastrophe, such as Netheril’s fall, was in the process of occurring.

Can you sound any more like a pompous Japanese trying to sound intelligent in English?

 

[Lurkar]

The biggest gripe with Forgotten Realms before 4e was the number of shitty books that were supposed to be canon.

Wizards decided to answer this in 4e by giving almost zero details for the actual setting, and instead mandating that you either buy the shitty books or subscribe to their shitty online magazines. Seriously, the campaign setting book has an adventure that takes up a good 10-20% of the entire book and it doesn't even happen in the setting.

I wouldn't call it an Eberron clone. I LIKE Eberron. Eberron was made for a specific style of setting. So far, everything 4e has touched isn't styled to BE a setting in the first place - it's a series of battle maps for miniatures combat.

 

[Lurkar]

Im glad DnD isnt about role playing anymore.

It was always a combat game first. AD&D and later editions just added (mostly inadequate and flawed) RP/sim rules. 4E almost entirely ignores the RP/sim dimension

No, it's not. D&D started as a dungeon crawl game where combat was a very small portion of what you did. That's why thieves had shit all to do in combat; combat wasn't the focus. Monsters were traps. In 2e, it introduced the idea of using D&D to tell a story, but it still wasn't in any way combat based. The GAMES might've been, but killing monsters was never supposed to be where you got the brunt of your experience from, not until 3e. Instead, you were given experience pre-2e based on how much loot you grabbed. And in 2e, you got experience based not on combat, but on succeeding in class-related activities; so you'd get experience for the thief disarming traps. 3e is what pushed it towards being more combat based, but even then, it wasn't on purpose; the idea was to make all classes decent at combat, and the side effect was on emphasizing away from the non-combat related stuff. And now 4e has completely warped it into being only about combat; not even the faintest sense of exploration OR story remains. The traps are now monsters.

 

[Disconnected]

No, it's not. D&D started as a dungeon crawl game where combat was a very small portion of what you did. That's why thieves had shit all to do in combat; combat wasn't the focus. Monsters were traps.

Right you are. I didn't mean to equate dungeon crawlers with skirmish games, but.. Yeah, I suck.

3e is what pushed it towards being more combat based, but even then, it wasn't on purpose; the idea was to make all classes decent at combat, and the side effect was on emphasizing away from the non-combat related stuff.

I never played it enough to realise that.

And now 4e has completely warped it into being only about combat; not even the faintest sense of exploration OR story remains. The traps are now monsters.

Evidently I didn't play it enough to realise that either. We only played the first adventure (can't even remember what it's called right now), but I got the impression it's a decent crawler. It's a decent skirmish game at any rate.

I guess I'll just have to feel extra content to be stuck in AD&D2ed land, since I'm apparently not clever enough to see through the failings of D&D versions without investing a massive effort in each

 

[Insane Psychic]

Having played it 6 or 7 times, I'd say 4th edition is okay for a beer and pretzel game. Although I agree with the fact that larger encounters become next to unmanageable. The new FR setting is pure shite though. Don't touch that thing with a 10-foot pole.

 

[hiver]

Good riddance to it and its retarded alignment system i say.
Or its implementation, however you prefer best.

preemptively:
No! PsT gave some fun in alignment changes because it was a good game, not because of that retarded system.

 

[Xor]

They replaced the flawed 3E alignment system with one even more retarded. There's nothing positive about that.

 

[DemonKing]

They replaced the flawed 3E alignment system with one even more retarded. There's nothing positive about that.

Yep - now you can either be "EVIL" or "CHAOTIC EVIL" - it's like they wanted to get rid of the whole Law/Neutral/Chaos grid but couldn't bring themselves to drop something that sounds so damn cool as "Chaotic evil" does...

 

[LittleJoe]

Baldur's Gate and NWN 3 are coming...

NWN 3 : Yeah, quite possibly.

BG 3 : Nah, don't think so.

On the other hand...

Bethesda has made a buck out of an old franchise(the fallout series).

Maybe those guys at Atari will finally realise that they're sitting on a potential goldmine..

BALDURS GATE 3 In all new SHINY First person perspective!

Now you can see the FEAR in the orc's eyes!

 

[Serus]

Im glad DnD isnt about role playing anymore.

It was always a combat game first. AD&D and later editions just added (mostly inadequate and flawed) RP/sim rules. 4E almost entirely ignores the RP/sim dimension.

Maybe we could finally have a system that is.

I'm pretty sure there's at least a couple of hundred published & fairly polished systems/frameworks for RP'ing, ranging from hardcore simulation'ist systems to guides for Freeform gaming (if you don't know what that is, I envy your ignorance). If you're not just bitching about D&D, try ranting a bit about what you want of a system. I know the Codex is mostly cRPGers, but I'm reasonably confident there's a broad enough selection of PnP'ers here to at least point you in the right direction.

I dont understand people insisting on playing D&D, there are so many better PnP RPGs, really some people dont want to realise that we no longer live in the 70s or 80s and there are hundreds of PnP RPG systems to choose from.

 

[Volourn]

"there are so many better PnP RPGs"

No.

 

[MetalCraze]

NWN3? Well considering that Neverwinter is going to be destroyed by a magical catastrophe 11 years after SoZ just like 99% percent of everything good in the setting - we might have our trilogy with an ending! An ending to the most bland dnd game series of 21th century.

 

[hiver]

With finally i meant a system that would replace DnD in mass market game industry.
Not the actual number of systems that are available.

 

[Drakron]

And who the fuck wrote this:

Magic in all its forms was under the exclusive control of Mystryl, and Amaunator had no lawful right to interfere in any way, even when a magical catastrophe, such as Netheril’s fall, was in the process of occurring.

Can you sound any more like a pompous Japanese trying to sound intelligent in English?

That bit is about a part of the end of Netheril, Amaunator was a major deity of the Netheril and after the collapse he simply vanished as other deities take up his profolio.

One of the reasons Amaunator died was he was blamed from not preventing the disaster and pretty much lost all his followers in the aftermath.

As Mystryl was the original Goddess of Magic, she died and was replaced by Mystra, 4ed is the THIRD TIME they kill the Goddess of Magic ... even if Mystryl was not "killed" for a edition change and was just flavor.