Beamdog working on a new D&D CRPG (cancelled)

[ga♥]

Guys, it's probably just the setting. There are already somewhat crappy VGS based in the Forgotten Realms... so nothing to be worried about.

And I would gladly welcome some love, of any quality, to the setting!

 

[Roguey]

Or he's just reacting to the rumors of a new Planescape game by putting up a "Hire me, I know stuff" sign.

Adam Heine begging for a job there as well.

 

[LESS T_T]

Still waiting for Guido.

 

[Infinitron]

Hah! http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/11/a-note-about-that-planescape-concept-art.html

A Note About That Planescape Concept Art



A note from Trent on the Planescape concept art going around:

The Beamdog creative and art teams often explore concepts, pitches, and designs touching on different Dungeons & Dragons and unique settings. This was the case of the Planescape: Unraveled character concepts shown in the recently released STORYHIVE Next Level documentary.

At any given time, there are a few of these exploration projects happening in different parts of the studio. They’re typically not shared outside of the company as they can be interpreted as a new project.

We do these exploration projects as a way to find new ways to bring different ideas and creative styles to projects we’re working on. We’ve found it’s a great way to let the creative team stretch themselves and expand their skills. Occasionally, we return to these explorative projects and incorporate them into other things we’re working on.

Does this mean a new Planescape game is currently in the works at at Beamdog? Afraid not, the team is hard at work on other projects at this time. Planescape is an amazing setting that we enjoyed exploring as a part of developing Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition and we’d love to visit it again in the future. Only the Lady of Pain knows if that’ll happen, and she’s not sharing.

 

[Fairfax]

 

[Telengard]

I find that unlikely, given that Planescape sold pretty poorly.

I don't think the sales figures were made public. The reason WotC killed Planescape (along with Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Birthright, Ravenloft, Mystara and others) wasn't because it sold poorly. They thought TSR made too many settings and were cannibalizing their own sales. They decided to focus on FR, and only saved Greyhawk because it was a personal favourite of Peter Adkinson.

They never made the sales public, but there have been a lot of interviews over the years, largely thanks to fans of the video game and not the p&p material. Which interviews, to summarize, are that the initial box set sold well and was met with great critical reception. However, sales of the ancillary products were not good, and critical reception plummeted like a stone once the new shine of the setting wore off. And that in turn leads to the Planescape setting not just being ended and retconned out of existence; it alone was sealed up in the vault and even third-party attempts to revive it were always unwelcome.

In all likelihood, without the cult status of the video game, the Planescape setting would probably have long since become one of those forgotten chapters of gaming history. Like that period when TSR was selling the All My Children rpg*.

Spoiler

* That's rpg in today's terms.

 

[Fairfax]

Which interviews, to summarize, are that the initial box set sold well and was met with great critical reception. However, sales of the ancillary products were not good,

Any source on that?

and critical reception plummeted like a stone once the new shine of the setting wore off.

That's not true. Many (if not most) Planescape books were well-received, especially the boxed sets.

And that in turn leads to the Planescape setting not just being ended and retconned out of existence; it alone was sealed up in the vault and even third-party attempts to revive it were always unwelcome.

That's not why it was killed (along with all the other settings I mentioned). This book has a first hand account by Peter Adkison (WotC's founder and CEO at the time), and he's the one who said it was because of cannibalization and TSR having too many product lines. The book also explains why TSR went under. It wasn't because low PnP sales, it was because Lorraine Williams (CEO) went after Magic with Dragon Dice, which bombed hard and was expensive to make, and went crazy with the hardcover novels just because some of them sold well. TSR published 12 hardcover novels in 1996 alone, but they all bombed, so TSR ended up owing $12.5 million to the publisher from unsold copies. At that point they couldn't even pay their printer, which sued them and won. He then took over TSR's office and revenue to get paid. The book even mentions that sales were actually high, but TSR owed too much money and was being sued by a bunch of people, so in 1997 the partners sold the company to WotC.

 

[Lilura]

Does this mean a new Planescape game is currently in the works at at Beamdog? Afraid not, the team is hard at work on other projects at this time. Planescape is an amazing setting that we enjoyed exploring as a part of developing Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition and we’d love to visit it again in the future. Only the Lady of Pain knows if that’ll happen, and she’s not sharing.

In regards to this, they are working on the 2.5 patch for their EEs/SoD. Apparently, there will be a couple of content changes such as an adjustment on Mizhena and putting their Shaman class into IWD:EE. So yeah, nothing newsworthy until they announce their new project.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The last few products for the Planescape setting were published in 1998 under the company name Wizards of the Coast, i.e. after TSR went bankrupt in 1997 and was acquired by WotC. It's true that Planescape didn't survive the great retrenchment that occurred shortly after bankruptcy, but not much did.

 

[Telengard]

For the citations, the reviews for Planescape's later material are there for anyone to see. But also I'm old, so I watched those review scores go down in real time. Sales were bad enough locally that my one and only local hobby store didn't even stock Planescape besides the box set, and they stocked Aria RPG, for God's sake. And finally, D&D not wanting to even rent the Planescape license, that used to be just stories told amongst the workers in the biz, but recently WotC/Hasbro did say that with the success of the Torment Kickstarter they would be open to licensing a Plansecape project again. You know, thus confirming that they weren't open to it before.

Common complaints about Planescape from D&D fans and reviewers (yes, all these can be found amongst reviewers):

• Starts out fresh, but gets hokey fast
• Just not as fun as bashing orcs
• Is just a giant excuse for philosophy majors to argue endlessly about nothing, so the game constantly stops while the philosophy majors argue (I experienced this one myself)
• The lingo is fun at first, but gets old fast
• Nothing you do there matters, because nothing there is permanent
• Only interesting if you care enough to study all the lore, otherwise it just all falls flat
• (And last but certainly not least) Too weird!

I've played a lot of D&D with a lot of different people over the decades, and I never met anyone who actually played the p&p version outside of a group I was in (as in I bought all the stuff and got them to play it after much cajoling). Lots of people I've met have played the video game, though.

 

[Cael]

For the citations, the reviews for Planescape's later material are there for anyone to see. But also I'm old, so I watched those review scores go down in real time. Sales were bad enough locally that my one and only local hobby store didn't even stock Planescape besides the box set, and they stocked Aria RPG, for God's sake. And finally, D&D not wanting to even rent the Planescape license, that used to be just stories told amongst the workers in the biz, but recently WotC/Hasbro did say that with the success of the Torment Kickstarter they would be open to licensing a Plansecape project again. You know, thus confirming that they weren't open to it before.

Common complaints about Planescape from D&D fans and reviewers (yes, all these can be found amongst reviewers):

• Starts out fresh, but gets hokey fast
• Just not as fun as bashing orcs
• Is just a giant excuse for philosophy majors to argue endlessly about nothing, so the game constantly stops while the philosophy majors argue (I experienced this one myself)
• The lingo is fun at first, but gets old fast
• Nothing you do there matters, because nothing there is permanent
• Only interesting if you care enough to study all the lore, otherwise it just all falls flat
• (And last but certainly not least) Too weird!

I've played a lot of D&D with a lot of different people over the decades, and I never met anyone who actually played the p&p version outside of a group I was in (as in I bought all the stuff and got them to play it after much cajoling). Lots of people I've met have played the video game, though.

Well, it would give Beamdog their perfect excuse to have a bisexual tranny half-squidhead half-gith maltreated misunderstood child of lurve between two mortal enemies in the game. Whose entire personality is "woe is me, I am so oppressed!"

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

For the citations, the reviews for Planescape's later material are there for anyone to see. But also I'm old, so I watched those review scores go down in real time. Sales were bad enough locally that my one and only local hobby store didn't even stock Planescape besides the box set, and they stocked Aria RPG, for God's sake. And finally, D&D not wanting to even rent the Planescape license, that used to be just stories told amongst the workers in the biz, but recently WotC/Hasbro did say that with the success of the Torment Kickstarter they would be open to licensing a Plansecape project again. You know, thus confirming that they weren't open to it before.

Common complaints about Planescape from D&D fans and reviewers (yes, all these can be found amongst reviewers):

• Starts out fresh, but gets hokey fast
• Just not as fun as bashing orcs
• Is just a giant excuse for philosophy majors to argue endlessly about nothing, so the game constantly stops while the philosophy majors argue (I experienced this one myself)
• The lingo is fun at first, but gets old fast
• Nothing you do there matters, because nothing there is permanent
• Only interesting if you care enough to study all the lore, otherwise it just all falls flat
• (And last but certainly not least) Too weird!

I've played a lot of D&D with a lot of different people over the decades, and I never met anyone who actually played the p&p version outside of a group I was in (as in I bought all the stuff and got them to play it after much cajoling). Lots of people I've met have played the video game, though.

We played a pretty good Planescape campaign when I was in college, but the DM was very clever about shutting down the freshman level philosophy nonsense. He had some house rules like if we got too into philosophy 101, whoever participated would be afflicted with an existential crisis status ailment that reduced most their stats until they did something decisive (usually it meant getting into a few fights or whatever was necessary to move things along). The longer the debate, the worse the affliction. If he was prepared in advance he’d just tell us our nihilism had shifted the balance of the planes and we were slipping into the abyss but that only happened a couple of times.

But yeah, it probably would have sucked if we hadn’t had a very excellent, insanely committed DM. Planescape almost has too much freedom, so you really need the right DM and a very imaginative party to make it work.

 

[LESS T_T]

Whatever that unannounced projects are:

 

[Fairfax]

The last few products for the Planescape setting were published in 1998 under the company name Wizards of the Coast, i.e. after TSR went bankrupt in 1997 and was acquired by WotC. It's true that Planescape didn't survive the great retrenchment that occurred shortly after bankruptcy, but not much did.

WotC actually kept using the TSR brand until the end of 1999. In 2000 they retired the brand and logo, but kept the TSR codes for the last AD&D products. And yes, the settings weren't immediately killed off. Planescape, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Al-Qadim and Birthright all had new releases in 1998. In 1999 I think all books had generic settings, and in 2000 they released the last accessories and adventures for Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Birthright in AD&D. The last adventure was Die Vecna Die!, a Greyhawk-Planescape-Ravenloft crossover that was meant to end AD&D and try to bring people over to the 3rd edition.

For the citations, the reviews for Planescape's later material are there for anyone to see. But also I'm old, so I watched those review scores go down in real time. Sales were bad enough locally that my one and only local hobby store didn't even stock Planescape besides the box set, and they stocked Aria RPG, for God's sake.

There are very few reviews from the period out there, and critical reception by fans was positive for most Planescape products. They did well enough The last Planescape adventure books, Dead Gods and Tales of the Infinite Staircase, were very well-received and are major fan favourites.

And finally, D&D not wanting to even rent the Planescape license, that used to be just stories told amongst the workers in the biz, but recently WotC/Hasbro did say that with the success of the Torment Kickstarter they would be open to licensing a Plansecape project again. You know, thus confirming that they weren't open to it before.

Wrong. Fargo and Colin said WotC wasn't open to licensing Planescape when they asked. When asked for comment, WotC denied it and said they were open to licensing Planescape:

The WOTC guys didn't say there was no offer:

It turns out, however, Wizards of the Coast wasn't against the idea of licensing Planescape at all - or so it told me.

"We would absolutely consider licensing out Planescape, or any of our other great D&D IPs, if we were approached with a proposal," Wizards of the Coast told us through its presumably bushy beard.

"We often get proposals and are actively pursuing opportunities to make great digital D&D experiences.

"Brian [Fargo] suggested Baldur's Gate 3 had proven difficult in the past before we regained our digital rights, so, that probably didn't help the situation."

The last quote is just the guy being polite. He's basically saying "we are willing to license Planescape, we just don't want to do business with him". This is because Fargo was Interplay's CEO when Hasbro sued them for unpaid royalties for the first time.

The weird part is that they said Fargo himself brought up the BG3 situation, but that only happened after Fargo left the company. It's possible he fucked that up by not explaining the story correctly and getting the blame for no reason.

Common complaints about Planescape from D&D fans and reviewers (yes, all these can be found amongst reviewers):

• Starts out fresh, but gets hokey fast
• Just not as fun as bashing orcs
• Is just a giant excuse for philosophy majors to argue endlessly about nothing, so the game constantly stops while the philosophy majors argue (I experienced this one myself)
• The lingo is fun at first, but gets old fast
• Nothing you do there matters, because nothing there is permanent
• Only interesting if you care enough to study all the lore, otherwise it just all falls flat
• (And last but certainly not least) Too weird!

I've played a lot of D&D with a lot of different people over the decades, and I never met anyone who actually played the p&p version outside of a group I was in (as in I bought all the stuff and got them to play it after much cajoling). Lots of people I've met have played the video game, though.

These criticisms exist, and it seems your friends didn't like it, but how is that evidence that Planescape books were poorly received and didn't sell? Not even WotC knew how each product sold because of how terrible TSR was at keeping records, it's one of the reasons why they went with a clean slate as soon as possible.

 

[Telengard]

The last few products for the Planescape setting were published in 1998 under the company name Wizards of the Coast, i.e. after TSR went bankrupt in 1997 and was acquired by WotC. It's true that Planescape didn't survive the great retrenchment that occurred shortly after bankruptcy, but not much did.

WotC actually kept using the TSR brand until the end of 1999. In 2000 they retired the brand and logo, but kept the TSR codes for the last AD&D products. And yes, the settings weren't immediately killed off. Planescape, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Al-Qadim and Birthright all had new releases in 1998. In 1999 I think all books had generic settings, and in 2000 they released the last accessories and adventures for Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Birthright in AD&D. The last adventure was Die Vecna Die!, a Greyhawk-Planescape-Ravenloft crossover that was meant to end AD&D and try to bring people over to the 3rd edition.

Do you ever wonder why for every edition they eventually always dredge up and redo Ravenloft and Dark Sun, but they never do Planescape? ...It is a mystery why that's the only actually dead world, isn't it? Not to mention, the only world that has been retconned out of existence.

For the citations, the reviews for Planescape's later material are there for anyone to see. But also I'm old, so I watched those review scores go down in real time. Sales were bad enough locally that my one and only local hobby store didn't even stock Planescape besides the box set, and they stocked Aria RPG, for God's sake.

There are very few reviews from the period out there, and critical reception by fans was positive for most Planescape products. They did well enough The last Planescape adventure books, Dead Gods and Tales of the Infinite Staircase, were very well-received and are major fan favourites.

There were plenty of reviews at the time. Sure, it's mostly paper reviews, 'cause dial-up, so you have to go to your library or find scans. But there's also plenty of retrospectives around from old hands that will tell you much the same as me, many citing those same reviews. 'Cause it's not like anything I said is in any way new information. Plus, when I say my local hobby store wouldn't stock the material, I mean I asked the owner why he wasn't stocking it, because I wanted to buy it. And he told me it was selling so bad it wasn't worth occupying shelf space. (But I could special order it, if I wanted.)

And finally, D&D not wanting to even rent the Planescape license, that used to be just stories told amongst the workers in the biz, but recently WotC/Hasbro did say that with the success of the Torment Kickstarter they would be open to licensing a Plansecape project again. You know, thus confirming that they weren't open to it before.

Wrong. Fargo and Colin said WotC wasn't open to licensing Planescape when they asked. When asked for comment, WotC denied it and said they were open to licensing Planescape:

The WOTC guys didn't say there was no offer:

It turns out, however, Wizards of the Coast wasn't against the idea of licensing Planescape at all - or so it told me.

"We would absolutely consider licensing out Planescape, or any of our other great D&D IPs, if we were approached with a proposal," Wizards of the Coast told us through its presumably bushy beard.

"We often get proposals and are actively pursuing opportunities to make great digital D&D experiences.

"Brian [Fargo] suggested Baldur's Gate 3 had proven difficult in the past before we regained our digital rights, so, that probably didn't help the situation."

The last quote is just the guy being polite. He's basically saying "we are willing to license Planescape, we just don't want to do business with him". This is because Fargo was Interplay's CEO when Hasbro sued them for unpaid royalties for the first time.

The weird part is that they said Fargo himself brought up the BG3 situation, but that only happened after Fargo left the company. It's possible he fucked that up by not explaining the story correctly and getting the blame for no reason.

I was speaking about the experience of personal contacts still in the biz, which biz I happily got out of in '11.

Common complaints about Planescape from D&D fans and reviewers (yes, all these can be found amongst reviewers):

• Starts out fresh, but gets hokey fast
• Just not as fun as bashing orcs
• Is just a giant excuse for philosophy majors to argue endlessly about nothing, so the game constantly stops while the philosophy majors argue (I experienced this one myself)
• The lingo is fun at first, but gets old fast
• Nothing you do there matters, because nothing there is permanent
• Only interesting if you care enough to study all the lore, otherwise it just all falls flat
• (And last but certainly not least) Too weird!

I've played a lot of D&D with a lot of different people over the decades, and I never met anyone who actually played the p&p version outside of a group I was in (as in I bought all the stuff and got them to play it after much cajoling). Lots of people I've met have played the video game, though.

These criticisms exist, and it seems your friends didn't like it, but how is that evidence that Planescape books were poorly received and didn't sell? Not even WotC knew how each product sold because of how terrible TSR was at keeping records, it's one of the reasons why they went with a clean slate as soon as possible.

Those are quotes from reviewers, which reviews you can dig through old records and still find today. And when I say I never met anyone who played the p&p version, I include conventions, tournaments, speeches, etc.

In the retrospectives I mentioned, you will also find a lot of fan theories as to why Planescape never really caught on. My own guess is Planescape is like a lot of p&p material purchased today, where people buy it to read it and not to play it. They like the art and the ideas, but without Chris Avellone around to put all those ideas together into something special, the box set is used more as art than a game.

 

[Lilura]

I've added a Beamdog poll on my blog that you can vote on. Please express yourselves openly and honestly. Thank you.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

WotC actually kept using the TSR brand until the end of 1999. In 2000 they retired the brand and logo, but kept the TSR codes for the last AD&D products. And yes, the settings weren't immediately killed off. Planescape, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Al-Qadim and Birthright all had new releases in 1998. In 1999 I think all books had generic settings, and in 2000 they released the last accessories and adventures for Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Birthright in AD&D. The last adventure was Die Vecna Die!, a Greyhawk-Planescape-Ravenloft crossover that was meant to end AD&D and try to bring people over to the 3rd edition.

Right, the products had the TSR logo on them, but the title pages and back covers listed "Wizards of the Coast, Inc." and "Wizards of the Coast, Belgium" as the corporate addresses. At that point, TSR maintained a shadow existence as a subsidiary of WotC, though it wasn't long before TSR was completely dismantled.

 

[LESS T_T]

David Gaider's talk on worldbuilding (of Dragon Age) at some Australian conference:

World-building is an incredibly involved business, as you're not just serving the interests of the narrative but also that of the gameplay.

More than that, you're creating an Intellectual Property, one that could potentially span multiple games and even products that aren't games, and there are many questions that will need to be answered beyond the simple details of the setting like history and culture.

In this lecture, David Gaider will walk you through the creation of the world in BioWare's Dragon Age, the successes and problems it encountered as well as how it evolved from one title to the next - and how the lessons learned could be useful for other developers building their own game worlds, whether they be for triple-A RPG titles or not.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2017: The Ripple Effect

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premiere game development conference, a part of Melbourne International Games Week. Situated in Melbourne, Australia in the October-November period, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

46:37 a bit about how the endings of Mass Effect 3 did "destroy" the IP

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

We played a pretty good Planescape campaign when I was in college, but the DM was very clever about shutting down the freshman level philosophy nonsense. He had some house rules like if we got too into philosophy 101, whoever participated would be afflicted with an existential crisis status ailment that reduced most their stats until they did something decisive (usually it meant getting into a few fights or whatever was necessary to move things along). The longer the debate, the worse the affliction. If he was prepared in advance he’d just tell us our nihilism had shifted the balance of the planes and we were slipping into the abyss but that only happened a couple of times.

But yeah, it probably would have sucked if we hadn’t had a very excellent, insanely committed DM. Planescape almost has too much freedom, so you really need the right DM and a very imaginative party to make it work.

This actually sounds amazing

 

[Mexi]

Whatever that unannounced projects are:

How soon is soon?

 

[Grauken]

Too soon

 

[Sacibengala]

I consider myself an imaginative man. But i can't think of a real good game coming from this people. Probably will be some pieces of good stuff blended in shades of s***

 

[Cael]

I consider myself an imaginative man. But i can't think of a real good game coming from this people. Probably will be some pieces of good stuff blended in shades of s***

Considering Beamdog has not done anything original ever (even SoD is basically just one big BG mod), you are not wrong.

 

[LESS T_T]

So much for that, David Gaider left Beamdog: http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/02/farewell-to-dave.html

Farewell to Dave!


A portrait of the artist at work.


Today, Beamdog bids farewell to our Creative Director, David Gaider.

Dave came to Beamdog during interesting times. Since then, he has been teacher, mentor, and friend to many on the team. We’ve seen Dave conjure new worlds we’d love to play in, and spin stories in places already close to our hearts. Someday we will share the fruits of his labour!

Most lasting, Dave has built a creative team that will shape the stories Beamdog tells in the years to come. He has freely shared his incredible wealth of storytelling and narrative design experience with the developers, designers, and artists around him. We’ve all learned a lot from Dave and we hope he picked up a trick or two from us as well.

As fans of Dragon Age, KoTOR, Baldur’s Gate, and many of the other incredible worlds Dave has helped create, we’re excited to find out what’s next (come on, give us a clue Dave!) be it a new game, novel, or whatever else it is you choose to create.

We’ll certainly miss your lunchtime stories. Best of luck Dave!

 

[Infinitron]

lol come on you never actually made anything dude.

I'd love to learn more about what happened here.