KickStarter Solasta: Crown of the Magister - 5E OGL turn-based RPG with verticality - now on Early Access

Lol

 

D&D 5E being more popular should make you know from a glance that it is inferior. If the addlepated munchkins can get into it then it is too streamlined for antediluvian patricians.

If anything, this should encourage you to go to any store that sells 5E products and proceed to rip the pages out and eat them for the good of the realm.

 

Definitely has potential, it's still baffling why WotC hasn't tried to make a real 5e game yet

or depending who's writing those words I suppose. Planescape isn't a fair comparison, so I'll exclude that. But a quick Google shows that Icewind Dale had about twice as many words as NWN1 OC did, and I know which one I find more tedious.

On balance, it looks promising enough to follow development at least.

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If your only metric for "patrician choice" is being less popular, that means 4e is superior.
5e doesn't have the volume of content 3.5e did, but I think it would make a good base for a CRPG.
I especially like the Concentration mechanic that means "stack more buffs" isn't always the answer.

 

It's true. Adam Brenneke said one of the design goals of Beast of Winter was to add as many cutscenes and setpieces as possible.

 

Who is this Adam guy and wtf is a “cinementic”?

 

Adam Brennecke is the lead programmer on Deadfire, and the lead designer of Beast of Winter and Forgotten Sanctum.

A cinematic is a cutscene. There are many of them in Beast of Winter, and to a lesser extent the base game.

 

Munchkins are the ones who don't like 5E that much. 3.5E/PF is their paradise.

 

Tell me these cutscenes aren't great

 

That's basically the first thing anybody meddling in RPG development should say upfront, before any other bullshit like "we've got a Fallout license and permission to use GURPS and Chris Avellone is aboard and blah blah blah".

FIRST you say whether it's turn-based or trash. THEN you proceed with peddling some useless fluff.

 

Fixed.

 

5E is like when you go into Greg Jackson's Martial Arts mcdojo and you see 12 year olds with blue belts. 3.5 is when you take an indefinite leave of absence to travel to Japan to learn ancient ninja techniques and an assortment of other clandestine arts.

Being that I grew up with 2E, I know how to kill a man in ten unique ways with just my index fingers. Did they teach you that in "D&D NEXT?" Hah, that's what I thought.

 

"Inspired by XCOM" reads as "turn-based" to me ("inspired by Baldur's Gate" seems like it's more related to the RPG elements and being based on D&D).

I haven't played Beast of Winter but I will say that Sawyer tends to do pretty well with "isometric RtwP in the snow"

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Showing a cinematic set in the "Temple of Decline," Safav Hamon ? You sneaky pete!

 

Doesn't 5E's version of OGL explicitly exclude using it in video games?

 

Not a lawyer, but it reads to me like a video game is "derivative material" which just means it has to specifically exclude product identity:
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/OGL License

 

Either way, 5E makes no sense for a video game. Non-casters have virtually no options in combat.

Aside from 3.5/PF, Spycraft 2.0 is the only distinct system licensed under OGL that I'm aware of and isn't horrible (Exodus, D20Modern) or deliberately simple. Spycraft isn't really something I can see working in a cRPG. Maybe if you use the generic classes supplement and add talents worth a damn (as Star Wars The Roleplaying Game Saga Edition did) it could kinda work, but you'd have to do a lot of work.

 

Non-casters had few to no options in combat in BG, BG2, and IWD.
Not sure which classes are covered under OGL but Battlemaster Fighters and Monks definitely have options. It also depends if they implement things like grappling and shoving I guess.

 

They can't use PI from games released under the licence without permission, and I believe they must include a copy of the OGL listing all the OGL material the game is using. P:K is an example (Pathfinder Kingmaker/OGL/OGL/OpenGameLicense-PFKMCRPG.pdf).

 

And is the combat of those games remembered for anything other than wizard duels?

 

Not really, but why is that a problem?
Combat options all depend on what archetypes, spells, and feats they implement, and if multiclassing is in the game. Every class has at least one archetype published that would have options besides "I attack."

Is PI=intellectual property?
So, everything Paizo does would have to include the 3.5 license, right? And then Kingmaker would have to include that plus whatever parts of Paizo's IP, separate from the OGL, that Owlcat were using?

 

PI=Product Identity. Wizards used it to refer to things they explicitly did not release into OGL like beholders.

Kingmaker, like ToEE, is actually licensed so it can use anything Paizo owns, it just has to publish stuff derived from OGL content under OGL.

Even if they do focus on caster duels, 5E is still a worse system for it.

 

Pretty much everyone uses magic in 5E though. The archetypes which don't are in the extreme minority. 5E is an excellent rule set regardless of all of the edges being bared in this thread. The only real issue I see is properly instituting reactions, which are a crucial part of gameplay. Turn-based will be able to handle that far better. Given the mention of XCOM, it's likely they'll go with that. Turn-based are also much easier to design mechanically. That they mention XCOM worries me though. It makes me think we're actually going to get a highly simplistic, and mobile-worthy version of 5E, which would be awful. XCOM is great and all, but its depth of play is quite shallow by comparison.

 

Yeah, even Barbarians get a PHB archetype that can cast some spells (as rituals though, not for fighting). There are more magical Barbarians in Xanathar's Guide.
A 5e game would definitely have to be turn-based because action economy is so important to combat.

Thanks for clearing that up.

But they don't have to focus on caster duels. The only archetypes without many combat options I can think of are Champion fighters, PHB Barbarians, and maybe Assassin rogues.
Also BG1 didn't focus on caster duels really, that didn't happen until high-level play. BG1 was all about kiting and summon cheese.

 

And most in that minority have de facto magic. That's a big part of the decline, though it started with 3E.