Decline Sword Coast Legends Pre-Release Thread

[butchy]

I am glad I am not an idiot and was absolutely correct in knowing this game was going to be an rpg-lite Gauntlet Clone. Have fun with your list for inventory console games, bitches.

 

[sstacks]

D&D 5E in general is doing very, very well despite what people may or may not think about Sword Coast Legends.

 

[Night Goat]

Shitting out books every two months killed 3e and 4e. No, shut the fuck up, we've heard it from the guys at wizards.

I see this argument a lot from 5anboys, and it's bullshit. There can be a middle ground between "shit out books every two months" and "never make any new content after the core books". Where are the setting books? Where's the support for popular character types like psionics and martial adepts? For fuck's sake, Eberron was one of the two most popular settings in 3.5 and you can't run a campaign there in the new edition without gutting it of psionics, artificers etc. For that matter, how did producing new content kill 3e? People were free to run core-only games if they wanted to, it's not like anyone was forced to buy books they didn't want. That you think we can just take WotC's word for it shows how much of a fanboy you are. As for 4e - it didn't die because they put out too many books, it died because it was shit.

I just texted my buddy who runs the store and while you and I were having this autism off, he sold two PHBs, a DMG and a MM to a kid and his friend.

If we're going to go by anecdotal evidence, then I'll point out that whenever I'm at the FLGS on a Saturday there are 3-4 times as many people playing Pathfinder as there are playing 5e. I was playing in two 5e campaigns, and both have fizzled due to lack of interest from everyone involved.

So, you know. Putting out two campaigns a year, which contain new magic times, new character options for PCs, and a campaign, meaning: A 30-40 session of 5 hours a piece adventure path for players. That's 150 hours of campaign for the players to get through. Most of these adventures are excellent quality(Hoard of the Dragon Queen was a faltering, but Rise of Tiamat was fine, Princes was excellent, and OotA is the best one they've released yet) and as said before, add new content. Princes added a shit ton of new spells, for fuck's sake. Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide adds a bunch of new shit and they release playtest material for what they're working on every month. They've ran polls to find out what new races to add, what new settings people want explored, and such.

No one's going to buy campaigns except DMs, and not even all of them - just the subset that don't want to make their own. And this doesn't address the fact that these are being farmed out to third-parties; if WotC had faith in their in-house developers, why aren't they letting them do anything?

They will release new books, but RPGs, and print books in general is not the same business it was ten years ago. Shit isn't the same and it's not going to be. And if you're just gonna claim that wizards not pretending it's 2003 and crapping a new book into store shelves every few months is proof that they're either trying to kill the franchise or aren't supporting it, then I can't help you. You're thinking about it as realistically and logically as someone who knows nothing about the PnP business.

Pathfinder's still doing great. All of their content besides setting fluff is available online, free and legally, and they're still selling books. Are they selling fewer than they used to? I don't know, but something is better than nothing. Please, explain to me how producing content that brings in more money than it costs to make is worse than not doing that.

 

[Alchemist]

This probably belongs in the Gazebo, but personally I'm glad WotC isn't rapidly bloating the 5E rules with tons of splatbooks. They are taking a sensible approach to the pace of releases in my opinion. The biggest mistake they're making is delaying release of an OGL or other 3rd-party license of some kind. That's the main issue I have with the handling of 5E so far.

My observations are that 5E has been pretty well received even among old grognards, who are notoriously hard to please.

 

[Night Goat]

The biggest mistake they're making is delaying release of an OGL or other 3rd-party license of some kind.

What makes you think they have any intention of doing so?

My observations are that 5E has been pretty well received even among old grognards, who are notoriously hard to please.

5e is made for grognards. Grognards like keeping rules to a minimum, because it gives them more room to fuck over the players. So they're sure to love 5e's frequently throwing up its hands and saying "the DM makes something up" instead of having rules that the players can learn. 5e also has stupid shit like electrum pieces and feats being optional, for no other reason than grognard-pandering.

 

[Alchemist]

What makes you think they have any intention of doing so?

5e is made for grognards. Grognards like keeping rules to a minimum, because it gives them more room to fuck over the players. So they're sure to love 5e's frequently throwing up its hands and saying "the DM makes something up" instead of having rules that the players can learn. 5e also has stupid shit like electrum pieces and feats being optional, for no other reason than grognard-pandering.

If you hate old D&D / AD&D so much you should relinquish your Trampier 1E avatar now and replace it with some Wayne Reynolds art.

I realize you probably never had a good experience with old-school play - the solution is to not play with assholes. A good DM worth his salt is not there to fuck over the players.

 

[Zombra]

Nothing to add to this conversation. I just want to express my joy at seeing two powerful creatures from the 1st edition Monster Manual battling about what's good for D&D. So happy! :D

 

[Desur]

5E being good actually makes SCL that much more of a disappointment - back when 4E was released no one sane hoped for a half decent cRPG based on it (and rightly so). The game was a huge opportunity to encourage new players to try P'n'P (I know it worked for me with Baldur's Gate & Co.) while also keeping the old fans happy. SCL failing so hard will unfortunately just mean no new D&D games getting released in the foreseeable future (although maybe for the better).
I'm still probably going to end up buying this if just to test the multiplayer myself, if the actual reviews are not too harsh I might even consider not waiting until a sale.

 

[Night Goat]

If you hate old D&D / AD&D so much you should relinquish your Trampier 1E avatar now and replace it with some Wayne Reynolds art.

'k plz upload

I want to be a sephiroth

 

[Irenaeus II]

Jesus Cristo

 

[pippin]

 

[Nael]

No one stands like that. Such bullshit.

 

[Telengard]

Under modern business principles, you keep the lucrative parts of the business to yourself and outsource the weak parts to cheap third parties. In terms of d&d, that means setting books and modules get sent out to third parties as much as humanly possible, keeping the earners in house. Because you want your staff working 24/7 on earners, not burners.

Which is what the OGL was meant to do - outsource all the burners to 3rd parties. But in practice, that's not what the OGL did, and thus there will never be an OGL like there was during 3e. In corporate terms, the OGL was a pratfall of epic proportions. It was the dummkoff move that gets you laughed at in the boardrooms for decades.

 

[Volourn]

5e is the best selling ever? O RLY? Is that fact or bullshit numbers keeping? D&D 2E lasted for how long? And, continually spammed books, boxed sets, and campaigns. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't selling.

\Give me actual evidence. PTU


As for this game, HAHAHAHAHAHA.


P.S. 5E is a pretty solid edition. It has issues (which one doesn't) but it is definitely playable but the different adventure campaigns are overrated.

Seriously. A level 2-4 party facing a young dragon with over 100 hp after fighting other enemies? COME ON. Also, almost all the end bosses are purposefully nerfed because they go for demon lords, gods, or overpowered elementals so the party can actually have a shot. Why use these super enemies if youa re just gonna dumb them down anyways? WTF

 

[Night Goat]

There's setting material all over the place. 4e didn't get setting books in its first year either. SCAG is both a setting book and a new splatbook.

4e had plans to make setting books in its first year, I'm sure. And this was an edition that failed so hard that the guy in charge was fired three years in a row.

Producing content killed 3e because nobody fucking bought it. Grunting out tons of books that only 2% of players bought and the rest stole from wikis = money sink.

I see you didn't actually play 3e in its heydey. People were lugging around backpacks full of sourcebooks. The 2% stat comes from 4th edition, but that was shit, and even the people who liked it didn't want to fuck around with the books - authors were paid by the word, so they spent a whole lot of space to say nothing, and the information relevant to your character could all be written down on a note card.

Most of the 3.5 books near the end were shit, with the excellent Tome of Battle a notable exception. By that point, they were out of ideas. But the early books were very successful. If you think 3e would have been more of a success with just the core books, some adventure paths and no OGL, then you're just too dumb to reason with. And if you think that 5e's lack of content will somehow give it a longer run than 3rd had...well, remember this in a year or two when Hasbro shitcans the whole thing.

3e didn't fail. It was popular until its cancellation and beyond, and is still the most popular edition of D&D. Hasbro pulled the plug because they wanted to put out a whole new set of core books, with a new set of splatbooks afterwards. I suspect that the MMOness of 4e wasn't a coincidence either, with WoW being so stupidly popular then. I also suspect that the move to 4e was in part an attempt to kill off the OGL - Hasbro is a toy company, after all. The suits don't understand the nuances of the RPG industry, and conventional wisdom says that giving away your product for free isn't a great idea.

What's wrong with third parties?

Nothing's wrong with third parties. I love Dreamscarred Press, they make much better content for Pathfinder than Paizo does and I won't pass up an opportunity to shill for them. When the first party isn't doing anything, though, it makes me think that something is amiss. And in 5e, third parties will only do what Hasbro tells them to do, because there is not and will not be an OGL.

Like you realize DnD does "storylines" now, right? They're synchronizing novels, the video games and the PnP all together. Elemental Evil was new content in Neverwinter, some FR books, and the game. They're putting out board games. The DnD brand is now a multimedia property. I have no doubt that the DnD movie will come replete with its own campaign

And what if you don't care about their published campaigns? I understand that due to time or creativity constraints, canned adventure paths are sometimes the only option. But they can't compare to the reactivity of a homebrew campaign, where entire series of adventures can be tailored around the players' characters. As for all the licensed shit...not seeing what those have to do with an interactive storytelling game, which is what D&D is. Of course Hasbro wants to license shit out as much as possible, but this isn't about that, it's about whether they want people to actually play the game.

Well, the basic rules for DnD are also online, and they're also free and legal. Also, shit tons of adventures are also online and free, and they're selling books., and they're selling more than Pathfinder.

[citation needed]

I don't even know what your issue is man. You're like, convinced that this game that's selling well and getting tons of support from Hasbro isn't getting the releases you want, when the SCAG is what everyone wants and it'll probably sell more than most of what Paizo puts out this year. I mean man, what is your overall goal here? 5e isn't a flop. It's selling well and you seem to be really buttsore about it being popular and doing well.

I only got involved in this thread because I saw a factual error - your statement that 5e's PHB is the best selling ever, based on the artificially inflated ranking on a website that most people didn't use back when 3.0 or 3.5 were released - and decided to correct you.

 

[Night Goat]

OGL was successful for awhile until they decided to release 3.5 and killed quite a few companies by outdating and incompatibilizing their books before they came out.

3.5 was a blatant cashgrab, but it wasn't so different from 3.0 that material couldn't easily be converted. And third-party books kept being published after the shift to 3.5. And they're still being published for Pathfinder today. OGL was and is a success, and you're just spouting whatever the 5mind tells you.

 

[Telengard]

OGL was successful for awhile until they decided to release 3.5 and killed quite a few companies by outdating and incompatibilizing their books before they came out.

The OGL is one of those things that is highly beneficial to the public, and looks really good on paper. But, the core of Hasbro's business strategy was to retain the profitable books for themselves. However, the OGL ended up being too loosely written, and so 3rd parties started making core and splat books too (because they're lucrative). But not only did that crowd the market, it slowly started undercutting the returns of Hasbro. And that's the trouble. Hasbro is there to make money. Any decision that lowers the amount of money they earn is - by definition - a bad one. The OGL ended up setting up a number of rivals to their income, but worse these rivals were free to use the exact same material as Hasbro and WotC had. Which means that Hasbro couldn't even insist that they were selling the superior product. They were selling the exact same product as their new rivals, rivals that they created and nurtured out of corporate infancy.

Which inevitably led to the abandonment of the OGL. But by then it was too late, and their greatest rival kept Hasbro's work and set themselves up as a direct competitor. And the rest, as they say, is farce.

 

[ArchAngel]

Can you guys move your love quarrels to a private room? You are ruining a perfectly good SCL bashing topic!

 

[Infinitron]

Dan Tudge boilerplate interview: http://www.pcgamer.com/sword-coast-legends-on-dd-dungeon-masters-and-the-crpg-revival/

Sword Coast Legends: on D&D, dungeon masters and the CRPG revival
Samuel Roberts Sep 18, 2015

Sword Coast Legends is an exciting prospect for D&D fans, Bioware fans, RPG fans and anyone who's interested in games that try to model the role of a dungeon master. The developers are consulting with Wizards of the Coast to maintain the authenticity of Forgotten Realms lore, and their powerful DM custom campaign tools could give rise to some some fascinating player-made campaigns. We sent over some questions to game director Dan Tudge to find out more.

PC Gamer: To what extent are you guys targeting D&D fans versus people who are just generally interested in fantasy RPGs? I’m not personally invested in D&D, for example, but I really enjoyed what I played of the 4v1 multiplayer at E3.

Dan Tudge: I’m glad you enjoyed yourself at E3, that’s great to hear. D&D has been around for over 40 years and as such has influenced a lot of CRPGs over the years, so even if you’re just a fan of CRPGs chances are you’ve played a lot of D&D without even knowing it. I’ve personally played a lot of D&D over the years (both on and off the table) and building adventures in the deep, rich world of the Forgotten Realms is something that will only add to the excitement of adventure, teamwork and discovering what lurks down the next dark corridor with your friends.

PC Gamer: Can you talk about the campaign and what that experience is like in single-player?

Tudge: The player campaign can actually be played with one to four players which is pretty exciting for a CRPG and one of my favorite ways to play Sword Coast Legends. We set out from day one to create an intimate story that rightfully sits well within the legacy of D&D classics such as the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series—and I think we’ve accomplished that. I’ve played through our story more times than I can count and still find myself laughing out loud at some of the conversations with companions like Hommet and Izhkin and feel some dust fly into my eye during other moments as well.

PC Gamer: What have you learned about the way people approach playing as DM in Sword Coast Legends? Do people get better at constructing on-the-fly narratives as they go?

Tudge: It has been really interesting to watch. Different people have different approaches to playing as the DM and there is a lot of power at your disposal to play with. Learning when to hold back really is key, how to provide just the right challenge. When you achieve that balance everyone has a fantastic time playing—and I know we’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do.

PC Gamer: Can you talk about the story of Sword Coast Legends? How can players shape the narrative of the single-player?

Tudge: I don’t want to spoil too much here so I’ll just set it up. You are members of the Order of the Burning Dawn, a somewhat ‘standard’ guild whose origins have been lost over the last 100 years. Recently you’ve become hunted by the Gilded Eye, a particularly brutal offshoot of Order of the Gauntlet. Players will need to unravel this ruthless agenda and perhaps save all of Faerûn in the process. Throughout their adventures players will meet companions, travel the surface of Faerûn and even journey deep into the Underdark. Players will definitely make choices along the way, determining not just their fate, but the fate of many others.

PC Gamer: There’s something of a CRPG resurgence right now. Why do you think that’s happening now, and where do you think Sword Coast Legends first into that?

Tudge: The video game industry has evolved to allow developers to connect directly with players. We see this with Kickstarter and direct to consumer digital distribution like Steam. Couple this evolution with game developers—and players—love of the isometric CRPG and I think you’re seeing a resurgence of this genre because we can finally make the games we’ve been longing to make for years. Sword Coast Legends’ DM Mode put’s a unique spin on the genre, one that will give players the tools to tell their own stories for years to come.

PC Gamer: Is this viewed as a Baldur’s Gate spiritual successor by the team or Wizards of the Coast? To what extent are you conscious of that history in making Sword Coast Legends?

Tudge: We’re all huge fans of past D&D RPGs, including Baldur’s Gate and while we have certainly been inspired by it, I would not say we are a successor. Sword Coast Legends is its own evolution, one that hopefully earns a rightful place within that legacy.

PC Gamer: What benefit does years of experience at BioWare bring to making a brand new RPG series?

Tudge: Directing Dragon Age: Origins (and my experience at BioWare as a whole) was a big influence on my career as a game developer. In particular, the development competency required to create a great interactive story. Jay Turner, our narrative director (who is also from BioWare) and I have leveraged our BioWare experience to ensure we created a compelling story for Sword Coast Legends—and with DM mode, the ability for players to create their own stories as well.

PC Gamer: I know some of the team came from the ranks of former BioWare employees—what about N-space generally? What’s their background coming onto this project?

Tudge: n-Space was founded over 20 years ago and has worked for pretty much every major publisher in the industry. We’ve always been fans of RPGs here, working on RPGs such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance and creating RPGs from scratch like Heroes of Ruin, however we’ve always worked with a publisher. With Sword Coast Legends we’re pivoting away from that model and creating it internally. This one is as much for us as it is for gamers.

Sword Coast Legends is available on September 29.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Tudge: We’re all huge fans of past D&D RPGs, including Baldur’s Gate and while we have certainly been inspired by it, I would not say we are a successor. Sword Coast Legends is its own evolution, one that hopefully earns a rightful place within that legacy.

Called it

 

[ArchAngel]

Tudge: We’re all huge fans of past D&D RPGs, including Baldur’s Gate and while we have certainly been inspired by it, I would not say we are a successor. Sword Coast Legends is its own decline, one that hopefully earns a rightful place within that legacy.

Fixed it.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Called it

It's funny how the tone of his interviews has changed since February, now that the truth is out and it's getting late for vague hype-generating references:

"When I directed Dragon Age: Origins the mission was to create the ‘spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate’ and I think players really felt like Origins achieved that,” said Tudge. “With Sword Coast Legends we are also continuing the legacy of the Baldur’s Gate series"

"When I tell you that Jon Irenicus from Baldur’s Gate II was based on the D&D character campaigned by the Sword Coast Legends’ technical director… or that the director of Dragon Age: Origins is heading up the team… These things lend a certain degree of instant credibility to the team and our game.

But that sort of thing is only enough to get your attention. What really matters is what the fans see when they look at what we’re doing, or hear about it from their friends. The care taken in bringing the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons and old-school RPG sensibilities to their PC in a way that lets them play with their friends, and create a story with their DM… that will attract the fans."

 

[Ziem]

I know some of the team came from the ranks of former BioWare employees—what about N-space generally?

We’ve always been fans of RPGs here

working on RPGs such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance

and creating RPGs from scratch like Heroes of Ruin

...

 

[Morblot]

Note that he doesn't actually answer if they're targeting D&D players or filthy casuals. (Although, of course, the answer to that is blatantly obvious.)

Also,

Players will need to unravel this ruthless agenda and perhaps save all of Faerûn in the process

 

[vonAchdorf]

RPG setting are worse than the Euro in their need for constant saving.