19 users logged in
Proud partner of GDC 2025
Before posting, review our community guidelines.
Support GameDev.net with a monthly GDNet+ subscription!
What do you think about Dungeons & Dragons Online?:
January 05, 2006 11:09 PM
What do you think about Dungeons & Dragons Online? Say as whatever you think,the foreground,the market,and so on.
136
January 06, 2006 09:31 AM
Edit: I just realized Dungeons & Dragons Online is a real game. I didn't know anything about it when writing this post. So, pardon this treatise on my wet-dream idea of a perfect D&D Online game. I hope it can stimulate a good discussion about PC D&D games. I also see you're a new member, from your other post, and you're from China. I actually happen to be living in China right now (close to Guangzhou), but I'm just a visitor here. In any case, welcome to the boards, and good luck with your game development! Huan ying nin!
First of all, if you're just writing this about D&D's combat system (that you've seen in many of the D&D games on the computer) but haven't played actual D&D without a computer and with a DM before, please know they're quite different, and this whole post is about the actual D&D table/pen-and-paper game.
Also, about the market, I think it's out there if you can really nail it right. I think it's very difficult to do so. I've heard that Neverwinter Nights nailed some of it, but I haven't played it myself. The rest of this post is simply about my little brainstorm on how to implement D&D online (and implement it well). Let me start with the 2 things, to me, that make D&D a great experience.
1. The Dungeon Master (DM), who creates and adapts a good story and environment specifically for the party. This gives you creative problem solving, and nearly unlimited choices, limited only by your (and the DM's) imagination. You can always stretch the game world in any particular way you want (want to burn down the town instead of doing the quest you're supposed to do? Want to get drunk at the pub? If you have a decent DM, you'll find all sorts of possibilities, that will still result in fun and interesting situations).
2. The social aspect of voice acting (and perhaps in some groups real acting) for the other people in the group. It's fun to watch people do it, and it's fun to do it too if you get into it. It has something in common with karaoke.
#2 can't really be recouped in an online situation, but I don't think this is a required factor, as long as the players in-game can express themselves as best they can (perhaps with microphone, typing, and even some pre-set messages to say for slow typers / urgent situations), and as long as you have a DM that makes things fun.
The rest of this is regarding #1. I believe perhaps it's THEORETICALLY possible SOMEDAY to make a really sophisticated AI that can do something like this, sometime far in the future. But right now, even if your pockets are the size of Microsoft's, I think this is impossible. This means we need people for our DM's.
However, if the DM's are people, your game would have to provide near-instant control to the DM for a multitude of situations, such that they can easily create and manipulate situations in the game (creating encounters, the environment, affecting the look of the environment from architecture to nature to characters, as well as being on the other end of much of the dialogue), and even sometimes affecting combat on the fly. All this, and the DM needs a realistic interface to take control of it, with just himself and his computer.
Perhaps some of the things the DM needs to do could be taken off their back with an incredibly realistic physics engine (that allows for magic too), but even if this is done, of course it also needs to be able to be completely customized by the DM at his will (what if the players go to a world with lower gravity? What if the DM wants to create a new spell with some strange new effect from his imagination? What if there's an almost perfectly frictionless surface in the necromancer's keep?).
Also, as said earlier, the look of the game is important, and it would be disappointing if every DM's campaign used the same set of "house" and "castle" models, the same set of textures, etc. I don't know a good solution to this without a simply huge library of art, perhaps with some simple mutators the DM's can apply to each model / texture (curve this edge of this model a bit, distort this texture, change this color, etc).
Also, you run into the problem of how to find DM's for your players; hiring is probably not feasible, because in order to get a decent player to DM ratio, you would need to hire a whole bunch of DM's. I hardly think a single party of players' monthly fee can pay for a DM for a month, unless you start charging several hundred US$ per month, or start having a hundred or so players in the party (that's no good). I think the solution is to allow some of the players themselves to choose to be a DM instead of a player-character. Also, I think it's important to have a rating system (with comments as well as numbers), such that people can know who is a good DM, and who is not. (I can imagine the 6-year old DM's now, in the first session of their campaign creating an army of dragons to crush the newly-born party. Now that's a bad DM). DM's should also be allowed to give some information about the sorts of campaigns that they like to give, either epic quests, lots of fun things, very dark, etc.
Second, do you mean D&D Massively-Multiplayer Online, or just D&D Online? I think MMO is a bad idea, we want a low number of player characters who either know each other or get to know each other, and one DM who controls the whole world, but can focus on giving a good experience for his players (because there are just 6 or so). In my mind this would be like battlenet, where you sign into a central server, but the server is really only a mechanism for finding and joining the appropriate game, and communicating with other players. This small-party-and-just-one-DM system also lets some of the players (at least the ones who are partying together) get to know each other, and form some mutual camaraderie. Each session they will get to know the quirks of the other characters (and players) personalities a little better, and develop their own specific role in the party. MMO would change the spirit entirely, as control of the game world would have to be "shared" between DM's, and the whole world no longer exists JUST to entertain one party of players; it has to cater to everyone. The DM's then have less freedom or must be strictly regulated to not ruin it for the other campaigns, and the whole world just becomes dynamic like any other MMO (I can already hear shouts of "need gold plzzz!"), instead of dynamic because it comes from the DM's imagination like a D&D campaign.
This brings us to yet another issue I see; even if you can find a good DM to player ratio, part of the appeal of playing is developing this camaraderie with the other players, and keeping the same DM, who continues leading you through the same story. Switching DM's mid-campaign is the equivalent of switching to a new author in the middle of the book. Perhaps this could be fixed by setting a certain schedule to the campaign; every player comes starting at 7:00 pm Friday night for a certain timezone, and it lasts for at least 3 hours, and possibly until whenever the players agree to leave. This way the DM and all the players can be present at each session, for a consistent experience that can grow into a great D&D campaign.
This leads us to the need for players to have a rating system for each other, such that players in the future can know who is a good sport, who is reliable in showing up to the sessions (and not leaving early or complaining about leaving early too often), and who is not a spammer / other troublemaker. Again, this should include comments as well as numbers. This way when making a new campaign after an old one is finished, players can find each other, and good DM's will choose good players and vice versa. Over a few campaigns, players will hopefully find other players they really like to play with, and the good players can try the various good DM's and vice-versa, so the good players will have a good experience.
It'd be great to find a real D&D experience online, but a lot of sacrifices would need to be made, and in the end I think it's a game that's just better staying on the table instead of online. However, I hope what I've written above is helpful in getting you some ideas. If this were actually done well, it'd be a wet dream for me, but I think at this point it just isn't feasible even with player DM's, because of the need to create such a flexible system for the DM to manage.
*whew* that was long. I hope I made sense, and I hope someone managed to survive through reading it.
[Edited by - Corfe on January 6, 2006 10:31:26 AM]
First of all, if you're just writing this about D&D's combat system (that you've seen in many of the D&D games on the computer) but haven't played actual D&D without a computer and with a DM before, please know they're quite different, and this whole post is about the actual D&D table/pen-and-paper game.
Also, about the market, I think it's out there if you can really nail it right. I think it's very difficult to do so. I've heard that Neverwinter Nights nailed some of it, but I haven't played it myself. The rest of this post is simply about my little brainstorm on how to implement D&D online (and implement it well). Let me start with the 2 things, to me, that make D&D a great experience.
1. The Dungeon Master (DM), who creates and adapts a good story and environment specifically for the party. This gives you creative problem solving, and nearly unlimited choices, limited only by your (and the DM's) imagination. You can always stretch the game world in any particular way you want (want to burn down the town instead of doing the quest you're supposed to do? Want to get drunk at the pub? If you have a decent DM, you'll find all sorts of possibilities, that will still result in fun and interesting situations).
2. The social aspect of voice acting (and perhaps in some groups real acting) for the other people in the group. It's fun to watch people do it, and it's fun to do it too if you get into it. It has something in common with karaoke.
#2 can't really be recouped in an online situation, but I don't think this is a required factor, as long as the players in-game can express themselves as best they can (perhaps with microphone, typing, and even some pre-set messages to say for slow typers / urgent situations), and as long as you have a DM that makes things fun.
The rest of this is regarding #1. I believe perhaps it's THEORETICALLY possible SOMEDAY to make a really sophisticated AI that can do something like this, sometime far in the future. But right now, even if your pockets are the size of Microsoft's, I think this is impossible. This means we need people for our DM's.
However, if the DM's are people, your game would have to provide near-instant control to the DM for a multitude of situations, such that they can easily create and manipulate situations in the game (creating encounters, the environment, affecting the look of the environment from architecture to nature to characters, as well as being on the other end of much of the dialogue), and even sometimes affecting combat on the fly. All this, and the DM needs a realistic interface to take control of it, with just himself and his computer.
Perhaps some of the things the DM needs to do could be taken off their back with an incredibly realistic physics engine (that allows for magic too), but even if this is done, of course it also needs to be able to be completely customized by the DM at his will (what if the players go to a world with lower gravity? What if the DM wants to create a new spell with some strange new effect from his imagination? What if there's an almost perfectly frictionless surface in the necromancer's keep?).
Also, as said earlier, the look of the game is important, and it would be disappointing if every DM's campaign used the same set of "house" and "castle" models, the same set of textures, etc. I don't know a good solution to this without a simply huge library of art, perhaps with some simple mutators the DM's can apply to each model / texture (curve this edge of this model a bit, distort this texture, change this color, etc).
Also, you run into the problem of how to find DM's for your players; hiring is probably not feasible, because in order to get a decent player to DM ratio, you would need to hire a whole bunch of DM's. I hardly think a single party of players' monthly fee can pay for a DM for a month, unless you start charging several hundred US$ per month, or start having a hundred or so players in the party (that's no good). I think the solution is to allow some of the players themselves to choose to be a DM instead of a player-character. Also, I think it's important to have a rating system (with comments as well as numbers), such that people can know who is a good DM, and who is not. (I can imagine the 6-year old DM's now, in the first session of their campaign creating an army of dragons to crush the newly-born party. Now that's a bad DM). DM's should also be allowed to give some information about the sorts of campaigns that they like to give, either epic quests, lots of fun things, very dark, etc.
Second, do you mean D&D Massively-Multiplayer Online, or just D&D Online? I think MMO is a bad idea, we want a low number of player characters who either know each other or get to know each other, and one DM who controls the whole world, but can focus on giving a good experience for his players (because there are just 6 or so). In my mind this would be like battlenet, where you sign into a central server, but the server is really only a mechanism for finding and joining the appropriate game, and communicating with other players. This small-party-and-just-one-DM system also lets some of the players (at least the ones who are partying together) get to know each other, and form some mutual camaraderie. Each session they will get to know the quirks of the other characters (and players) personalities a little better, and develop their own specific role in the party. MMO would change the spirit entirely, as control of the game world would have to be "shared" between DM's, and the whole world no longer exists JUST to entertain one party of players; it has to cater to everyone. The DM's then have less freedom or must be strictly regulated to not ruin it for the other campaigns, and the whole world just becomes dynamic like any other MMO (I can already hear shouts of "need gold plzzz!"), instead of dynamic because it comes from the DM's imagination like a D&D campaign.
This brings us to yet another issue I see; even if you can find a good DM to player ratio, part of the appeal of playing is developing this camaraderie with the other players, and keeping the same DM, who continues leading you through the same story. Switching DM's mid-campaign is the equivalent of switching to a new author in the middle of the book. Perhaps this could be fixed by setting a certain schedule to the campaign; every player comes starting at 7:00 pm Friday night for a certain timezone, and it lasts for at least 3 hours, and possibly until whenever the players agree to leave. This way the DM and all the players can be present at each session, for a consistent experience that can grow into a great D&D campaign.
This leads us to the need for players to have a rating system for each other, such that players in the future can know who is a good sport, who is reliable in showing up to the sessions (and not leaving early or complaining about leaving early too often), and who is not a spammer / other troublemaker. Again, this should include comments as well as numbers. This way when making a new campaign after an old one is finished, players can find each other, and good DM's will choose good players and vice versa. Over a few campaigns, players will hopefully find other players they really like to play with, and the good players can try the various good DM's and vice-versa, so the good players will have a good experience.
It'd be great to find a real D&D experience online, but a lot of sacrifices would need to be made, and in the end I think it's a game that's just better staying on the table instead of online. However, I hope what I've written above is helpful in getting you some ideas. If this were actually done well, it'd be a wet dream for me, but I think at this point it just isn't feasible even with player DM's, because of the need to create such a flexible system for the DM to manage.
*whew* that was long. I hope I made sense, and I hope someone managed to survive through reading it.
[Edited by - Corfe on January 6, 2006 10:31:26 AM]
588
January 06, 2006 12:03 PM
It already exist:
Dungeons & Dragons Online
On the other hand I agree w/ Corfe, a MMORPG would spoil the experience for others.
Don't really know what the gm does(never had the oppurtunity to play w/ others), but would he/she be the one that creates a quest, right? Perhaps tell the NPC how to react etc. Building the level/designing towns & caves? Isn't this what a leveldesigner & a script-programmer does?
This sounds more and more alot like something along the lines of Morrowind Online with really easy tools?
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Quote:
What is Dungeons & Dragons Online?
Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is a fun, action-packed, massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that allows thousands of players to participate in a story-driven D&D campaign. DDO features swashbuckling adventures, betrayal and intrigue, and lots and lots of deep, dark, dangerous, trap-riddled dungeons.
On the other hand I agree w/ Corfe, a MMORPG would spoil the experience for others.
Don't really know what the gm does(never had the oppurtunity to play w/ others), but would he/she be the one that creates a quest, right? Perhaps tell the NPC how to react etc. Building the level/designing towns & caves? Isn't this what a leveldesigner & a script-programmer does?
This sounds more and more alot like something along the lines of Morrowind Online with really easy tools?
113
January 09, 2006 11:22 AM
I pretty much agree with Corfe, though I wouldn't mind making some sacrifices to the tabletop experience if it means bringing much of that experience to an online game.
Personally, I think a strong focus on voice acting (both by player characters and non-player characters) will go a long way.
Personally, I think a strong focus on voice acting (both by player characters and non-player characters) will go a long way.
You either believe that within your society more individuals are good than evil, and that by protecting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible, or you believe that within your society more individuals are evil than good, and that by limiting the freedom of individuals within that society you will end up with a society that is as fair as possible.
145
January 11, 2006 09:39 PM
The biggest problem with D&D is that it's a system built around playing a few times a month for a couple of years before 'capping out'. You spend half of your time fighting and spending an hour engaging in a fight that takes all of 10-15 minutes in an MMOG.
An MMOG is built around spending 10-15 hours per week and taking 12-18 months to 'cap out', 1-3 if you powerlevel (2 weeks if it's WoW).
If they maintain all of the mechanics of D&D in their MMO, then everyone will be level 20 (the cap last I knew) in a month and a half. The game is built around a completely different play environment. Fights will happen very frequently and quickly, when compared to an MMOG. Just imagine the Baldur's Gate series, the amount of time that it took you to get up to the high-level game in actual play time. The system really isn't well designed for an MMO playstyle.
I wouldn't mind trying it out, but I'm definitely leaning toward thinking it's going to be about as successful as an MMOG as NWN was. IMO, the d20 system gave D&D a nice revitalization, but overall it's ruined the genre. It won't be any better in the MMO arena.
An MMOG is built around spending 10-15 hours per week and taking 12-18 months to 'cap out', 1-3 if you powerlevel (2 weeks if it's WoW).
If they maintain all of the mechanics of D&D in their MMO, then everyone will be level 20 (the cap last I knew) in a month and a half. The game is built around a completely different play environment. Fights will happen very frequently and quickly, when compared to an MMOG. Just imagine the Baldur's Gate series, the amount of time that it took you to get up to the high-level game in actual play time. The system really isn't well designed for an MMO playstyle.
I wouldn't mind trying it out, but I'm definitely leaning toward thinking it's going to be about as successful as an MMOG as NWN was. IMO, the d20 system gave D&D a nice revitalization, but overall it's ruined the genre. It won't be any better in the MMO arena.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
Recommended Tutorials
Advertisement