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Original post by 00Kevin 1. You are going to be forced to make modifications to the game system 2. You will be told how your artwork should look from Wizards of the coast 3. Atari will rip you off and screw the marketing of it. 4. Most people who don’t understand D&D will be confused by the rules. 5. The rules are not balanced enough for online play (MMO) 6. The development cycle is way too long 7. Way too many bugs to deal with because the rules are full of exceptions and odd

1. Understandable. Not everything in a pen'n'paper strategy game (which is what one translates to PC in such a process) translates well to PC, particularly because D&D pnp is turn-based, and games like NWN are quasi-realtime. However, keep in mind that D&D 3.x are based on d20 rules, which in general are more strategic-oriented than roleplay-friendly.

2. This is understandable to a certain extent. They own the license, you do their bidding to a certain extent.

3. That's a generalized assumption. I will not comment.

4. This is true. Hell, I played old-skool D&D, AD&D 1st ed., and AD&D 2nd ed., and when NWN got to (useless) feats and whatnot, I was a little lost. I didn't enjoy that part of the game (character creation), and I hadn't even *entered* the game yet!

5. Not sure about this, but playing a mage-type in NWN was not fun, because melee combat is more or less required.

6. This is likely due to QA and marketing pulling the strings.

7. Not sure about this statement. Any game has bugs, it's up to QA to nail the worst of them before ship-date.

But I'd like to interject one item here: any pen-and-paper doesn't translate well to a CRPG in general when the focus of the game is combat (which NWN clearly is). Sort of tosses out the entire argument.

The biggest reason why developers make D&D games is branding. Its simply because despite all the headaches involved, all the money and time spent on development, all the hoopla of advertiseing...D&D is a brand name with a built in audiance.

Its the same reason Hollywood kicks out sequel after sequel and remake after remake. The time, cost, and effort needed to produce a AAA title/film is so high that its too risky financialy to make such an investment in more original works.

Both the game industry and Hollywood very much do produce original, creative, and risky games/films...but YOU have to hunt them down, its simply not financialy reasonable and/or responseable for them to flush the market with advertiseing for such games/films when so very many players/moviegoers wont exit the comfort zone of well known and established brand names.

yeah but in a CRPG you lose the whole role-playing experience. It comes down to just some stupid dialogs with NPCs you meet, and there isn't any real role-playing going on, it's just point-and-click combat.

Half of the game is lost in the translation. It's not the rules, it's the actual gameplay that gets lost.

I'm not too familiar with D&D games. Based on what people have been saying, I was wondering if maybe game companies are moving too fast. I guess with the memory and speed of computers nowadays shouldn't there be more games based on the D&D 1st edition since that ruleset will be able to modelled more accurately and efficiently than edition 2, 3 or 3e (am I getting these names right?).

Actually it's extremely easy to create program that is using these rules. Computers love tables. All internal pipelining is fairly clear if you'd do some analysis.

In reality a lot of companies botched it because they implemented just a subset of rulesystem.


As for complex rules (complex in this system?), that's what tutorials are for. HOI has worse, and people are playing it anyway.

It's no problem if it's apparently "real time" or if it's more abiding to table rules. In reality table rules were simultaneous, so conversion of table rules into the computer game is just about correct implementation of simultaneous combat, with is hard, however there should be quite high amount of programmers that could do it easily. These are for example programmers that did work of GM as well. If they'd remember some rules were used just for convenience, to avoid situations when players would need to write down orders on paper in secret, they'd have conversion significantly easier, because they'd avoid stupid mistakes caused by lack of understanding.

Of course they'd enter interesting part of implementation like conversation, breakable environment, and creation of dynamic world they are often too uncreative to solve. Is it lack of in house research, and implementation by researcher? Or are programmers too afraid to be creative?

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Original post by Anonymous Poster This is one of the reasons I feel CRPGs are getting worse every year. All that matters is money, so the games are dumbed down in order to reach a larger demographic.

It's not just a question of target audience. A lot of games are getting "dumbed down" simply because it costs more money to work-in the little bits of panache and style that make a game really lovable.

This is true not only for games with the role/roll-playing theme but just about all games. The urgent need to keep to a venture-capitalist-friendly schedule has forced companies to pump-out their product as fast and as hard as they can and it's rather antagonistic toward the mentality of craftsmanship that we would like to see in software.

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Original post by Alpha_ProgDes I'm not too familiar with D&D games. Based on what people have been saying, I was wondering if maybe game companies are moving too fast. I guess with the memory and speed of computers nowadays shouldn't there be more games based on the D&D 1st edition since that ruleset will be able to modelled more accurately and efficiently than edition 2, 3 or 3e (am I getting these names right?).

Old editions shouldn't be used because they are outdated. (And you'd hate combat done by these rules.)

3.5E is the correct abbreviation. Why are people using small letters for abreviations? 3E was broken and needed a quick repair of the rules. Of course people should remember they are not getting perfect system, the problems of D20 are perfectly known. Closed system, skills are not integral part, and so on. BTW by closed system I mean numbers can't be arbitrary high, or low. Still it produces quite high amount of consistency an implementor could use, and make things much easier for him.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster ¿Easy to get a complete computer implementation of Dnd3e rules?. Of course, all can be done, but certainly isnt a easy task. There are thousands of rule exceptions, triggered actions and user options.

It just means that "real time" system would punish player in comparison with some pause at start of turn system, or phase system.


Hard? Where? RPG combat system is just a series and combination of FSMs (possibly one of ISMs type 3) It could be hard if data could break it, or if company would permit creation and modification of data by notepad, instead by specialized program. It's not hard, it's at most time consuming, and it has high demands on programmer (not always in programming skills).

Actual implementation isn't that hard if programmer is competent. One of more difficult problem is to choose what is in combat and what isn't in combat. However if programmer has experience with GM, and he is competent GM, he could solve some problems quickly, and most importantly correctly.

What would happen if character would like to grapple opponent when he has fire shield and ring of blades? Correctly written combat system would fall back into correct behaviour even if it will not know what is ring of blades.

And what would happen to bags of rat fighter? And what about implementation of dispel that would be non abusive?
These are questions that should any person that would be in charge of writing core of that system answer before this program would be production ready.

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Original post by 00Kevin You are much better off making your own RPG system then using the D&D licence. You will make more money and you will end up with a larger demographic.

What a bizarre assertion. Where is your backing for that? Do you know nothing of brands or licences? Why do you keep coming out with statements that you try to claim as fact but without presenting either logic or evidence to support them?

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Original post by 00Kevin Quote: Original post by Kylotan Not one of your 7 points has anything to do with 3D whatsoever. Nor should it - 95% of the game system does not change at all whether you use 2D or 3D. The statistical game mechanics are entirely separate from the rendering. All that significantly changes is the art pipeline, which really has little effect on the quality of the game itself. The fact remains that commercially and critically successful games can be and have been developed while sticking close to D+D settings and rules, and that your statement of "the system doesn't translate well enough into a computer game" is clearly false. For your information a 3d engine doesn't just render pixels. It handles many more complex data structurs such as those related to movement, cameras, object detection, etc..

For your information, I'm a professional game developer, and though I don't claim to be the next John Carmack, I do know what a typical 3D engine does. I also do know that there does not need to be any significant difference in gameplay between a 3D rendered game and a 2D rendered game such as Baldur's Gate.

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The statistical game rules that relate to classes, races, and equipment are not the problem. Issues are found with the turn based combat system and the way special abilities, spells, and feats work. The fact is you can't claim that the turn based pen and paper system transates well into a real time 3d game.

The fact is, you cannot show whatsoever that the choice of 2D or 3D has any effect at all on the combat system.

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Original post by joanusdmentia I've played a few D&D based games myself as well, and I prefer them to pen & paper. You don't need to understand the rules to enjoy the game, whereas with pen & paper you can't even play if you don't.[...]

It is entirely possible to play Pencil & Paper RPGs without knowing any of the rules as long as the GM knows the rules and is willing to do all the calculations for you.
Anyways, the point of the thread does not appear to be P&P vs cRPG, but rather a P&P system as the basis for a cRPG system vs a system custom-designed for a cRPG.

If you've played many P&P games, it's obvious that just about every one leaves a ton of details to the players and GMs and does not specify everything precisely. That is exactly the opposite of the kind of thing a computer can easily handle. Simply chopping P&P systems down to make them work better on a computer really removes a lot of the fun parts of P&P systems. For example, when D&D is used in cRPGs, all the interesting illusion spells are removed (because they allow excessive freedom). That means making an illusionist is completely pointless, so now there is a whole in the system that used to be filled by several interesting spells that allowed interesting approaches to just about every problem a PC could encounter.

Even if you're a game designer and you want to avoid the work of creating your own cRPG system, there are many P&P games more suited to implementation on a computer, such as GURPS or HERO.

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Original post by Kylotan [...]Baldur's Gate? Planescape? Unless you can explain those two, the rest of your post isn't worth the electrons it's composed of.

I've only played Baldur's Gate 2, but I imagine the same applies to earlier games: While BG2 was a fun game, it was NOT D&D except in the loosest of senses. It did have a system that might appear mechanically similar, but the details that were altered made tremendous differences. For example, half or more of the spells for wizards and clerics were removed completely, which meant that while casters were still powerful, they were rather boring. Then there was the interface itself, which made casting spells something you could only effectively do in the combat mode that used repeated pauses in an attempt to simulate the more natural turn-based system that exists in the P&P game. Overall, the system was stripped of both depth (which it already had a limited supply of compared to many other games) and convencience/simplicity (which had been one of D&Ds selling points since other P&P systems first came out). They could have done far better if they had skipped emulating D&D and instead went for something more diablo-esque.

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Original post by Alpha_ProgDes I'm not too familiar with D&D games. Based on what people have been saying, I was wondering if maybe game companies are moving too fast. I guess with the memory and speed of computers nowadays shouldn't there be more games based on the D&D 1st edition since that ruleset will be able to modelled more accurately and efficiently than edition 2, 3 or 3e (am I getting these names right?).

The problem is that the tables, charts, and algorithms are only around 5% of the game. The game might have a formula to relate climbing penalties to weight carried and surface climbed, and might relate climbing speed to walking speed, but that doesn't do any good unless you include climbing animations, label every surface with the appropriate penalty to climb it, etc. Even once you do all that, you still don't allow for a player using a 'Feather Token: Tree' to instantly create an easily-climbable 60ft-tall tree wherever they want, or a 'Rope of Climbing' to easily climb up to 60ft of the slickest wall, or 'Boots of Levitation', 'Winged Boots', 'Boots of Teleportation', 'Figurines of Wondrous Power: Ebony Fly', or any of the related spells, etc. The fact is that D&D is a very complicated system due to the great variety of spells and items that exist in the game (not to mention everything else), and that isn't even getting to things like "common sense realism" where you might be able to use a ladder, a grappling hook, pitons, etc.

P&P systems are designed to work in combination with the player's reasoning ability to simulate reality. Since cRPGs are unable to use the "player's reasoning ability", they can't reach quite that far. In attempting to do so, they fall short of what they could currently be.

[Edited by - Extrarius on December 5, 2006 11:01:34 AM]