In case you haven’t been following my Neverwinter coverage, you should go and do that now – if you’re a video game player at least. If you’re not and you just came for the D&D editorial then hey, that’s alright too.

Over the years tabletop D&D has been compared to many things, and there always seems to be a hot button issue when you compare it to a video game. Mainly because of the disparity of generations spanning D&D players and of course the inevitable comparing of everything to everything else all the time syndrome caused by internet usage. Of course there have been many legit comparisons of Neverwinter, it seems especially related to 4th edition. Let’s keep in mind that there have been numerous D&D video game titles both legendary and awful, (The 01′ Pool of Radiance was Power Word Death to your OS, among other things) and of course D&D has served as the inspiration and basis for thousands of games for nearly 40 years now. You’ve got to analyze each one based on its own merits, which I’m hoping you’ll do for Neverwinter because people (including myself) have been notoriously unkind regarding their expectations of the game.

I don’t feel that directly porting over D&D rules into a video game always works out well, mainly because at some point you stop trying to make a game that’s fun and you’re just trying to simulate a game that’s already simulating something. It is the crap-ception of video game design – tabletop and electronic are two very different mediums and I think all too often people lose sight of that. Don’t get me wrong a lot of analog games move over well to video games - especially board games, but I think that the perfect blend of crunchy mechanics and open storytelling that tabletop RPG rules are, aren’t one of them. The pure organic basis of why we play tabletop RPG’s doesn’t convert over well is what I’m saying, especially not with tools so we can tell our own stories. This is why the original Neverwinter games were such a hit, because of the DM toolbox, it gave us the ability to tell our own stories, albeit there were more limitations than pen and paper, but there were a lot less than conventional D&D video games. So hooray for Neverwinter’s foundry (which I’m currently playing with but cannot tell you anything about)!

Keeping It In Perspective

Anyway, in short I think games like the Baldur’s Gate Series and Planescape: Torment were pulled off wonderfully because they focused harder on narrative than the mechanics behind them, although the mechanics were definitely there (see: full minutes full of swings and misses in melee combat at low levels) but all D&D video games don’t manage to do it quite as well. Would those button smashing console titles have been as fun if the combat were turn based? Was it really “fun” to measure out your movement with as much granularity as was presented in Temple of Elemental Evil? To each their own of course but I wasn’t a fan. Let’s keep in mind that Neverwinter is an MMO so you’re going to get a lot more fluctuations in the “D&D-ness” factor of the gameplay than a title focused solely on telling a single story.

There have been dozens of D&D games, some great and some awful but let’s not list them all, I’m sure you already know your favorites are. For the sake of not starting any fires or turning this post into troll bait I won’t be comparing Neverwinter to raw tabletop D&D rules, I don’t think that’ fair…or sane. If you want a fluid game that is fun and fun to play as a video game, you’ve gotta make changes for the sake of playability. Neverwinter does that very very well. Alas before I move on to talk about its awesomeness I’ve gotta tackle one more ugly, unavoidable tidbit before we can finally get to the good stuff.

The Inevitable Comparison to DDO, Let’s Get It Over With

Ah Dungeons & Dragons Online, the other D&D MMO. One that’s currently breaking out of it’s Eberron box to bring Forgotten Realms content, to compare with Neverwinter perhaps? Who knows. Anyway, if you’re wanting to know about how Neverwinter compares to DDO, I’m going to try and be as tactful as possible, so here I go. DDO is a beautiful game, the DirectX11 shinies make it look great for being as old of a title as it is but I still don’t think it stacks up to Neverwinter in the aesthetics department. I played DDO on and off for a while with my wife and a few friends but none of us could ever really get into it. It’s not for the lack of options or content, or most of the freemium aspects. It was mainly because we just found the game made us feel very claustrophobic and tedious   Nearly everything in the game is a tiny, uneventful dungeon crawl and the entire scope of the game’s landscapes feel very limited. Granted this is only up to about level 5 which as as far as I could stomach DDO’s gameplay. Keep in mind I bought this game at launch, and have also played as recently as about 6 months ago – things have certainly changed for the better but the overall ethos of the game is still the same stagnant waiting pool of 3rd edition fumbly bits.
Of course DDO’s near verbatim use of the 3rd edition ruleset causes the game to suffer, keep in mind this actually has very little to do with the fact that 3rd edition is one of my least favorites. As I mentioned above, directly porting over a finnicky tabletop system into a video game where the crunchy bits should be as concealed as possible isn’t a great idea – and unfortunately that’s exactly what DDO does. In DDO you’ll see extremely high level characters walking around without armor on because of the DEX mod cap and other oddities that the 3.x rule system generates when players are trying to get the most of their characters.

Neverwinter Does It Right

Neverwinter avoids shenanigans like this, yes the game is modeled after 4e’s art style, and the initial 5 classes are very much a resemblance of the D&D Essentials line but that doesn’t mean that Cryptic copied things verbatim and slapped them into their game. When you’re making a game, especially a D&D game, you have to make it accessible. More people play video games than Tabletop games, especially pen and paper RPGs and sure it sucks but it’s the truth. We as tabletop gamers have to accept that. Cryptic has taken liberties with making the game fluid and attractive to many different play styles and commitment levels. For these reasons (and quite a few more I imagine) some people will say that Neverwinter is “not D&D” and to those people I say, honestly, why do you hate fun?

As far as other aspects of the game go, the freemium model of Neverwinter doesn’t involve teasing you with content and then going “oh wait, do you want to run this dungeon? Better buy the adventure pack now!” There are barred doors and dungeons behind a paywalls all over DDO, and that’s not even a factor in Neverwinter. DDO also has no real form of PvP that is even remotely interesting or relevant, it feels tacked on. PvP is a big factor for me personally because I am a huge fan of the fact that you’re not going up against a programmed AI and that it’s constantly changing and (relatively) unpredictable. Neverwinter’s PvP is structured and far from pointless, it earns you several rewards and is a total blast (I actually just did some alongside one of the Neverwinter devs Joe Garhan and we got to chat about lots of stuff, timing didn’t line up for me to fit it into my wrap up earlier this week so be sure to check it out). One last thing I wanted to touch on was the fact that both of these games are instanced isn’t even an issue, lots of games are these days and Neverwinter is no exception, but its the sheer fact of how ‘walled in’ DDO feels compared to Neverwinter. Turbine, who makes DDO, also does LOTR online and that game feels very different (and much more open and well done) than DDO. Overall Neverwinter is just a more playable and cohesive game than DDO is. So there’s my two cents, but keep in mind that I’m also not really a fan of Eberron or 3e so take all of this with a grain of salt I suppose. Now, finally moving on to the good stuff!

Neverwinter Is Great

Honestly, playing Neverwinter has somehow reignited some small part of me that really wants to play 4e D&D again. I’m not sure if its the simplicity of the player character power setup, the look of the tieflings, or just because I’m on my love/hate roller coaster ride with Vancian magic and we just took a huge dip off the top of a very high crest.

As a tabletop player I can honestly say that contrary what grognards and grumpy edition warrers will say, Neverwinter is very “D&D”. The combat is furious and deadly, it has all the accommodations of modern MMO games at zero cost. You can jump in with your friends and get playing immediately, granted the class selection is a bit limited right now and will be at launch but sometimes less options are better, like the essentials line. I know I know, let’s not get started on that but honestly, if you were considering not giving Neverwinter a shot I highly suggest you change your mind and at least try playing it for a week and see what turns up.

You’re going to roll for your ability scores, increase them as you level, weigh the pros and cons of which powers to use in battle, roll with your teammates across a wide range of playscapes disarming traps, smashing bad guys, and helping fallen comrades from the brink of death’s door. This game is D&D in the truest of forms, you don’t need THACO or weird ability score caps to tell you that, action point and spell mechanics don’t have to be carbon copied from a book on your shelf for you to have fun.

A List, For Lists Sake

Maybe you like lists, maybe you need a list of things/reasons for you to try Neverwinter. I can give you that, I’ll give you ten actually, ten reasons you totally wouldn’t expect.

• It’s free, as in free beer. Download the game, play it, that’s all there is to it.
• It’s got dwarves, and dwarves with mohawks.
• You can get companions and train them to fight at your side and give them cool names like “Zero Cool” and “Healbot 9000″.
• The PvP is fucking amazing.
• The devs really care about the feedback they recieve, it shows more and more with each patch.
• There’s Mimics, holy shit!
• If you’re actually reading this you’ll notice that there are in fact 11 bullet points, I might give you a beta key too so keep reading.
• It runs on just about any modern PC, even the shitbox I have at work with onboard graphics played it smooth (with graphics turned down) at 1920×1080. No I wasn’t playing during working hours, I’m not a slacker. You can even move the UI around to your liking without installing a billion mods.
• There’s built in voice chat, come smash things with your friends and laugh and make dick jokes, just like you would around the table.
• The Foundry is going to produce awesome content, even if the people at Cryptic fall through (they probably won’t, did you see me fighting that pit fiend?) you can just make your own.
• The chance to poke fun at literally hundreds if not thousands of people who have named their character some variation of “Drizzt” and have panther companions.

Wrap Up, Time to Crack Some Skulls

It doesn’t matter what edition of D&D is your favorite, Neverwinter is a blast. Games like this are what I’d rather do than attempt to play tabletop games online. Roll20 and other online tabletop tools are great but the whole online gaming experience just isn’t for me, give me tabletop or give me death, and by death I mean video games.

I’m not sure when the game is actually launching but I’m sure it can’t be too far away. I hope you’ll give it a shot at least, I know I was fully prepared to completly disregard this game and let my assumptions and reservations guide me in a completely different direction. I’ve been playing D&D since I was a teenager and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon, I’ve played a lot of D&D licensed titles and I can honestly say that Neverwinter is one of the few that does the brand good.

If you’re interested in playing this weekend and haven’t managed to grab a key from the various promotions going on online that I’ve been tweeting about then I have some good news for you. I have several Neverwinter keys to give out, give me either A) your biggest sob story as to why you need to play Neverwinter this weekend, B) your testament as to how much you’ve loved the Neverwinter series and/or Forgotten Realms for your whole life, or C) a rant about how much you can’t stand assboats who sit around in general chat of MMO’s complaining about them and should probably just log off and go drink bleach.

Hope to see you in game this weekend!

Alright let’s pick right up from where we left off last week. As I said there the first 20 levels felt very linear as far as the story and the world go, though the sheer amount of things to play within within your character are the exact opposite. As you climb in levels you gain new abilities, most of which you’ll automatically jump on using but right around level 15 you have to start making choices. The choices are great because you want to be able to use all of your abilities but you can’t so you’re really trying to pick and choose the best one for the job at hand. Partying with friends? Pick a set of powers that is going to benefit your strengths/weaknesses the most. Are you fighting lots of monsters that are quantity over quality? Maybe it’s time to break out that AoE power you have. Soloing? Bring your companion.

As you go through those 20 first levels the game presents itself to you in bite sized amounts of nuance – teaching you about the UI, different types of resources you can use and expanding your possibilities within the game world. The story starts to branch out it seems toward levels 19-20 and starts introducing some of the spell plague plot elements but I honestly can’t say more than that because I didn’t get to play much farther.

Let’s drop back a bit to the character creation and discuss the races, classes, and all of those other great D&D bits we all know and love.

Character Creation

Races

So the beta gave us access to humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, half elves, half orcs, and tieflings. Of course the founders will have access to the Drow race and more will come down the pipeline after the game launches. I will say that the level of customization for each race was beyond what I expected, more comprehensive than most MMO’s I’ve played. I’d put it on par with Elder Scrolls or Bioware level of detail tweaking. If that’s what you’re into there is plenty of that here. Each race definitely feels very distinct and has a solid look carved out for them, though I can’t speak for the half elves because I didn’t poke around with one but c’mon and use your imagination there – It’s part elf, part human.

Each race has a set of racial bonuses ala tabletop D&D, where you’ll be able to get a +2 to one stat and an optional plus two in a selection of two others. Unless you play a boring human of course. You “roll” for your ability scores and can roll them as many times as you want but it still seems like it’s set up to produce results from an array, no matter how many times I rolled I couldn’t achieve more than one score of 18 in a stat. Not a big deal, there would be huge balance issues if it was purely “organic” like the 4d6 method of making characters in pen and paper D&D. I believe each race has a skill associated with it but I could be wrong, that might have just been the classes, which would kind of make sense I suppose.

Skills

Speaking of the skills – allow me to explain how those work in an MMORPG. From what I can tell certain skills are given interactable objects within the game world. Little tables full of ancient books and baubles give way to caches of items for those with Arcana, Shrines and statues for religion, Gatherings of moss and mushrooms for nature, and discarded satchels/backpacks for thievery. Not sure why you’d need thievery to steal someone’s backpack but hey, whatever. I was not entirely sold on this to be true, it just seems like a topical way to plug in more things to loot and tie it to a D&D trope. There are also “kits” which are consumables that give you a chance to interact with one of these items if you don’t posses the needed skill, depending on the situation you have a certain % chance to fail and your kit will “break”, consuming it.

However as I played more I did learn that skills also come in handy for things like disarming traps (traps in this game are legit), and sometimes the skills will allow for the manipulation of a door or lever that will gain you access to a separate area, which usually results in a treasure chest of some sort so it’s more of just a roundabout way of doing the same thing. Then again, the core of MMO’s is about killing things and taking their loot, or getting loot from treasure chests so take it as you will. It’s not a complaint but I do think there’s a lot more they could do with it, and perhaps they have and I just didn’t get that far.

Classes

Anyway back to character creation. After you pick your race, you’ll obviously pick a class. During the beta weekend that I played there were 4 classes available: Guardian Fighter, Trickster Rogue, Control Wizard, Devoted Cleric. Each has a very distinct feel to them and I think they will be releasing more classes post launch and it seems they are going the D&D Essentials route of [Type]Class. I suspect we’ll see some kind of striker (DPS) wizard or sorcerer, and a cleric that is more melee oriented than the “laser cleric” that is the devoted one. I played all 4 classes at least to level 10 (sans Cleric) but I played the rogue to 19 so I’ll give you my quick breakdown of how they “feel” and comment on how they feel as part of an adventuring party. The solo capabilities of each class is quite good so there’s no need to comment on whether they can solo, but rather how they do it.

• Rogue – Very strong solo capabilities, though the game tends to throw bad guys at you in groups of at least 3 or 4 at a time. Depending on the situation and the level of your enemy you’ll likely chug down a health potion or two when faced with 4+ opponents by yourself. As the member of a group you’re great at focusing down a single target at a time and are very mobile so you can dart all across the room with your various encounter powers picking people off and helping peel bad guys off the squishy wizards. Playing the rogue was very very satisfying and combat never felt like a bore, the active maneuvering is very fun to play with by dodging enemy attacks and just being all over the place in general.

• Wizard – The wizard can pew pew magic missiles quite quickly usually in a one, two burst followed by a third triple missile assault which feels very weighty as they sink into your foes. Their control abilities work quite well, perhaps too well! While playing my rogue I kept having to chase after monsters the wizard would knock around the map, so controlling really is a thing they excel at, as well as AOE damage. Their teleport ability allowing them to swiftly avoid incoming attacks or bamboozle a foe who is charging at them head on is very nice, I can’t wait to see this play out in PvP

• Fighter – The fighter plays like the tank it is supposed to be. I played a dwarf and boy oh boy did I feel like my little dude could take some punishment. The fighter doesn’t have any active abilities to dodge out of the way like the other 3 classes (which is good) and instead has an active block. You hold shift down and he raises his shield, while in this mode you can’t attack but you take considerably less damage. This pits the fighter against huge foes and really enforces the damage sponge mentality of the guardian fighter, it’s great. To choose to block or to build more aggro or to just get another sword swing in again? Decisions! They have a cool intercept style ability too which makes for great ways to leap into a bundle of foes to get their attention, or to save one of your other party members’ asses.

• Cleric – The cleric was the first time I’d ever played or heard about people playing a healer in an MMO that were actually excited about it. You don’t just sit around and stare into whack-a-mole health bars and fall asleep at your keyboard. The devoted cleric actively participates in battle by tossing out seals to heal the party, obliterating undead, and slinging lances of faith into enemies at a constant rate. It’s pretty fun, but I won’t say much more because my cleric actually only got to about level 6.

Everyone in Neverwinter has the same shoes. EVERYONE.

I do have some small gripes about all the classes though, it seems there was only 1 weapon each one could use. Though my rogue did get an axe toward the end, wizards use orbs, fighters use swords, etc. It felt very limiting but it could be that it’s still a beta, or I wasn’t looking hard enough, or I just got unlucky with drops. I think that the weapons you wield have something to do with your character’s general animation, which can get annoying.

The wizards all constantly walk around with their two fingers up (controlling the floating orb? scouts honor?) and the clerics are always holding an arm out dangling their holy symbol around. Looking at them just makes my arms tired. The rogues do this little jump back and forth the way boxers do when preparing for a fight, which is actually kind of cool. Minor gripe but yeah, I wish they’d just stand still!

Each class does have a build system too. As you advance in levels you get “feat points” to spend on passive perks for your character, about midway through you’ll gain access to a “paragon path” where you’ll pick to further specialize your character’s already specialized role. I think when the game finally launches this level of granularity is going to be great. You’ll have a defending fighter, and an offensive one, each with 3 separate paths they can go down, should make for some varied groups and even more dynamics in PvP. I’m a big fan of PvP in case you can’t tell

Speaking of PvP, there’s an exclusive press only PvP event going on in Neverwinter tomorrow the 19th and I’m going to get to be part of it! We’re being leveled up to 31 and being shown around the PvP scene! So I’ll be streaming between 3 and 5 pm PST if you want to check out the coverage over on my twitch channel, be sure not to miss it!

Questing and Leveling Up

So, what is leveling and questing like? It’s pretty streamlined, as noted before it may be a bit too streamlined for some people but to each their own. The questing system has a built in tracker. You can make notes on your map, flag areas on your map, and each quest has a highlighted quest zone so you know exactly where to go. There’s also a trail of rainbow sparkles ala Fable that will lead you by the nose to your next objective. You can easily disable this stuff with the stroke of a single hotkey if you like to explore more than you like to be caught up in an endless tutorial. I will admit though I did have it turned off 90% of the time it was great for when you got in a pinch and had no idea what/where the hell it was you were supposed to be doing/going.

Getting a level up brings about a pop up for you to basically go through a check list of all the things you can do for that level advancement. The whole game has an overlay that can be triggered via mouse click or key combination, which is an elegant solution for a game that involves a constant use of mouselook. It might take a little getting used to for the first 10 minutes or so but after that you really start to appreciate the UI.

Fiddly bits about the game are always a point of contention for me. Am I going to be playing inventory tetris? How quick do I run out of bag space? How easy is it to split stacks of items, trade, converse, manipulate objects, etc. In Neverwinter most all of the things I just mentioned are handled with the F key (rebindable of course) you use it like an action key in other games. The same way E does most actions in a FPS, F does the same in Neverwinter. It may sound awkward but it felt really really ergonomic during gameplay. I got some footage of inventory management, if you’re as boring as I am you may enjoy it.

Dungeon Instances

The dungeon queuing system is really slick. You put yourself in the queue and right there on the screen it tells you the ETA on running the dungeon and an estimated wait time for when you’ll be entering. It uses a system similar to WoW where if a party member drops you can look for someone to fill in on the fly. During the beta I got to run The Cloak Tower and our group had no true tank actually, we used the wizard’s fighter companion as a tank and it did a decent job up until the final boss. Our cleric admitted that they did not know how to heal (I died a time or two) but we managed to get through it.

Our party composition was 2 rogues, 2 wizards, and a half cleric and we managed to make it through in about 35 minutes so I’m not sure what that says for the difficulty of the content or if we just got lucky or if since it was an intro dungeon if it wasn’t really meant to be much of a challenge. Regardless, the experience was fun, the run was quick and colorful. That’s one thing I’ll say about the game over and over is that the environments are really varied and it doesn’t just feel like its all open fields and boar slaying. This is a good thing. If you want to watch the whole dungeon run in its entirety, you can do so right here.

Enough! Just Grab This Beta Key and Find Out For Yourself!

I could go on and on about so many more things, the more I write the more I realize I could be writing about right down to the keybinds and quest givers themselves. I’m not going to press into 2500 word territory though. I’m sure you’ve heard enough of my babble and want to try the game yourself anyway? Logitech is giving away keys for this weekend so go grab one and find me in game. Check back later this week as I have my final wrap up regarding who Neverwinter feels to a D&D player, and perhaps to a DDO player.

For a precursor to this post, and what lead up to its writing, be sure to check my this post first, then jump back here. Okay, so I was once a huge MMO gamer, my World of Warcraft days were the only way to get my ‘RPG fix with other actual living people’ before my re-induction to the tabletop world. I played long hours and ran a hardcore raiding guild for 2 straight years, disregarded schoolwork, relationships, shaving, and overall missed out on a lot of things real life had to offer. Thankfully those days are over and so what I look for in an MMO is a lot different. To be honest I don’t look for MMO’s at all anymore because of the time constraints and obligations they inter, and also my habit to become wildly addicted to them. That being said I may not be the hardest of the hardcore anymore, and if you’re looking for thoughts on the game from that vantage point you may as well stop reading now.

Recently I picked up Guild Wars 2. Yes this piece is about Neverwinter but I’m going somewhere with this so just sit tight. I picked it up on a whim to relive some old memories with a few buddies and spend more time with a friend who had moved away, also it seemed just too hard to pass up being that there was no subscription fee. The game is great, I played for a few months but have since fell out of love with my class and been too preoccupied with a glut of other great games to play. I have coined Guild Wars 2 “the MMO for adults who have jobs and/or lives” because of its ease of entry and non-committal nature. You can log in and play for a bit and hop right back off and still feel like you accomplished something, which I find greatly important between having an amazing wife and 2 kids who deserve my attention, 2 and a half jobs, and a social life away from a computer monitor.

“Pay To Win”? Nope

My only minor issue with Guild Wars was the 60$ bar to enter. It wasn’t bad, but it was still a bar. Here I was paying $60 for another MMO which I may or may or may not still want to play within a few months. With Neverwinter I feel that you’re getting all of the “gamer with a life” benefits of Guild Wars 2 and also waiving the entrance fee, because there’s none of that, the game is free to download and free to play. Yes there is a cash store “freemium” option for things but from all I can gather it is not “pay to win”. It is actually somewhat similar to Guild Wars 2’s setup for their cash store. It may be “pay to save time” however, which I’m totally okay with. Why? Because I’m an adult who can’t spend a ton of time raiding/grinding/questing to get the cool bits that I want out of a game. I’ve dropped a total of 30$ on other “freemium” games like Tribes Ascend and I’m very, very happy about it. That’s half of what I’d have spent for a major release AAA title video game and I’ve gotten at least 35+ hours of gameplay out of it so far and look forward to a lot more, that’s a pretty cheap entertainment/dollar ratio if you ask me.

With Neverwinter’s “zen” (real cash) store you can get mounts, bags, consumables, companions (which are like pets, but they actually help you fight, especially helpful for solo adventuring) and more, though you can earn all of these items in game without ever spending a dime. There’s also a thing you can do hourly by sending a prayer to your deity which grants you a short buff and some kinds of tokens that are redeemable for other goodies too, including a unicorn mount which someone I know is awfully excited about.

Apples, Oranges, and Eyestalks

Let it be known that I’m not a fan of saying “oh it’s just like X but with Y” when it comes to games, at least not on a cynical level of merely writing them off. Almost every creative work is a derivative of various other creative works so let’s just get that out of the way right now. At this point though, calling any game a “clone” of something typically isn’t fair unless it is obviously a blatant clone of another title. (see: Runes of Magic)

If I had to compare Neverwinter to another single game, I wouldn’t.  I’d say that it was honestly a large blend of things with one big unique twist – the gameplay is all action oriented. The combat reminded me of a hybrid between Diablo and the old console D&D games of yore where you go around smashing barrels and racing to run over the little piles of gold and potions before your buddies did (though that’s not actually the case in Neverwinter, loot isn’t shared).

The action economy reminded me of something between classic MMO “cooldowns” (at will and encounter powers) and limit breaker abilities that you build up ala Final Fantasy (daily powers, which are over the top awesome). The grouping system is simple and easy to grab friends and go, the built in voice chat is wonderful (when it works, I had to relog a few times to get it to “click”), you share gold when in a party and items aren’t shared so there’s no fighting over loot. You will obtain items that you can’t use though, which is a good thing because it helps you gear friends, alts, or at the very least make some coin selling the stuff. Each dungeon and most quests have a chest at the end that holds an item just for your class which is a nice touch.

However most likely though, people will compare Neverwinter to Guild Wars 2. There are scrying orbs that are like GW2’s vistas -allowing you to see a large overview of the map via some awesome aerial camera angle, as well as a few other minor aspects that will prompt the comparison of the two games. It’s unavoidable and I’d rather not get into any pissing matches about it, so let’s avoid that if we can. All this being said let’s move on to actually talking about now Neverwinter plays and feels on its own merits instead of playing the name game, shall we?

Look & Feel, More Coming Tomorrow

Let me first just say that I had an absolute blast playing every moment of Neverwinter this past weekend. I really didn’t want to put it down, I even woke up thinking about playing it both days of the beta weekend. To top that off each time I woke up thinking about it, my wife had already beat me to the punch because I was woken up by the sounds of frantic clicking and spells being thrown about. Anytime a game does that to me, I know it’s doing something right.

Neverwinter feels very fluid, I thought at first that the action “mouselook always on” feel would be too twitchy for an MMO. This didn’t work very well in Conan so I was not sure what to think. After my very first combat interaction though I was glad to be wrong, the lock on features are great and everything just feels smooth and super playable. Combat in this game is addicting. Speaking of smooth though, the graphics themselves are very “D&D” and work wonderfully for the setting of the game, environments are very varied and look beautiful in a lot of places. Although they do feel somewhat dated in other aspects (especially the character models), and the animations, particularly those of your enemies are still very rough in places but it is a beta after all. Honestly though I don’t really give two shits about the graphics because I don’t play games for the visuals, they’re just icing on the cake. For those of you who are PC hardware nerds I’m running an Athlon II X4 630, 8GB of DDR3, and a Radeon HD 7850 2GB, I ran the game on maximal settings with zero performance issues when I wasn’t streaming.

Tomorrow I’ll be covering what the game’s first 20 levels felt like, classes, races, skills, character creation, leveling, builds, the dungeon I ran along with the queue’ing system, questing, and more. If you want a sneak peak or some insight into what I’m going to be talking about you can check out my live streaming coverage of day 1 that includes the aforementioned topics for tomorrow’s post. The stream is also full of commentary and questions I was taking from d20Monkey and some other people from the internet! After the gamer perspective commentary, I’ll be writing up an entire blog from the point of being a tabletop D&D player and the possibilities behind the game’s foundry. Expect that early next week.

Watch The Stream, Neverwinter Gameplay In Action

Bonus Clip: “HOLY SHIT IT’S A MIMIC!”

I’ve been thinking a lot about character creation. I’m officially a Player now, and not just a GM. I’ve been lucky enough to become a regular player in a D&DNext game for the past month and a half or so now, and I’ve also started up a homebrew Pathfinder campaign that’s about 4 sessions in. I’ve also had a long drawn out flirtation with both Dungeon World and Savage Worlds for some time now and have begun the initial motions for each of them. With all of this, I’ve learned a lot about what it is to be player lately and also a lot about indoctrinating new gamers. So I’m here to report some of my findings.

To make a long story short, this article is going to explore 2 ideas. Implementing making non-mechanical decisions into character creation and the general over-complication of character creation found in some games and some ideas on how to lessen it. I’m looking at you 3.x.

Conceptualize Before Your Roll Those Dice

Dungeon World example bonds for a Bard. Great stuff here.

Often, we roll up a character starting with exactly that – rolling dice for stats, or in some cases distributing points for stats. There’s not been much emphasis on questions like “who is your character” “what drives them” “what secrets or flaws do they have”? Not only does this seem to place focus on mechanics, but also often only places focus on how awesome a character is. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be awesome, but everyone has flaws, no? Seems like it’s just all about allocating stats and figuring out how many cool feats, gizmos, and special abilities a character can rack up before even stepping foot into their world.

Games like Savage Worlds have edges and flaws, a beautiful system for balancing out all of the top-heavy ‘awesomeness’ characters often have. Not only does this help round characters out, but it also gets the players in the frame of mind that may better prepare them to actually role play a little. Dungeon World has a thing called bonds where you fill in blanks with your other party members names detailing which of them you owe a debt to, knows your secrets, or who’s life you have saved. Bonds also create unique opportunities for character creation that should get everyone out of the fucking tavern.

Charm, Diplomacy, Ferocity? How does your character typically overcome their problems?

I’ve recently jumped into Guild Wars 2 as well, because I can get behind a triple-A title MMORPG that doesn’t ask me to dump coins into its coffers every month. Even during the character creation in this game, (an MMO mind you – typically known for their lackluster approach to personalization of your character beyond gear, funny pets, and stupid haircuts) made me feel as if my character had some depth to him.

But, Shouldn’t This Be Up to the DM?

Some have told me that my stance on this is silly and that it should be left up to the DM, regardless of what game system is being used. My answer to this question is a firm No, mainly because I’m bitter and believe that DM’s have enough shit to do already. That and because players are too lazy to do most things unless you force them to. Well, both of those things and becuse most players seem to actually enjoy making these kinds of decisions when creating a character. If you present it before them it can fit right into the character creation process quite nicely, within reason of course. If a player is already choosing feats, skills, theme, background, race, class, specialty, etc it seems that the more you tack on the more excruciating you’re going make character creation for them. Especially to newcomers.

Speaking of Complications

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it again here: I hate feats. The above mentioned gigantic list of all the granular pieces of ‘awesome’ that go into creating a character can weigh down a lot of the character creation process. In games like 3.x, Pathfinder, and even some parts of the latest iteration of D&DNext – these decisions can start to feel more cumbersome than fun, especially for those who aren’t nuanced with RPG’s.

Starting my Pathfinder game began with an entire evening of character creation for 6 players. It took all of 4 or 5 hours to get everyone settled in and ready to roll their first d20. It was a fun night, but it really started to drag toward the end there. Had I already obtained my copy of Hero Lab (full review on this amazing piece of software to come next week) some 4 weeks ago this may have never been an issue. But it was. I like digital tools like Hero Lab, but I also like rolling up characters “by hand” as I think it adds to the investment you have in your character. Now, most of my players are RPG vets and they’re used to what goes into making a character for the most part. Not all of my players are seasoned dice slingers though, and so I think it adds yet another hurdle to overcome for new players.

How to completely bewilder even the most seasoned of RPG players.

Now, creating a D&DNext character strikes the sweet spot for ‘time spent filling out a character sheet’ in my book. It’s accessible enough to feel robust but easy at the same time, even people totally new to the game can dive in and not be too intimidated. Though it’s not perfect, as D&DNext in particular has some real redundancy issues with selecting your class, class style/build, background, and specialty. Granted these things are optional, but most players are going to want those options unless their DM has disallowed them. I’m sure the character creation process will also become more streamlined as development continues but in the meantime: saying that you’re playing a Human Rogue Lurker Thief sounds a little silly, and mostly confusing.

Slow Your Roll

Emphasis on “all of them” but perhaps a penchant for one or the other. A nice touch from Guild Wars 2.

I don’t see why some of these bits can’t be moved further into character progression, especially in Pathfinder 3.x’s case. Instead of gaining level 2 and getting a +1 to your base attack bonus and nothing else, why not pick a feat then or gain some other little nugget of coolness? Players like to get perks and stuff like this but, making them choose so many of them, from such a big list of things is daunting and seems to exponentially reduce the amount of fun dreaming up a character can be with each and every asset you add to the process.

Spread out the little bits that go into making a character until you’ve spent some time with that character, and the game itself. Unless you’ve written a massive back story already, will you know what school of magic your wizard prefers? Let them figure it out as they go. Building a character can be looked at like building a house, you need a good foundation but you can’t use all of the (mechanically) strong bits  just within the foundation, you’ve got to save some for the walls and the ceiling. Let some of those bigger decisions lie further down the progression line. That’s a lot to deal with up front, and I’m not sure it feels nearly as organic as it should.

Again, this is all just my two cents. I’m sure there are some HYPER MATHEMATICAL reasons why what I just proposed is pure idiocy/lunacy so be sure to enlighten me. It’s just that the more games I play, and the more rule sets that I read I feel like creating a character should have some baseline questions asked about your character’s makeup that goes beyond ability scores and stat blocks. With some of these elements in place, the motivations for your characters and the game world itself become much clearer and easier to manage the improvisation required to both run and play RPG’s.

So, character sheets should read a little more like questionnaires, and I absolutely hate feats and giant lists of hyper detailed bits right at character generation. What are your thoughts?

Also, while we’re on the topic of the lord of hell, it’s only proper to mention that Kobold Quarterly is developing a series called Monsters of Sin for Pathfinder. Avarice is the first one out of the gate and it’s definitely worth a look, I’m enjoying the hell out it myself and I don’t even play Pathfinder. They are doing each of the 7 deadly sins at 2.99 a piece, or you can grab the subscription and get all 7 of them for 16$ (plus a final copy with all of them compiled into a single PDF). Honestly, even if you’re not a Pathfinder player (I’m not) these are still great sources of inspiration for your game, especially if you want some darker themes and it all converts over to whatever system you’re playing easily anyway.

I don’t just hand out plugs for products I don’t believe in or like, so please keep that in mind with me relaying all of this to you guys. Honestly Kobold Quarterly and Open Design put out some damn good material, if you haven’t honestly given their stuff a look over before perhaps now is the time!

Anyway, that’s it for this week folks. Check back next week and I’ll have a review up for the Dungeon Survival Handbook and another board game as well as more Diablo and D&D crossover stuff, plus whatever else I might conjure up! Have a good weekend, and happy gaming!

Holy Shit

As many of you who already know me, you’re probably aware of my unhealthy fondness of the Baldur’s Gate PC game series. For those of you who were unaware of this, you may now consider yourselves in the loop. I loved it so much I even submitted this craptastic desktop wallpaper that somehow made it onto Planed Baldur’s Gate back in 02′.  Baldur’s Gate was my entrance into the D&D world, it spoke to me as a gamer and drew me into the hobby, and the series is still to this day my single favorite video game of all time. I used to skip school, work, sleep, and other marginally important activities in order to play this game. The story, the writing, voice acting, gameplay is all what I consider to be the holy grail / apex of PC RPG’s. Which is why you can imagine, I almost started hyperventhilating when I saw BaldursGate.com yesterday.

That’s right, the spectacle of the website is that it appears to be taunting something brand new on the horizon for the series. The music sent chills up my spine, even though I just played the game less than a week ago (thanks GoG). Anyway, no one is sure of what it actually is but we’re already starting to gather the ideas about what it isn’t. We do know that it isn’t the recently surfaced “complete edition” to be released on Steam, and we know that it probably isn’t a spoof or just some random fan page due to the domain being about ten years old and recently going up for sale from its previous fan owned registrars, and is now registered under a proxy.

A supposed statement from former Bioware designer Trent Oster stating “We’re not related to the Steam complete edition, I can tell you that much. Other than that, we’re hoping to announce something soon.” ”we” being Beamdog, the studio Trent is part of these days.

Scry Source

The HTML source of the Baldurs Gate page contained numerous teaser bits within the comment markup and seems to have changed several times already all the way up until the time of this writing, so you may want to drop by the site and have a look for yourself in case anything has changed recently. Also be sure to check the the final lines at the bottom of the source as well. This is what we’ve seen so far, there are even other sources online claiming to have seen a few different snippets than I’ve seen just yet. Including lovable quotes from Minsc, and Irenicus himself.

February 28, 2012
Shadowy Figure - Raise Dead : Infinity Engine
For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory.
And then... it returned. Better than it was before.
Pore over the tapestries and works of art hanging from our walls if you wish, Child of Bhaal...perhaps you will find a clue. But patience, ah... patience would reveal it all.
Love is a lie. Only hate endures.
As the silver moon waxes and wanes, so too does life.

Updates

• Kotaku reports ‘teaser’ video to be fake, tweets from Trent Oster confirm, yet tease more.

A Pledge, A Question, A Wish, A Rant

I know I’m always going on about how I’m not one for speculation, but my favorite video game of all time gets to be the exception to this rule, so please forgive my hypocrisy here for devoting an entire post to it. Fear not though, I do have some legitimate questions for you guys, and also a few statements.

I Pledge to try and cut out a little slice of DreadGazebo.net and dedicate it to summarizing coverage of the new game on a semi-regular basis until some sort of credible/tangible source of information surfaces. If you don’t care about this sort of stuff, no worries just ignore the posts, I’m sure it won’t be long before the official site tells us more.

I wonder if this is going to have anything to do with D&DNext? I’d really like to see a stellar video game launch alongside 5e to hopefully reach out and pull people into the hobby the same way the originals did to me. There is a whole demographic of potential D&D gamers out there that are missing out because, well let’s face it, D&D has not had a solid video game to pair up with it since in a long time. Sorry, Daggerdale. As for the new Neverwinter title, well I abandoned all hope on that one a long time ago.

I hope this isn’t some mobile gaming port. I won’t mind if it’s a HD remake, a 3D remake, sequel, prequel, hack & slash Dark Alliance title,  or a shrink wrapped collection of macaroni art shaped to look like Minsc and Boo taking over the world. I just don’t want this to become some  iOS / Android / Mobile whatever the fuck app, because I really like to game using actual peripherals – be it dice, pens, keyboards, mice, controllers, whatever. I don’t understand the desire to port games not meant for touch input over into touch input (also: this has already been done). They always wind up buggy and were never meant to be played that way to begin with. Like… this thing, what the fuck is this anyway? Who buys this? Humbug.

Anyway, I’m going to get slightly grognardic here and say that I’m hoping for an honest to goodness solid sequel: Baldurs Gate 3. I’d love to continue the epic story of the Bhaalspawn and seeing some old favorite characters once again, and bring that sweet, sweet video game RPG goodness to the masses once again. Top notch writing, voice acting, gameplay, stunning environments, challenge, core D&D rules. What’s there not to love? What I don’t want is some watered down button mashing bullshit like they pulled with Dragon Age 2.

You Point, I Punch!

Thanks for reading, whether you agree with me or not I’d really appreciate some feedback in the comments below, or hit me up on twitter. I’m really looking forward to whatever comes of these cryptic little tidbits they throw at us and I’ll be keeping you all updated with whatever I dig up in the meantime. I know I’ll also be playing through all of the Baldur’s Gate PC games once more very soon, you know, for science. Well, that is when I can unglue myself from Tribes Ascend. Any of you planning on doing the same? Let me know!

A while back, I wrote the most popular article on my site – “4e D&D Plays Like A Video Game, And That’s Awesome” though you wouldn’t know that from what my site currently displays due to having to rebuild completely after being hacked by some shitheads. I’m not bitter. Anyway, today I’d like to discuss an idea that came to me during a twitter debate instsigated by the NewbieDM the other day, and that is alternatives to levels in D&D. Particularly in this case, players leveling up.

Now I’m no pro game designer, or even good at being an amateur one so bear with me here – I’m just a guy who likes video games and D&D, and has a (probably) dumb idea. Hear me out.

In A Nutshell, Or Two.

The way the Elder Scrolls games work as far as leveling goes is basically as follows: As you are out adventuring, using your abilities, the more you use something, the better you get with it. Say for example, that you spend a lot of time using a sword – this will earn you a point in Blades which relates back to the Strength attribute. After you have earned 10 points in any skill you achieve a level up, when you level up you get points to spend on your Attributes. In the Elder Scrolls universe, these differ slightly from D&D, they are Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility, Personality, Intelligence, Willpower and Luck.

Depending on what skills you used to earn you those 10 points will affect the bonuses you get when distributing points to your attributes at time of level up. When leveling you get 3 points to spend on your attributes, so lets say you used Strength 5 out of the 10 times you got a skill point towards leveling, if you chose to put a point into strength, you’ll get a +3 bonus or so, actually resulting in a +4 bonus to strength. Now lets say you want to increase your willpower but didn’t use any willpower related skills on your way to this level, spending a point would only earn you +1 to that attribute.

Specifics, Details, Whatever

The above mentioned math is not verbatim from the games so please don’t rib me on that, and while the system is still technically a labeled leveling system “You are now level 2″, the beauty of it is that really there is no cap unless of course you somehow manage to max out every single attribute you have which takes some real dedication, and lots of time.

Cryptic’s past titles have been mediocre at best, and this is where my suspicion lies. It’s also worth mentioning they probably should get their lore right, before they go attempting to win over hardcore FR fans. While I may have started playing D&D when I was 13, I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 – which means I can honestly say “20+ years of experience” when it comes to this subject matter. When the announcement for “Neverwinter” was made, like many of us I was pretty excited at first glance.  I’ve always beeg a huge fan of the series and the Forgotten Realms world, but a lot about this title (so far) seems iffy.

Given a projected quarter for it’s launch date, already having determined it’s 5 classes (via the front page graphic), the creation tools being announced and more, yet they still don’t know what the hell the games core genre will be other than an RPG? It’s advertised as a “Multiplayer RPG” but in an interview their CEO the game is referenced in an MMO-esque light. Talking about pricing schemes and mentioning microtransactions and “pay-by-the-minute” doesn’t sound much like any “Multiplayer RPG” I’ve ever played. On top of sounding asinine, the arrogant “Hey look the Neverwinter IP on a new game, no business model yet but that’s okay! Come and give us your money!” attitude makes it seem like they’re banking on a majority of sales being generated solely from the games name (and perhaps 4e?) and not much else.

They are ready to sell this idea to all of us yet they don’t even know the how they’re going to go about doing it? How does this seem feasible that they’re already planning out classes yet we don’t know if it’s going to be turn based, action (ala Diablo), similar to other bioware engine RPG’s, or a full fledged MMO? Will class synergies and/or balance not matter because it’s the first 4e video game so far and they assume we’ll all just go gobble it up when it hits the shelves?

Perhaps the most boisterously stupid thing I’ve read thus far is from Cryptic CEO Jack Emmert:

“We’re trying to create new sorts of games that we call “OMGs” (online multiplayer games)“.

Hello? ‘Online multiplayer game’ isn’t exactly revolutionary idea, and a real stupid use of an internet acronym for a buzz word to boot. Considering ‘online multiplayer gaming’ has existed for decades, I’d say it’s kind of a dickish move on Mr. Emmert’s behalf to even conjure and spread such silly words. Is this game being developed for consoles too, perhaps that’s why the approach is so willy nilly? There’s still a lot of unanswered questions that I have so I guess time is going to be the only cure for that. We’ll have to just wait and see. What are your thoughts on all of this, let me know in the comments section!