New, official (licenced) D&D CRPG. Link.

The Good: A new official D&D CRPG, yay! 5e ruleset. Also, DM mode! Looks like Neverwinter Nights for a new decade. Hopefully.

The Bad: Dragon Age: Origins writing team on the campaign. Meh. Also can't tell whether there's a co-op mode for the campaign, which would be sweet.

The Ugly: "In DM Mode, the Dungeon Master engages players and empowers them to have fun in a way that suits the party best while creating a tailored, non-adversarial 4 with 1 experience that any RPG or pen-and-paper fan will enjoy." FUCK YOU COMPUTER PEOPLE I WAS HERE FIRST.

I'm optimistic, though.

Anyone know anything more?

D&D has needed this for a while, because a host of retro and modern Steam computer games have been doing classic D&D games better than WotC tabletop D&D games for a decade now.

But, unfortunately, as part of their transmedia plan, paying out the ass for D&D computer games must be part of the process, because so far Neverwinter, the newest D&D MMO is microtransactioned within an inch of it's life, and whether or not it's "Pay to win" it's certainly "Pay for damn near each and every option available on the tabletop".

Look at the pricing structure of the new game.  There of course are a stupid number of ridiculous pricing adds for the extreme collector, but you have to go to one of the deluxe editions to get "Beholder (DM use), Lost Mines dungeon tile set (DM use)".  If that means you don't get a Beholder to use as a DM unless you pay for it, then this thing will not be a Skyrim level success, as a "Pay for monsters" model means the game is probably not going to be moddable.

So this definitely won't be "Neverwinter Nights" for a new generation if the community can't create (like they did for NWN) 40 times the content the original game had.

Quote from: The Butcher;821396Dragon Age: Origins writing team on the campaign.

My interest = gone.

Quote from: CRKrueger;821421If that means you don't get a Beholder to use as a DM unless you pay for it, then this thing will not be a Skyrim level success, as a "Pay for monsters" model means the game is probably not going to be moddable.

This part really depends on how they've implemented it and how they manage it. If they intend on selling modules, monsters and tile sets odds are very good that adding such things is rather simple. They may not want people to do it, but that rarely stops anyone.

I'd say it'd still be in their best interest to encourage modding, while they sell actual quality content that cleaves to the current plot of D&D. Relatively few mods are as polished as professionally made games should be, if the quality is up to snuff and they maintain it the moddability could be exactly what they need to get people interested in the game and hopefully willing to buy their DLC.

Of course a stuffed suit is very likely to not grasp that and start DMCAing anything they don't like. But it's not inherently bad they've made it so that they can sell things in the game, it's just a rather douche move to day one DLC one of the more iconic monsters in the game.

I'll probably watch the game from a safe distance till reviews come down and any dust ups over content and modding have occurred. Might be a solid single player adventure even if the worst is true, if not it might be a modernized Neverwinter so long as management doesn't act stupid. Given part of me thinks that last bit needs a laugh track I can't say I'm too optimistic.

It sounds interesting.
We'll have to wait and see how the specifics work out.
There' so many ways they could screw this up.