Dungeons & Dragons Anniversary Gets Further Celebration

Thanks to GameSpy for its series of articles helping commemorate the 30th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Continuing previous articles about the occasion, the week-long feature includes a look back at SSI's Gold Box series (" the first series of games to truly bring the D&D experience to video gamers"), The Daily Show's Stephen Colbert discussing his D&D schooldays ("We were all complete outcasts in school -- beyond the fringe, beyond nerds"), and a feature on Planescape: Torment ("One of the greatest, and certainly the weirdest, RPGs ever made.")

Comments

Bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

They dissed Al-Qadim.

DnD replaced by MMORPG

[tod_miller]

In my limited roleplaying experience (mainly a few games of paranoia, and mechwarrior) I found the a good structure was excellent. The DM was intelligent enough that we were confortable with his decisions etc. It felt like a true game experience.

You had too many laughs obiviously, especially paranoia, which has an amazing atmosphere.

Take that to the PC. You have faceless people playing games, less laughs, more stats.

DnD used to be small groups of upto 12 (for Vampire games which again I joined out of interest).

MMORPG seem to have lost that element of role playing in their enormity.

How about a LMORPG? Get lots of subscribers, but play mini missions (1 week or so?) where you select a band of 5-6 other players, and really role play, and take challenges.

There should be an API for a human DM in these instances, as it is only their own mission.

Just a couple of eurocents.

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[fiftyvolts]

Even with something like NWN, I don't think you achieve the same kind of "fun & laughs" the parent post was talking about. Playing DnD with close friends is so much more personal than using a computer. With a computer there's no pencil, no paper, no dice, but instead a screen that blinks at you. No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.

... and I spend a LOT of time on the computer...

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[Jeranon]

No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.

Feh. Real people are overrated. Try dealing with metagaming powergamers who see nothing wrong with it (and technically, there is nothing wrong as it follows "teh roolz"). Burn out happens faster when you're at opposing sides of playing styles.

WotC did a survey where they broke down the player types into what people wanted in their RPG experience. From what I can see from WotC's current products and the computer games coming out, there is currently a bias towards the combat focused side. One could say that about the old Gold Box games, which are classics, but shouldn't games have evolved in the decade since? The critically acclaimed Planescape Torment, an innovative game in which only the ruleset was not, has shown that it's not the industry, it's just that most gamers aren't interested. Lamentation for Torment's poor sales indeed.

Re:DnD replaced by MMORPG

[perlchild]

It's not just sales...

Making a great "brain" game is hard, making a hack and slash fest is "relatively easy".

Any sane PHB worth his salt would stay away from trying to make a Planescape II, even if it HAD sold, simply because if the brain is the game, he'd need to find

1) a group of very smart people
2) a group of very smart, creative people
3) a group of very smart, creative people who work well together
4) a group of very smart, creative people who work well together, and prevent egos from causing cost overruns.

Even Vegas won't give you good odds on #4...

We won't get innovative games until we punish the un-innovative ones with bad sales, VERY bad sales.
At least enough for one company to go under, but it has to be explicit... I just don't see that happening, a lot of casual gamers just don't have the exposure to a lot of the innovative, older games, in order to tell them apart from the new rehashed ones.

I have Planescape: Torment

[david.given]

...and it's brilliant. Really. The characters are excellent, the graphics are great, the voice acting is superb (although there's not much of it), it has an atmosphere you can cut with a knife, and the writing --- wow. If you've played it, you'll know what I mean when I say that Morte, Dak'kon and Annah's backstories all hit me at the same time, and I was glued to my monitor for several hours, ignoring the graphics, just reading the text as it scrolled past...

Alas, it's not perfect. The AI ain't great; Ignus, my physically weak but very powerful sorceror, has a tendency to wander up to some huge, horrible monster when I ask him to cast a long-range spell unless I keep an eye on him. (This tends to be terminal for him.) There are some scripting bugs; there's one minor subquest I can't complete. There are some more serious engine bugs, too. If I try and enter one room the game crashes on me, which is a pity because I need something that's in it. One whole section, the Godsman temple, is noticeably poorly written, at least compared to the rest of it.

The worst problem is that it's far too easy to get involved in the story and gallop through the main plot while avoiding the subplots. (I did this.) This means you end up at the endgame grossly underpowered. I'm now wandering around trying to level up so I stand a slight chance against the ...

But the problems are minor. If you like RPGs, get it. It's not expensive these days, and you'll enjoy it. It's the classic RPG; if you think you know about the genre, it's required playing. It's the Hamlet of RPGs, and no, I don't think I'm overstating the case.

It's a damned shame it didn't sell better --- it was probably too intelligent. If it had, perhaps we'd have more games that were that good.

hahaha

[geekoid]

How can you tralk about flexability and 'ease' in the same sentece as GURPS?

PLease, I have super stupendous skill from the conan the dishwasher book, page 23 top sidebar!

GURPS is full of take this skill, and divide by three. There is very little flexibility, even less as more books get published.

GURPS is a munchkens wet dream.

I am not anti-gurps, and run a GURPS Horror game on mondays. It aint flexable, or easy. I can teach some hero system in 5 minutes, your lucky to know what your doing in gurps after 5 game sessions.

Not to be a party pooper ...

[arhar]

... but I have to comment on this.

Planescape Torment was not such a great game. Now, let me just say I'm not trolling and hear me out.

Sure, it was an amazing STORY. The characters were brilliant, great dialog, etc... but was it FUN to play? Not really. In the end, I abandoned the game and just went to some site to read what happens... boring battle system, bad skill system, apathetic gameplay, uninteresting monsters (a real shame... I have 4 Planescape Monster Manuals in paperback and there are some amazing monters in there).. you said it yourself: you were glued to the monitor, reading the text and ignoring everything else.

And that, I think, is the real reason the game didn't do so well. The REAL Hamlet of D&D RPG's, imho, has to be Baldur's Gate series games ... which didn't have such an amazingly elaborate script, but the gameplay was so well thought-out and balanced that it was just so much FUN you couldn't stop playing.