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[baconman]

Yup. It's that discussion, the one that's right up there with "I'ma make my own MMORPG but better" and "let's do a remake of FF7-11."

Bouncing around some gamedev stuff with nerdy IRL friends has inevitably led to some good ideas and feedback, and maybe even some coop with spriting (we'll see how that goes). But it's also been brought to my attention - repeatedly - that I should attempt a PC-able game of D&D 3.5.

Yes, I know about Rogue, and the bajillion spinoffs, half of which I've played quite a lot of, even right here:

-Rogue
-TileRogue
-Brogue
-Dungeons of Dredmor
-Red Rogue
-The Binding of Issac
-NetHack
-ADoM
-(InsertClassicNESGameName)RL

...and how they are fundamentally, retuned D&D for computers. I could go on, but you get the drift.

Clearly, I'll be discussing the ideas with them too. But I'd love a good TIGS perspective on the topic; if and how it works, how and why it doesn't. I mean, for me, there's three glaring things that clearly sever "D&D" from "computer/video game."

1. D&D is not a game.

A D&D campaign is a game. But D&D itself isn't; it's a narrator-driven gaming SYSTEM. It would be like calling "Nintendo" a game.

2. Luck vs. Skill

D&D and it's high-drama moments are driven ENTIRELY by luck of the roll. Every turn has a 10% chance of said drama; 5% critical, 5% fumble. Video/PC gaming, OTOH, is about using observation and skill to subvert stuff like "luck;" and losing to dumb chance is generally a BAD sign of a game, especially an Adventure/RPG.

3. Scope of Project

Holy crap, THIS!! There are over FIFTY VOLUMES of characters/creatures/classes, and other fine details of D&D 3.5, ranging from typical medieval folklore to steampunk/sci-fi, all the way to videogame characters and commercial mascots. There is no effing way to feasably condense all of that. About the only thing I could *hope* to suggest in that boat is reskin options (ala Desktop Dungeons - Yes, I've played that one too...), and the potential of cross-referencing two types at a time. Because everybody's going to want to do Final Fantasy vs. Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter vs. Dragon Ball Z, Sonic vs. Mario, Dark Souls vs. Skyrim, Terraria vs. Spelunky, Sailor Moon vs. Ninja Turtles vs. Ronin Warriors vs. Power Rangers and My Little Pony vs. Azumanga Daioh at LEAST 30 times apiece. Just to see - for once and all - who's REALLY the best one ever, definitively, REALLY.

I mean, come on. Can ANY PC game be THAT perfect?

In before M.U.G.E.N.

[Mikademus]

Would like to add "Ïncursion: Halls of the Goblin King" to your list of Roguelikes. It actually implements the D&D3/D20 ruleset, and does so bloody well.

[C.A. Sinner]

neverwinter nights

[st33d]

Baldurs Gate.

I now name all of my online characters as the son of my Baldurs Gate character.

Also - how can I play Planescape Torment on a Mac?

[LDuncan]

I dunno, I've been sort of toying with something like this in the back of my head for some time, and I just keep on coming back to the fact that it's not the d20 system that makes D&D fun, it's the fact that I have a real-life DM that is trying to screw with me or whatever. It doesn't really matter that a sword does 1d6 damage or that being behind cover grants +4 AC. What matters is that I have a (hopefully) good DM that can gauge whether or not we're having fun, and can spice things up if necessary, or add in some interesting twists. Or, can come up with something on the fly if I decide not to go through the ominous door he's implying I should open.

I don't want to say that this makes it "impossible," but it certainly makes it much more difficult. When I've DMed, my players have come up with solutions that I never would have thought of--and it made my mediocre campaign much more interesting. I mean, who hasn't gotten miffed at a video game because they realized that the solution to the problem would be quite easy if the game would actually let you do it?

But yeah. That'd be incredibly complicated to program. If not impossible, then improbable (I don't really like the word impossible ). I guess that's sort of what "The Director" or whatever it's called in L4D is supposed to be. Kind of a DM (I've only played a little L4D, so if I'm completely confused, sorry).

Luck vs. Skill: it's not entirely chance. If the only thing you could do was attack, sure. But that's where you need to be able to account for player creativity.

Scope: don't implement all 50 or so volumes. Just do the core rules

Anyway, I blab on and on too much.

[C.A. Sinner]

I dunno, I've been sort of toying with something like this in the back of my head for some time, and I just keep on coming back to the fact that it's not the d20 system that makes D&D fun, it's the fact that I have a real-life DM that is trying to screw with me or whatever. It doesn't really matter that a sword does 1d6 damage or that being behind cover grants +4 AC. What matters is that I have a (hopefully) good DM that can gauge whether or not we're having fun, and can spice things up if necessary, or add in some interesting twists. Or, can come up with something on the fly if I decide not to go through the ominous door he's implying I should open.

I don't want to say that this makes it "impossible," but it certainly makes it much more difficult. When I've DMed, my players have come up with solutions that I never would have thought of--and it made my mediocre campaign much more interesting. I mean, who hasn't gotten miffed at a video game because they realized that the solution to the problem would be quite easy if the game would actually let you do it?

But yeah. That'd be incredibly complicated to program. If not impossible, then improbable (I don't really like the word impossible ). I guess that's sort of what "The Director" or whatever it's called in L4D is supposed to be. Kind of a DM (I've only played a little L4D, so if I'm completely confused, sorry).

neverwinter nights

more specifically nwn has the possibility of one player being the DM in multiplayer games. its not perfect by any means but its something. its a bit of a shame that no game so far has picked up on this concept and tried to refine it.

[LDuncan]

more specifically nwn has the possibility of one player being the DM in multiplayer games. its not perfect by any means but its something. its a bit of a shame that no game so far has picked up on this concept and tried to refine it.

Ah, yeah, now that you mention it, I do recall that. Someone gave me their copy of NWN a long time ago, and I've yet to actually play it. Maybe I should actually try it out one of these days

[inkBot]

Although they are generally viewed as good examples of CRPG's, I don't think Baldurs Gate or Nevewinter Nights are particularly good examples of a D&D conversion (not to mention that BG is AD&D, not 3.5). I've been on about this before but I don't think their (or Dragon Age for that matter, even though it's not a ruleset converison) combat engines are particularly good. The rulesets are shoehorned into a semi-realtime environment, which I don't think works out all that great. I'm not saying the games are bad, but that they could've been handled better.

The problem with a pure ruleset conversion is that the rulesets are made with a D&D group in mind. I.e. 3-5 players and a DM. The dice and stats are there to expedite situations that would be difficult to completely play out with freeform roleplaying. Like combat or dangerous situations like traversing a steep cliffside. In a computer/video game the result of those situations can instead be actively played out by the player. My general rule of thumb would be that if you're going to make a D&D computer game, use the books as reference for fluff, then put the books away. Depending on what you're going for, that is (why I used the word "general"). There are, speaking broadly, two ways to go about a D&D game. Either you try and capture the look and feel of a fantasy adventure, or you try and simulate the rules.

Capturing the feel:
With this route, use the books as inspiration for the setting and story only. At most use the actual rules as a guideline for character progression. One of the BIG problems with D&D when doing a conversion is the classes. Even with just the base classes and races there's 11 classes and 7 races. Either limit the class selection, or have characters of your own making so that the player chooses a character instead of choosing a class. Or maybe even just go with 1 designed character. Using specific characters instead of general classes does have the upside that it's generaly easier to write a story around them.

For gameplay, a more direct approach would be better. Instead of basing the brunt of the characters combat prowess on stats, base it on the players ability to play the game. Demon's/Dark Souls, Shadow over Mystara, Dark Messiah, Zelda/Darksiders are good examples of approaches. Even in Demon's/Dark Souls, stats heavy as they are, the ability of the player comes first.

Simulating the rules:
Even though I don't think that doing a 1:1 conversion of the rules is a feasible goal, I think you can use the rules as long as you keep in mind that the rules were not designed to be used in a computer game.

First things first, make it turn based. If we're going to simulate the rules, then let's do it proper. In D&D combat is turn based. If you want to make it real time, try the other approach instead.

Since we're simulating the rules now, (let me stress that point, simulating) we'd have to go over the rulebooks and decide what is to be included in the game. What aspects are necessary for what we want to do? Since you can do a lot of different stories in D&D,  it's infeasible to include everything in a single title. So naturally we'll have to leave stuff out.

So what can be trimmed? Class selection, skills, feats, monsters, equipment (including magic items) are all things that can be trimmed. How often have you climbed in a CRPG for instance? So that's a skill that most likely will not be necessary to include in the game.

If your story is centered around humans, elves and dwarves, is it completely necessary to include gnomes and halflings? This is the kind of thinking that I think is needed when making a D&D conversion. Some might say "But it's D&D! You're supposed to be able to make whatever character you want!". Those people have probably never played a D&D campaign where elves don't exist, or orcs are extinct. Apply the same kind of thinking on classes and feats.

Combat, like I said earlier, should (imho) be turn based. That's the way it works in the actual D&D game and having it so makes having die rolls in the game more plausible. Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins ALL had die rolls, but they were pseudo-real time. The frontend was realtime, but the numbers in the backend were not. In DA:O this became clear to me when I tried to stay clear of an AoE and got out of range but still got hit. Instances like that would not happen if the game had been turnbased.

Games like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics and Shining Force are some that I think could be used as inspiration for this approach. I would put Temple of Elemental Evil here, but I haven't played it that much so I can't vouch for it being a good example.

Now let's discuss something that concerns both approaches. D&D is not a singleplayer game. It just isn't. The very nature of PnP RPG's is a group of friends playing the game together.  Not just one of the characters make all the decisions. Heck, not even all of the players interact with the same npc at the same time, or even for the same reason. A group often faces dilemmas that makes one or more characters unsure about the actions available to them. This is very hard to include in a singeplayer D&D experience. DA:O did it surprisingly well by having the various party members banter when walking around, and agree or disagree with your actions, but in the end, you made all of the decisions. Written well this can work, and in a singleplayer game it kinda must work, but it's still awkward if you think about it.

In the "Capture the Feel" approach this is easily solved by having the protagonist be a lone adventurer, and maybe allow co-op multiplayer. When trying to simulate the rules, it becomes more difficult, since the rules expects you to have a balanced party. A way around this is the way Final Fantasy Tactics and similar games do it: Have the battles be set-pieces and progress the story in cut-scenes. This works, but is kind of boring for people that want the dungeon crawl experience not to mention dialogue in FFT and similar games lets you have no input.

One way to go about it could be that since you, the player, would be controlling the entire party anyway. Why not have the entire party be your character? So instead of having different dialogue responses from your main character, the responses you can make depend on the characters in your party instead. Say you are posed with a situation where you can act negatively or positively. The negative response could be from one character and the positive one could be from another.

I also want to point out that I have not played Planescape Torment that much, nor have I played Dark Alliance at all. Which is why I have left them out from my post. I haven't talked about roguelikes either, because I don't play them that much, the one exception being Dungeons of Dredmor.

[baconman]

There are so many different ways of playing though; having been in about half a dozen groups over my life, and DM'ing myself, no two groups/DMs have ever played the same way twice. The official rules and popular minor tweaks thereof are so open to interpretation that it's really hard to solidify everything without making a lot of options for exceptions.

A lot of this feedback so far has been stellarly helpful; and there has been some discussion on a number of things talked about here. One of which really IS "why do another D&D-like;" and a lot of it came down to three key elements:

1. Dungeon Construction

Sure, it's roughly as simple as a level editor; but there's also complex intricacies to it as well, like hidden doors and traps, and whether or not room's contents are predetermined by design or populated by chance/dice rolls. Then there's also whether walls and doors will be tiles themselves, borders between tiles, or some oddball combination of both (like Hero Quest does).

There also needs to be enough on-the-fly adaptive power in the DM's hands, but some kind of check/balance system so they can't just jew the players. This leads to the second part...

2. Active DM participation in the game

Seriously, this is quite possibly the most challenging aspect of a project like this. I mean, how exactly can you logically quantify what a DM can and cannot do; and how do you implement that kind of thing? One of the main supporters/proposers suggest you "allow DMs to make up conditions/commands on the fly," but that's pretty much impossible to actually do in a video game; without including a code editor - which then takes a game that becomes a gaming system and changes that into a flexible programming IDE!!

One thing I was thinking, for the sake of balance, was that the game could generate a small ragtag band of recurring enemies that each have their own way of navigating around and screwing with the players - so that the DM has a fair way of affecting the terrain during their turn. However, defeating one of them will disable them for the remainder of that chapter.

That's about as close to a "fair solution" I can think of; and it does add some character friction to the story. Although as forementioned, quantifying what can and cannot be changed is kind of challenging.

3. Flexible, DM-driven rules of gameplay flow

Maybe you want to play with permadeath. Or a purgatory/rebirth cycle with some penalties. Perhaps you just want to take the "Dark Souls" bloodstain approach to player defeat. But ultimately, for a story/module; there's got to be some flexible options to suit differing gameplay styles, which does include the single-player-driving-a-party system; solid single-class vs. dual-class vs. open-class development; and differing winning conditions like collecting an item and escaping, killing a target enemy (or group thereof), making it from start to an exit, and so forth.


FEATURES THAT ARE IN PLANNING

For sake of trimming/simplicity, the main difference between different races will likely simply be their color to start with. There's the four core builds (Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard); which will likely split off into other skill sections later in development (Warrior becomes Samurai or Knight, for example).

Deities, alignment, and factions will all go hand in hand. I mean, it would make no sense for a Lawful Neutral character to worship a Chaotic Good deity, would it? And for sake of clarification/actions, they'll be remarked or renamed to fit the kind of description I've always identified them with...

Lawful are driven by order/organization.
Neutral are driven by freedom/freewill.
Chaotic are driven by coercion/manipulation of others.

Good are driven by doing good unto others.
Fair are driven by promoting fairness between others.
Evil are driven by harming others strategically for one's benefit/gain.

So Xanatos from Gargoyles would actually classify as "Chaotic Evil," where the Sith would be "Lawful Evil." (Again, that's a total interpretation thing.) Each kind of action nets a different type of reward, which will have values relative to your deity/faction/alignment.

A slightly altered form of "Search;" where instead of searching specifically for traps/treasure/secret doors/etc.; it simply draws attention to "anything suspicious." The range of this is based on your INT level, which determines an A* radius within your character's perception range, although it won't tell you what is what (whether to investigate or avoid said thing). The Rogue will also have an automatic per-turn one that investigates a considerably smaller radius (to start, only immediately neighboring tiles/spaces).

A small number of quickstart dungeon templates based on actual boardgame grids, such as Clue or Hero Quest, that can (hopefully!) be edited quite swiftly by adding key elements like doors and quickly modifying pieces of it.

[Malice]

If you wanna make a co-op RPG with a DM, you don't need to feel inclined to bring thousands of rules worth of existing baggage along with you. Especially when those rules were designed for a different platform and have been tested, thoroughly, on the digital platform already, mostly to poor results (people remember good D&D crpgs mostly for their writing, not what you do in them, which consists mostly of min-maxing and numerical risk management. hardly compelling for anyone besides an accountant)

[st33d]

Speak for yourself mate. I got on fine with Baldurs Gate and it didn't have the best story in the world.

[Malice]

Feel free to say why.

[C.A. Sinner]

That's about as close to a "fair solution" I can think of; and it does add some character friction to the story. Although as forementioned, quantifying what can and cannot be changed is kind of challenging.

"Fairness" is usually based on consensus between the players and the DM in a pen & paper RPG and I don't think it should be different in a computer adaption. Also from what I get from your post, you're making the mistake of thinking the DM is "competing" with the players which isn't (or at least shouldn't be) the case. The DM is more like a manager/narrator.

[st33d]

Feel free to say why.

I was an evil cleric. With the ability to control most undead thrown at me I had hilarious fun. Plus I didn't min/max, I just bounced around doing quests, pillaging, etc.

In table top RPGs I was GMing some pretty flexible narrative driven stuff, but generally kept low on the rules because they were too cumbersome to keep track of.

In a CRPG, the computer takes care of all the cumbersome stuff so I get to try out all the mechanics I couldn't be bothered to read about.

There's a benefit to both ways, and you sacrifice something in either way. Neither is worse for wear in my opinion. They're just different ways to have fun.