Just saw Trent Oster Interview on Site, Trent you are a bro!

DKnight

Yeah I just am hoping that he makes more games in the infinity engine with dungeons and dragons. I dont know if anyone will like a new baldur's gate graphics wise (For nostalgia reasons).

I think that they can make new games besides baldurs gate and icewind dale but still set in 2nd edition rules of d and d.

Is that that unreachable or will they likely make it look like Nwn2 or all the new stuff. Maybe it's just me with nostalgia, heh.

spacejaws

I'm not too sure but I think there is a challenge that Wizards of the Coast want future D&D games to use the most modern ruleset. A kind of understandble rule for them to promote the new rules but it does make any future Infinity Engine games using the 2e rules not bery probably if true.

I think Seige of Dragonspear is getting away with it because it is being classed as an expansion and not a new full release.

I'm actually not too sure if Beamdogs contract is just for Baldur's Gate or for Dungeons and Dragons in general. I would love to see something similar to IE if they do have to depart it due to 2e rules being so rooted into it's workings.

Personally I always wanted to see some kind of original Sci fi outing with Infinity Engine, almost like Baldurs Gate mixed with Farscape or something but I'm nuts.

DKnight

Yeah I know what you mean. I am just so used to the look of these games. I never want it to end!

Grammarsalad

I'd be cool if they imported 5e into the infinity engine

Dee

Grammarsalad said:

I'd be cool if they imported 5e into the infinity engine

It would certainly simplify a lot of 2da's.

billbisco

@Dee Confirmed use of the infinity engine for BG3? ^_^

Dee

Not at all. Just pointing out that 5e simplifies a lot of systems that make 2e's rules cumbersome on the back end.

kanisatha

Dee said:

Not at all. Just pointing out that 5e simplifies a lot of systems that make 2e's rules cumbersome on the back end.

While the Infinity engine may still have life left in it, I for one do not want to see any more 2e games. As a 25+ years D&D vet, I think 2e is complete crap and 5e is fantastic.

Archaos

kanisatha said:

While the Infinity engine may still have life left in it, I for one do not want to see any more 2e games. As a 25+ years D&D vet, I think 2e is complete crap and 5e is fantastic.

Dee said:

Not at all. Just pointing out that 5e simplifies a lot of systems that make 2e's rules cumbersome on the back end.

Here's my opinion about the DnD versions:

ADnD 1E: VERY unintuitive with rules and restrictions that make no sense and are complex just to be complex. (the Dual-Classing acrobatics to become a Bard).
But it served as a solid BASE and setting traditions of classes.

ADnD 2E: Simplified some things but still kept unintuitive stuff that make no sense (THAC0, reverse AC, dual-classing, race restrictions).

DND 3.5E: My favorite edition until now (except Pathfinder), simplified a lot of rules, gave tons of customization and freedom to players (no race restrictions).
The problem was that many classes were front-loaded and others were empty of class features so people dipped in a half-dozen classes and prestige classes for free stuff.

DND 4E: They threw the laundry with the baby out of the window, DnD became unrecognizable and turned into a PnP MMO with super powers per encounter, everyone could heal, and most importantly: destroyed the Realms.
It should have been a spinoff setting/ruleset instead of a new Edition.
In my eyes, Pathfinder is the true "unofficial" 4E that evolved and improved the previous edition instead of remaking it from scratch.

DND 5E: Don't know much about it, but read some of the Player's Handbook. They seem to take influences from all previous editions while taking a more conservative stance about the power levels and seems like a nice balance of ADnD 2E, 3E and some 4E.

And 5E draws influences from 2E by design. They wanted to bring old and new players back and the Realms have been "restored" after the obnoxious event that was the Spellplague.

Also all the old gods are back, including Myrkul and Bhaal. Now is the BEST chance to make a BG3, involving Bhaal in some way while using the 5E rules.

kanisatha

Archaos said:

kanisatha said:

Here's my opinion about the DnD versions:

ADnD 1E: VERY unintuitive with rules and restrictions that make no sense and are complex just to be complex. (the Dual-Classing acrobatics to become a Bard).
But it served as a solid BASE and setting traditions of classes.

ADnD 2E: Simplified some things but still kept unintuitive stuff that make no sense (THAC0, reverse AC, dual-classing, race restrictions).

DND 3.5E: My favorite edition until now (except Pathfinder), simplified a lot of rules, gave tons of customization and freedom to players (no race restrictions).
The problem was that many classes were front-loaded and others were empty of class features so people dipped in a half-dozen classes and prestige classes for free stuff.

DND 4E: They threw the laundry with the baby out of the window, DnD became unrecognizable and turned into a PnP MMO with super powers per encounter, everyone could heal, and most importantly: destroyed the Realms.
It should have been a spinoff setting/ruleset instead of a new Edition.
In my eyes, Pathfinder is the true "unofficial" 4E that evolved and improved the previous edition instead of remaking it from scratch.

DND 5E: Don't know much about it, but read some of the Player's Handbook. They seem to take influences from all previous editions while taking a more conservative stance about the power levels and seems like a nice balance of ADnD 2E, 3E and some 4E.

And 5E draws influences from 2E by design. They wanted to bring old and new players back and the Realms have been "restored" after the obnoxious event that was the Spellplague.

Also all the old gods are back, including Myrkul and Bhaal. Now is the BEST chance to make a BG3, involving Bhaal in some way while using the 5E rules.

I largely agree except for that although 3.5e has all those great qualities you mentioned it also has the huge problem of needing to wade through a million sourcebooks to figure things out.

My personal preferences: 5e > 3.5e > 4e(the mechanics, not the FR changes) > 2e

Natreg

A lot of people seem to forget that there was also another edition simply called D&D that was published alongside AD&D 1st Edition.

It's also known as BX/BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia. It's a simple ruleset compared to the others, but it still is close to AD&D (negative armor class, THAC0...).

People tend to discard it since the classes/races are more limited (There are no races, everyone uses classes, so Elf, Dwarf and Halfling are classes on their own). However, there are tons of classes that were published on different books and you can have almost anything that appears on the first edition of AD&D.

I doubt we will ever see a new game using those rules, but I certainly would love to see one. Shadow over Mystara is one game using it's rules, as well as Tower of Doom, Order of the Griffon and Warriors of Eternal Sun (all of them based on Mystara).

I think 5e took some ideas from this ruleset, but I'm not familiar with 5e so I'm not sure about it.

Faydark

Sounds like I need to brush up on my 5e. I stopped caring at 4E and just assumed 5E would be more of the same.

Dee

This is getting like whoa off topic, but 5e did a lot of things that I had wanted to be done since 3.5e--it simplified saving throws and the stacking bonuses from magic items, it made spellcasting exciting without making it feel like doing one's taxes*, and it made "character background" a thing to be paid attention to, rather than something you just jotted down and then forgot about.

* Probably it's more like, 5e spellcasting is what doing your taxes is like if you started using TurboTax instead of doing them by hand.

DKnight

The only game I liked for 3rd edition was Eye of the Beholder for gbadvance. When I am creating a party I like turnbased rules rather than Icewind dale's real time. The only game in infinity engine games I will play over and over is baldurs gate. Planescape and Iwdale I never could get into. I beat each one of them but not good enough to play more than once.

Faydark

I've played PST so many times, but not recently. I couldn't handle the low resolution last time I played it (on a big LCD screen, it was just a blurry mess).

I think last time I played it (waaaay back when), I was at the point of having around level 34 Wizard, ~10ish Fighter and ~10ish Thief levels. It was quite a lot of fun running around with so many of those "cutscene" spells. Modron cannon was my fav to blast away... anything, pretty much.

Also, not sure from your post if you've played NWN2 or not, but it's been my goto 3rd ed game. Not necessarily for the official stories, but just as general 3rd ed crpg engine.

DKnight

Faydark said:

I've played PST so many times, but not recently. I couldn't handle the low resolution last time I played it (on a big LCD screen, it was just a blurry mess).

I think last time I played it (waaaay back when), I was at the point of having around level 34 Wizard, ~10ish Fighter and ~10ish Thief levels. It was quite a lot of fun running around with so many of those "cutscene" spells. Modron cannon was my fav to blast away... anything, pretty much.

Also, not sure from your post if you've played NWN2 or not, but it's been my goto 3rd ed game. Not necessarily for the official stories, but just as general 3rd ed crpg engine.

I am just terrible at NWnights1 so I dont know how I the sequel would change anything. To beat the last boss of the game in SoUndrentide, I had to save the game and reload during the medusa boss fight 20 times. I dont know what I did wrong but I shouldnt have that much trouble with a game.
The only game that does real time in d and d well is baldurs gate 1 and 2, BgDark Alliance 1, 2, Kotor 1&2 and Dungeons and Dragons Heroes.

I liked Eye of the Beholder 3rd Edition, I am just about finished with Knights of the Chalice which is turnbased and 3rd edition and is awesome. I dont know, I own NWNights 2 or someone I know owns it. I will give it a shot but if its anything like the 1st game I dont think I will like it.

GreenWarlock

One thing NWN2 does better than NWN1 is parties. You get to recruit a party of 4 (including yourself) and will, for special missions, be allowed to exceed that limit for even larger parties.

NWN2 uses 3.5 edition rules, rather than straight 3rd, which smooths out a few issues.

NWN2 is also design to play from 1-20 in the main campaign, which is a relatively steep level progression but I found it a lot of fun. I'll confess to really quite enjoying the NWN2 story, where NWN1 largely left me bored, but that reflects a large part of the game design. NWN1 was designed from day 1 as a toolset for modders and the community to build with, and the in-box campaign was almost an after-thought. The two expansion campaigns I found far more involving. NWN2 was almost the other way around, where the expansions were interesting additions to the original game, the last one adding a bunch of stuff that really needed modders to exploit as the in-box game was poor.

To be fair, NWN2 required many more patches than NWN1 before it was considered 'playable' by many (the camera angles!) but those problems are long since resolved. Online play and modding seemed to prefer the original NWN too.