I've now played the DDB VTT and, I gotta say, you're right. Modding BG3 is probably going to give a better experience. If Larian added a Neverwinter Nights-esque expansion that allowed for DMing and servers, etc, there would be no contest.
A quick clarification for 4:35 - Wizards of the Coast funded the movie, but didn't put a cent into BG3's development. Larian apparently paid for the license and then funded BG3 themselves as a private company (which is quite the feat). Acknowledging Baron didn't actually say WotC funded BG3 - but it's easy to mishear in this vid, and a misconception that has been thrown around the internet a bunch.
Correct, he said they put money into the movie which serves as marketing for the game, not that they paid toward the development. Which IMO was the most hilarious fact in this video.
BG3 will teach players that dropping heavy things from up high works well IF it hits. One of the biggest issues with any game or VTT is that players are either not encouraged to think outside the box or are simply not allowed to. Social interactions are especially vulnerable to this.
I think the MAIN difference between BG3 and classic DnD is height. We play our DnDs on top-down viewed 2d maps, and that very often times limit us as players and DMs to think outside the box and play with things such as dropping stuff on ennemies. We ain't thinking about that because when you look at it, it just isn't thought of as a fundamental caracteristic of classic DnD In a video game, having the third dimension allows for much more possibilities and creativity right out of the gate So I think this is mainly a "visual" thing. I try to add heights variations in my maps but this can get confusing quickly, and 2d flat maps are the default 95% of the time
@@Ewekansige 1-when you say "classic" i assume you actually mean "5e", because classic would be either 3.x or 2nd ed...and BG3 isn't either of those. 5e is the current iteration, and in no way classical anything for the IP. 2-no, that is a result of party/table dynamics. My players have no issues working within a simulated 3d space in a ttrpg, and as a player I've never struggled to consider 3d space in the game. 3-BG3 makes it easier to do stupid crap, like a modified villager rail gun with crates and such... but that isn't the fundamental difference. I would actually argue that the biggest mechanical differences would be pot usage as throwables/breakables, damage condition interactions, and bonus action utility changes. The only real perception difference, is that when you're playing a video game you generally are less concerned about trying something stupid because you can always reload and the other players are going to feel less "judgmental" over trying something dumb.
Im a bg3 modder (Creator of Animist Sorcerer, Fighter Rework, Tashas BM Manuevers, and soon to be psi warrior and rogue rework). Its coming, the desire is 1000% there, but its not going to be here any time in the forseeable future, at least until very robust mod tools are given. Right now we're still modding using text editors and wrestling with odd arbitrary script. Tools are slowly being developed though (like the script extender and modders mutlitool etc.) that will probably exponentially grow the intensity of the mods. As more and more mods get made, mod makers have more and more references to use as a template. Id say we're maybe 2% of the way there so far, but itll get there provided larian gives great modding tools
I look forward to it! And thank you for your work for the community 🙏 I was disappointed at how little people dug into the DOS2 campaign editor, but I have hopes for what the community/Larian will come up with for BG3
@@tp1382 I think people (and Larian, actually) are sorely-underestimating how big a campaign editor would change the game. ESPECIALLY considering they have literally half of the numbers of the entire current D&D fanbase with just one simple release. With an overmonetized system in place for the next edition of D&D (an edition not a single person asked for; with far more restrictions than elevated freedoms, paygates, subscription services, and technical hurdles than ever before), people are going to look at the $60 game and realize that the modding community is going to offer for free the things the corporate shills want to sell you and more--and they're going to do it much more efficiently than the stupid corpos. This movement will be absolutely disrespectful to WotC's bottom line; however, WotC is absolutely deserving of such disrespect and Larian is deserving of so much more. The fact that they're not considered AAA developers is beyond criminal. The modding community for BG3 is *going* to save D&D from becoming an overmonetized and predatory monstrosity upon its own playerbase.
Gracias for the time you and the other modders put into adding additional flavor to the game. I'm not a huge gamer, but I have already sank over 100 hours into Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't played a lot of Dungeons & Dragond, but this game reminds me a lot of a game I used to play called Heroclix. And a lot of the same tactics carry over too. :)
This reminds me of an anecdote. Players were facing a Dragon that breathed sodium, the DM thought it’d be challenging as there would be no resistance from it. One of the players was a chemist. He said he’d hold his action waiting for the dragon to start his breath weapon attack to… cast create water. The DM didn’t quite get it at first, then he was pointed at looking what sodium does when put in contact with water. BooM. Some players are just terrifying
Oh, an Orange Dragon, yeah those are fun. Very explosive lol. They like to live in rainforests and other wet environments so they can exploit their own exploding breath weapons too. It's a super neat type of Dragon. I love the Dragon Color Theory stuff.
Once in a Shadowrun campaign I had a construction engineer as a player. He could calculate the exact amounts of explosives and where they should be located in order to destroy a corporate HQ with minimum collateral damage.
@@dianabialaskahansen2972 I loved playing Burnt out mages (for those who touch grass, that’s a Shadowrun build that is a magic user who was forced to get cybernetics even if it fucks with their magic.) The roleplay and story potential is always great.
Fun fact: all of Renegade's Hasbro RPGs use the same engine. So you can have a crossover event that involves Joes and Ponies taking on the Decepticons and Rita Repulsa.
i really did not like the system either. massive power rangers fan and i feel like they totally messed it up. it felt like the started with trying to smash the pr stuff into d20 and did a bad job. well actually it more felt like they just filed the serial numbers off of the classes and said ok you are now x suit colour. and then the rest of it felt like two different systems smashed together and they really didnt know what they wanted it to be. which is a shame because i have been drooling over the idea of a power rangers game for years.
Not all the rules in Baldur's Gate 3 are the same as in 5th edition. We're technically going to get a bunch of people who know the rules possibly more deeply but not without some confusion and disappointment.
Even some channels are considering using some of the differences as part of house rules from my understanding. Even saw some channels do comparison videos on how the rules are different.
@@arandomnamegoeshereYeah, can’t wait for the folks who don’t understand the loading property of crossbows, that Thief Rogues don’t just get free bonus actions, and that there are limits to the number of spells you can cast.
This isn’t really relevant. The internet is full of house rule BS. There’s a huge minority of tables that don’t play RAW. I could see plenty of tables use Larian house rules because why not? I play ad&d 2e. I am older than you. The rules are not sacrosanct - if they were, 3e would not be completely different, and 5e would not be completely different 💡
Two of my players play BG3, and they are already showing better understanding of the rules. You're right about BG3 improving player knowledge. That's an interesting point about Renegade Studios. But if any of those games become lucrative, Hasbro won't renew the license and can bring the game in-house by releasing a new edition via WotC. Matt Mercer used Original Sin 2 to run D&D as a promo for Larian. After that, a lot of people said they we're going to run D&D that way. How many actually did? I think all this merely creates options. I'm sure some people will use BG3 mods to play D&D. Some will use the WotC VTT. Some may even use the new DnDBeyond MAPS. And others will continue with Owlbear or AboveVTT or whatever they're already using. I think the player base is broad enough... there's no One-VTT-to-Rule-Them-All.
I think the point that hasbro will pull the licensing is huge too. If the BG3 toolset creates a direct competitor to their VTT, they will likely pull the license or do something like that. I think the video is a bit of a click bait in regards to what they think will happen.
For me, Baldur's Gate 3 is the definitive D&D experience adapted to a video-game, and i've been playing RPGs both tabletop and video games for more than 2 decades. Seldom i've felt empty after playing a game and that happened after i finished BG3, I wanted more and more and more, that's how good it was!
My expectations were sky high, since BG1 and 2 (a long with StarCraft and Diablo) were the games that got me into gaming in general... And BG3 still surpassed them by a LARGE margin. The game isn't perfect, but it's everything I could reasonably ask for!
Having followed Hasbro and WotC for the last several years (and also being a Magic: the Gathering player), I think you have one part of the analysis exactly backwards: it is not WotC itself that is making these bad choices for D&D (and MtG), it's Hasbro. WotC was quite successful and had a good relationship with it's fandom for a number of years. Then Hasbro started taking a greater interest (because WotC was making money while the rest of the company was not); Hasbro started making changes at WotC, emphasising monetization over product quality and customer satisfaction. MtG was hit first (and hardest), but there has definitely been a decline of quality in D&D as well; as far as I can tell, this has been _entirely_ due to increased Hasbro involvement and attention (including taking WotC from being a subsidiary and instead making them a division of Hasbro itself, putting them more fully under Hasbro's control). Virtually every questionable monetization decision has been (as far as I can tell from my position as an outside observer) a decision pushed on WotC by Hasbro, and their desire to use WotC profits to keep failing divisions of the company afloat. As I understand it, the current CEO of WotC (and her ruthless monetization mindset) were choices _Hasbro_ made, not WotC itself. Now, I don't want to suggest WotC is this angelic organization that can do no wrong; they certainly made their share of mistakes and just generally poor decisions; but, most of the terrible monetization choices have come from Hasbro.
I remember earlier in the year during the whole OGL debacle that all of this turned around when there was an article that came out in the Wall Street journal about how Hasbro was underutilizing the money making potential of wizard of the coast before that article. All the investor calls were concerned about the next transformers movie but when that article came out all of a sudden the focus was on WOTC
@@muscularclassrepresentativ5663 Actually, capitalism would not only advise that long term profits and customer satisfaction is better for the company, but is also the mechanism by which we give them our feedback: by not spending money, we tell Hasbro more clearly than any survey we dislike what they are doing. Eventually, I’d they do not listen to that feedback, there won’t be a Hasbro, and someone else will buy and use the D&D IP. That’s actual capitalism.
That's the captialist system. If you run a successful company, the money minded people of the world take notice and acquire you, merge into this corporate culture and remove the purists and idealists in the ecompany, then they expect to make a profit in return, so all the monetization and worker incentives changes. What were labors of love become tools for the stock markets and shareholder dividens @@sethlindgren1067
Solasta is also worth a look for players who don't mind the indie implementation of the core D&D rules - they have a campaign builder and actually made no real changes to the ruleset like BG3 did. It also handles flying much better than BG3 and I think now you can go as high as level 14. It's not a triple-A experience, but it's an excellent system.
Their latest dlc goes up to 16 and it feels great having a barbarian flying across the map while the spellcasters are slinging fireballs and chain lightings. I also really like how Solasta showed you all the dice rolls. There was something satisfying about scoring a critical on a paladin smite or throwing a 5th lvl fire ball and seeing all those dice rolling across the screen.
@@butHomeisNowhere___ oh, no doubt about that. They're a very small team and it shows in several ways (like the writing, or the clunky phrasing of their house rules). But there are things I liked more in Solasta than in BG3. Some aspects of the UI, for example, or the way it handles flying.
I would love it if bg3 turned into a VTT through mods, I’ve always wanted something like that since Neverwinter Nights, but even NWN, a game made specifically to let people DM their groups, didn’t get that kind of lasting traction. I’m still not convinced a BG3 DMing mod will take off. I hope I’m wrong, but typically systems that do 3D VTT style things take a ton of work and time to learn and use.
For about 5-7 years I modded, DM'ed and played in Neverwinter Nights "Persistent Worlds" online which were like mmos / vtts in real time. Its very easy to set that up and people absolutely love it, at the least you can run your own small mmo for the price of a minecraft server, or just host 3 other people done. They really shot themselves in the foot here lol.
@@millersj when it was released the paid Matt Mercer to do a video on how it worked, but it just didn't take off. It's a feature maybe 1 out of every 5,000 players might use, so it's just not really worth their time. It's not Larians prerogative to put WotC's VTT out of business, it's to sell as many copies of BG3 as possible.
May I point you to Solasta Crown of the Magister? It seems like what you are looking for... It has DM Tools as well as custom campaigns and uses the 5E system even more faithfully then BG3
@@fireguardianx I've wanted to play Solasta for a while, it looks great! But I think Solasta makes my point perfectly - people haven't overwhelming flocked to it over traditional VTTs. Now, it' hasn't gained the popularity BG3 has, but seems like if folks really wanted game-like VTT, they'd be all over Solasta. (I'm sure some folks are, and I'd love to try it! But my point is that it's not being counted as a massive shift in gaming like folks are predicting BG3 could be.)
Not to mention that modded content usually lacks some of the flair that people love about the game-voice acting, cutscenes, etc. The other point this ill-conceived video misses is that modding might let a DM create stuff in BG3 but it’s most certainly going to be more difficult than it would be in WOTC’s VTT, especially given that you’re likely to be able to use maps already made for the published adventures.
If I was making decisions at Wotc, I think I would try to create an ecosystem and marketplace of new BG3 adventures in co-operation with Larian. They could easily sell official adventures like Waterdeep dragon heist and Curse of Strahd. But they could also benefit from other people making modules: host free modules for free, but allow people to create and sell their own adventures there, taking some percentage cut from the profit. While dm mod would be awesome, I think a well integrated map and adventure creator tool could be more popular and offer easier paths to monetization. User made content would keep the community and platform active, but the official content could still do well because of higher interactivity and more professional voice acting and writing.
I have been thinking that the perfect way for Larian to make DLC is to just make more, perhaps smaller, campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms.But if WotC begins to see Larian as a threat, it's unlikely we'll see something like a video game adaptation of campaign books, since that would directly compete with book sales.
You know how many hours of programming it would take to put a full length adventure into BG3? If you could do it in 8 months it'd be impressed - and that's with only TEXT dialogue.
“New BG3 adventures in co-operation with Larian. They could easily sell official adventures like Waterdeep dragon heist and Curse of Strahd” Oh boy, can’t wait for those to come out. See you all in 10 years when they do! 😃
As far as video games as training aids go, I learned to play D&D 3.x very easily because I started playing Neverwinter Nights (PC game) in 2002. Neverwinter Nights was my gateway into D&D and I bought the 3e Forgotten Realms Setting and D&D 3.5e books as my first D&D books after I had been playing Neverwinter Nights for awhile. So speaking as someone who came to TTRPG after learning the mechanics in video games first, video games can serve as an excellent way to learn the system. They can't get it 100% correct, but they'll bring a player close to system mastery a lot faster than just starting from scratch with the books.
There's an influx of new players in the official D&D Discord server who arrived via BG3. One thing I noticed that is they have a mindset of the 5E rules based on BG3, which is heavily homebrewed compared to the 5E SRD. One person thought rogues in 5E have two Bonus Actions because apparently it's a thing in BG3.
If the number of bg3 players is big enough, then their rules will take precedence. Homebrew isn’t a dirty word, and there are enough people in the wider hobby that think that 5e is garbage that killing a bunch of sacred cows isn’t that big a deal. You can’t assume that WOTC or Hasbro cares about their product s as much as you do. If they could abandon 5.5 and just sell bg3 rules, they will 😜
That's because in BG3 any time you get an extra action or bonus action, they have removed the limitations for them. This is likely a simplification for people unfamiliar with D&D. So when you get hasted, you have 2 actions which can be used for anything. Fast hands for the thief subclass was changed to just be a second bonus action. Oh yeah, and the "only 1 leveled spell per turn" rule is gone.
Turning BG3 into a VTT will take a lot more work than just releasing modding tools. Creating the entire DM side of things is a lot of work. It would probably be a better VTT than what Wizards are cooking, but I would not hold my breath for it
I'm certain it will happen once the modding tools are out, which Larian has already said they plan to do. Once the tools are in modders hands there will be no stopping them, quite frankly.
I am wondering how much of the game's environment is engine and how much is game design. Like, if you don't need to write code to determine cover and vision lines in specific places, BG3 map maker could be the best DnD thing ever
According to line of sight wonkyness I would say it's engine. Or at least very dynamically supported by the engine. As in, if you make objects for the game you have to define which parts are see through. So the game know how to calculate it. Meaning as long as you use fully defined set pieces it should all work. The limitation of fully defined was very intentional. Because for pieces of backgrounds you could not reach there might be partially defined pieces. Which might be just all set as solid or not solid. Even the now 20 year old WC3 map editor had that. So I am fairly confident it is about as good as you would hope. At least for the fully defined set pieces. See time constraints, so on some objects corners have likely been cut in the definitions. removed timestamps, wrong video.
Except that WotC hasn't employed the talent that Larian has. Yes, BG3 is ultimately making WotC money but the few people that cross over from BG3 as new players will find an utterly lacking experience and most likely not be interested in engaging further. Nevermind, that experienced roleplayers that found a better experience in BG3 are probably going to be less inclined to engage with the WotC VTT and may find other ways to engage with the rules set.
@@Spectrue I agree with your thoughts here. I'm just curious what the split will end up being - between players who now want to play regular-ass D&D (I've anecdotally heard this A LOT) and players who want to do D&D inside of a BG3 style experience (I've heard pundits predict this, but I can't tell if the demand is really that high.) If someone goes to their friend who plays D&D and says "hey, I just played BG3 and now I wanna play D&D", they will likely just use whatever their friend uses. Pen and paper, D&D beyond, another VTT, the DDB 3d VTT, or a BG3 mod. 🤷🏼♂
I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is different enough from 5e (mage hand has hit points and can shove, rangers are completely different, spells are reworked, rests work differently, etc.) that I think changing to the tabletop game will be a learning process regardless of whether it’s OneD&D or not.
The tabletop game is going to change. Finding and keeping players is more important than following rules. There's going to be an explosion of homebrew campaigns that look 99% like BG3.
@@aarons3014 And those games are going to have a whole host of issues, especially if they run spellcasting like BG3. BG3 is fantastic but it’s completely different to run fully busted rules in a solo game than it is in a co-op game.
my feelings playing a wizard in BG3 and playing the official rules in a table setting: I feel like i'm playing a wizard in BG3. At the table, I feel like a squishy guy scared to spend a spell slot. One thing I think BG3 messed up is the class specifics for preparing spells. You know how you deal with OP players? you increase the CR of the enemy npcs or increase their numbers.@@Chris_the_Nerd
Before BG3 I basically had no hope of ever doing Tier 3 or 4 play. Because it's just too complex. But thanks to BG3 it's now realistic. Because all the candidates have hundreds of hours in BG3. and therefore are very familiar with everything up to including the entirety of tier 2. With the addition for wizards: "Oh yeah, in the table top variant you can stay mid air and shoot fireballs. You don't have to land. You only risk to fall to the ground if your concentration is broken." And they won't even ask what concentration is or what happens when they fall!
Complex for who? It certainly wasn't complex for my players. They would steamroll through content. But I recall spending 8 hours of prep per session to create challenging content and a compelling storyline.
As a longtime DM and Baldur’s Gate 3 lover I thought I’d chime in. I’ve also used most major VTTs out there extensively: Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and finally, happily settled on Foundry, which is vastly superior to anything else IMO. Even if Larian released the modding infrastructure necessary to run D&D games in BG3, there are a few things that make it very impractical. 1. No native module import support. Many VTTs have importing capabilities that make world set up time simpler and MUCH less time consuming. Building a campaign without those tools is an insane amount of work. For instance, Foundry allowed me to import the entirety of Curse of Strahd - maps, tokens, walls, lighting, all text, etc, - with only a few clicks. Now I just read the adventure and run it. Done. 2. No community sharing of maps. Many VTTs have online resources, or even Patreon creators, providing maps for just about any scenario you can think of. I have over 200 gigs of these maps personally. The thought of hand building a map in BG3 for every single encounter is daunting to say the least. 3. The nature of a BG3 VTT would be such that you are limited to the assets that are in the game. Want to run a setting or a creature that doesn’t exist in BG3? You just can’t. I also own well into the 1000s of tokens and thats not a flex, it’s to illustrate the gap between the needs of a DM vs what’s available in BG3. 4. The ability to even run games effectively in BG3 is likely years away. 5. Most players and DMs I know have little to no interest in WotC’s VTT to begin with, regardless of BG3. The flexibility and pool of resources available in other VTTs wins out, 3D and special effects notwithstanding. (And if you really want to run 3D then Foundry + Ripper93 mods + BaileyWiki assets works beautifully, spell effects included)
Everything from 6:30 on in this video is insane. Baron, I'm a fan, but come on, all these hand waving imaginary mods that you think will just appear is just silly. You're anti-WotC is really showing here. WotC is bad, but that doesn't mean all these free mods that are orders of magnitude better than anything else on the market are suddenly going to appear.
Baldurs gate really through me for a loop I'm used to throwing 'throwables' so when I learned you could throw a bottle of grease or a bottle of water on an enemy it kinda blew my mind. Untill I was able to grasp the creativity of D&D I had a real hard time on my first playthrough.
1 of my favorite tricks is to carry around wooden crates. Stack 3 in a leaning tower and you have portable high ground. Useful for archers, casters, and certain kinds of barbarians!
Any kind of AOE will destroy them though, so keep a supply at camp! No need to lug them all around, anything beyond 3 you can right click and "send to camp" and it'll be in the traveler chest. Same thing you should do with any kind of explosive or surface making barrel!
I came to this conclusion after about an hour of my first session in BG3. In fact, I was already to the point of wanting a BG3-type game for half a dozen other pen/paper TTRPGs like the Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, Mechwarrior, etc systems. WOTC must have had about a week of extremely low morale among their owen VTT dev team.
@@steppahouse As a heads up, Kingmaker is. .. kinda meh. I believe there are mods out there that remove the most egregious problem (the kindgom builder) or at least make it more tolerable. That said, Wrath of the Righteous is significantly better and there are a lot of mods out there for the game that do anywhere from adding in other Official Paizo material (some of which is a really good idea to install as it adds decent support for Kineticists and the like) to a big Toybox that has options for common PF1 Houserules. Paizo also recently announced another DLC for WotR, so it's still getting support and updates.
Yes. When I first played Baldur's Gate 3 my impression was that it really feels like DnD, just in a form of a computer game. And that it really looks like the announced VTT would/should look like.
A DM mod would be amazeballs. But it would require a map editor, dialogue tree editor, monster and loot editors etc. etc. It sounds like way more homework your average DM would want to do. Maybe it can come with preprogrammed modules, but that defeats the "do anything" ethos of table top, and might as well just be an expansion to the he game.
My guess is BG3 won't ever get the mod tools to the level of DOS2. And the reason is likely non-compete style agreements we aren't privy to. This isn't to say the community couldn't try to make this, but it would be a huge endeavour that will take much longer for the community.
I believe Larian has mentioned that while they will not create a DM mode themselves. Likely for the reason you describe. They have said that the tools will be available so that potentially modders could do all those things on their own.
Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 had full toolsets that were used by the developers themselves to create the content, along with a DM client, and the ability to add new art assets and audio very easily through .hak packs. It did not disrupt WotC's business model in any way. But that was 20 years ago.
@@VulcanLogic WotC's business direction is much different now with the desire to do something much like NWN1 & 2 were doing, because they want to capture the D&D market in a more substantial way, in part because a much higher percentage of people play video games today than did in the past. IP is really the villain here. WotC should serve at the pleasure of the customer, and if someone else does it better, the customer ought to be able to just go to them to get it.
Hi, Scrubby indie but actual UE5 dev. This was a damn good watch. There are some misunderstandings surrounding everything in the VTT not being animated and or polished. Regardless of how the VTT turns out. It hasn't even been a year. It's literally physically impossible for everything to be polished and animated. I run into similar misunderstandings almost daily. I'm burnt out on all the misinformation around game development. It frankly sucks the fun out of talking about games. As such I avoid videos like this. But this is a calm, rational take, that I can't do anything but respect. Thanks for taking time to put this together. Take care and have a good one
We’re already getting 1st time players coming in to play because of BG3. They’re even easier to teach how to play. Their pick up of what needs to be done on turns are really quick. And really, you find that they only need more experienced players or the DM to confirm what they instinctively know to do. You only need to tell about some of the mechanical differences. Also when they’re not worried about the mechanics so much they RP more and to me that’s what takes more getting use to. One guy in our game today just brought in a Shadar Kai soul knife rogue at Level 12 and ran with it with almost zero hand holding needed. And he was filling for some one, it was only his second game(he played a one shot before). So I think I tend to agree. We don’t need no VTT. If people wanna play in a VTT, just play BG3. If they want to play D&D on a TT, they’ll easily transition in to TT they don’t need anything in between.
my groups play online with VTTs because we are from all over the planet and can't meet physically. we use both roll20 (sucks) and forge (is awesome, but has a heavy learning curve.) the WoTC VTT looks worse than either of those options. we do need a VTT, just not the one WoTC is trying to sell.
@@davidbaldwin7788 Good news is that Larian is enthusiastic about implementing modding tools in the near future and modders are chomping at the bit to adapt BG3 for that purpose.
I think if their modding scene pops off, then their VTT system will need some serious lifting. As far as 2024 5e the system? No way, BG3 is good but as far as the scope of their player options go, TCE introduced so many cool and fun mechanics. The new play test have invited even more and it makes some BG3 subclasses feel outdated or limited. Yes I know they were going for 5e14 and they’ve done a great job, but 5e24 has good potential.
I had been trying to get my best friend into D&D for a very long time. He's politely declined. After playing BG3, he is very excited about playing pen & paper D&D.
First off, thanks'for another excellent discussion. Secondly, I feel that these videos are overproduced. The frequent pop up images are distracting. I guess if some people have trouble following discussion of a concept without constant visual stimulation then this makes sense. But for people like me that are trying to follow what you're saying, this is just distracting. Thanks again. Love your series.
I don't see BG3 or its modding scene as being the big problem for WOTC's VTT. The issue I think is going to be convincing people to leave Roll 20 and Foundry for it, its more direct competitors. I don't expect the BG3 modding community to end up rivaling these platforms in playerbase. The idea of a DM creating a campaign in BG 3 sounds neat but also seems like a lot more work and tehcnical know how required than it is to upload some maps and actors on a VTT and start rolling dice.The vast majority of people who bought and played BG 3 are not going to be sticking around to play mods of it. Ultimately, while I'm sure some people will have fun modding BG3, I think it's not going to be nearly as accessible for DMs and players in general as Roll 20 and Foundry are. And so the problem for WOTC is going to be competing with those platforms. If they can't make a BETTER VTT than roll 20/foundry, they won't get people to migrate to it en masse. And if they try to force the others to shut down, there will be another OGL type blowback against the company they probably can't afford.
I think you vastly overstimate the difference between just using DnDBeyond and a VTT for having hidden maths, and how much BG3 teaches you the rules. As to different people turning up to the table with different rules 1) that'll almost certainly be cleared up when it releases, 2) having had a non-tashas ranger at the table, while they were weaker than they could've been it didn't ultimately create any gameplay problems
I usually host games just for new players. Since BG3 launch the number of requests for games quadrupled. Last month I had 12 tables only for new players. BG3 is a big win for DnD.
"just for new players" So are you one of those paid dms, or do you not like experienced players who actually know the rules and their ignorance of said rules can't be taken advantage of?
Is there a big demand to game-ify the VTT space? I don't see it. I might not be the market. But for me - I want a VTT for when I want to play a tabletop experience and BG3 when I want to... play BG3. Even if I'm playing BG3 with friends. Even if BG3 eventually allows NWN-levels of customizations for community-create modules. If my friends and I sit down one night to play BG3 and the Wombats of Doom module... we'll be playing BG3. When we log in to Discord and fire up the VTT... we're playing D&D. These are two very different experiences. With different expectations. Having said that... I suspect the business model for the WotC VTT is a very pre-fab future. You can run your own campaign. But good luck building up a VTT battlemap with custom assets. Much easier if you pull some prefab battlemaps from one of a dozen modules WotC has already provided via online store.
@@Arkenald fair point. But I'm not sure what they're doing is going to pull from a larger video game player space. What I'm seeing so far is a... very boring video game. With a LOT of overhead for the poor DM (or hey - maybe Snoop Dog with AI DM until that gets boring too). Again - I could be the wrong market. :)
@@sexyshadowcat7 I see why some folks would think so. I mean, I still have a soft spot for hex paper maps and painted minis lit by a dining table light in to the late night. When one starts plugging in more pixels, its getting further away from that classic experience. But for me - the VTT experience has been an amazing tool while still providing a lot of that table experience. Its not what I get out of playing BG3. They're not the same. YMMV.
I ran my first D&D session two weeks ago. With one day advance warning. I’ve been GM’ing for over 20 years in other systems but had never ran D&D. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for "a few" hours made that work with so little preparation - that was awesome. It even provided me enough intuition to improvise enemies.
I've been thinking for a while now that your videos have been getting worse, but this is something special. It's just your last video about this.. Again. With a bunch of antiquated EA footage of BG3 and AI art thrown in for good measure to really sell how little you're trying.
This happened with the first two Baldur's Gate games as well. A bunch of new players learned AD&D2E rules by playing those games, but by the time BG2 came out WoC had already taken over D&D and introduced D&D3E which was almost a complete revamp of the mechanics. So all those new players who had learned 2E rules from playing BG1&2 came into 3E wondering why all the rules were different.
I'm confused, what you mean by saying "wizards of the coast inadvertently did a huge service for Larian studios by offering up the 350 million dollar required to produce a brand awareness movie for the Baldur's Gate 3 release" what's that about???? Are you talking about DND honor among thieves movie hat was released earlier in 2023? cuz for all i know Larian didn't get a single dollar from WOTC, if anything they had to pay for the rights to create Baldur's Gate 3, and i doubt the movie itself had a huge impact on the game, idk if you played and finished it yourself since i don't watch your content and this is my first time viewing any of your videos, but BG3 is a masterpiece of a game, and due to itself being so good that even mainstream players started picking on it is why it's so successful. So all in Larian Studio's integrity and skill all throughout the 20+ years that they have been making games and their recent success with Divinity Original sin 1 and 2 that got them to secure the approval rights to Baldur's Gate 3.
It's a joke. WotC Lost money, tons of money, on that movie. And was set in the same world that BG3 is, and WotC had no serious product release to follow the movie's launch. The closest thing on the calendar was the video game. So, therefore, wotc made a brand awareness movie for larian studios.
If one wants a VTT experience one can get it for like 5-10$, that has immense mod support, most if not all of the prewritten 5e adventures up in the steam workshop for free and is easily customizeable there is Tabletop Simulator. I honestly have no clue why would anyone would buy WoT’s VTT over it. It might look one bit shinier, but that’s about all the positives.
You are taking a random prediction and really running with it here as though it’s fact. I don’t see any reason to believe BG3 will supplant either 2024 DnD or the VTT. BG3 is phenomenal, but the very things that make it so cool also make it less than ideal as a VTT.
It would be good if you did real research for these stories as Larian already added a full VTT system to their previous game - and even had Matt Mercer show it off in a one shot campaign so odds are the underlying code is there already. However hidden in the OGL 'drama' was WOTC trying to draw a line between videogames and VTTs that may have prevented Larian adding DM mode which would explain why they had no plans at the moment - but Larian has a history of adding new features over time. You are also assuming WOTC will charge people up front for the VTT when DnDBeyond, Idle Chapions/Magic:Arena are all free at base level with micotransactions on par with Roll20. There was also the recent release of the DNDBeyond 2D VTT which would seem odd except that not every DM/group will want/be able to run a 3D VTT. Its important to remember that VTTs TTRPGs and videogames are not muturally exclusive. As a player who was introduced to the rules/world of DnD via BG2 the crossover between videogame and real DMing can really go both ways. There are also recent UA interviews and BG3 interviews talking about how OneDND rules, names and mechanics were added to BG3 - such as the Wildheart Barbarian and it's possible that some of the homebrew BG3 rules may be based on OneDND - or simply homebrewed in if DMs like them. In terms of how it impacts players/DMs growing up with DND videogames helped me learn the lore and mechanics that my DM would never have time to explain in a game (eg by reading lorebooks) and it wasn't hard to jump from 2nd edition to 5th. However watching the recent High Rollers BG3 one shot actually added a lot of context to the city of Amn that I never grasped from playing the games as a kid...but a lot of that had to do with the limits of the videogames of the time. Either way it's great for players/DMs to have a whole bunch new toys to play DND...and for the videogames to introduce a whole lot more people to the game.
The modding scene will be massive for BG3. So many casual/noob CRPG gamers are working through their 3rd, 4th, 5th playthrough and will soon want more end-game BG3 content.
My once a month game has a player who couldn't grasp the simplest rolling and post baulders gate is telling me about the intracies of my character build. I was shocked
1:20. FWIW, this is not just a problem in gaming. It's a problem anytime one has to transition from ready reference to memory. Learning languages (especially archaic ones), or math rules that are hard-coded into calculators so you don't have to look them up.
I mean, you are putting a lot onto the modder community. Until I can DM a campaign of mine in BG3, the answer is: No. I mean, I really think you are living in a bubble here. And I say this as someone playing in multiple non-D&D games, and who LOVED BG3.
Baldur's Gate 3 may have pre-emptively torpedoed 5.5e or 6e or whatever the heck it'll end up being, and secured basic 5e as the definitive D&D version for the next two or three decades (in spite of its many, many deviations from 5e RAW). It'll be very interesting to see how many tables in the next few years start up with a bunch of new players and homebrew such things as Shove and Leap bonus actions without even realizing they're homebrewing it.
I strongly disagree with the sentiment of a single adventure module overwriting the sandbox capabilities of another VTT program, or with ONED&D (Which I don't find very exciting anyway). Mainly because of accessibility, DM prep, traveling mechanics (or the lack thereof), combat junkiness, and homebrew. 1. Accessibility. The engine that Baldur's Gate 3 works on is heavy and requires a significant amount of computing power to run smoothly, even on low settings, which makes it incompatible for most non-gaming laptops. The polish and detail that Baldur's Gate 3 has on every aspect is admirable, but mostly unnecessary in a setting where most of the important descriptions come from word of mouth. It will surely be a great theatre for the most dedicated players and dungeon masters, but at the cost of filtering out a much larger audience. 2. DM prep. This is speaking just from experience; the best moments in D&D games comes from the things you could never expect. You could have prepared for players to go to one place, but instead they are drawn to another place that you mentioned in passing. And when they ask to go there, you won't have the time or even an idea to build what it would look like. For VTT's that use miniatures and building-block terrain, it's easier to throw that together and the players can navigate as they please, but with BG3's more intricate collisions that limit a character's movement and overlapping placement, it chokes out opportunities of unusual character relocations. This point is negligible if you use the engine only for premade modules like Larian Studios did, but it's very suffocating for home games, especially for dms who aren't adept in the engine. This argument extends to characters, items, and special effects as well. 3. Traveling mechanics--there aren't many of them in 5e. Sure, you have weather tables and resource gathering checks and random encounters, but most of the interesting events that happen on the road were tailored to the preexisting story. Half of BG3 is just about wandering into new areas and discovering new places and finding cool loot; it's an integral, detailed part of the game cycle. But that took years to make. And if there were this many POIs in a regular D&D game, it would take forever to get anywhere story-wise. One area in BG3 could take 5-30 minutes just to examine depending on its size, whereas a DM would probably describe a place of any size within just a couple. We all want to have exquisite visual aids and living environments in our adventures, but they're more of a bonus than a base requirement. And to set those expectations on a DM would be very weighty. You just won't find a D&D session take even a tenth of the same time describing the journey from one place to another. 4. Combat Junkiness - Because BG3 is 100% DM-free, you are stuck with all of the jankiness that comes with combat calculations. You could run encounters very smoothly on simple maps, even if the encounters are huge. But if you're going to try to do it just as the game was originally designesd, good luck with difficult terrain imposed by the environment, or ruling half/three-quarters cover, or moving around/through other characters. Because all of the actions are determined by the game engine instead of the DM, there is little to no flexibility to taking actions. 5. Homebrew--I'm not talking about making a simple magic item or something, I mean mechanics that fundamentally change the game. Once a group has played for long enough, they will inevitably have made at least a few homebrew rules that work for their game specifically. 5e is great, but nobody ever truly plays rules as written. Brutal Crits, Proficiency Dice, Crit Fumbles, Lingering Injuries, Rule of Cool, etc. are just the most common examples. You can make mods that implement these homebrew rules, sure, but the time and effort to implement this into a VTT that crunches all the numbers for you is infinitely more laborious than the DM just saying "you do it." In the end, it's mainly the fact that BG3 controls the movement and numbers with an iron flayer fist than anything that makes it too rigid to work for a lot of players. It's a luxury item for people who stick to specific rules. I have 19 hours in Baldur's Gate 3, 113 hours in TaleSpire, and 1.75 years as a DM.
Point 1 alone undercuts most of the argument. Accessibility is the biggest advantage of D&D over other ttrpgs; it is a broad system that appeals to a lot of styles of engagement and experience types with a large enough playerbase and name recognition to _somewhat_ help with the difficulty of finding people to play using the same system, at the same place/platform, at the same time, for the same or compatible experiences/engagements. Most of your subsequent points are additional points of inaccessibility as well, to say naught of the additional barrier to entry that is learning how to mod a game (assuming that it does not conflict with your machine, either). Vttrpgs work _because_ they are barebones as it is easy to set up a map on the fly when all that you absolutely _need_ is a grid, lines drawn on it, and moveable tokens with trackable values. Setting up environments in BG3 practically means 3d modelling by comparison.
@@NevisYsbryd My whole argument was that the BG3 Engine won't dominate other VTTs even with the advanced software. I'm talking about platform compatibility amongst people with a preceding attraction to D&D. Yes, you could consider all of the points I brought up to be about accessibility, but the kind of accessibility is completely different: the first is about hardware requirements, and the rest are about game mechanics. BG3 is good as BG3, but not good for the average DM/players for the reasons I listed.
Eh. While it might expand the playerbase some, I am very skeptical of it being remotely close to the sort of numbers WotC is looking at. The extremely low cost of entry to ttrpgs is a major part of their accessibility (where inaccessibility is a primary problem it faces). A lot of that prospective overlap does not have access to the sort of pc quality to run BG3 (although this seems to apply to their vttrpg as well). Modding video games is its own additional skill that many are not going to want to bother with. There are significant rules differences from BG3 to 5e, let alone 5.5e. The transfer, to say naught of expectations, will not bleed over entirely.
low cost of entry? maybe if you want to play with only the players handbook, but if you want to play a class from one book and a subrace from another, its a pretty expensive hobby. luckily my DM provides all the book content, but he's spent thousands on books.
@@davidbaldwin7788 You can find most of 5e available for free online with a little looking, and that is assuming that the table is unsatisfied with the core ruleset. Setting that entirely aside, buying literally _every_ 5e book on D&D Beyond-one of the more expensive ways of doing it, and including the almost unanimously-regarded-as-terrible books-comes out to under ~$800 USD, plus a few dice and writing materials. You are not looking at thousands unless you are talking about books across multiple editions, purchasing the same material across multiple forms of media (eg both physical and digital), or collecting large numbers of old and limited books (such as 3.5 years after it stopped being printed), at which point you are dealing with a niche collector's market and not a conventional ttrpg market. Realistically, most players are looking for _at most_ $200 to start and easily as little as the cost of dice (usually under $20 USD outside of fancy dice, possibly per player) for a full starter setup. You are _easily_ looking at $800+ USD for a gaming PC alone, let alone the games themselves, and there are similar costs to many popular and mainstream sports. And unlike D&D, those costs are generally per person, not per group; with a standard group size of four-ish, the _entirety_ of 5e costs, individually, around a fourth _or less_ of a moderate to decent, and not exceptional or comprehensive, setup for a wide breadth of mainstream hobbies. Yes, ttrpgs are _extremely_ cheap by entertainment and hobby standards, D&D included. While it is certainly easy to spend more than necessary, that is true of all entertainment. The gaming PC to run BG3 decently itself costs more than many entire tables pay for D&D.
My experience is that people don’t actually understand the mechanics. People all over reddit are confused by spell slots, durations, concentration, saving throws, damage rolls, etc. I doubt many people who are enjoying BG3 will have a smooth transition to tabletop.
Having DM'ed in Divinity Original Sin 2 for a long while, I doubt it will have the impact as a VTT you think it will. It was a hassle and a pain in the ass because it was so extensive and the design in the game itself was so polished and good. Sure, it can have a scene like Solasta, where scenarios and campaigns made by players are actually impressing and renowned, but actually running and DMing a game using the tools, if its any similar to Divinity, won't be for too long, where as simpler VTTs have a longer retention due to easier access.
WotCs VTT is likely to have all the hassle you're talking about, especially for DMs, while with existing VTTs like Roll20 the DM can invest as much or as little time as they want or need. MS Paint style diagrams with theatre-of-the-mind are fine for many, many groups.
@@Klijpo I agree and have no interest in that VTT. I veered towards FoundryVTT for that reason vs TaleSpire which looks cool tbh. Honestly the D&D Beyond Maps future looks more exciting than the VTT they're putting their time into, but has to play catch up with the competition.
Wondering how, and/or if and when a video game equivalent of the OSR movement will occur. Like if a competitor of Larian sees the market they've created, and makes a D20 system of their own for a video game that attempts to cut a slice of the markets pie away from the official DnD rules branded version of what would become a bigger video game subgenres, expanding on Diablo and D:OS2 for a more TTRPG like playing system.
I'm not sure how videogame OSR would look like. I think that Darkest Dungeon kinda tapps into that market, otherwise I don't know how you'd preserve the experience of dangerous exploration and high openness to the world. Maybe we'll see something like that soon-ish tho?
My DnD group stopped playing because life. I was sad because I liked my character, A Grave Cleric. With mods I was able to add the Grave Domain, design ny character how ive imagined him, add the other 5E spells BG3 didnt have, and have a new appreciation for my character and think of things I wanna try if I can again in the future.
All I can say is: good. D&D has suffered from the incompetence of WotC writers for too long. If Hasbro farmsit to a different company, it's likely to benefit the quality of the products. Though, if I have to be honest, dice roll mechanics and the D&D ruleset have only hurt BG3 as a videogame--at least the way they were implemented. Failing a roll often just meant missing content, not "failing forward" towards an engaging narrative. Which is why save-scumming even is a thing. Then again, I tend to avoide dice rolls as much as I can even when I run a TTRPG campaign--especially d20s, because they fail to give the proper value to a character's training and competence.
I love thay Larion didnt explicitt tell their fanbade to create the VTT, they for sure let us know that we have their support, again, another reason Larion is walking away with goty as well as the overwhelming trust and support of the community old and hella new. Thisbis the type of company we gamers and players of any genre have been waiting for for over a decade now. Thr second coming of a gaming revolution that will be a kin to the explosion of the beginning of the console wars when playstation and xbox and pc all entered the same chat in 2001. Lets keep supporting them because they are leading a charge to a better gaming industry.
At my local library, I volunteer as a GM and teach kids how to play TTRPGs. Throughout the whole summer, every single kid had either never played any TTRPG before, or had only played Dungeons & Dragons 5e. Now I know there's a large TTRPG marketplace, and kids in highschool and younger are not the majority of the buyers, but it was shocking to me that all the kids had unanimously only played D&D, and hadn't even heard of other TTRPGs. I think Hasbro is zeroing in on the youth market (like usual) and is relying on a monopoly ovser the youth soon-to-be young adults to make their VTT work. They'll try to get the kids playing it and paying for it like other video games they already pay for and play. I think it will work for them, despite traditional TTRPG players avoiding their VTT.
I was interested in the thesis statement at the beginning, but the video ended as another "WotC BAD" rant. I guess we'll have to animate another Warhorse Skeleton to beat.
One thing that I think people aren’t thinking of is that there are plenty of people who don’t have gaming computers to run BG3 or download mods. I play the game on my PS5, and if I learned anything from my version of Skyrim, it’s that the modding community (if we even get it!) will be significantly different from PC players. Considering that the player count will be comprised of people with different consoles, you can’t assume that half of the people who play 5e would jump over to BG3 as a substitute for a virtual tabletop, WOTC or otherwise.
I never got into a D&D play session that lasted more than few nights. Just one hour wit BG3 made all my D&D knowledge gaps disappear. Free cantrips, advantage, always considering Guidence, just stuff that Seasoned D&D just did automatically, it all made sense
I think what a modded BG3 and WotC VTT will be is simplicity. The basic game is theatre of the mind and the more you add the more complicated the setup gets. the more setup the harder it is for the DM to find time to do it. Less DM's will be around to join a game. I think the number one goal should be making it easier for the DM to put a game together, not making another video game.
After Larian Studios made Divinity Original Sin 2 (DOS2), I always had faith that they would make an excellent D&D video game. Half a decade ago, WotC had a job posting of VP of D&D. I made a video on my channel about it (and what I would do, if I were the VP of D&D). In it, I stated that WotC should either further partner with or acquire Larian Studios (hence I am not talking with 20/20 hindsight). DOS2 has a GM Mode which functions like a VTT. THUS. WotC should have worked with Larian to create a DM Mode (aka D&D VTT) for BG3, which I also stated I would have done, if I were the VP of D&D.
BG3 rule changes also make the game by and latge a lot better. I love my warlocks. Always thought they were limited in 5e as with Tasha's you have a lot of options at creation but then you are basically railroaded into a build. Also, Hexblade warlock never made sense to me. So folding that into pact of the blade and the changes to pact of the tome and pact of the chain... Are amazing imho.
Most of the company stuff I can get on board with, Larian has a banger with BG3 and could really change the VTT landscape considering how many people already own BG3 if they put out some seriously powerful modding tools. However, the idea that people who play and finish BG3 will be ready to jump into D&D 5e knowing the rules on anything more than a very, very basic level without prior D&D knowledge is not an opinion I agree with. The box needed for that to be true is far too small to contain the glories of proper D&D gameplay between the DM & the players, instead of a player and the video game. I had hoped to prepare my son for his first D&D campaign by introducing him to D:OS2, learning how to interact with the environment strategically and how to investigate, ways to use dialogue to your advantage or how it could be a hinderance. How stealing is much more high risk compared to other video games. Within a short time, he crushed it on Tactician difficulty. Unfortunately - though not unexpectedly - even after reviewing a typical beginners guide for players that came with a starter pack (and later the actual PHB), much of the "Theater of Mind" aspects simply did not translate over, rules on the most basic level were easy to adapt to but knowing to search for things not immediately obvious, speak to NPCs or press in different ways, etc., were not always obvious without a nice little window prompting such behaviors or icons / outlines giving visual aid. The best way to learn the rules, is to read the rules and actually play D&D, preferably in person with the least amount of technological assistance as possible.
It really depends on their license agreement with WOTC. If they included language that prevents them from adding a GM mode for a number of years, then it may not have that much of an effec
Ironically, BG3's dice cheat like a DM who rolls behind his screen, but with the dice in the player's face. If anything, BG3 is a threat to face-to-face tabletop roleplaying. At least until someone creates DM controllable loaded dice. ;-)
The one dnd vtt it's in a weird place, not a 2d vtt like foundry but packs the gameplay of baldurs gate 3, where both ends are one-pay products and not suscriptions
ehh having gone from 3.5 to 5e it wasn't hard to change (there was no version in between). The group I played with was knowledgeable in both and we would pick and choose things from both like all feat options and some spells. As long as core mechanics are the same it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate say an old version of a class with newer ones. I really don't think that BG3 will poach much from D&D there is just so much you can do with homebrew that you couldn't do with modding, especially for ordinary people. For homebrew you just need an imagination, to mod you have to actually know computers. Table-top also lets everyone involved use their imagination not just the modder.
This guy: Me: i walk slowely..stoicly towards this man with shadow from my long dark locks obscuring my grim countenance and bend on one knee for this man as i calisly unsheath my sword sweat beading almost dripping from my chaded out body long dark hair draping almost to the floor as i grasp the sharp end with my bare hand gripping it as it eats into my bleeding flesh i extend with both of my hands gracefully holding my sword in silence raising it up to thee..i must learn your ways in a bellowing crackled voice solemnly vowing to hold my steel against any who might stand against him *rolls 2 This guy:oh yea man what "version of d and d do you know Me: like a knife the shame ran deep through my spirit as i slowely stood and turned around and walked away..just walked away
Slight correct. Renegade Game Studios did NOT create VTM V5. They're merely the publisher. Not even the first publisher for that specific edition of VTM either. On that note, the writers for that edition are currently Paradox. Edit: I keep editing this because there is SO MUCH wrong with Renegade as it is with Wizards. If Renegade is the future of Hasbro and D&D, then it is screwed.
Then make your own. There is no value in being critical of companies if you won’t fill the space you see them making with bad decisions. Do you have a job? Failure is constant.
TFW my DnD group tries to use spells as they work in BG3 instead of 5e. So NO, it isn't a good way to teach the game. If you want the actual rules and spells there is a 5E VTT game that has been out for years called Solasta. It's accurate to the 5E ruleset. I know this video is just capitalizing on the BG3 bandwagon, but it's not a substitute for learning the actual rules and not even the best game to attempt to.
this is 100% true. I understand how real D&D works SO MUCH BETTER now thanks to playing BG3. No VTT required. It's rare that a video game is such a help to the core book game. I never really liked VTTs anyway, I much prefer the imagination and visualization of RTT :)..... Videogames should be video games, and D&D should be D&D.
Something I've noticed (and that I want to try myself) is to use the character creator in BG3 to make tokens for new characters in my own campaigns. And the mods make it even better with a ton of options if you're creative enough
I've now played the DDB VTT and, I gotta say, you're right. Modding BG3 is probably going to give a better experience. If Larian added a Neverwinter Nights-esque expansion that allowed for DMing and servers, etc, there would be no contest.
A quick clarification for 4:35 - Wizards of the Coast funded the movie, but didn't put a cent into BG3's development. Larian apparently paid for the license and then funded BG3 themselves as a private company (which is quite the feat). Acknowledging Baron didn't actually say WotC funded BG3 - but it's easy to mishear in this vid, and a misconception that has been thrown around the internet a bunch.
Correct, he said they put money into the movie which serves as marketing for the game, not that they paid toward the development. Which IMO was the most hilarious fact in this video.
BG3 will teach players that dropping heavy things from up high works well IF it hits. One of the biggest issues with any game or VTT is that players are either not encouraged to think outside the box or are simply not allowed to. Social interactions are especially vulnerable to this.
First we learned from ACME that dropping heavy objects was, and is, a viable strategy. Now we learn from BG3 the lessons of the past.
Literally, outside the box
I think the MAIN difference between BG3 and classic DnD is height.
We play our DnDs on top-down viewed 2d maps, and that very often times limit us as players and DMs to think outside the box and play with things such as dropping stuff on ennemies.
We ain't thinking about that because when you look at it, it just isn't thought of as a fundamental caracteristic of classic DnD
In a video game, having the third dimension allows for much more possibilities and creativity right out of the gate
So I think this is mainly a "visual" thing. I try to add heights variations in my maps but this can get confusing quickly, and 2d flat maps are the default 95% of the time
@@Ewekansige 1-when you say "classic" i assume you actually mean "5e", because classic would be either 3.x or 2nd ed...and BG3 isn't either of those. 5e is the current iteration, and in no way classical anything for the IP.
2-no, that is a result of party/table dynamics. My players have no issues working within a simulated 3d space in a ttrpg, and as a player I've never struggled to consider 3d space in the game.
3-BG3 makes it easier to do stupid crap, like a modified villager rail gun with crates and such... but that isn't the fundamental difference. I would actually argue that the biggest mechanical differences would be pot usage as throwables/breakables, damage condition interactions, and bonus action utility changes. The only real perception difference, is that when you're playing a video game you generally are less concerned about trying something stupid because you can always reload and the other players are going to feel less "judgmental" over trying something dumb.
@@Ewekansige stop using battlemaps and minis, they are nothing but a limitation on the possibilities you can achieve with pure theater of mind
Im a bg3 modder (Creator of Animist Sorcerer, Fighter Rework, Tashas BM Manuevers, and soon to be psi warrior and rogue rework). Its coming, the desire is 1000% there, but its not going to be here any time in the forseeable future, at least until very robust mod tools are given. Right now we're still modding using text editors and wrestling with odd arbitrary script. Tools are slowly being developed though (like the script extender and modders mutlitool etc.) that will probably exponentially grow the intensity of the mods. As more and more mods get made, mod makers have more and more references to use as a template. Id say we're maybe 2% of the way there so far, but itll get there provided larian gives great modding tools
Do a soulknife, please!
I look forward to it! And thank you for your work for the community 🙏
I was disappointed at how little people dug into the DOS2 campaign editor, but I have hopes for what the community/Larian will come up with for BG3
@@tp1382 I think people (and Larian, actually) are sorely-underestimating how big a campaign editor would change the game. ESPECIALLY considering they have literally half of the numbers of the entire current D&D fanbase with just one simple release. With an overmonetized system in place for the next edition of D&D (an edition not a single person asked for; with far more restrictions than elevated freedoms, paygates, subscription services, and technical hurdles than ever before), people are going to look at the $60 game and realize that the modding community is going to offer for free the things the corporate shills want to sell you and more--and they're going to do it much more efficiently than the stupid corpos. This movement will be absolutely disrespectful to WotC's bottom line; however, WotC is absolutely deserving of such disrespect and Larian is deserving of so much more. The fact that they're not considered AAA developers is beyond criminal. The modding community for BG3 is *going* to save D&D from becoming an overmonetized and predatory monstrosity upon its own playerbase.
What next? The Dragonmark Subraces?
Gracias for the time you and the other modders put into adding additional flavor to the game. I'm not a huge gamer, but I have already sank over 100 hours into Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't played a lot of Dungeons & Dragond, but this game reminds me a lot of a game I used to play called Heroclix. And a lot of the same tactics carry over too. :)
This reminds me of an anecdote. Players were facing a Dragon that breathed sodium, the DM thought it’d be challenging as there would be no resistance from it. One of the players was a chemist. He said he’d hold his action waiting for the dragon to start his breath weapon attack to… cast create water. The DM didn’t quite get it at first, then he was pointed at looking what sodium does when put in contact with water.
BooM.
Some players are just terrifying
Oh, an Orange Dragon, yeah those are fun. Very explosive lol. They like to live in rainforests and other wet environments so they can exploit their own exploding breath weapons too. It's a super neat type of Dragon. I love the Dragon Color Theory stuff.
Once in a Shadowrun campaign I had a construction engineer as a player. He could calculate the exact amounts of explosives and where they should be located in order to destroy a corporate HQ with minimum collateral damage.
@@dianabialaskahansen2972 I loved playing Burnt out mages (for those who touch grass, that’s a Shadowrun build that is a magic user who was forced to get cybernetics even if it fucks with their magic.)
The roleplay and story potential is always great.
I’d allow it only if the character and not the player, knew how sodium reacts with water
Though it’s good to ask "how does your character know that?" if player's knowledge is different than character's knowledge.
Fun fact: all of Renegade's Hasbro RPGs use the same engine. So you can have a crossover event that involves Joes and Ponies taking on the Decepticons and Rita Repulsa.
Alright, Fluttershy. It's ACTION TIME! *Jumps in fighter jet"
You mean a campaign where we invade and destroy Equestria
i really did not like the system either. massive power rangers fan and i feel like they totally messed it up.
it felt like the started with trying to smash the pr stuff into d20 and did a bad job. well actually it more felt like they just filed the serial numbers off of the classes and said ok you are now x suit colour.
and then the rest of it felt like two different systems smashed together and they really didnt know what they wanted it to be. which is a shame because i have been drooling over the idea of a power rangers game for years.
So you are saying we can have a TTRPG version of HOI4 Equestria at War?
Run Starscream! Rainbow Dash coming in for round 2
Not all the rules in Baldur's Gate 3 are the same as in 5th edition. We're technically going to get a bunch of people who know the rules possibly more deeply but not without some confusion and disappointment.
Even some channels are considering using some of the differences as part of house rules from my understanding. Even saw some channels do comparison videos on how the rules are different.
BG3 is like a table running 5e with some house rules. And those house rules are... interesting.
@@arandomnamegoeshere this is a very good way to put it, yes. Larian's House Rules.
@@arandomnamegoeshereYeah, can’t wait for the folks who don’t understand the loading property of crossbows, that Thief Rogues don’t just get free bonus actions, and that there are limits to the number of spells you can cast.
This isn’t really relevant. The internet is full of house rule BS. There’s a huge minority of tables that don’t play RAW. I could see plenty of tables use Larian house rules because why not? I play ad&d 2e. I am older than you. The rules are not sacrosanct - if they were, 3e would not be completely different, and 5e would not be completely different 💡
Two of my players play BG3, and they are already showing better understanding of the rules. You're right about BG3 improving player knowledge.
That's an interesting point about Renegade Studios. But if any of those games become lucrative, Hasbro won't renew the license and can bring the game in-house by releasing a new edition via WotC.
Matt Mercer used Original Sin 2 to run D&D as a promo for Larian. After that, a lot of people said they we're going to run D&D that way. How many actually did?
I think all this merely creates options. I'm sure some people will use BG3 mods to play D&D. Some will use the WotC VTT. Some may even use the new DnDBeyond MAPS. And others will continue with Owlbear or AboveVTT or whatever they're already using. I think the player base is broad enough... there's no One-VTT-to-Rule-Them-All.
I think the point that hasbro will pull the licensing is huge too. If the BG3 toolset creates a direct competitor to their VTT, they will likely pull the license or do something like that. I think the video is a bit of a click bait in regards to what they think will happen.
For me, Baldur's Gate 3 is the definitive D&D experience adapted to a video-game, and i've been playing RPGs both tabletop and video games for more than 2 decades. Seldom i've felt empty after playing a game and that happened after i finished BG3, I wanted more and more and more, that's how good it was!
My expectations were sky high, since BG1 and 2 (a long with StarCraft and Diablo) were the games that got me into gaming in general... And BG3 still surpassed them by a LARGE margin. The game isn't perfect, but it's everything I could reasonably ask for!
Having followed Hasbro and WotC for the last several years (and also being a Magic: the Gathering player), I think you have one part of the analysis exactly backwards: it is not WotC itself that is making these bad choices for D&D (and MtG), it's Hasbro. WotC was quite successful and had a good relationship with it's fandom for a number of years. Then Hasbro started taking a greater interest (because WotC was making money while the rest of the company was not); Hasbro started making changes at WotC, emphasising monetization over product quality and customer satisfaction. MtG was hit first (and hardest), but there has definitely been a decline of quality in D&D as well; as far as I can tell, this has been _entirely_ due to increased Hasbro involvement and attention (including taking WotC from being a subsidiary and instead making them a division of Hasbro itself, putting them more fully under Hasbro's control). Virtually every questionable monetization decision has been (as far as I can tell from my position as an outside observer) a decision pushed on WotC by Hasbro, and their desire to use WotC profits to keep failing divisions of the company afloat. As I understand it, the current CEO of WotC (and her ruthless monetization mindset) were choices _Hasbro_ made, not WotC itself. Now, I don't want to suggest WotC is this angelic organization that can do no wrong; they certainly made their share of mistakes and just generally poor decisions; but, most of the terrible monetization choices have come from Hasbro.
Damn, that really sucks. And it sucks that the more popular and successful this game gets, the more the greed will grow.
I remember earlier in the year during the whole OGL debacle that all of this turned around when there was an article that came out in the Wall Street journal about how Hasbro was underutilizing the money making potential of wizard of the coast before that article. All the investor calls were concerned about the next transformers movie but when that article came out all of a sudden the focus was on WOTC
Capitalism is to blame once again. Short term profits for owners over long term consequences for the company, consumers, or employees
@@muscularclassrepresentativ5663 Actually, capitalism would not only advise that long term profits and customer satisfaction is better for the company, but is also the mechanism by which we give them our feedback: by not spending money, we tell Hasbro more clearly than any survey we dislike what they are doing. Eventually, I’d they do not listen to that feedback, there won’t be a Hasbro, and someone else will buy and use the D&D IP. That’s actual capitalism.
That's the captialist system. If you run a successful company, the money minded people of the world take notice and acquire you, merge into this corporate culture and remove the purists and idealists in the ecompany, then they expect to make a profit in return, so all the monetization and worker incentives changes.
What were labors of love become tools for the stock markets and shareholder dividens @@sethlindgren1067
Solasta is also worth a look for players who don't mind the indie implementation of the core D&D rules - they have a campaign builder and actually made no real changes to the ruleset like BG3 did. It also handles flying much better than BG3 and I think now you can go as high as level 14. It's not a triple-A experience, but it's an excellent system.
Their latest dlc goes up to 16 and it feels great having a barbarian flying across the map while the spellcasters are slinging fireballs and chain lightings. I also really like how Solasta showed you all the dice rolls. There was something satisfying about scoring a critical on a paladin smite or throwing a 5th lvl fire ball and seeing all those dice rolling across the screen.
Solasta is a fun game, I unfortunately only have it on console so I am limited in the mod and creation department.
Isn't the actual story pretty lame?
@@butHomeisNowhere___ oh, no doubt about that. They're a very small team and it shows in several ways (like the writing, or the clunky phrasing of their house rules). But there are things I liked more in Solasta than in BG3. Some aspects of the UI, for example, or the way it handles flying.
@@butHomeisNowhere___ , It is a primarily linear story. Nothing I would say is lame or memorable but does well to push the game forward.
I would love it if bg3 turned into a VTT through mods, I’ve always wanted something like that since Neverwinter Nights, but even NWN, a game made specifically to let people DM their groups, didn’t get that kind of lasting traction. I’m still not convinced a BG3 DMing mod will take off. I hope I’m wrong, but typically systems that do 3D VTT style things take a ton of work and time to learn and use.
For about 5-7 years I modded, DM'ed and played in Neverwinter Nights "Persistent Worlds" online which were like mmos / vtts in real time. Its very easy to set that up and people absolutely love it, at the least you can run your own small mmo for the price of a minecraft server, or just host 3 other people done. They really shot themselves in the foot here lol.
@@millersj when it was released the paid Matt Mercer to do a video on how it worked, but it just didn't take off. It's a feature maybe 1 out of every 5,000 players might use, so it's just not really worth their time.
It's not Larians prerogative to put WotC's VTT out of business, it's to sell as many copies of BG3 as possible.
May I point you to Solasta Crown of the Magister? It seems like what you are looking for... It has DM Tools as well as custom campaigns and uses the 5E system even more faithfully then BG3
@@fireguardianx I've wanted to play Solasta for a while, it looks great! But I think Solasta makes my point perfectly - people haven't overwhelming flocked to it over traditional VTTs. Now, it' hasn't gained the popularity BG3 has, but seems like if folks really wanted game-like VTT, they'd be all over Solasta. (I'm sure some folks are, and I'd love to try it! But my point is that it's not being counted as a massive shift in gaming like folks are predicting BG3 could be.)
Not to mention that modded content usually lacks some of the flair that people love about the game-voice acting, cutscenes, etc. The other point this ill-conceived video misses is that modding might let a DM create stuff in BG3 but it’s most certainly going to be more difficult than it would be in WOTC’s VTT, especially given that you’re likely to be able to use maps already made for the published adventures.
If I was making decisions at Wotc, I think I would try to create an ecosystem and marketplace of new BG3 adventures in co-operation with Larian. They could easily sell official adventures like Waterdeep dragon heist and Curse of Strahd. But they could also benefit from other people making modules: host free modules for free, but allow people to create and sell their own adventures there, taking some percentage cut from the profit.
While dm mod would be awesome, I think a well integrated map and adventure creator tool could be more popular and offer easier paths to monetization. User made content would keep the community and platform active, but the official content could still do well because of higher interactivity and more professional voice acting and writing.
I have been thinking that the perfect way for Larian to make DLC is to just make more, perhaps smaller, campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms.But if WotC begins to see Larian as a threat, it's unlikely we'll see something like a video game adaptation of campaign books, since that would directly compete with book sales.
Absolutely. Make it as moddable as Solasta.
You know how many hours of programming it would take to put a full length adventure into BG3? If you could do it in 8 months it'd be impressed - and that's with only TEXT dialogue.
“New BG3 adventures in co-operation with Larian. They could easily sell official adventures like Waterdeep dragon heist and Curse of Strahd”
Oh boy, can’t wait for those to come out. See you all in 10 years when they do! 😃
As far as video games as training aids go, I learned to play D&D 3.x very easily because I started playing Neverwinter Nights (PC game) in 2002. Neverwinter Nights was my gateway into D&D and I bought the 3e Forgotten Realms Setting and D&D 3.5e books as my first D&D books after I had been playing Neverwinter Nights for awhile.
So speaking as someone who came to TTRPG after learning the mechanics in video games first, video games can serve as an excellent way to learn the system. They can't get it 100% correct, but they'll bring a player close to system mastery a lot faster than just starting from scratch with the books.
Same lol. Only reason i can understand THAC0 is because of baldurs gate
Same. My favorite 3.x character was a tweaked remake of one of my NWN characters.
Hasbro D&D has no impact on how I play Fantasy Ttrpg but it's entertaining to follow the ebbs and flows!
There's an influx of new players in the official D&D Discord server who arrived via BG3. One thing I noticed that is they have a mindset of the 5E rules based on BG3, which is heavily homebrewed compared to the 5E SRD. One person thought rogues in 5E have two Bonus Actions because apparently it's a thing in BG3.
If the number of bg3 players is big enough, then their rules will take precedence. Homebrew isn’t a dirty word, and there are enough people in the wider hobby that think that 5e is garbage that killing a bunch of sacred cows isn’t that big a deal. You can’t assume that WOTC or Hasbro cares about their product s as much as you do. If they could abandon 5.5 and just sell bg3 rules, they will 😜
@@Xplora213 Sure, Jan.
@@Chris_the_Nerd more face palm. You aren’t cool. A mighty sting given you are on a nerd page 🤣
That's because in BG3 any time you get an extra action or bonus action, they have removed the limitations for them. This is likely a simplification for people unfamiliar with D&D. So when you get hasted, you have 2 actions which can be used for anything. Fast hands for the thief subclass was changed to just be a second bonus action. Oh yeah, and the "only 1 leveled spell per turn" rule is gone.
@@Xplora213 Sure, Jan.
Turning BG3 into a VTT will take a lot more work than just releasing modding tools. Creating the entire DM side of things is a lot of work.
It would probably be a better VTT than what Wizards are cooking, but I would not hold my breath for it
BG3 is running on the same engine than DoS2, which already has a VTT mode. So it doesn't sound out of the question.
@@snowolf494Spoken as someone who hasn't used the dos "vtt"
I'm certain it will happen once the modding tools are out, which Larian has already said they plan to do. Once the tools are in modders hands there will be no stopping them, quite frankly.
I am wondering how much of the game's environment is engine and how much is game design.
Like, if you don't need to write code to determine cover and vision lines in specific places, BG3 map maker could be the best DnD thing ever
According to line of sight wonkyness I would say it's engine. Or at least very dynamically supported by the engine.
As in, if you make objects for the game you have to define which parts are see through. So the game know how to calculate it. Meaning as long as you use fully defined set pieces it should all work.
The limitation of fully defined was very intentional. Because for pieces of backgrounds you could not reach there might be partially defined pieces. Which might be just all set as solid or not solid. Even the now 20 year old WC3 map editor had that.
So I am fairly confident it is about as good as you would hope. At least for the fully defined set pieces. See time constraints, so on some objects corners have likely been cut in the definitions.
removed timestamps, wrong video.
I’m not 100% sure BG3 taking off is a “checkmate” for WotC - it’s a win and a money maker for them.
Except that WotC hasn't employed the talent that Larian has. Yes, BG3 is ultimately making WotC money but the few people that cross over from BG3 as new players will find an utterly lacking experience and most likely not be interested in engaging further.
Nevermind, that experienced roleplayers that found a better experience in BG3 are probably going to be less inclined to engage with the WotC VTT and may find other ways to engage with the rules set.
Its not a money maker, cause WotC didn't make it... Larian just payed for the license to make the game to begin with, sales are all Larian Studio
@@TheDragonshunterit's most definitely a money maker for what was a very small investment in providing support during development.
@@TheDragonshunter I'd be surprised if the license agreement didn't include royalties per sale or similar. I could be wrong though.
@@Spectrue I agree with your thoughts here. I'm just curious what the split will end up being - between players who now want to play regular-ass D&D (I've anecdotally heard this A LOT) and players who want to do D&D inside of a BG3 style experience (I've heard pundits predict this, but I can't tell if the demand is really that high.)
If someone goes to their friend who plays D&D and says "hey, I just played BG3 and now I wanna play D&D", they will likely just use whatever their friend uses. Pen and paper, D&D beyond, another VTT, the DDB 3d VTT, or a BG3 mod. 🤷🏼♂
I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is different enough from 5e (mage hand has hit points and can shove, rangers are completely different, spells are reworked, rests work differently, etc.) that I think changing to the tabletop game will be a learning process regardless of whether it’s OneD&D or not.
The tabletop game is going to change. Finding and keeping players is more important than following rules. There's going to be an explosion of homebrew campaigns that look 99% like BG3.
@@aarons3014 And those games are going to have a whole host of issues, especially if they run spellcasting like BG3. BG3 is fantastic but it’s completely different to run fully busted rules in a solo game than it is in a co-op game.
Yeah, it’s almost as though this video wasted 10 minutes of everyone’s life with pointless conjecture.
my feelings playing a wizard in BG3 and playing the official rules in a table setting: I feel like i'm playing a wizard in BG3. At the table, I feel like a squishy guy scared to spend a spell slot. One thing I think BG3 messed up is the class specifics for preparing spells. You know how you deal with OP players? you increase the CR of the enemy npcs or increase their numbers.@@Chris_the_Nerd
It’s almost like no one cares about your ignorant opinions.
Before BG3 I basically had no hope of ever doing Tier 3 or 4 play.
Because it's just too complex. But thanks to BG3 it's now realistic. Because all the candidates have hundreds of hours in BG3. and therefore are very familiar with everything up to including the entirety of tier 2.
With the addition for wizards:
"Oh yeah, in the table top variant you can stay mid air and shoot fireballs. You don't have to land. You only risk to fall to the ground if your concentration is broken."
And they won't even ask what concentration is or what happens when they fall!
Complex for who? It certainly wasn't complex for my players. They would steamroll through content. But I recall spending 8 hours of prep per session to create challenging content and a compelling storyline.
As a longtime DM and Baldur’s Gate 3 lover I thought I’d chime in. I’ve also used most major VTTs out there extensively: Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and finally, happily settled on Foundry, which is vastly superior to anything else IMO.
Even if Larian released the modding infrastructure necessary to run D&D games in BG3, there are a few things that make it very impractical.
1. No native module import support. Many VTTs have importing capabilities that make world set up time simpler and MUCH less time consuming. Building a campaign without those tools is an insane amount of work. For instance, Foundry allowed me to import the entirety of Curse of Strahd - maps, tokens, walls, lighting, all text, etc, - with only a few clicks. Now I just read the adventure and run it. Done.
2. No community sharing of maps. Many VTTs have online resources, or even Patreon creators, providing maps for just about any scenario you can think of. I have over 200 gigs of these maps personally. The thought of hand building a map in BG3 for every single encounter is daunting to say the least.
3. The nature of a BG3 VTT would be such that you are limited to the assets that are in the game. Want to run a setting or a creature that doesn’t exist in BG3? You just can’t. I also own well into the 1000s of tokens and thats not a flex, it’s to illustrate the gap between the needs of a DM vs what’s available in BG3.
4. The ability to even run games effectively in BG3 is likely years away.
5. Most players and DMs I know have little to no interest in WotC’s VTT to begin with, regardless of BG3. The flexibility and pool of resources available in other VTTs wins out, 3D and special effects notwithstanding. (And if you really want to run 3D then Foundry + Ripper93 mods + BaileyWiki assets works beautifully, spell effects included)
Everything from 6:30 on in this video is insane. Baron, I'm a fan, but come on, all these hand waving imaginary mods that you think will just appear is just silly.
You're anti-WotC is really showing here. WotC is bad, but that doesn't mean all these free mods that are orders of magnitude better than anything else on the market are suddenly going to appear.
Baldurs gate really through me for a loop I'm used to throwing 'throwables' so when I learned you could throw a bottle of grease or a bottle of water on an enemy it kinda blew my mind. Untill I was able to grasp the creativity of D&D I had a real hard time on my first playthrough.
1 of my favorite tricks is to carry around wooden crates. Stack 3 in a leaning tower and you have portable high ground. Useful for archers, casters, and certain kinds of barbarians!
omg thats amazing@@TrairFrair
Any kind of AOE will destroy them though, so keep a supply at camp! No need to lug them all around, anything beyond 3 you can right click and "send to camp" and it'll be in the traveler chest. Same thing you should do with any kind of explosive or surface making barrel!
I came to this conclusion after about an hour of my first session in BG3. In fact, I was already to the point of wanting a BG3-type game for half a dozen other pen/paper TTRPGs like the Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, Mechwarrior, etc systems. WOTC must have had about a week of extremely low morale among their owen VTT dev team.
Are you aware of Owlcat Studios' Pathfinder video games?
@@WalkOnNick Nope, but I'll check it out.
@@steppahouse As a heads up, Kingmaker is. .. kinda meh. I believe there are mods out there that remove the most egregious problem (the kindgom builder) or at least make it more tolerable.
That said, Wrath of the Righteous is significantly better and there are a lot of mods out there for the game that do anywhere from adding in other Official Paizo material (some of which is a really good idea to install as it adds decent support for Kineticists and the like) to a big Toybox that has options for common PF1 Houserules. Paizo also recently announced another DLC for WotR, so it's still getting support and updates.
The magic of this hobby is friends at the table. But the competition for the best alternative is now happening
Yes. When I first played Baldur's Gate 3 my impression was that it really feels like DnD, just in a form of a computer game. And that it really looks like the announced VTT would/should look like.
A DM mod would be amazeballs. But it would require a map editor, dialogue tree editor, monster and loot editors etc. etc. It sounds like way more homework your average DM would want to do.
Maybe it can come with preprogrammed modules, but that defeats the "do anything" ethos of table top, and might as well just be an expansion to the he game.
My guess is BG3 won't ever get the mod tools to the level of DOS2. And the reason is likely non-compete style agreements we aren't privy to. This isn't to say the community couldn't try to make this, but it would be a huge endeavour that will take much longer for the community.
Yes. Since the video seems to be comprised entirely of unsourced conjecture, it’s odd that this notion escaped him.
@@Chris_the_Nerd To play devil's advocate for why Mr.Barron didn't speak this concern "Why give them the enemy Any-Ammunition worth using for free"
I believe Larian has mentioned that while they will not create a DM mode themselves. Likely for the reason you describe. They have said that the tools will be available so that potentially modders could do all those things on their own.
Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 had full toolsets that were used by the developers themselves to create the content, along with a DM client, and the ability to add new art assets and audio very easily through .hak packs. It did not disrupt WotC's business model in any way. But that was 20 years ago.
@@VulcanLogic WotC's business direction is much different now with the desire to do something much like NWN1 & 2 were doing, because they want to capture the D&D market in a more substantial way, in part because a much higher percentage of people play video games today than did in the past.
IP is really the villain here. WotC should serve at the pleasure of the customer, and if someone else does it better, the customer ought to be able to just go to them to get it.
Hi,
Scrubby indie but actual UE5 dev. This was a damn good watch. There are some misunderstandings surrounding everything in the VTT not being animated and or polished. Regardless of how the VTT turns out. It hasn't even been a year. It's literally physically impossible for everything to be polished and animated. I run into similar misunderstandings almost daily. I'm burnt out on all the misinformation around game development. It frankly sucks the fun out of talking about games. As such I avoid videos like this. But this is a calm, rational take, that I can't do anything but respect. Thanks for taking time to put this together.
Take care and have a good one
We’re already getting 1st time players coming in to play because of BG3. They’re even easier to teach how to play. Their pick up of what needs to be done on turns are really quick. And really, you find that they only need more experienced players or the DM to confirm what they instinctively know to do. You only need to tell about some of the mechanical differences. Also when they’re not worried about the mechanics so much they RP more and to me that’s what takes more getting use to. One guy in our game today just brought in a Shadar Kai soul knife rogue at Level 12 and ran with it with almost zero hand holding needed. And he was filling for some one, it was only his second game(he played a one shot before). So I think I tend to agree. We don’t need no VTT. If people wanna play in a VTT, just play BG3. If they want to play D&D on a TT, they’ll easily transition in to TT they don’t need anything in between.
my groups play online with VTTs because we are from all over the planet and can't meet physically. we use both roll20 (sucks) and forge (is awesome, but has a heavy learning curve.) the WoTC VTT looks worse than either of those options. we do need a VTT, just not the one WoTC is trying to sell.
@@davidbaldwin7788 ah I forgot about remote games, sorry there is that to consider. I guess from that perspective you’d have to consider VTT.
@@davidbaldwin7788 Good news is that Larian is enthusiastic about implementing modding tools in the near future and modders are chomping at the bit to adapt BG3 for that purpose.
I concur 100%. Great cameo by Discourse, BTW.
I think if their modding scene pops off, then their VTT system will need some serious lifting. As far as 2024 5e the system? No way, BG3 is good but as far as the scope of their player options go, TCE introduced so many cool and fun mechanics. The new play test have invited even more and it makes some BG3 subclasses feel outdated or limited.
Yes I know they were going for 5e14 and they’ve done a great job, but 5e24 has good potential.
there are already mods out for expanded character options including subclasses.
I had been trying to get my best friend into D&D for a very long time. He's politely declined.
After playing BG3, he is very excited about playing pen & paper D&D.
First off, thanks'for another excellent discussion. Secondly, I feel that these videos are overproduced. The frequent pop up images are distracting. I guess if some people have trouble following discussion of a concept without constant visual stimulation then this makes sense. But for people like me that are trying to follow what you're saying, this is just distracting. Thanks again. Love your series.
I don't see BG3 or its modding scene as being the big problem for WOTC's VTT. The issue I think is going to be convincing people to leave Roll 20 and Foundry for it, its more direct competitors. I don't expect the BG3 modding community to end up rivaling these platforms in playerbase. The idea of a DM creating a campaign in BG 3 sounds neat but also seems like a lot more work and tehcnical know how required than it is to upload some maps and actors on a VTT and start rolling dice.The vast majority of people who bought and played BG 3 are not going to be sticking around to play mods of it.
Ultimately, while I'm sure some people will have fun modding BG3, I think it's not going to be nearly as accessible for DMs and players in general as Roll 20 and Foundry are. And so the problem for WOTC is going to be competing with those platforms. If they can't make a BETTER VTT than roll 20/foundry, they won't get people to migrate to it en masse. And if they try to force the others to shut down, there will be another OGL type blowback against the company they probably can't afford.
I think you vastly overstimate the difference between just using DnDBeyond and a VTT for having hidden maths, and how much BG3 teaches you the rules. As to different people turning up to the table with different rules 1) that'll almost certainly be cleared up when it releases, 2) having had a non-tashas ranger at the table, while they were weaker than they could've been it didn't ultimately create any gameplay problems
I usually host games just for new players.
Since BG3 launch the number of requests for games quadrupled.
Last month I had 12 tables only for new players.
BG3 is a big win for DnD.
"just for new players"
So are you one of those paid dms, or do you not like experienced players who actually know the rules and their ignorance of said rules can't be taken advantage of?
Is there a big demand to game-ify the VTT space? I don't see it. I might not be the market. But for me - I want a VTT for when I want to play a tabletop experience and BG3 when I want to... play BG3. Even if I'm playing BG3 with friends. Even if BG3 eventually allows NWN-levels of customizations for community-create modules. If my friends and I sit down one night to play BG3 and the Wombats of Doom module... we'll be playing BG3. When we log in to Discord and fire up the VTT... we're playing D&D.
These are two very different experiences. With different expectations.
Having said that... I suspect the business model for the WotC VTT is a very pre-fab future. You can run your own campaign. But good luck building up a VTT battlemap with custom assets. Much easier if you pull some prefab battlemaps from one of a dozen modules WotC has already provided via online store.
It's not so much a demand in the TTRPG space, but more so a way to appeal to the much larger space of gamers and bring them into a VTTRPG space.
@@Arkenald fair point. But I'm not sure what they're doing is going to pull from a larger video game player space. What I'm seeing so far is a... very boring video game. With a LOT of overhead for the poor DM (or hey - maybe Snoop Dog with AI DM until that gets boring too).
Again - I could be the wrong market. :)
@@sexyshadowcat7 I see why some folks would think so. I mean, I still have a soft spot for hex paper maps and painted minis lit by a dining table light in to the late night. When one starts plugging in more pixels, its getting further away from that classic experience.
But for me - the VTT experience has been an amazing tool while still providing a lot of that table experience. Its not what I get out of playing BG3. They're not the same.
YMMV.
I ran my first D&D session two weeks ago. With one day advance warning. I’ve been GM’ing for over 20 years in other systems but had never ran D&D. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for "a few" hours made that work with so little preparation - that was awesome. It even provided me enough intuition to improvise enemies.
I've been thinking for a while now that your videos have been getting worse, but this is something special. It's just your last video about this.. Again. With a bunch of antiquated EA footage of BG3 and AI art thrown in for good measure to really sell how little you're trying.
This happened with the first two Baldur's Gate games as well. A bunch of new players learned AD&D2E rules by playing those games, but by the time BG2 came out WoC had already taken over D&D and introduced D&D3E which was almost a complete revamp of the mechanics. So all those new players who had learned 2E rules from playing BG1&2 came into 3E wondering why all the rules were different.
I'm confused, what you mean by saying "wizards of the coast inadvertently did a huge service for Larian studios by offering up the 350 million dollar required to produce a brand awareness movie for the Baldur's Gate 3 release" what's that about????
Are you talking about DND honor among thieves movie hat was released earlier in 2023? cuz for all i know Larian didn't get a single dollar from WOTC, if anything they had to pay for the rights to create Baldur's Gate 3, and i doubt the movie itself had a huge impact on the game, idk if you played and finished it yourself since i don't watch your content and this is my first time viewing any of your videos, but BG3 is a masterpiece of a game, and due to itself being so good that even mainstream players started picking on it is why it's so successful.
So all in Larian Studio's integrity and skill all throughout the 20+ years that they have been making games and their recent success with Divinity Original sin 1 and 2 that got them to secure the approval rights to Baldur's Gate 3.
It's a joke. WotC Lost money, tons of money, on that movie. And was set in the same world that BG3 is, and WotC had no serious product release to follow the movie's launch. The closest thing on the calendar was the video game.
So, therefore, wotc made a brand awareness movie for larian studios.
@@DungeonMasterpiece i see
If one wants a VTT experience one can get it for like 5-10$, that has immense mod support, most if not all of the prewritten 5e adventures up in the steam workshop for free and is easily customizeable there is Tabletop Simulator.
I honestly have no clue why would anyone would buy WoT’s VTT over it. It might look one bit shinier, but that’s about all the positives.
You are taking a random prediction and really running with it here as though it’s fact. I don’t see any reason to believe BG3 will supplant either 2024 DnD or the VTT.
BG3 is phenomenal, but the very things that make it so cool also make it less than ideal as a VTT.
Wait, you guys have games in person?
It would be good if you did real research for these stories as Larian already added a full VTT system to their previous game - and even had Matt Mercer show it off in a one shot campaign so odds are the underlying code is there already. However hidden in the OGL 'drama' was WOTC trying to draw a line between videogames and VTTs that may have prevented Larian adding DM mode which would explain why they had no plans at the moment - but Larian has a history of adding new features over time. You are also assuming WOTC will charge people up front for the VTT when DnDBeyond, Idle Chapions/Magic:Arena are all free at base level with micotransactions on par with Roll20. There was also the recent release of the DNDBeyond 2D VTT which would seem odd except that not every DM/group will want/be able to run a 3D VTT. Its important to remember that VTTs TTRPGs and videogames are not muturally exclusive. As a player who was introduced to the rules/world of DnD via BG2 the crossover between videogame and real DMing can really go both ways. There are also recent UA interviews and BG3 interviews talking about how OneDND rules, names and mechanics were added to BG3 - such as the Wildheart Barbarian and it's possible that some of the homebrew BG3 rules may be based on OneDND - or simply homebrewed in if DMs like them. In terms of how it impacts players/DMs growing up with DND videogames helped me learn the lore and mechanics that my DM would never have time to explain in a game (eg by reading lorebooks) and it wasn't hard to jump from 2nd edition to 5th. However watching the recent High Rollers BG3 one shot actually added a lot of context to the city of Amn that I never grasped from playing the games as a kid...but a lot of that had to do with the limits of the videogames of the time. Either way it's great for players/DMs to have a whole bunch new toys to play DND...and for the videogames to introduce a whole lot more people to the game.
I love all of the guest stars with all the gamemastery channels over the past little while!
I agree, there are already some really impressive mods out there- it shocks me how fast modders get this stuff developed and published!
A++ quality Discourse cameo
Spitting hot takes! Love the insights here.
Dude, you are talking so perfectly, it's a lot of words for saying ultimately that Baldur's Gate 3 is the best D&D experience.
The modding scene will be massive for BG3. So many casual/noob CRPG gamers are working through their 3rd, 4th, 5th playthrough and will soon want more end-game BG3 content.
My once a month game has a player who couldn't grasp the simplest rolling and post baulders gate is telling me about the intracies of my character build. I was shocked
1:20. FWIW, this is not just a problem in gaming. It's a problem anytime one has to transition from ready reference to memory. Learning languages (especially archaic ones), or math rules that are hard-coded into calculators so you don't have to look them up.
I mean, you are putting a lot onto the modder community. Until I can DM a campaign of mine in BG3, the answer is: No. I mean, I really think you are living in a bubble here. And I say this as someone playing in multiple non-D&D games, and who LOVED BG3.
Baldur's Gate 3 may have pre-emptively torpedoed 5.5e or 6e or whatever the heck it'll end up being, and secured basic 5e as the definitive D&D version for the next two or three decades (in spite of its many, many deviations from 5e RAW). It'll be very interesting to see how many tables in the next few years start up with a bunch of new players and homebrew such things as Shove and Leap bonus actions without even realizing they're homebrewing it.
Just being able to create an official 5e adventure module in BG3 would be fun! That would mean I can play for once 😂
I strongly disagree with the sentiment of a single adventure module overwriting the sandbox capabilities of another VTT program, or with ONED&D (Which I don't find very exciting anyway). Mainly because of accessibility, DM prep, traveling mechanics (or the lack thereof), combat junkiness, and homebrew.
1. Accessibility. The engine that Baldur's Gate 3 works on is heavy and requires a significant amount of computing power to run smoothly, even on low settings, which makes it incompatible for most non-gaming laptops. The polish and detail that Baldur's Gate 3 has on every aspect is admirable, but mostly unnecessary in a setting where most of the important descriptions come from word of mouth. It will surely be a great theatre for the most dedicated players and dungeon masters, but at the cost of filtering out a much larger audience.
2. DM prep. This is speaking just from experience; the best moments in D&D games comes from the things you could never expect. You could have prepared for players to go to one place, but instead they are drawn to another place that you mentioned in passing. And when they ask to go there, you won't have the time or even an idea to build what it would look like. For VTT's that use miniatures and building-block terrain, it's easier to throw that together and the players can navigate as they please, but with BG3's more intricate collisions that limit a character's movement and overlapping placement, it chokes out opportunities of unusual character relocations. This point is negligible if you use the engine only for premade modules like Larian Studios did, but it's very suffocating for home games, especially for dms who aren't adept in the engine. This argument extends to characters, items, and special effects as well.
3. Traveling mechanics--there aren't many of them in 5e. Sure, you have weather tables and resource gathering checks and random encounters, but most of the interesting events that happen on the road were tailored to the preexisting story. Half of BG3 is just about wandering into new areas and discovering new places and finding cool loot; it's an integral, detailed part of the game cycle. But that took years to make. And if there were this many POIs in a regular D&D game, it would take forever to get anywhere story-wise. One area in BG3 could take 5-30 minutes just to examine depending on its size, whereas a DM would probably describe a place of any size within just a couple. We all want to have exquisite visual aids and living environments in our adventures, but they're more of a bonus than a base requirement. And to set those expectations on a DM would be very weighty. You just won't find a D&D session take even a tenth of the same time describing the journey from one place to another.
4. Combat Junkiness - Because BG3 is 100% DM-free, you are stuck with all of the jankiness that comes with combat calculations. You could run encounters very smoothly on simple maps, even if the encounters are huge. But if you're going to try to do it just as the game was originally designesd, good luck with difficult terrain imposed by the environment, or ruling half/three-quarters cover, or moving around/through other characters. Because all of the actions are determined by the game engine instead of the DM, there is little to no flexibility to taking actions.
5. Homebrew--I'm not talking about making a simple magic item or something, I mean mechanics that fundamentally change the game. Once a group has played for long enough, they will inevitably have made at least a few homebrew rules that work for their game specifically. 5e is great, but nobody ever truly plays rules as written. Brutal Crits, Proficiency Dice, Crit Fumbles, Lingering Injuries, Rule of Cool, etc. are just the most common examples. You can make mods that implement these homebrew rules, sure, but the time and effort to implement this into a VTT that crunches all the numbers for you is infinitely more laborious than the DM just saying "you do it."
In the end, it's mainly the fact that BG3 controls the movement and numbers with an iron flayer fist than anything that makes it too rigid to work for a lot of players. It's a luxury item for people who stick to specific rules. I have 19 hours in Baldur's Gate 3, 113 hours in TaleSpire, and 1.75 years as a DM.
Point 1 alone undercuts most of the argument. Accessibility is the biggest advantage of D&D over other ttrpgs; it is a broad system that appeals to a lot of styles of engagement and experience types with a large enough playerbase and name recognition to _somewhat_ help with the difficulty of finding people to play using the same system, at the same place/platform, at the same time, for the same or compatible experiences/engagements.
Most of your subsequent points are additional points of inaccessibility as well, to say naught of the additional barrier to entry that is learning how to mod a game (assuming that it does not conflict with your machine, either). Vttrpgs work _because_ they are barebones as it is easy to set up a map on the fly when all that you absolutely _need_ is a grid, lines drawn on it, and moveable tokens with trackable values. Setting up environments in BG3 practically means 3d modelling by comparison.
@@NevisYsbryd My whole argument was that the BG3 Engine won't dominate other VTTs even with the advanced software. I'm talking about platform compatibility amongst people with a preceding attraction to D&D. Yes, you could consider all of the points I brought up to be about accessibility, but the kind of accessibility is completely different: the first is about hardware requirements, and the rest are about game mechanics. BG3 is good as BG3, but not good for the average DM/players for the reasons I listed.
Eh. While it might expand the playerbase some, I am very skeptical of it being remotely close to the sort of numbers WotC is looking at. The extremely low cost of entry to ttrpgs is a major part of their accessibility (where inaccessibility is a primary problem it faces). A lot of that prospective overlap does not have access to the sort of pc quality to run BG3 (although this seems to apply to their vttrpg as well). Modding video games is its own additional skill that many are not going to want to bother with.
There are significant rules differences from BG3 to 5e, let alone 5.5e. The transfer, to say naught of expectations, will not bleed over entirely.
low cost of entry? maybe if you want to play with only the players handbook, but if you want to play a class from one book and a subrace from another, its a pretty expensive hobby. luckily my DM provides all the book content, but he's spent thousands on books.
@@davidbaldwin7788 You can find most of 5e available for free online with a little looking, and that is assuming that the table is unsatisfied with the core ruleset. Setting that entirely aside, buying literally _every_ 5e book on D&D Beyond-one of the more expensive ways of doing it, and including the almost unanimously-regarded-as-terrible books-comes out to under ~$800 USD, plus a few dice and writing materials. You are not looking at thousands unless you are talking about books across multiple editions, purchasing the same material across multiple forms of media (eg both physical and digital), or collecting large numbers of old and limited books (such as 3.5 years after it stopped being printed), at which point you are dealing with a niche collector's market and not a conventional ttrpg market.
Realistically, most players are looking for _at most_ $200 to start and easily as little as the cost of dice (usually under $20 USD outside of fancy dice, possibly per player) for a full starter setup. You are _easily_ looking at $800+ USD for a gaming PC alone, let alone the games themselves, and there are similar costs to many popular and mainstream sports. And unlike D&D, those costs are generally per person, not per group; with a standard group size of four-ish, the _entirety_ of 5e costs, individually, around a fourth _or less_ of a moderate to decent, and not exceptional or comprehensive, setup for a wide breadth of mainstream hobbies.
Yes, ttrpgs are _extremely_ cheap by entertainment and hobby standards, D&D included. While it is certainly easy to spend more than necessary, that is true of all entertainment. The gaming PC to run BG3 decently itself costs more than many entire tables pay for D&D.
My experience is that people don’t actually understand the mechanics. People all over reddit are confused by spell slots, durations, concentration, saving throws, damage rolls, etc.
I doubt many people who are enjoying BG3 will have a smooth transition to tabletop.
Sounds like people all over reddit are learning the mechanics
The game exposes lots of mechanics, but doesn't really hand hold the player to explain them.
Like that wasnt true before BG3 though?
@@kevinalexander8368 of course, but the argument that bg3 will bring in a slew of competent players just isn’t true imo
Having DM'ed in Divinity Original Sin 2 for a long while, I doubt it will have the impact as a VTT you think it will. It was a hassle and a pain in the ass because it was so extensive and the design in the game itself was so polished and good. Sure, it can have a scene like Solasta, where scenarios and campaigns made by players are actually impressing and renowned, but actually running and DMing a game using the tools, if its any similar to Divinity, won't be for too long, where as simpler VTTs have a longer retention due to easier access.
WotCs VTT is likely to have all the hassle you're talking about, especially for DMs, while with existing VTTs like Roll20 the DM can invest as much or as little time as they want or need. MS Paint style diagrams with theatre-of-the-mind are fine for many, many groups.
@@Klijpo I agree and have no interest in that VTT. I veered towards FoundryVTT for that reason vs TaleSpire which looks cool tbh. Honestly the D&D Beyond Maps future looks more exciting than the VTT they're putting their time into, but has to play catch up with the competition.
That moment you wall in your garden, and it's the outside the flourishes.
All my players who tried BG3, become way more creative in fights and with useing their skills.
D&D really need a good tutorial.
Very insightful. Keep up the great content.
Wondering how, and/or if and when a video game equivalent of the OSR movement will occur. Like if a competitor of Larian sees the market they've created, and makes a D20 system of their own for a video game that attempts to cut a slice of the markets pie away from the official DnD rules branded version of what would become a bigger video game subgenres, expanding on Diablo and D:OS2 for a more TTRPG like playing system.
Basically like dark and darker, but multiplayer. I think it could sell
I'm not sure how videogame OSR would look like. I think that Darkest Dungeon kinda tapps into that market, otherwise I don't know how you'd preserve the experience of dangerous exploration and high openness to the world. Maybe we'll see something like that soon-ish tho?
@@Suavek69 Stoneshard maybe. Various rogue likes like Pixel Dungeon ig.
That GI Joe deep cut at the end was great.
My DnD group stopped playing because life. I was sad because I liked my character, A Grave Cleric. With mods I was able to add the Grave Domain, design ny character how ive imagined him, add the other 5E spells BG3 didnt have, and have a new appreciation for my character and think of things I wanna try if I can again in the future.
All I can say is: good. D&D has suffered from the incompetence of WotC writers for too long. If Hasbro farmsit to a different company, it's likely to benefit the quality of the products.
Though, if I have to be honest, dice roll mechanics and the D&D ruleset have only hurt BG3 as a videogame--at least the way they were implemented. Failing a roll often just meant missing content, not "failing forward" towards an engaging narrative. Which is why save-scumming even is a thing. Then again, I tend to avoide dice rolls as much as I can even when I run a TTRPG campaign--especially d20s, because they fail to give the proper value to a character's training and competence.
I'm going to suggest that WotC ruined WotC's VTT.
All by themselves.
I love thay Larion didnt explicitt tell their fanbade to create the VTT, they for sure let us know that we have their support, again, another reason Larion is walking away with goty as well as the overwhelming trust and support of the community old and hella new.
Thisbis the type of company we gamers and players of any genre have been waiting for for over a decade now. Thr second coming of a gaming revolution that will be a kin to the explosion of the beginning of the console wars when playstation and xbox and pc all entered the same chat in 2001.
Lets keep supporting them because they are leading a charge to a better gaming industry.
At my local library, I volunteer as a GM and teach kids how to play TTRPGs. Throughout the whole summer, every single kid had either never played any TTRPG before, or had only played Dungeons & Dragons 5e. Now I know there's a large TTRPG marketplace, and kids in highschool and younger are not the majority of the buyers, but it was shocking to me that all the kids had unanimously only played D&D, and hadn't even heard of other TTRPGs. I think Hasbro is zeroing in on the youth market (like usual) and is relying on a monopoly ovser the youth soon-to-be young adults to make their VTT work. They'll try to get the kids playing it and paying for it like other video games they already pay for and play. I think it will work for them, despite traditional TTRPG players avoiding their VTT.
I was interested in the thesis statement at the beginning, but the video ended as another "WotC BAD" rant. I guess we'll have to animate another Warhorse Skeleton to beat.
One thing that I think people aren’t thinking of is that there are plenty of people who don’t have gaming computers to run BG3 or download mods. I play the game on my PS5, and if I learned anything from my version of Skyrim, it’s that the modding community (if we even get it!) will be significantly different from PC players. Considering that the player count will be comprised of people with different consoles, you can’t assume that half of the people who play 5e would jump over to BG3 as a substitute for a virtual tabletop, WOTC or otherwise.
I never got into a D&D play session that lasted more than few nights. Just one hour wit BG3 made all my D&D knowledge gaps disappear. Free cantrips, advantage, always considering Guidence, just stuff that Seasoned D&D just did automatically, it all made sense
Caught me with the GI Joe meme closer 😅 well played
Does it "encourage tricksy use of the environment, attacks, and spellcasting" should be the new benchmark for any VTT or TTRPG tool
I think what a modded BG3 and WotC VTT will be is simplicity. The basic game is theatre of the mind and the more you add the more complicated the setup gets. the more setup the harder it is for the DM to find time to do it. Less DM's will be around to join a game. I think the number one goal should be making it easier for the DM to put a game together, not making another video game.
hear me, bg3 mod, where players can create adventures and players can hook up to them in the tavern job board.
love the video A++ with unknow youtuber Discourse cameo 💜💜 a lovely nerd like us! 😁😁
After Larian Studios made Divinity Original Sin 2 (DOS2), I always had faith that they would make an excellent D&D video game. Half a decade ago, WotC had a job posting of VP of D&D. I made a video on my channel about it (and what I would do, if I were the VP of D&D). In it, I stated that WotC should either further partner with or acquire Larian Studios (hence I am not talking with 20/20 hindsight). DOS2 has a GM Mode which functions like a VTT. THUS. WotC should have worked with Larian to create a DM Mode (aka D&D VTT) for BG3, which I also stated I would have done, if I were the VP of D&D.
BG3 rule changes also make the game by and latge a lot better. I love my warlocks. Always thought they were limited in 5e as with Tasha's you have a lot of options at creation but then you are basically railroaded into a build. Also, Hexblade warlock never made sense to me. So folding that into pact of the blade and the changes to pact of the tome and pact of the chain... Are amazing imho.
Most of the company stuff I can get on board with, Larian has a banger with BG3 and could really change the VTT landscape considering how many people already own BG3 if they put out some seriously powerful modding tools.
However, the idea that people who play and finish BG3 will be ready to jump into D&D 5e knowing the rules on anything more than a very, very basic level without prior D&D knowledge is not an opinion I agree with. The box needed for that to be true is far too small to contain the glories of proper D&D gameplay between the DM & the players, instead of a player and the video game.
I had hoped to prepare my son for his first D&D campaign by introducing him to D:OS2, learning how to interact with the environment strategically and how to investigate, ways to use dialogue to your advantage or how it could be a hinderance. How stealing is much more high risk compared to other video games. Within a short time, he crushed it on Tactician difficulty. Unfortunately - though not unexpectedly - even after reviewing a typical beginners guide for players that came with a starter pack (and later the actual PHB), much of the "Theater of Mind" aspects simply did not translate over, rules on the most basic level were easy to adapt to but knowing to search for things not immediately obvious, speak to NPCs or press in different ways, etc., were not always obvious without a nice little window prompting such behaviors or icons / outlines giving visual aid.
The best way to learn the rules, is to read the rules and actually play D&D, preferably in person with the least amount of technological assistance as possible.
It really depends on their license agreement with WOTC. If they included language that prevents them from adding a GM mode for a number of years, then it may not have that much of an effec
Ironically, BG3's dice cheat like a DM who rolls behind his screen, but with the dice in the player's face. If anything, BG3 is a threat to face-to-face tabletop roleplaying. At least until someone creates DM controllable loaded dice. ;-)
The one dnd vtt it's in a weird place, not a 2d vtt like foundry but packs the gameplay of baldurs gate 3, where both ends are one-pay products and not suscriptions
If there was an official DM version of the BG3 engine with a library of environments and characters that wluld be amazing.
ehh having gone from 3.5 to 5e it wasn't hard to change (there was no version in between). The group I played with was knowledgeable in both and we would pick and choose things from both like all feat options and some spells. As long as core mechanics are the same it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate say an old version of a class with newer ones.
I really don't think that BG3 will poach much from D&D there is just so much you can do with homebrew that you couldn't do with modding, especially for ordinary people. For homebrew you just need an imagination, to mod you have to actually know computers. Table-top also lets everyone involved use their imagination not just the modder.
This guy:
Me: i walk slowely..stoicly towards this man with shadow from my long dark locks obscuring my grim countenance and bend on one knee for this man as i calisly unsheath my sword sweat beading almost dripping from my chaded out body long dark hair draping almost to the floor as i grasp the sharp end with my bare hand gripping it as it eats into my bleeding flesh i extend with both of my hands gracefully holding my sword in silence raising it up to thee..i must learn your ways in a bellowing crackled voice solemnly vowing to hold my steel against any who might stand against him
*rolls 2
This guy:oh yea man what "version of d and d do you know
Me: like a knife the shame ran deep through my spirit as i slowely stood and turned around and walked away..just walked away
Slight correct. Renegade Game Studios did NOT create VTM V5. They're merely the publisher. Not even the first publisher for that specific edition of VTM either. On that note, the writers for that edition are currently Paradox.
Edit: I keep editing this because there is SO MUCH wrong with Renegade as it is with Wizards. If Renegade is the future of Hasbro and D&D, then it is screwed.
Then make your own. There is no value in being critical of companies if you won’t fill the space you see them making with bad decisions. Do you have a job? Failure is constant.
I can't wait to be able to download campaigns for bg3 on mod sites.
TFW my DnD group tries to use spells as they work in BG3 instead of 5e. So NO, it isn't a good way to teach the game. If you want the actual rules and spells there is a 5E VTT game that has been out for years called Solasta. It's accurate to the 5E ruleset. I know this video is just capitalizing on the BG3 bandwagon, but it's not a substitute for learning the actual rules and not even the best game to attempt to.
" . . . players who are converting from the Baldur's Gate platform." 5:30 😁👍
this is 100% true. I understand how real D&D works SO MUCH BETTER now thanks to playing BG3. No VTT required. It's rare that a video game is such a help to the core book game.
I never really liked VTTs anyway, I much prefer the imagination and visualization of RTT :)..... Videogames should be video games, and D&D should be D&D.
One thing to add is getting a dungeon master. Baldurs gate 3 has a baked in dm and no rules that go unnoticed
I wonder how long it would take to run BG3 as a TTRPG?
The vtt is a creativity killer larian studios shows we love and should embrace creativity
If only the multi player had better support. Once a map editor is opened up we can go bananas.
Neverwinter Nights from 20 to years ago, has a DM mode.
Something I've noticed (and that I want to try myself) is to use the character creator in BG3 to make tokens for new characters in my own campaigns.
And the mods make it even better with a ton of options if you're creative enough