Custom Campaigns and Adventures

[🌴🐺[ 7 ]🐺🌴]

With the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, there has been a lot of talk about a potential sequel or DLC, Larian has come out and stated that a level 12-20 campaign would be a notoriously difficult undertaking to balance gameplay wise as characters in 5e become godlike in power.

However, there is another solution, the potential is there for Larian to bring back custom modules, Neverwinter Nights style. Give the community access to a plethora of assets, tools and mod support. We could get BG1+2 and Icewind Dale 1+2 in 5e using the same engine, all put together by the community.

People have responded to this by saying it isn’t Larian’s way, that DOS set a standard that they are only interested in telling their own stories, but I disagree, BG3 is such a success that people will most certainly want more, and what better way to give it to them and make it easier for yourself by allowing NWN like modular design?

Give people the tools to make 5e dnd campaigns, this is the perfect time to do it. And they could go bar beyond what dungeon master mode in DOS.

[r0m]

This. Maybe not now with the devs patching post-release, but the community needs this at some point. Imagine the life NWN has had after so many years but in this really good take on 5e. A thriving modding scene, custom modules, persistent worlds... Endless fun and also a good opportunity for them to recruit talent and even to make some money, they could release official WotC adventures instead of crappy DLC like other companies would do in their games (not Larian's way, but if it ever gets that bad, I'd rather get this than the other thing).

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

I wish, but it won't happen.

Just wait for generative AI to get good enough.

[MrSoul]

Yup. I’d pay money for this as a dlc without a moments hesitation.

It’s diff between game being good, but flash in pan, or becoming a long lasting way to play 5e on pc as former games like nwn were for their respective versions. Either first or second nwn, but it’s still going strong due to this.

Semi edit: lol ya like first post is saying exactly.

[mutantspicy]

it was literally the best thing about NWN. that community was amazing. I would whole heartedly support this.

[Hemingwey]

Solasta has excellent tools for making player generated campaigns. Annnnd… its developers would like to continue upgrading those tools. I think it is a matter of funding and revenue. Perhaps more support for the small French design studio that created Solasta would be in order? Just sayin’.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

it wont happen, not because of larian mind you. But rather because of WOTC who is on the verge of releasing there online only ONE DnD VTT. They'd see this as direct competition, i mean why bother with there VTT if you can just make your module in BG3 and play it.

[Zugrok]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

it wont happen, not because of larian mind you. But rather because of WOTC who is on the verge of releasing there online only ONE DnD VTT. They'd see this as direct competition, i mean why bother with there VTT if you can just make your module in BG3 and play it.

Exactly this you'd have to be an idiot not to put together WOTC business practices and what Sven meant when he said it would be "too complicated" to do.

[darkholyPL]

Originally posted by 🐺 Your Dad 7 🐺:

Larian has come out and stated that a level 12-20 campaign would be a notoriously difficult undertaking to balance gameplay wise as characters in 5e become godlike in power.

So what? Give us that power fantasy, who cares.
High level DnD adventures were always bs anyway. That's kinda the point of them.
All I hear is 'lazy lazy lazy'. If not only previous BG games and other IE games could do it, but also small indie studios, than I'm sure Larian can as well.

[🌴🐺[ 7 ]🐺🌴]

Originally posted by darkholyPL:

Originally posted by 🐺 Your Dad 7 🐺:

Larian has come out and stated that a level 12-20 campaign would be a notoriously difficult undertaking to balance gameplay wise as characters in 5e become godlike in power.

So what? Give us that power fantasy, who cares.
High level DnD adventures were always bs anyway. That's kinda the point of them.
All I hear is 'lazy lazy lazy'. If not only previous BG games and other IE games could do it, but also small indie studios, than I'm sure Larian can as well.

I agree with you, if you don't want to do it than at least let the fanbase do it.

I don't think the VTT will be able to give quite the same experience, does it have AI controlled enemies without a DM?

[Dragnier]

Maybe do a DLC but with new characters that start on level 1 up to 12 which seems to be the manageable zone, and let our original party and companions be NCPs in these new adventure, continuing the story from where it ended in a new adventure and with potential to recruit your main character or original companions once the new party from the DLC reaches level 12.

[Notch]

Originally posted by 🐺 Your Dad 7 🐺:

With the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, there has been a lot of talk about a potential sequel or DLC, Larian has come out and stated that a level 12-20 campaign would be a notoriously difficult undertaking to balance gameplay wise as characters in 5e become godlike in power.

However, there is another solution, the potential is there for Larian to bring back custom modules, Neverwinter Nights style. Give the community access to a plethora of assets, tools and mod support. We could get BG1+2 and Icewind Dale 1+2 in 5e using the same engine, all put together by the community.

People have responded to this by saying it isn’t Larian’s way, that DOS set a standard that they are only interested in telling their own stories, but I disagree, BG3 is such a success that people will most certainly want more, and what better way to give it to them and make it easier for yourself by allowing NWN like modular design?

Give people the tools to make 5e dnd campaigns, this is the perfect time to do it. And they could go bar beyond what dungeon master mode in DOS.

No, this just wastes time and produces tons of junk that no one plays. Please no. no no.

[[GAY] stoni mahoni]

I mean a wish we would get that, but it's entirely unrealistic. Not only because Larian doesn't want to do it (and probably wouldn't be allowed by WoTC), but also because of technical reasons.

Originally posted by 🐺 7 🐺:

However, there is another solution, the potential is there for Larian to bring back custom modules, Neverwinter Nights style. Give the community access to a plethora of assets, tools and mod support. We could get BG1+2 and Icewind Dale 1+2 in 5e using the same engine, all put together by the community.

Here is the thing: That's basically not possible. Neverwinter Nights was made so creating custom adventures and even campaigns was relatively easy. The downside was that all maps looked very much alike, everything was square and there was very little visual variety. There was also no true verticality, only a bit of optical tricks to make it look like there was.

Neverwinter Nights 2 tried to fix these issues but ended up making modding the game for more complicated. The result was far less fandmade content. But the general issues remained the same. It looked way better than NWN 1, but still not nearly as good as other rpgs of that time.

Baldur's Gate 3 was not made for easily creating new maps. You basically need experienced coders to make proper maps for this. These people are already programming stuff they're getting paid for, though. And even if they could sell their BG3 mods, they probably wouldn't sell all that well compared to just creating a game. All that being said, even to make this possible, it would require huge amounts of work on Larian's part to make this possible. That costs money and time. They're already working on their next games and the people still working on Baldur's Gate 3 are working on patches on updates for the actual existing game, not on tools to create maps and campaigns. That would be several orders of magnitude more work.

Generally speaking, there are reasons why we never got a game like the Neverwinter Nights games again: You can't make one that looks even half-decent by today's standards and allows for easy level design at the same time. And if it's not easy, it won't be done. And if the game doesn't look good, only very few people will buy it.

[Norma]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.