Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Not 100% relevant to PC gaming, but 1) D&D’s rules have been enormously influential on computer RPGs 2) whatever the new edition ends up doing will almost certainly filter down to a PC game or six at some point 3) your mum.

Wizards of the Coast are taking another pass at Dungeons & Dragons, after the recent fourth edition rules proved more than a little divisive. Divisive = MASSIVE RAGEFEST, of course. On top of that, WOTC reckon vidjagames are taking an increasingly deadly bite out of their side. So, they want to get D&D back on track – and they’re actively looking for the community’s input to do so. Is that you? Ooh, probably.
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You might recall that last year I talked to Cryptic’s Jack Emmert about the MMO he called “an old school Western tactical RPG”. It’s Neverwinter, a game that also, apparently, marks a new direction for the studio. You can see some of the fruits of that new direction over on the official site, and also in the teaser trailer below.

Looks like a fantasy action-RPG to me! Yes sir. The most interesting aspect of this, of course, is that Cryptic are planning to let people come up with their own dungeons, with their own fictions, to be installed in the world. If they pull it off it could be a genuinely interesting spin on the way these kinds of games work.
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Hmm. The title’s so long that there’s no room for bad punning (“Hi Card” is what I was going to go for, which is a bit of a stretch, but it’s late). Anyway – Mananation broke the story even before the actual website was up (it is now). Basically, Sony are taking Wizards of the Coast’s famous collectible-card-game-thingy and doing an MMO with it. They’re promising single player scenarios and PvP action (with a “robust tournament environment”), but specific details are thin on the ground. Read the press-release if you fancy decoding them. My reading is very much “Magic: The Gathering… online” rather than a complete translation, but that’s just a reading. We’ll know soon enough though – it’s due for an early 2010 release. You’ll find the teaser beneath the cut…
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Early news reaches us about not one, not three, but two new PC/360 games based on the Magic: The Gathering license. Wizards of the Coast, who own all of fantasy ever, are moving the collectable card game franchise over to videogames for the first time since 2003.

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It’s been a few years since I’ve been an avid Pen & Paper Tabletop roleplayer. Like – say- about sixteen or so. However, I’ve dabbled sporadically ever since and have tried to keep an occasional eye on the hobby, if only for old time’s sake. So I was aware that Wizards of the Coast had announced they were releasing a fourth edition of the D&D rules next year.

It wasn’t until someone who’d been following it a little closer talked to me about it last week that I realised it actually was something genuinely radical. Buried between the announcements of Swords Versus Scarabs +3 now being +4 and kobolds being pink rather than whatever colour kobolds are, Wizards have done something interesting and relevant to RPS.

They’ve turned it into a PC game.

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