Watching these two new Sword Coast Legends videos, which show off the extremely flexible campaign creation tools and Dungeon Master gameplay, have me swimming in a sea of wonderful memories. For a good few years, this was how I spent most of my evenings, playing Neverwinter Nights and running a persistent world with a group of friends. It remains the highpoint of my gaming life.
Point your eyes at the videos, below.
This first one shows off campaign creation. Dialogue, quests, triggers, merchants, areas — they are all under the control of the DM player. It is a lot like Neverwinter Nights’ DM tools, in terms of freedom, but the interface looks considerably easier to manage.
The second video pits a group of adventurers against the dungeon crafted in the previous video. The DM can still exert a great deal of power over the adventure, setting up obstacles from traps to enemies, and can take control of NPCs as well. We’ve seen this part of the game before, but it’s a more in-depth look this time around.
I really appreciate the threat mechanic. You sometimes find DMs who only want to kill adventurers. They want to win. That’s not D&D — it’s not a competitive game. Threat makes it more cooperative, because the DM can only earn lots of threat if the players are doing well. The better they do, the more challenging situations the DM can create.
Sword Coast Legends was one of Tim’s favourite games from E3, and it’s certainly got a lot going for it.