A lot of amazing things started in the 1970s. James Brown perfected the

Funk, Star Wars entered our collective conscious, the oil crisis

popularized small, cheap, fuel-efficient Japanese cars, and punk rock

boiled out from a seething, angry sea of disillusioned youth. In a much

quieter, calmer corner of the 1970's world, another youth phenomenon came

into being: Dungeons & Dragons. What started out as the self-funded

passion project of a couple of hardcore wargame enthusiasts, cranking out

rule books in their basement to sell in their local hobby shop, has

evolved into a multi-million-dollar entertainment empire. This empire has

spawned several editions of the original game, with hundreds of rulebooks

and adventure supplements, as well as miniatures, childrens' toys,

television shows, a series of horrible movies, and a giant slew of video

games.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248441">Computer

games used to ship with massive manuals and maps.And you could buy them

in actual stores!

The latest D&D game, Neverwinter,

carries on a proud tradition. While there have been some black sheep in

the herd, many D&D games have been outstanding, groundbreaking and

innovative. In particular, D&D has been very well represented in

multiplayer games - the first graphical MMO ever produced was SSI's Gold

Box Neverwinter Nights in 1991. While the graphics of this DOS

game seem primitive by today's standards, and the game itself would not

likely appeal to the modern MMO crowd, it was still an impressive

achievement at the time.

After SSI's Gold Box games died out, the D&D license was picked up by

Interplay, BioWare and Black Isle Studios to develop into new games. The

BioWare team built the Infinity Engine, which was used to power a bunch of

incredible and successful new games: the Baldur's Gate series,

the Icewind Dale series, and Planescape: Torment. The

Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games were all multiplayer, but not

massively-so; multiplayer was limited to 6 players controlling party

members. These were essentially single-player games that allowed for

multiple players (except Planescape: Torment, which was single-player

only).

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248442"> Back in the

day, when a serial port LAN connection was an option.

These games used 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules - the

confusing THAC0 system. Characters were generated with random die rolls,

and could range from truly feeble to super-powered. And since they could

be re-rolled indefinitely, and the points could be reallocated as desired,

there was no reason to play a weak, ineffective character. Parties could

be stacked with turbo-charged supermen. Of the two series, Icewind Dale

was more purpose-built for multi-player; in Baldur's Gate, the party could

be filled with NPCs met during the course of the story, whereas Icewind

Dale was built around a 6-man player-made party.

When Interplay went broke and axed Black Isle Studios, the D&D

license went to Atari. Atari partnered up with BioWare (and, later,

Obsidian), and the team developed 2003's Neverwinter Nights.

This was a hybrid sort of game - a big and excellent single-player

campaign that allowed for multiplayer over LAN or internet, and a set of

tools for creating all-new game worlds and hosting servers for

massively-multiplayer action. You didn't need an internet connection to

get an excellent game, but the game was so much better when you took it

online.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248443"> Things

are about to take a dark turn here. You can tell because it's all sunny.

The Aurora toolset was the driving force behind NWN's

multiplayer success. Adventure modules were easy to create. Players could

find servers that perfectly fit the style of game they wanted to play,

from over-the-top, ultra-powered PvP arenas where the only way to survive

was to figure out the most ridiculous Monk-Sorcerer-Paladin build

possible, to higly-restricted roleplaying servers where players could

spend the whole day hanging around in town and not doing any fighting at

all because there was no in-character reason to do so. The scripting

language used by the game was similar to the C programming language, and

was relatively easily-learned by coding neophytes. The DM client allowed

world-builders to police their creations, to administer custom-made

persistent worlds or to run adventures almost the same as they would with

pen-and-paper adventures.

This is going to be a significant hurdle for the new Neverwinter -

dealing with the expectations of the fans of the Aurora toolset from its

older namesakes. While Neverwinter is not a direct sequel to Neverwinter

Nights I or II, it will ship with a similar toolset called the Foundry,

which will allow players to build their own adventure modules and share

them in-game with other players. While the Foundry toolset

has not yet been made available to the public, it seems unlikely that

players will be able to use it to create and host their own persistent

world modules like they could with previous games. Custom player-made

content in the beta weekend was made available through bulletin boards on

the one server that was open to the public, and everything that was on the

bulletin board was single-serving adventure packs. It was all single

dungeons, small exterior maps with small dungeons attached, campaigns

spread across a handful of small maps, all set within walking distance of

the city of Neverwinter. No big, new foreign lands, no weird portals to

Eberron or Greyhawk or Ravenloft. Nothing persistent.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248444"> "I'll

make my own server! With blackjack! And hookers!"

That's not to say someone won't figure it out. Players managed to do some

very clever things with the previous toolsets and some third-party tools,

and it won't likely be long after launch that some very clever people find

a way to build and maintain something resembling the old persistent world

servers within the confines of Neverwinter's custom-content system. It

will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Neverwinter will not be the very first video game to use the 4th Edition

ruleset. That dubious honor belongs to Dungeons & Dragons:

Daggerdale, a sub-mediocre 2011 console-style "Action-RPG" grinder

that received lousy review scores because of its bugginess, lackluster

gameplay, poor graphics, sub-par voice acting and a host of other

complaints. Daggerdale used a very limited set of 4E rules, drawing more

of its gameplay inspiration from other console titles like Dungeons &

Dragons: Heroes. There's not much of a comparison to be made between

Daggerdale and Neverwinter. Daggerdale had a split-screen 4-player co-op

multiplayer option, but was essentially a console-style action game with

some RPG elements. Neverwinter has also jury-rigged the 4E ruleset to

better fit the game style, but as of the first beta weekend it already

felt more polished and engaging than the reviewers felt Daggerdale was at

launch.

When Neverwinter launches, it will inevitably get compared to Turbine's

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ddo">Dungeons & Dragons Online

DDO has been around for a while now, since before the introduction of 4thEdition rules in 2008, and is a very different game from Neverwinter.



"Say that again and I'll show you what

happened to the last guy who called me Jolly."

DDO's character generation uses a point-buy system, allowing for a very

broad range of character builds. Neverwinter's character generation (at

least in beta) allowed for one of two sets of stats to be selected - one

set with the main stat as the highest, one set with Consitution as the

highest. While both games are MMOs, Neverwinter's gameplay feels more like

a single-player RPG experience shared with other people, while DDO feels

more MMO-like. Neverwinter is being billed as an "Action-MMORPG," with

more emphasis on combat than on character development. While DDO has

recently tunneled its way into Forgotten Realms territory via the

Underdark, it is still very much rooted in its Eberron setting.

Neverwinter is pure Forgotten Realms, dripping Greenwood and Salvatore

from every drow-infested pore.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248446">Neverwinter's

horses look badass, but are likely very painful to ride...

The player-made content is the thing that will most clearly set

Neverwinter apart from DDO. DDO faces a type of limitation common to most

other MMOs - once players have blasted through all the current content,

they have to wait for the next big content update for something new.

Neverwinter will essentially remove this limitation by giving players the

power to create their own new content. Official patches and updates will

still roll out, adding new classes, races, official story arc

continuations, bug fixes and the like, but player-created content from the

Foundry could end up replacing the endgame gear grind found in so many

other games. Once you've beaten all the other dungeons, make your own and

introduce new challenges, tougher monsters, weirder scripted effects.

There are tons of other D&D video games out there. How do you think

Neverwinter will stack up against your favorites? Let us know in our

comments!