D&D Online (mmorpg by Turbine)

[Fabinusar]

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Created by by Turbine, makers of AC/AC2 and developers for Middle-Earth Online. Somewhat scary given that they bought back rights to AC, merged AC2 servers.

There is a AVI on stratics taken from the Turbine Nation event (fan faire).

Looks interesting, thoughts?

[Deathwing]

I think you surmised the opinion of this forum already. It's going to be REALLY scary. This is going to be a worse representation of D&D than that movie with the goofy Wayans brother.

[Vinen]

DnD should be left to PnP nuff said o_O;

Well Baulders Gate did own all.

[Nar]

Bleh, tabletop D&D is broken beyond belief. I dread to see it in a MMO format.
I'd love to see "Mage the Ascension" as a MMO, but the spheres are way too open ended to make a game with them and be any good.

[Samus Aran]

SPeaking of DnD, are there any programs or utilities that create a pen/paper environment to play over the net. Maybe with the help of Teamspeak and such a utility, I could start playing again... fyi: i hate java.

[Vinen]

Originally posted by Fattyfat
SPeaking of DnD, are there any programs or utilities that create a pen/paper environment to play over the net. Maybe with the help of Teamspeak and such a utility, I could start playing again... fyi: i hate java.

I saw one for Mirc. Not sure what it was thought =/ Ill try and find out I belive a friend of mine has a copy of it.

You could use a combination of Teamspeak and Mirc to run a campaign.
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edit~

Did a quick Google Search and came up with this dice roller

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shad.../dnd_dice.html

which is all you really need.

[Fabinusar]

Originally posted by Nar
Bleh, tabletop D&D is broken beyond belief. I dread to see it in a MMO format.

Curious, how do you mean tabletop D&D is broken?

The graphics for this game look pretty nice (IMO better than EQ2 as far as the character models go), though there is little information on character customization. They sound like they'll be doing a lot of instancing which is supposed to be the mechanism for avoiding AC/AC2 running around the wilderness with random mobs dropping in front of you (but reminds me of AO/CoH type 'dungeons'). They allow you to climb, which adds a whole new possible level of strategy (or abuse). The combat looks to be quite a bit different from other MMORPGs with regards to action - it's almost arcade-like.

Sounds like they're changing a few things as far as MMORPGs. Biggest fear, Turbine is making it.

[Samus Aran]

Originally posted by Vinen
I saw one for Mirc. Not sure what it was thought =/ Ill try and find out I belive a friend of mine has a copy of it.

You could use a combination of Teamspeak and Mirc to run a campaign.
---

edit~

Did a quick Google Search and came up with this dice roller

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shad.../dnd_dice.html

which is all you really need.

I'm looking for something that would provide me with a tabletop drawing medium where I can use miniatures and maps. When I played dnd it consisted of a large plastic grid you would write on with markers. That, minatures, dice, a medium of communication, and players would be what i want!

[Vinen]

I hate double posts.

[Vinen]

Ahh im used to the campaigns ive been in being run without a map etc, the GM would describe the area we are in, mabey a player would draw a map etc, we never had figures =/.

[Nar]

I should probably qualify myself by saying I've played since 1985 or so. I played up until a couple of months ago, when I no longer had the time to play any table top games. I have not played 3.5 and my concerns may no longer be valid with that edition.
I have noticed a few very broken elements of AD&D, and especially the new version with the feats and such.

Its my opinion that rangers are practically worthless. They cannot wear decent armor, and regardless how they spend their feats, or use their favored enemy, a fighter of the same level will always be a better overall. A fighter can easily be a superior archer with the number of feats they have, a better tank due to their armor, and their damage always superior thanks to specialization, and more feats. As a trade off, rangers get a limited selection of druid spells. None of them are really enough, in my opinion, to offset the shortcomings.

Fighters can easily become obscene. By 12 to 14ish, it is practically impossible for a fighter to miss an attack, and they have quite a few of them. It didn't ever really make any sense to me why a fighter using two dwarven war axes not only did more damage, but had more attacks then my monk.

Speaking of monks, they don't really excel at anything. They do get a ton of nifty feats, but bounced up against anything with a damage resistance, they are worthless. Just a 10/- pretty much negages everything you have, until you get the ability to hit magical things. Unfortunately in many of the games I have played, the DM had to give most of the encounters something with damage resistance to slow the fighters down. All I was doing was tumbling behind to give them a flanking bonus...whee.

Oh, and you can't feather fall enemys anymore. I always liked to feather fall an enemy, and then cast gust of wind when I played a spellcaster. Not saying the inability to do so is broken, it was just a nifty application of the spells you already have.

There are a few other things, but those are what come to mind. Like I said, I perfer Mage, where the creative use of your powers is what really counts.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Originally posted by Deathwing
I think you surmised the opinion of this forum already. It's going to be REALLY scary. This is going to be a worse representation of D&D than that movie with the goofy Wayans brother.

The second one is rumored to have Paris Hilton in talks....

[Samus Aran]

Originally posted by Vinen
Ahh im used to the campaigns ive been in being run without a map etc, the GM would describe the area we are in, mabey a player would draw a map etc, we never had figures =/.

I've done both, i'm a fan of the encounter map where you can see exactly what's going on in your surroundings.. minatures were fun!

[Darkmyst]

fyi: i hate java

Belongs in the General Forums but why?

[Fabinusar]

My group uses minatures and a grid map - works very well with combat. I can't picture going back to not using the grid, especially with 3e.


Thanks for the response Nar, I don't want to get too far off topic but 3.5e addresses a few of the Ranger and Monk issues. Both classes got a change as well as the Barbarian class which allow the extra mobility when wearing light and medium armor.

Ranger fix added some different spells, a few abilties (such as hide in plain sight for a given terrain - may be wilderness in general), two weapon paths to select (melee or bow; each granting free feats as appropriate). They dropped the HD to d8 though. (our group's ranger leads the pack in kills and is managing to stay ahead of the fighter, barbarian and even the cleric who has been blasting swarms of undead)

Monks had some changes as well, again more bonus feats and some choices. I haven't seen one played much since we switched to 3.5.

Another big change is buff spell durations; things like Bull's Strength dropped from 1 hour/level to 1 minute/level so the fighter isn't going to be running around with a all day buff any more.

Back on topic; I believe the current race implementation is: human, elf, dwarf, halfling, half-orc and warforged (new campaign setting race of 'living golem'). Missing gnome, half-elf and 4 campaign specific races. Classes missing are: druid, monk and artificer (campaign setting specific). They said multiclassing was in as were prestige classes.