Neverwinter

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Neverwinter
Co-op RPG Neverwinter announced for PC- Destructoid

Looks like Neverwinter is being done by Cryptic studios now. This one's slated for Winter 2011

Five classes, seems like:

Priest
Wizard
Warrior
Rogue
Ranger

5-player co-op. You'll also have the ability to create your own character stories and quests. Maybe there's a dungeon master going on as the sixth? PC Onry, unfortunately.

They didn't seem to suggest which ruleset they were going to use, either.

[Takelli]

Re: Neverwinter

Wonder if this will be better than NW2....

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Neverwinter

Well, its not by Obsidian so that's a good sign at least.

Personally, I wouldn't want today's Bioware to go near it, given their love for vanilla/chocolate decisions a D&D approach would melt their shrunken brains.

[Icemage]

Re: Neverwinter

I've never liked the games in the Neverwinter Nights series. A reboot might be OK, but it'll still be hamstrung by the D&D ruleset.

I don't know why companies keep trying to "cash in" on a phenomenon that has long past seen its best days; D&D rules are deliberately distilled down for pen and paper roleplaying, and many elements are abstracted out due to the probability curves provided by physical dice.

Not that I'm bagging on P&P RPGs - I've played more than my fair share of them over the years, and then some. But I'd be the first to say that they're not nearly so popular as they used to be, and for good reason (time requirements and scheduling being the major sticking points). CCG-style games like Magic: The Gathering fall under a similar heading.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Neverwinter

Well, I'm always rather curious when developers try to blend a video game with some pen-and-paper sensibilities. I'll agree the large amounts of time required are often why I prefer RPGs in video game form, but I always feel like somethings missing when its an MMORPG or an P2P RPG where roleplaying is a totally foreign concept.

I'm actually watching a movie about pen-and-paper RPG players right now, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Seems the plight of the Dungeon Master here is typical - he cares about the story and the scenario, the players just care about numbers rules and fucking over that scenario in any way they can get away with.

Sounds familiar. Even so, its ten times better than The Guild, which iust seems to live in stereotypes.

The last game that really tried to mesh a pen-and-paper element in to an RPG was Etrian Odyssey and those are DS RPGs that have been quite special experiences. There's something to be said for charting out your adventure and it becoming a story all its own.