https://swordcoast.com/
I only just heard of this game last night, but it seems to promise to be exactly what Neverwinter Nights never did manage to be. You can play through the adventure single-o, but you can also play through table-top style with a GM and a party of your friends. Neverwinter Nights was a good game overall, but my friends and I beat our heads against it’s implementation of GM Mode week after week. That this is apparently truly turn-based should help, but if this is the real deal, why am I only hearing about it now?
Should I take a chance on another heartbreak?
Looks like I was mistaken thinking I saw that the game was going to be turn-based. That in itself means it’ll be a chaotic free-for-all in which any attempt at table talk will be moot.
Been waiting on this one for a while. The release has been pushed back several times and I’m desperately hoping it’s “hold off to get the polish looking shiny” rather than “hold off because EVERYTHING IS ON FIIIIIRE.”
It’s not going to be a replacement for running a campaign but I could see it being a fun tool within the scope of an existing online campaign being run primarily through something like Roll20.net.
I’ve discovered that there is a discussion board for the game on EnWorld. It seems to feature mostly complaints.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?536-Sword-Coast-Legends
Apparently, it’s very buggy, not really 5e and the GM mode is no substitute for tabletop playing. But it is a D&D CRPG, which usually gets my money. The fact that you can’t play a bard is a point against it.
A lot of the complaints seem to be centered around it not being a fully featured campaign creation tool, but I think that’s the result of unrealistic expectations. I’ve been following SCL for a while now and I never got the impression that’s what they were going for.
Since last talking about this, I have looked around at other options and have talked some friends into letting me experiment with using Tabletop Simulator as an online RPG tool. It doesn’t do as much work for you, but the entry costs are substantially lower. In fact it was on sale at Steam at the time, so I picked up a bundle and sent my friends the copies they needed to let me try it out. It basically simulates a tabletop, including the physics of moving objects around. So the rest is just what you normally do in an RPG – talk.
I will go ahead and pre-order Sword Coast Legends, though, despite the fact that I’m probably being a sucker to do so. Ah well.
I’m definitely interested in the concept. I’ve been thinking idly thinking about running an online RPG for a while and this would definitely be an interesting approach to take with it. But I’ll end up waiting for a while until they ideally work out the bugs and put it up on sale, since that’s the only way I’ll get a few people to buy it too probably. Still, I’d be interested to hear what people think about it.
If you want to run an online RPG, roll20 is a great way to do it. Really great interface and lots of good DM tools.
I’d recommend forgoing their voice chat and using a third-party like Skype, though.
Well, the game is out. Too soon for many reviews.
If anyone decides to try it out please let us know.
I’ve played it a bit now, the single player part anyway. It plays a lot like Neverwinter Nights, though obviously with better-looking graphics some 12 years later. It’s about as compliant with actual 5e rules as Neverwinter Nights was with the 3e rules. After so many years of people complaining that tabletop RPGs are being made to conform to the style of computer games, still people who actually make the computer games continue to insist on making up their own rules.
So far, it’s a good example of its type. It doesn’t have the Divinity: Original Sin’s fun and versatile action point combat, but it also doesn’t have Pillars of Eternity’s glut of spells and effects that I always suspect were designed to be optimized in ways I just haven’t figured out yet. Legends is pretty straightforward in how everything is supposed to work, but without a lot of gameplay tricks and gimmicks for the obsessive to go nuts with.
So far, the story kicks off kind of slow, but I’m interested. Compared to the beginning of Baldur’s Gate, it comes on like gangbusters. Compared to Baldur’s Gate II, it comes on like Lawrence Welk. You’re a member of a guild that some offshoot of Helm worshipers thinks is working with demons to bring about the end of the world. And there are some demons who also seem to think that this is the case. All this is revealed to you as you strike out to do quests for a caravan you’re guarding, where you are being paid in nobody-cares-if-you-take-anything-not-nailed-down. Also, you are never forced into an awkward conversation about how you’ve discovered that the caravan was attacked because you’re in it.