Previews

D&D Online - Module 8 Hands-On

Though I haven't played as many tabletop RPGs as I'd have liked, I've always been fond of the concept - and have enjoyed the sessions I have had. I'm also a fan of MMOGs of multiple genres, styles, and sizes. Still, while tabletop RPGs and MMORPGs might share a three-letter acronym, they might not necessarily share the same audience - and people who like both might like them both for wholly different reasons. Cramming forty people into a basement and rolling dice to topple a dragon doesn't sound like my idea of fun, after all. I like ketchup and I like ice cream, but I won't be putting them together anytime soon.

Bridging the gap between tabletop gamers and MMO acolytes has been the core difficulty for the Dungeons & Dragons Online team at Turbine since the game launched in 2006. Their goal has been to provide fans of D&D the sort of handcrafted, intimate experience that they're used to - story-driven, with survival in trap-filled dungeons depending not just on rolls of the dice but on how especially cruel the DM was feeling on that day - while not alienating people who signed up with the game expecting a more traditional MMORPG.

It's something that they're still working on, admitted Kate Paiz, the game's Senior Producer, when she and other members of the DDO team - Ian Currie, Stephen Muray, Jesse Smith, Brent Walton, Ilya Bossov, and Brian Cottle - showed me a preview of the upcoming content in Module 8: Prisoners of Prophecy, the game's 18th free content update since its launch. As they continue to try and bridge the gap between people wrestling with the MMO aspect and people wrestling with the D&D aspect, one of the ways they're doing so is by streamlining the introduction - character creation and the tutorial phase of the game.

Though it was, admittedly, my first time actually sitting down with the game, I was able to see what they were getting at from both points of view. Someone unfamiliar with D&D might not know a Barbarian from a Fighter from a Paladin, but by starting out with the simple choice of, "Do you want to swing a sword, cast a spell, or do something more specialized?" and gradually getting more specific, they cater to people who know what their preferred MMO playstyle is but might not know what the difference between INT and WIS was. For experienced D&Ders, though, there's the option to look less at playstyles and more at stats, feats, and the like.

After deciding to be boring and generic and roll a Human Fighter, I started off my new character on the shore of a tropical island - in the middle of a rather unseasonal snowstorm - having been shipwrecked thanks to a particularly aggressive white dragon that had been terrorizing the island, preventing any ships from getting in or out. Soon enough, I'd been given a starting set of basic equipment and sent into a nearby dungeon with a party of higher-level NPCs.

While in the company of these NPCs, I had a special buff that would prevent me from dying - a way, explained Paiz, to help ease players into the game (while making them feel like a halfway-competent adventurer instead of a glorified rodent exterminator). The dungeon itself featured some basic puzzles (climb the ladder, open the door for your party, find a hidden key, and so on), and of course introduces players to the game's combat - though the high-level NPCs do most of the dirty work for you. For tabletop gamers, it's an easy introduction to a world of full-motion, real-time combat that doesn't stop while the Cleric grabs another Mountain Dew, and for MMO gamers, it's an introduction to a world where puzzles and environmental interaction are just as important as who can hold aggro and a world where you just might want to let the rogue go ahead and search for traps before running through a door.

After the tutorial dungeon, I was awarded with another set of equipment, plus a shiny new weapon of my choice - and then was sent out into the new communal area. Given that snowfall on a tropical island was slightly unusual, characters will be tasked to help out the village in dealing with the dragon Aussircaex - who would occasionally fly overhead - and also uncovering whatever was behind this unusual cold snap. While I had to bid my NPC companions farewell, I was told that they return in the capstone dungeon for Korthos Island, where characters confront the white dragon herself.