Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: What other D&D setting would you want to see Larian tackle?

Dragonlance! YES

I think you're wrong there. This game is clearly a work of love, and from the get-go they were always talking about how they play tabletop. But the final product is a computer game and must be designed as such. It must be fun to play as a computer game, for which the ruleset is not designed. There's also the matter where something of this budget, must be able to be played by those who aren't at all invested in D&D. This held a little less true for the original Baldur's Gate, which was more of a niche game, but that too is in a lot of ways a poor representation of the AD&D ruleset. Because it's not a tabletop game.

Then, the rules lawyer is always the worst player at the table, as they get in the way of having fun. D&D is about speaking to your imagination. In every player's handbook since the very first - it says - paraphrased - That the rules are there to give you a baseline, but that they should never get in the way of your world, your imagination, your fun; and you're encouraged to change them up in your game. Well, they did just that.

I think that, with all the infrastructure they built and now in place - they might be in fact, be rather anxious to tell another story. Could be D&D, could be something new or an add-on for this game. If they do, they can have my money now. Just, have a good launch party and a few weeks off, first.

Oh, me too, it's all fine - and if that was our starting point, that's what we would have played. But just for convenience sake, we swapped things around in Adventure Paths, so we didn't have learn a bunch of new lore while playing. It also makes more sense in game that major deities are just known by everyone and don't require extensive explanation. The only reason we played Pathfinder was 4E, anyway. 5E is perfection, though and we're not likely to go back - or even update to something newer. If you start your level one adventure and Demogorgon shows up, that instills something far greater than an unkown Demon that kicks a Dragon in the face. Our Paladin and Cleric conversing with Torm has more impact than explaining who the new deity is.

I just might, but it's been such a long time, I worry it'll be the same experience.

I agree that the game was a work of love. I think Larian cares about and is passionate about Baldur's Gate, but that that care does not extend to the wider Forgotten Realms lore or the 5e ruleset. After all, the original BG games didn't use it, so I suspect their thinking there is that ruleset doesn't really matter. They may be right (they probably are right honestly) it's just a question of if the rules they came up with are actually better.

They will probably use what they learned making BG3 and use it to make DOS3.

90% of BG3's rules match 5e's. The problem with 5e is that it's very hand-wavey and a lot is left up to DM fiat. A video game can't accommodate that, so they had to come up with other systems to fill in the gaps. I don't think straying from the RaW in the PHB indicates they don't like D&D's settings.

Imo Dragonlance is the least compatible setting with "Larian style" design.

The only thing Larian would be good at is making draconians look good.

Im no expert, only read like 3 or 5 books from Dragonlance ...
But would it even be compatible?

Or would it require to stay strictly separated?

It's also played in a couple of completely different ways. Some play it as a fantasy skirmish battlegame, and interpret rules legalistically; some play it as a story telling game, and interpret the rules loosely, with Rule-of-Cool paramount. Critical Role has popularised this latter form, and this is what BG3 seeks to emulate.

NB, if you prefer the former, I would suggest Solasta.

Some tweaks, but nothing really major. No half orcs!

That's kind of the point. The original characters where "good" and "evil" because it said so on their character sheet, but regularly acted in a way that wasn't compatible with that. So we saw ablest bullying of Rastalin; racist and classist attitudes towards gully dwarves, etc. Not to mention genocide by so called "good" gods.

Larian would be ideal to do a remake that allowed the players to judge who was right and who was wrong, without reading it off the character sheets.

That cant be the only difference ...

Im quite certain Dragonborns are entirely different creatures, in books i readed Tiatmat was still "sealed" somewhere and unable to influence anything in the world, there was no mention of neither Gnomes, nor Halflings, instead there was other small race wich name i dont know in english
Thats just from top of my head.

Differences in Dragonlance:
Halflings are Kenders, often played as remorseless kleptomanics. Imo they were quite misunderstood even by later writers and are intended to represent Hobbits++ which live carefree lives in a communist utopia without personal belongings and instead people just take what they need. Until the war comes crashing down on them.

Gnomes are even more mad scientists

Orcs do not exist. Instead you have draconians born from corrupted dragon eggs each with a special ability that trigger when they die. They predate dragonborn by a lot.

Max level was 19

Steel is used as currency instead of gold as steel is useful.

Depending on when in the timeline it plays, no gods or divine magic.

Minotaurs are normal people and known to be expert sailors.

Magic is strictly controlled by the 3 orders of magic (one for each alignment on the good/evil axis) and every mage of more than minimal ability is required to join an order and pass a possibly lethal test or get hunted down.

The power of arcane spells is affected by its respective moon, one per order.

Golarion

I have a feeling they'll want to do their own thing, and try to one up BG3. DOS3 incoming I would expect.

Message to the devs:
Make Rivellon lore and worldbuilding better by adding more depth to civilizations, cultures, peoples, languages, theologies, cosmologies, histories, politics, notable individuals, and geographies. Be more consistent in how these things work too.

I might've misread the poll, but I assumed that these "D&D" Settings were for potential DLCs for BG3 rather than full on games.

Well, my question doesn't rule out DLC.

You should do a runoff poll soon if either top 2 or top 3.

Spelljammer could be an expansion pack for BG3, pursuing Mind Flayers in another planet, or maybe a whole game, traveling in Star Trek mode...exploring new civilizations.

With comparisons to Kotor..possibly.

As for Planescape, the obvious benchmark would be Planescape: Torment...a masterpiece of older RPG games in my humble opinion.

Then...there is Ravenloft..good environment for higher level characters..loaded with powerful equipment but perhaps unable to sleep well
and recover. The first challenge there could be to find a decent place to sleep.

Maybe the Vampire lord is a high level Warlock which rides his flying black horse and throws energy blasts from above..talk about Larian´s verticality combat..

but then, I don´t think WoC would agree on that plot ... not yet.

I want larian to keep adding to the map, and creating a GM client... with the coop functions BG3 has its just amacing... and the replayability is endless !