Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Shared Dialogue Roll System similar to SWTOR

Hello,

i advocated for a similar to SWTOR-based dialogue system in the past but i wanted to start the discussion again and hopefully reach someone at Larian to give it a thought.

Baldur’s Gate 3 set a new standard for cinematic storytelling in RPGs. However, in multiplayer, dialogue often feels one‑sided: the first player to trigger a cutscene becomes the sole speaker, while others watch passively. This limits roleplay opportunities and reduces narrative engagement for the whole party.

To enhance immersion and cooperative storytelling, I propose a Shared Dialogue Roll System, inspired by SWTOR.


SWTOR:

For people who did not play SWTOR: When you play in multiplayer you enter a cutscene together and chose to answer for yourself. A dice roll decides then which you of the member in the party gets to answer.

There are also light and dark side options and even if for example the light side options get picked the one who chooses the dark side options get dark side points. They also have a hidden system to increase your roll chance if you didnt get to speak in a longer period.

With this they try to give a fair equalization for each player. Also you have to option to not chose an answer during the cutscene the other players chose to roll or their answer gets picked. The benefit of that is that you as a group can decide if you want a certain person to handle the dialogue.


Core Mechanics:

When a dialogue begins, all players can select a response.

The game performs a random roll (or vote) to determine which line is spoken aloud.

Even if a player’s choice doesn’t win, their character still receives approval/disapproval, alignment, or narrative flags tied to their selection.

Players have the option to not chose an answer at all in order to give other players the spotlight / let them handle the dialogue / reflecting their character.

This means every player has a voice and is engaged into the game at all times. It also creates fun situations and a certain kind of unpredictability. Additionally, it feels very immersive because all people participate at all times.


You could also have different variants for the system. For example the option to give charisma / persuation a bonus to dialogue selection or instead of a dice roll system just a vote system. There should be also an option just to select "shared rolls" or "first speaker gets to talk" if you want to have it like BG3 is at the moment.

This would be a huge step from a "spectator mode" into a collaborative roleplay game which closely aligns with a basic DND encounter.

This would make games like Divinity and Baldur’s Gate feel even more refined than they already do.

that isn't how D&D works so thats why they didn't go with it but Divinity is the next game and Larian has full control of that one so you would be better off asking your proposal there

i would argue that it is very close to DnD because if you have an encounter with a group everyone gets to talk to the baddies if they want to except someone of the groups decides to attack instantly.

Another example would be if the group meets some lord and get a contract. There is not only one person talking usually but the group as a whole - with the suggested system this would be possible.

Technically, SWtoR system isn't the group talking as a whole. It's still only one person talking. It's just a dice roll to choose who, whilst allowing everyone to have their associated dialogue option side effects (Meaning their morality isn't screwed over by someone else getting to roll their preferred dialogue option)

Solasta is more of a "The group talking as a whole" as each dialogue option is voiced by a different character. Though I'm not sure how this would translate into mulitplayer (As the single player mode of the game has you create your full party and then separates the multiple options in dialogues across them)

The SWtoR system seems fairly decent for multiplayer video games. Given it provides equal opportunities and also allows preservation of personal choice.

It's a far cry from a TT game though, where everyone can say what they want to say during a conversation, rather than just 1 option randomly decided. Which is more possible because TT games don't shove in random inspiration/morality outcomes into dialogue options (Since there are no options. People just make up what they want to say and then the DM roleplays the NPC's response)

If their future games feature multiplayer, having a SWtoR style system could make sense to include. That is unless they can come up with something that works better (Such as a way to actually incorporate everyone's dialogue options)