I wish there were more games based on D&D released these days. I feel like there have been a lot of games trying to imitate Baldur's Gate, but they all feel watered down, so as to let new casual players have fun. I just need another good 2nd AD&D game to play. :(

Dungeons and Dragons is not the hot commodity that it was. I'm not sure what happened, but its popularity in video game circles has visibly waned in recent cycles. Online multiplayer MMOGs Neverwinter and Dungeons & Dragon's Online being the most recent adaptations of the DnD license I can think of, though they make use of the D&D lore and setting moreso than its ruleset.

The last single player D&D adaptation I can think of was Demonstone and its critical reception was lukewarm if I recall correctly. At least it never made any splash that caught my attention.

The prevalence of CRPGs in the Infinity style also waned. As video game presentation technology 'improved' we started seeing CRPGs adapted to better show off a more capable presentation. This is why Fallout was adapted to first person.

Meanwhile Wizards continues to release further adaptations of their PnP ruleset that go largely unnoticed by gaming ventures. An Infinity style CRPG utilizing the most recent version of D&D is not entirely unheard of given the recent resurgence of CRPGs in the Infinity style, but whether or not that happens remains to be seen. Nor would it be unheard of for a CRPG Dungeons and Dragon's game to adapt older versions of the rules, but it would be more obvious to adapt the current version over older ones.

If the demand for Infinity style role playing games persist and the products we're given are satisfactory (or at least adequate) perhaps we might eventually see an old school CRPG adaptation of D&D.

Well there is Pillars of Eternity:

http://eternity.obsidian.net/

I'm a backer of the game, but have not been keeping up with it's development. So not sure how relevant it is in terms of D&D ruleset. They did want to bring back the Baldur's Gate feel though.

Ah yes! Thanks NotJabba, I forgot there was another one. I backed the new Torment game as well. Although I keep getting the two mixed up and sometimes forgetting there is actually two new games coming out lol. Yeah Torment: Tides of Numenera would have been the better example.

https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com/

Although based on the info on the site, the new Torment game is a spiritual successor rather than a sequel as well. It appears to use its own custom ruleset. I must have been confused by the name; I'm a bit surprised they were allowed to use it.

Hole-ee-crap! I had no idea they were making a sequel to Planescape Torment!
. . .maybe I should play PT before I get too excited, heheh. That's one of the infinity games I have never played, maybe because I heard the combat is bad? I never looked into it at all, and really know nothing about it. Do you guys think this could be the game I'm looking for?

More of a spiritual successor, than anything. Still, I await it with baited breath.

As for why there aren't more games based on D&D... Honestly, it's just not that good of a system to base a videogame around. In P&P, a game can get by on the base rules while using them as guidelines to do any number of things that the PCs attempt. In a game, the flexibility that allows for any number of ways for the players to solve problems is limited by the game engine and the capacity of hard drives. Rogues in particular get screwed hard by this. Rogues aren't all that interesting in combat, but they make up for it with unique skills that allow them to infiltrate an area, sneak around, and whatnot. In games based on D&D, climbing anywhere is right out, and sneaking is extremely poorly implemented, basically making the rogue a half-assed fighter who can disarm traps.

Setting that aside, that's not even getting into the sheer impenetrable nature of D&D. In PST, not mastering the system beyond the basics will see you through, whereas in every other 2e IE game pretty much requires that you have not only studied the manual intently, but master it to a degree that makes the game feel more like homework, or more fittingly, like rolling up a character for a gaming session run by a twink who plans the game on the assumption that everyone will be playing the most twinked out characters possible. The NWN series made that feeling even worse with the addition of feats; all of a sudden, in order to make a viable character, you need to spend far too much time outside of the game plotting out feat trees like an arcane math problem. That sort of thing is something that most gamers today just don't have the patience for, and I can't blame them.

Yes, more AD&D second edition titles please.

It's my absolute favorite edition of the rules, is huge in scope and thus kind of perfect for computers! Granted, it's unsurpassed for veteran pen/paper players, but I can see the utility of a computer as well.

I think a huge portion of the success of BG/BG2 and ID was the kind of successful combination of 2nd ed. AD&D rules and a computer game.

After that, it was just downhill, fast. NWN 3rd ed. rules were pretty lame and NWN2 3.5 ed. rules were nothing amazing either.

2nd edition AD&D rules are the result of a decade of playtesting. It shows.

The Icewind Dale Enhanced edition game will hopefully be out sometime in the near future.

I would like to see some enhanced editions of the SSI games.

I would love to give the Gold box games a try, I've never played them before. I've just been waiting for an easy legal way to do so on modern computers. I want to go back in time and play the original Neverwinter Nights, the first multiplayer game ever.

Maybe. For me, it is the last GOOD, OUTSTANDING, D&D game. Not the last of them simply. More D&D games just MIGHT come and go; like BG series, nothing else will come.

A bit tragic, really. The main reason why I struggle to get into later Bioware RPGs is that the ruleset is so shallow and underdeveloped. KOTOR especiallly - I keep hearing about how great the story is but boring character creation (it felt like someone took NWN's character creation and removed 90% of the things that made it interesting) and customization combined with the awful controls just make it impossible for me to get into. DA:O was a bit better, but not all that much.


Not saying that those games are bad, they did some things really well. It's just I feel like especially DA:O could have been so much better with a D&D ruleset running under the hood (although given the release date I suppose they would have been required to run 4e, so perhaps not).


Actually, that raises another good point. I think part of it is that in order to use D&D rules, you gotta get official licensing, and they're probably not going to give you official licensing for anything other than the current edition of rules (with BG2 being the exception as converting that to 3e would have messed up a whole lot of things - but even then, it's more 2.5 than the AD&D of BG1). I actually don't hate 5e, so maybe there's a future, but man, the past few years its been 4e, and no one wants to base a game around that.

That a great old school style modern implementation RPG is created sooner or later is more certain with each passing year. Simply the gaming industry is slowly maturing and this particular niche is too big to pass over (not to mention games currently in development). The problem is the DnD IP owner. AFAIK they have a specific approach to licensing rulesets: if you want to use the official dnd product logo you must comply with the latest version. Which is crap because for me 3.5ed is the last one noteworthy. So seeing a 2nd ed game released today is out of the question.

Moreover, from a contemporary point of view, (besides absurdly extensive lore) what is the reason, really, to use proprietary system in an rpg that is good in its own right? d20 (nevermind the edition) isn't even that balanced for combat at higher levels anyway. Again, leaving the lore aside, there is no real added value, one might even argue that such a system constrains the designers making the game potentially worse.

Wow, I didn't know that, just thought that the license was expensive. This is horrid.
In this way, there is no chance for any kind of indy-cRPG using Forgotten Realms old school.

I got into DnD through the infinity engine games (v2.0), also with Neverwinter Nights and the newer Pool Of Radiance (v3.0 or 3.5 w/e). While I understand that the dnd ruleset (esp. older versions) might not be optimal for a "modern" cRPG, I would like to see a game like that. Main reason I think is familiarity with the campaign setting, lore, spell and skill names etc. But with dnd popularity decreasing, younger generations with probably stick to some other good IP made with tons of cash [Dragon:Age etc.]
Sad, although I am sure that lots of quality cRPGs will come. Just not "good old Forgotten Realms"