Fallout co-creator Tim Cain's long list of "nitpicky" D&D questions for Wizards of the Coast in 2002 might help explain why Larian wanted to move on from the tabletop license after Baldur's Gate 3

Reasons for success Baldur's Gate 3 There were many of them, and one of these factors was the use of the Dungeons and Dragons license. D&D's popularity has exploded since the last time role-playing game developers created ruleset-based games, and suddenly we have a great video game welcoming a new generation of fans. Why did Larian want to give up this advantage? Well, a fresh history lesson from role-playing game legend Tim Kane shows the limits that D&D can impose on a video game project.

Cain is best known as the creator of the concept for Fallout and the development director for the original game, but he also directed the acclaimed 2003 game D&D: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Based directly on the D&D 3.5 module of the same name, it was perhaps the most faithful adaptation of the board game ever made, replicating just about every little rule and character building option you could want.

These questions include things like: What prestige classes should I support? Should classes that don't benefit from certain skills still be able to gain them? Should skills such as execution that are not useful in the game be adapted? Should players be able to multiclass when creating a character with two level 0 classes? If a monk scores a critical hit with shocking grasp, is the damage of the spell or melee hit doubled?

WotC Questions about ToEE – YouTube

The list goes on and on and goes deeper into the story issues specific to the Temple of Elemental Evil module. These questions “illustrate the difficulty of converting a paper-and-pencil module into a computer game,” Kane explains.

“Because you can’t have any questions left. Every question you have about the module needs to be answered, or you just don't include this thing in a computer game. Computers can't control this. When someone ever says, “Well, that's up to the DM's discretion,” you should immediately decide what your discretion is. The computer must know. You must create a rule for this. You must enter a dialogue line for this. path. You can't do this.”

This is exactly the problem that Larian boss Sven Vincke mentioned when explaining why the studio refused the D&D license for its next game. “There were a lot of restrictions when creating D&D, and 5th edition is not an easy system to implement into a video game,” Vincke said, and the team wanted to create new combat systems that weren't necessarily compatible with those rules.

Vincke is not alone in suggesting that D&D Rules Could Be a Problem for Video Game Manufacturers – As comfortable as the familiar game system may be for board game fans, these rules are complex, and this problem is largely solved by having a DM to smooth out the confusion. As Tim Kane discovered back in the early '00s, a video game is not the place to follow these rules.

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