Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Interview
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GameSpy: How much of a factor was it when you were conceiving the new ruleset notion that they would someday be used in computer and videogames?
Rob Heinsoo: I think it was not the starting point. Our number-one priority was to get our genre nailed, to the extent that we had to make a game that worked face-to-face, and then would be able to work on a digital table. It certainly didn't escape us, however, as this design coalesced -- and we had several different versions of the designs -- that we could look at it and easily say, "wow, that would be a good adaptation for a computer game." But it wasn't a driver per se.
James Wyatt: I remember Heinsoo saying several times, "Well, if we were designing a computer game, we could do that sort of thing, but we can't, because we have to rely on the processing power of peoples' brains.
Heinsoo: So all the time, we would have this discussion as sort of a design workshop approach, and I would frequently say, "Imagine for a second we are designing a game that is not the type of game we're designing. What would we do? OK, and now, imagine that we are even more limited than we are. What would we do?" Basically, we'd approach problems from "alternate worlds," which would sometimes create ideas that we would never have had otherwise.
Collins: Ultimately, if and when the next iteration of computerized D&D play comes -- and I'm not talking online gaming table here, but some sort of automated, computerized version of the game -- it would behoove those designers to use this game as a starting point, but it would be foolish for them to feel like everything that was done in the pen and paper D&D will have to translate fully across. Just like it would be foolish for us to do that if we were making a D&D-flavored board game, or a D&D-flavored card game, or dice game, or what have you. The key is, what are the right parts of the world of D&D and the rule system that fit a new platform, and what adaptations do we have to make.
Kind of like turning a book into a movie, or vice-versa. If you slavishly follow every word, you're selling your platform short. If you translate a book word-for-word into a movie, you're ignoring the realities of what a movie can do for you, what film can do that a book can't. The same for a computer game versus D&D; if someone is going to make a great computer game version of D&D, is it going to look a lot like D&D? Absolutely. Is it going to look exactly like the 4th Edition D&D? Of course not. It would be foolish of them to try. I hope, however, that we've given them a little better starting place.
