Sword Coast Legends Previews
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Another pair of Sword Coast Legends impression pieces recently hit the web, both of which still appear to be based on the ambitious multiplayer RPG's showing at last month's E3 event.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun kicks things off with some developer commentary:
The campaigns will be playable with or without the dungeon master present. When not present you'd rely on the DM's organisation of objectives, their difficulty presets and arrangements of foes for the experience. If a dungeon master was playing simultaneously they could adjust the experience depending on how it's going.
()They can fine-tune the fun,) says Turner. (If the players are doing really well you can promote monsters and add monsters. If they're not doing so well they can make the encounters easier, demote monsters, take monsters away. Not having the DM is still going to be a fun dungeon crawl but you'll miss that human element.)
For added atmosphere (well, depending on the DM) you can also use voice. (You can have it so when you load the dungeons the DM is on voice over IP so he's like, '˜You walk into the shadowy dungeon and it's cold.' all that classic dungeon master stuff.)
And Digital Trends goes for more of a traditional preview:
Where Sword Coast Legends distinguishes itself is with Dungeon Master mode, allowing one player to assume control over the non-player characters and environment. At a minimum the DM can take the helm of pre-made adventures, modifying encounters as the game goes on and taking control over enemies during fights. On the outside of complexity, though, DMs can spend hours and hours crafting their own adventures, using the same tools that the developers created to design the pre-built campaign, building elaborate worlds for players to explore.
This can be as minimal as taking a pre-made or randomly generated dungeon and tweaking the encounters, or as complex as designing multi-part quests that span numerous regions. Non-player characters can be fully customized with a fine degree of detail for both their abilities and their appearance. A degree of scripted dialogue is available, but for truly hands-on DMs that want to capture the freeform play of D&D, VoIP chat is enabled for live conversations.
