Sword Coast Legends will be removed from sale December 31st. Until then the game is available for 67% off.

Last Chance To Purchase Sword Coast Legends

Gather your party for epic adventures before Sword Coast Legends disappears forever at the end of December, 2017!

Purchase Sword Coast Legends now at 67% off and receive the Rage of Demons DLC for free. Our publishing contracting is ending, but although Sword Coast Legends will no longer be available to purchase after December, its multiplayer servers will remain live indefinitely.

Sales will also be available on the follow platforms for the following dates:

• Steam - 67% off - December 11 to December 25

• Sony America - 50% off - December 12 to December 26

• Gamestop - 75% off - December 18 to December 28

• GamersGate - 67% off - December 11 to December 31

• Gamazavr - 66% off - December 12 to December 19

• Microsoft - 60% off - December 19 to December 25

The free DLC Rage of Demons for Sword Coast Legends has been released:

Venture into the depths of the Underdark, through the trading outpost of Mantol-Derith, and fight alongside the legendary Drizzt Do’Urden!

Rage of Demons is a free DLC expansion for Sword Coast Legends that includes hours of new story content; new Dungeon Master options; a new playable race: Tiefling; and a new playable class: Warlock!

Warlock Features:

• New cantrip - Eldritch Blast
• New spells - Finger of Death, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Hex
• Unique archetype abilities - Dark One’s Blessing, Hurl Through Hell, Create Thrall

Tiefling Features:

• Hellish Resistance - All Fire Damage reduced by 50%
• Hellish Rebuke - Flames surround the caster, reaching out and burning any creature that attacks for the next forty seconds.
• Darkness - Magical darkness spreads from a point within range to fill a three-yard radius sphere for the duration.

Dungeon Master Features:

• Two new tilesets
• New monsters
• New placeable decorations and objects
• Gather your party and prepare to delve into the Underdark, before the Rage of Demons consumes the Sword Coast!

Thanks henriquejr!

Design Director Tim Schwalk and Community Manager Ash Sevilla are showing footage of the PS4 version of Sword Coast Legends and the Warlock.

Thnaks Couch.

Gamebanshee reviewed Sword Coast Legends and aren't very positive.

Sword Coast Legends was a major disappointment for me.  Developer n-Space completely massacred the Dungeon & Dragons fifth edition ruleset to make their game more action-oriented -- or perhaps more "appealing to the masses" -- but their strategy backfired terribly.  They also built a campaign that could have come out of an RPG 101 factory, which is a waste of time for anybody like me who has graduated on to more advanced coursework.  Their campaign also does little to advertise what their module toolkit might be capable of, or to encourage anybody to explore it further.

That said, Sword Coast Legends is a budget title, and you'll probably notice it on sale a lot in the future.  If I've done my job properly and set your expectations extremely low, then maybe it won't seem horrible if you pick it up for around $5.  But there are better games out there.  All over the place.

Thnaks Couch.

Couch spotted the news update for Sword Coast Legends about the community pack 3 and the expansion Rage of Demons:

Greetings, Sword Coast community!

Since the launch of Sword Coast Legends on October 20, 2015, we’ve released two Community Update Packs on schedule. These community packs were entirely free and consisted of highly requested features, such as: playable drow elves, companion skill trees, hundreds of new placeable objects, additional monster abilities, character respecs, and much more (info here). Some elements of CP3, such as the introduction of mod support, were actually introduced earlier than expected.

When we published our State of the Game back in late October our intent was to release another free community update pack in December of 2015. December has come and gone, so where is CP3? At this point, CP3 is currently on hold while the team focuses on the Rage of Demons expansion, which now includes some bits we had originally thought to package with CP3.

We understand that people will be disappointed by this decision, but Rage of Demons is quite large and boasts a brand new adventure complete with new areas to explore, new placeable objects, a new playable race (Tieflings), new creatures, new bosses, new spells, a new playable Warlock class, WASD movement and much, much more.

Apologies for any frustration or confusion this has caused. Development is fluid! Know that the best is yet to come for SCL. We can’t wait to share what we’re working on in 2016!

Sword Coast Legends is free to play this weekend on Steam.

Good news, adventurers!

If you’ve been waiting to try Sword Coast Legends or have been longing to form a party and play co-op with on-the-fence friends, we’re happy to announce that for a limited time we are letting absolutely everyone experience Sword Coast Legends free!

The Sword Coast Legends Steam Free Weekend runs from 10:00 a.m. PST on 12/17 to 10:00 a.m. PST on 12/22. Immediately following the Steam Free Weekend, Sword Coast Legends will be on sale and offered for a limited time of $19.99.

During the Steam Free Weekend, players have the opportunity to experience all of SCL’s 40+ hour story campaign, delve into more than 1,500 community made modules, or create their own adventures for others to enjoy. The entire game will be open, online and free to play.

More information.

Community Pack 2 for Sword Coast Legends is available now and here is a list of its contents:

Drow [New Playable Sub-Race]: Players can now create characters using the drow elf sub-race. Players who choose to roll a drow character will also gain access to unique the drow specific racial abilities of faerie fire and darkness. Lolth the Spider Queen will also be selectable as a deity for players who don’t like to play nice.

Death Changes:Numerous options have been added to alter the impact of death and dying in SCL.

Stabilize Improvements

Stabilize will take longer to perform (about 50% longer) and will now have a visual bar to indicate progress

Stabilize will now be interrupted if the player performing the ability takes damage (This can be disabled from the options menu).

Hardcore Options

Option to disallow Stabilize during combat.

Option for party wipes in Dungeon Crawl games to reset the dungeon and completely return players to the party camp (This can be enabled from the DM Board in the camp while setting up your dungeon).

Loot Changes: We’ve added individual loot as an option! Now you can pick up and keep anything you find without feeling guilty about it. Players who prefer traditional D&D shared loot can play that way too. Players will now be able to choose which type of looting that they would like in their games. The new option of individual loot means that players will only see items that they themselves can pick up and will not see the option to loot items designated for other players. In multiplayer games, players will see which looting option has been chosen by the game host in the server browser.
New Placeable Objects: Over 170 new placeable objects [full list link] have been added for Dungeon Masters to use in their modules – Some exciting new objects include:

Mystic Circle

Inn Table

Scurrying Spiders

Impact Crater

Ruins (Pillar)

Stockades

Large Smoke (Black)

Keg Rack (Four Kegs)

Hanging Shark

Consecrated Ground

Door Collapse

New Area (Village): Multiple versions of a large seaside village have been added for content creators to use in their modules. This village also includes multiple interiors.

New Placeable Visual Effects: Content creators will now be able to add a variety of visual effects to their modules such as fire, smoke, spiders, mist and more. You may now create your very own apocalyptic scenario!

Ambient NPC Text: Dungeon Masters now have the ability to add ambient text/dialog to NPCs. This works exactly as it does when assigning ambient text to objects.

Tile Customization: DMs should now be able to better customize their cabins, villages and cities. Another cool thing is that players can also use this to customize zones/areas. For example, if you choose “mountain A” and get a random mountainous area instead of the cabin, you can toggle over to the cabin without leaving or reloading. You can even customize small city sections by swapping entire buildings in or out, adding or removing access to interior areas.

Quest Changes: Dungeon Masters can now lock and unlock locations depending on the state of a particular quest. For instance if the player completes a quest to escape the burning village the dungeon master would have the option to remove that location from the player’s map.

And there is a list of bug changes as well.

Free Pumpkin Patch for Sword Coast Legends:

It’s time for Liars’ Night in Sword Coast Legends and we’re giving you some extra content free of charge to help you construct your very own Liars’ Night adventure in SCL. This completely free patch adds a number of community requests including screen nudge and extended conversation text as well as over 35 new placeable objects, Liars’ Night gear and more! The “Pumpkin Patch” will go live this morning and will be free for the SCL community. In order to get your hands on the mysterious Liars' Night gear, you will have to find it someplace in the game world... happy haunting!

---

Overview:

• New area and placeables with a Halloween theme (Liars’ Night)
• Screen nudge with mouse (toggled option)
• Players will now be able to move the camera by nudging the edges of the screen. (The WASD keys and the middle mouse button will still work the way they currently do).
• Auto-heal at Adventurer's Camp
• (When entering the adventurer’s camp, the party will heal any damage previously taken).
• DM collect quests will display “x of x found” on the HUD
• Hotkey added to re-center camera on player
• Doubled the max length for DM quest conversation text
• Added the option to lock your cursor to the window

Bugs:

• Fix so that when a certain angry halfling leaves your party, party follow is toggled to OFF even though the UI still shows it as ON
• Fix so highlight state does not get stuck on
• Fix for Mercenaries that would occasionally get stuck behind the goblin trap gate in the intro caravan
• Fix for map sort issue
• Corrected damage value for Solar'El Dagger
• We did a D20 and encounter pass on: Luskan (Large City), Grack Streets, Duergar Tower, Dark Lake, and DM Slums/Mausoleums
• Some of these areas were missing encounters or only had a single encounter. Now have multiple D20s that change multiple encounters

Pumpkin Patch/ Liars’ Night Gear:

• Old Broom
• Sweeping Fire
• Jack-O’-Lantern
• Skull Mask

DM Location:

• Cemetery

DM Placeables: Over 35 new DM placeables!

[...]

The community manager made this announcement yesterday:

Look for a ton of information to drop tomorrow at 9:00 am EDT (SwordCoast.com).

We will also have a special stream tomorrow afternoon around 3:00 pm EDT.

Talk to you soon.

Gamebanshee has collected some more reviews for Sword Coast Legends - the ratings are mediocre to bad.

N-Space's Dan Tudge and Dan O'Leary talk to Vice about Sword Coast Legends.

"Tabletop D&D is about hanging out with your friends," says Dan Tudge, president of n-Space and game director of Sword Coast Legends. "It's about the relationships that you build, the stories that you tell. It's about something funny your friend did, or you how exploded because you absolutely failed that check. That's something that was really important to us, to recreate that experience of people playing together. To make it easy for them to do that."

"The team wanted to create something that was, first and foremost, collaborative," explains n-Space CEO Dan O'Leary. "And letting people play the game the way they want to play it. There are options for player pausing, DM pausing – and that wasn't originally in there. DM pausing was added so that a DM could stop the game and interject storytelling, they can roll checks, they can insert more of the tabletop game elements into it."

Thanks Eye.

A negative review of Sword Coast Legends can be found at PCGamer (55/100) as has been mentioned on our forums.

I was prepared to give it some licence to recycle fantasy clichés—if Dungeons & Dragons didn’t invent them, it’s certainly responsible for mashing them together into game format. In many ways, however, Sword Coast Legends is a step back from its pen-and-paper inspirations. A good dungeon master is able to react to any action you can think up so long as it’s within the rules, while a dungeon is not only a gauntlet but a puzzle to be solved. Though Legends opens up in its second act (the Bioware-brand companion loyalty quests are a highlight), whatever quest you pursue gives you no leeway to improvise.

Contrast this with Divinity: Original Sin, a game which gives you a high-level objective and just leaves you to it, allowing you to smash through doors, break chests and interact with everything to solve the riddle. Two years ago, Sword Coast Legends would have been part of the vanguard for the resurgent cRPG, but we’re past that now. This is once more a competitive genre that demands new ideas.

Who also doesn't like it is GameWatcher (4/10).

Sword Coast Legends fails to deliver on its promises both as a solid RPG in it's own right and as a digital Dungeon Master toolset. The limited options available to creators are unlikely to yield anything memorable and the single player story section is marred by poor pathfinding, limited scope and shoddy writing. Overall an immense disappointment.

However Escapist thinks its better than that with 3.5/5.

Overall, Sword Coast Legends offers a fun romp through the D&D world of Faerun once again. D&D fans should love the narrative. Unfortunately, the combat and often repetitive feel of other aspects of the game, and the generally restrictive DM tools, keep it from being the critical hit and genre-changer it could have been.

RPS isn't too positive either.

It’s definitely best to think of Sword Coast Legends not as Dungeons & Dragons (let alone AD&D) and more as a sort of low-key DIY Diablo. Even then, the core combat is too forgettable, and the DM mode too limited, to make a solid case for playing this instead of co-op Diablo or Torchlight or Titan Quest or Path of Exile if monster-bothering with chums is what you’re after. It’s not impossible that later updates will make fighting feel less underwhelming or expand the potential of dungeon-building, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it.

It’s absolutely true to say that you get out of Sword Coast Legends what you put in, but right now there just aren’t enough reasons to put much in.

Sword Coast Legends fails to deliver on its promises both as a solid RPG in it’s own right and as a digital Dungeon Master toolset. The limited options available to creators are unlikely to yield anything memorable and the single player story section is marred by poor pathfinding, limited scope and shoddy writing. Overall an immense disappointment. - See more at: http://www.gamewatcher.com/reviews/sword-coast-legends-review/12375#sthash.1KDsaa0x.dpuf

Christopher James Underwood (Newshub) explains why Sword Coast Legends is a diamond in the rough:

Game Review: Sword Coast Legends

We're not in Neverwinter any more (well, not yet at least.)

I've spent pretty much an entire decade waiting for a new D&D game to be released. I'd even go so far as to say that the lack of such a game left a hole in my life; a hole that nothing, not even vengeance (shameless Once Upon A Time reference) could fill. Well maybe not, but you get the point! Some might argue that Obsidian Entertainment's Pillars of Eternity could be considered a more than worthy attempt at filling such a void, and whilst that game was great (thanks mostly to its nostalgia-provoking style and mechanics) it obviously wasn't a D&D game. But right here, right now, at long last I have actually found something to scratch that incessant adventuring itch; and that something is N-Space's Sword Coast Legends.

Taking place in what is assuredly one of the most popular fantasy settings ever conceived, Sword Coast Legends has been designed from the ground up as part of ongoing efforts to expand and improve the 5th Edition product line of the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset. Built to tie in with the launch of the Rage of Demons campaign, this game is nothing short of love letter to the classic games that inspired it. It offers players one of the most well-crafted and confidently designed RPG experiences available on the market at the moment.

[...]

Over the course of this review I've probably sounded suspiciously positive about this game in the face of the otherwise near-universal disdain shown for it because it wasn't the second coming of Neverwinter Nights. Well, just like the return of Christ, that's never going to happen and people should stop expecting it to. Is this game perfect? Not by any means, but no game ever is, especially in this day and age where post-launch patching and overhauls are an industry rule rather than the infrequent exception they once were.

Despite a few minor flaws (most of which have either been imagined or blown way out of proportion by more vocal commentators) this game is a diamond in the rough: one that is definitely worthy of your attention and your time. I have faith that N-Space is going to maintain a steady stream of updates and content expansions to build upon the solid foundation that they've already established. Whether you're a tabletop D&D enthusiast new to the digital format or a seasoned CRPG veteran with even an ounce of patience, then you should share that faith. I wholeheartedly suggest that you give this game a try, even if you've been put off by the negative press surrounding it. You might find that you actually like it despite of what you've been told, and discovering the unexpected is what being an adventurer-at-heart is all about.

Hardcore Gamer reviewed Sword Coast Legends and feel it is a 4 out of 5 game.

Sword Coast Legends is a solid loot crawl with more options than most games of its kind. It may not be the Dungeons & Dragons simulator many were hoping for, but it works well as just a straight video game. There are some hiccups, mainly in the graphics, optimization and customization departments, but its host of modes, delightful story, clever writing and the ability to play player-run and -created campaigns solo or with others, on top of having a creation suite for those who want to play the part of dungeon master, all make for a content-rich experience. The combat and overall gameplay mechanics can prove a bit shallow at times, never offering the depth or tactical veracity of Pillars of Eternity, but as a hybrid of Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, Sword Coast Legends is a game that mostly excels in all that it tries to do. Post-release will be an interesting time, though, as the limited and sometimes restrictive options are opened up and iterated on by N-Space. Until that time comes, however, it’s a good game with the capacity to be great.

Thanks Eye.

MMORPG chatted with Sword Coast Legends game director Dan Tudge about the last months and more.

MMORPG: The game has been receiving many changes and updates, leading to the short delay of the PC version. What sort of improvements have been made since announcing that delay?

Dan: We’ve focused on a lot of areas, including player feedback, bugs, networking improvements, graphics performance, story tweaks, combat, economy, and difficulty balancing, which can all really be summed up as polish. We just really wanted to take some more time to add that polish -- it’s what SCL and our players deserve.

MMORPG: One of the biggest selling points for SCL has been offering a real, dungeon master-driven Dungeons and Dragons experience. Storytelling is obviously huge here. We know that dungeon masters have a powerful toolset to design their areas and missions. What kind of tools to DMs have to tell the stories they want to tell?

Dan: When players create and run a module they have a bevy of features they can use to tell their story, creating their own custom creatures, NPCs, locations and quests. They can live roleplay interacting with live players as an NPC or creature using /say within chat or using VOIP. They can even have players roll a D20 in game to pass a difficulty check. We’ve already had hours and hours of fun playing through some very interesting stories in player created modules.

MMORPG: Will players have any freedom within the campaigns, outside of strategic combat?

Dan: They most certainly do. We have already played several player created campaigns that have little combat, instead choosing to focus more on story. Many have been live roleplayed with a DM.

Thanks Eye.

Sword Coast Legegends has been released. Here's a review of ACG:

Jason Parker (OnRPG) has reviewed Sword Coast Legends:

Dungeons and Dragons: Sword Coast Legends had a bit of a setback and pushed the release date back to Oct. 20^th, which may have upset some players who were in the Head Start/Early Access, but not me. I understand full well what it takes to make a game polished and good. Is it perfect yet? Not in my eyes, but it’s still a blast to play, and the DM tools make for an amazing way to get your D&D group together and adventure, even hundreds of miles away in a more action-packed setting. In the Head Start you don’t get access to the campaign or anything like that though; just Dungeon Crawl Mode and DM mode, which allows you to build modules (one shot adventures) for other players to download and play. Some require a DM to run them, most of the ones I have seen do not. I really wanted to peek at the story though, I did. And badly! But I did mess around a lot with Dungeon Crawl, deciding that I had a rough time going solo, so I coaxed/wheedled/demanded my editor, MissyS (who I deputized as a member of Bottom Tier) to play with me. After some time, we learned what it means to utilize teamwork.

[...]

Score: Great

Honestly, I love this game. It’s basically everything I’ve wanted in a Dungeons and Dragons game since Neverwinter Nights. In a lot of ways, I view it as a spiritual successor to the series, taking place in the same world, with many of the same important NPCs likely still alive and influencing the world. Are there things I hope I see in it? Yes. Lots of Drow, Beholders, perhaps Obuld Many-Arrows, the Orc Chief-turned Diety. You know what I hope I don’t see? Drizzt. But that’s not relevant to this review. I’m looking forward to seeing the community explode with scenarios at release, and there’s one thing really ticking in my head about it. It has “Modules, as I said above. But with that in mind, is Wizards of the Coast going to release their own Modules/stories on Sword Coast Legends, and if so, will they be free? Will they give players a chance to use this game to publish their own created campaigns? There is a lot of potential to create/share terrific stories, and I’ve seen some real winners so far. Dungeons and Dragons: Sword Coast Legends is the real deal.

Gamespot joins Sword Coast Legends devs to play through a dungeon:

MMORPG has the first of a series of dev journals for Sword Coast Legends and start with two monsters, the Beholders and Troll.

One glance at a beholder is enough to assess its foul and otherworldly nature. Aggressive, hateful, and greedy, these aberrations dismiss all other creatures as lesser beings, toying with them or destroying them as they choose. A beholder’s spheroid body levitates at all times, and its great bulging eye sits above a wide, toothy maw, while the smaller eyestalks that crown its body twist and turn to keep its foes in sight. When a beholder sleeps, it closes its central eye but leaves its smaller eyes open and alert....

Born with horrific appetites, trolls eat anything  they can catch and devour. They have no society to speak of, but they do serve as mercenaries to orcs, ogres, ettins, hags, and giants. As payment, trolls demand food and treasure. Trolls are difficult to control, however, doing as they please even when working with more powerful creatures....

Thanks Eye.

Sword Coast Legends will be a bit longer than expected. Its late September PC release has been set back to October 20 for extra polish, with console versions launching in Q1 2016.

Could it be that the game was a bit rough around the edges? Initiative roll failed.

PCGamer have interviewed Dan Tudge about Sword Coast Legends and its place in the crpg revival.

PC Gamer: There's something of a CRPG resurgence right now. Why do you think that's happening now, and where do you think Sword Coast Legends first into that?

Tudge: The video game industry has evolved to allow developers to connect directly with players. We see this with Kickstarter and direct to consumer digital distribution like Steam. Couple this evolution with game developers-and players-love of the isometric CRPG and I think you're seeing a resurgence of this genre because we can finally make the games we've been longing to make for years. Sword Coast Legends' DM Mode put's a unique spin on the genre, one that will give players the tools to tell their own stories for years to come.

PC Gamer: Can you talk about the story of Sword Coast Legends? How can players shape the narrative of the single-player?

Tudge: I don't want to spoil too much here so I'll just set it up. You are members of the Order of the Burning Dawn, a somewhat ‘standard' guild whose origins have been lost over the last 100 years. Recently you've become hunted by the Gilded Eye, a particularly brutal offshoot of Order of the Gauntlet. Players will need to unravel this ruthless agenda and perhaps save all of Faerûn in the process. Throughout their adventures players will meet companions, travel the surface of Faerûn and even journey deep into the Underdark. Players will definitely make choices along the way, determining not just their fate, but the fate of many others.

Couch spotted this video that is showing 45 min Sword Coast Legends gameplay footage:

Upcoming multiplayer RPG Sword Coast Legends is due to go into head start mode for pre-orders on September 18th. We got our hands on the game's DM-made dungeons early thanks to Nspace and streamed a bit for you all this weekend.

Video about the dungeon master mode in Sword Coast Legends:

n-Space teaches us to be kindly dungeon masters in Sword Coast Legends. Okay, so they really taught us to be cruel dungeon masters—but we did learn all about the game's deep DM mode, and there's a whole lot to take in.

If you are still curious what Sword Coast Legends is about, you might trye reading these previews.

Everybody Plays spent some time with the game:

No matter how you choose to play, Sword Coast Legends has the potential to suck you in for hours on end. As a solo adventurer, you have an epic story to take on; if you're more of a creative type, you can create your own modules on PC or console, and share them with the world. If you like playing with your friends, you can come together with a group and take on the story - or, if you'd rather something a bit more unpredictable, one of you can become the dungeon master, and guide you on a quest of their own. More ambitious than any role playing game on the "next-gen" consoles so far, Sword Coast Legends is still near the top of our most wanted list. Hopefully now, it's on yours too! For more on the creation tools, check out the in depth (if a bit lengthy) video below.

Gamers Nexus combine a hands-on preview at PAX with an interview with Tim Schwalk:

Sword Coast Legends stays true to its D&D PC RPG roots. The RPG mechanics and dungeon crawling mechanics co-exist in relative harmony, and the DM mode is a unique, collaborative way to indirectly direct flow of play.

Fextralife went to PAX to play the game:

The ancient art of storytelling is woven into the cultural DNA of humanity, and its value and need is as relevant now as it ever was. D&D has always been a fantastic platform for teasing out the myths, archetypes and symbols inside of us all and subsequently allowing us to share and experience them with others. Video games are at the forefront of bringing people together from around to globe to play, and Sword Coast Legends hopes to deepen that and bring us together to tell the stories that course through us all.

XBLA Fans played the game at PAX as well:

The dev team told us that this was a "4+1" game, designed so that the DM played with the team, not against it. Our game felt a lot more 4 vs. 1 than 4+1, but the DM can choose to help the team rather than play against it — if, that is, he's feeling generous. Just like in the traditional D&D game, the possibilities are endless.

Playstation Lifestyle played the PC version at PAX:

I am excited to see the console build of Sword Coast Legends, and hope they will be as easy to control as the PC version. If not, then at least the it is nice to know that consoles versions will have everything the PC build will have.

Echobase try to make a long article (in page length) by adding big images.

The Sword Coast Legends team shows the character creation and a bit of the player campaign:

Thanks Couch!

Watcher Eye spotted the new Sword Coast Legends Trailer at PCGamesN:

I'm quite excited for the upcoming Sword Coast Legends. It's essentially digital D&D, much like Neverwinter Nights, but designed with the idea of a guiding DM player running a co-op team through adventures. It also has all the single-player RPG goblin looting you'd expect, but D&D that I don't have to clear a big table or put trousers on for is the main draw. There's a playable build at PAX this week and, in concert with that, developers n-Space have released a new trailer.

All who pre-ordered one of the of the Limited Edition Collector’s or Campaign Collector’s packs can play Sword Coast Legends before the official release date on September 29th:

ORLANDO, Fla. — August 21, 2015 — Independent developers, n-Space and Digital Extremes, announced today that their upcoming Sword Coast Legends™, a party-based RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Forgotten Realms universe from Wizards of the Coast, will offer Head Start Access for PC, Mac and Linux players. Starting September 11th, players can try Sword Coast Legends™, prior to the game’s release on September 29th.

Head Start will have three planned sessions, he adds. The first is scheduled for the weekend of September 11th through 13th and will be available only to members of the Design Council – those that pre-ordered one of the Limited Edition Collector’s or Campaign Collector’s packs. The second will run September 18th through 20th, and will be open to all pre-order customers. These first two sessions will focus on the Dungeon Master modes of Campaign Creation and Dungeon Crawl. In order to avoid spoilers, the Story Campaign will not be available at this time. The third session will run September 24th through the game’s release on September 29th and will once again feature the Dungeon Master modes for all pre-order customers while Design Council members will also have access to the Story Campaign. PC, Mac and Linux cross-platform play will be supported.

In each of these sessions, players will mingle with n-Space, Digital Extremes and Wizards of the Coast team members. To be included in the Head Start program, players must have linked their game purchase to an account on SwordCoast.com. Access details will be sent to the associated email account starting the week of September 11th.

“The Sword Coast Legends team welcomes your feedback! Feel free to share your experiences via your favorite forums, blogs and social media channels.”

The Mind Fayer of Sword Coast Legends is presented in this video showcase:

Coming to Sword Coast Legends: Mind flayers, also called illithids, are the scourge of sentient creatures across countless worlds. Four tentacles snake from their octopus-like heads, flexing in hungry anticipation when thinking creatures come near.

In eons past, illithids controlled empires that spanned the planes. They subjugated and consequently warped whole races of humanoid slaves, including the githyanki and githzerai, the grimlocks, and the kuo-toa. Conjoined by a collective consciousness, the illithids hatch plots as far-reaching and evil as their fathomless minds can conceive.

Since the fall of their empires, illithid collectives on the Material Plane have resided in deep in the Underdark.

The guys of Gameplane.de have interviewed Ash, Tim und Jay from N-Space at GC2015:

Philippa Warr (Rock, Paper, Shotgun) takes a look at the upcoming game Sword Coast Legends:

Sword Coast Legends: Being Bullied By Rats

Sword Coast Legends was one of my favourite experiences at E3. In a little booth off the main show floor, the developers are demo-ing their D&D game’s dungeon master mode. I’ve only recently dipped a toe into D&D with a tabletop campaign but it’s been excellent fun so far and I was curious as to how the mode would measure up.

Sitting at the terminal designated for the fighter character (I like biffing things, what can I say) I watched design director Tim Schwalk craft a demon web terror campaign – a spider-themed cave dungeon complete with custom cultists and a little quest path.

Building seemed a pretty easy-to-fathom affair. For the quest Schwalk was building he opened up the map location for the first NPC you need to visit and set her to provide a quest when you speak to her. You can also use other triggers for that kind of progression – “on action” and “on kill” being mentioned specifically. He also added a vendor with a potion cart in case we needed to stock up on supplies.

The end point for the quest the first NPC handed out was a cabin in the mountains. We were supposed to be seeking out a chap but would always arrive too late to save him. To that end Schwalk added a corpse and various bloodstains to the small room, set an ambush encounter to trigger when we entered and switched the setting from a sunny daytime to a stormy night. Investigating the corpse ends the NPC quest (it’s that complete-on-action option) and starts the next bit which takes you to this cavernous spider lair.

You can fiddle with names, descriptions, tilesets, dungeon sizes, difficulties and so on when you’re building. There seemed to be pretty extensive object libraries for building out your scenes (lanterns and creepy paraphernalia for the site of a demonic ritual, chairs and tables and other more mundane bits and pieces for the cabin scene). [...]

Here's a link to the recorded Twitch TV live stream. Community Manager Ash Sevilla and Design Director Tim Schwalk present Sword Coast Legends.

In case you haven't seen enough E3 previews of Sword Coast Legends, here are a few more.

Gameinformer

The concept of Sword Coast Legends always intrigued me, but I really wasn't sure how the sandbox-style build-your-own-adventure would play out in reality. Today at E3 I had some hands-on time with the game, and I really enjoyed it. A team of four of us took on the Dungeon Master (Also handled by another player, controlling a swarm of spiders, a host of traps, a massive boss, and other surprises) and crawled through a quickly hand-crafted dungeon complete with all the staples you'd expect from a real-deal Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

RPGFan

The developers talked a great deal about balancing the DM side of things as I placed a near endless supply of spider eggs and traps in a room, and this seems to be the make or break part of SCL for me. At this current stage, it seemed way too easy for me to completely overwhelm the party and end their pathetic existence (though a "cheat" kept at least one party member alive at all times for purposes of the demo build). I could directly target party members to make sure the healer stayed on the ground at all times, continue to swarm them with more and more enemies and traps, and even spawn some hard-hitting beasties directly behind them so long as they were out of a fairly small threat range. It was all good fun on my end, but I can imagine this being an utter nightmare for the heroes.

Destructoid

Schwalk had probably done this demo 492 times at this point, but instead of seeming tired and frustrated, he saw an opportunity to make our adventure particularly bizarre. He showed us how ridiculously intuitive the creation system is before we actually started playing. He first chose an empty, pre-generated town. Since he wanted us to do a quest, he chose to create a questgiver with just a couple of clicks. Though we were skipping through in the interest of time, he showed us that you could customize their backstory, race, clothing, and appearance. Then he went through a menu, deciding how the quest would be triggered.

And an interview by MMORPG.com with Dan Tudge.

John Keefer takes a look at Sword Coast Legends:

(...)
Neverwinter Nights can attribute its longevity to players wanting to create their own campaigns, but this version appears so much easier to use. We got to watch as one of the developers from n-Space used the tools to create and customize a town, rural and forest settings, and of course a dungeon. Templates can be created, everything is drag and drop, and just about everything can be customized.

In the brief scenario that was set up for us, we learned that an associate has gone missing. The developer, who was actually playing the dungeon master, created a contact in town, chose the race, class and name of the contact, and was able to create triggers that could begin or end quests. He also created a potion vendor in town, giving that vendor a cart for a bit of ambiance, and creating the inventory that the vendor would carry.

He then opened a new forest tile set complete with a rundown shack. Our quest would take us to this location, where cultists would be waiting for our party. He set up a trigger zone outside the shack that would start the attack once a party entered the zone. He also dragged and dropped the location of where the attackers would come from, the type of attacker and even any special attacks or spells the attacker would have. Inside the shack, we would find the body of our contact, which was also customized to end a quest and begin a new one. The body was also created to be examined, so we could see how he was killed.
(...)

Here are a few news bits for Sword Coast Legends from E3.

PC World thinks the game will be a candidate for the best game at E3.

All in all, it’s looking great! I don’t love the 3D aesthetic quite as much as Pillars of Eternity’s Infinity Engine-esque art, but the game still looks pretty good (at least as good as Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin) and it plays well. Some of the animations still need more feedback and movement could be a bit more fluid, but overall I have no huge complaints on that front—it played like an isometric CRPG.

It’s almost like the genre never died in the first place. Almost.

 

Couch forwarded us the link to VGChartz, who are filled with imagination after seeing the demo.

Excited about the prospects of what DM mode could entail, I asked n-Space the extent to which Masters could design stories, questlines, and combat scenarios - could players make their own “Baldur’s Gates”? In talking with n-Space, they stated that, theoretically, players could write stories and quest-lines long enough to comprise the length of an entire game. I asked if other campaign settings were on the cards for future Sword Coast Legends content, and I was told “absolutely” by n-Space.

WCCF Tech feels it is an authentic reproduction of the DnD Realm.

Sword Coast Legends wants to bring the true dungeon master experience into the digital realm, and I truly think it’s succeeded. Already in this early form it has all the features you’d want. The direction they’re taking is phenomenal, and it allows for new ways to enjoy D&D, beyond the table and with absolutely everything you’d want.

Technology Tell played it as well

“For far too long, passionate and dedicated Mac and Linux RPG gamers have been left out in the cold, forced to watch from the sidelines as the industry focused efforts on just a select few platforms. That ends today,” said Dan Tudge, President of n-Space and Director for Sword Coast Legends. “With Sword Coast Legends, we are dedicated to delivering exactly the sort of classic, D&D, RPG gaming experience fans on every platform have been clamoring for. More importantly, we’re committed to providing the community with the largest possible pool of adventurers and prospective Dungeon Masters by ensuring that all gamers can play together regardless of which operating system they use.”

And then there are two videos with hands-on play.

The video of the Twitch play session of yesterday for Sword Coasts Legends that was made as a preparation for E3, can now be found on their Twitch page and on Youtube.

N-Space has self-leaked the E3 trailer for Sword Coast Legends online a few days early. The game is set for release on September 8. 

It may be old news to most, but I didn't realize until reading a blurb for this trailer that Dan Tudge, president of n-Space, was also director of the first Dragon Age game. So that's a thing.

The release date for Sword Coast Legends has been set to the 8th of September 2015.

You can pre-purchase it now, with a 13% discount or go for the Deluxe version, which has no discount.

Thanks Francis.

Sword Coast Legends will be released simultaneously on 3 major platforms:

We're very happy to announce that Sword Coast Legends™ will be released simultaneously on Steam for Windows PC, Mac and Linux operating systems in Q3 2015.

“For far too long, passionate and dedicated Mac and Linux RPG gamers have been left out in the cold, forced to watch from the sidelines as the industry focused efforts on just a select few platforms. That ends today,” said Dan Tudge, President of n-Space and Director for Sword Coast Legends. “With Sword Coast Legends, we are dedicated to delivering exactly the sort of classic, D&D, RPG gaming experience fans on every platform have been clamoring for. More importantly, we’re committed to providing the community with the largest possible pool of adventurers and prospective Dungeon Masters by ensuring that all gamers can play together regardless of which operating system they use.”

Sword Coast Legends fully supports cross platform network play on any mix of Windows, Mac and Linux machines. As further proof of the team’s shared commitment to gamers on all desktop platforms, each Sword Coast Legends Steam key can be redeemed for the player’s platform of choice.

When Sword Coast Legends releases later this year, it will introduce an entirely new way to play Dungeons & Dragons with Dungeon Master Mode and its introduction of real-time, active and reactive Dungeon Mastering. While Dungeon Master Mode is a truly innovative RPG “game changer,” Sword Coast Legends will also feature a massive single player campaign and complex storyline, deep character customization, engrossing party-based gameplay and NPC interactions, an epic orchestral soundtrack, high-quality professional voice-over production, and much, much more.

New video: Sword Coast Legends Live - World Building

Dagon interviewed Dan Tudge, President of n-Space and Director of Sword Cost Legends. You will have to scroll down to find the English translation of the interview, in which they also don't answer questions on DM.

How did you adapt the D&D pen & paper rules for the game as a computer RPG, especially regarding spells (cool down? recovery? Casting time vs area of effect spells vs moving targets).

Much of the 5th edition rules were a pretty straight forward adaptation, however some posed quite a challenge. To be clear, we never set out to do a direct adaptation of the 5e rules, both n-Space and Wizards of the Coast agreed that some of tabletop rules would (and should) require adaptation. What was important to both of us was that we maintain the spirit of those rules. For example, with early iterations on multiplayer and DM play we realized quite quickly that resting to recover spells just wasn’t going to appeal to a broad group of players. As a result we implemented spell cooldowns and balanced those to maintain the spirt of resting which is really tactically managing your spell usage.

Some of our forum members joined forces earlier this month in preparing questions about Sword Coast Legends. We just got them back answered, so here it is.

Lucky Day: Can PvP be possible? Or friendly fire? Can spell and other scripts be edited? I was also wondering if it's possible to make a standalone server?

Tim: Since adventuring in D&D has always been a cooperative experience, PvP has never been part of our plans. However, friendly fire is very much a factor so powerful AoE spells need to be used carefully and tactically.

I can't yet answer your questions about DM Campaign creation and customization, but I can confirm that you will not be able to create a standalone server.

goblin: Is the RTwP  feature for single player only? If not how will it work in multi-player? Also will your single player characters be available for multi-player?

Tim: Regardless of game mode, pausing is only available with a single player controlling the party. Once additional players have joined, we're currently disabling the pause feature. We are considering allowing a group to unanimously pause in multiplayer if that's what players would like.

Yes, your custom characters will move with you into dungeon crawls or even other player campaigns. This means if you want to run a dungeon with only rogues, you can very much do that.

Inon Zur, who is repsonsible for the music in Dragon Age: Origins, Icewind Dale II, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Fallout 3 and many other games is to copse the music also for Sword Coast Legends.

ORLANDO, Fla. - May 26, 2015 - Independent developers n-Space and Digital Extremes announced today that Hollywood Music Award-winning and two-time BAFTA nominated composer Inon Zur is composing the original score for the studios’ upcoming Sword Coast Legends™, a party-based PC RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms universe from Wizards of the Coast.  Known for powerful and melodic orchestrations, Zur’s critically acclaimed scores have been heard in some of the most popular and well regarded video games of all time, including Dragon Age: Origins, Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Icewind Dale II, Fallout 3, EverQuest and many others.

Recorded in Prague, the Czech Republic by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, the rich orchestral soundtrack for Sword Coast Legends helps bring the game’s numerous, well-known, and highly varied locations, environments and encounters to life from the raw emotion captured in Luskan Streets, to the uneasy anticipation of the Evermoors, and the heroic main theme.   The official orchestral soundtrack for Sword Coast Legends will be available with the game later this year.

“Throughout his career, Inon’s music has been integral to many of the game industry’s most memorable experiences and has raised the bar on what we expect from a video game score today.  His ability to capture the player’s experience through his music is second to none,” said Dan Tudge, President of n-Space and Director of Sword Coast Legends.  “It’s wonderful to see Inon return to Dungeons & Dragons and the Forgotten Realms setting, where I’m confident our deep story, compelling characters, and rich environments will inspire one of Inon’s most memorable works to date.”

Releasing later this year, Sword Coast Legends offers an all-new way to enjoy the time-tested magic of playing Dungeons & Dragons, with a first-of-its-kind real-time Dungeon Master mode, which allows players to play alongside an active DM, whose primary role is to provide a more robust and enriching roleplaying experience.  Active DMs can dramatically alter adventures, challenge players with random encounters, hide treasures, place traps, take direct control of powerful opponents, reward clever adventurers, and even reduce encounter difficulty on-the-fly.  And, much like the player party, DMs earn experience, are rewarded with power-ups, increase in level, and gain new abilities as the adventure progresses.

For the single player, Sword Coast Legends will offer a lengthy campaign mode featuring a deep and engrossing storyline, a host of potential companions with unique personalities, and quest lines that will lead the player through a variety of well-known locations along the Sword Coast.

The official site for Sword Coast Legends is bringing out teaser profiles for the game's companions one by one. The latest is a mean-looking halfling.

Growing up as the son of bakers in the small village of Red Larch, Belamy Lightfingers never had the temperament for the family business. When he came of age, Belamy chose to turn his back on his humble beginnings and find fortune elsewhere ....

Not long into his less-than-spectacular adventuring career, Belamy realized that his combat skills weren’t enough. He needed support. ... He tracked down his sister Bryn in the Ardeep Forest, and together they joined the Burning Dawn, hoping to find both an outlet for Belamy’s aggression and a replacement for the family they left behind.

Sword Coast Legends still has no set release date, but it's expected in Q3 2015.

Developer N-Space posted another profile for a party member called Jarhild Stoneforge.

A shield dwarf as tough as an ox and as stalwart as a stone wall, Jarhild straps on armor and shield to fight for the ones she considers friends. As a member of the Order of the Burning Dawn, she has the opportunity to protect the innocent and bring justice to the evil… and make a little coin doing it. She’s wise, powerful, and experienced in battle tactics, and when the people she loves are threatened, there is little in this world that can withstand her fury.

Gamereactor also published a new preview/interview video for Sword Coast Legends with n-Space President Dan Tudge who talks about a few various topics on the site.

Gamecrate has a new video interview with Director Dan Dudge of N-Space who gave them more details about his upcoming Dungeons & Dragons game Sword Coast Legends.

Since the last update for Sword Coast Legends the games developer N-Space has shared more profiles for two more companions that will join your party in the game.

Companion Bio: Hommet Shaw

It takes a lot for a young wizard to be exiled from Longsaddle, the home of the famously eccentric Harpell wizards, but Hommet Shaw managed to pull it off. He’s a very talented wizard, but his attention to detail leaves something to be desired… to say the least. He’s young, and eager, and desperate to prove himself, but, well, necromancy isn’t the most widely accepted magical specialty, and it’s hard to find a mentor who won’t go all “Dine upon the fearsome hatred of the DEAD!” on you. When he sees a chance to accompany the heroes into battle, he takes it as a chance to prove himself… and make some friends in the bargain.

Companion Bio: Soronil Noonshadow

Luskan is a place where reputation means more than honor, and information sells better than ale… and thus, it’s the perfect place for Soronil Noonshadow. A moon elf diviner with a taste for mysteries, Soronil is a storehouse of information, both fact and rumor, and he’s willing to share it with anyone willing to pay his price. As such, he is a valuable source for those who, like Illydia and Larethar, seek ways to make up for past mistakes. While he’s open to sharing information to those willing to pay—or to work—for it, his own past is a bit of a mystery… as is his ability to remain alive in Luskan, given the enemies that a man in his line of work tends to make.

N-Space published profiles for two of the companions in Sword Coast Legends.

Companion Bio: Illydia Maethellyn

A moon-elf cleric of Sehanine Moonbow, Illydia has seen more pain and loss in her 140 years than even most elves see in a lifetime, but her faith in Sehanine Moonbow (a goddess of the moon and dreams) keeps her mind centered and her heart hopeful. With her ever-loyal friend and bodyguard Larethar by her side, she uses her talents with a bow and her goddess’ blessings to make up for her own past mistakes.

Companion Bio: Larethar Gulgrin

A gold dwarf rogue rarely gets the honor of traveling with one such as Illydia Maethellyn, and Larethar will never take that honor for granted. A Luskan resident with a penchant for drink and debauchery, Larethar rarely goes without a snide word or a sharp insult… except when it comes to Illydia. Without her, Larethar is a cutpurse, a brawler, and an occasional second-story-man. With her, however, he gets to be a hero—a snide, wisecracking, and somewhat greedy hero, but a hero, nonetheless.

N-Space hosted a new live Q&A earlier this week on Twitch.Tv. I don't have a YouTube version so your all stuck watching the recorded stream this time.

Alright everyone I finally got the clearance from the PR department of N-SPace to ask few questions about their recently announced RPG game Sword Coast Legends. 

So I thought why not turn it into another Q&A as you guys always have good questions to ask. Now due to a limit of only ten queations only one question per a member please.

You have two days till I have to send the questions.

In-case you missed the Twitch game-play stream from earlier today don't worry as developer N-Space one again released a recording on YouTube for everyone to watch.

The adventure continues in part two of the exclusive Sword Coast Legends reveal! Join Technical Director Ross Gardner and Design Director Tim Schwalk as they face off in Sword Coast Legends’ highly anticipated Dungeon Crawl mode featuring real-time Dungeon Mastering.

N-Space announced on Twitter they will be hosting the next Twitch Stream later today for Sword Coast Legends, and it's your chance to more dungeon crawling footage.

Just a heads up! We'll be streaming on Twitch tomorrow 3/26 at 3:00pm EST. Drop by http://twitch.tv/SwordCoastLegends … and take a peek at Dungeon Crawl!

Dan Tudge will also be doing a new special AMA on Twitch.Tv on April 2nd.

Join n-Space president and Sword Coast Legends Game Director Dan Tudge as he and the development team provide fans the second half of the first ever demo of the game including exclusive reveals of Dungeon Crawl and Dungeon Master modes.

Tune into the action as the intrepid adventurers continue their search for the Ashen Priest following their successful infiltration of the city of Luskan and a challenging encounter with a gigantic Ogre Zombie in the city’s graveyard.

In-case you missed the Twitch game-play stream from earlier today don't worry as developer N-Space released a recording on YouTube for everyone to watch.

Originally streamed on Twitch on 3/19 - Join Sword Coast Legends' Design Director Tim Schwalk and President/Director Dan Tudge with a first look video of the SCL Player Campaign! This is the public's first chance to see the Sword Coast Legends player campaign in action.

N-Space announced on Twitter they will be hosting a new Twitch Stream later this week for Sword Coast Legends, and it's your chance to see more gameplay footage.

Here are the details.

Join us on Thursday 3/19 at 3:00pm EST on Twitch for a look at some player campaign footage ! http://bit.ly/SCLTWITCH 

The Community Manager of N-Space released a new update for Sword Coast Legends a few days ago asking forum members to send in their questions.

In the comments below please ask a question or two that you'd like to know the answer to. I'll present these questions to the team later in the week and hopefully we can get a few answered for you.

Also, I'd like to say thanks to you all for keeping the forums classy. While there has been some debate here about SCL, you've all managed to to be respectful toward each other and the development team and that's awesome.

Probably explains why they skip our forum.

Here are three new previews for Sword Coast Legends from GDC 2015.

GamesRadar

At GDC 2015, I had the chance to check out an extended demo of the game, complete with a party of four distinct heroes, loot and player customization, undead hordes, and plenty of witty banter. But what really got me jazzed was the game's dungeon master mode. That's right, without needing any sort of special modding know-how, you can whip up a fully customizable adventure for your friends (or strangers online).

GamersNexus

Sword Coast Legends is among the most promising video game releases we've seen for the RPG space in recent years. The game is a true return-to-roots for D&D cRPG fans and, if delivered properly, offers a unique gameplay mechanic that greatly extends longevity of the title.

MMORPG

At first glance, Sword Coast Legends’ minimaps, class skills, dialogue options, and user interface certainly connect the dots for what a spiritual successor to the beloved Bioware and Black Isle games should look like.  In our GDC 2015 preview, we first got to look at a small portion of the single-player campaign and a dungeon delve through the sewers beneath Luskan, which showed off the game’s rich use of Forgotten Realms lore and tactical combat.

MMORPG posted a new video interview with Game Director Dan Tudge at GDC 2015 to ask a few question about his new RPG game Sword Coast Legends.

We chat with Dan Tudge, Game Director on Sword Coast Legends from nSpace about the team's upcoming PC Dungeons and Dragons RPG. With a focus on tactical combat, co-op and solo gameplay, and real-time dungeon-mastering, Sword Coast Legends looks poised to really bring the table top experience to the PC.

Venturebeat published a new interivew this week for Sword Coast Legends with D&D Brand Director Nathan Stewart and Dan Tudge, the President of N-Space.

GamesBeat: Why has it taken so long for us to have a party-based D&D game for the PC? The last real one was in 2008.

Nathan Stewart: The obvious answer is because it took Dan Tudge this long to pitch an awesome game to me. I could blame it on him.

The fact of the matter is that for a long time, we had our video game publishing rights in a long-term agreement with Atari. Its publishing strategy for D&D games didn’t match my strategy exactly, but I’ve only been on the brand for three years. They brought me in at Wizards to run D&D, primarily because of my video game experience in the past. Right before I came on, they had ended their agreement, their relationship with Atari and said, we want to take the rights back. We want to manage this. We want to make the great D&D games we know our fans want. We don’t think that having someone else control our rights is the right way to do it.

We didn’t think Atari was doing the best job, so we were able to end that.

I say that all nice and fuzzy because I wasn’t in the middle of it, but the fact of the matter is there was litigation over the deal. This wasn’t the best ending of a relationship. But we got the rights back because we care about what the consumer experience is. What that means is that you have to be selective. You have to be picky about finding the right company, the right people at that company, the right concept. All those things have to marry together to bring this to fruition.

I hope this is OK to say, Dan — I don’t think this is crazy — but Dan can confirm that when they showed us the project and they were talking about this, Dan was just kind of coming on board with N-Space. I talked to him and said, look, I love this. I think this is awesome. But you’re a big part of it, Dan. I need to know that you’re not just jumping on or partially here. If I’m signing up for this, I’m signing up the full team. It has to be you as part of the equation. He said, yeah, that’s what we’re doing.

Dan Tudge: I agree wholeheartedly. There’s a lot to be said for these ideas brewing for quite a long time. Really, the timing was right for both parties to come together. What we really wanted to make was Sword Coast Legends. What Wizards really wanted to return to came into alignment a couple of years ago. To Nathan’s point, my answer was clear. This is a title that’s very dear to my heart. I definitely want to be part of it all the way through.

PCGamer has news from Dan Tudge the president of N-Space explaining how his studio will be adapting the 5th edition of D&D to work with Sword Coast Legends.

Dan Tudge, president of Sword Coast Legends developer N-Space, explains. "I played the first AD&D, the first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons," Tudge tells PC Gamer's Dan Griliopoulos. "For me I think fifth is the first time that they've really captured that original set of rules. Ease of use is the wrong word, because it is very, very deep, but it is accessible and it swings the focus back to adventuring rather than being all about the rules. It's about having fun and having a great adventure, which is why I got into D&D."

While there are specific things that need changing for Sword Coast Legends, Tudge thinks the new ruleset lends itself well to adaptation. "There's things that just don't translate from a six second round on the table top to a real time practical RPG, he says. "We've had to make some adaptations, but I think that's one thing that's really great about the fifth edition rules. They are almost more about the spirit of D&D, and the spirit of playing a great adventure with your friends. So it's actually been a very good rule set to adapt."

According to Tudge, the benefit of fifth edition is that players have more to do in combat. "It's been balanced in a way where you do a lot more hitting ... The fights don't end any quicker or any worse, but it's balanced in such a way that everybody still gets to have a lot more fun, because they're hitting more and wizards and casters are doing a lot more hitting. They're not limited to one or two things per encounter. And I think that's made it way more enjoyable for groups to play."

Forum member Morrandir brought to my attention a new interview for Sword Coast Legends on MMORPG with Brand Director Nathan Stewart, and President Dan Tudge.

MMORPG.com: How does Sword Coast Legends compare to Neverwinter Nights, as many will likely draw comparisons?

Tudge: Right now a lot of people are talking about how Sword Coast Legends feels reminiscent of Neverwinter Nights (NWN); it's a comparison that is definitely warranted. SCL is a classic Forgotten Realms adventure on the Sword Coast. It features tactical pause and play combat with an isometric camera in real-time 3D environments (vs. pre-rendered backgrounds). However, it's the inclusion of DM mode where comparisons to NWN are probably the strongest. Despite both having DM capability, players will find the DM experience in SCL quite different from NWN, finding instead a system that enables DMs to quickly jump in and immediately start playing in real-time. All told, our inspiration has come from many sources, from a lifetime of playing D&D on the tabletop and to the legacy of so many great RPGs such as Dragon Age: Origins and the Baldur's Gate series – inspiration that will enviably invoke comparisons the more of SCL we show to the world.

MMORPG.com: Why the Forgotten Realms?

Stewart: The Forgotten Realms is the universe that we at Wizards of the Coast are focusing our storytelling in for the foreseeable future. It is our most popular setting and can be found in novels and game materials that have been translated in over a dozen different languages. Forgotten Realms is home to some of our most iconic heroes. As we dive into our annual stories, Forgotten Realms will be the backdrop for those adventures. We know we have a large and diverse fan-base who also enjoy our other settings, but there is still so much to explore in the Forgotten Realms.

MMORPG.com: What have you done developing this game to make it feel like fifth edition as opposed to 3.5, 4.0, or the open 20 systems?

Stewart: As Wizards of the Coast was developing the latest edition we very specifically wanted to take emphasis off the rules and focus on the feel of the game. As part of the playtest and creation of the new edition we looked back at all previous editions and made sure we had clear ideas and descriptions for the most important elements. An example is magic, more specifically let's focus on the fireball spell. It isn't important that the Fireball spell does 8d6 damage or has 150 range in all our games, but is instead important that in each instance it is a mid-level spell that explodes and causes a wider range of damage. In other words, for our partners it's critical they capture the feel of the latest edition of rules, but not necessarily the specific mechanics.

Tudge: In SCL we have adapted the fifth edition tabletop ruleset to better work in a videogame; however, n-Space and Wizards of the Coast have worked very closely to ensure we deliver an experience that feels "true to D&D."

Cheat Code Central has a new article for Sword Coast Legends that asks if we are finally getting the Dungeon Master Game we all Deserve? What do you all think?

Many of us nerds for life have at least experimented with pencil 'n' paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, so it's no surprise that video game designers have been trying to re-create that kind of experience since the dawn of the digital age. It started with the idea of the game designer being the dungeon master (DM), who creates an adventure and leads a player through it. When online gaming became possible, though, developers have been striving to offer players the chance to step in and use game-building tools to become dungeon masters themselves.

Although various games (from various Neverwinter games to the modern Shadowrun RPG) have provided us with limited dungeon master tools, I have yet to find a toolset that allows players to easily create and run a game for friends. Most toolsets have required coding skills or have simply been difficult to learn and clunky to operate.

Enter Sword Coast Legends. This newly-announced game promises not only a full RPG created by veteran developers, it aims to give players the tools they need to actively DM a game without knowing how to code. It's set in the popular D&D Forgotten Realms universe, so there's already a wealth of content and lore for adventure creators to work with. It uses the fifth edition of the D&D ruleset, which was tailor-made for video gaming. Heck, it's even scheduled to come out this year.

If this sounds too good to be true, I don't blame you. I've been through this song and dance before, too. Still, online technology has come a long way since the original Neverwinter Nights, and making a user-friendly set of DM tools is now more of a social and interface issue than a technological challenge. I'm excited to follow the development of Sword Coast Legends, and I hope it does the things it needs to do in order to get dungeon mastering right.

Dan Tudge released a new community update on the forums for Sword Coast Legends.

My name is Dan Tudge and I’m the director of Sword Coast Legends and president of n-Space. We’re all very happy to be finally be sharing SCL with the world and are very thankful that you have chosen to be a part of its creation. We've already seen a lot of questions on the boards here and while there is much we can’t talk about I’m going to do my best to answer what I can.

Develop-Online had the chance to interview CEO Dan O'Leary about his studio's new RPG Sword Coast Legends. Just follow this link for the announcement if you missed it.

Tell us more about the talent you have brought on board for this new RPG project. Who have you hired and why?

I first brought on Dan Tudge as president over two years ago. Dan was the director of Dragon Age: Origins, but our paths had first crossed prior to that when he was running his own development studio and we were both working for Nintendo. I hired Dan to fill shoes left empty in 2008 and to help pivot the company. Even then we were talking about this project, which was a great fit for his experience and passion.

In turn, Dan brought in Ross Gardner and Jay Turner, both BioWare vets and prior members of the DA:O team. Ross came on as the project’s technical director, leveraging over 13 years of experience at BioWare on Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights and The Old Republic, among others.

Jay is the narrative director for Sword Coast Legends. While at BioWare, he wrote for several titles including Dragon Age: Origins, Jade Empire and the Mass Effect series, before moving to EA where he wrote for Dead Space 3 among others. Together with n-Space’s proven team of veteran developers, it is a formidable combination.

How else will you ensure Sword Coast Legends stands toe-to-toe with other games set in the Forgotten Realms universe?

At n-Space, we are all passionate fans when it comes to D&D and the Forgotten Realms, and that passion drives a deep understanding of the brand. The team is committed to authentically recreating the Forgotten Realms setting, its characters and stories, myths and legends to deliver a game that stands tall in a long line of classic D&D titles.

Like many on the team, Sword Coast Legends is a game that I have dreamed of since I was first introduced to D&D. I still vividly remember the moment I learned that skeletons take more damage from blunt weapons than edged. That experience in sixth grade framed my entire understanding of games as rule systems and kickstarted a lifetime of playing and making them. This project brings me full-circle, nearly 30 years later. I speak for the entire team here at n-Space when I say that our goal for Sword Coast Legends is to provide its players with life-long memories of fun-filled experiences.

Seems the new RPG by n-Space & Digital Extremes is called Sword Coast Legends, and it looks to an updated NWN set in the Forgotten Realm. Here is the launch video.