D&D Iconics MOBA

[Ionbound]

So, crazy idea I just had: A MOBA where you play as Iconic characters from D&D's history. People like Mordenkainen, Robilard, Azalin, Strahd, and their like. Would this have a market at all? More importantly, would Hasbro let it be a thing?

[D-naras]

Oh man! That's awesome! They would have to be stupid not to let this happen! Bonus points for adding skins like Pimp Krusk and Frog Mialee!

[Dusk Eclipse]

That is all.

[Xefas]

People like Mordenkainen, Robilard, Azalin, Strahd, and their like.

Who cares about those people? The Nameless One, Minsc, and Deekin all the way.

[elliott20]

You first need to a developer crew that can handle this kind of job.

Then you need to figure out a way to pay for the license fees to Hasbro. But I'm not sure if Hasbro actually owns all of the settings, to be honest. So that would require some investigation.

Easiest way is to get the team together first, and then go on kickstarter to raise money for the license fee. The kickstarter campaign, if successful, would be a signal to Hasbro that this is viable and will at least bring them to the table for terms negotiation.

[Amaril]

I'd Kickstart the crap out of this

[Ionbound]

Well, does anyone know how to negotiate with Hasbro or code MOBAs? Because this would be really cool if we could actually make this a thing.

[endoperez]

This is too niche to do well, most probably.

It would be much easier to do a replacement mod where you take existing characters in a MOBA and change their models and effects and names to match D&D iconics. Of course, competitive MOBAs aren't very mod-friendly, but still...

[Socratov]

This is too niche to do well, most probably.

It would be much easier to do a replacement mod where you take existing characters in a MOBA and change their models and effects and names to match D&D iconics. Of course, competitive MOBAs aren't very mod-friendly, but still...

Or you could do what made Dota so famous over the years: create a Warcraft 3 map like Dota, but with all the models and effects redone to fit the DnD's iconic people.

[Lilapop]

I'm pretty sure the success (and lifespan) of such a game would be all but independant of the setting. It's so much more about balancing, payment model and praying for a mature audience. The basic principle is also kind of overrun at the moment, so you gotta come up with something innovative - which can solve balancing problems or be a balancing nightmare.

Oh, and even within the few posts this thread has by now, people aren't exactly in agreement about what settings the term "D&D" includes. Specifically, is Forgotten Realms a "sub-setting" or something completely different?

[Ionbound]

For what I'm talking about, I'm considering FR a subsetting. I want to be able to use people from Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape, everywhere. As for mechanics, hmm...Maybe make pushing much more emphasized over farming? It fits the theme of heroics.

[Tengu_temp]

I'd say this idea is too niche (the overlap between DND players and MOBA players is not that high, and tabletop RPGs are a much smaller market than video games to begin with). And, honestly, most DND iconic characters are boring as hell, and those who aren't are often ridiculous self-insert Mary Sues.

[toapat]

the problem is that the characters of DnD fall into 2 power levels:

Chief Tuktuk the kobold terror, and Elminster the mary sue god.

[Amaril]

the problem is that the characters of DnD fall into 2 power levels:

Chief Tuktuk the kobold terror, and Elminster the mary sue god.

Since when have other MOBAs let lore conceits like that get in their way? That LotR MOBA that got released a while back let you play Frodo against the Witch-King and made that perfectly viable.

[toapat]

Since when have other MOBAs let lore conceits like that get in their way? That LotR MOBA that got released a while back let you play Frodo against the Witch-King and made that perfectly viable.

except that barring Gandalf, Saruman, or sauron, everyone is reasonably on the same playing field.

when you get into DnD, the power level disparity are characters like Chief Tuktuk who is highly intelligent but himself not really that dangerous beyond his tribe and extreme battlefield preparation, and then gods who blink and delete their foes.

there are also the npcs statted out in all the books who are extremely weak typically

barring Greyhawk, all dnd settings are owned by WotC

[Chaosvii7]

DEFINITELY would buy into this if it also included Player's Handbook Iconics like Jozan, Regdar, Mialee, even the ones that they tucked away in the later chapters like Nebin and Devis. While all the player classes from the PHBII and I think the Completes got Iconics, I wouldn't go farther away for influences than that myself. Imagine all of them with the historic Greyhawk characters, FR of course, maybe some NPCs made famous from DDO.

I'd easily be able to back this with little question.

[toapat]

Even Greyhawk is owned by WotC.

The only "Greyhawk content" not owned by WotC are those entities whose names are anagrams or derivations of Gary Gygax's own name.

actually im mistaking Greyhawk for Blackmore. i knew one of the DnD settings was sold back to Arneson

[elliott20]

Well, does anyone know how to negotiate with Hasbro or code MOBAs? Because this would be really cool if we could actually make this a thing.

Hold your horses there, coding a MOBA is not simply a matter of finding 2 guys and off you go. Anything of this kind of scale would require a real MOBA veteran to helm the project, raise the money, and then get together a team of say, 6 guys to pull together. It's not so trivial as just asking someone to negotiate. There are a LOT of legal issues packed into it. The best thing would actually to find an open source engine that already has a community behind it, do the kickstarter, and develop the prototype WHILE you look for negotiating partners. This kind of approach would require a lot more business acumen than what we can muster up from a community board though.

I'd say this idea is too niche (the overlap between DND players and MOBA players is not that high, and tabletop RPGs are a much smaller market than video games to begin with). And, honestly, most DND iconic characters are boring as hell, and those who aren't are often ridiculous self-insert Mary Sues.

Well, whose to say that ONLY players who play D&D would be playing this? Having said that, the problem with iconic D&D characters is a very real one though.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

If I were in charge of this, I'd focus heavily on marketing it as a MOBA-style game that appeals to non-MOBA players. Take a lot of cues from the 4th Edition tactical combat model, and the NWN games. It'd have to be something that you could pitch to anyone D&D-interested.

Plus, that means it's not directly competing with LoL and DotA, which would be a death sentence. Wizard's best option would be to go for the audience that's out of the reach of those games.

I can also say that if this becomes a thing, it'll only be because Hasbro decided it was worth a risk and had the idea a few years ago.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Yeah. This would work best if it was aimed at D&D fans, rather than MOBA fans.

If it was built on a relatively small budget with a simple graphical style and a small development team, it could possibly work. Names like Bigby and Melf have nostalgia value for me and many other people. Combat mechanics could be based mostly on 4e, which would help it to me more than League of Legends with a D&D hat.

[elliott20]

Plus, that means it's not directly competing with LoL and DotA, which would be a death sentence. Wizard's best option would be to go for the audience that's out of the reach of those games.

That's almost impossible to do with the MOBA segment. The comparison is going to be inevitable no matter which way you cut it.

In general, the established MOBA markets care very little for franchise names and all that. Their primary core is, as Lilapop pointed out, about game balance, competitive edge, and depth.

so, if Hasbro wants to dodge around that issue, their method would have to be to court those outside of the MOBA genre but play D&D and convert them over. to be clear, the game would have to function very differently than normal MOBAs as well, since inheriting D&D game play aesthetics means certain incompatibilities with traditional MOBA scenarios.

Yeah. This would work best if it was aimed at D&D fans, rather than MOBA fans.

If it was built on a relatively small budget with a simple graphical style and a small development team, it could possibly work. Names like Bigby and Melf have nostalgia value for me and many other people. Combat mechanics could be based mostly on 4e, which would help it to me more than League of Legends with a D&D hat.

A project of this kind of scope will never be small, no matter how much we want it to be. The only area I can imagine being able to scale down here is maybe graphics. The engine itself, for both scalability and integrity would have to be airtight. anything less than that would make it tough for it to survive.

[the_other_gm]

rather then compete with MOBAs in the traditional scene, why not offer different game types as the focus, rather then the standard "3 lane, bunch of towers and one base"?

Why not try for a more objective based map, like 2 teams trying to steal treasure from a dragon's hoard? The dragon would be sitting on his hoard as a sort of supercreep (think Baron Nashor of League of Legends) and while killing the dragon might be a long-term goal, you could have stealth-based PCs steal gold in increments while more offensive characters run interference, attacking the enemy thieves and taking whatever gold they stole for their own. whoever fills up their cart with treasure first wins!

Maybe a king of the hill type game, where two teams vie for control of a single area, say a wizard/lich's tower or something. they each send waves of minions at the tower trying to capture it. Whoever captures the tower for 5 minutes total wins.

Catch-the-Kender: Somewhere on the field is a stupid kender, running around and hiding in bushes. First team to kill the kender 10 times wins.

Terrasque Attack: One team is trying to make a path for the Terrasque to stomp down the enemy base, one team is trying to stop the terrasque. The team on the defensive needs to kill the terrasque (sending it back to a respawn point) while researching a wish scroll. kill the terrasque, use the scroll on the body to finish it off and win! the team on the offensive needs to capture points so the big T spawns closer and closer to town while interrupting the scroll research... if big T reaches town, they win!

Tier 1, too OP: if anyone played League while they did the april 2014 URF mode (ultra rapid-fire) you'll know what I mean when every character is turned up to 11. i miss URF.

[Xuc Xac]

Balance and gameplay issues aside, the biggest problem with this idea is that most D&D "iconic" characters aren't actually that iconic. If you take Darth Vader and rework him as a samurai or steampunk cyborg, he's still immediately recognizable as Darth Vader because he's iconic. If you take Elminster out of the Forgotten Realms, nobody would recognize him. He looks like a generic "old wizard". Without that context, most people would guess he was Gandalf (and, honestly, he is). Other than having a hand fetish, what do you even know about Bigby? Would you recognize him if you saw him? How many people even know what Mordenkainen looks like? Bigby at least has a theme, but what makes Mordenkainen different from any other wizard? Other than his name, what separates Krusk from any other half-orc barbarian? They aren't "iconic"; they're just "examples". Only a few characters, such as Vecna or Raistlin, have unique identifying features while everyone else is just a name without a face.

[Magic Myrmidon]

Yeah, I dunno, I don't exactly have a connection with the iconics, and for some reason, when it's associated with dnd, playing as someone else's character just feels hollow and lame.

[Jammyamerica]

Nice Thread!!!

[elliott20]

Well, the best way I think to skirt around the iconic issue might just be to have a some iconic characters, but really maybe stick with a semi-"rolling up a character" feel that D&D is really known for.

Each character would just be a class or a monster of some sort.

[elliott20]

rather then compete with MOBAs in the traditional scene, why not offer different game types as the focus, rather then the standard "3 lane, bunch of towers and one base"?

Why not try for a more objective based map, like 2 teams trying to steal treasure from a dragon's hoard? The dragon would be sitting on his hoard as a sort of supercreep (think Baron Nashor of League of Legends) and while killing the dragon might be a long-term goal, you could have stealth-based PCs steal gold in increments while more offensive characters run interference, attacking the enemy thieves and taking whatever gold they stole for their own. whoever fills up their cart with treasure first wins!

Maybe a king of the hill type game, where two teams vie for control of a single area, say a wizard/lich's tower or something. they each send waves of minions at the tower trying to capture it. Whoever captures the tower for 5 minutes total wins.

Catch-the-Kender: Somewhere on the field is a stupid kender, running around and hiding in bushes. First team to kill the kender 10 times wins.

Terrasque Attack: One team is trying to make a path for the Terrasque to stomp down the enemy base, one team is trying to stop the terrasque. The team on the defensive needs to kill the terrasque (sending it back to a respawn point) while researching a wish scroll. kill the terrasque, use the scroll on the body to finish it off and win! the team on the offensive needs to capture points so the big T spawns closer and closer to town while interrupting the scroll research... if big T reaches town, they win!

Tier 1, too OP: if anyone played League while they did the april 2014 URF mode (ultra rapid-fire) you'll know what I mean when every character is turned up to 11. i miss URF.

I actually like this idea. a lot. Mostly because D&D is not a game built on the same army-battle model that MOBA is built on.

Having said that though, I think that it would be best if the game was built to focus on just one type of game play, and on what is effectively a single map. Competitive games are like that where you need to have a stable playing field and ruleset so that the metagame can start evolving. For this reason, I think a terrasque style game might be the best bet here.

[Spore]

Robilard

That dude is iconic now? Also I have seen that he beat Arklem Greeth. I have read all Drizzt books and I don't recall ever reading that. Which book is it

e: Okay, I found it. The fight is barely 2 pages long and very underwhelming. Did I mention that the lich was killed with electricity damage?

[toapat]

That dude is iconic now? Also I have seen that he beat Arklem Greeth. I have read all Drizzt books and I don't recall ever reading that. Which book is it

e: Okay, I found it. The fight is barely 2 pages long and very underwhelming. Did I mention that the lich was killed with electricity damage?

Eilistraee was killed with the shattered remains of her bastard sword, despite the fact that its an artifact that had been destroyed

[Ionbound]

That dude is iconic now? Also I have seen that he beat Arklem Greeth. I have read all Drizzt books and I don't recall ever reading that. Which book is it

e: Okay, I found it. The fight is barely 2 pages long and very underwhelming. Did I mention that the lich was killed with electricity damage?

IIRC, he helped kill Mordenkainen and Tenser with Rary in Rary the Betrayer.