Turbine's Ken Troop has been interviewed at MMORPG.com about D&D Online. Here's a taste:MMORPG.com: Given the history of Dungeons & Dragons, from both a pen and paper and a computer game perspective, how do you view the task before you? Do you approach the making of a Dungeons & Dragons game with caution and respect, taking care not to sully the game's reputation, or do you see it as a robust world full of opportunity, freeing you to a greater level of creativity and invention?
Ken Troop: Honestly, it's a bit of both. Dungeons & Dragons is the 30-year old granddaddy of role-playing games, and it features a constantly-evolving ruleset that has always managed to stay relevant.
On the other hand, no one's done a massively-multiplayer version of D&D in the last 10 years, and we've made it clear from the beginning that not all of the PnP rules are going to work well in a real-time MMORPG format, so we have a clean slate in some regards.
With these things in mind, we're approaching the conversion with an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy. What this means is that we're using the PnP rules as a baseline, and then making tweaks and edits as necessary. So far, it's worked out really well. |