Dragonshard Interview

HC.Gamer has conducted an interview with Liquid Entertainment’s Ed Kaminski, in which the producer talks at length about their upcoming Dungeons & Dragons RTS/RPG, Dragonshard. An excerpt:

Q: How will you connect the RTS genre and the RPG genre? Will it be enjoyable for those people too, who only like the RTS genre or the RPG genre?

A: I think fans of both RTS and RPG will find Dragonshard to their liking. We’ve tried really hard to allow hardcore RTS fans to still stomp their opponents in big battles while maintaining the questing and exploration that RPG gamers have grown to love.

The way we’ve connected RTS and RPG is by taking components of one genre and injecting them into the other. For example, RPG gamers are familiar with the concepts of gaining experience, leveling, questing, and customizing characters. Well, with Dragonshard you can still do all of those things except it’s on a grander scale than on a single character. Let’s take experience… whenever any of your units attack and kill monsters, experience is gained. However, that experience does not go to the single unit that did the killing. Instead the experience goes into a global pool. The player can then take this pool and pass out experience to whichever units he chooses. He may choose to invest all of his experience into his sorcerers… or just into his barbarians… or he may give a little to both. As you can see, you can customize your army’s strengths and weaknesses depending on how you choose to spend your experience points.

Another example is questing. Let’s say that while your dungeon party is exploring, they stumble upon a wizard who is trapped in a cage and has lost his magical staff. He promises that if you return his staff to him so he may escape, he will open a secret door for you that leads to a hidden library deep within the underground city. So, your party goes out in search of the item, fighting monsters and dodging traps along the way. You find the staff and return it to the wizard who keeps his end of the bargain. The door is opened, the library is found, and experience is gained. Now, I’m sure that there are RTS gamers reading this that are probably saying, “Big deal… that’s a lot of work for getting a little more experience to make my army stronger.” Well, there’s more to it than that. This particular quest gives you access to a secret location called the Hidden Library. The Hidden library is but one of many secret locations in the game called Places of Power. When you find a Place of Power, a global blessing is bestowed upon your entire army. This one in particular grants an intellect buff on all of your spellcasters, allowing them to cast more powerful spells than your opponent, which makes your army much more powerful. There are other PoPs that may grant things such as global armor buffs, attack buffs, health buffs, etc. So, you see, there are plenty of RPG elements to enjoy while at the same time benefiting the RTS player’s “I’ve-gotta-make-my-army-powerful-and-crush-my-opponent” mentality.