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“we’ve-done-our-job”:-baldur’s-gate-3-devs-call-off-dlc-and-step-away-from-d&d

“We’ve done our job”: Baldur’s Gate 3 devs call off DLC and step away from D&D

Baldur's Gate 3, DLC, Dungeons and Dragons, gaming, hasbro, Larian Studios, Wizards of the Coast / /

Baldur’s Gate Closed —

Larian boss says BG3 is “a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

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Karlach, the tiefling barbarian, infernal heart glowing, axe at her back.

Enlarge / Sometimes your infernal-engine-powered heart just isn’t in it.

Larian Studios/Hasbro

Swen Vincke, director of the colossal entity that is Baldur’s Gate 3, is not leaving the door open to future expansions of that already fully packed game.

At this week’s Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), Vincke made it clear during a talk and in interviews that Larian Studios is not going to make any major new content for Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)—nor start work on Baldur’s Gate 4, nor make anything, really, inside the framework of Dungeons & Dragons’ Fifth Edition (5e).

Not that Vincke or his team are bitter. Their hearts just aren’t in it. They had actually started work on BG3 downloadable content and gave some thought to Baldur’s Gate 4, Vincke told IGN. “But we hadn’t really had closure on BG3 yet and just to jump forward on something new felt wrong.” On top of that, the team had new ideas that didn’t fit D&D 5e, which “is not an easy system to put into a video game,” Vincke said.

“You could see the team was doing it because everyone felt like we had to do it, but it wasn’t really coming from the heart, and we’re very much a studio from the heart. It’s what gotten us into misery and it’s also been the reasons for our success,” Vincke told IGN.

After returning from winter holidays, Vincke told the Larian team, “We’ve done our job. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. So let’s pass the torch to another studio to pick up this incredible legacy.” The team, he told IGN, was “elated.”

Onto the next act

Vincke’s enthusiasm for having determined Act 1 of “this thing I’ve been working on,” as he posted on X (formerly Twitter) in early January 2024, has some new context from this new dialogue. Larian, it seems, is working on another RPG, just not one involving a certain port city in a particular tabletop scheme.

At GDC, Vincke said Larian was “a company of big ideas… not a company that’s made to create DLCs or expansions,” according to PC Gamer’s recap. “We tried that actually, a few times. It failed every single time. It’s not our thing. Life is too short. Our ambitions are very large,” Vincke told the crowd.

As you might imagine, Larian Studios is ready to say goodbye to D&D games, but Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro almost certainly are not. As of February, BG3 had made around $90 million for Hasbro. Hasbro’s CEO followed up on that report by noting that BG3 was “just the first of several new video games that will be coming out over the next five to 10 years.”

One of those is likely to be “an innovative hybrid of survival, life simulation, and action RPG,” from the makers of the notably survival/life/RPG-like game Disney Dreamlight Valley. Gameloft Montreal pitches the game as a space where “the rich lore of this legendary franchise meets real-time survival in a unique campaign of resilience, camaraderie, and danger at nearly every turn.

It feels safe to say that you will not be able to romance Beast, Maui, or Mike Wazowski in the next big D&D game. Larian’s time in the Forgotten Realms is over, and the team is likely to have many people waiting to see where they’re going next.

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dungeons-&-dragons-turns-50-this-year,-and-there’s-a-lot-planned-for-it

Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and there’s a lot planned for it

50th anniversary, culture, Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons and Dragons, gaming, Gary Gygax, Role-Playing Games, RPGs, tabletop games, tsr, ttrpg, Wizards of the Coast / /

Critical Success —

It started with “a new line of miniatures rules” and became a global phenomenon.

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The three rulebooks fo Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/rulebooks-800×548.jpg”>

Enlarge / The three rulebooks fo “fantastic medieval wargames” that started it all, released at some point in late January 1974, as seen in Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History.

Wizards of the Coast/Ten Speed Press

“We have just fromed [sic] Tactical Studies Rules, and we wish to let the wargaming community know that a new line of miniature rules is available.”

With this letter, written by Gary Gygax to wargaming zine publisher Jim Lurvey, one of the founders of what would become TSR announced that a January 1974 release for Dungeons & Dragons was forthcoming. This, plus other evidence compiled by Jon Peterson (as pointed out by the Grognardia blog), points to the last Sunday of January 1974 as the best date for the “anniversary” of D&D. The first sale was in “late January 1974,” Gygax later wrote, and on the last Sunday of January 1974, Gygax invited potential customers to drop by his house in the afternoon to try it out.

You could argue whether a final draft, printing, announcement, sale, or first session counts as the true “birth” of D&D, but we have to go with something, and Peterson’s reasoning seems fairly sound. Gygax’s memory, and a documented session at his own house, are a good point to pin down for when we celebrate this thing that has shaped a seemingly infinite number of other things.

  • The evolution of The Beholder, through 3rd edition, in Dungeons & Dragons, from Art & Arcana: A Visual History.

    Wizards of the Coast/Ten Speed Press

  • The fourth and fifth edition versions of the Beholder, as seen in Art & Arcana: A Visual History.

As with playing a good campaign, you’ve got a lot of options for how you acknowledge D&D‘s long presence and deep influence. The game system itself, now under Wizards of the Coast, will this year push “One D&D,” a name the D&D leaders sometimes stick with and sometimes don’t. Whatever the next wave is called, it includes new handbooks, guides, and Monster Manual books that are not exactly a new “edition,” but also an evolution. Books like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything will be codified and unified by a new sourcebook at some point, but all of it will be compatible with 5th Edition material.

Also, at some point this year, stamps celebrating D&D‘s 50th will be available from the US Postal Service, at least if you rush. Ten different designs, leaning heavily on the dragons, were commissioned based on existing illustrations. There’s a documentary from Joe Manganiello (still in pre-production, seemingly). And there’s a 500-plus-page non-fiction book, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1976, with research help from the aforementioned Peterson, containing never-before-seen correspondence between co-creators Gygax and Dave Arneson.

I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, never actually playing Dungeons & Dragons, but its influence shaped vast amounts of my playtime and curiosity. I loved playing Hero Quest, without knowing that it was essentially an on-rails D&D setup. My cousin and I spent large parts of one summer attempting to play Marvel Super Heroes without understanding its D&D roots (or that it would always be a bit awkward with just two people).

And, of course, every video game, comic, novel, and other media I consumed that made a point of explaining how different classes worked, or the theory behind spells, owed something to D&D—by way of J.R.R. Tolkien and centuries of folklore tradition, of course. Tales keep inspiring other tales, and it’s largely to our benefit.

Take a moment on this occasion to look back through some notable D&D coverage at Ars:

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