“It’s impossible for us to have specific tutorials on wizard spells, because we’re not sure the player is going to have a wizard,” says Girard. The game doesn’t know if the player is going to create a party of all wizards – or no wizards at all, however. “Instead the tutorial is an origin story for each of your characters of the party.” These mini-tutorials show off the lighting and verticality in the level design, as well as the turn-based tactical combat, which includes Attacks of Opportunity and using Actions, Bonus Actions, and Reactions. “We wanted to avoid boring tutorial boot camps that involve shooting crates and rats,” says Girard. The result is a wonderfully immersive intro that features each of my custom party members bantering with one another, from the stuffy elf to the surly halfling.ĭuring the intro each character regales their scenario prior to joining the party. Solasta takes it a step further by providing fully voiced characters for each of the four customizable party members that we’ll be creating at the beginning of the game. Having unique dialogue choices based on your chosen personality is a nice reflection of role-paying in D&D. “We didn’t want a binary system.” A Philosopher could choose Cynicism and Kindness, while selecting Neutral Good can add Altruism and a second Kindness flag, resulting in a very formal, self-less personality. “The Personality Flags define how your character acts during cutscenes and narration, as well as dialogue choices when interacting with NPCs,” says Girard. Players choose two from each to form their character’s overall personality. A character’s Background could be an Aristocrat, Lowlife, or Spy, along with the classic D&D alignment system, like Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral.Įach Background and alignment includes four personality traits, like Lawfulness, Greed, and Kindness. These traits are derived from the character’s Background and Alignment, which are often shoved to the back or forgotten altogether once the dice starts rolling. One of the most intriguing elements of character creation are the Personality Flags. “Everyone is a veteran and works wonders, but we wanted to focus on six classes for now.” The team hopes to add the remaining classes in the future. “We’re a small team, 17-person studio,” says Girard. Currently Solasta only features six of the 12 D&D classes: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard, with a seventh class, Sorcerer, coming as launch day DLC. Solasta will include original lore-specific sub-races like Snow Dwarves and Island Halflings, but doesn’t have the more exotic races like tieflings and dragonborn.ĭ&D veterans will feel right at home when creating a four-person party of characters, including rolling for STR, DEX, CON, etc, and choosing Race, Class, Background, and starting equipment. Solasta will feature a completely original fantasy world, but with the familiar Tolkein-inspired D&D races of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings. The SRD includes all the races, classes, magic items, and most of the monsters from D&D 5E, but does not include any of the official settings, characters, or trademark foes. Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition has a special Open Gaming License that allows other creators and companies to use the basic ruleset for their own games and supplements. In the fall of 2019, Tactical Adventures brought their concept for Solasta to Kickstarter, successfully raising over $275,000 from nearly 6,000 backers.Ī major selling point for Solasta is that it’s based on the Systems Reference Document from D&D. Girard previously co-founded Amplitude Studios, creators of the excellent Endless strategy series, before founding Tactical Adventures in 2018. Making a D&D RPG is a passion project for us.” “We have a D&D campaign running every week – currently playing Descent Into Avernus. “We’ve been a big fan of tabletop RPGs for 30 years,” says Mathieu Girard, CEO and creative director at Tactical Adventures. Indie studio Tactical Adventures hopes to change that with Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Despite Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition catapulting the tabletop RPG into mainstream popularity, there’s been a stark lack of officially licensed D&D video games in recent years. Video game RPGs owe much of their DNA from the classic tabletop RPG.
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