Interview Chris Avellone Interviewed at GamesIndustry

[Jaesun]

I think if you made a game using some of the concepts of Planescape, the metaphysical ideas and the plane travel, without using the D&D mechanics, you could actually come up with a much better game.

Of course. Planescape could be a much better game by just scrapping the DnD mechanics and replace them with some Obsidian ingenuity, e.g. Alphaturd mechanics. Voila! A much better game.

They currently have to make mass accessible games for consoles as that is what the Publisher will require. IF they wourked exclusively on a new rule system they would love to play and implement in a game (say via Kickstarter), I'd be willing to bet it would be quite good.

 

[G Ziets]

MCA kinda did PS:T spiritual successor already - with MotB. I don't know how you can be closer to Planescape: Torment than this without becoming a direct sequel.

I was under the impression that story of MotB was mostly the work of George Ziets.

Both games were personal stories, and they both involved interplanar travel. But the themes were very different, and with MotB, I definitely wasn't trying to write a spiritual successor to Torment. I'll leave that to Chris - I don't think anyone else could pull it off.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

They currently have to make mass accessible games for consoles as that is what the Publisher will require. IF they wourked exclusively on a new rule system they would love to play and implement in a game (say via Kickstarter), I'd be willing to bet it would be quite good.

We can't know for sure, but in my opinion there's nothing in Obsidian's past to indicate they're capable to come up with an entire system from scratch (within a fairly short dev-cycle of 2-3 years) that's as good as DnD would be or even comes close. Not that I blame them for it, because it's impossible for a handful of dudes to create a system within that short timeframe that beats something developed by so many over such a long time and got thouroughly playtested like an established system, be it DnD or something else.

 

[J_C]

MCA kinda did PS:T spiritual successor already - with MotB. I don't know how you can be closer to Planescape: Torment than this without becoming a direct sequel.

I was under the impression that story of MotB was mostly the work of George Ziets.

Both games were personal stories, and they both involved interplanar travel. But the themes were very different, and with MotB, I definitely wasn't trying to write a spiritual successor to Torment. I'll leave that to Chris - I don't think anyone else could pull it off.

Ahh, another lurker. Always nice to see devs on the Codex.

 

[Morkar Left]

They currently have to make mass accessible games for consoles as that is what the Publisher will require. IF they wourked exclusively on a new rule system they would love to play and implement in a game (say via Kickstarter), I'd be willing to bet it would be quite good.

We can't know for sure, but in my opinion there's nothing in Obsidian's past to indicate they're capable to come up with an entire system from scratch (within a fairly short dev-cycle of 2-3 years) that's as good as DnD would be or even comes close. Not that I blame them for it, because it's impossible for a handful of dudes to create a system within that short timeframe that beats something developed by so many over such a long time and got thouroughly playtested like an established system, be it DnD or something else.

What do you think about Frayed Knights? Plays pretty solid for me as a rulesystem and seems to be heavily inspired by 3.5

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

What do you think about Frayed Knights? Plays pretty solid for me as a rulesystem and seems to be heavily inspired by 3.5

It was ok-ish. Perhaps this

heavily inspired by 3.5

was the key for FK being solid? I don't know, however, it's still a system purely for combat (with nothing else) and with fairly limited character building suited for the 4 obligatory characters. Imo it's nowhere near DnD or TDE.