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Dungeons & Dragons by Stern

I quite like the look of it 🤷‍♂️ looks nice and the progression and theme will hopefully attract a slightly different audience.

The code will of course make or break the game, and my concern is that the next Elwin will come and gazump its FOMO before the vision is fully realised.

Also no mention of the boardset - is this still going to be on Spike 2?
 
Taxiturn said:
I quite like the look of it 🤷‍♂️ looks nice and the progression and theme will hopefully attract a slightly different audience.

The code will of course make or break the game, and my concern is that the next Elwin will come and gazump its FOMO before the vision is fully realised.

Also no mention of the boardset - is this still going to be on Spike 2?
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Yep confirmed on twitter by Stern it's still Spike 2.
 
Cheaper licence = more mechs and features.

Feels like Stern are looking hard at responding to recent criticism.

D&D is a household brand but was probably very reasonable to deal with licence-wise.

D&D probably were happy to give free reign to IP use. I think it'll be a good game with a few interesting pinball moments.
 
I liked where the Dwight Mando code eventually got to with foundry- I can see him tying together some of his best ideas from GB, GOT, Mando and TMNT- plus this looks a better layout than all of Brian Eddys recent designs
 
Was a massive player of D&D as a teenager. I’m excited by this but the voice of the dragon needs to be more like Smaug in The Hobbit. “I see you”….!
 
Think it will shoot great.. Super Nerds will be happy.
I think some call outs are a bit forced.
Still not heard anything to beat IMDN which they nailed in this dept.
Maybe I need my hearing checked 🤷‍♂️
I keep thinking D&D the Japs Eye for some reason 😃
 
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Zero interest in the theme but looks like a competent effort with what's been shown so far, nothing obvious to dislike but it will all come down to how it's coded, and how long that takes.

I don't mind being on a journey with the code but there's no guarantee the final code will be great.

Weekly changes to the maps is interesting and may freshen things up. That's something I'd like to see more of.
 
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I really don't know anything about the theme but that looks a damn good machine.

So the pro still has the dragon which doesn't move as much, still has the shield and still has the trapdoor? Unless I'm mossing something that would appear to be the way to go on this one?
 
Actually impressed, it's less of a fever dream of red/blue/purple feature art that I might actually be able to recognise it from a lineup of Stern playfields.
 
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thejefu said:
Actually impressed, a decent effort and a good looking machine. Not that I'll ever buy a NIB Stern since they're all overly gamified and have LCD screens.

I had a quiet hope they'd go back to something classic with a DMD ala Pulp Fiction. I might be waiting forever.
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It does feel like pinball, especially on Sterns, is over reaching a bit in terms of what it is supposed to be.

Coming from a position of absolute weakness as I’ve not played venom which seemed to be the first stab at it. However this ongoing progression piece and now moving into an ongoing RPG style - is that the new direction of pinball?

The best games I can think of that has a wizard mode hunt are the likes of TWD, AFM, MB, GB etc., it’s fairly linear, you can take a few paths and on a hot game you get there. Or you start again.

D&D have both options generally, you can run a campaign or a one shot, perhaps I’m being a grumpy old man, preferring the way things “used to be” but a variety of one shot campaigns as opposed to an RPG would have been more interesting to me. Stern seem pretty intent on moving player experience to longer form, building content.

*If* JJP do have HP - the ultimate (for me) would be to have movies (or sets of movies) to progress through in a single “credit” and I hope they don’t go down the route of turning it into a Harry Potter RPG.

Tin hat on…
 
James said:
It does feel like pinball, especially on Sterns, is over reaching a bit in terms of what it is supposed to be.

Coming from a position of absolute weakness as I’ve not played venom which seemed to be the first stab at it. However this ongoing progression piece and now moving into an ongoing RPG style - is that the new direction of pinball?

The best games I can think of that has a wizard mode hunt are the likes of TWD, AFM, MB, GB etc., it’s fairly linear, you can take a few paths and on a hot game you get there. Or you start again.

D&D have both options generally, you can run a campaign or a one shot, perhaps I’m being a grumpy old man, preferring the way things “used to be” but a variety of one shot campaigns as opposed to an RPG would have been more interesting to me. Stern seem pretty intent on moving player experience to longer form, building content.

*If* JJP do have HP - the ultimate (for me) would be to have movies (or sets of movies) to progress through in a single “credit” and I hope they don’t go down the route of turning it into a Harry Potter RPG.

Tin hat on…
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You are missing what Dungeons and Dragons is about, it is literally the first RPG, so making this ‘play like the others’ is not being faithful to the theme.

Everyone asks about innovation in pinball, so they do something new and then people moan (before playing it I might add), Stern cannot win!
 
JAG555 said:
You are missing what Dungeons and Dragons is about, it is literally the first RPG, so making this ‘play like the others’ is not being faithful to the theme.

Everyone asks about innovation in pinball, so they do something new and then people moan (before playing it I might add), Stern cannot win!
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RPG doesn’t have to span multiple credits. Like with D&D as I said, you can have a one shot and character progression can still occur.

I also said I’ve not experienced it. I am but a single person and time will out what innovations people want.

It’s not a moan, it’s an observation. I’d be interested in what people who spent far more on NIB’s want from their games, because ultimately it’s them who keep pinball alive.
 
JAG555 said:
You are missing what Dungeons and Dragons is about, it is literally the first RPG, so making this ‘play like the others’ is not being faithful to the theme.

Everyone asks about innovation in pinball, so they do something new and then people moan (before playing it I might add), Stern cannot win!
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Sure, but they make practically every modern pin play like an RPG as far as 'the features which are required to neccessitate pinball' are concerned.

When you look at the top 10 or 20 pins (Pinside or whatever), there's a huge juxtaposition between the games from the 80s, 90s, 00s (which still have a lot in common and are recognisably classic pinball) and 2010 onwards.

It's feature creep which happens in basically every genre of gaming. Designers over extend muds and create inferior nethack. Designers over extent nethack and create inferior isometric RPGs. Designers overextend isometric RPGs and create inferior action RPGs. Stern are over extending pinball machines and creating weird inferior flash games you play with pinballs.

I will however say that they've done some pretty impressive things. The idea that rules can change weekly and that you could theoretically play one shot pinball games and make a form of continued progress each game - that's impressive. I'd really like that 'progress' to be some other meta or grindy gamification for repeat play of standalone pinball games, but I suspect it's a crutch to remedy the precise thing I'm complaining about and increasing accessibility to the over gamification.

If I could play Medieval Madness or WCS and have some kind of progress saved which, after a few days or a week of regular play unlocked some wizard mode to reward my time spent - that's pretty cool. If that wizard mode changed monthly and kept my gameplay and my machine fresh, that's walking into territory where I might wanna spend 8 grand on a machine that loses 2 grand the moment I open it.

It's a fair criticism to say that Stern keep pumping out glorified flash games which don't have a tremendous lot in common with the pinball machines people have been used to the last several decades. But I do plead ignorance similar to James since, given this has been my opinion of a lot of modern games, I really don't go out of my way to play them. But I get the impression these machines are designed for HUO to be studied and enjoyed for as long a time as possible, which defeats the object of me going to an arcade and playing one for 30 minutes - back to my original point.
 
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James said:
RPG doesn’t have to span multiple credits. Like with D&D as I said, you can have a one shot and character progression can still occur.

I also said I’ve not experienced it. I am but a single person and time will out what innovations people want.

It’s not a moan, it’s an observation. I’d be interested in what people who spent far more on NIB’s want from their games, because ultimately it’s them who keep pinball alive.
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Why should it just be the opinion of people who buy a lot of NIB? What about people who play on location? In the States that is what is keeping pinball alive.

Stern cannot win though. They do it the same way, people moan it’s a rebadge of an old game. They innovate and then people moan it isn’t pinball (fists shaking!)
 
Gonzo said:
I really don't know anything about the theme but that looks a damn good machine.

So the pro still has the dragon which doesn't move as much, still has the shield and still has the trapdoor? Unless I'm mossing something that would appear to be the way to go on this one?
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No trapdoor, dragon moves up and down only, but the shield is there.

I think the Pro looks good.
 
I think the saved progress thing is a good avenue to explore to see if it's popular, as long as they don't do it on every game. It's good to try new things and see where they lead.

Overall for pinball I think I prefer a game that's a one credit game than a saved progress thing which feels more like 'if I grind enough I'll get there', to me that's less satisfying than putting that one great game together occasionally but I can see why it's popular with some people.

There's a small attempt in TMNT but once you've levelled your turtles there's nothing extra to do there. Mando topper had a little save feature I think? Venom was the first real attempt but for me it doesn't quite work because I feel like to save progress there needs to be extremely deep code or very slow levelling but lots of different, fun ways to level. Venom isn't very deep and the levelling is very quick, once you know what path to go down, every game is very much the same imo, especially after you unlock Captain America. Characters need to be extremely well balanced or just cosmetic to make it an actual choice. Also Venom needs an option to not start the boss battles if you're the right level imo, give you the option to continue to just level without fighting the bosses and losing your grid progress.

I'll watch the gameplay stream on Sunday and maybe make a decision on D&D then. I want to see more of the code but also feel like we haven't really seen how it shoots yet. I do have a couple of empty spaces to fill though...
 
Thinking on it, absolute best version of one shot pinball I have played, actually, is Batman 66 - and the features the side villains get, the tournament strategy is mr freeze and… mad hatter? I forget without being in front of the game, but essentially it saves villain progression across balls and freezes timers which can rack up serious points.

I’m not saying don’t try new things, sure - and I remember when Batman came out it was trashed as incomplete, a terrible game, etc. etc.
 
Has got my mind going though. Imagine a pin where you were gaining EXP and levelling a character as in World of Warcraft etc. Have to grind quests for 200 hours of play to hit max level to do the raid of the month. If you lose you go back to level 0.

Don't give Stern any ideas.
 
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