Roll for initiative
FormerFortniteand Blizzard developers have formed new studio Lightforge Games to make amultiplayerRPG that applies the collaborative world-building and storytelling of original tabletop Dungeons & Dragons to the polished video game presentation of its successors in the likes ofBaldur’s Gate 3.
Project ORCS, as the game is currently codenamed - with ORCS being an acronym for “Online Roleplaying with Collaborative Storytelling” - is effectively a few steps up from tools like Roll20 and Tabletop Simulator that allow pen-and-paper roleplayers to play online by providing a digital simulation of miniatures, dice and so on. The result is a mix of editor mode and traditionalco-opRPG, as players can serve as something akin to a dungeon master as they make their own homebrew adventures from scratch or simply jump into a premade campaign - either by the game’s devs or other players - with pals.
That editor can be used by itself to craft characters, environments and encounters before the group plays, or edited in real-time - much like a DM riffing around the table and reacting to dice rolls - as up to five players explore led by their Guide. You’ll be able to carefully customise your character in a character creator, picking from a selection of classes and species, before you jump in, too.
As you’d expect from a D&D-likeRPG, players can level up their characters across multiple quests, returning to a home base that they’ll also be able to upgrade and expand. Guilds are also planned, allowing players to form larger groups who share a world they’ve built together.
The whole thing looks very slick in its reveal trailer, with Lightforge CEO Matt Schembari’s work as a lead engineer at Blizzard and UI director at Epic Games - including on Fortnite’s battle royale mode - easy to see in the clean interface and social interaction between players.
“We’ve set out to make a roleplaying experience that has never been attempted before in the games industry. We’re calling it a Collaborative Storytelling RPG or CSRPG,” Schembari said. “Project ORCS is a collaborative game that will give new and old RPG fans a way to create their own stories on an interactive canvas.”
