A Case for Monitizing the Foundry (NWO as a "Digital D&D Platform")

quickfoot · February 2021

I'll just start by saying that I have no expectation of this idea every being realized by the creators of NWO, but it was a thought provoking idea for myself, and I figured I'd share it.

One of the most compelling aspects of Dungeons & Dragons is that it is a platform for telling a story. Whether you are the DM or a player, you get to create a narrative that those involved can be a part of. Sometimes it's a story of intrigue, sometimes it's a story of battle (so called hack-n-slash), sometimes it's a story of heroism, a story of morality, or one that calls forth deep contemplation about a certain aspect of life. There's no way the creators of D&D could tell all of these stories themselves, there is no way the developers and designers of NWO can put out enough content to satisfy the seeming unquenchable thirst for content, and part of the fun is being the creator instead of the consumer.

If we look a P&P D&D, there are many so called "3rd Party Modules" or "3rd Party Rulebooks", sites like https://www.dmsguild.com/ provide a platform for authors of such 3rd party content to publish their wares. The Foundry could be utilized in much the same vein.

I imagine...

The Foundry could be something much like an app store, some free, some pay-to-play. The content of which is created by 3rd parties. Players can become content creators, and if they choose, can charge a fee to play the content they created, a percentage of which would go to "the company", the rest to the creator. Artists could create game assets which could be licensed to other content creators, with or without a fee, which could then be used in the Foundry. In this way, NWO could truly become a "Digital D&D Platform".

I never had the opportunity to utilize the Foundry myself, but if the proper tools and support were given to content creators, NWO could be a sea of content for players, and potentially, a source of income for creators.

I realize that this idea if probably absolutely crazy, and there would problems to be solved, such as licensing and copyright issues. There would also need to be some sort of "Quality Control", especially for "pay-to-play" content. The ability to give rewards, and the regulation of such rewards would also be an issue. If "the Foundry as a platform" for 3rd Party content was ever to be realized, there would be a whole host of issues, I know. I think though that viable solutions exist, and when necessary lawyers can work out any legal issue w.r.t intellectual property.

All the best...

hustin1 · February 2021

A lot of us are convinced that the Foundry could be made profitable and several people have proposed ideas to Cryptic to make it profitable. From my standpoint, it all comes down to money -- will the money people at Cryptic give them the development resources to build it right this time, i.e. in such a way that it could automatically adapt to other game changes? It needs to be easy to understand and maintain from a developer standpoint to keep its operating costs low. It also needs to be well-documented. The reason they discontinued it last time was because it was maintenance-intensive and eventually the people who understood how it worked had all left. There is one silver lining, though, and that's the fact that they at least *had* a Foundry, which means they have an example of a system that worked, and that can inform them of what they might want to do differently if they wanted to create Foundry 2.0.

I wish they would bring it back, but I'm not hopeful. We have to rake them over the coals just to get them to fix bugs that have been lingering for years. I hope their software isn't a case of spaghetti code, but even if it's well-architected they definitely appear to be lacking for development resources. Julia says that their team hasn't shrunk, and perhaps that's true, but if they're being forced to hit the snooze button on longstanding bugs there's still either a development deficit or a system that's inefficient to maintain. When I used to work at a rather well-known chemical company we always had weekly bug burn-down meetings to prioritize which ones to fix, and if we hit the snooze button on something for more than a month people started getting really antsy on when we'd put that bug to bed.

I'd love to see @cwhitesidedev#9752 and/or @nitocris83 show us some details on the kind of under-the-hood things they're looking at, and the kinds of capabilities they're aiming at making possible, and it would be really great if they could chime in on the Foundry and what they think about what it would take from a software standpoint to make it live again.

As an example of my train of thought: one of the features the Foundry had was to let you save your quest as a text file (you couldn't re-import it but you at least had something archived). It looks a lot like a Lua file, so perhaps the Foundry used some form of Lua scripting. I have no idea if this is how their normal quests work, but one question I would ask if I worked there would be, is this the way we should build it again, or should it work some other way? Does using XML make sense, or does that make it too hard to work with? What's the best way to make a Foundry quest work seamlessly with their standard quest engine? When their quest engine undergoes a change, how can the Foundry system be set up so that Foundry quests get automatically updated the way (I presume) that normal game quests do? Another way to look at the question is, how can a Foundry 2.0 system be architected to make it as lightweight and transparent as possible?

I'm not claiming anything wrong with Lua; the Legend of Grimrock's fantastic editor uses Lua, but as a developer my questions would be based on what was most compatible with their existing quest engine so as to minimize any maintenance load that a Foundry 2.0 would impose. Ideally, the maintenance load should be zero.

Someone at Cryptic mentioned that they're prevented from allowing player-generated content on consoles due to the certification process, but that might not actually be true. Others have pointed out console MMOs that do allow player-created quests, so it surely must be possible if Cryptic wanted to pursue it. The certification process might be different but it doesn't appear to be an outright prohibition.

From a legal standpoint, when the Foundry was up we had to agree that Cryptic owned anything we produced. I was fine with that; I simply wanted to create great content that other players could enjoy.

auron · February 2021

What they should do is make a dedicated D&D "foundry" game.

I know NWN has a half decent albeit dated foundry however, you can't share your UGC easily. This "foundry" game would have this ability integrated into it like Neverwinter used to and also possibly Social Media (facebook, twitter,etc) integration.

I really wish they would release the foundry's raw code to the public domain so people could bring this idea to life (i know at least one person who could do so).

highlyunstable · February 2021

I would pay $$$ and continue to play this game IF the Foundry came back. Talk about some AWESOME adventuring.... some of them were just.... AMAZING.

vastano · February 2021

highlyunstable said:
I would pay $$$ and continue to play this game IF the Foundry came back. Talk about some AWESOME adventuring.... some of them were just.... AMAZING.

i remember all the work done by players with neverwinter nights some of the moduls are still going strong (higher ground)
the sheer amount of player content was amazing ok some of the mods were not great some were excellent
its a shame neverwinter online removed this aspect because there are maybe thousands of players playing atm and it would give all of something to do rather then look for another game when you finished your 2 hours doing weeklies

A Case for Monitizing the Foundry (NWO as a "Digital D&D Platform")

Comments