Sword Coast Legends

The concept of Sword Coast Legends always intrigued me, but I really wasn't sure how the sandbox-style build-your-own-adventure would play out in reality. Today at E3 I had some hands-on time with the game, and I really enjoyed it. A team of four of us took on the Dungeon Master (Also handled by another player, controlling a swarm of spiders, a host of traps, a massive boss, and other surprises) and crawled through a quickly hand-crafted dungeon complete with all the staples you'd expect from a real-deal Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

While the game has other aspects to it, this "build a campaign" feature feels like the next evolution of Dungeons & Dragons. Forget hours of setup and boxes full of pieces – everything you could ever want to play with is available here. I can definitely see this being used to host D&D games, especially for playgroups that may have become separated over the years as people move from place to place; all you have to do is log on voice chat and boom, you may as well be in the DM's living room.

I played as a dwarven rogue, fond of drink and stabby-style abilities. My ability to search and disarm traps was instrumental to the group's survival as we moved through the dungeon, and I'll admit I was probably too far ahead of the group in a lot of cases, placing me in harms way often.

I died quite a few times, especially on the final boss spider, but the dungeon jaunt was fast, pleasant, and interesting. We completed the customized quest, found secret doors, and gathered treasure. The dungeon tools that went into building and populating the dungeon were quite interesting – extremely easy to use but allowing for a lot of customization.

Looking forward to playing a lot more of this one when it rolls out this year.