As I understand it, when Larian Studios released the mod kit for BALDUR’S GATE 3 a few days ago they left some of the tools greyed out and inaccessible. Why? Well, they say ‘complexity,’ but I suspect they mean ‘Hasbro.’ Copyright violations of D&D, copyright violations of other IPs, copyright violations involving porn* – take your pick, the company’s probably going to freak out over it. So they released a restricted mod kit.
Which has been unrestricted, to absolutely nobody’s shock. “Nexus Mods user Siegfre uploaded a new mod that unlocks all the potential features squirreled away in the Baldur’s Gate 3 mod toolkit. With this mod, aptly named BG3 Toolkit Unlocked, players will be able to add new maps and campaigns to the game, really opening the possibility for players to build their own campaigns in the CRPG.”
Check that space in six months for the first epic campaigns. Because you know some glorious madman will decide that now is the time for a proper Ravenloft full-world mod. …Okay, I meant that as a joke but that would actually be pretty cool.
Moe Lane
*I’m adding that one for completeness’ sake. Everybody knows that modders make NSFW material, but Hasbro absolutely does not want to officially give people the tools to drag in entities from other licensed properties Hasbro owns, solely that the player can [expletive deleted] them. Although there is, God help us all, probably a lot of money in that.
#commissionearned
Ravenloft.
Such a cool concept.
Such excellent writing.
Such a player base that completely misses the point, and ruleset that undermines it.
Wizards has cultivated that player base, so that now it’s no longer wargaming adventurers but BookTok™ smut-novel RPers.
While I do agree…
I also remember groups using Deities & Demigods as a Monster Manual, and the d20 version of Call of Cthulhu. “If it has stats, we can kill it” has been part of D&D practically since Chainmail.
I appreciate the meta here. The developers clearly setup the mechanics to allow it, but comply with not releasing any such functioning elements.
Modders immediately mod the mod toolkit to enable the functions that the developers built for modding.