Divinity Original Sin 2 Game Master Mode Revealed

Larian Studios have published a new video for Divinity: Original Sin 2. It’s twelve minutes long, and it explains how the Game Master mode will work, as well as showing it in action for the first time ever. Spoiler: it looks amazing.

Game Master mode was the final stretch goal during the Kickstarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin 2, way back when. The folks at Larian have been working on it for the past couple of years, and it’s finally in the stage where they feel confident enough to show it to the world. The video follows Larian boss Swen Vincke as he travels to Seattle, to the headquarters of Wizards of The Coast. He wants to ask them for permission to use a Dungeons & Dragons starter campaign as a demo for the new mode.

In order to obtain the permission they need, Larian set up a session with some of the folks from WoTC, with one of Larian’s own acting as game master. They’ve already ported the campaign they want to use, and we get to see a part of it – a fight with a group of goblins in some ruins. Most importantly, we get to see how the GM adapts to the players’ actions and demands. The game seems flexible enough to allow a lot of tinkering on the fly.

The second part of the video is spent on showing us what exactly the game master can do using this tool. The answer is “pretty much everything”. The environments need to be prepared in advanced, but almost everything else can be added or modified on the fly, including creating items, placing enemies (and controling them), setting traps, rewarding players with gold, experience and items, etc.

Obviously, people who have experience with pen and paper RPGs are going to see the faults and shortcomings more clearly, but it seems like a great middle ground, a good thing for folks who’d like to give PnP RPGs a try, but are terrified by all the logistics and number-crunching involved.