Dungeons & Dragons – Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons DLC Has Arrived | Dev Guide

Foreign I can’t wait to see D and Minecraft combined that trailer was nuts I’m sure a lot of people are very excited for this content what was fun about merging Minecraft and d d so uh we have been wanting to do this for a long long time

Because we have a lot of Dungeons and Dragons fans in the studio so yeah we really need to make it happen and I think there is a bit of DnD DNA into Minecraft so it kind of feels like there is a there is overlapping here and the

Thing was like yes but how do we do it how do we make it happen so it was about this Define what what it could be what it definitely was not going to be and then finding the best partner for it and we had ever Bloom who had the dnds

Talk or nearly top of the IP they want to work on and we say wow this looks like it’s going to be a very good match yeah so we specialize in in story content and that was one of the reasons also we were approached this is the

First Minecraft DLC that is story driven uh it’s the first thing that is really about completing a linear story beginning middle and end uh it’s certainly the first one with that’s fully voiced but yeah the fantasy setting of Minecraft uh paired really well with DND so there was a lot of

Stuff already there for us you know uh in terms of some of the blocks and so forth um and also sort of that theming and state of mind for the player uh to to set the set the tone uh I think that one of the things that was really hard about

Uh bringing it over was that d d being so much about storytelling is really about like there’s a cinematic quality that of course when you’re playing a tabletop is often in your head uh and something that we needed to bring to the game and so that’s also something that

We uh specializing as well is uh which you can see behind me is the uh this is an aurora borealis that we put in icewinddale uh in the game and so there’s a lot of effects like that we uh made some Innovations in audio uh our audio engine uh we’ve done some really

Cool things to really Elevate Minecraft to that cinematic level that you want it to be at when you’re telling a grand story like one in the Forgotten Realms was that in any way nerve-wracking to add uh Ricardo any any type of story driven content for Minecraft it was the

Terrifying I mean because uh Minecraft by definition is a Sandbox open in the game now when we do this collaboration we normally default go into Adventure Mode which constrains more so you cannot break everything so you can have a story then it was uh like I wouldn’t say okay

Oh we want to go full voice over hold on a second we have never done football on a license that was that’s our thing and we were very adamant about that yeah no no we need to to do it and we’re like okay okay let’s give it a go if you feel

Feeling good about it and actually actually it was a great call because when you are in and it’s really immersive you see the track Serene is start with the dungeon master voice over which really introduced to the game and then it moves you into the game world

And there’s this transition and there is all the banter between the characters and the personality of the character it’s not just voice over it’s voice acting and it asks a lot and it’s all in English or English only we cannot fit more languages unfortunately but

Even if you and if there will be some subtitles so you can understand the story but even if you don’t understand the language it will work it will give you the narrative give you the mood the emotions what what’s the most quintessential thing that’s important when you’re making anything for

Minecraft when making anything for Minecraft I think everybody will give you a different answer but for our studio it’s it’s really twofold and they go hand in hand first is storytelling and that is uh even in things outside of Dungeons and Dragons we are always very story focused we believe that Minecraft

Has a capacity for storytelling that’s not really explored enough uh there’s uh you know there are so many possibilities for storytelling uh and the second is elevating Minecraft to something greater than the sum of its parts uh and that’s sort of goes into what I was talking about with these cinematic effects uh

With our beautiful custom soundtrack and um all of these things together we wanna we want you to feel like whenever we make anything we want you to go I can’t believe they did this in Minecraft I want we want we want you to be playing

Its own your own game uh not not just the DLC for Minecraft but this is the game it was quite interesting especially at the beginning it was like okay let’s try to figure out what these uh DSC what this game is not so go by okay is it

Going to be a virtual tabletop nah it’s not going to be able to tabletop it wouldn’t work in Minecraft there are plenty already is not what we want to do okay is it going to be your perfect video games DND simulator uh no that’s baldos cave 3 which does it you know in

Spades and it’s fantastic but no that doesn’t really work so it’s gonna be tied to Minecraft so there are a few things about Minecraft you’re going to be a character yes it’s going to be action based and you’re gonna move into an open world yes you’re gonna do that

So all this means yes they are Minecraft and they work but there are a number of things which are not Minecraft and Airbnb and those needs to be layered on so we need classes we don’t have classes in Minecraft let’s have fun class starts oh yes progression and then you have the

Setting you have the forcaterians the characters the lore and that was the magic that everboom managed to wave together make it happen I think there are two kind of main things that I want to touch on the first is uh you’re talking about you know the classes the

Combat in this game is completely custom so we didn’t use any of the vanilla stuff that Minecraft comes with we had to recode health and damage and everything because this is uh uh much more advanced uh than what Minecraft typically has so you’re gonna have enemies in normal Minecraft right you’d

Have a zombie that sort of just goes like that you know hits you again and again repeatedly sort of mindlessly and in our game we have different attacks uh multiple attacks with different effects we have uh the classes which can attack at different speeds and that scales with

Your uh different stats we have classes that you know have different abilities and those all need to interact correctly as you would in any game and just in general the combat itself was a a real tremendous challenge to really overhaul completely to a new system when we were first coming up with

The idea we talked about what are the essential pillars of DnD and what are the things that we want to focus on and I don’t remember exactly uh what what we presented but in talking about tabletop versus the the uh video game we knew that tabletop it’s similar to Baldur’s Gate 3

Was not going to capture our audience nor was it really going to be a good fit for Minecraft uh everyone already is used to the real-time combat that Minecraft has so we wanted to lean into that so as a result when you play you’ll notice the stats aren’t exactly you know

What they do in in dungeons dragons tabletop they complement more of our combat system uh you know to adjust the speed of your attack and how often you crit for example what were like some of the crunchy things that you added that were quintessential to DND so we started out

With talking about what classes we wanted and what the kind of the scope of that was we said okay we can’t do every single class uh we want to do the what are the ones that people are going to want to play and we got some data about

Like what are the most popular classes and we did some research on how their abilities would interact with each other you start out with two class abilities that are unique to your class and you keep those for the whole game and then through story elements which I will not spoil

Everybody in each chapter gets one additional spell but it’s the same for all classes uh and they’re all sort of themed so it’s not exactly the same way that it works in the tabletop uh we wanted more we wanted to be able to focus more on the story and the quality

Of the actual gameplay than focusing on the character building element So speaking about you know the the different pillars of DnD we’ve got that pillar of player choice we have the pillar of Storytelling we have the pillar of character customization and we decided that the carriage customization was less

Important to us when it came to than than storytelling and you know getting this narrative and connecting with people so you get that DND flavor uh you know I I don’t don’t expect to be spending you know three hours in character creation uh it’s it’s it’s just a stat a stat

Assignment and pick a class uh and you get thrown right into it that being said playing different classes does present you with different experiences so you’ll want to replay it uh to see how combat differs what kind of uh strategies you’re gonna use differently uh you know

We talked about the kind of like the the tenpole things about D what’s important for Minecraft to maintain because you know when you when you’re kind of merging these two worlds Ricardo what was important to maintain like Minecraft uh they are prescribed in Minecraft I think we found that uh it was very

Similar to the approach we found with working with wizard of the course so it’s like right uh as longer as long as you don’t break it it’s fine go for it try a few things it’s like uh uh we have some Polish some doing the answer for

Example uh we have what is about Firearms like you know firearms in uh Minecraft no guns uh but that’s not the Chrome audience it’s not a problem yeah that’s a that’s an easy easy for this one uh other than that we have some limitation about the character size but

You can do whatever you want with monsters and NPCs so that’s fine as well um then yeah it’s pretty much fair game uh what you want to keep from Minecraft is the sense of Freedom the sense of a agency the sense of oh I can make my own

Way through whatever is the experience at end and I think this this does it very well do you see his uh I think the the classic pillar of DnD combat exploration role play it’s all all three and it adds something else it adds some flavor some personality that

Is hard to find even in in different games we wanted to tell a story that was able to say something meaningful and something deep but we also knew that there are restrictions on Minecraft of What kinds of stories we can tell because we can’t go too dark we can’t

You know we can’t be super bloody uh so one of the things that was difficult was Finding how to tell a story that’s going to connect both with kids and uh adults long time players of d d what’s you know themes that that everyone can connect to

And we’ve had so many great responses uh like Ricardo said to you know connecting with the characters yeah they were finding the tone was really important uh Minecraft is a everyone 10 plus game so yes it needs to fit with rating so that’s very important but also uh

Finding the voice and something I found a bit surprising is that uh you are a character yeah okay you choose your classroom but the character as a name and there’s a voice so it’s not your uh that was a big discussion in production yeah the new protagonist which is basically your standing is

Going to go every time and no no the car that talks talks a lot talks back as opinions as a soul and but it works when I play personally I never feel like oh I’m forced into a character I’m like oh that’s not me I would no no it it works

In the story works in the uh in the narrative so that was a bold choice I think it’s going to pay off hopefully people will uh will enjoy it yeah we wanted to have a buddy of a buddy Adventure so uh when we started with that we were like okay well let’s uh

We’re probably gonna want the main character to be silent and we started to try and write it and it was just it was a slog it was it just wasn’t feeling good you didn’t really get any relationship between the characters so yeah I think it was definitely a good

Move I’m curious do you have like some favorite monsters or areas that you ported into Minecraft like between both of you like was it funny seeing these monsters brought to life in Minecraft it was unbelievable let me tell you I love seeing everything that our team makes

It’s so remarkable uh and one of the things that I think worked really well is we we focused a lot on the player ex player experience and like sight lines uh when doing the level design and that actually really paid off in a bigger way than we thought it would uh because you

Get these nice framings of each location in each location brings like it has a real atmosphere and brings the feeling of these places to life so every location is really special in its own way also with all the dungeons each of the Monsters uh you know they’re made

With what monsters are going to be there in mind and it’s all lore accurate to D and D in terms of you know where do these these monsters live how uh how do they live and uh there’s sort of little stories told with where monsters appear and what monsters they’re with I’m a

Personal favorite is is the shambling mound not because of Any abilities or anything I just think it’s very imposing and uh everything it’s worth noting that as with all Minecraft DLC you know we wanted to keep the Minecraft feel so it’s not like we put in you know super

High resolution models or anything we’re not trying to you know throw Minecraft out the window it was really important to us to maintain the feeling of Minecraft so uh it’s all still voxelized you know made of blocks uh so like the shambling mound even though a large part

Of it is you know its main body is very cubic uh the Nuance that our artists are able to put into it making it feel and look gross and you know have things dripping off of it uh is is really cool to see is it weird that I’m excited for

The gelatinous cube it feels like it’s time it’s time to shine is in Minecraft like it this is yes well it’s it very much is a a slime from Minecraft uh that it with a different texture uh oh that that is a very cool thing though is uh

We had a nice little detail there are really cool details to find uh in this map uh that I’m excited for people to to notice and one of those is the gelatinous cube has uh little bits of like skeleton bone and so when it does its attack which swallows you up and you

Get stuck inside of it you can sort of see the the I think there’s a skull of of like the previous uh the previous victim which is very cool and that sort of Jiggles around like it’s in jello I love it how long is this content potentially I mean it seems pretty meaty

For a first time player if you’re really taking your time to see everything uh it’s about 10 hours uh if you are rushing through uh probably five hours that’s a lot even looking at the trailer and it was the trailer was so well received and there was so much

Excitement uh it just feels Charming in a way I I haven’t experienced it’s just a very Charming looking piece of DLC thank you that opening scene that you see in in the trailer uh you only I will tell you you only get to go there once

And that’s in the very beginning of the game but I think it works because we we all collectively had this idea that we wanted to pursue of of being thrown the book so to speak yeah uh and you know actually starting to play D D and then

You go into the mind of the DM uh in the mind of the players and so we wanted to capture sort of that 80s basement with the open pizza boxes and you know the the open the the the old computer on the side that was moved out of the way so

You could push the table in uh and uh the moving boxes of stuff from college that you you left behind uh all of those things uh are in there there’s a ton of detail in that room including uh all those Foods our DND themed so uh I believe there’s displacer chips or

Something I think there’s an orcus up drink in there they’re they’re cute little things there yeah was there a big challenge like you have an inventory system I think the biggest technical challenge with this map was dealing with stuff like inventory and uh skills and there’s a tremendous amount of

Information that you have to communicate that Minecraft doesn’t really support that level of uh information so we created a in-game menu system that you can navigate using your movement directions uh with different like tabs of the inventory uh so we basically did away with the Minecraft inventory

Completely and sort of coded our own thing that a little menu backpack that you take everywhere with you uh which I think is people are really going to like is is a very satisfying uh juicy kind of uh interactive system perfect it is also very useful because you know I I always

Go into the OR there is a quest log and say oh what am I supposed to do okay this is the quest so it helps me just going through and for people who are new to DND or just want a refresher uh there’s also a glossary that updates as

You go through the game when new terms or new beasts are introduced and you can look and read a little bit about them was it difficult adding skills to this how do you do that like are there dice rolls how does this happen in Minecraft skills are a little bit harder to

Pinpoint they’re all kind of unique as I said that ties into our custom combat system uh but practically the way that they work is they’re represented in your hot bar and you interact to use them and there’s a cooldown that happens for each of them and uh so we’re not dealing with

Spell slots or anything like that and with the die rolls the die rolls in combat we there was a that was a big decision about what we wanted to do with dies in combat we ultimately decided that in order to keep real-time combat feeling exciting we didn’t want to bog

You down in a bunch of die rolls so passively while you’re fighting there is a chance to you get a little pop-up notification that says that you roll the NAT 20 and you do 20 I mean excuse me uh uh double damage for that uh hit uh

There’s no like Nat one or anything like that in combat uh we it didn’t really play well in testing uh but the real way that die dice rolling comes into this game is in dialogue and skill checks so during dialogue you’ll have various moments where you can decide to use a

Certain skill and of course depending on how you specked out your character those skills will be different uh there’s a little die rolling animation that happens on screen and uh something that is crucially different than Baldur’s Gate 3 is that every single choice always has a unique Nat 20 option

Because we wanted it to make sure that the net that a Nat 20 was always extremely satisfying you know we wanted the the everybody screaming around the table like oh I can’t believe it’s so exciting so uh each interaction that can happen has a critical success uh and I

Think most of them if not all have also critical failure uh conditions as well so unique dialogue that you won’t see unless you uh roll uh not 20 or not one what’s the number one thing you feel the Minecraft fans should know about this DLC like what’s your kind of like real

Fast uh guide to it you know everything they kind of need to know about this new DLC that’s about to come from you know from Minecraft and and d and also what was it like seeing the response and the excitement from fans about the trailer so first the the quick guide is for

Minecraft fans is that this is the largest most intense Adventure Map you will have ever played uh it’s got a story that has lovable characters uh a rich world and details like and and Technology like you haven’t seen in a map before and if you like Adventures if

You like fantasy then you’re going to love this and um similarly for d d fans I would say if you uh are not really into Minecraft uh still definitely play it there are uh and also yeah the response to the trailer there are a lot of people saying that they haven’t played Minecraft

Before and they want to in order to get this uh and I would say yeah if you’re not really into Minecraft by the same token that this is Minecraft it also isn’t it’s also like this isn’t the normal Minecraft experience you’re gonna get something special here perfect interesting the interesting

Thing for me is like uh I have friends who I play uh DND airplane games with and uh some may or may not play Minecraft uh those who play Minecraft hardly play Minecraft DLC it’s just that they just play Minecraft creative or survival whatever little I think this is

The first Park where they are asking me about it it’s the first time today when it’s coming out is it out same for me yeah I have friends that have never really taken an interest until now I mean we know that we don’t know what kind of overlapping is going to be

Between uh DND audience and Minecraft audience we but hopefully it’s gonna work out it’s gonna uh create some bars in the Minecraft Community about DND is going to make people who play Indian D but don’t know much about Minecraft maybe between the same getting closer to give it a try and

Something may come out there isn’t no we don’t have any hard data here it says yeah it is gonna be it’s gonna be a slam dunk or anything like that but we feel like this is a chance we really wanted to take I I can tell you that it was very

Important to us from day one that we wanted to please but we’ve been doing pleasing Minecraft fans for years so we’re we’ve got that we we knew from day one uh in addition to pleasing Minecraft fans we had to please d d fans so it was

Very important to us to be accurate to do our research you know reading tons and tons of handbooks and uh making sure that we did Justice two people’s favorite things uh you know the things that maybe an outside Observer wouldn’t necessarily think of when they think of

DnD we wanted to get those references in we wanted to get uh the things that are gonna make d d players really happy perfect um did you check out the Monstrous compendium volume 3 Minecraft creatures that’s on d d beyond what was that like seeing your Minecraft what was like

Seeing Minecraft creatures turned into d d creatures I think it was it was excellent I mean it’s just like they they were 15 writing for me like yeah stats blocks you know and all that like that it seems like they’re made for this the the they

Will they will be just fine over there perfect uh is there anything I didn’t ask about this DLC that you feel like I should have uh yes or something I I want to mention is is a uh the audio side of things because we talk about voiceover which is impressive

As it was done in this part uh and also we need to talk about the music because music has been specifically composed uh for this pack by uh Kyle Martin who is also our audio lead so he also was the lead on sound effects and voiceover as well yeah so it was specifically

Composed for this tailored to the content it’s really well done it’s really immersive really hits the mode and it is a dynamic it’s interactive so that’s a that’s a big part of this that we were very excited about because we’ve actually we’re we were one of the earliest

Minecraft Partners so we were one of the earliest people making Minecraft DLC uh official DLC and so for years we have been sort of in Pursuit we’ve also won one of the only large teams with an actual sound Department sound has always been a core part of our identity as a

Team and one of the things that we’ve been searching for for years is ways to overcome some of the limitations of the audio engine in Minecraft there are no Dynamic Fades well arguable but there’s limited Dynamic Fades you don’t really have you know audio engines that you can

Tap into uh what our sound designer audio lead Kyle likes to say is uh his job is finding creative ways to turn sounds on and off and that is so true and he he and the rest of the sound team have done an incredible job here with uh

We finally sort of broke the code that we’ve been trying to uh reach for years we finally have this beautiful Dynamic music system where uh track seamlessly transitioned into each other instruments come in and out based on the action that’s happening uh and it’s it was like a huge breakthrough like we

Were celebrating with we called up all the old people who used to be in the sound Department was like we did it we finally figured it out uh and so that that was a huge milestone for us and I think it’s it’s really going to have a big effect on the experience

And I have a little bit of a a news here is that the soundtrack is going to be available on the 26th on all the major digital platforms so uh if people enjoy it they can go get it maybe they can use it for their own DND games

You know in background some people do I do so I mean I think it’s gonna work very well you can also uh like if you’re playing the game you know it’s it’s copyright free so you can stream it oh yeah there’s that in case that wasn’t

Clear I I and uh when when is the DLC out uh the 26th of September at 10 A.M PST perfect and is there anything you want to say to fans or kind of Express about d d or Minecraft at this moment I hope people

Will want to give it a try because uh it does things that Minecraft is not necessarily supposed to do and that’s a good word in a very good way uh and it really pushes the end pushes the envelope of what is possible to do within Minecraft with Minecraft content and it

Can open up possibilities also questions internally about enabling Creator to uh do more because they can it sure did uh yeah I I guess I’ll say that uh it’s been we we’ve all been so incredibly honored to be given this uh opportunity the chance to work with this uh property

And the world of of Dungeons and Dragons and you know some of our team are d d veterans some of our team had never played d d everybody got into it after this uh I I don’t think there’s a single person who was like you know what this

Isn’t for me everybody got into it everybody did a ton of research uh and I hope that we did Justice to what for so many people is one of the most important elements of their lives uh and we knew that those people were going to be

Playing this game and we we wanted to do right by them and hopefully you agree that we did I do have a follow-up question how long have you each have you been working on Minecraft I’ve been working on Minecraft foreign professionally I’ve been working on Minecraft for maybe eight years uh but

Uh in terms of how often I’ve since I’ve been involved in the community maybe 11 or 12. this is my actual final question because that’s a long time you’re very professionally emotionally invested in trading worlds what is this like you know after 10 years what does the community mean to

You what does this game mean to you are there things that are surprising you have to have some some pretty amazing insights into all of this it’s a hard question well I think for me it’s like his moment like this when you are like okay you’re doing this we normally release like uh

Probably close to 10 license Parks per year and uh I probably produce half of those maybe a bit more but but sometimes and they don’t cool everybody does something special everybody’s is interesting different but sometimes there is one like this one where you go in and you

Are kind of Blown Away you’re like oh oh thank you I didn’t I didn’t expect this I didn’t expect these I didn’t expect like uh mini skirting into Minecraft and then that those are the moments that’s exciting after after 10 years for me I think for me uh

For me it’s always about my team uh of course it’s also I mean it’s about the players but it but as the creative director of everbloom games uh and I I’m not technically one of the founding members I helped get it on its feet uh but being you know every day seeing the

Growth the personal growth of all the people in our company seeing people move through different stages of their lives and uh people from different backgrounds and different all over the world we have people in I think uh like eight different countries uh seeing everybody be brought together through this common passion of Minecraft

And all of these people who took something they loved and made it into a career and seeing all of this sort of culminate of course it’s going to continue to culminate as we do more things but seeing it culminate in this wonderful piece that represents what we’ve always been about about

Storytelling about meaning about characters about uh pushing the envelope on on capabilities of Minecraft all of these these pillars of what makes everbloom everbloom and what makes each of us unique we got to actually show off in this game and it’s very rare that you get uh in in

Any career to be able to get exactly the right thing that hits all of the points that you want to show that you get to do do it all and so it’s been a really emotional experience to see you know I mean it was a hard process uh

But seeing it all come together and seeing the way that people have just yeah I’m rambling but just pouring all their heart and soul into it I I I have a tremendous amount of respect for every person on the team and seeing how that they they have crafted

This thing and making this amazing experience that we can’t wait to you know release into the world thank you all for your time it was so fantastic to meet both of you I’m really excited for this DLC uh did you have anything else no thanks for you thanks so very much

For giving us this opportunity we we love talking about this we can go on for hours I guess yes uh yeah this is uh this has been a really really good journey I think for uh everybody that’s been uh so lucky to be part of it