Brian Fargo talks about inXile's new Torment RPG
Out with D&D and in with brand new Numenera tabletop rules.
InXile's successor to Planescape: Torment has a whole new ruleset.
It's out with the old - the Dungeons & Dragons setting of Planescape - and in with the new: a Kickstarter-funded and brand new tabletop role-playing creation called Numenera, RPS revealed.
Numenera is a science fantasy set a billion years in the future, after civilisations have risen and fallen and settled at a Medieval level of technology. But the remnants of advanced societies are all around.
Numemera's made by Monte Cook, himself an original member of the Planescape: Torment team. He'll be working with inXile both to adapt Numenera into a video game as well as to provide a bit of writing for it.
Wizards of the Coast may have snubbed inXile's advances to licence Planescape, then, but those D&D rules apparently got in the way when making PST anyway. Sounds like a blessing in disguise.
Fargo is confident it will feel like a Torment game without Planescape, and thinks the Torment theme can straddle other settings and stories as well.
The plan is for real-time-with-pause combat for the moment.
InXile will look to Kickstarter again to fund the Torment game, a strategy that worked incredibly well for Wasteland 2. When, however, Fargo didn't say.
"We're very early in Torment's preproduction right now," Fargo mentioned. "We have a basic story outline, design sketches of the major characters, and thematic concepts defined.
"Wasteland 2 is in full production and we don't want to detract from that focus. But with that said, the writers on Wasteland are complete for the most part and the concept artists are not involved at this stage in the game."
Fargo also revealed that scripter Adam Heine had joined the team. He was another of the people who joined me for my special Planescape: Torment post-mortem in late August - the others including Chris Avellone and Colin McComb.
Fargo said Shattered Galaxy maker and former Obsidian veteran Kevin Saunders had joined the team, as have Planescape D&D campaign artist Dana Knutson and writer Ray Vallese.
"There will be some other surprise talent that I'll announce later on but I thought it important to stress the heritage of the great team we have," said Fargo. "I feel quite confident that the players of PST will feel comfortable and appreciate the experience being created."