template-based computer game design (e.g. FRUA)

[chair jockey]

I purchased a copy of Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures from its new legal seller, GoG. FRUA lets people design Gold Box-style adventures and play them.There are at least 700 user-made adventures available for free download in various places, including many tabletop module classics such as The Keep on the Borderlands and Tomb of Horrors.

I'm deeply immersed in designing my first Gold Box campaign, but wouldn't mind finding out about a better game design software that works in a similar way and offers a similar result--turn-based fantasy games that are heavily oriented toward strategy, resource management, etc. Anyone want to talk about that?

[Larkaloke]

Both Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 are very close to updated versions of the same thing. They come with a campaign to play through, but the main attraction is the user-made modules. They use 3rd edition rules (well, NWN uses something like 2.5 and NWN 2 uses 3.1 or something), and both have a fairly extensive module editor. NWN's is much easier to use right out of the box, but NWN 2's is more powerful. 3rd edition is still generally fairly strategic, so I think they would count. When designing your own module, of course, you can restrict resources and make sure that strategy is needed in order for the party to survive.

I personally prefer NWN over NWN 2, but that's mostly because of my preferences with regards to RPGs. I prefer the choose-a-portrait method of character creation over the choose-a-face method, and NWN's much closer to that than NWN 2 is. They've both got a very restrictive point-buy, which I generally consider their main flaw, but that's not so much of a problem when designing modules -- you can assign NPCs whatever stats you want, and there are character editors out there that can fix the problem for PCs.

I know there's also a new game in the works that's supposed to be similar, but I don't believe it's yet been released. It would be using 5th edition rules. Aside from that, I don't know of anything else that would fit that description.