Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons Battlemarked

Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked is a turn-based digital tabletop game set in the Forgotten Realms, where you face off against classic D&D monsters, delve into dungeons and save the realm from those who seek its ruin.

I joined the project right after pre-production and have stayed on the team through release and all post-launch content, including the large DLC for the third campaign.

I was brought on as the sole narrative designer, responsible for all narrative content. On top of that, I produced the majority of the level designs outside of the six dungeons in the current version, and designed and implemented all of the combat and non-combat encounters in the game.

My Contributions

Narrative

  • Championed the story and lore, keeping the team included and informed about the direction.
  • Worked alongside animators, musicians, audio engineers, programmers and artists to get the most out of every story element.
  • Found solutions to the constraints of working inside an external IP with tons of history.
  • Kept the story flexible to protect scope, and focused on moments where gameplay could elevate the narrative.

Encounters

  • Made all main and side quests, plus questlines introducing new characters.
  • Designed and implemented all combat and social encounters.
  • Worked with tools programmers to streamline the pipeline and expand the encounter tool.

Combat

  • Created bosses whose gameplay matches their look and theme.
  • Built varied combat encounters that kept the experience from becoming repetitive.
  • Prioritized enemies for gameplay variety and to fit each location's theme.

Additional Work

  • Implemented all the dialogue in the game.
  • Worked on additional cutscenes that didn't require custom animations.
  • Designed most of the diorama levels.
  • Helped direct voice actors during the recording sessions, providing tone and context where the script notes lacked them.
The dwarf fighter from Battlemarked, a miniature figure on its base

Narrative Example – Retrofitting a Questline

A Golden Opportunity

Fitting a questline into an existing narrative

I had the pleasure of working with Jerry Holkins, co-creator of Penny Arcade, PAX, and Child's Play, to design and implement a multi-location side quest for our first campaign. The campaign was already out when we designed the questline, so I had to make sure it fit into the existing content without breaking the continuity of the main quest.

Testbed for Future Content

Bite-sized encounters let me test the darkness mechanics that we later built a whole dungeon around in the third campaign. Designing the combat encounter also made it clear that our fog of war behavior needed an update.

Gated Progress

I set up logic to make sure the main campaign's narrative stayed free of plot holes, and that the side quest never revealed information before the main questline did.

Proof of the Zhentarim profiting from the conflicts in Neverwinter Wood Sneaking into the Zhentarim hideout
The players can't sneak into the Zhentarim hideout until they've discovered, in the main questline, that the Zhentarim are making money off the ongoing conflicts in Neverwinter Wood.
Familiar Places

I reused locations but with some changes to them, to give the feeling of a living, changing world that the players have a hand in shaping. It also saved the artists time, since they didn't have to create a completely new location.

The dragon's lair before
The dragon's lair overgrown with vines
Returning to the lair of the dragon slain by the heroes in a previous quest, to find it overgrown with vines.
A Thematic End to a Thematic Quest

The whole narrative of the Golden Opportunity questline is about Omin Dran's latest get-rich-quick scheme. His attempt to open a portal to the dimension of gold gave us the fun opportunity to create a boss battle themed around gathering gold to stay alive, and losing it all in the end. Ending up battered, bruised and without a copper to your name should make you think twice before falling for another lucrative deal that sounds too good to be true.

Encounter Example – Warlock Introduction

The Shard's Shadow

Disrupt the ritual gone wrong

Narrative Background

A man was spotted heading to the gravesite of a powerful necromancer, and now dark clouds have gathered over the location. The heroes make haste to the heart of the storm, where they're met by the sight of someone hovering in the air like a marionette tangled in its own strings. Whatever ritual this person was attempting has gone horribly wrong, and now their life is in mortal danger…

Narrative Goals
  • Introduce our new playable hero, Azruss the warlock, to the players.
  • Hint at the warlock's backstory and show his struggle against his less-than-benevolent patron.
Azruss the warlock standing in the snowy gravesite, purple light rising behind him
Gameplay Goal

Construct a fight with objectives that players can approach in more than one way.

Objective: destroy all five obelisks scattered around the level. Each destroyed obelisk raises the intensity of the fight, with more enemies spawning and other events triggering.

Players can group up and take down the obelisks one at a time, or split up to destroy them all in quick succession. Both approaches bring their own challenges.

A glowing purple obelisk in the snow, with the heroes fighting on the path behind it

Combat Example – Boss Fight

Frost Jarl Ungarth

The crowned tyrant

Narrative Background

Throughout the second campaign, the frost giant leader Ungarth has shown himself to be without honor: he stabbed his own brother in the back, ambushed the heroes after a fight, and held a town hostage to make the players do his bidding.

But now that he has his hands on a powerful artifact, and godhood within his grasp, the frozen tyrant finally has the confidence to step onto the battlefield without playing dirty.

Themes: Giant EnemyRestricted AreaIce and ColdArea of Effect

For the main game's final boss, I wanted a flashy fight with big attacks befitting an ice giant, in an arena that feels too small for him. Instead of making the boss grow, I made the space shrink. Enter: ice spikes. Most of Ungarth's attacks spawn ice spikes that block the heroes but not him, as he smashes straight through them. Ungarth can shatter the ice spikes to damage everything around them, but destroying them also gives the heroes energy for new spell cards.

Frost Jarl Ungarth, a crowned frost giant raising his sword
Boss Logic

Ungarth picks a random ability from a list and removes it once used. When the list is empty, it resets.

Storm Scream

Storm Scream: Pushes the heroes back and adds ice spikes.

Second Phase

The game's first two-phase boss: Ungarth heals back to full and shatters an ice spike every turn. His attacks also get stronger:

  • Storm Scream: spawns a large number of ice spikes.
  • Charge Attack: a bigger sweeping attack that spawns ice spikes.
  • Giant Leap: one more leap.
  • Shatter: three ice spikes at once.
Additional Boss Fight Features
Harshnag trapped in a prison of ice beside a hero, asking to be freed so he can fight Ungarth with them
An Ally in the Ice

Free the giant Harshnag from the ice to gain a powerful ally to aid in the fight.

Ungarth and his two frost giant guards facing the heroes in the icy arena
Cowardly King

After a few rounds, Ungarth calls in two frost giant guards.

Notable Updates

The True Heroes

Games are best made with others. Making Battlemarked would not have been possible without this marvelous team of people.

The Battlemarked team gathered in a forest scene from the game, with remote team members framed down both sides Part of the team sitting together in front of a tavern scene from the game, holding dice