Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 may not be as moddable as Bethesda’s Skyrim, but the beautiful and brilliant D&D adventure is home to some absolutely cracking mods. Alongside smaller mods to add features like player housing, some fans are working on absolutely massive custom campaigns that add entirely new games to Larian’s game.
One such mod is the in-development Mad Mage’s Domain, a massive adaptation of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage adventure that is being built within Baldur’s Gate 3. One of the first ever adventures designed for 5e’s level 17-20 characters, the ambitious mod is being worked on by a team of 400 volunteer fans, and it’s already shaping up well.
Speaking to FRVR, Andromeda, the Executive Director on the project, explained that the upcoming custom campaign aims to replicate the “choice, consequence, and reactivity” of Baldur’s Gate 3 with a whole host of new content that adapts the tabletop adventure with brilliant D&D mechanics of Larian’s game. After all, as Skyrim designer Bruce Nesmith previously told us, one of BG3’s biggest wins is how it makes the tabletop game far more accessible.
Prior to forming the mod team, Andromeda explains that she spent months familiarising herself with the Baldur’s Gate 3 Toolkit and its extended Moonglasses editor. Over the past three months, work on the project has ramped up with the mod’s full scope properly outlined by its leads.
“We plan to adapt the entirety of the DotMM campaign to Baldur’s Gate 3, including all twenty-three dungeon levels and Skullport,” Andromeda told us. “With a total of 10 companion characters, 500+ named characters, and an expanded level range of levels 1-20, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but with an expanding team of over 400 passionate and dedicated volunteers, we’re ready to face that challenge.”
Andromeda explained that the goal of Mad King’s Domain is to take everything great about Baldur’s Gate 3 and inspire a new version of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage tabletop game, including adding a full story that turns the fantastic gameplay of the original into something that more players will want to play through.
“Having a module with high mechanical depth but little development to the story and plot allows us to create something truly unique and this is the reason we chose to adapt the Dungeon of the Mad Mage to Baldur’s Gate 3,” she explained.
With this in mind, the custom campaign aims to add 10 custom companion characters, “not including the possibility for further temporary or camp companion characters”, to support the new story with an emotional core. After all, for a CRPG like Baldur’s Gate 3, strong companions are really the draw.
“One of the struggles many players and DMs have with the DotMM campaign is that it’s so expansive with little overarching plot structure or story to carry it along,” Andromeda said. “One of the benefits of developing a mod adaptation of this campaign is that we get to take the time to fully develop the story, flesh out companion characters, and allow players to experience the campaign in a new way. Baldur’s Gate 3’s dialogue system in particular and structuring of the plot through acts allow us to develop a rich and expansive story that we believe will greatly enhance this infamously large campaign.”
As with any mod of this scale, they explain that there have been a few issues getting the project running. While there are a lot of volunteers willing to help, the mod’s leads have had to find ways to manage everything, and that’s one hell of a learning experience.
“The main challenge we’ve faced is that due to this being a free, volunteer-based project, we haven’t been able to find a high-quality, free project management software to manage such a large team, so we’re having to establish workarounds and custom systems for the project, but the passion and dedication of our team has kept challenges like these from being a major roadblock,” they told us.
At the time of writing, Andromeda explains that the Mad Mage’s Domain custom campaign is a “multi-year project” and the team is “not announcing a release window for the project or even the demo yet” as the team wishes to hunker down and simply work on what they want to create, similar to other huge mods like Skyblivion and Fallout London.
All in all, it’s a very ambitious project, and one that shows just how dedicated the BG3 community still is as Larian moves onto pastures new. (Well, unless that Nintendo Switch 2 port ends up being real, which we hope it is!)
Additionally, if you’re an ambitious fan of Baldur’s Gate 3 and you want to help bring the Mad Mage’s Domain to help, the team is still looking for “level designers, visual designers, sound designers, composers, modelers, animators, and coders” interested in volunteering. If you’re looking to join – or just find out more about the project – you can join their Discord here.
