Not Always Summer Days...

[thorfinn]

Well, I succumbed to the lure ...

I like the NeverWinter Nights engine, a lot. D&D 3e is a system that I like a lot, being pretty much a made-consistent and game-balanced view of the AD&D of my childhood... I spent many hours on Paragon BBS doing PBeM AD&D, and NWN gives me just as much feel. I fished out all the old minmaxer reflexes, and generated a nice Wizard.

Agreeing with lederhosen's motto of
"Nobody ever died from having too much Dexterity.", I went with Str8, Dex 16, Int 18, and everything else 10. Grabbed 1 point in all the rogue skills, and with them all being Int based, that gave me a damn fine chunk of rogue skills, and tossed the rest of the points into the usual Wizardy skills (concentration and spellcraft).

Having done that, Identify, Magic Missile, plus the various cantrips... all ready to go. Played the Prelude, and I'm now about halfway through the first Chapter... argh. :-/ Too many damned boxes and chests. Very very annoying. That's the only thing that's bugging me seriously about the primary campaign, really. It's a bit item-chasey, but then, I expect that from an "epic fantasy" CRPG.

Over the weekend, I played the "Penultima" series of modules (available from the NWN vault), along with tyggerjai. That rocked, a lot. Far fewer chests (one as opposed to about six chests in the standard campaign, with about the same stuff), far more postmodern humour, featuring such cute things as the Magical Plot Fairies that take you from chapter to chapter... and even a bit where you get to meet some Magical Plot Fairies having a day off.

I have also decided that the Standard Gamer's Motto ("It Moves, Kill It!") needs some modification... So I've been chanting, "It moves, click it! If it doesn't move, click it anyway!" bunnikins wasn't entirely amused when we tried to click on her as she walked through the computer room on Saturday night, though... seedy_girl seemed a bit more amused when I tried it on her on Sunday, but then, I'm about to drag her into playing it this evening, and she seems enthused by the prospect...

Oh, and entrippy? You need to write a Time Of Legends NWN module. Or, if you won't, somebody should send me a copy of the 1 page module...

Comments

Greetings and gaming nirvana

[lethagus.livejournal.com]

Firstly, although I have only met you on a few occasions, thanks heaps for the invite. Am throughly enjoying this LJ experience :)

Secondly, you have sparked my curiosity as to this NeverWinter nights business. Though to be honest, I hated Balders Gate, and have fallen in love with Morrowind, so we shall see.

Thanks again, see you round...

Re: Greetings and gaming nirvana

[thorfinn]

No problems. My personal feelings about NWN are - if you are nostalgic for AD&D of any kind, it rocks, massively. And if you like D&D 3e presently, it's pretty cool. And the toolset rocks mightily for writing a campaign in...

[mikz.livejournal.com]

Last time I saw TMBG in concert (nearly two months ago now), before they played that song, they said that one of the Johns doesn't like it. I asked one of the Johns about it afterwards, but he wouldn't reveal exactly who doesn't like it nor why.

So far

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

I've managed to stay clear of the time-consuming scourge that is NWN. However, a copy of the TOL module should be winging it's way towards ya.

Re: So far

[thorfinn]

Woohoo. Now to think about whether it's even possible to script it sufficiently that it can run DMless... Bit difficult to capture the storytelling feel, though. *ponder* Or maybe not, if I can grant the PCs some DM-style powers... Hrm. Have to go poke around the toolset doco.

Re: So far

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

Actually, if there's a way to grant the players some DM abilities, that may well be very cool.

Hmmm. I'm just thinking I really should take a look at this thing - my current campaign could possibly be translated to NWN, being more of a standard dungeon bash than a freeform thingy. Not, mind you, that I do much of the work in advance - I tend to make it up as I go along (suprise suprise) but even so.

Re: So far

[thorfinn]

Hrm. Almost certainly. It would be good to have pre-prepped maps (but you could probably fake that by nicking large chunks out of existing modules and whanging them into one big module of your own and just teleport the players around), but you can certainly generate monsters and NPCs "on the fly", possess them, talk to PCs, etc... Certainly if I were to DM a campaign, I'd be very very tempted by doing it in NWN, even if I *just* handled combats in it.

Re: So far

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I lean towards narrative combat anyhow - and 3rd ed is so dang fast I don't feel any need to speed it up - it more than suits my needs.

Get a round of 3rd ed tabletop going and watch how fast the combat swings past - it's so impressive after the days of 2nd ed. System doesn't get in the way of gameplay - it just sits there in the background doing what it's supposed to.

Re: So far

[kitling.livejournal.com]

IME any combat that involves dice, or even rock paper scissors takes far to long

Then again its possible to call me impatient :)

On the other hand - i can't ever see TOL shrunk down to a standard module when it has far to much scope - although having not played NWN and not knowing (standard kill things get treasure like diablo right?) how it works may make me unqualified to comment...

NWN scripting...

[thorfinn]

NWN is *not* just your standard "kill things get treasure" game. The standard NWN campaign is quite linear-ish and item-chasey, yes. But that's because, IMO, it was poorly and rapidly put together, right at the tail end of the dev-process, and clearly rushed out the door without enough beta-testing (the big issue regarding having six containers of stuff where they should have one is something that would've been picked up and fixed given proper beta-testing of the campaign).

There are campaigns available for download that are much less linear and item-chasey, and modules that are designed as campaign starting-points, etc, etc.

The scripting engine is *completely* open ended. It has the power to do pretty much everything that can be conceivably fitted into a Forgotten Realms D&D 3e context. The *problem* is actually writing the scripts cleverly enough to do whatever your campaign requires... assuming you want the campaign to run "DMless" in the first place.

There is also the option of running *with* a DM, who can handle things like area transitions, actual non-scripted NPC interaction, etc, etc. Ie, as a visualisation aid, for GMs that are crap at flavourtext (like moi!), but fine with worldbuilding and NPC chat handling...

Re: NWN scripting...

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

"There is also the option of running *with* a DM, who can handle things like area transitions, actual non-scripted NPC interaction, etc, etc. Ie, as a visualisation aid, for GMs that are crap at flavourtext (like moi!), but fine with worldbuilding and NPC chat handling..."

Of course - it all makes sense now. I should have looked over at NWN from your point of view - wherein NWN is *perfect* for running the kind of baroque worldbuilding/NPC games.

Of course with me, my strength is generally not in the preparation end of things, so I've been looking at NWN and going "well, it's a lot of work, innit? Can't I just do things on the fly?".

Different GMing styles, and I ought to know yours well enough by now to have seen that earlier. Duh.

Re: NWN scripting...

[thorfinn]

*grin* Yeah. And I can see exactly why, for you, GMing via NWN would suck - your greatest strength as a GM is on-the-fly flavourtexting, which just becomes non-relevant when the world is fully visualised via NWN.

Re: So far

[thorfinn]

Mm... true. I've only read the players' handbook, and haven't actually seen it run, but I do see that it would be pretty fast. Still, even just as a visualisation tool, NWN would work... ie, you hold the maps in it, and just have the one computer, running in DM mode, and have NPCs (which are fully fleshed out characters, stats and all) representing the PCs, monsters, etc, then just move them around on screen... I suppose that's easier with actual figurines, though.

And if you're doing narrative combat, then yeah, it's pretty pointless... I just happen to like the twitch-feel of realtime combat that I'm in as a PC... the first time I tossed a fireball in NWN beats hell out of the first time I tossed a fireball in any PBeM or PnP campaign I ever played... It's just that much twitchier because it's realtime.

And handling mass combats (6 players vs 100 zombies) is *certainly* quicker in realtime. Narrative style, you'd just describe the zombies dying lots, of course, but NWN just takes care of all that work for you, arranging the zombie attacks and dice rolls, attacks of opportunity on spellcasters that are foolishly standing too close when they start casting, feat-mechanics, etc, etc.

The other thing NWN would be good for, is that you *can* conceivably run a non-local campaign... ie, everyone is at home on their own PCs, and you're running the "server" computer with all the maps and blah etc. 'Course, you then lose the live feel... and you do lose out on narration - after all, the point of narration is to give the players' imaginations something to work with, and with the world pretty much fully-visualised via NWN, you don't need that much...

I can see "voice-of-god" style narration working, but flavourtext mostly goes out the window...

Re: So far

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

My narrative combat approaches realtime. Or at least it does when it needs to. In convention systemless games my combat never drops below realtime, and I have the bruises to proves it :)

In PnP D&D 3rdE (say that three times fast! it's fun!) it tends to run at a fair clip, even on a bad day.

As for mass-combat. Hmmm. Interesting. I may indeed set something up like that, given that I have a war to simulate at some point in this campaign.

How does NWN handle deity-level interaction (D&D style deity - think uber-epic level chars) and 200+ units?

Re: So far

[thorfinn]

I haven't personally seen any campaigns do that yet, although I suspect later on in the standard campaign I may get to points where opposed mass combat is going on (there are hints of it in motion)... but I strongly suspect it will handle it jest fine, so long as the server computer has enough RAM and CPU grunt.

You may wish to run the standalone server (which is available for Linux and Win32), but I don't see any reason why 200+ unit combat can't work.

And you can set up multiple "sides", with scripted attack/defense reactions, to boot, so if you want to script NPC unit leaders and reactions, and in fact, go to the detail of auto simulating specific unit-tactics, you absolutely can... and the players can go in there and blow it all to hell by killing specific targets, etc, etc. :)

Re: So far

[thorfinn]

Oh, and the multiplayer server is entirely capable of supporting players inside buildings, outside buildings, interacting with NPCs inside and out, all at the same time, etc, etc. So long as everything's in the same game module, it should be fine.