Neverwinter Nights for the Community
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
Let this be a sticky for all non-feature request community discussion. Discuss best possible build ideas, easter eggs, all those little neat tricks you use and details you have noticed, share stories of playing NWN.
Every NWN player, feel at home here!
Every NWN player, feel at home here!
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Well I am excited!
I have missed everyone from the Bioware forums and it hasn't been the easiest to get a good conversation up and running between all the excited returning players eagerly sharing their feature wishlists!
So how is everyone?
What you been up to?
How is 2018 treating you so far?
- Jamie
I still remember quite fondly my first playtrough of the OC: a pure sorcerer build, wasted so much time resting, never played D&D, very disappointed at vancian magic!
At some point, I believe I will attempt to make a PVP server, because at the moment I do not believe I will have the time for a fully fledged RP PW (although I have so many ideas). I am really excited to see what old players will return, I know a few that are already watching this with eager eyes.
When it comes to playing NWN, I purchased it when it first came out, but it sat on a shelf while I continued to play BG2 online with friends. After a while, another friend finally convinced me to install and join him on a PW. I can still remember my first build, a pure rogue that I woefully attempted on a permadeath server.
Many a character was lost on that server. After all of it though, I had come out of the endeavour a hardened RP and PVP player (yes, the RP Permadeath was also full PVP). From there on out, I switched to low magic permadeath, and on the side I would take breaks to play on Bastions of War, and Antiworld. These two servers honed my min-maxing skills to perfection. After that, I was making epic smiting builds that dealt over 2000+ damage, and mind you this was on Antiworld, with their +5 item enhancement caps, and maximum 1d8 damage additions. Of course, yes it was a scythe smiter
Currently, I am biding my time, waiting for that freedom of schedule to start coding up a storm, to laydown the groundwork for my next module endeavour, which is likely to be a mix of Capture the Flag, Castle Defense, Team Deathmatch and Objective matches.
Servers I used to frequent:
I recently played through Witch's Wake to see what everyone thought was so good about it, as the first time I played it I got bored and quit. Managed to get myself into it after making myself a Fey Badger Barbarian named Brak, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the module is really damn good, but really damn short, as everyone is saying. I thought their inclusion of a unique death system was wasted a bit, though, as in single player you can just reload a previous save. Also, I wish they had unique voice actors instead of just the Witch voicing everything, at least I presume its supposed to be her. Though a couple of her attempts to voice dwarves made me chuckle. I kind of want to see it finished now because it ends after a short cutscene.
Also finished Pirates of the Sword Coast recently with a Dex-Based Barbarian named Serena Bloodbasher. Kind of wish I gave her a shield instead of dual wielding as her AC was relatively low, but whatever. Just now noticing that both of my recent premium module playthroughs have been dex-based barbarians, something I never normally play. Huh. Maybe I'll get around to finishing Wyvern Crown if I use one.
I also started the Aielund Saga, and the first act is pretty good. I'm playing an elven druid named Buddy McCracken and their spider named Lire. I made a custom spider companion with my own animal companion progression system in mind (+1 AC every 2 levels, extra use/improvement of special ability every 5th level, extra damage on natural weapons at 5th/15th/25th/35th level), but the module has buffs to animal companions already (they spawn with regeneration and a bonus to AC, casting spells on yourself like buffs and healing spells also affect your animal) making the spider more powerful than I was expecting... Though I guess its a trade-off for the fact I'm used to being allowed to wear chainmail and a tower shield as a Druid. I was definitely not expecting that to be restricted, and I've never understood the "no metal" rule myself as I don't see how forging metal armor is much different than skinning an animal and wearing it, but I'm not seeing any major difficulties with wearing studded leather and a large wooden shield. Its been fun so far, and I want to get back to playing it soon.
Lastly, I have been trying to start a module with the one handicap of not using the CEP or Project Q in order to ease myself into module creation, especially because I've played really good modules that only used default assets, but I don't really know how to start the module? I currently have a town crier (a clay golem) in the center of town yell something out when the player gets too close, but I get the feeling that might be easy to miss or something.
2018 has been interesting so far, and exams haven't been very pleasant to get through, but I accept its my own fault for not studying hard and I'll have to try better next time.
I have always been a big fan of Wizards and Rogues both in PnP and RPG's. That being said I am terrible at stealth based gameplay. My wife made me play through all the Assassin's Creed games so she could watch so now I am somewhat practiced but I am still far from what anyone would consider good... But I really like Sneak Attacks and Lockpicks so you I do my best to make do.
My wife and I try to have one game going at a time we can play with each other, kind like a personal lets play. Right now we are playing The Witcher 3 and she picks what quests we do and all our dialogue options and I am doing all the going places and fighting things.
I've only ever played permadeath in roguelikes but I can see how that could be a ton of fun in NWN. You have that large investment of time which heightens every danger you face. I bet it adds a huge amount of tension to the gameplay!
I lost a little taste for large investment permadeath when I lost a level 80 HC sorceress in Diablo 2 to a lag spike which caused me to teleport into Mephisto and just stand there waiting for death... I do not miss dial up. But I still play a ton of ADOM, Darkest Dungeon and single save runs of Eye of the Beholder/Dungeon Hack and the X-COM games.
What was your saddest permadeath loss?
Also, is a +5 cap considered antimagic or do you gauge it more based upon what other bonuses there are on items? I have been keeping an eye on the Aielund Saga thread and the Real Skies mod by @Savant1974. I am utterly impressed by his work and if I do ever get around to playing a single player campaign I am probably going to skip the OC's and play Aielund!
How would you rate it against the OC's?
Remember in 2nd edition when all of the weapon types could only be used by certain classes along with all the armor restrictions? Clerics only being able to use blunt weapons and Wizards being restricted to daggers, staves and slings? On one hand it added to the unique flavor of each class but it was really nice when everything opened up with 3e.
Whats the overall theme for your module? I find it's easiest to start with a broad concept and then slowly narrow your focus. Just like with drawing the empty page is intimidating but once you start putting lines to paper it becomes easier and easier to make your vision manifest!
I am Jim - community server hoster, software developer and someone that has loved NWN since his youth. Excited to see everything that is going to be done with the new Enhanced Edition and looking forward to getting lost in the Forgotten Realms again.
NWN 1 and 2 are without a doubt, the two most played games for me, bar none. I have lost count of the amount of hours I have poured into these games - both single player and co-op with friends. I have never been a big fan of persistent worlds, but love playing the multiplayer with a more close-knit group on the many modules created by the community.
3rd and 3.5 edition of D&D is also my favourite ruleset. I love the options available to you as a player when creating characters - the sheer amount of customisation available to you is staggering. I love creating builds and taking them through modules.
After being burned on the most recent PC game based on D&D (Sword Coast Legends), I am back with NWN - which provided a player, DM and content creator so much more than that game could ever hope to aspire to.
Lastly, some shameless links to some of the things I have been involved in:
NWN Character Organiser
Game Server Manager (now with NWN queryer, command-line generator and INI parser)
NWN-Players Steam Group
I have thought of the setting a bit, though, as I actually planned to write some stories for it. Never got far with that because I'm lazy and keep deleting the first 5 pages over and over again. I've kind of had demons and angels stray away from good and evil and land more firmly as agents of law and chaos with some outliers (The rogue henchmen I currently have made is a chaotic evil angel ATM. If only I could get her to take Improved Two Weapon Fighting at level 12 instead of 15 even though it should work...) I've also made up a setting specific gods, but I'm not sure I want them to be too important here. I don't want to take any one race for granted. In most fantasy settings you always have a bunch of "lesser" races that are just completely appalling and it is just morally acceptable to slaughter them by the hundreds; Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, etc. A lot of the time these creatures aren't even henchmen to a greater power, you just decided to invade their home and murder them. I feel like they should be treated as a bit more like actual people every once in a while, you know? I get that racism is a thing, and would certainly be a thing when talking about races that are literally inhuman, but it still seems odd. Its also funny that goblins and kobolds are written in modules and novels as though they have low intelligence when base D&D rules make them out to be just as smart as everyone else. Orcs and minotaur have intelligence detriments but are written closer to human intellect most of the time when compared to the littler races, it seems.
I've been trying to get through a lot of the modules I never played, like Aeilund Saga, Prophet and Swordflight. Then I wind up restarting them over and over again. Either I hit a wall where I don't care what happens next or I feel like I'm not progressing, or I get a new build idea that sounds more fun.
I think one of the one of the reasons NWN has lasted as long as it has is that it can be everything to everyone. It can be a single player epic, a co-op masterpiece or it's own living world with live DM's and ever changing content! All things that Sword Coast Legends tried to capitalize on but just failed miserably on any ability to deliver even the most basic of features. It was a very, very poor shadow of NWN and I am still a little bitter about the whole thing
NWN is a truly unique experience and nothing will ever be quite like it. But did you ever find anything to (almost) scratch that itch in your time away? It sounds like you have a really strong concept and know what you don't want to do which by process of elimination leaves you with exactly what you want to do
It's always a shame when DM's fall back on the standard tropes of monster genocide and ignore the very rich and detailed lore of D&D. There are so many amazing monsters that get skipped over for the 10 everyone knows and even then, the ecology and lore mostly gets skipped over. Monsters are more than XP Piñatas!
My favorite use of subverting players standard fantasy setting (SFS) expectations was a quest series called "Save the Dragon from the evil Princess" where a princess fakes her own kidnapping and uses magic to enslave a dragon and ransack towns and ultimately wage war against the kingdom.
The initial quest is set up entirely like the "Save the Princess" trope including everyone first meeting at the inn. Then as the story moves forward you drop little hints here or there that something may not be quite right which builds up to that first epic conflict between the players and the dragon where they have the choice to slay the dragon or dig deeper.
If they kill the Dragon the Princess becomes your shadowy antagonist who manipulates future plots until the players figure out who has been behind everything. And if the players save the dragon they gain a powerful ally against the princess who has now been exposed and becomes the overt big bad buy threatening the kingdom!
I ran the prompt for my group once and after the twist my players forever stopped taking monsters & NPC's for granted. They gained an entirely new respect for the world and the people within it and would begin to question if slaughtering the local tribe or Orcs was actually the good and just thing to do.
Keep us informed on your progress! I would love to know how everything is shaping up! I am not impressed with the meltdown fix so far and intel don't have the best track record with such things. They always make things worse before they make them better.
It seems like everyone is playing Aeilund but me! I am now strongly considering taking a little break from building and learning some tricks from people who are better than me! Stand on the shoulders of giants they say!
- Jamie
The closest I came was Divinity Original Sin 2 - an outstanding game. Really enjoyed playing through that one, but the lack of simple (and necessary) little things like saving/importing individual characters to move across games and modules completely killed the world-building side of the game for me. For some strange reason the developers were completely against adding this feature. Even had a thread (which I participated in), here, but alas because it wasn't something that some people could understand was required, it never happened.
Only having the option of Single Player or locked Co-Op adventure very much limits how large and in which direction the modding community can grow. Baldurs Gate wasn't even that limited and that came out 2 decades ago.
There was a pretty interesting Trent Oster interview last month on Dragon Talk soon after the NWN EE announcement.
Another recent interview with the RPG Research folks briefly mentioned they used NWN and the Aurora toolset for their therapy techniques.
Two hours very well spent watching both shows. Very informative!
I can very much see using the toolset for therapy. It makes a wonderful mindfulness exercise to hop into the toolset and have all your focus, all your creativity, all your problem solving ability directed at a single point of focus.
VR is also a wonderful tool for mindfulness for much the same reason. Strips away other sensory distractions and locks you into the immediate moment.
I did try and work with the toolset in VR but the resolution makes it a little difficult to work with text and not being able to occasionally look down at the keyboard but it is very neat to blow the toolset up on a movie theater sized virtual screen.
What have I been up to? Not much.
How is 2018 treating me so far? No snow yet, so I'd say good ;-)
2018 has been pretty good to me so far. I just started a new job, and am focused on rebuilding my old PW module. I love that NWN is being refactored and improved and can't wait to get to a place where we can relaunch.
My PW went out of service in 2007, and I've spent the last 10 years building my career and making glass art.
In Vermont we had a good couple of weeks worth of snow followed by a huge storm which turned the snow into a giant sheet of ice.
There is now this 3 inch thick slab of ice in our parking lot and I have to carry my wife to the car anytime we go anywhere. Winter is great for tourists but not so hot if you live here.
Here is to hoping you escape the snow this year! Welcome back to NWN!
The Enhanced Edition is this huge mass of potential and has a lot of people bringing their own worlds back from the dead or using this as an opportunity to start afresh! I always worked for other people so I didn't really have much of my own to come back to, so last year I began working on my own project not knowing there would be NWN:EE around the corner!
What was your PW called and would you be willing to share some pictures of your glass art?
I've always found it beautiful but the one and only time I tried glassblowing it terrified me!
The glass art I make is beads, so it's on a fairly small scale. Glassblowing is terrifying. I've only done it twice and both times felt like I was staring into the mouth of hell :P
Here are a few pictures of some of my recent pieces, since you asked.
All of the shapes have different swirls of color and different shapes inside. They look like islands and galaxies!
I fully agree with you about glass blowing. Terrifying. Truly terrifying. Really doesn't help when they explain if anything goes wrong it will explode molten glass into your face. That's just not a statement that instills confidence.
I see that Arensea has a wiki entry and it seems really neat! I particular love the line:
"This world is growing. What might have been held in a single palm only six months ago, now would take two to lift."
Beautifully descriptive.
This weeks questions are a a little less nebulous.
We all have our influences which both consciously and subconsciously so it is with this in mind that I ask you:
I actually didn't like Lovecraft upon first reading as I thought it was all fishmen and melodrama but since then he has grown to be my favorite author. No one else quite captures the endless scope of deep time and endless space.
Of Lovecraft's collective works my favorite story is "The Music of Erich Zann" which is a 97 year old short story about a student who rents an apartment in Rue d'Auseil. His upstairs neighbor is an old German man called Erich Zann who plays strange music throughout the night. The student tries to convince Erich to play this strange music for him but Erich refuses. Over time the student gains Erich's trust and is called up one night only to discover to his horror that Erich has been playing each night to keep our world from being swallowed by an unknowable abyss.
Lovecraft tends to bleed a little into my writing and exposition. Which in turn colors the things I create for NWN. NPC's with cryptic and foreboding dialogue. The ever present threat of some dark and sinister lurking in the shadows. Hopefully nothing overt but Howard was a master at setting tone.
I'm also a huge fan of The Twilight Zone as Rod Serling is an absolute genius who created many of our modern concepts of science fiction. If you can think of a trope there was probably a Twilight Zone episode that started it. Rod's work always reminds me to never take myself too seriously because no matter what I create, someone else has probably already done it better. But the important thing is to continue to create my vision, even if I am standing on the shoulders of giants to do so.
I am Tresset, one of the moderators here and, aside from the blue people (Beamdog developers and employees), I am probably the most knowledgeable and biggest fan of NWN among the moderators. I just decided to finally get the NWN:EE Deluxe Edition and Head Start so I could get started on helping with the project. I never was a part of the NWN community before now, mainly because I am not very social by nature due to my condition (Asperger's/High Functioning Autism). In any case, I have always been a big fan of NWN, I would rank it as either my second or third favorite video game/series after Baldur's Gate and
maybe Pokemon. I know quite a bit about the game but very little about the community. I look forward to getting to know all of you!
I think a lot of people in the NWN community are a bit shy or don't really interact with other fans socially so I truly appreciate you stepping out of your comfort zone and reaching out to all of us!
As a NWN Superfan, what is the one fact about NWN that you think most people in the community would be surprised to learn?
I will swap you a NWN fact for a neat Pokemon fact I just learned?
In Pokemon Red/Green/Blue if you talk to the bike shop owner before you get the coupon, then press B to exit the conversation the game glitches and all of the dialogue appears instantly until you use the start menu or heal a Pokemon.
This destroyed the Pokemon speed run community because people were using the instant text glitch to speed up their runs but could not use items to heal their pokemon so beating the game in record time became a matter of luck.
The glitch was fixed in Pokemon Yellow and the speed run community ended up banning its use for Red/Green/Blue speed runs because it killed the fun.
Another thing I discovered is that romancing Aribeth in HotU chapter 3 is impossible because a certain conversation you have with her will set a variable to an incorrect value. I had to edit the conversation to set the variable correctly so that she could be chosen by the Knower of Names as your true love at the end of the module (if you chose the correct dialog options earlier, of course).
Your pokemon fact is very interesting. I never knew that, but then again I got into pokemon kind of late due to my dad not liking game consoles at the time. I was only a kid so I didn't have much say in it. As a result, I am not very familiar with generations 1 and 2. I mean, I did play some of the games in those generations, but not enough to know them that well.
Well, you’d have to cast your mind back to the times of stone tablets and chisels, but Isaac Asimov
Robert Heinlein
Sci fi fan if you didn’t get it lol
2001 a space odyssey (never ever got the end of that fully, still an enigma to me)
Have spacesuit will travel
More that I can’t remember
More recently game of thrones books but lost interest once I worked out the writers recipe.
Conan- the real Conan with big ole heavily accented Arnie.
Transformers movies. Exceptionally written IMO with jokes and stuff and just good old big stuff blowing up action.
The old $5 budget doctor who’s. Today’s version just seems written by days of our lives writers. Old series visited earth once in a blue moon, new series, massive galaxy, just about every episode he’s on Earth again $@&
Umm yeah, funnily enough, my brother bought me nwn to pass the time when it first came out after I was let’s say unwell for a while. Never looked back! Love the game and all the trimmings.
The bug with Aribeth especially sounds like it has a huge impact on the game and both of them seem like quick fixes. Like you said it's changing a class and a dialogue variable. Beamdog seem really good with doing all those little fixes while working on the big features.
Not being able to romance Aribeth was like not being able to romance Tali'zorah in Mass Effect. The one interesting NPC that they allude to from the start was the one who got away!
Heck, you may have encouraged me to go fishing around the module and correct the bug myself when I finally get to HotU! I'm one of those awful people that has been playing for years but never finished any of the OC's.
As for Pokemon. People forget Pokemon Red came out 22 years ago (which makes me feel super old.) I was 14 when it came out and I was far too cool for a game about cute animals that went "PIKA!" all the time. I was 18 and a little less focused on "fighting for the limited space that was me" and was better able to recognize Pokemon for the addictive fun it is and have been playing ever since. I will skip a generation or two but when a new handheld comes out I will almost always cave in for the next new Pokemon game.
Thank you for sharing Tresset! I went to high school in the north east of Scotland and a huge shelf of Isaac Asimov made up the entirety of their fiction section. Many a dark winter's day (Scotland) did I spend trying to absorb myself in Asimov but he was a little out of my depth at the time. As an adult and a sci-fi fan I am ashamed to admit I have not yet gone back to revisit his work. What would be a good starting point?
Robert Heinlein is not a common name thrown around these days... Would You Like to Know More?
Robert E. Howard and Howard Philip Lovecraft and known affectionately in my household as "The Howard's."
I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard and his work for Weird Tales. The Howard's were best of friends and their written correspondences lasted until Lovecraft's death in 1935, with Robert to die a year after in 1936.
As for Dr. Who. In the US there is a service called BritBox that has all of the old Doctor Who episodes starting with William Hartnell onwards. I'm a displaced Brit living in the US so I was using the service to watch Dr. Who and Only Fools and Horses but the comedy section seemed to shrink every month so I finally unsubbed. Still a fantastic price if all you want to watch is Dr. Who and Red Dwarf! Ironically... BritBox is not available in the U.K.
So the important question that will determine if we are friends for life or mortal enemies...
Which is the best Doctor?
Ok... thats mean... Who are your top 3 Doctors and why?
Same question to any other Whovians lurking in the darkness.
I also hate how talking about things I like causes me to rant about the parts I dislike about them. I need to stop doing that.
How it affects my NWN work? Well, considering everyone in Star Trek looks like a human with a head ridge, it makes me prefer monstrous races. My favorite races in Star Trek are those that only get like 2 minutes of screen time but look super alien when they're there because they are just so different. Meanwhile, the fact most characters seem to be stereotypes makes me wish there were more non-human characters who have unique personalities in all media, really. I'm not saying that they need to be super deep or anything, but I doubt every klingon or orc you encounter would be interested in robbing or killing you for seemingly no reason. Many, even most? Perhaps. Almost all of them? Definitely not. That said, how I'm planning one of the followers in my module is definitely the exception from the norm considering their race.
Why have Beamdog not hired you for a QA position?
He always seemed one dimensional in TNG and downright abusive in DS9. How he treated his son was utterly despicable and no one really brings up the fact he constantly abandons his child. It became really difficult to sympathize with him as a character after that.
Granted, The House of Mogh storylines are great but for the most part Worf gets a lot of screen time, a lot of dialogue and very little of it's good. The writers really fell through on that character.
Just like poor Wesley who gets accused of ruining TNG.
I really enjoy Babylon 5 for all the neat alien races. When they head to the market or down below the screen is filled with a huge array of alien creatures that look utterly... Well... Alien. I feel sorry for all the poor actors who had to spend 4 hours in make up to be in screen for all of a few minutes but the effect is utterly stunning. Plus the Vorlons and Shadows are magnificent!
Also yeah, he was just a massive prick in DS9, especially upon the arrival of Ezri. He basically threatened and assaulted people who previously had a thing for Jadzia for talking to her solely because she was the next host of Dax, so obviously even talking to her is a disgrace to Jadzia's honor. She was already in a big daze over the fact she was basically forced into getting the symbiote in the first place, and Worf was only making it worse. The only thing he really added to the show was the few times Odo chewed him out for ruining his investigations, and it was only because he was getting punished for being an idiot. Similarly, Picard sarcastically asking him if he was going to try and shoot a hole in the viewscreen when he threatened Q one time was funny as well for the same reason. Maybe I'm just being harsh, but I'd rather Martok have been the main klingon of the show, because up until Worf gets involved he's a cool character that really felt like a general should be. Then suddenly, now that Worf fought him over his cowardly (aka rational) stealth strategy, through the power of bloodlust and and booze Martok and his abysmal crew can defeat Jem'Hadar fighters, even though their morale was probably just as good when they initially found themselves loosing every fight with a Jem'Hadar. You don't run into a forest with flashlights and righteousness to fight a bear, thats how you get killed. They clearly weren't equipped enough and the crew wasn't skilled enough to succeed, but of course klingon stupidity won out.
Unfortunately, I don't remember the House of Mogh episodes that well, though I admit I don't remember much about TNG at all due to not having watched it recently, but I'm pretty sure it brought up fact the government's whole Honor and Glory shtick was just a gimmick to keep the population happy, which honestly wasn't very surprising considering how hypocritical the klingons seem to be on that front.
Personally, I liked Wesley up until he returned from his absence of training at the academy. He wasn't anywhere near Data in terms of my favorites of the series, but he wasn't at all bad. Having Wesley become a total jerk to his friends and be abducted by the Traveler just seemed like a lazy way to remove what was a decently interesting character, especially since we last saw him being told to shape up by Picard after the accident that killed one of his fellow ensigns. Hell, him coming back all depressed would have been interesting if he wasn't taken away in the episode he returned.
I'm told Babylon 5 is basically a better DS9 (or rather, DS9 is a worse Babylon 5), but I haven't seen it. I'm always a fan of alien looking aliens, though, and both of those you mentioned look pretty cool.
Another side comment, I type way too much every post. Another thing I'll have to work on, I suppose.