Gothic Nightmare Theatre

kidsysco

Gothic Nightmare Theatre
NWN EE Persistent World
By KidSysco, Started in October of 2020

CEP 2.65 Required

Looking for players, and DMs. I have been building and running NWN Servers for nearly 20 years!

This is a brand new role-playing server with an RTS/Battle-Royale flare to it. Players can purchase properties in town, or capture bases and other settlements outside of town. Each property comes with an NPC that acts as a manager allowing the player to hire persistent guards, servants, farmers, farm animals, henchmen, horses, and even Nightmare Horses!

Team up and defend your base with up to 3 mounted henchmen, plus 10 more autonomous guards for each base. DMs will drive storylines pushing the factions to fight, defend, and trick each other using the standard D&D rules.

Build your army, join a faction, get involved.

We hope you will join us for a game!

Here is a discord invite to the group for server connection info, maps, hints, news, bugs, etc.

https://discord.gg/hXuJSPvKpR

--- MODULE CREDITS ---

Standing on the shoulders of GIANTS...

NWN Community Expansion Pack 2.65 (CEP)
by the NWN Community, CEP Teams, and The Amethyst Dragon

HardCore DND Rules 2.0
by Archaegeo, 20 Jun 2002

CNR 3.05
by Festyx & Hrnac

NESS 8.1.3
by Neshke Narovken

NPC Activities 6.1 & Bioware Horses
by Deva Winblood

kidsysco

I attached the world map to this post. All external areas are huge and sized the same. The X, Y coordinates help to navigate. The starting human village is identified here, but all other settlements are secret. Players will find external settlements to live in, build up, secure, and rule. The concept is a little bit experimental because it is a Persistent, Role-Playing, DM lead, Real Time Strategy type of world.

kidsysco

Neverwinter Nights is back in a big way. It is simply amazing how Beamdog has brought back this classic game.

I know it's an old game, I know the graphics are not next level, but that is not what makes it great. Not even close.

I started out building, and DM'ing a server named, The Know World (TKW), starting back around 2002. I actually remember waiting for years for Neverwinter Nights to come out back then. All of my friends jumped on board right away, but the persistent game server idea was still in it's infancy. It took a long time, and years of patches before we were really up and running.

We must have run TKW for at least 5 or 6 years, I cannot remember exactly. Were not a huge server, but we had a fun crowd of D&D role players that left me with many memories of really good times.

So in a way, playing Neverwinter Nights these days, makes me feel young again!

I have always been a professional computer programmer my whole life, and I been playing D&D since I was a kid. So this was always the perfect fit for me.

My friends and I set out to make a new server named, The Known World V2, after our server grew stale from years of play. This new server was next level at the time. It was entirely database driven, and players could drop items anywhere in the world persistently, any item, anywhere, anytime. Those items disappeared when players left the area, and spawned up when players showed up again. Areas could become littered with items, like old garbage lying around the allies. It was really neat but the release did not go over well. We bit off more than we could chew with our idea, and many players just were not interested in playing a buggy, unfinished mod.

Neverwinter Nights 2 came out shortly thereafter crushing all of our plans into oblivion.

I eventually re-built a new mod using NWN 2.0, which was a few more years of fun. We never saw the same player base as our original TKW Mod. But it was still lots of fun, and allowed me to express myself in news ways that were really cool.

Then Bioware went away. Bye bye...

It was a tough blow to the community of friends. I had met some great people and become close friends with them. Some of my friends even worked for Bioware directly like my Buddy Deva Winblood. If I remember correctly, I think they contracted Deva to do the horses! Deva was a NWN genius and I have always loved his NPC activity system. That is one of my personal faves!

I had other friends like Festyx who worked on CNR. Along with many others. I miss all you guys, and think about our work together all the time. I still talk you in my head sometimes about D&D! LOL!

So Beamdog brings NWN back. They fixed so many bugs, and really topped off the persistence system nicely. So many new cool features, and updated graphics. I am absolutely blown away.

So I am back in this, I am better at programming than ever before, and I am back in the Toolset almost every night again. I play on the server almost every night too having a blast.

What about you? What's your NWN history?

You didn't read this far because your some noob, lol, or maybe you are. It's ok, I am here to socialize and meet folks who are up for playing this old game. So let's talk!

kidsysco

All players start out in Subdual Mode which is important here. However, this server is heavily based on the use of henchmen and autonomous NPC units that act as guards to player homes and bases. So factions bring armies to fight and only face each other in direct PVP combat in rather extreme circumstances. Even if players do fight each other directly, Subdual Mode is turned on by default. So players will go through 3 stages of concussion before death.

This is also a permanent-death server. This adds to the simulations ability to strike fear into the hearts of players. Yet they are just playing a game! That is the point of this being a NIGHTMARE!!! So players are encouraged to role play, like this is a living nightmare, in gothic times. Use the fear of death to drive your role playing, and DMs will reward players nicely.

Of course we support raising from the dead, but its not easy, and ends up being rare.

Due to this strategy, the first few levels are supposed to be quick. We like to get everyone to level 3 or 4 in the first night of play. It is very easy to quickly add 3 henchmen to the party, persistently, on that first night too. The idea is to get some power, so players can kill some stuff, get some gold, and start buying or finding properties that can be used to start a faction, and build an army for defenses. Players will meet all sorts of DM driven characters along the way. There is a major storyline that over arches all of the different factions at play and helps to drive various goals.

DMs will certainly attempt to turn player-built army factions against each other. We can't all be friends all the time, and after all...

Our armies are being built to FIGHT!