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Standalone Infinity Engine Mods?

AciferAcifer Member Posts: 301
edited August 17 in General Modding
What if we had standalone Infinity Engine mods, maybe designed in the spirit of the Neverwinter Nights (premium) modules?

Instead of always being tied to the Baldur’s Gate trilogy, these would be self-contained adventures – small to mid-sized story modules with several hours of content. The idea is to give players a chance to enjoy a new setting, characters, and challenges without necessarily having to weave everything into the grand narrative of the Bhaalspawn saga.

Of course, these modules wouldn’t attempt to match the full sophistication and depth of the main game’s storyline and companions. They’d be more like bite-sized adventures or side-stories: compact, focused, and hopefully fun to replay. Think of them as Infinity Engine “one-shots” – something you can jump into, complete over a weekend, and walk away with the sense of having played through a complete little story.

This could open the door to experimenting with unusual settings, mechanics, or narrative styles that wouldn’t always fit into a BG2 playthrough. It could also be a good way to tell smaller, more personal stories – the kind that might get lost in a larger campaign.

I’m curious what the community thinks about this approach. Would you be interested in playing short, standalone Infinity Engine modules in the NWN style? Do you think such a format could work well within the BG engine, or is the appeal of Infinity Engine mods tied too closely to the main trilogy?

The quoted posts got me thinking about that topic:
RayCat wrote: »
These super high quality quest mods feel like they'd go well as adventures in Skyfire, creating a whole new infinity adventure worthy of rerolling a new pc
Nymrod85 wrote: »
I wonder if there could be a mod that just turns BG2 into a sandbox where you can just do mod content as well as all the extra adventures that are barely linked to you being the Bhaalspawn anyway. Probably would be insane to make though. It is always hard for me to pop into new adventures when the main plot feels so urgent:(

Comments

  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,551
    edited August 17
    Before Siege of Dragonspear came out I asked the developers if this could work. This was the response from Scott Brooks.
    Hey, go have a look at campaign.2da

    The first column should be a name like MYMOD, and then the rest of the columns represent different resources to use. In your case adjusting the STARTARE column will let you replace the STARTARE.2da with a new one to let your player start where ever you want.

    Then add a button to the start screen that calls startEngine:OnCampaignButtonClick("MYMOD", true)

    Then when you start the game, it should use your alternate STARTARE.2da.

    Some of the values in campaign.2da are movie file names, others are icon names, stringrefs, soundtracks. It won't make a lot of sense to you yet, but the campaign.2da that ships with siege will be helpful reference.

    Make sure to change the description column to something because the engine checks to see if it equals the default, and won't apply any other changes unless it's something else.
    I do not know whether it works. Life became busy with my firstborn daughter starting to walk and talk, and I never even found any time to test it. I played SoD well after release.

    I have a standalone concept in mind for a low level campaig. since 2012... no time to do it.

    It could be that they implemented Siege different than the above after all. Please try.
  • Permidion_StarkPermidion_Stark Member Posts: 4,917
    edited August 17
    @Acifer
    I think it is a great idea. I would love to be able to play some short-ish, standalone adventures. For me, one of the problems with Bg1 and BG2 is that they are too damn big (and ToB is too damn boring - but that's another story). I regularly find I abandon runs because I seem to run out of energy. I have installed loads of mods that I have never even started because I gave up on the run before I got to them. So yes, I think it would be great to be able to play a game that you had a chance of completing over a week or even a weekend.
  • xiaoleiwenxiaoleiwen Member Posts: 216
    edited August 17
    As a player I love this idea but I wonder this is too much extra works for the modders. And I believe a lot of players love the vanilla companions and would like to see how they react to those dlc size quest mod. Creating fleshed out new companions for the new campaign could be challenging as well.

    BTW, I always wonder whether it is a good idea / feasible to make a mod option to play those content after finishing SOA and before TOB, where the charname should have time to explore casually, somehow like SOD approach. Just like the SCS component to move watcher keep to that time point (but I never tried it because heard it can be buggy). I also plan to try transition mod some day to see whether it is a good idea to play those bigger quest mods after finishing SOA (some dialogues options could be weird though).
    Post edited by xiaoleiwen on
  • _DD__DD_ Member Posts: 68
    I have a mental block with these types of mods. My problem is that I consider them "play, finish (sometimes I skip this step), throw away and forget." Basically, I can convince myself to give them a chance... but I know that even if I like them, I'll play them once and move on. Black Pits 1 and 2 were exactly that, played once, forgotten the day after finishing them and never found any reason or impulse to replay them.

    I was very disappointed when I played Dragon Age Origins and noticed that there were 3 or 4 dlcs that added a few hours of extra content not to the main game but as individual stand-alone mini-campaigns expanding this or that character. Even if I liked the character I never felt the need to play them since I already finished the game. And when I replayed it years later, I added mods to modify the main campaign. But again, for whatever reason, I had no urge to play the stand-alone campaigns.

    A "normal" BG mod that I like is added to my base game from then on and I'll probably replay the content again when it's time for a new playthrough. Those mods are the reason why I replay the game from time to time, discover and explore new content, new characters, new stories, new fights, etc.
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,551
    That is undetstandable. Stand alone campaigns need to be really good and versatile in order to feel the urge to replay them.
    Then again, normal mods also become repetative content to be squeezed for just some XP and items because you already know all the outcomes.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,673
    I absolutely love this idea. Maybe something like Black Pits, except you know, with an actual story.

    I admit, as a non-modder I have no clue what all the pitfalls might be. But I love the idea of adventures across the breadth of Faerun. Maybe remakes of Goldbox games, Ravenloft, classic D&D modules… So many things I would love to see!
    I’m also a big wargamer and history nerd, which has influenced a lot of the adventures I’ve run in my own PnP games over the years. I have run and enjoyed things like Ancient Greek or Egyptian fantasy adventures. Or D&D in the dark ages (lower tech, less magic).

    There are *so many* things that would be a ton of fun to see. And the Infinity Engine remains my favorite implementation of D&D on computer.
    Not so long ago, I’d had hopes we’d see more new releases from Beamdog.
    The current run of excellent quest mods has been beautiful to see. Although there is the issue, as we add more, bigger mods, our characters gain more gear and experience, which of course impacts late game balance. There is even a big power range within the BG saga, so placing a mod within the game will always effect balance at one end or another.
    Which is just a roundabout way of saying yes, stand alone adventures would be a wonderful thing.
  • megrimlockmegrimlock Member Posts: 97
    Given that both IWD in EET and NWN for BG2 have options to go straight into their respective campaigns in the start menu, there seems to be no good reason why this couldn't also be the case for other large content mods.

    I'd also love to see Classic Adventures converted for EE with this very option.
  • IseweinIsewein Member Posts: 590
    edited August 19
    I would very much prefer this model - which has indeed been attempted with Classic Adventures before - for mods which neither thematically nor in terms of characters involve the Bhaalspawn saga. It's hard enough to justify doing all the side content in SoA as it is, while BG1 or ToB integration presents challenges in terms of level progression in their own right.
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