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Bonjour, y'all!

WheldrakeWheldrake Member Posts: 3
in New Members Welcome Area
G'day and all that.

I stumbled across this resurrection project of one of the finest RPGs ever made, NWN. I'll have to poke around a bit just to understand where you're all at - whether it's a serious commercial project, a hobbyist's dream project, a reskinning of NWN1 or NWN2 or something completely different. Whatever it really is, it sounds fascnating.

I'm an old grognard who started playing D&D in the mid 70s, then dropped out of the hobby for some 20 odd years before getting dragged back in by NWN1. I had such a slow connection (from my muddy village in central France) back then that I only played the campaign that was included in the game for the first year, but then, thanks to an improved and cheaper connection I discovered the online community and invested my blood, sweat & tears into breathing life into the thing. Sure, discovering new mods was cool, as was romping through shared NWN servers into scripted encounters, and I also loved building new areas to challenge my new online friends... but the really unique aspect of NWN1 that I have never seen equalled before or since was the ability to DM online sessions with 4, 5 or 6 players from anywhere in the world, control NPCs, drop critters and basically recreate in computer form everything that I used to love from pen and paper D&D sessions.

So I think I'll poke around these forums and see what y'all are up to. If anyone recognizes the Wheldrake handle from back then, why, shout out and we can reminisce.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake (aka PhilB)

Comments

  • ber5nie5ber5nie5 Member Posts: 426
    hail and well met! welcome to the forums! :)

    happy new year! :)
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    Welcome! Always good to hear from someone else who cut their teeth on the OLD D&D.
  • WheldrakeWheldrake Member Posts: 3
    Yeah, after getting boosted by a few years playing NWN1 online, DMing online sessions, and trying out NWN2 (but ultimately finding the experience dissatisfying), I found some guys to play DD3.5, and then a few years later we switched to Pathfinder.
    If I were on the team doing NWN:EE, I'd want to update the ruleset at least to DD3.5, and if possible to some extent to Pathfinder, which fixes some of the outstanding issues with DD3.5. This said, it would be a huge job, and I found the rules execution in NWN1 (including combat and spellcasting) to be entirely satisfactory, and close to the old-school feel of D&D. So all in all, it's probably not really worth the trouble to tinker with the ruleset.

    Looks like I'm going to have to try to clear out some space on my hard drive and take NWN:EE for a spin!

    Cheers, --- Wheldrake (aka PhilB)
  • Garvin77Garvin77 Member Posts: 52
    As I'm sure you've discovered by now, Beamdog is a video-game publisher* based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that has a primary focus on remastering the classic D&D Infinity Engine games, including both Baldur's Gates, Icewind Dale (the source-code for IWD2 has been lost, I'm afraid, but Beamdog is in a constant search for it), Planescape: Torment, and, most currently, Neverwinter Nights. They have also made an expansion to Baldur's Gate 1, called Siege of Dragonspear, developed in the Infinity Engine. These projects are developed by Overhaul Games, also based in Edmonton (I think). The "Enhanced Editions", as they're called, aim to fix many outstanding bugs and glitches, un-hard-code many such features, and implement as many fan-requested features as the code will allow. One of the great things about Beamdog is that they continue to support the amazing modding-communities that exist for all of these games, even making a few of their own free mods (thank God this ain't Bethesda . . .). I recommend to buy their games through their own website, where they're DRM-free and they directly support the developers; plus, mods work best through the beamdog.com-bought games (mods need an external programme to work through Steam and GOG, available here, on the forums, straight from the developers!). Currently, there are open betas for the Infinity Engine 2.5 patch and Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition; pre-ordering NWNEE lets you play the open beta; buying any of the other EEs lets you play both the stable builds and the 2.5 beta (as separate downloads).

    I hope you enjoy these games as much as I do!

    *They may also be a developer, but I only know for a fact that they're a publisher.
  • charissa1066charissa1066 Member Posts: 33
    Welcome @Wheldrake !!
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