Neverwinter Nights is a computer game by Bioware, published by Infogrammes under the Atari label. Bioware has licensed the Forgotten Realms setting, and use of the third edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, in an effort to bring the latest incarnation of D&D to the computer screen, as they had previously with 2nd edition AD&D with their excellent Baldur's Gate series. More than just a game, however, Neverwinter Nights ships with the tools necessary to allow players to build their own adventures, and run them as Dungeon Masters for other players. In a sense, Neverwinter Nights is a tool for playing D&D over the Internet.
I'll be looking at Neverwinter Nights (NWN) from that perspective - as a toolset and medium for play, rather than focusing on the campaign that ships with the game. It has also been two months since the game's initial release. The game and the community have changed and matured significantly in that time. While this has had little effect on the single-player game, this has tremendously changed the landscape for those of us building modules and playing online.
I'll warn you - this is a big review. It's a big game. It's getting bigger daily, and has grown by user content almost constantly during the last 5 months. It is a game people will still be playing three years from now. There's quite a bit to say about it.
First Blush - Graphics, Sound, and User Interface
The graphics have been met with mixed reactions. On the one hand, players expecting beautiful pictures and detailed characters far beyond that found in "aging" titles like Unreal Tournament and Quake III have been disappointed that NWN hasn't pushed the envelope. However, NWN has far more potential objects to deal with per screen. While rooms in games like Unreal Tournament have tightly confined lines-of-sight and a great deal of architectural detail, they have relatively few objects to contend with. A player might see three or four other players, with their weapon effects, and a couple of pickups. Neverwinter Nights may have to deal with eight players, their weapons, spells, a room full of furnishings, chests, bodies, and treasure... and a dozen orcs rushing them from the next room! The tradeoff between graphics quality and speed seems to have been handled quite well in my opinion, although there is often a bit of slowdown on a mid-level machine in the above circumstances.
More interestingly from a toolkit perspective, the graphics for weapons, armor, and characters from the PC races are extremely customizable. The most extreme example is the armor. You choose the model / texture for the chest (51 different models alone there!), neck, belt, pelvis, left shoulder, right shoulder, left bicep, right bicep, left forearm, right forearm, right hand, left hand, thighs, shins, and finally the feet (helmets are another type of object altogether, separate from armor). There are often around 13-23 different variants for each section of armor. This alone gives you trillions (or more) of different combinations. However, each segment consists of some combination of six materials - two each of cloth, leather, and metal. You can choose from 56 different colors for each material. While not every element uses all six materials, you can see that this multiplies the potential unique armor sets by about 30 billion. I'll give them an "A" for variety, here.
The sound quality overall is quite good. While there were some muddled sound effects often filling the background in the single-player game that I could never quite identify (Mining carts? Rolling thunder?), the sound palette offers a variety of generally high-quality sounds to use in a game. The music is excellent (though, like all music, it can get repetitive after 50+ hours).
The UI (User Interface) borrows a bit from "The Sims", using a radial menu system for most actions. You choose the "default" action by left-clicking on an object (this will open a door, attack a hostile monster, talk to a non-hostile NPC, etc), or bring up a menu of options by right-clicking on it. It's fairly intuitive, but it can be very hard to, say, cast a fireball at someone in the heat of battle. For this, however, you have three banks of "hot buttons" at the bottom of the screen which you can customize to do virtually any function in the game. You can even load a button with BOTH your primary and off-hand weapon, to give your character a single-keypress ability to draw or switch weapons.
Base Campaign
Way too much attention has been focused on the built-in campaign already - I've seen entire reviews that never even mention the Aurora Toolset or multiplayer modes. Unfortunately, for many people, this is all they ever see of Neverwinter Nights. To me, that's like never opening the wrapping on a Christmas gift. The provided campaign is more of a demo of what Neverwinter Nights is capable of. But it's quite an elaborate demo, with more than forty hours of gameplay packed into it. So how does it fare?
Basically, a plague is sweeping Neverwinter, and the player, a young graduate of the Academy, is the only person in the world capable of retrieving the four creatures needed for their bodily parts needed to concoct a plague. After that, you must find a mysterious cult that started the plague. This involves searching three different areas for clues as to their headquarters. Then you must go on another quest two find three different stones, hidden in three different locations... get the picture? Along the way, there are thousands of crates, boxes, chests, and barrels just sitting out in the street for you to open at random. Some are locked, and trapped with expensive traps that have a street value of 50+ gold... and protect a supply of 32 sling bullets, with a street price of less than 1 gold. Hmmm?
Still, there are some interesting twists in the plot, and some very unique adventures - including one which occurs almost entirely within a magical snow-globe. Not all of these quests require violence and hacking & slashing to solve (the snow globe adventure, in particular, requires a bit of thinking "outside the box" to solve). There are also several sub-quests that are quite entertaining as well. There's a courtroom drama that requires not only gathering the facts and statements, but "playing to the jury" as well.
It's an interesting collection of somewhat-linked adventures, but compared to what Bioware has pulled off in the past (Baldur's Gate II is one of my all-time favorite computer games, let alone CRPGs), it came up a pretty empty experience. The encounters and treasures were too random, the storyline too generic, the memorable characters too few. While the henchmen had interesting storylines, they were too annoying with no real connection to the main storyline - Tomi, Sharwin, and Linu can't hold a candle to characters like Mazzy and Minsc.
But, as I said - if you stop after the single player game, you've really only played the demo.
The Rules
How well does Neverwinter Nights conform with Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules? My answer to that question is "Pretty Well." The purist will gripe, the casual gamer won't care. There are no prestige classes; only the core Player's Handbook classes are represented. Many feats, spells, and skills are missing - everyone is guaranteed to find a favorite unavailable. Also interesting are some of the changes and additions to the feat and skill list. Diplomacy has been broken into two skills - "Persuade" and "Taunt" - the latter being effective to convince a monster to quit chasing the magic user and to attack the (hopefully better-armored) taunter instead. "Discipline" is a skill used to resist the effects of certain new combat feats (like "Knockdown"). "Parry" is a special defensive skill that you can use instead of attacking - it allows you to try and parry away incoming melee attacks, occasionally (by exceeding your opponent's roll by 10 or more) sneaking in a counterattack. Familiars and animal companions have been greatly "beefed up". The "Toughness" skill grants +1 hit point per character level, rather than a flat +3 bonus, making it a much more useful feat than it ever was in the Pen & Paper game.
However, it is easy to miss how close NWN follows the D&D rules when you focus on what is missing or changed. You have attacks of opportunity, the "notorious" 5' step, The class / skill / feat system is largely unchanged. You can freely multiclass (yes, the front-loaded ranger is STILL a rules loophole waiting to be exploited) up to three classes. The core races have their abilities and bonuses still intact. Clerics can still spontaneously cast cure spells; rogues are the masters of skills; fighters are the kings of feats. The rules regarding hit points, saving throws, armor class, base attack bonus, spell resistance, counter-spelling (yes, counter-spells!), spell progression, ability bonuses, and tons of class and creature special abilities are nicely represented.
Ultimately, the biggest difference in the rules is the real-time nature of the game. Having to react in real-time is much harder than taking turns around the game table. Casters have it particularly hard, as you may have to predict enemy locations in advance for area-effect spells, or react very quickly with a heal spell for your companion. It's much harder to notice that you are losing a fight - by the time you recognize it, it may be too late to run away. This adds a whole new dimension of challenge to the D&D game, one many players may not find to their liking.
The Aurora Toolset
The Aurora Toolset is the "Construction Kit" portion of NWN, and it's one of the most amazing things I have ever seen for a game. The creators of NWN knew that many "world-building tools" for other games were inaccessible to all but an elite bunch of modelers who are gifted with the mind of an artist, the expertise of an engineer, and the free time of the idle rich (or someone with no life). They designed NWN to be approachable by the complete novice, who can build worlds out of combinations of pre-designed objects and tiles. In fact, in just minutes a first-time user can construct a fairly professional-looking (if quiet) world fully playable in the game.
The game ships with ten different "tile sets", though one of them is really just a tiny "test" version of the Rural tile set (good for testing, and little else). These tile sets include: Castle Interior, City Exterior, City Interior, Crypt, Dungeon, Forest, "Microset" (the subset of Rural), Mines & Caverns, Rural, and Sewers. This is a pretty decent cross-section of typical adventure settings. In addition, many more "tile sets" are being constructed by users and posted on the Internet each week, and there's little doubt that Bioware will be releasing some more "official" tile sets with their first expansion (after a million units of NWN have sold, is there any question as to whether or not there will be expansions & / or sequels).
The tile sets are limited, of course. Tiles can only be combined in certain ways (you can't have a tree-line bumping directly into a wall, for example, or a bridge crossing grass), and there are certain features in one tile set missing from another. There are ruined castle pieces found in the forest set that I'd love in a rural area, but they just aren't there. And since a given area may only be built from a single tile set, those limits can be frustrating. However, there is a large library of "placeable" objects that can be applied to any environment. Want to stick a bunch of carts and oxen in the middle of a lava-filled dungeon? Be my guest. (Strangely enough, there's a "chessboard" tile available in every single tile set. Those old OAD&D "chess" puzzles can be alive and well in NWN). You can also change the lighting on tiles, and areas can be set with different musical themes, background audio "ambient" sounds, fog colors and levels, weather (if they are outdoor levels), and such. It's amazing how the same tile set can "feel" different when it's lit with a dim red, evil glow and heavy fog instead of brightly lit with white / yellow light, or when there are spooky sound effects going on in the background instead of cheerful music.
There are plenty of graphics for placeable objects, monsters, and items in the game. Some old favorites are conspicuously absent, such as rats, beholders, and mind flayers. Like the tile sets, user-created monster and object models are making their way to the Internet. While this is a good thing, user-created graphics and sound content does have to be transmitted to each player beforehand, rather than being automatically transferred in-game between players. And Bioware HAS been addressing these issues - a recent patch gave us kobolds at long last, as well as secret doors. An upcoming patch promises to bring us rats (so I can quite faking them with a badger model!)
Items are pretty extensively presented as well. What abilities an item might possess is largely determined by its type - a potion, for example, will have different abilities than a sword. The list of possibilities doesn't include everything in the Dungeon Master's Guide - but in some cases there are lots of possibilities far in excess of what's presented in the DMG as well. Do you want to create a +2 Keen Rapier only useable by lawful-neutral dwarf rogues that provides a +5 to his listen skill, has 16 charges of "Doom" as cast by a fifth level caster, and does an additional 1d4 acid damage against elves? Oh, and it sheds green light in a 10 meter radius? No problem. And you can customize the style and color of the blade, hilt, and pommel of the weapon while you are at it.
Besides plopping down monsters, items, and "placeables", you can also set up "encounters" - areas that will spawn monsters that will automatically scale themselves in number and level to try and match a particular challenge level compared to the party. Populating a dungeon with encounters and setting their difficulty rating mans a dungeon will scale automatically to a party's size and composition without DM intervention. The encounters can be set to go off once only, a finite number of times, or forever, at particular intervals whenever a player enters the encounter area. Points where the spawn occurs can be added or changed, and the composition of the monsters appearing can be modified. You can set some monsters to be "unique", meaning that only one of a particular creature will be created with the encounter - for example, only one officer might appear with several soldiers. You can also use encounters to "scale" a unique villain to match the party - create three different versions of the villain (for example, a level 5, a level 7, a level 9, and a level 12), and let the encounter automatically "spawn" the one most appropriate to the party as they get close.
The toolset also provides the module-builder with sound objects to place in the game. Sounds can be set to loop constantly, play at particular intervals, play only during specific times (like only at night, or at midnight), play in a random position within a designated rectangle, or play from any location in the area. They can have their volume or pitch randomly modified. Sounds add a ton of life to a module - I was surprised at how much my town came alive when I added the sounds of birds singing, children playing, and the roar of a nearby waterfall.
There are also "triggers" - location-based polygons you can place that will cause something to happen when a player (or NPC) touches them. A specific type of trigger is a trap - the game comes with several pre-built trap types. But with scripting, you can create triggers to do virtually anything. You can also create triggers that will transition between areas (though this is often done automatically with doors - a special type of object also available).
There are also merchants (stores), factions, doors, locks, keys, waypoints, journal entries, conversations, module properties (like time of day, XP multiplier, time progression, and starting movie - if you are so industrious), area properties, and all kinds of fiddley bits you can use to customize your adventure. You can use as little or as much as you like.
Scripting
Neverwinter Nights runs on scripts. The scripting language is very much like the "C" programming language (or somewhere between "C" and "Java"). So much so that this professional "C" programmer was right at home and whipping up complicated scripts in no time. Most scripts are fairly short and simple. Most of my scripts consist of less than a dozen lines of code.
You can script almost anything. The function list is huge. There are some glaring omissions, but these are glaring mainly because the function list is so incredibly complete otherwise. You can create a complete game-within-a-game with the scripting language - people have already used this to create functional games of blackjack, Life, darts, and chess (remember those chessboards available in every tile set?).
You can attach scripts to almost anything. Nearly any object in the game has a set of events that cause it to fire a script. For example, you can create a campfire that will react when a player casts "Dispel Magic" on it or unlocks it (How do you unlock a fire? I don't know, but it's there if you want it) by checking the player's alignment to see if it is good, and check to make sure he is in good standing with the local Badgers and has at least 300 gold pieces, and if so it will spawn a visitation from Odin. This is freaky weird, but very possible. Or, on the more simple side of things, you can simply have a door or a container inform all Dungeon Masters online when they have been opened, or have creatures try to run away or surrender when their leader is killed or they've taken more than 50% losses.
Many of the spells and effects of the game are "powered" by built-in scripts. So if you want to customize the Harm spell, for example, to tweak it to match the rules you use for your PnP game, you can do it. There's no need to overwrite the original script, either - local versions of scripts automatically take precedence over global "built-in" scripts, so you aren't in danger of irrevocably destroying important code. Several people (myself included) have used this incredible power to change the rules of the Neverwinter Nights game to better match the "Pen & Paper" rules we are used to.
So what if you don't know how to program, and don't want to learn how to program? Neverwinter Nights has a number of "script wizards" you can use to automatically generate certain types of game events (like making a skill check or opening a store). There is also a TON of ready-to-install objects and scripts available on the Internet at this time that you can simply "plug in" to your game and use. If you plan on having an active Dungeon Master for your module, he will be able to manually do a lot of things, so you won't have to automate them with scripting. So all is not lost.
Dungeon Master Client and Multiplayer
Still with me? Okay. The cool thing about Neverwinter Nights is being able to play the game with your friends. It can't replace "Pen & Paper" gaming, but it is very convenient, and allows you to play with people all over the world.
How well does it work? At first, it was sketchy. The original release of the game had a lot of crash bugs, particularly with the Dungeon Master Client program. These have been largely ironed out in several patches. Many of the issues are convenience factors - which have been addressed by the player community in the form of DM "helper" tools that a Dungeon Master can use during gameplay. The advanced DM has access to a tremendous number of "console commands" that take a while to learn, but in the end gives him a huge amount of power over the game beyond the considerable abilities given by the basic in-game commands.
Ignoring the community creations or the awesome might of the console commands, the Dungeon Master has an experience not unlike a player - an invulnerable, invisible player who can teleport at will and run super-fast. The Dungeon Master has the ability to do things like take gold and XP from a player, give gold and XP to a player, create objects & monsters, destroy objects & monsters, take possession of creatures for roleplaying purposes, select several creatures at once and give them basic commands without possessing them, jump to any map in the game, jump to any object in the game, cast any spell, instantly heal / kill / destroy any creature, pause and unpause the game (this power can be given to players as well), force things to "rest" to regain lost hit points or spells.
What the Dungeon Master is NOT is omniscient. This can be frustrating. Recent patches have addressed some of the more annoying omissions - like not being able to hear "party chat" as a DM, or not being able to look at a player's character sheet without the use of a scripted tool - but several still remain. Some of this comes from task-overload: you may not realize that one of the players has just broken off and opened the Dread Sarcophagus of the Mummy Lord, and that all hell is scheduled to break loose three seconds ago and you are now behind the power curve. Being a DM in Neverwinter Nights is an art form requiring all the skills of a DM for the PnP game, as well as a few new ones. If your world is automated with scripts, this can take some of the workload off your shoulders, to the point where sometimes you'll even be bored.
The multiplayer experience of NWN really depends upon the module and the DM. Some modules can re-create the PnP "feel" very closely. You've got the rogue creeping on ahead taking point, watching for traps and hoping to see monsters before they see him. You've got your caster in the rear rank, perhaps protected by the cleric or another fighter, in case something sneaks up from behind. The DM might periodically call out for someone to make a Listen check. Roleplaying is limited only by players' typing speed. Again, it's no replacement for sitting around a table with dice and paper, but it can still capture the "feel" of that experience in a new medium.
Of course, the experience is only as good as the other players, the DM, and the module. Many online modules are little more than hack-fests, particularly the public "local vault" games.
Community
Which brings us around to the part of the game that didn't come in the shrink-wrap, is completely outside the control of the game developer and publisher, but is still a key part of the game - the player community.
As of this time, there are over 1,500 modules freely available for download at one popular Internet site. There are about an equal number of scripts, portraits, and player-generated objects. There are matchmaking sites designed to allow people to get together for games without dealing with the "riff-raff" of the public servers. Volunteer reviewers have begun rating these elements to help others find the best (or most appropriate) modules. Tons of tutorials have been written for beginning and advanced Dungeon Masters, scripters, module-builders, and players. Logging into the public server area at night reveals hundreds upon hundreds of active games - many of high quality.
A number of tools and rules sets have appeared to aid players, dungeon masters, and builders in their play. It's quite possible now for a Dungeon Master to find a group of players, schedule a game, find a good module to run, review it, customize it, add some "off-the-shelf" rules and tools to enhance the game, and run it - all in about the same amount of time it would take to prepare a module for table-top play.
Conclusion
I originally met Neverwinter Nights with a feeling of elation... followed by disappointment in the single-player game... followed by growing enthusiasm as I began to explore what was really possible with the game, and started running my own modules with friends (including some friends I've only met online).
I view NWN as a construction set and multiplayer / DM tools - and even if the game shipped with no single-player game whatsoever, these would make it worth the price and then some. It is rare that a game comes so close to meeting my lofty expectations. Finally, we have the chance to play a "real" role-playing game online. It may not be for everyone, and it's certainly not "pure" D&D, but it is a real role-playing game.
For four of the five months the game has been out, I have been running NWN games successfully with a closed group of friends several nights a week (in addition to PnP campaigns). It took me a month or two to really get the "feel" for it - and it can take a lot of work, especially when starting out. Now that we've settled down to a steady pace, it's still a lot of work, but I've slowly come to a comfort level with the tools. With a toolkit of off-the-shelf and home-brewed objects and utilities, I can now "whip out" a simple adventure in about the same amount of time it takes to prepare a PnP game. It takes significantly more time to fully automate a module for "DM-less" gaming, but for my purposes - who cares? Many of my PnP skills have transfered across to the new medium fairly well, but I've found I have had to learn a few more skills (and perfect the fine art of juggling) and use a few different techniques to run a successful NWN adventure. One of the most obvious differences is that role-playing conversations take more time, and combat takes much less. It may not be for everyone, but I've found it provides a good "Fix" for my roleplaying addiction in-between my weekly PnP sessions.
Ultimately, you get out of it what you put into it. Finding a DM or a good module is a lot of work. Being a DM or building your own adventures from scratch is a lot more work. The first two weeks after the games' release, it was perhaps a little questionable as to whether or not these challenges were surmountable. With the hindsight of several months, seeing the incredible community support for the game, and having several outstanding game sessions under my belt, I think I can speak with confidence that yes, the game delivers. You just have to hunt a little.
