T13K + Neverwinter Nights = Potential Coolness

[Renfield]

Allright, sitting here cursing my body for not sleeping the one night I decide to go to bed early, I had an idea. I recently got a job that has insanely nice flexibility, damn good pay and benefits, and is stable to boot. This means I'll have nice money making job and time to have fun, THAT means I'll have more time to dedicate to T13K and my other renewed obsession: Neverwinter Nights. Now if any of you are familiar with Neverwinter Nights I run games and play under my standard issue screen name of Renfield, so far I seem to be doing well as a player and intend on testing my capabilities as a Dungeon Master this sunday, that being said I like to consider myself a decent story teller and intend on creating modules of my own.

Now, with the implications of wonderful new items for the toolset, as well as my joining a nice wittle guild that was made to help scripting inept peoples such as myself, I'm confident I can flush out a few quasi entertaining gems. The question would remain where to set my stories? The Forgotten Realms have been done, and I consider story telling a form of sharing ones creativity, which naturally keeps me from considering using someone elses campaign world. However, a campaign world that I had the pleasure and honor to assist with, even if that assistance was limited due to real world difficulties (though hey, I still be a CM so that's gotta count for something ) so the perfect idea in my mind would be T13K's world of Aerde.

As to where I'm going with this? Hell, I don't rightly know myself, but it could add a little extra spice to the flavorful and original world that is Aerde. Perhaps might even lead to a nice little guild on Neverwinter Connections, a nice name for ourselves on Neverwinter Vault. It could also potentially haul in more and more players to boot, among them some of the best roleplayers I've worked with. Many people turn to Neverwinter Nights as their primary tool for gaming for the same reasons a lot of people have come to our community, because they lack people to play with face to face in their own area.

Now I only have the rough skeleton of an idea for a module to build, but before I even want to work on it I need to complete my debut module, that particular nugget has been in the works for too long and is set in my home brewed world that my pen and paper campaign people play in. Still, I encourage anyone out there with Neverwinter Nights who have an interest in building modules, scripting, modeling, or anything else of use; to consider building items or working on things that might serve to bring Aerde to what I think is one of the coolest computer RPG's out there (if not the most accurate, but you win some you lose some, I mean look at Temple of Elemental Evil). This post is for general comments on that idea, I'm posting it here for player's, DM's, and CM's alike and included below are two links that are useful to anyone who enjoys NWN (provided they, for some strange freakish reason, haven't heard of them yet.)

http://www.neverwinterconnections.com - A nice site built with the purpose of getting people together who wish to play NWN with a group and the like.

http://nwvault.ign.com/index2.shtml - A great site, easily the best (IMHO ) site for finding excellent home brewed modules, custom made modules and hak packs, and other stuff to increase NWN's cool rating (or make it cool for those who played the game out of the box and hated it because the campaign it came with *SUCKED* or something. )

 

[DMEntropy]

I had thought of this when our community was first started and NWN became available. I did play through the entire provided module to the very end and enjoyed the game play. Playing with others would be interesting online, but never did that.

My first attempts at making modules was not successful at all. Without a "manual" to work from I became frustrated very quickly. Do you know of such a resource to guide people who cannot program anything beyond AppleSoft (That is Apples basic computer language from the early 80's for those of you who never heard of it).

Translating online characters to NWN characters may be difficult, so I am not sure what the crossover could be. The only downside to this would be the possibility of diluting our participation group too thinly between differing modes of play so that it looks like noone is participating to any great extent here.

 

[Renfield]

Well, the purpose of doing this wouldn't exactly be to transfer the living part of our campaign to another medium, and as far as rules go I agree, it would be rather complicating and frustrating to try and keep a nice record of NWN characters. Hence the idea of building modules, not exactly having a campaign. Essentially what I'm thinking of involves one creating an adventure, whether single player or a game that can be DMed, then make sure to do some blatant and shameless advertising within the credits. Considering what curiosity can do to people it might bring in some new blood for our campaign giving other DM's a chance to show their stuff.

Who knows, perhaps a Persistant World (a world set up online kind of in the vein of MMORPG's only with the added benefit that DM's can pop up and create adventures and the like) can be somewhere in the future but that would definitely be an idea for a time when we have a larger population of players.

As for program languageses, there was a 2 part guide to NWN shortly after it hit the shelves. I never really bothered with the first part, the walkthrough and hint guide for the campaign, but I did get the second part, the one that described how to build modules and even had a mini scripting guide. Alas I have been too impatient to learn and chose to take the easy way out. (BTW: I believe the guide was put out by PRIMA)

If you want a suggestion for learning scripting and the like there's the scripting library at neverwinter connections. Though that's more helpful to those who already know a bit, therefor might not be of much help for you or I. The other option I've found quite useful: Go to the bioware website, register your NWN (if you haven't already), that'll unlock the forums for you along with news on expansion packs, nice downloads (including the free module put out by the BIOware team: Witch's Wake) and other goodies. In the boards you'll find every neverwinter nights topic available to man (or just about) one of the main threads involves module building and scripting assistance. There are guilds who's soul purpose is to keep track of these threads and help people like us who know next to nothing about scripting.

Another option is to use the plot wizard though I find that limited in it's capabilities. Anyway, hope I helped, have to run.

 

[Renfield]

P.S.: I think I remember someone having mentioned NWN once upon a time. That's likely what triggered the idea, I was on here when I recalled it, so in an odd sort of way: thanks.

 

[Arkhandus]

Feh, the 2 strategy guides (Worldbuilder's Guide and Adventurer's Guide) aren't that great, though the Adv Guide has been helpful for me to breeze through parts of the game without missing much. The Worldbuilder's Guide blows however, a lotta wasted space. There's far too little explanation of how to use the Neverwinter Toolset, and not enough help for those of us who aren't knowledgeable in the C language. It does help some, granted, but a lot of what it suggests is to look at the code for existing modules and NPCs and encounters from the official campaign.

Regardless, my dwarven monk r0xx0rs Faerun in the official campaign. Amazing how many bosses can be neutralized by a Stunning Fist and wasted with some frenzied dwarf-monk beatdown!! With all the dwarven and monkish saving throw bonuses, I have NEVER worried about any trap or wizard in the game, just laughing at how piteous their fireballs and hold persons and webs and such are!!! MUAHAAHAHAHA!!!! MY MONK IS UNSTOPPABLE!!!!

*cough* *cough* Phew. Had to let that out.

 

[DMEntropy]

"frenzied dwarf-monk BEATDOWN!"

Anyone in the Kinrisar Campaign better not be looking cross-eyed at any dwarves for a while.....

((Actually, I had mentioned NWN a LONG time ago in this forum. I gave up on it since I couldn't get things working easily and lack the time for a new college major in computer programming.))

 

[Renfield]

Well, I'll at least work on modules and stuff, some requiring the expansion packs and others that can do without, granted the others won't necessarily be as potentially nifty as the first but hey, that's how the cracker crumbles. Regardless I'll likely update this thread and post the links to any modules I create, anyone who is interested in assisting should post here and perhaps we could form a guild, though Entropy is right on another thing. We should watch out about taking people away from T13K. My intentions are to bring more people to T13K by showing off our wonderful little world via the CRPG media and letting people know what badassness occurs when 13+ imaginative people put their heads together. Not to mention anyone looking at my signature knows I'm not above a little blatant advertising

 

[Emiricol]

I'd love to play any T13K NWN stuff you come up with

 

[Renfield]

I just realized I could easily convert the module I'm currently creating to a T13K campaign module... I'll have to look into it to see if the setting would fit into any of the kingdoms.

 

[Memnus]

I would definitely love a T13K/NWN combination. However, my few forays into the builder have ended miserably, and I don't have the free time to figure out how to make it love me more.