Slashdot Mirror

Obviously you have never played NWN with a Good DM and players.

A well DMed module, comes about as close to PnP D&D as you can get on a computer. The DM can "radically alter the nature of the game world on the fly." And there are work arounds for most of it's short falls.

Granted, changing the landscape on the fly during game time isn't an option, unless it was planned for. But almost everything else can be done to make it feel like tabletop D&D. Most DMs I know run modules that are lightly scripted. All communication with NPCs is done with the DM possessing their bodies. Full, rich conversation and character development occur on a regular basis. Nothing canned like you suggest.

Check out http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/ if you want to find well DMed games. A lot of hardcore PnP RolePlayers hang out there.

You aught to give it another chance. Several people have said playing a well DMed game moved NWN from their rubbish bin to one of the best games they have ever owned.

You should see some of the Total Conversions that are being done. http://www.city-of-doors.com/ and http://www.dladventures.com/ are a couple of the most promising.

I know I sound like a fan boy, but there are really 2 different games in the box you get from the store. The single player (not too exciting), and DMed multiplayer (rock your world).

I know some MMORPG's have utilized the DM/GM model but the ratio of players to DMs is much higher, so it's often difficult to get help when you need it.

This is the same reason why I tend to play FPS games on servers that have an admin presence to boot unruly players. I like games that have friendly-fire set to on (forcing you to be careful and work together), but this is almost an invitation to grief unless you have a vigilant admin online. There have been a number of games that were really promising in this genre, but had a tough time because the booting mechanism was so ponderous. I've seen publishers trying to improve this by putting in voting mechanisms for players to boot a PKer, as well as automatic boots for players who rack up too many team kills. These are good steps, but are not yet a substitute for a good admin. One of the best systems I've seen is in Call of Duty, where some servers have a "forgive" system in place where you can do a console command to forgive a player who inadvertently team-kills you. If not forgiven, a player is booted after only a few incidences of team-damage.

Since this thread is about Dungeons & Dragons, I thought it would be a good opportunity to plug NWCon 2.5, a worldwide virtual convention for those interested in NeverWinter Nights, a D&D Computer Role-Playing Game

Similar to a real-world convention, NWCon 2.5 will also have conferences taking place both in IRC and In-Game.

NWCon 2.5 will be taking place September 25 & 26. Visit http://www.NeverWinterConnections.com for more information.

There are alternatives to the level grind and roll-playing as opposed to role-playing. There are players and worlds that prefer to get into character rather than simply bash pixels for experience.

Legends of Greyhawk Persistent World
Avlis Persistent World

Here is a list of some others that might be of interest:

Recent Bioware Forums PW list

And if you'd prefer a more PnP-like experience with scheduled game sessions:

Neverwinter Connections

For fan-based remakes of ultima, get neverwinter night!

We're in the process of rebuilding Zonker's adaptation of Ultima IV. We need more players!
We're missing a second DM and players for Dupre, Katrina, Jaana and Mariah.

Ultima Fans Allied on neverwinterconnections, an excellent site for player matchup and campaign management.

You wrote:
"The online experience so far also seems to be incredibly shallow, even if it is time consuming."
Have you ever tried Neverwinter Nights in a properly organised game with DM(s) online ?
No single player RPG will ever reach that level of quality.
check it out!

Neverwinter Nights? exactly! also... the best multi-player content is available, and for free, HERE I DM'ed a few games, played a lot more, it is absolute fun. Also players will burn about 2 or 3 hours a week there, ie a sane level.

*sigh* You're missing the point of the game. It's single player game is like Quake3's ... to teach you how to play.

Grab 3 friends and a dungeon master and play a campaign together. Or head over to Neverwinter Connections and find a game. You won't miss henchmen and you'll find the real strength of NWN, multiplayer.

The game has a few flaws -- IMO a fair number of bugs still and the original campaign is fairly bad compared with other games like Baldurs Gate.

But, it can be very fun to play if you're with a group of players that are at least trying to roleplay. Neverwinter Connections helps a great deal in organizing such games.

I think that Neverwinter Nights is the first true CRPG ever. The Dungeon Master client and toolset add the final key ingredient that seperated roleplaying games from character-based computer games. Together these allow games to be played where the game world can react to anything you say and do. Before NWN one could role-play their, say, Diablo character if they really wanted to. But that would be something a player did on their own -- the game world itself would never respond to it. Anyway, having played the Diablo and Baldurs Gate series and many others, I can say that NWN is completely different if you're playing with a dedicated group online.

BTW, the Aurora toolset is not being ported to Linux or MacOS. I see that someone did some work get the toolset working under wine, but I don't know what the current status is. I haven't been brave enough to try it with wine yet, since 95% of my past attempts at getting anything to work under wine have failed. Does anyone know what's up?

Says it will be available in Beta 2.

Of course, all cool kids use the "Direct Connect" button, right?

Some folks think that MMOGs are the next generation of MUDs, but I think not.

MMOGs are the AOL of the internet - a prepackaged, lowest-common-denominator experience. That's the economics of paying for the bandwidth and paying for the servers - you need so many customers. Because of that, MMOGs are simply not going to be as challenging as the single-player games in difficulty, but are still not going to allow everyone to complete the game. What will be challenging for the 10 hour a day player will be impossible for the 10 hour a week or month player.

The MUDs were so great because of the connection between community and the creators of the content - often there was overlap.

There are some open-source mmog projects (mmog open-server) and Nel. There is some hope of community-driven content in mmog gaming. Of course, there is also, NeverWinterNights, which although proprietary, still is really taking off in terms of its community and its player-created content.

Some folks think that MMOGs are the next generation of MUDs, but I think not.

MMOGs are the AOL of the internet - a prepackaged, lowest-common-denominator experience. That's the economics of paying for the bandwidth and paying for the servers - you need so many customers. Because of that, MMOGs are simply not going to be as challenging as the single-player games in difficulty, but are still not going to allow everyone to complete the game. What will be challenging for the 10 hour a day player will be impossible for the 10 hour a week or month player.

The MUDs were so great because of the connection between community and the creators of the content - often there was overlap.

There are some open-source mmog projects (mmog open-server) and Nel. There is some hope of community-driven content in mmog gaming. Of course, there is also, NeverWinterNights, which although proprietary, still is really taking off in terms of its community and its player-created content.

You should try playing on better servers. Either meet a group ahead of time on Neverwinter Connections, or if you're playing PWs, then join something with RP-enforced in the PW Story section, using server-vault only.

I think this game would have been a boon for linux gaming if they'd stuck to their plans to do simultaneous release. I'm not so sure now. Still, I like native linux gaming, and it does raise the bar for developers a bit. But in all seriousness, if you're a big fan, you could not wait until now to get it for linux. Thankfully they don't sell a "linux version" in box, so there won't be bogus weird sales figures.

On a final note, there won't be any linux toolset, because of the environment they built theirs in.

the ruleset is whacked, they did NOT even get close to making it 3rd ED D&D.

But any actual character development or spontaneus roleplay is impossible in this game.

I've had the most fun playing NWN with people I already know, but actually, I've also had really good luck just going online and connecting basically at random to an interesting looking server, meeting some folks, and dungeon-crawling a bit. There's also a few decent sites (Neverwinter Connections, for example) geared towards getting like-minded people together for games, and that seems to work pretty well.

Have you played with the toolkit at all, or at least downloaded a few modules? This is a game whose potential won't be realized all at once.