NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[Poseidon00]

I have been working on a module for about a week and have been having a lot of fun with it. I have quite a few areas done already, I got companions up and running, some quests already working, and I think I have areas looking pretty nice. If anyone wants to check my progress, just ask. When it's closer to completion, i'll post it for general feedback.

 

[Pikoman]

Glad to know that I'm not the only one who noticed the faults in Texts of Thaan's encounter design and my frustrations weren't due to me being a filthy scrub or some shit lmao. I still liked the module after all said and done, it does have a lot of potential in my mind and an interesting enough premise, so I'll be following the series progress.

 

[RedpilledBiggerHeadshot69]

Any of you ancient motherfuckers remember Bastions of War? Damn now that was a mod.

 

[Gahbreeil]

The most important thing (for Codexers) first: combat is piss easy.

Considering this is NWN, which is a game with dogshit combat, that's actually a good thing. Makes the worst part of the game less obnoxious if it's easy to breeze through.

And you play on the default difficulty, don't you? Try it on Hardcore D&D. The game is fun and the difficulty makes it fun. It's quite quite akin playing D&D 3.5e on Fantasy Grounds. It's actually way easier because the Player can save and reload as well.

 

[JarlFrank]

The game is fun

Nothing about this game is fun.
The more difficult it is, the less fun it becomes, because everything about it is frustrating. I love difficult D&D-based games - Knights of the Chalice 2 is a favorite of mine, ToEE is a classic I like, and Solasta is cool too. But NWN? Utter shit, because it fucks up the fundamentals.

D&D is a party-based game. If you play a fighter you don't have much to do other than attack, and attacking is slooooooow (once every 6 seconds, MUCH slower than ANY turn based game). If you play a mage you will die in melee and get your spells interrupted by AoO attacks all the time. The solution to this problem in D&D is that you have a fighter to capture the enemies' attention and a mage standing behind him to cast damage/debuff/environment effects for tactical synergy between the two characters.

NWN doesn't let you do this, because it is a single character game. In a system designed to be played with a party.
Oh sure, there are hirelings, but they are AI-controlled and even if you try to give them commands they will mostly ignore them and run off to commit suicide. I played a few chapters of Swordflight, and some of the fights in those modules are genuinely well designed. In any other engine they would be incredibly fun encounters. In NWN, they're an exercise in frustration because of the shitty companion AI and lack of party control.

Also, everything in NWN moves slow as molasses due to the one action per 6 seconds RTwP timeflow. Which wouldn't be that bad if you could control multiple characters... but you only control a single character, so you can only make one decision every six seconds. Incredibly slow and boring.

NWN is shit, 0/10 game, I tried deriving some fun from it many times, but every single time it ended up being a frustrating and un-fun experience. The most enjoyable modules I played were those that barely had any combat and just roleplaying, sorta like Disco Elysium, because at least the non-combat gameplay is bearable as long as you use CheatEngine's speedhack to improve the torturously slow walking speed.

 

[Gahbreeil]

The game is fun

Nothing about this game is fun.
The more difficult it is, the less fun it becomes, because everything about it is frustrating. I love difficult D&D-based games - Knights of the Chalice 2 is a favorite of mine, ToEE is a classic I like, and Solasta is cool too. But NWN? Utter shit, because it fucks up the fundamentals.

D&D is a party-based game. If you play a fighter you don't have much to do other than attack, and attacking is slooooooow (once every 6 seconds, MUCH slower than ANY turn based game). If you play a mage you will die in melee and get your spells interrupted by AoO attacks all the time. The solution to this problem in D&D is that you have a fighter to capture the enemies' attention and a mage standing behind him to cast damage/debuff/environment effects for tactical synergy between the two characters.

NWN doesn't let you do this, because it is a single character game. In a system designed to be played with a party.
Oh sure, there are hirelings, but they are AI-controlled and even if you try to give them commands they will mostly ignore them and run off to commit suicide. I played a few chapters of Swordflight, and some of the fights in those modules are genuinely well designed. In any other engine they would be incredibly fun encounters. In NWN, they're an exercise in frustration because of the shitty companion AI and lack of party control.

Also, everything in NWN moves slow as molasses due to the one action per 6 seconds RTwP timeflow. Which wouldn't be that bad if you could control multiple characters... but you only control a single character, so you can only make one decision every six seconds. Incredibly slow and boring.

NWN is shit, 0/10 game, I tried deriving some fun from it many times, but every single time it ended up being a frustrating and un-fun experience. The most enjoyable modules I played were those that barely had any combat and just roleplaying, sorta like Disco Elysium, because at least the non-combat gameplay is bearable as long as you use CheatEngine's speedhack to improve the torturously slow walking speed.

I have to agree that the plot, characters, party character limit and all of that is crap. The fundamentals are done right, however. And I can explain why.

It's RTwP, it's an advancement from BG in graphics. Also, D&D doesn't have to be a party game. I've beaten the Original Campaign without henchmen on D&D Hardcore. It was altogether fun.

Bear with me, imagine BG I & II & ToB as NwN? If you're not happy, which would mean that the game deserves a mark above 5/10, you probably consider Disco Elysium an RPG and are a Sunday gamer.

EDIT: Ah, the timing of the rounds. 6 seconds is just fine since Haste is a spell. They could've done 4 seconds but hey, the game is PEGI +12.

 

[JarlFrank]

Bear with me, imagine BG I & II & ToB as NwN?

BG 1 and 2 would suck in NWN's engine, absolutely.

BG 1 and 2 in ToEE's engine however would be heavan.

 

[Gargaune]

If you play a fighter you don't have much to do other than attack, and attacking is slooooooow

Level up your fucking Fighter.

If you play a mage [...]

Level up your fucking NWN:

 

[JarlFrank]

>multiplayer settings

Yeah the game was designed for multiplayer, which is why it sucks in singleplayer. Too bad I don't care about multiplayer, so all I'm left with is a terrible singleplayer RPG.

 

[NJClaw]

it's an advancement from BG in graphics

Neverwinter Nights is the ugliest game I've ever laid my eyes on. Everything looks like vomit.

 

[Gargaune]

>multiplayer settings

Yeah the game was designed for multiplayer, which is why it sucks in singleplayer. Too bad I don't care about multiplayer, so all I'm left with is a terrible singleplayer RPG.

It's not multiplayer-only, singleplayer's technically running on your own local server. This is a new NWN EE setting that gives you additional controls for your associates:
- select henchmen by CTRL + clicking them or CTRL + draq marquee;
- SHIFT + click an enemy or location and profit.

It's a bit finnicky, still nowhere near full party controls like in the IE, but it does the job and I've played a glass cannon Wizard through the OC and a rearguard Cleric through DoD all safe and snug. Once combat is joined, NPC AI will still do what it wants up close, but being able to lead with your meatheads is a game-changer. Note that you'll want to keep them on Stand Your Ground if you intend to move in formation this way (or they'll keep running back to you out of combat), and use SHIFT + double click to have them run.

 

[MerchantKing]

The game is fun

attacking is slooooooow (once every 6 seconds, MUCH slower than ANY turn based game)

I'm not so sure about that. Often in turn-based games you're waiting for a minute or more just to be able to do any actions at all thanks to the developers being clueless as to how much time they're wasting with all the superfluous animation and their extremely unoptimized AI calculations in many newer games. It's rare that you get a developer who makes a game with minimal animations like Pierre or a developer that adds an animation speed multiplier like Styg or what Owlcat did with Kingmaker (10 times animation speed in Kingmaker, downgraded to 3 times in Wrath). Most of the time you get something like Larian where not only do the animations and janky controls slow down your turns, the AI takes forever to get their turn done and you have to wait a long time just to take turns for more characters.

Sure you can get 3+ attacks in 6 seconds in turn-based between much longer periods of waiting before you get another. But a hasted level 12+ fighter will get the same in 6 seconds in NWN. It's just boring because the gameplay of NWN is taking your hand away from the keyboard and mouse as you wait for the character to resolve the fights full of trash mobs that can't damage you that aren't worth wasting precious resources on with auto-attacks.

Oh sure, there are hirelings, but they are AI-controlled and even if you try to give them commands they will mostly ignore them and run off to commit suicide. I played a few chapters of Swordflight, and some of the fights in those modules are genuinely well designed.

This is kinda a funny thing to say when you consider how many of the fights are just jobber and trash mobs with the few strong enemies just being overpowered.

Which wouldn't be that bad if you could control multiple characters

In that case, you end up pausing so much whenever you can't just auto-attack enemies to death that it might as well be turn-based or round-based like Wizardry. In NWN, if you're doing anything but auto-attacks, you're going to have to pause a lot to use the shitty wheel interface to use all the abilities that aren't hotkeyed.

It's RTwP, it's an advancement from BG in graphics.

It's only a technical advancement. One that happened 7-8 years prior to Neverwinter Night's release. Moreover, it doesn't matter as far as whether or not Neverwinter Nights is a good game.

The fundamentals are done right, however. And I can explain why.

You haven't explained why the fundamentals are done right anywhere in your post.

 

[MerchantKing]

>multiplayer settings

Yeah the game was designed for multiplayer, which is why it sucks in singleplayer. Too bad I don't care about multiplayer, so all I'm left with is a terrible singleplayer RPG.

It sucks in multiplayer too. It's like playing WOW which is absolute garbage.

 

[Pikoman]

There are enough tools at your disposal, even without installing additional mods, to properly wrangle and position your henchmen to do something you wish, adding a semblance of strategy, though I've never understood why having limited party control is deemed as unquestionably resulting in shallow gameplay devoid of any tactics by some of the people disliking NwN. It is unfortunate that full party control isn't a thing when it comes to the SP, but it was never that much of a deal-breaker for me personally, I can't give a honest and truthful recollection on BGI and BGII's combat encounters since it's been a long time since I replayed them, but Swordflight and even a few other modules have given me the same amount of memorable and tactical encounters as the bhaalspawn trilogy.

Fighters not being able to do anything is a pretty questionable thing to say, considering they have a more varied kit than the 2E games for example and a couple of rogue levels in your build also offer a versatile playstyle. Not to mention the prestige classes if you take one of those in your fighter build.

But yes, the philosophy behind the game's creation was always geared towards multiplayer and the ease of making custom content. The latter two are exactly why in my book NwN is the greatest and purest form of DnD to exist in digital form and I think that whatever sacrifices were made in terms of the OC and other aspects of the game, in order to fully flesh out said focuses of the game, were more than worth it in the long run.

 

[Pikoman]

>multiplayer settings

Yeah the game was designed for multiplayer, which is why it sucks in singleplayer. Too bad I don't care about multiplayer, so all I'm left with is a terrible singleplayer RPG.

It sucks in multiplayer too. It's like playing WOW which is absolute garbage.

I fail to see much similarities to WoW, even if we're strictly talking about action-oriented PWs.

Was never heavy on the PvE side of things, but it's a much more engrossing and strategic experience to go and clear out a dungeon in the better made NwN servers, than it is in WoW. The servers themselves add on a lot of custom classes, feats, skills, spells, races and so on that add even more layer of complexity to the already solid systems framework that the vanilla game has. It may be anecdotal evidence, but a lot of the dungeons I've ran on the server I've spent the most time in are quite imaginative, tactical and are faithful adaptions of a PnP experience of delving a dungeon for treasure. The more complex ones would require you to pay mind to your party composition, elemental resistance, the weapons you bring, environmental hazards or effects, skill checks to pass and so on.

Even completely disregarding the qualities of the multiplayer PvE and PvP experience, NwN lets you do some pretty crazy shit and authentically RP your character to do whatever you and the DM feel like doing. You could be a mafia boss, commit regicide, summon demons or make pacts with them, negotiate trade deals with plot critical NPCs, become a vampire and many more other cool stuff that'd be either impossible or very half-assedly done in another online RP environment without the custom tools and the DM mode in NwN.

 

[Gahbreeil]

You haven't explained why the fundamentals are done right anywhere in your post.

It's RTwP, it's an advancement from BG in graphics.

It is a mystery?

Right. Adventure gaming, the dialogues exist, the radial menu is a nod to Monkey Island. The graphics are Three Dimensional. The combat is more or less D&D. The fundamentals.

 

[MerchantKing]

>multiplayer settings

Yeah the game was designed for multiplayer, which is why it sucks in singleplayer. Too bad I don't care about multiplayer, so all I'm left with is a terrible singleplayer RPG.

It sucks in multiplayer too. It's like playing WOW which is absolute garbage.

I fail to see much similarities to WoW, even if we're strictly talking about action-oriented PWs.

It's that the melee is all auto-attacking with abilities on hotkeys. And then you have a fixed 6 second cool down for everything.

 

[MerchantKing]

the dialogues exist

Dialogues exist in as many terrible games as they do in good games.

the radial menu is a nod to Monkey Island

It's a terrible interface.

The graphics are Three Dimensional.

Choosing to use 3d graphics is not "getting the fundamentals right." There are plenty of terrible games that have 3d graphics too.

The combat is more or less D&D.

The gameplay is mostly sitting their waiting for the hidden timer to run out so the action can start. It matters not what the ruleset is. The same gameplay with an entirely different ruleset would still be garbage.

 

[Pikoman]

It's that the melee is all auto-attacking with abilities on hotkeys. And then you have a fixed 6 second cool down for everything.

That is true, though auto-attacking has been the go-to formula not only for DnD based games(since other options wouldn't be feasible in an online environment), but for most successful MMORPGs. It is not "all" turning off your brain and left clicking on an enemy most of the time though when playing a melee character, but it all depends if the module or server you're playing in requires you to use your brain and pay heed to your positioning, focusing on mobs, knowing how to maneuver in order to save your retarded wizard buddy when he aggros and so on.

Then again, enjoyment of those things in multiplayer is intrinsically linked on whether one likes RtW(ithout)P DnD as well as some of the more classic MMO conventions of gameplay found in Everquest or WoW.

 

[JarlFrank]

Swordflight and even a few other modules have given me the same amount of memorable and tactical encounters as the bhaalspawn trilogy.

Swordflight gave me the most memorable encounters of playing NWN, indeed.
Encounters that stuck to my mind because of how frustrating they were, probably gained a few grey hairs out of it.
Encounters you were intended to tackle with a party and without resting in between. Of course the caster companions would waste all their spells on the easy upfront encounters and have nothing left for the boss! And the thief chick that accompanies you from the start, whom you probably don't want to die because she keeps being your companion later on, kept shooting her crossbow in melee, provoking attacks of opportunity that killed her! Just trying to prevent my companions from committing suicide was almost impossible!
Add to that the boring slowness of everything, and it pretty much devolves into a game where you keep fighting the engine for 99% of the time, rather than the actual encounters.

It's simply not fun to play. Every other D&D engine in existence is better than NWN. It's such a shame it became the most popular modding platform for RPGs, because even the best modules aren't fun to play. I can recognize that Swordflight is good, but I don't enjoy playing it because every single aspect of NWN feels shit. I liked A Dance With Rogues for the story and choices, but every time I had to enter combat or a thief challenge gauntlet I had to sigh. Playing a thief in this shit game isn't fun either - every single lockpick attempt takes six seconds, so if you go through a place with a handful of locks, it's pretty much a game of watching the lockpick progress bar tick down a dozen times. Meanwhile in Baldur's Gate, the resolution of lockpicks and trap disarms was instant! Another shitty element caused by the multiplayer focus, I assume (to make sure thief player actions take the same amount of in-game time as any other action), which adds only frustration to the single player mode.

It's honestly a shame how much top-tier D&D content is held back by having been made for NWN. In any other engine, it would be fun to play. In NWN, even the best content will only be tolerable at best.

 

[Pikoman]

Swordflight and even a few other modules have given me the same amount of memorable and tactical encounters as the bhaalspawn trilogy.
Swordflight gave me the most memorable encounters of playing NWN, indeed.
Encounters that stuck to my mind because of how frustrating they were, probably gained a few grey hairs out of it.
Encounters you were intended to tackle with a party and without resting in between. Of course the caster companions would waste all their spells on the easy upfront encounters and have nothing left for the boss! And the thief chick that accompanies you from the start, whom you probably don't want to die because she keeps being your companion later on, kept shooting her crossbow in melee, provoking attacks of opportunity that killed her! Just trying to prevent my companions from committing suicide was almost impossible!
Add to that the boring slowness of everything, and it pretty much devolves into a game where you keep fighting the engine for 99% of the time, rather than the actual encounters.

It's simply not fun to play. Every other D&D engine in existence is better than NWN. It's such a shame it became the most popular modding platform for RPGs, because even the best modules aren't fun to play. I can recognize that Swordflight is good, but I don't enjoy playing it because every single aspect of NWN feels shit. I liked A Dance With Rogues for the story and choices, but every time I had to enter combat or a thief challenge gauntlet I had to sigh. Playing a thief in this shit game isn't fun either - every single lockpick attempt takes six seconds, so if you go through a place with a handful of locks, it's pretty much a game of watching the lockpick progress bar tick down a dozen times. Meanwhile in Baldur's Gate, the resolution of lockpicks and trap disarms was instant! Another shitty element caused by the multiplayer focus, I assume (to make sure thief player actions take the same amount of in-game time as any other action), which adds only frustration to the single player mode.

It's honestly a shame how much top-tier D&D content is held back by having been made for NWN. In any other engine, it would be fun to play. In NWN, even the best content will only be tolerable at best.

Spellcasters not blowing up their spells on trash can easily be rectified by toggling spellcasting off for them via the radial menu or voice commands. Another option would be through dialogue where you can be a little more specific in that aspect telling them not to go crazy with offensive spells in weaker fights, though I don't remember using those options and can't tell you of their reliability - the simple toggle-off and toggle-on spellcasting button worked for me.

As for Zarala, the henchman you mentioned who accompanies you from the start of Swordflight, she can fairly be easily be positioned to stay back at long range with the "stand your ground" command and then ordered with "attack nearby" whenever she's at range to shoot her crossbow from a safe distance. I think there were options via dialogue to make her stay far back when travelling with you in Chapter I as well, unless I'm mistaken and this was an option in the later chapters. If you meant that she just faceplanted mobs even when you equip her with a crossbow and tell her to go ranged, then that's strange - never had issues with that in regards to the AI.

In regards to it being a shame that DnD content is "held back" by NwN, I don't know about that honestly. If classic full-party control is to be deemed mandatory then sure, but a vast majority of the modules made for NwN wouldn't really be possible to be made elsewhere by amateur hobbyists even with a lot of free time on their hands, and as I've previously mentioned - admittedly a lot of stuff devwise were sacrificed in order for the toolset to be easy and powerful to use as it presently is, which again in my opinion is a fair trade-off.

 

[Zeriel]

Bear with me, imagine BG I & II & ToB as NwN?

BG 1 and 2 would suck in NWN's engine, absolutely.

BG 1 and 2 in ToEE's engine however would be heavan.

ToEE was such a sad and tragic fate for a beautiful engine and combat system. It just needed good content; which it lacked entirely.

it's an advancement from BG in graphics

Neverwinter Nights is the ugliest game I've ever laid my eyes on. Everything looks like vomit.

People felt this way at the time too. Infinity Engine games were much prettier, it's why so many of us hated NWN, it was a step back when it was released. The selling point of NWN is that the graphics allow reusability and flexibility; you can make a ton of different areas that vary enough to seem superficially different, at least at the time. Whereas Infinity Engine has static images for areas, you can't do much to have variety except having professional artists making new maps. But when comparing the campaigns and not modding... NWN is so much uglier, for sure.

 

[0sacred]

The most important thing (for Codexers) first: combat is piss easy.

Considering this is NWN, which is a game with dogshit combat, that's actually a good thing. Makes the worst part of the game less obnoxious if it's easy to breeze through.

And you play on the default difficulty, don't you? Try it on Hardcore D&D. The game is fun and the difficulty makes it fun. It's quite quite akin playing D&D 3.5e on Fantasy Grounds. It's actually way easier because the Player can save and reload as well.

I don't believe in cock and ball torture to make a game more exciting. Feels off for me. Also that wouldn't change the lousy encounter design in the game. You could argue that it's not lousy design and it's more about world simulation than being gamey, e.g. most groups of enemies are homogenous and don't have layers of difficulty.

More experienced players than me probably won't have a problem even on higher difficulty settings anyway.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Also, everything in NWN moves slow as molasses due to the one action per 6 seconds RTwP timeflow.

It's a pity that Bioware in 1998 didn't faithfully adopt the Gygaxian one-minute combat rounds of original D&D, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and AD&D 2nd edition; that would have aborted RTSRPGs from the start.

 

[MerchantKing]

Also, everything in NWN moves slow as molasses due to the one action per 6 seconds RTwP timeflow.

It's a pity that Bioware in 1998 didn't faithfully adopt the Gygaxian one-minute combat rounds of original D&D, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and AD&D 2nd edition; that would have aborted RTSRPGs from the start.

Someone could probably mod the AI Updates config to run that slowly if they really wanted to. By default, it's 30 per second. So with 3 per seconds, that would result in in one minute rounds.