hell bovine
Arcane
I don't think it is necessary to excel at writing to build a fun mod, it's just that those wall of texts are really unnecessary. NPCs don't have to give your character a lecture on how and why to do a quest, each and every time.Rogueknight writes in an explicit, almost professorial tone. Which can sometimes break the immersion a bit. I think Cerutti is probably the best character writer that I've come across on the NWN platform. Paladins, thieves, whores, masterminds, dumbfucks, peasants and aristocrats. He seems capable of representing people from all walks. I was especially impressed on how he wrote women. For me, Gagne and Baldecaran come in 2nd place. It's really quite difficult to write for an array of characters. I've tried it myself and failed, utterly.
As for why Swordflight hasn't received that much interest, my guess would be it is because of the uninspiring main plot. It starts interesting enough, but then just kind of... loses the momentum. Zarala is supposed to be central to the story, but she just isn't developed enough as a character to be interesting. Heck, I was playing chapter 3
and the girls got jumped by assassins twice - and she has nothing to say about it! If an NPC doesn't care someone wants them dead, why should my character?
What I have enjoyed in Swordlfight was area & combat design. I honestly think this mod would have been better without the main plot; just an old school dungeon crawler, topped with nice boss fights.
Edit: As for favorite writers, I definitely agree on Gagne and Cerutti. Baldecaran's writing doesn't work for me; for some reason I just didn't care about the stories in his mods (though I still recommend them). Another recommendation would be FesterPot, I just love the attention to the detail in his mods.
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