I bought Neverwinter Nights

Cafe Society
1

[gaming nerd hat on]

DMs, the wait is over - cuz daaaaammmmn this game rocks! I was almost late to work because of it. Anyone else picked up this gem?

I also bought the official World Builder Guide. The thing reads like a course book in C Programming, but my mouth is drooling at all the amazing things you can do. Want your NPC’s to interact with your players differently depending on alignment, gender, or triggers? It’s in there. Want a deep dank dungeon filled with voluminous posion fog effects or rowdy drunken tavern customers who walk and talk with a purpose? Oh yeah! Want to paint a luscious rolling countryside (and then fill it to the brim with Ancient Black Dragons and Vampire Mages)? Booyah!!!

The single player game is cool. The multiplayer is a hoot. But the worldbuilder tool’s ability to create your own F**king world is just jelly on the anus! :smiley:

Ooo baby, who needs crack? I’ve found my new addiction!

[/damn, this hat isn’t coming off]

2

You realize, of course, that you’ve doomed me. I can actually feel the game store pulling at me now. I guess I know what’s going to become of my weekend (at least the part of it I don’t spend in a wyvern costume, slaughtering hapless adventurers).

3

Oh, man, I am sooooo jealous!

So, can I create scenarios and then have friends who have the game play together over the net? Can I? Huh?

4

MrVisible - Yes, you can build a module, host it as a server, and then play it as a player OR run it as a DM while your friends play through it. If you like you can allow others to download your modules and play them as well. Other options include creating portals that adjoin your world with other people’s creations, thus creating a neverending storyline to explore. The tools and wizards included make it as easy or complex as you want it to be.

Some other features of note - you can adjust all the module’s settings on the fly, making it easier or harder for the players as you see fit. You can add monsters and twists while your friends are playing, which means more freedom and power as a DM. You can even jump into an NPC’s body and converse or fight with the players as that character. My friend loaded up the first Act of the game in the DM client, dropped in a few elder dragons, took control of one of the dragons and fought and killed the other one, then went on a rampage burning down the town. Absolutely amazing…

5

Okay, now I have to wipe the drool off my keyboard.

6

Unbelievable. You know, SOME people have priorities in their lives - career, friends and family - and can’t just run off and buy every new addictive time-sucking computer RPG that comes out.

Why, look at me for example … I still have to finish Baldur’s Gate II.

7

So far, I’m about half way through the first chapter of the game (I’d guess, just cleared out the zombies). The game is cool, but there’s just something lacking to me. I think maybe it’s the fact that the writing in the single player is pretty bad… “You doth verily beith thine bestest. Whilst thou givith me a might dragon heart?”

Ok, so they don’t really say that, but the writing of the characters sounds like bad roleplayers trying to talk in character. So far, I’ve not really been impressed with the single player. Unfortunatly, due to working on too much at once, I’ve not gotten a chance to do the multiplayer, but the world building has an amazing amount of potential.

Hopefully, there will be well known servers to visit and places that make up for the ho-hum single player that ships with the game. I think it’ll just be tough to wade through an amazing amount of crap just to get onto a good server, but it will probably be worth it.

Right now, unless you want to start building, or have friends you want to play with, I’d just wait until some full servers are available. However, I’m sure in the next two to three months, this will be a must have game.

8

I’m glad to hear that you guys like it so much. How does the non-content part of the game stack up (such as chat features, user interface, ease of use)? It seems like a very interesting game (particularly the module building), but I’m a little wary of buying a game that requires 200 clicks just to walk across the room. Also, is it stable? Nothing cheapens a game more than all the little “features” that they couldn’t fix in time for release.

9

jmizzou - The chat feature is great. You hit enter, type what you want to say, and it appears in the lower left chat window as well as above your characters head. Pretty much anything anyone says in the game appears above them. So if one member of your party talks to an NPC, everyone can see both sides of the conversation.

The user interface is very simple. Left click does the most common action, depending on what you click on. Left Click a bad guy and you attack, left click an item and you pick it up, left click an NPC and you talk with them, left click a spell and then again to where you want to cast it. The right mouse button brings up menus based on what your mouse is over. There are 3 quickbars in the game, so you can have up to 36 preprogrammed actions (potion, spell, weapon switch, etc.). I brings up Inventory, R makes you rest, J is for Journal, M is for Map, and B is for Spellbook. Very easy to remember.

Walking across a room just requires clicking once on where you want to go. The zoom in and out is a nice feature, but I only use it when things get really crowded. I do pan the camera left and right, but it’s very smooth. In a way, it’s similiar to the zoom on Black and White and Dungeon Siege, but it just feels smoother.

The tutorial is important to the storyline and great at teaching all these basics.

You can make your own notes on the maps. Your inventory is freekin huge! Every time you touch your characters abilities (when you first create him, when you level up) there is also a Recommended button. Hit this, and the game picks the best setup it can for your new attributes. Or you can be like me and go into every little detail and fully customize your player. You can load your own portraits. Hell, if you’re playing a Bard you can even load your own .mp3’s! It’s just cool how it can be as easy or as detailed as you want it to be.

As for stablity, it hasn’t crashed once on me, and I’ve logged about 20 hours of playtime. They released a patch on the VERY SAME DAY the game was released to fix some gamespy server issues. How cool is that? For some games it takes weeks or months to release a patch. Bioware get’s an A+ in my book for that action alone.

10

Oh, my god. I am so in love with the idea of this game. I have to go out and buy it right after work. This is my Geek/DM/Computergeek dream come true.

Check out the game’s official site and tell me that’s not a complete and total mindblower.

Seriously; is DMing using these tools the beginning of a whole new art form?

11

Why do you think I’m so damn sleepy today? I’ve been playing it as much as humanly possible. I even put together one of my old computers so I can set up a 24/7 server on my home network, so my friends can all connect and play through the module I’m going to make.

I’m currently halfway through the first chapter in the official module, playing a half-elf Monk/Paladin. The hireling thief, Tomi, rocks.

Best. Game. Ever.

12

After all this testimony, I guess I’ll have to buy it.

Be back in a few days, guys. :slight_smile:

13

I bought it last night about 7 pm. Got home, installed it, launched, and the next thing I knew my contacts were all dried out and it was 2:30 am.

I bought a couple of other games at the same time. I wonder if I’ll ever install them.

Anyway- I gave up clicking to walk, and use the wasd keys for movement most of the time. I found that clicking was making my guy do weird things, like walk backwards to get to places behind him, no matter how far away he was from them. I also couldn’t tell why he sometimes decided to walk and sometimes run.

One of the few things I don’t like about it is the camera controls. Or, possibly, the way doorways work. One or the other. You can get it so you’re looking at your character from the wrong side of a doorway, and you can’t go through unless you swing the camera all the way around.

Other than that, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, and am now schemeing in my head ways to get all my friends to get it too.

14

I’m with ya on the door thing, it would be nice to be able to go through them from all sides. However it has saved me a few times. By turning the camera it gives my guy a few seconds to stand there and scan the door - which often leads to finding booby traps!

Cool thing you can do instead of clicking to walk - just hold down the left mouse button and it will turn into an arrow. Your guy will move wherever it goes, it’s much easier then clicking to get him there.

Level 6 elf wizard, 3 of the creatures recovered, I love this game!

15

Hmmm, I dunno. The game so far just seems kind of “ehh…” I keep thinking that the little details all over the Baldur’s Gate games – like better-looking inventory icons and character portraits – would’ve gone a long way towards improving my impression of Neverwinter Nights on the whole. Were the games done by completely different teams?

I’m kind of at a disadvantage because I think I’m about the only computer science/videogame geek who never played Dungeons & Dragons. (I was savagely mocked by my co-workers when I first played Diablo and had to ask what “mana” is.) I started playing through the single-player version of NWN to get an idea of what the whole D&D “universe” is about – I’ve played Baldur’s Gate and a little bit of BGII, but assumed that that was a very specific story & setting and atypical of table-top versions of the game.

And that single-player version of NWN was kind of discouraging – if this is the best that a team of “professionals” can come up with after devoting all of their time to working with the toolest, then what are the player-created games going to be like?

If any of you guys come up with a module that you’re proud of and want to open it up to the “public,” say so on this message board. I really want to try out a good player-run game and see what all the fuss is about.

16

Hmmm, I dunno. The game so far just seems kind of “ehh…” I keep thinking that the little details all over the Baldur’s Gate games – like better-looking inventory icons and character portraits – would’ve gone a long way towards improving my impression of Neverwinter Nights on the whole. Were the games done by completely different teams?

I’m kind of at a disadvantage because I think I’m about the only computer science/videogame geek who never played Dungeons & Dragons. (I was savagely mocked by my co-workers when I first played Diablo and had to ask what “mana” is.) I started playing through the single-player version of NWN to get an idea of what the whole D&D “universe” is about – I’ve played Baldur’s Gate and a little bit of BGII, but assumed that that was a very specific story & setting and atypical of table-top versions of the game.

And that single-player version of NWN was kind of discouraging – if this is the best that a team of “professionals” can come up with after devoting all of their time to working with the toolest, then what are the player-created games going to be like?

If any of you guys come up with a module that you’re proud of and want to open it up to the “public,” say so on this message board. I really want to try out a good player-run game and see what all the fuss is about.

17

So far, the single player module has not been that bad. I don’t know what you people are bitching about. I mean, sure, there are certain things I’ve been making fun of – the vague and unconvincing set up for one. There’s a plague going on, so what does the city do? They recruit heroes to go kick its ass! But anyone who has played actual table-top D&D ought to let this one pass, because this is just the sort of slapdash setup you get in a real D&D game.

DM: You decide to visit beautiful, historic Dirt Dale, for some reason.

Players: Do we?

DM: Well, you know, um, Carl’s got a cousin there who’s got a bit of a rat problem in his cellar. You know what that can lead to!

Players: But there’s something unusual about these rats, wink wink.

DM: Well not the rats as such.

Players: The celler is a bit, er, dungeony, nudge nudge.

DM: Mmmmm. Maybe.

Players: To Dirt Dale! For dear Counsin What’s-His-Face!

Whatever gets the ball rolling goes in D&D.

I also note with amusement that Chapter One quickly splits into four quests, when four dangerous beasts escape to the four corner districts of the city and create havoc. Oooo, how conveniently they divide up the territory. But actually, this artifice may tax credulity, but only in exactly the same way that is pretty typical in tabletop adventuring. This splits the story pretty neatly into four roughly equal-sized modules that amount to a minor epic that will segue into the bigger epic. Hokey, but again exactly the sort of thing people have been elbowing up to the dinner table for all these years. Whatever gets the ball rolling.

You might wonder why if you and your henchman and your summoned boar can clean up the district, nobody else apparently could. The big muckity-mucks are way too busy? How long would it have taken them? Once again, this is exactly the same kind of silliness you get in an actual D&D game.

In fact, what with all these niftly little homeade touches I’m really amazed at how much this game feels like a real pencil-and-paper game. I think somehow people were expecting more from this game than from the regular D&D that it’s supposed to be an imitation of.

In the end what matters is that I’m absorbed in ot. I have just got to kick open every door and make sure no zombie goes unclobbered. By god, you’re gonna cut this evil cult shit out right now, squire!

18

What’s this talk of thieves with their lockpick skill? Improved Power Strike + warhammer specialzation = a pile of splinters! I love it!

Actually though, I have encountered a game-killer bug, and so have a few other players on the NWN forums. No one is yet sure of the exact cause, but it seems that in the Peninsula district you should use the prison key instead of taking the secret passage. I’m sure they’ll patch it pretty soon, but I don’t know how that one managed to slip past the testing department.

19

sturmhauke wrote:

I took the secret passage, and I don’t recall running into a game-killing bug. What’s it supposed to do?

20

A few questions…

So the single player mode seems self-explanatory. But what exactly does the multiple player mode entail? Is it the single-player quest with multiple players? Also, in the single player quest, do you just control one person, or is it a party system?