Hello,

I haven't played this butwould like to, however the list of mods etc.. is a bit daunting (impressive though). Can I ask is it ok just to play the game in its original form (ie install and play)? Or is it broken in any way that would affect the ability to play it.

Maybe if I like it, I might want to try some mods, but I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to play games as it is, so am more of a 'install and play' type guy.

Thanks.

Rob.

Absolutely. There is nothing wrong with playing it that way.

Just to clarify, the term "mods" in the NWN-series usually refers to "(adventure) modules" (i.e., new campaigns and adventures, which are completely separate from the official ones), not "modifications to the base game", like it is with other games. Those modifications exist too, but are usually referred to as "custom content" or "haks".

Excellent, thanks for the quick reply.

I had to install the crucial hotfix because the game wouldn't load, but now it seems to be working fine.

Thanks.

The 1.69 Critical Rebuild, I assume?

And yes, as Gaunathor said "mods" refers to new campaigns/adventures -- each chapter of the official campaign is a module, for example.

And there are MANY user made modules that are FAR superior to the official Bioware campaigns. Let us know if you'd like any pointers to particularly good ones. The reason NWN is amazing is certainly not the official campaigns (which, strictly speaking, aren't bad and Hordes of the Underdark is pretty good), it's the other 99% of the game made up of custom modules and online persistent worlds supported by custom script systems, custom creature models, custom tilesets, custom item models, and more.

But all YOU need to worry about as the user is downloading the files and copy/pasting them to the right folder, which is pretty simple.

If you want to play the game without sorting through the user-made adventures, you might want to start with the expansion packs. Shadows of Udrentide is meant to be played with a new character and is quite a bit better than the original campaign when it comes to level design, and the story at least is more tolerable. Hordes of the Underdark is actually meant to be played with the character from Shadows of Udrentide, and is rightfully considered to be the best of the bunch.

Now, mind you, there are some people who enjoy the original campaign just fine. I found the story to be aggressively stupid though, particularly early on, and the gameplay is extremely repetitive. Huge areas with dozens of groups of the same kind of enemy to fight, endless amounts of chests and barrels to loot with nothing in them... some elements are more inspired than that, but in general NWN1 does not measure up to any of Bioware's other efforts. Even Baldur's Gate 1 had a better story.

Scuttlebutt (and gamasutra) have it that the designers never meant to ship NWN1 with any kind of campaign at all, but instead with a few short, modular multiplayer-friendly adventures. The game and the engine are obviously designed for this. But then testing revealed that the customer base expected a big, central campaign, and the designers threw one together at the last minute. And it shows. Boy, does it ever show.

Besides the crud writing and lazy design, if you're even remotely familiar with the game's toolset you can see how they basically have to use scotch tape and paperclips to make the campaign work. To name an example: modules can only be a certain size before they get unwieldy, so the campaign has to consist of 6 such modules pasted together. But the engine could not save variables between modules. Or save information about multiplayer characters that would log in our out repeatedly in an ongoing game. There was no database support whatsoever So to remember the things your character had done in the early parts of the official campaign, you got items in your character's inventory. Accept a quest? Get a token! Make friends with a character? Get a token! Your inventory ends up cluttered with these useless odds and ends just so the game can scan your inventory and thus deduce what your previous actions were. (early user-made modules tend to do the same, since they were bound by the same limitations.)

The expansion packs fixed this kind of thing and the premium modules and later user-made modules are much more sophisticated and polished in look and feel.

don't know if this is catching you quick, but be careful when building your character.

the game makes no attempts to gate off content that's only meant for the later expansions when playing the original campaign. so points in intimidate or bluff, as well as the crafting skills, will be wasted. those would be far better spent on something like tumble or discipline. I think the manual makes mention of when something requires an expansion, so check that. if not, there's always the wiki.

you get answers to a lot of this stuff on the wiki, just be careful to avoid spoilers. you should be fine as long as you stick to the search engine and look for class, game concept, mechanic, and item articles only. careful about character articles because they can lead to story spoilers.

that said, there are some spells brought in in the expansion which can be used just fine in the vanilla campaign. for example, the evocation school was given a low-level summonable minion. so, if you specialize in evocation, you aren't gated off from minions until level 4 when you can get the shadow conjuration spells from the illusion school. there's also polymorph self in transmuation, but then you can't cast spells. there's also the charm spells in transmuation, but not having used them too much, I do not know if they make monsters fight for you. the evocation minion is only good until level 4 though, because of its lack of hit points even though it does have some DR. once the DR is outmatched, it will get killed quickly. so just remember this when picking spells. one I like is the electric fireball, but that was brought in in an expansion. I don't think that one is too unbalanced in vanilla, though. sometimes it's more useful than fireball, sometimes it isn't.

oh, and if you play a wizard, don't hesitate to ask for advice, and also check out the recommended spells list on the wiki. wizards can be tough and also unintuitive because of the way the D&D system works.

Really? That's the one I started twice but got bored with and never completed. I guess I should give it a third try sometime..

It is worth a playthrough but I don't want to get your expectations up. From what I could tell, more attention was given to alignment changing dialog options and actions than the OC and HOTU did. Don't want to say too much cos of potential spoilers. I started to get fed up of HOTU in chapter 3 and just randomly killed a few guys hoping to find a shortcut, my alignment wasn't affected at all even though I did some things very unpaladin like.

All campaigns suffered from the over the top unbelievable villians (and stupid dialog options for that matter) so don't expect any good writing here. The OCs villians didn't even exist in Forgotten Realms canon and HOTUs rediculous "I'm evil and arrogant and borderline stoopid and I'm gonna conquer the world" rethoric kind of villians, well, I'm just sick of em. Seriously, everytime a cutscene with Valsharess came on, I just wanted to ram an illithid tentacle down her throat so she would shut up. In regards to villians, SoUs was the most tolerable of the 3 but not by much.

It's also worth noting that SoU doesn't drag on like the OC did and that was a plus. SoU also starts quite slow as well (though not as slow as the OC) which might explain why you got bored. Deekin is also an interesting character (well, I liked him anyway) and some of his dialog definately helps the atmosphere of the game.

I agree that none of the OCs are actually -good-, let alone great. But I still think Hordes is the best of the lot. Gameplay is varied and fun, particularly in the first two chapters. (out of three.) The plot is much better than the OC. Okay, that's damning with faint praise, but still.

User generated content is definitely where it's at, though. Stuff like Stefan Gagne's later work (Hex Coda, Excrucio Eternum) for imaginative weirdness and, in the former case, humour. Or Baldecaran's (Prophet series, Honor among Thieves) for epic philosophical plotting and non-linear conniving, respectively. Or Fester Pot's Almraiven/Shadewood for atmospheric low-level adventuring that actually makes the game look good through extremely detailed area design. Or El Danno's Black Thorn mod if you want something really different from your typical RPG. (it's a timed whodunnit with randomised plot. No, really.) And that's just the tip of the iceberg, albeit the tip that involves most of my all-time favourites.

And if you can get a few friends together and someone who knows the DM client well enough to throw together an adventure... well, there are few things that get as close to the P&P experience as that.

(Edited for embarrassing typo. A mod called "excrucio eternum" is -not- the funny one.)

Is there by any chance a good module for a group of people that's a copy of the official printed modules, like Tomb of Horrors or any of the 1/2e modules? If there are more people who'd like to try it out and a willing DM, I'd love to try some of them out! :)

I saw ToH on the old Vault, not sure how good the conversion is and there were several versions of it as well, none of which are on the new Vault yet.

-edited typos-

Oh man, ToH. Not sure how if it was based on the 3.5 conversion or the original module, but either way you'd probably wind up with a TPK pretty quickly. I might actually consider tagging along just to see how that goes if someone gets a game running.

Yeah, I've read reviews about it saying it was brutal and made to kill all but the best and most clever parties. That's why I'd also like other people who know nothing about it (the reviews never mentioned what's actually inside), so it would really be a surprised and a test of skill, wits and cunning for all members! :)

You'd be welcome as a spectator though, and any subsequent reruns (since I'm not sure if we will manage to beat it for the first time if I do manage to get a newbie party together).

Only problem is that I'm not sure how the module handles some of the traps, but that's pretty standard for the NWN toolset; I mean, it can recreate a spike trap ok, but not a good old fashioned pit trap that calls for a DEX roll to avoid falling in and necessitating climb or creative thinking to get back out, or any number of nasty traps that a more sadistic DM might throw at a party in a given P&P game. Thanks for the invite, though. I might take you up on it if things work out, and if I think I can avoid giving away spoilers by virtue of maniacal laughter.

Assuming you're referring to the race, they do, albeit not looking quite the same as they're described in game.