NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[Lhynn]

2003: Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher by Adam Miller; I can't remember what this was about, but my eyes glazed over when I read the description years ago
2004: Demon by Adam Miller; the epilogue to his epic

Shadowlords is mostly a dungeon romp, dreamcatcher has a few interesting areas and some novelties, adam miller did very interesting things with aurora. Demon is basically him going crazy with the toolset, really worth playing just to see what he did.

2005: The Hex Coda by Stefan Gagne; "What if Bioware made a JRPG pastiche?"

i knew it wasnt complete so i didnt play it. But i believe he got the award on the back of his previous modules.

2007: The Aielund Saga Act IV part 3 by Savant; more dull fantasy crap that makes my eyes glaze over

Its a fairly good saga, great example of world building. Every single sidequest in the game, no matter how small, ties into the main plot, but only realize this at the end. Its funny how it connects with everything. My only qualm was that by the end of it the author had a boner for his own characters, hate it when that happens.

play the bastard of kosigan series, its witcher done right.

 

[grotsnik]

Demon is probably the least deserving of those, for me - although I haven’t played 2003 or 2004.

All of Miller’s campaigns beyond the first one were, to some extent, a loose grab-bag of novelties and scripting tricks (ones that were, mind you, far beyond anything else anyone was capable of with the toolset), without much structure beyond the companion relationships.

But Demon felt like the thinnest, most incomplete excuse for a story, when the setting should have made it the strongest.

It‘s a Planescape adventure (complete with the superb City of Doors tileset and Adahn homages) but with the worldbuilding, creatures, factions and strong central narrative almost completely stripped out in favour of the one thing Miller’s really interested in: planeswalking, which allows him to come up with as many single-level gimmicks as he likes.

Beyond them, and the card mini-game, it’s a pretty goddamn empty experience, and the way it trails off feels particularly dissatisfying given how hard he pushes the retconned story at the very beginning: it turns out you were an interplanar infernal shapeshifter all along and now your baby has been stolen!!

 

[hell bovine]

2008: Shadewood by Fester Pot; sequel to Almraiven. I hear they're both a pain to navigate and require either extensive note-taking or guide-reading to complete.

I didn't take notes and there was no guide when I've played it, still managed to finish both without problems. These aren't mods aimed at the average skyrim player, but extensive note taking is exaggerating (unless your measure stick is the average skyrim player).

Shadewood is pretty terrible to navigate, that much is true, but I liked the dark atmosphere.

 

[JarlFrank]

A Dance With Rogues is actually the best NWN mod because it's got a lot of good non-combat gameplay, and combat in NWN sucks.

 

[Lhynn]

it turns out you were an interplanar infernal shapeshifter all along and now your baby has been stolen!!

Yeah, but the ending varies according to your choices. That was fairly good, tho it felt odd when i played it, almost as if i was altering reality with my choices.

 

[Roguey]

i knew it wasnt complete so i didnt play it.

It tells a complete story (the primary conflict is resolved), it's just left open-ended. It ends where a normal game would end, considering part two takes place after a considerable time skip.

play the bastard of kosigan series, its witcher done right.

Heard it has an awkward Italian-to-English translation.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Hex Coda 01 was pretty terrible, especially the loooong, droning & emo-angst final parts, but for some reason it's always held up by NWN nutters who constantly nut over it as the absolute pinnacle of classic NWN modules. It's the Planescape: Torment of Neverwinter Nights modules. In A Dance With Rogues I came to an impasse with an obstinate dwarf with a huge bug up his ass that would charge towards me in a combat encounter I was not fit to win, but at least it was mildly interesting and made me want to continue. Perhaps I will someday. We need more good rape simulators in cRPGs rather than so many bad ones. j/k.

 

[Cosmo]

Heard it has an awkward Italian-to-English translation.

He may have an italian name, but Cerutti is french as far as i know...

 

[Immortal]

2002: Lone Wolf Chapters 1 and 2 by Altaris, the chump who'd go on to make the Shadowguard premium mod, so it's probably as dull as it gets

I didn't know he made Shadowguard, Nice catch there. I really enjoyed the premise of the Lone Wolf stuff. Shadowguard was shit.

2006: A Dance with Rogues parts 1 and 2 by Valine. Seriously. Rape-heavy romance.

Roguey, I didn't know you had such "exotic" proclivities..

Heard it has an awkward Italian-to-English translation.

It's actually not bad at all.
I have the full set if you need them, although they should be on the vault now.

Would also reccomend:

Honor Among Thieves (ADWR on crack with less rape)
Vampire: Heaven Defied (Vampire module that actually works)

A few more I can't think of right now. Not sure what you've already played.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I found Dave Mason's NWN modules (which were early ones in the community) pretty hardcore and unforgiving, to the point that I gave up about a third of the way in playing only one of them. After that, no NWN module felt difficult or gave me the slightest trouble. The real ball-busters for me was one or two encounters in SoU and nearly the entire last part of HotU because I was fighting against two henchmen that I had loaded up with overpowered gear who had turned against me. It was both a pleasant and an unpleasant surprise. Aside from the aforementioned Dave Mason one, no NWN module ever felt especially challanging to me, though I still haven't played the Swordflight trilogy yet.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I tried to play Vampire: Heaven Defied, being intrigued by its vampire RPG mechanics/powers, but ran into a bug, much like Roguey described above in his playthrough of a vampire-themed NWN module - my special vampire powers were BFBR (Bug-Fucked Beyond Repair).

 

[Roguey]

Honor Among Thieves (ADWR on crack with less rape)

I had this under consideration long ago, however I read that it has NPC schedules, which aren't a good fit for the NWN engine considering there's no fast way to make time move forward (sure, resting takes a few seconds, but it doesn't actually move the clock ahead and even if it could, it'd only be in 8 hour increments). Additionally, stealth in NWN involves walking slowly and hoping you don't get a bad roll, which doesn't strike me as fun.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I loved those ghosting/stealth segments in Honor Among Thieves. I remember being very impressed that the author managed to pull it off so well in the Aurora engine. I was also quite impressed by an elaborate puzzle segment in the Eye of The Beholder II module that was taken from the original game and lost very little in translation. There was great ingenuity among the NWN module authors. Hopefully with the EE edition coming up we'll see a flood of the best NWN module authors coming back along with talented newcomers.

 

[Immortal]

Honor Among Thieves (ADWR on crack with less rape)

I had this under consideration long ago, however I read that it has NPC schedules, which aren't a good fit for the NWN engine considering there's no fast way to make time move forward (sure, resting takes a few seconds, but it doesn't actually move the clock ahead and even if it could, it'd only be in 8 hour increments). Additionally, stealth in NWN involves walking slowly and hoping you don't get a bad roll, which doesn't strike me as fun.

Most modules that have Schedules like that generally implement a custom item like a deck of cards or widget to push time forward.
I don't remember if Honor Among Thieves has that, but it's not impossible to do in the engine or anything.

(I think Honor Among Thieves does have such a mechanic though, I just can't remember)

 

[eXalted]

(I think Honor Among Thieves does have such a mechanic though, I just can't remember)

Wasn't you able to click on shop signs and select to wait there? Or was that another module?

 

[purpleblob]

Every single sidequest in the game, no matter how small, ties into the main plot, but only realize this at the end. Its funny how it connects with everything.

Yep, this is why I love Aielund Saga so much. The writing (the main plot) really impressed me.

 

[Roguey]

Pirates of the Sword Coast
What a letdown. Lousy writing, mostly lousy combat, and half-backed gimmicks (crafting stuff on an island to "survive", a color-based puzzle I refused to solve, treasure hunting by following written directions, becoming undead). Being undead and walking on the ocean floor could have been interesting if they had devoted more time to that instead of everything else. Rob Bartel was responsible for this mess, so I guess Witch's Wake was a fluke. Kingmaker being the only halfway-decent Bioware-developed campaign for NWN is just pathetic.

Maugeter - The Keys to the City
Bit of a bland premise, but it has some creative sidequests and fine combat and dialogue pacing; in other words, Mysteries of Westgate: NWN edition (although I suppose it's actually the other way around given this came out first). I wish Hex Coda had been structured more like this given their comparable word counts.

Ravenloft - Beyond the Gate
Another hyped up module in a potentially-interesting setting, another boring combat crawl. Dropped it when I got to the part where it copy/pasted the same bunch of cone of cold-spamming wolves multiple times. It was so obnoxious having to deal with those things without the benefit of full party control it made me realize that every previous map had the same encounter "design." Nothing noteworthy about the writing either; a stock "chosen one vs evil" plot.

That's it for my NWN ventures. I guess I'm lucky I found 3.5 modules I liked, even if that ratio is utterly terrible. What good is a user friendly toolset when there are so few with the ability and the inclination to make good things with it?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Have you tried John McA's modules, Roguey?

 

[Lhynn]

What good is a user friendly toolset the gaming industry when there are so few with the ability and the inclination to make good things with it?

 

[Roguey]

Have you tried John McA's modules, Roguey?

Bunch of fan fics, no thanks.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Have you tried John McA's modules, Roguey?

Bunch of fan fics, no thanks.

Is it the Conan ones you're talking about?

 

[Roguey]

Is it the Conan ones you're talking about?

And the Lord of the Rings and post-Hordes of the Underdark Neverwinter Nights.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is it the Conan ones you're talking about?

And the Lord of the Rings and post-Hordes of the Underdark Neverwinter Nights.

There's no hope for you. Not even Sawyer can save you now.

 

[deama]

Aielund saga
I thought it was a pretty well made module. However, the story was above average and I gave up after being

Spoiler

captured in a ridiculous way early in chapter 4.

The module could have also used less combat related tasks/quests. I tried to do most of the sidequests and I can only think of a couple that weren't combat related. It would have been nice to have something like a bard battle or that court thing (even if it was fake) that NWN2 had.
At any rate, it was a nice module, but I probably won't ever play it again (maybe one more time in the far distant future).

 

[Leitz]

Why is this thread stickied again?