NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[Sabotin]

You start HotU without your stuff regardless. If you've imported your character you retrieve your things a good ways in, but by that point they aren't so OP anymore anyways.

 

[Raziel]

Rogueknight, why is there so much alignment shifting tied to stealing? I assume you made it so to dissuade typical RPG shenanigans of looting everything in sight without remorse, but at the same time it feels like that alignment shifts that come from other sources have less of an impact and thus feel less meaningful, at least mechanically that is. As it stands, stealing a loaf of bread is one of the most heinous acts a budding adventurer can commit-- up there with murdering someone in cold blood.

Aside from that, awesome module. Got into it again. Only got to the dragon inn so far with a barb/bard/rdd. Have also finished first chapter with some other classes(fighter/rogue, wizard, cleric/monk) and it feels like a module with a lot of replay value. In ch2 there was a situation with a NPC who needed help from a martial/fighter type person, and my experience as a barb didn't convince him(but the option was there, intimidate I think). Thought it was interesting, since I assume you need to be a pure fighter or paladin maybe.

 

[Kliwer]

I don't like Swordflight modules. I admire author's hard work but the game is a chore to play. Boring, tedious, endless combats with HP sponges. Weak level design (endless sewers...). Too wordy and not very interesting dialogues. Add to this whole NWN engine shitness. Reactivity is great but it's not enough. I will not come back to this overhyped title.

Alignment changes are strange. Especially those weird penalties for stealing. It is impossible to play as a, for example, chaotic good thief. It's obviously against the D&D assumptions. Someone like Robin Hood should be Chaotic Good. It was so strange that my Chaotic Good elf rogue/ranger finished like a Chaotic Evil psychopath because of some stolen items (mostly from rich houses).

 

[eXalted]

Alignment in DnD as a whole is trash.

 

[rogueknight333]

Rogueknight, why is there so much alignment shifting tied to stealing? I assume you made it so to dissuade typical RPG shenanigans of looting everything in sight without remorse, but at the same time it feels like that alignment shifts that come from other sources have less of an impact and thus feel less meaningful, at least mechanically that is. As it stands, stealing a loaf of bread is one of the most heinous acts a budding adventurer can commit-- up there with murdering someone in cold blood.

It is partly to make stealing an actually meaningful decision, as you suggest, and for that purpose evil shifts tend to get the attention of players much more effectively than chaotic shifts. A second reason is that it contributes to making an evil playthrough more profitable than a good one, which I wanted to do since realistically if one could profit as much by being good as by being evil, neutral evil characters at least would logically have no reason to actually do anything evil. The main reason though is simply that I think stealing (absent some special circumstance providing a justification for it) is in fact evil according to the accepted definitions. It involves performing an action that will harm others for one's own selfish benefit: classic "neutral evil' behavior. In some cases involving thefts of low value items the harm might be slight, but then, typically for the same reason, the gain to the player will usually also be slight, so the fact that the character was willing to trouble and inconvenience people (at best, depending on the NPC's level of wealth it might be doing much worse) over items of such slight value would seem to indicate a decidedly rapacious attitude.

The attitude is indeed primarily what the shifts are measuring, which is one of the reasons why relatively minor offenses often cause almost as much of a shift as major ones. The main question is whether the character's action indicates an unscrupulous willingness to screw over people for his own benefit or an unselfish willingness to help them, not how much actual harm was done. The other reason for this is that I did not want to shift a character's alignment too massively as the result of any single action. Since alignment shifts will inevitably be controversial (whether due to actual ethical disagreements or simply because a game system will inevitably deal with them in a simplistic way that does not take into account all nuances of intention and circumstance) I wanted to give players a chance to get used to how the ethical system in Swordflight works and thus be given a chance to avoid altering their starting alignment in an undesired direction.

...In ch2 there was a situation with a NPC who needed help from a martial/fighter type person, and my experience as a barb didn't convince him(but the option was there, intimidate I think). Thought it was interesting, since I assume you need to be a pure fighter or paladin maybe.

This is the class-specific quest for fighters. You can access it automatically if at least 50% of your levels are levels of either fighter or a combat-oriented (i.e., full BAB) prestige class. Other characters who are warrior types but do not meet this condition might still be able to access it, but need to succeed at a conversational skill check. Characters such as Barbarians, Rangers and Paladins will get other class-specific quests, regardless of whether they access this one.

Alignment changes are strange. Especially those weird penalties for stealing. It is impossible to play as a, for example, chaotic good thief. It's obviously against the D&D assumptions. Someone like Robin Hood should be Chaotic Good. It was so strange that my Chaotic Good elf rogue/ranger finished like a Chaotic Evil psychopath because of some stolen items (mostly from rich houses).

You are correct D&D typically tends to treat stealing a Chaotic. As explained above, I disagree with that, and as I am the "DM" in this particular case you get a somewhat different "house rule." I also do not think the Robin Hood "Rob from the rich and give to the poor" ethic is very realistic, since in the real world if rich people suffer a financial loss they will probably make up for it by paying their employees less or charging their customers more (i.e., some not so rich or even poor people will end up being the ones who suffer most). However, this is a game, so it is actually possible, if a bit tricky, to play as a Chaotic Good Robin Hood type if you really want to. You can steal only from rich marks, getting evil shifts, and then donate the wealth gained by this to the Temple of Ilmater, getting good shifts. If you are not actually giving your stolen wealth to others but keeping it all to yourself while claiming some noble motive, then the evil shift would seem to be quite appropriate.

That said, there are a lot of alignment shifts in the series, some thought through more than others, and mostly just there to use alignment as a tool to help make role-playing decisions meaningful, rather than to push some well-thought out ethical philosophy. If I reviewed every single one of the shifts in the game I would probably find a few of them to be strange myself and wonder what I was thinking at the time. Again, a game system does not really lend itself to a highly nuanced ethical approach.

 

[Nharwell]

Swordlfight ch 2 question if anyone can help:

I returned to Calimport between the 2 humanoid missions. When i tried to re-enter the city, both of my henchmen said they would remain in this gate area. But when i came back later, they couldn't be found - even if using the Chooser (debug mode) to check the area. Has anyone encountered a problem like this? Is there a script I can run to bring them back?

 

[rogueknight333]

Swordlfight ch 2 question if anyone can help:

I returned to Calimport between the 2 humanoid missions. When i tried to re-enter the city, both of my henchmen said they would remain in this gate area. But when i came back later, they couldn't be found - even if using the Chooser (debug mode) to check the area. Has anyone encountered a problem like this? Is there a script I can run to bring them back?

To cover the obvious just in case: the henchmen should be waiting in the Desert Dragon Inn, off the gate area, not the gate area itself.

If they are actually gone due to some rare bug, you can use the debug command:

dm_runscript s_test007

to conjure up Barazh. and use:

dm_runscript s_test008

to conjure up most other henchmen who would be available at this point (including some who would not both be available without cheats, so be sure to talk to and have join only those who should have been present to avoid various issues. The default conversations will probably allow them to join, IIRC, but if not, using:

SetVarInt PCTALK 2

followed by clicking on the henchman should set the conversation to an appropriate point.

 

[Nharwell]

Swordlfight ch 2 question if anyone can help:

I returned to Calimport between the 2 humanoid missions. When i tried to re-enter the city, both of my henchmen said they would remain in this gate area. But when i came back later, they couldn't be found - even if using the Chooser (debug mode) to check the area. Has anyone encountered a problem like this? Is there a script I can run to bring them back?

Well, looking through the module in the toolset I found script s_test008. I ran that and it recreated the henchmen - unfortunately they lost any items I had given them but at least I got them back!

 

[Nharwell]

Swordlfight ch 2 question if anyone can help:

I returned to Calimport between the 2 humanoid missions. When i tried to re-enter the city, both of my henchmen said they would remain in this gate area. But when i came back later, they couldn't be found - even if using the Chooser (debug mode) to check the area. Has anyone encountered a problem like this? Is there a script I can run to bring them back?

To cover the obvious just in case: the henchmen should be waiting in the Desert Dragon Inn, off the gate area, not the gate area itself.

If they are actually gone due to some rare bug, you can use the debug command:

dm_runscript s_test007

to conjure up Barazh. and use:

dm_runscript s_test008

to conjure up most other henchmen who would be available at this point (including some who would not both be available without cheats, so be sure to talk to and have join only those who should have been present to avoid various issues. The default conversations will probably allow them to join, IIRC, but if not, using:

SetVarInt PCTALK 2

followed by clicking on the henchman should set the conversation to an appropriate point.

Thanks!

 

[Nharwell]

My comment sounds a bit harsh in retrospect, sorry, I was just frustrated yesterday...

I have heard worse, and it is basically true that the AI is terrible. I would like to consider this a flaw in NWN rather than Swordflight in particular, which it technically is, but I clearly underestimated the extent to which Swordflight's increased difficulty also increases the frustration it causes. My optimistic assumption was that anyone playing NWN in the first place would just take the bad AI as a given of that game. Albeit in the case of Zarala in particular, the frustration is actually intentional. She is supposed to be annoying and incompetent.

However, it does seem that in your game Barazh has bugged out somehow, which is unfortunate as he is usually one of the more useful henchmen. I have no idea whether this was caused by the EE, PRC, or something else, but whatever is going on with him is definitely not typical. I may look in to trying to replicate the issue at some point, but am not sure when I will have the time.

I have the exact same issue with Barazh - I'm running the most current EE release with PRC. WHen I get a chance I'll try this without PRC to see if I have the same problem.

 

[Nharwell]

My comment sounds a bit harsh in retrospect, sorry, I was just frustrated yesterday...

I have heard worse, and it is basically true that the AI is terrible. I would like to consider this a flaw in NWN rather than Swordflight in particular, which it technically is, but I clearly underestimated the extent to which Swordflight's increased difficulty also increases the frustration it causes. My optimistic assumption was that anyone playing NWN in the first place would just take the bad AI as a given of that game. Albeit in the case of Zarala in particular, the frustration is actually intentional. She is supposed to be annoying and incompetent.

However, it does seem that in your game Barazh has bugged out somehow, which is unfortunate as he is usually one of the more useful henchmen. I have no idea whether this was caused by the EE, PRC, or something else, but whatever is going on with him is definitely not typical. I may look in to trying to replicate the issue at some point, but am not sure when I will have the time.

I have the exact same issue with Barazh - I'm running the most current EE release with PRC. WHen I get a chance I'll try this without PRC to see if I have the same problem.

Update: Fixed issue by dismissing Barazh, then running script mentioned above to resummon him.

 

[Lacrymas]

Most bugs are more than likely the fault of the EE and not the PRC, I've played Swordflight with the PRC (no EE) and have had no issues.

 

[Nyx]

Hi guys, dunno if this is the right thread to ask this in, but after I got windows 10 my old copy of NWN just doesn't seem to want to start, like at all. I don't even get any errors or anything, so I have no idea what's wrong with it. Have any of you ran into this and if so how do you fix it? I don't want to "upgrade" to the EE version, both because I've already paid for the game once, and also because I'm sure it would break my old modules y'know. Tried compatibility modes and stuff, but it doesn't help.

 

[Gargaune]

Hi guys, dunno if this is the right thread to ask this in, but after I got windows 10 my old copy of NWN just doesn't seem to want to start, like at all. I don't even get any errors or anything, so I have no idea what's wrong with it. Have any of you ran into this and if so how do you fix it? I don't want to "upgrade" to the EE version, both because I've already paid for the game once, and also because I'm sure it would break my old modules y'know. Tried compatibility modes and stuff, but it doesn't help.

Just to be sure, did you do a clean install of NWN on your new OS, or are you trying to run the old install on an updated OS from Windows 7? If the latter, try reinstalling the game clean. And when you say "old copy", are you patched all the way to 1.69? You may also want to check whether a) the Neverwinter Nights process shows up in Task Manager, and b) that it's not being stopped by security setting, I get a UAC prompt when launching. Other than that, my Diamond Edition off GOG is working fine on W10, so I don't know.

For the record, the EE should be largely backwards compatible with campaigns that worked on the DE. I think there are some edge cases where stuff is broken, I believe Swordflight had a bug with some door transitions that got patched, but most modules should be ok. At least I played Crimson Tides of Tethyr, Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher on it without issues.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Also did you try renaming the exe file.

 

[Nyx]

Hi guys, dunno if this is the right thread to ask this in, but after I got windows 10 my old copy of NWN just doesn't seem to want to start, like at all. I don't even get any errors or anything, so I have no idea what's wrong with it. Have any of you ran into this and if so how do you fix it? I don't want to "upgrade" to the EE version, both because I've already paid for the game once, and also because I'm sure it would break my old modules y'know. Tried compatibility modes and stuff, but it doesn't help.

Just to be sure, did you do a clean install of NWN on your new OS, or are you trying to run the old install on an updated OS from Windows 7? If the latter, try reinstalling the game clean. And when you say "old copy", are you patched all the way to 1.69? You may also want to check whether a) the Neverwinter Nights process shows up in Task Manager, and b) that it's not being stopped by security setting, I get a UAC prompt when launching. Other than that, my Diamond Edition off GOG is working fine on W10, so I don't know.

For the record, the EE should be largely backwards compatible with campaigns that worked on the DE. I think there are some edge cases where stuff is broken, I believe Swordflight had a bug with some door transitions that got patched, but most modules should be ok. At least I played Crimson Tides of Tethyr, Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher on it without issues.

Yes, I made a new installation and everything. I do have the old CDs laying around somewhere but I got the GOG version for free at some point and that's what I'm using. I do get the UAC prompt thingy and after I okay it nothing happens. The game is in the task manager but I don't get an error message, not even a black screen or something. What's up with that? If you can get it running on win10 then it should work for me too dammit!

Also did you try renaming the exe file.

Tried that and it didn't work.

 

[Sabotin]

Try installing the critical rebuild 1.69 patch, although that shouldn't matter with gog version. Probably don't install the game in any Program Files folders either, though again I think gog changed that. You could also try playing with some settings in nwn.ini (resolution/windowed for example) or run as admin to see if there's any difference. For compatibility mode, I think XP sp3? Oh and go directly through nwmain.exe instead of launcher.

I'm really not sure why it wouldn't function outright, the worst I get is that it won't run for 1 or 2 attempts, but eventually it works.

 

[Gargaune]

Yes, I made a new installation and everything. I do have the old CDs laying around somewhere but I got the GOG version for free at some point and that's what I'm using. I do get the UAC prompt thingy and after I okay it nothing happens. The game is in the task manager but I don't get an error message, not even a black screen or something. What's up with that? If you can get it running on win10 then it should work for me too dammit!

That would suggest something's hanging in the game process itself, I've had something like that happen sporadically with Unreal Tournament back on Windows 7 but all I had to do was kill the process and try again.

Like Sabotin suggested, try running it as Administrator first. If that works, check that you haven't installed the game under a Program Files directory. And yes, also have a look at the Display settings in the nwn.ini in the game's root folder, see if changing resolutions or the FullScreen setting makes a difference. What's your graphics processor, anyway? There's also a nwnconfig.exe in your game folder that's worth a go, just in case.

Finally, if you look in the Windows Start Menu, under NWN Diamond you should find a Neverwinter Nights (Safe Mode) shortcut. I'm not clear what exactly this is meant to be doing, since it just points to the same main executable with a test argument, but can't hurt to try.

 

[Nyx]

Yes, I made a new installation and everything. I do have the old CDs laying around somewhere but I got the GOG version for free at some point and that's what I'm using. I do get the UAC prompt thingy and after I okay it nothing happens. The game is in the task manager but I don't get an error message, not even a black screen or something. What's up with that? If you can get it running on win10 then it should work for me too dammit!

That would suggest something's hanging in the game process itself, I've had something like that happen sporadically with Unreal Tournament back on Windows 7 but all I had to do was kill the process and try again.

Like Sabotin suggested, try running it as Administrator first. If that works, check that you haven't installed the game under a Program Files directory. And yes, also have a look at the Display settings in the nwn.ini in the game's root folder, see if changing resolutions or the FullScreen setting makes a difference. What's your graphics processor, anyway? There's also a nwnconfig.exe in your game folder that's worth a go, just in case.

Finally, if you look in the Windows Start Menu, under NWN Diamond you should find a Neverwinter Nights (Safe Mode) shortcut. I'm not clear what exactly this is meant to be doing, since it just points to the same main executable with a test argument, but can't hurt to try.

Let's see, what I have done so far:

• Installed it outside of the program files folder
• Changed the ini to run in windowed mode
• Ran it as an administrator
• Opened it, shut down the process when nothing happened and done so multiple times
• Ran the safe mode thingy

So far nothing has worked, it just doesn't launch, I don't even get a window or anything, but it starts a process. My graphics card is a crappy old GeForce GTX 1050. Am I seriously the only one with this problem? It worked fine on windows 7 for me.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Have you tried formatting your c drive?

 

[Nyx]

Have you tried formatting your c drive?

Is that supposed to be funny? I will never play as a barbarian ever again.

 

[Gargaune]

Let's see, what I have done so far:

• Installed it outside of the program files folder
• Changed the ini to run in windowed mode
• Ran it as an administrator
• Opened it, shut down the process when nothing happened and done so multiple times
• Ran the safe mode thingy

So far nothing has worked, it just doesn't launch, I don't even get a window or anything, but it starts a process. My graphics card is a crappy old GeForce GTX 1050. Am I seriously the only one with this problem? It worked fine on windows 7 for me.

That's weird, I'm running out of ideas. I'm running an Intel CPU with a GTX 2070, so I'd be surprised if the 1050 were giving you grief, but maybe it's worth trying to update the graphics driver. And maybe giving the Critical Rebuild patch a go, like Sabotin suggested, I don't remember whether I applied this to mine. I do recall a while back some people were saying they couldn't get the old NWN to work at all, when discussing the DE versus the EE on the Beamdog forums.

I did come across this thread on GOG that might be worth a skim, a bunch of different suggestions from DirectX versions to deleting some audio libraries.

Out of curiosity, does the Toolset start for you?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Have you tried formatting your c drive?

Is that supposed to be funny? I will never play as a barbarian ever again.

Did you really expect better from barbarian tech support.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Have you tried formatting your c drive?

Is that supposed to be funny? I will never play as a barbarian ever again.

have you tried switching your PC off and then on again?

You can also try to whitelist NWN in windows defender and/or your antivirus/security program. Apparently it can happen that one of those programs prevents NWn from launching.
Could also be a sound problem with some realtek drivers.

Spoiler

The solution was to delete the following files from my 'GOG Games\NWN Diamond\miles' folder:

msssoft.m3d
Msseax.m3d
mssds3d.m3d
Mssa3d.m3d

After deleting these files, the games runs fine with sound under RAD Game Tools or DirectSound3D in the sound options. I'm running Windows 10

Some ppl say they had to install DirectX 9c for the game to work.

 

[DeepOcean]

Hi guys, dunno if this is the right thread to ask this in, but after I got windows 10 my old copy of NWN just doesn't seem to want to start, like at all. I don't even get any errors or anything, so I have no idea what's wrong with it. Have any of you ran into this and if so how do you fix it? I don't want to "upgrade" to the EE version, both because I've already paid for the game once, and also because I'm sure it would break my old modules y'know. Tried compatibility modes and stuff, but it doesn't help.

Have you changed the CPU affinity on the ini to force it to only use a single cpu? Some older games have problems with multiple core CPUs on windows 10.