Neverwinter Nights

Neverwinter Nights (NWN), produced by BioWare and published by Infogrames (now Atari), is a third-person perspective computer role-playing game that is based on third edition Dungeons & Dragons rules (with minor changes). It was originally to be published by Interplay Entertainment, but the publisher's financial difficulties forced the change. Infogrames released Neverwinter Nights for Windows on June 18, 2002. BioWare released the freely downloadable Neverwinter Nights Linux Client in June 2003. MacSoft released a Mac OS X port in August 2003.

The game is based in part on traditions started in the original Neverwinter Nights online game, the first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), which ran from 1991 to 1997 on AOL.

The core release includes the game engine, a NWN scenario, and the Aurora toolkit (Windows only) for building custom content based on the same engine.

Description

Play centers on the development of a character that becomes the ultimate hero of the story. In the original NWN scenario supplied with the game engine, the player is single-handedly responsible for defeating a powerful cult; stopping an insatiable plague; thwarting an attack on the city of Neverwinter, and many other side quests.

The first and final chapters of the story in the official campaign deal with the city of Neverwinter itself, but the lengthy mid-story requires the player to venture into the countryside and then northward to the city of Luskan. Neverwinter is a city on the Sword Coast of Faerûn.

Gameplay

True to the game's Dungeons & Dragons roots, the first thing a player must do is create a character. One can choose the character's gender, race, class, alignment, stats (strength, dexterity, etc.), abilities (skills, spells, feats, etc.), appearance, and name. There is a great deal of customization involved - one can be, for example, an outdoorsman (Ranger class), healer (Cleric class), and choose the skills and feats that would help them the most (a Ranger might want Animal Empathy, for example, while a Cleric would probably choose Combat Casting).

The actual game is rather lengthy (original NWN has three CDs, while the expansions each add one CD). Following a small prelude, there are four "chapters" in the original game, with each chapter consisting of a general storyline (the first chapter, for example, deals with a mysterious plague in the city of Neverwinter), and within each chapter, there are many quests, subquests, and mini-storylines. The game's actual mechanics are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rule set – most important actions (fighting, persuasion, etc.) are based on a die or dice roll. For example, when a fighter attacks, he might use a 1d6 short sword (meaning that one roll of a six-sided die determines the damage inflicted).

Multiplayer

The robust multiplayer component separates Neverwinter Nights from previous Dungeons & Dragons games, as there are many servers for players to choose from. Each server, depending on hardware and bandwidth, can support up to 72 players or more in the same module. NWN game modules run as a variety of separate genres and themes, including persistent worlds (which are similar to MUDs), combat arenas (player versus player modules), and simple social gatherings similar to a chat room. The campaign included with the game can be played with friends, for example, or a team of builders can build a virtual world similar in scope and size to commercial MMORPGs. The big difference is that BioWare insists these persistent worlds be free of charge.

Many persistent worlds are still actively run with updates and improvements. Servers can be linked together as well, allowing the creation of large multi-server worlds. Two early examples include A Land Far Away and Confederation of Planes and Planets.

Because Neverwinter Nights lacks a global chat function aside from the supported Gamespy, players typically join "pickup" games through the game's multiplayer interface, or schedule games in advance with friends. Matchmaking sites, such as Neverwinter Connections, facilitate scheduling of games, and the experience is much like traditional Pen-and-Paper roleplaying games. Persistent worlds do this work for them by inviting players to visit their website and continue to roleplay there.

Custom content

Neverwinter Nights ships with the Aurora toolset, which allows players to create custom modules for Neverwinter Nights. These modules may take the form of online multiplayer worlds, single player adventures, character trainers or technology demos. Additionally, several third party utilities have further expanded the community's ability to create custom content for the game. Custom content creators are known as builders in the Neverwinter Nights community.

The Aurora toolset allows builders to create map areas using a tile system; the appearance and surface textures of the area are defined by the area's selected tileset. Builders can overlay placeable objects onto areas, and use the built-in scripting language NWScript to run cut scenes, quests, mini-games and conversations. NWScript is based on C++.

Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment. Custom content is added to the game in the form of hakpaks. Builders have used the Aurora toolset in combination with hakpaks to create playing experiences beyond the scope of the original campaign. Despite the game's age, the Neverwinter Nights custom content community remains active.

The Aurora toolset is not available for the Linux and Macintosh versions of Neverwinter Nights. The open source project neveredit aims to port the toolset features to these platforms.

Throughout the game's life, a handful of Neverwinter Nights custom content groups were formed, dedicated to the creation of high quality content and modules. The largest of these groups were the City of Doors Initiative (CODI) and DragonLance Adventures (DLA). The former's aim was the recreation of the Planescape universe within Neverwinter Nights, while the latter worked on modules in the Dragonlance setting.

As of June 2006, some smaller custom content groups are inactive and the CODI team is defunct. DLA is still around but has dissociated itself from its "DragonLance Adventures" moniker.

Expansions

Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) — This expansion scenario pack was released in June 2003. It adds 5 prestige classes, 16 new creatures (two of them available as additional familiars), 3 new tilesets, and over 30 new feats and 50 new spells, as well as additional scripting abilities for those who use the Aurora toolkit. It features a story line concerning a student sent out to recover some stolen magical objects. The story begins in the Silver Marches, eventually moving toward the desert of Anauroch and the old Netherese city of Undrentide.

Hordes of the Underdark (HotU) — Released in December 2003, it expands the maximum amount of levels a character can reach to level 40 (epic levels), and adds a number of spells and items appropriate to such characters, as well as further tilesets, prestige classes, feats, and abilities, as well as adding compatibility with the Intel Pentium 4 Processor, which was unsupported in previous versions. The story continues where Shadows of Undrentide ended, with a character of at least 12th level (if you start this expansion with a character below level 12, the game will level you up to 15), and leads into the vast subterranean world known as the Underdark. The first chapter of the story takes place in the Undermountain dungeon beneath the city of Waterdeep. Released as Die Horden des Unterreichs in Germany.

In March, 2004, an expansion known as the Community Expansion Pack (CEP) based on community material was released. This freely downloadable expansion was compiled by members of the Neverwinter Nights community. It combines a selection of previously released custom content into one large hakpak. BioWare had no involvement in creating content for the CEP, but provided resources to help promote it. Players must add the CEP to a module with the toolset to use CEP content.

Though not actually expansion packs, Atari released subsequent editions of the game following its first release in 2002. These editions are Neverwinter Nights: Gold, which combines the original game with the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, Neverwinter Nights: Platinum (called Neverwinter Nights: Deluxe Edition or as the Neverwinter Nights Deluxe: Special Edition- with extra bonus content- in Europe), which combined all three NWN products and came on a single DVD-ROM or four CD-ROMs, and Neverwinter Nights: Diamond, which includes everything in the Platinum edition plus 3 premium modules.

As well, in early December, 2003, the Players Resource Consortium released the PRC, which is a group of hakpaks combined, which added classes, races, skills, and spells to the game. As of May 20'th, 2006, the PRC now has roughly three times the number of prestige classes the original game had. It also adds dozens of epic spells, and many normal spells that make better use of Bioware's Aurora engine. These include: Teleportation, Transposition, Mazes, Summoning Houses and more. As well, psionic powers have been included, which are essentially spells, but done with "power points", akin to the sorcerer class. This "expansion" can be found at nwn-prc.com, along with documentation. There are many excellent additions to the game, however, portions may have bugs, so beware.

Premium modules

In late 2004, BioWare launched its online store and started selling what it called premium modules as part of its digital distribution program. This initiative was spearheaded by BioWare's Live Team Lead Designer, Rob Bartel. Though technically not expansions, these smaller-scale adventures introduce new storylines and gameplay. They often include new music and art that BioWare claims will be integrated into future patches and updates to the core game. The most recent patch, 1.67, includes a great number of the art and music that you find in the premium modules.

According to BioWare, the revenue generated is used to support their fan community and provide ongoing updates and improvements to the popular game. Unfortunately the modules that are sold for download require internet access to play even though they are single player only. The modules in the Kingmaker expansion were stripped of this requirement but are only for Windows. The modules included with Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition do not require Internet access to play.

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker — In November, 2004, BioWare announced their flagship premium module, which later received the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 'PC RPG of the Year' award. The player is called upon to defeat the evil at the Keep of Cyan, and win the throne.

Neverwinter Nights: ShadowGuard with free Witch's Wake — At the same time as Kingmaker's release, BioWare also offered a bundled pair of shorter premium modules which included ShadowGuard, created by community member Ben McJunkin, and Witch's Wake, a remastered version of Rob Bartel's popular story-oriented module by the same name. The remastered version added new subraces, music, and substantial voice-acting throughout.

Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast — In June, 2005, BioWare announced the upcoming release of a new premium module. The story begins in the city of Neverwinter, and leads to a lengthy ship-bourne, swashbuckling-style adventure. Characters start at 5th level.

Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker (Premium Modules collection) — Atari released this CD-ROM expansion pack in September, 2005. It compiles the premium modules Kingmaker, Shadowguard and Witch's Wake.

Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons — In May, 2006, Bioware released this premium module which takes place in Undermountain below Waterdeep. The main feature is randomly generated dungeons, which are suitable for all levels of adventurer. The module is designed for single and multiplayer gaming.

Trivia

Several of the in-game portraits were modified in patches due to parts of them being copied from copyrighted sources. ^*
The Red Cross symbol was removed from the Healer's Kit due to trademark complaints from Canadian Red Cross ^*
The Bioware and Baldur's Gate logos are visible on certain books in some bookshelves.
Neverwinter Nights is used for educational purposes in West Nott's college in the UK to help IT designers understand the coding in the game.

Sequel

A sequel to Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2, is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a company which has a long history of association with BioWare. According to BioWare, the change of developer is due to BioWare's business with other titles, such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The game is expected in September of 2006.

Legacy

Knights of the Old Republic

Knights of the Old Republic, a role-playing game based in the Star Wars universe, was also released by BioWare using a heavily modified version of the Aurora engine of Neverwinter Nights. The sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, also used this modified engine. Because of this, modders have been able to modify these games using some Neverwinter Nights modding tools.

The Witcher

The Witcher, a computer role-playing game currently in development by the Polish company CD Projekt, is based on the Aurora engine of Neverwinter Nights. Its development was highly publicized within the NWN community.

Awards

E3 2002 Game Critics Awards: Best Role Playing Game
E3 2001 Game Critics Awards: Best Role Playing Game
E3 2000 Game Critics Awards: Best RPG, Best Online Multiplayer

External links

Official NWN website
NWN Vault, the largest hub for user-created content.

Reference and utility

Notable custom content teams

Community Expansion Pack (CEP)
DLA (formerly DragonLance Adventures)
Player Resource Consortium (PRC)
Penultima, a series of modules for Neverwinter Nights.

General resources

Sorcerer's Place NWN coverage

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