Online Role-Playing with NWN - A DM's Perspective

Recently I've been considering different ways of refreshing my gaming experience. After all, I've played for 15 years now, and although different games and different players have brought me varied experiences, eventually one settles into a rut and it can be a rough trend to buck. Gamegrene has a stable of writers who form a strong community to support the hobby, luckily. And for my part, I would like to add an experience with a (sort of) new and long-awaited aspect of our favorite pastime.

Recently I've been considering different ways of refreshing my gaming experience. After all, I've played for 15 years now, and although different games and different players have brought me varied experiences, eventually one settles into a rut and it can be a rough trend to buck. Gamegrene has a stable of writers who form a strong community to support the hobby, luckily. And for my part, I would like to add an experience with a (sort of) new and long-awaited aspect of our favorite pastime.

When I heard about Neverwinter Nights a few years ago, my excitement was off the charts. You see, as someone who has played in games with people who have since graduated from various stages of life and taken their chances in other parts of the world, some of my favorite players and GMs were lost to geography. As online programs take giant strides in shrinking the world, gamers are at the forefront and it was only a matter of time before we made a
true attempt at a GUI (Graphical User Interface, but you knew that) for multi-player table-top simulation on our faithful computers.

So after having played through several chapters of the single-player campaign and being increasingly impressed, I finally convinced a friend in San Francisco and my Most-Honoured Girlfriend to give me a whack at creating a campaign with the NWN Aurora Toolset. I am an employed coder and a proponent of visual tools in my games, so it seemed a natural progression.

Initially I created only a town skeleton, then slowly added NPCs, encounters, stores and waypoints. The toolset has wizards for most of the basic systems, so everything seemed to be well in hand. I had a little difficulty originally with the conversation editor, but since I wanted my game to be as open-ended as possible, I determined I would speak for any NPC, rather than make predetermined conversational flowcharts. I did, however, use the automatic store system, which allows me to choose to barter and haggle only when the characters aren't there just to have a beer.

The building of the town was no more time-consuming than mocking up a pen and paper campaign, and so with my town created and a few simple plotlines in hand, I welcomed my first players into the setting. Neverwinter Nights allows you to run along with the characters as an invisible omnipotent Dungeon Master, creating custom encounters or dropping items, gold or experience on the fly. As the DM avatar, you can also possess any creature, including the NPCs and PCs for more direct control over the system.

My players wandered around the town I had built, chatted with each other in character and spoke with me as I played some NPCs. In general, it was relatively close to a table-top experience, despite some mistakes on my part. We have not yet had any large combats, but it seems very straightforward in the few test runs we've had. Despite the impressive visuals the spells have and the animation devoted to each character, obviously combat is a little inflexible in that you do not have the open plain of options that you do when in the limitless ambience of a table-top game.

So, of course, there are places where this system fails to deliver that same atmosphere and experience we all crave, but for my money (and since all your players have to have all expansions packs as you in order to play in a world you've created, it can be expensive to the tune of around $100, not counting a computer to run it adequately) it's the largest step toward a combination of the immersive and social storytelling of a table-top game and the impressive visuals and diceless, seamless gameplay of a video game.

Pros To This Approach

• Everything is visible immediately, resulting in no confusion about layout of buildings or position of PCs and baddies.
• Play with people anywhere with relative ease.
• Store system allows PCs to take care of business, even while you're engaged with other PCs.
• Combat is resolved quickly, saving more time for role-playing and plot development.
• Flexible appearance generator and on-the-fly encounters if necessary.
• Highly customizable and almost limitless ability to create any kind of (D&D) game you want.
• DM is able to improvise as necessary for most interactions and encounters. DM tool is very powerful, indeed.
• Cheating (apart from hacking) is for the most part eliminated.

Cons To This Approach

• Combat is somewhat inflexible and eventually repetitive and does not adhere to very strict rules, which may deter a more tactical or swashbuckler-type player.
• Improvising when players wish to go somewhere you haven't created is nigh impossible.
• DM client can be a little awkward and
• Unless you have software to do voice, you lose some of the atmosphere a DM can create with his voice through an NPC.
• Requires significant money investment for each player, though maybe not more than buying books and dice.
• Game can be hacked and the DM might not be able to spot it.
• Just not as social or personal as standard table-top.

There are no doubt more opinions on using this or other online systems for role-playing, and Gamegrene encourages such discussion. As a long-time GM this was just one way to rejuvenate my jones.