Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Tiamat)

Trent Oster, Producer:

Notes on Combat: Your character will go defensive if there is an attack against them. They will attept to defend themselves from the attacker, but they will not move.
NWN will not shut down if you just stand still. You can leave the game for days and your character will still be standing there.

Module Size: Our largest module to date is around 19 MB uncompressed. There is a fair amount of slack, so in a test I just did it zipped down to under 2 MB.

Sneak Attacks: Rogue characters get a sneak attack whenever the opponent is "flat footed" to them, so a Rogue character gets a sneak attack when an enemy hasn't seen them, is engaged with another character or the enemy enters a state which removes their dexterity bonus.
The sneak attack bonus is given every second level gained as a rogue, starting with 1d6 at 1st level and scaling to 10d6 at 19th level. So, the character you detailed gets a 3d6 backstab bonus, not a 10d6.
In NWN a held character cannot be killed instantly, they must be killed in a normal fashion. Coup de grace would be fun if only players do it, but when it is done to a player the fun factor really drops.

Henchmen: The henchmen in NWN are going to be pretty cool. If you've ever had a chance to look at a little game we created called "Baldur's Gate" you would see we do alright with NPC interaction.
As an aside, I'd never commit Seppuku. I'm much to social for such a solitary ending. When I'm going down, they're all coming with me Baby.
NWN will come with an auto patcher. If you don't want to update you won't have to, but it would probably be a good idea. We might be tweaking the balancing in a patch, but most likely our patches will be more anti-exploit fixes / bug fixes.
With BGII we made a major stride forward in the quality of our localized (languages other than English) versions. Moving forwards with NWN we are very committed to shipping a quality localized game as close to our English release as possible. We have a strong desire for a simultaneous release in a number of languages, but we just have to see how it plays out.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

DM Techinques: Well, the first trick would be to strip down the ol' word count It's *really* hard to do, but try imposing some limits on yourself to force yourself to think creatively. I used to have creative writings professors who would have us write complete stories that were more interesting than the last thing that we wrote, but with ever-decreasing word counts. I think I got down to just under 200 words for one story that had originally been close to 3000 words

Another trick is to allow the player to find out about the story voluntarily. One way to do that is with the aforementioned books and scrolls. You're right, though - some players will grow weary of this, especially if that information is often necessary. While it works in a paitent game like Myst, it doesn't always work in a more action oriented game like D&D.

A second way to go about this is to include it (that information) into the conversations. For example, a player might need to ask an NPC about a key and so they have the player response, "I need the key; who has it?". But they should also have a player response for, "just what does that Tyrran fellow have to do with this?"

Of course, if the player can play through a module without needing background information, but can stop and find it and it enriches the experience - well, I think that's probably one of the more interesting ways to go about it.

As for the NPC answering, we try to keep uninterrupted NPC monologues to about 3 - 5 lines, with each line kept around 25 words (as well, we try to keep PC responses at about 3-5, around 8 words maximum each). At that point, if the NPC simply *has* to continue on, allow the player to change the subject, ask for a quick summary to wrap things up, or allow the NPC to continue on at the current (verbose) pace.

One big mistake that I have found is giving the player no choice at all, or even worse, only a single choice in dialogue, such as, "wow, that's really interesting. Please go on!" or "Yes, I would love to do your quest! Thanks for giving me the chance!"

Like I said, the occasional string of is okay, but if you have to hit continue more than a few times, assume that most players will just hit and look for something else (something fun) to do.

And, on balancing player freedom with telling a good story: that's a really, really tough one, and one that comes down to the personal preference of both the DM and the players. I wish I could help you, but any thing I can say would only be my own preference.

Jonathan Epp, Quality Assurance:

Will the weapon animation take after BG1? Yes.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance Ninja:

BG2 Cameos: The NPCs from the BG series that are definitely in the game are: Peasant466x, Dwarf17b, Corpse5j, HangingSkeleton102y, GuyWhoLikesSword44g, Tree2883t and Merchant76q. Many more of your favourite NPCs will be reappearing as various scenery. Imoen will be playing Window in area Balsa64k1/abx4.s, Viconia is a section of bridge in area Flax8550p14/tujb0.w, Minsc and Boo will be identical twin cobblestones in area Clown97o342/svn!2.df, and even Bhaal will make a cameo as a text box in area QA458v8/m#99.&! Can you spot them all?