In response to a recent comment on the NeverwinterNights Podcast forum about single-player vs. online and DM’d modules,  I wrote the following post explaining how and why I look at NWN modding as a new form of “interactive storytelling.” After I finished, I decided to blog those remarks here as well. 

Regarding Erik’s comments: while I do think there are somewhat different perspectives between the NWN online and single-player (SP) communities, I dislike casting the two in competitive terms. To some extent that’s natural between people who prefer different aspects of the same thing, but I see it as more of a kind of “Tastes Great / Less Filling” debate than a real conflict. I’m happy to concede that NWN provides great opportunities for online gaming in a D&D environment, and to respect peoples’ interest in PWs and DM-able mods, even if I don’t have the time or inclination to play online myself. As a former DM, it’s hard not to recognize the value of what NWN has to offer in this regard, especially for DM’d campaigns. Bruce covered this brilliantly in Episode 20, and I have little to add to what he said.

But I also think it’s important to realize that NWN is more than just computer-game implementation of D&D. Thanks to the toolset, it’s a robust environment for crafting an interactive storytelling experience. So on that note, let me briefly try to present my own perspective on NWN modding, as a serious SP modder and player — a perspective for which I’ve become something of an “evangelist” over the last year. That perspective is to view FRPGs in general, and NWN mods in particular, as a new and emerging art form — as a kind of interactive fiction or cinema.

I came to NWN with the kind of “storyteller’s focus” that was natural to me as an amateur writer, and as a former DM who built his own campaign world and typically wrote his own adventures. When I started playing NWN modules, I was struck by the game’s potential specifically as a storytelling medium. Historically, most forms of storytelling that we have had (today, primarily fiction and cinema) have been passive art forms. The author crafts a story, using the tools of a particular medium (words and concepts for fiction, film and acting or animation for cinema), and the audience experiences that story in a way that does not include being an active participant in the events. By contrast, one of the innovations that D&D and other role-playing games made possible was the idea of an interactive storytelling experience. This was one in which an “author” (DM) crafted a story in which the “audience” (players) could be active rather than passive participants. This added a factor that was needed to make the storytelling experience dramatically more immersive: the ability to make choices and take actions that have an explicit effect on the course of events.

Storytelling by DM, while a very interesting and rewarding kind of experience in its own right, is also very “resource-intensive.” To do it, you need to have a DM and a relatively small number of players together for an extended period of time. And most importantly, you need a DM who is not only a skilled storyteller, but is skilled specifically at thinking on his feet and ad-libbing when his players come up with things that he didn’t expect or anticipate. This is a very demanding set of conditions that makes truly good DM’d events relatively rare. And it requires a large investment of time on the part of the DM, in order to craft and run a story for relatively few people. This can be great fun (I’m not knocking it — as I said, I was a DM for many years). But it’s simply not practical for most people, and certainly not for the number of people who are interested in the kind of experience that NWN modding makes possible.

I want to stress this last point, because I think it is extremely important. If you look at the download statistics on the typical NWN SP module, you’ll find that they get thousands of downloads. My own first mod, Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight, currently has about 3800 — and that’s low by comparison to some of the more popular and well-known mods. The plot is not suitable for more than one player at a time, and thus doesn’t support MP — but let’s ignore that for a moment and pretend that it could be DM’d for a group of six. A standard play-through of Sanctum takes about 8 hours. So, everything else being equal, running games for those people would have taken me, as a DM, over 5000 hours. At 8 hours a day, seven days a week, that’s over 20 months, *non-stop*, of DMing *just one* NWN mod (and that’s ignoring the scheduling complications of getting players together for a game). That enormous investment of time on the part of DMs is the main reason why I think that good DM-led events, while interesting and unique, will never be a dominant phenomenon in the NWN community.

This is where the distinctive advantage of SP (or MP) modding with NWN comes in. It allows me, as a mod author, to program a computer to do most of this work for me through the features made available in the toolset. It enables me to allow players to experience my story, in an interactive form, on their own schedule and without my having to devote thousands of hours of time to running games for them as a DM. It affords me the time to think carefully, in advance, about how to craft such a story, just as I would carefully craft the plot of a good novel — so that the player has a polished and solid experience when he does play it. And since I’m effectively programming a computer instead of just writing words on a page, this can now include options for the player to interact with the events of the story instead of just experiencing them passively.

For all these reasons, I think of NWN modding as much more than just a computer-game environment for D&D. It has the potential to become a new storytelling medium, reminiscent of the historical emergence of the novel or the movie. And that’s the main reason why I’m so enthusiastic about it.