A Builder’s Dilemma (2NWN2, or not 2NWN2)

2 - The Quest, Gaming & Modding

I’m posting this blog entry mainly to solicit feedback on a major dilemma that I now find myself facing, with regard to the development of Sanctum of the Archmage II. That dilemma is whether to continue with my decision to develop the first act of the sequel in Neverwinter Nights 2, or to go back to developing it in Neverwinter Nights 1.

I was initially very impressed with Neverwinter Nights 2 in January when I got my new computer and played through the OC. I was wildly enthusiastic about the possibility of scripting with parameters (those of you who don’t code, trust me: that’s a big deal), with the improved graphics and terrain modeling, and with many of the design improvements that I saw in the engine. And since it seemed to me that the future of Neverwinter Nights lay in the sequel, rather than in NWN1, I decided that making the switch early would be a good idea.

I also heard (and saw, as I started trying to learn it) a great deal about the instability of the toolset. I was horrified at the almost uniformly grotesque head models, the full-body underwear, and the elimination of 2D portraits and cinematic cutscenes. Many of the armor models had bizarre hard-coded tints that could not be changed in the toolset. And the initial palette of creatures and models did seem a bit light. But I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get to work in earnest on Sanctum II until May or so because of my schedule. And by then, I reasoned, most of these issues would have started to be addressed and new and custom content would start appearing for the game. In the meantime I could work on planning, and on fully fleshing out the plot for the three acts of the sequel.

Now that May is here (indeed, almost over) and that planning work is done, I’ve had to take a sober look at these expectations. And what I’ve seen hasn’t given me a sense of confidence about the prospect of being able to build the first act of Sanctum II in NWN2 — not in a way that I will be satisfied with as a builder.

The NWN2 toolset seems to be crashing less than when I first started using it, but there are still widespread bugs. For example, the item-related 2DA files have actually spawned a whole host of “Bad Strref” entries since the 1.04 patch. I haven’t lost any work due to corrupted mod files, thank goodness, but I’m still seeing posts from other builders who are reporting this. And unless I’m completely confused about where to to look, the NWN2 models sections of the vault show next to nothing in the way of new creature and placeable content. This was a huge surprise to me, since NWN1 had a robust community of modelers (such as the CEP Team) that were regularly developing such resources for the game.

After doing some digging this morning, though, I think I’m beginning to understand some of the reasons for this. Apparently, Obsidian used a proprietary 3D modeling and animation system for NWN2 called “Granny.” From what I’ve been able to gather, Granny offered certain benefits in terms of performance and ease of development — but at the price of a proprietary format for which there are no available converters for commonly used modeling programs like 3DSMax. A prospective modeler could, of course, buy a copy of Granny — starting, I believe, at around $12,500 for a single machine license. Perhaps not surprisingly, that hasn’t turned out to be a particularly viable option for the cadre of amateur 3D modelers who had previously been turning out so much excellent work for the Neverwinter Nights community.

As a result, and from what I can see, there are few to no new creature and placeable models for NWN2, even now eight months after release of the game and much longer after the appearance of the pre-release toolset. There has been widespread clamor for a “granny plugin” from Obsidian that will finally make this modeling work possible, and they appear to be working hard to provide one in the relatively near future. If it works well, that will be a real breakthrough that should liberate and empower custom modelers to start creating new models for NWN2.

But that work will almost certainly come too late for me to make any use of for Sanctum II, Act I, since I have to start making progress on the sequel now. And this has put me in something of  bind with regard to some of the content that I need to make Act I work. Wasting half a day today unsuccessfully trying just to re-create the “Control Rod” from Sanctum I — a simple, unadorned black rod held in the left hand — brought me up short about the harsh realities of this. Here’s a partial list of the creatures and models that I want or need for the sequel that I currently cannot find or create in NWN2:

– The Beastmen. They return and play an important role in Sanctum II, Act I. The closest thing I can find to them in the NWN2 toolset are bugbears.

– Hand-held wands and rods. The player acquired several of these in Chapter 1. None of the wand or rod models from NWN1 seem to have made it into NWN2.

– Demons. Demons play a central role in Sanctum of the Archmage, and not surprisingly, there are a number of major battles with them in Sanctum II. NWN1 and CEP between them gave a wide selection of fiendish outsider models to choose from. NWN2, by contrast, has Balor, a Hezrou, a Succubus, and a couple of devils. I could probably make do with these, but that isn’t a whole lot of variety from which to construct an army of demons that are overrunning the kingdom.

– Pegasi. The elven pegasus warriors play an important role throughout all three acts of Sanctum II. From what I can gather, there aren’t even any horses available in NWN2, much less winged ones.

For these reasons and others, I’m now seriously considering returning to building in NWN1 until NWN2 matures more as a modding environment. There is no question that the development of Sanctum II Act I will go much faster if I do this, even if it does mean scrapping much of the preliminary work that I’ve already done in the NWN2 toolset. And I could always port Act I to NWN2 later on. I really would rather move to NWN2 now, but I can’t shake the conviction that the considerations I’ve described here are too important to set aside and just “hope for the best” by sticking with NWN2, at least for the first act. (As a former manager of mine used to put it: “Hope is not a course of action.”)

This is a decision I have to make now. So the question I wanted to solicit feedback from my fellow players and builders on is: what do you think? Am I overreacting, and are the prospects for NWN2 maturing sufficiently in the couple of months or so better than my currently pessimistic mood would indicate? Or would going back to NWN1 be a sober decision based on an assessment of the current realities of modding with NWN2?

gearing up for Sanctum II

2 - The Quest

Now that the spring semester is finally over, I’m ready to start turning some serious attention to the task of building Sanctum II. As I’ve written previously, I have the three acts of the sequel pretty much plotted out, and I have some very ambitious plans for the romance plot as well. I’ve been tinkering with the toolset on the initial areas to get the hang of it, and I’ve imported and fixed up most of the important items, as well as the extensive utility scripts that I used in Sanctum I. Now I’m ready to start hacking away at it in earnest!

The thing I’ve been dreading most is the task of area creation. From everything I’ve heard (and my own limited experience has been consistent with this as well), creating areas in NWN2 is a royal pain, requiring much more time and effort than it did in NWN1. However, I’ve learned an interesting tip from some other developers that has made me a bit more sanguine about this prospect: using a terrain tool (such as L3DT) to create realistic terrain, and then importing it into NWN2 using YATT. I’ve heard that using these tools can dramatically speed up the process of area creation, so downloading and familiarizing myself with them is my main building project for the next week.

Modding as Interactive Storytelling

Gaming & Modding, NWN Podcast

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.

Sanctum on The NWN Podcast

NWN Podcast, Sanctum: The Modules

I’d like to let everyone know about a short segment on Sanctum of the Archmage that was included in Episode 22 of the Neverwinter Nights Podcast. Trey and Jay, who produce the show, did a great job of pulling teasers from my website to give a good flavor for the saga. Thanks, guys!

I’d like to recommend the NWN Podcast to anyone who may not be familiar with it, and who is interested in the game. I discovered it a few weeks ago and have been enjoying it. I haven’t listened to all the back episodes yet, but they’ve had some great interviews in the ones I’ve heard so far. The recent one with Bruce Nielsen in Episode 20 was particularly excellent.

Keep up the good work, guys!

Module of the Year Contest!

1 - The Sight

I’m happy to report that Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight is a contestant in the Neverwinter Vault’s annual Module of the Year Contest for 2006. Voting is open to anyone who had an active Neverwinter Vault account as of March 1, 2007.

Unfortunately, the contest had to be re-started with some additional software safeguards due to some suspicious voting in the original poll (which has now been scrapped). So if you haven’t voted yet, or if you voted in the original poll and haven’t yet re-cast your vote in the current one, here’s the link to do so:

 

2006 Module of the Year Contest

You can see the current standings here. I’d like to encourage Vault members who haven’t yet voted (or re-voted in the new poll) to do so, even if you’re not voting for Sanctum :). There are some really excellent works in the contest this year, and a strong vote turnout for it will be a real morale boost to the module building community.

An Update on Sanctum II

2 - The Quest, The Miracle Worker

In the comments on my post, “A New Face for Robin,” Michele asked: “When is the next installment coming out? I’ve been checking up on it ever since I played #1 last summer.”

Michele, thanks for your interest in the sequel! Here’s a little more information about the progress of “Sanctum of the Archmage II – The Miracle Worker.”

Players of Chapter I may remember that I gave a pessimistic estimate (“sometime in 2007,” I think I wrote) about when I might be able to have Chapter II available. Unfortunately, I’m more or less still on schedule with those expectations — but my plans for Chapter II have also expanded significantly in scope since then. As I describe on the Sanctum Projects Website, I’m now planning to release Chapter II as a series of three short modules or “Acts” for Neverwinter Nights 2. I’m hoping to be able to release Act I, titled “The Alliance,” sometime in the late summer of 2007.

The main reason for the delay is because of the demands of my “real life.” Currently, I’m juggling a full-time job in quantum optics with part-time coursework for a graduate degree in physics. What little spare time I have left is split between my writing projects (including the modules), and of course spending time with my wife. Unfortunately, that means that during the academic year (between September and May), my ability to spend focused time working on the modules is very limited. I wrote Sanctum I in my spare time over the course of a year, from August 2005 through July 2006, and I’ve been using more or less the same estimate for how long it will take me to develop the first act of the sequel.

That timetable has been complicated by my decision to build Sanctum II in NWN2 rather than NWN1 — which means, among other things, having to learn a largely different and much more complicated toolset. And it has also been complicated by the fact that my plans for the sequel have become much more ambitious in the past few months. I’ve been plotting it on my drives to work using a new attachment that turns my iPod into a voice recorder, and I now have the basic storyline for all of Chapter II entirely worked out. The good news is that it has now grown into a fairly extensive and complex plot that will support a somewhat longer sequel trilogy — but each Act of which I should take less time to build than the full sequel that I had originally planned.

Balancing Romance Plots – Part II

1 - The Sight

(Warning: the following may contain spoilers for Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight.)

Continued from Balancing Romance Plots – Part I.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I had a ready-made solution to my problem: Orion, the character I’d had to remove from the saga to make room for the player to begin with. His personality was already well defined; all he needed was a new background and a way to add him to the story. His thoughtful personality made inventing a new background for him as a philosopher-scholar easy and natural. And there was also a ready-made place to insert him into the module: taking the place of Handol’s original companion, an elven ranger named Ferna Galen. Ferna was a relatively minor character who didn’t have an important role in the plot (although she might still make an appearance in the sequel). Replacing her with Orion tightened up and improved the story significantly, and enabled me to add back some of the plot and interpersonal dynamics that his character had originally made possible.

With this rework, I now I had both male and female romance characters and plots. And although they were written and designed as straight romances, I decided not to code gender checks on the PC to enable them — instead giving the player conversation options to choose which romance(s) interested him. Comfortable that I had now written a reasonably flexible romance plot for it, that was how I released Sanctum I.

After a while, though, I realized that I still wasn’t satisfied. By this time my thinking had fully evolved to the point where I had embraced writing a flexible and balanced romance as a module-building design goal. And while adding Orion to the story improved it in many ways, his romance plot was still a secondary one compared to Robin’s. Orion is encountered at the earliest halfway through the module, and by the end, the player has known him for a week or two at most. Although I have very ambitious plans for his romance in the sequels, in The Sight I had to limit it to flirting, since anything more would have been unconvincing.

This lack of balance in Sanctum’s romance plot became the subject of a very interesting correspondence that I had with one of the module’s players. We also discussed the fact that while there seemed to be a number of mods out there with “Romance the Princess” plots, that neither of us had ever seen a “Romance the Prince” mod. And perhaps not surprisingly, this got me to thinking about whether I could create a version of Sanctum I in which Robin was a romanceable male character — and whether I could sustain this option in the sequels.

After a lot of thought, I decided that I could. That decision led to my final update to The Sight in January 2007: version 2.1M. And with that update, I had finally balanced the romance plot in Chapter I to my satisfaction — while also setting the stage for an even more ambitious romance plot in Chapter II.

(To be continued)

Balancing Romance Plots – Part I

1 - The Sight

(Warning: the following may contain spoilers for Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight.)

As some of you may know, I’m a sucker for a good romance.

Building Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight was an educational experience for me in many ways. Being a hopeless romantic, that had to include learning how to develop an effective romance plot for a Fantasy Role-Playing Game (FRPG). There’s a lot more to this than I realized at first. And the evolution of my thoughts on this topic ended up having a significant influence on the development of the first module, as well as on my plans for the rest of the series.

A key part of the “Sanctum” saga as I originally conceived it is the love story between Robin and The Miracle Worker — whose name in the novels, it may surprise some of you to learn, is Orion. One of the first things I realized when I started trying to adapt the story for Neverwinter Nights, though, was that simply importing the characters and the plot from the novel would not create the kind of FRPG experience that I wanted. I wanted to create an interactive story, one that the player would feel fully immersed into, and in as personal a way as possible. I was comfortable specifying the player’s background, since I’ve never thought that background defines who a person really is. But dictating the player’s name, personality, gender, and so on — in short, their identity — didn’t quite sit right with me.

I know that other (and some quite successful) builders have done this, and I did consider it. But one of the things I learned from my years as a Dungeon Master is the fine line that you have to walk between defining the story on the one hand, and giving the players freedom to contribute to and feel that they are a part of it on the other. This is something that a novelist doesn’t have to consider at all, because a novel is not interactive in the way that an FRPG is. As with any other kind of storytelling, a good FRPG needs to have a strong and tightly developed plot. But that plot also has to be flexible enough to make the player feel that they are a participant, rather than a spectator, in the events they are playing. So when I started building the Sanctum modules, I reluctantly decided that the personality of one of my most beloved characters (Orion) would have to be set aside — to allow the player to put himself into the story (and into his romance) instead.

As time went by, though, I realized that I still wasn’t satisfied with this. In keeping with the plot of the novels, Sanctum I initially only had a possible romance between a male player and Robin. But women play FRPGs, too. And as I came to realize, they not only make up a sizable part of the player community, but are often some of its most discerning members — particularly when it comes to romance plots. A Bioware forum discussion that I participated in last year really brought this point home to me, along with the fact that I was ignoring many of the players who might best be able to appreciate a module romance. So even though Sanctum I was already largely written and plotted out, I resolved to try to think of a way to introduce a male romance into it as well.

(Continued in Balancing Romance Plots – Part II)

A New Face for Robin

2 - The Quest

I’ve seen a lot of comments on the forums about people being disappointed with the faces available in NWN2. After having spent some time trying to choose one for Robin, I’m starting to empathize with that sentiment. Remembering the limited selection of decent looking “heads” in NWN1 is helping me keep this in some perspective, but not entirely. One of the NWN2’s selling points is supposed to be its improved graphics, and the ability to support things like facial animations. So I was a little surprised that there weren’t more attractive head models currently available in the Electron toolset.

None of them fit Robin exactly. But I think I’ve finally narrowed it down to two choices, so I thought I’d post them and ask for reactions. The first one uses Aasimar head model #2, and the second one uses Half-Elf head model #5.

Robin with Aasimar head #2Robin with Half-Elf Head #5

I’ll hold back mentioning my own thoughts and preference for now. But I get the impression of a somewhat different personality from each of these faces, and I was curious to know which one players preferred — and which one better fit their “mental image” of Robin.

Welcome to The Sanctum

General

Welcome to “The Sanctum,” a blog created for information about the ongoing “Sanctum of the Archmage” writing projects. More information about these projects can be found at my website, www.andarian.net. As described there, portions of the project are being developed as a series of novels, and others in the form of custom modules for the Neverwinter Nights Fantasy Role-Playing Game (FRPG).

My current project as of the creation of this blog is to develop the sequel to my Neverwinter Nights 1 Hall of Fame module, “Sanctum of the Archmage I – The Sight.” The sequel, “Sanctum of the Archmage II – The Miracle Worker,” is under development in Neverwinter Nights 2’s Electron Toolset. Rather than as one long module, it is being written as a series of three relatively short “acts.” Act I, “The Alliance,” will pick up the story from the end of Chapter I.

If you’ve stopped by, feel free to leave a note to say “hi” in the comments!