[MUD-Dev] BioWare to demonstrate Neverwinter Nights at E3

[Travis Casey]

On Friday, April 21, 2000, F. Randall Farmer wrote:

> Neverwinter Nights allows you to experience all the magic and multi-player
> excitement of a pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons game on your home computer.
> Set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, the characters come alive with
> the latest 3D graphics technology powered by NVIDIA. Neverwinter Nights is
> played using Wizards of the Coast's newly updated Third Edition Dungeons
> & Dragons rules.

> AD&D? Yikes!

> Has anyone been Alpha/Beta testing this game who's not NDA'd? The quote
> above is frightening to me.

> The AD&D rules have never scaled well at the upper end, in my experience
> (25 -yikes- years of experience with the various flavors, though I don't
> know much about Third Edition.)

Well, I don't know anything about NWN, but I do know about as much
about 3rd edition D&D (they're dropping the A) as anyone who hasn't
been a playtester does.

WotC has put a good bit of effort into making 3rd edition work better
at high levels -- they've been playtesting it, in cooperation with the
RPGA, for about two years now, and were working on it before then.
Indeed, word has it that work on it actually began before WotC bought
TSR.

The people working on it are some of the best game designers in the
paper RPG business -- Jonathon Tweet, of Ars Magica, Over the Edge,
and Everway fame, is one of them.  People who I've known for more than
10 years, who have been playing D&D/AD&D for over 20, and whose
opinions I trust, and who are playtesters, say that it handles high
levels better than any prior version of AD&D.

For tons of info, check out Eric Noah's 3rd edition web pages, at:

  http://www.rpgplanet.com/dnd3e/

> As a DM, I was always adding non-combat responsibilities to the
> characters/players as they became Lords,Arch-magi,Overlords,Bishops,
> Dons, etc. They loved it, but it became less and less about combat tables.
> :-P It was more and more about making good choices and the repercussions.

IMHO, the biggest promise of NWN may be the ability to run your own
server and be a GM.  I play in a game on WebRPG weekly right now --
having something that would automatically handle the details of
combat, mapping, etc. for us would be wonderful.

> I've found that high and low level characters don't mix well using
> straight AD&D.

That's definitely true, and it doesn't look like it's going to change
under 3e.  I do wonder how they're going to handle that.

> Perhaps some of the staff are on this list? If so, please tell me that
> the above quote just marketing hype. (One can hope!)

Everything I've seen (which isn't much) indicates that they will be
using D&D3 rules, and they've been given a lot of access to the
playtest versions to help with that.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)





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