1/07/00 - Latest News
World Size and Playing a Monster in NWN
Berendir @ 20:38 EST
How big can worlds be? How big: as big as you want. Each actual encounter area is limited to 32x32 tiles. That is a very big space to run around in. At the fastest character speed running in a straight line, it still takes a couple of minutes to cross. That's just one area. There is no real limit to the number of areas in the World Map; just memory on your pc I suppose….so you can have very large world maps made of linked areas. You can also link to other servers, allowing players to cross from your world map, to another DM's world map. One good idea is to trade NPC's and areas with other DM's…you could go find a cool innkeeper NPC on the net, and drop his Smugglers Inn down in your town, then grab a bunch of other NPC's to put in the tavern, then take one of our dungeon crawls and start modifying…you could end up with a very detailed world, quite quickly…. Maybe some of the DM's could start writing NPC's now…we might have chance to add any cool ones we happen to receive into a module…. Will I be able to play as a Monster? Well, I opened my big mouth didn't I...we haven't totally decided how his will work, but MOST LIKELY, you will NOT get a full scale character sheet as a monster, you will only have the stats and equipment the DM has given the creature. I don't think monsters will be able to earn XP...you'd have to ask Scott about that one....if you wanted to play a monster as a continuing character, you would need a lot of help from a live DM. Now if your playing in a small group, on a server with a DM available, that should be very possible...it could be quite cool...
How long: well that is relative…we are building the Solstice editor to be very fast and easy to get started, but to allow a lot of depth. So I'd say you can make a basic area, just lay out some landscape and town tiles in only 10 or 15 minutes. It's filling that area with interesting NPC's, quests and encounters that can take as little or as long as you like. You have the option to write all new dialogue for NPC's, customize monster behavior, set up chains of events…just about anything our designers can do here…so if you want a huge city, with hundreds of unique characters, you can do it, but it may become a week, or a month, or a year worth of work!… (Realy what I'm saying is that it's just like pen and paper D&D).
Source: Neverwinter Nights Vault