Though I am not a competent modder by any stretch, I think it is important to mention a couple of failings in NWN 1 and 2 community endeavors that we should consider as we launch ourselves into the DAO engines.
This is just food-for-thought stuff. No one has to accept any of it. These are just observations based on the previous games’ community creations. Given my inherent lack of ability with the DA toolset (or programming in general), I figured I could at least contribute some take-it-if-you-want advice.
1) Think outside the CD box: between the codex, the artifacts, and the conversations in DAO, we have a lot to choose from as far as material is concerned. I love the darkspawn as an enemy, and since the character is a warden, it makes sense that he/she fights them; however, if all the new adventures feature darkspawn as the primary antagonist, the game might degenerate into a cliché-fest in the same way post-movie Star Wars novels did. Every novel seemed to feature some remnant of the Empire and some super-weapon it was trying to utilize. They all run together after a time.
That is, until the Yuuzon Vong were introduced in the New Jedi Order series. I didn’t like that Chewie died, but I sure welcomed a fresh take on a beloved story.
Be creative. No one says you have to stick with standard conventions ALL the time. Inspiration for new material can come from a variety of places: comic books, novels, short stories, movies, the OC, the codex—you name it! The world has many problems, not just darkspawn; it also has mystery, subterfuge, and political intrigue—each has its audience, and each can be a suitable endeavor for the famous Warden. Finding fresh themes to explore and then tying them in a logical way to the DAO universe will keep the lettuce from spoiling.
2) Play with Progression: the Neverwinter Nights series suffered greatly from this. The modding community never quite figured out the right formula for playing characters at epic levels. Of course, part of this was the D&D game mechanic: high-level characters gain so much in immunities, overpowered weapons, and blatantly over-kill skills, it’s no wonder this was an issue.
After playing through the DAO game a few times, this isn’t so much of an issue (Maker be prasied!), but it’s still one worth mentioning. Anyway, when looking for custom content for NWN, one quickly finds there are countless “young adventurer” modules, but few that expand on the career of the hero one spent countless hours building. Adventures designed to level a character are great; we all love them, but try not to forget about the veteran Warden who saved the world. We love him too.
3) Keep your Module Focused: it’s easy with a game toolset to start off with an idea, but it’s hard to keep that idea at the forefront of module creation. Back when I used to dabble in the NWN toolset, I would catch myself running off on tangents to include something I thought would be cool to add.
What I should have done was create a second module based on the idea. Staying focused to your original story outline does one awesome thing for the building team: it keeps you moving forward. Most players don’t expect community-made material to be of the same scope that a typical OC is (we have jobs, families, etc). If you have an epic idea, that’s great! Building it in episodes is a nice way to keep things moving, which avoids the frustration of dealing with gigantic files, balance issues (between RP and hack-n-slash), and far-overdue deadlines.
4) Buy a Grammar Book: if you advertise yourself as a writer to a team or if you plan to do the writing yourself, make sure you have your game face on when you work. You owe it to those you have volunteered to help. It’s been my experience that the player community doesn’t want to spend three minutes chewing a sentence that reminds them of a seven-year-old, freezer-burned slab of overcooked minute steak.
One very good method of simple sentence analysis is to read the sentence aloud. If you have a tough time with fluidity (if you notice the words don’t flow quite well), take a few moments to jot the sentence down two or three other ways. You might come up with something that works better.
Keep your sentences clean; use your fragments with style; examine your diction closely so you remain true to your characters and concise to your readers; use a variety of sentence structures and types; use punctuation in creative ways, and familiarize yourself with the parts of speech. Few things will ruin a good roleplaying experience more than seeing a king say, “Cya L8r!” or using “were” when you actually meant “where” or creating an ambiguous sentence such as, “The Warden discovered a rune-covered cauldron for a cook with a round bottom suitable for beating.”
So, there you go, for what it’s worth. Just a few tips from a long-time RPG lover. I’m sure I haven’t covered other tips, so for those more knowledgeable than I—and there are many, particularly those with programming knowledge—please feel free to add your observations as well.
Modifié par spoe71, 20 décembre 2009 - 01:32 .
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