[MUD-Dev] Neverwinter Nights

[Taylor]

On Thu, 31 May 2001, Dave Rickey wrote:

> Well, *what* you can script is pretty limited too.  You can create
> content within certain limits, but as near as I can tell you cannot
> add graphical assets, nor can you make any significant change to the
> D&D3E ruleset, or create one of your own.  Contrast this with an FPS
> like Tribes, where literally everything up to and including the
> physics engine can be over-ridden in scripts, and graphical assets
> added.

> Where you see those form-based tools, you're looking at hard-coded
> aspects of the game that can only be altered in certain ways.

True, but since D&D is such a huge influence on many gamers, these
rulesets will probably be good enough for the vast majority of people
who want to try their hand at game design. It may not allow for
designers to make whatever specific world they want, but it will allow
for an endless amount of modules that work according to a ruleset
familiar to most of the gamers out there. It'll have more modules
produced because it's simple, and while most of them will be not very
good, it by sheer volume we'll probably get a few gems.

I wasn't too exicited by it until I really started investigating it
the past couple of weeks. It already has a huge fanbase, most of whom
want to play in a custom world. I think it will be a good gateway drug
for aspiring game designers (hi).

What I'm really interested in will be how the designers will deal with
the social administrative issues of running the game world. I would
hope there will be a spike in traffic to all those excellent essays
that detail what operators of muds have already learned. Though I
suspect that instead they will make all the same mistakes over and
over again.

--
Taylor                                 log: http://www.captaincursor.com/
taylor at taylor.org

Luddites are bad film critics! -evan

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