Awesome Neverwinter Nights1 Hardcore RP mod

[Cackfiend]

Shadows of the Sword Coast

I've played a ton of NWN servers in the last several years and I can honestly say this is easily in my top 3. We are currently looking to rebuild our once glorious player base.

Forgotten Realms Experience:

Detailed cities of Waterdeep, Athkatla, Baldurs Gate, Candlekeep, and many more. All FR deities are involved in the game and there are some quests borrowed right out of BG1 & 2.

Hardcore Mode:

Monsters do Critical Hits! Very exciting feature that most mod's dont use.

Perma Death:

When you die, you leave behind all of your items and a corpse. You must have a friend or someone come and raise that corpse or your character is stuck in the fugue, forever!

Adds a very real, very dangerous feel to the game and encourages partying while leaving soloing only to the truly bold.

Low levels may get the ability to respawn sometime soon to promote new players. Currently a lv 1 should play it safe and use a ranged weapon

Strict Roleplaying:

You won't find a bunch of guys running around saying "hey dood wanna kill some monsters?"

OOC talk is restricted to using // in front of a sentence


Very well done quests and encounters:

You gotta experience it yourself. There are tons of quests in this mod that are very well done. Currently has static drops but should soon have a random loot system. There are also many Artifacts that are one of a kind.


There are about 317 megs of haks that are required to play here, download them here and dont forget the tlk file. There is also custom music but currently no working link for that file.

Find us under the Roleplay servers

Server Name: Shadows of the Sword Coast
Module Name: SotSCv150

[Kestenvarn]

I once played on A Land Far Away... had fun, but their schedules and mine tended not to mesh, so I missed out on most campaigns. I'd like to ask a few questions, since I don't see a FAQ on the forum...

• 1. What is the average player density?
  2. Is the setting low fantasy or high fantasy?
  3. Is there a level cap? What is the average player level? Are there
  restrictions on the number of characters a player may have?
  4. How prevalent are magic items in the setting?
  5. How detailed are the maps and npcs?
  6. What are peak times for player activity?
  7. What are the policies on player versus player combat?
  8. Is the setting surface only? Material Plane only?
  9. Out of curiosity, how's the Fugue Plane set up? Similar to the books, or
  somewhat more limited? (In-Character or Out-of-Character afterlife?)

[Cackfiend]

I once played on A Land Far Away... had fun, but their schedules and mine tended not to mesh, so I missed out on most campaigns. I'd like to ask a few questions, since I don't see a FAQ on the forum...

• 1. What is the average player density?
  2. Is the setting low fantasy or high fantasy?
  3. Is there a level cap? What is the average player level? Are there
  restrictions on the number of characters a player may have?
  4. How prevalent are magic items in the setting?
  5. How detailed are the maps and npcs?
  6. What are peak times for player activity?
  7. What are the policies on player versus player combat?
  8. Is the setting surface only? Material Plane only?
  9. Out of curiosity, how's the Fugue Plane set up? Similar to the books, or
  somewhat more limited? (In-Character or Out-of-Character afterlife?)

not sure what u mean by low fantasy or high fantasy?

lv 40 player cap

very detailed maps and npcs

pvp - if you have no interest in pvp (since their is full death and full looting) you can add a PG tag to the end of your character during creation, this means you're in the Peace Guild and no one can pk you.


surface only? theres quite a bit of underdark in there...

fugue plane... is basically an island sitting in the middle of nothingness where you wait with a dead character until you're raised.

will answer more later

[Kestenvarn]

lv 40 player cap

Well, there goes my interest.

PS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy

[Cackfiend]

ah theres plenty of nwn mods out there that the average lv is 8 and u can kill rats for 10xp each all day long if you want


servers like SotSC only the very best ever get anywhere near lv 40

most cap around lv 20 because they cant get any farther

plus the end game content at lv 40 is by far the best and most fun
fighting demons and dragons and such

[Kestenvarn]

Yes, that's high fantasy.

Some players prefer settings with lower-powered plots. Instead of saving the world from timeless abominations, they might be protecting refugees from enemy raiders as they guide them to a nearby fortress. Campaigns might involve the political intrigue of the royal court, an explorer mapping out wild lands to set up a profitable trade route between kingdoms, a man seeking to cure his family of an old curse, soldiers guerrilla fighting to reclaim their homeland against overwhelming odds...

There's more to the game than simple hack+slash and shiny trinkets.

[Cackfiend]

lol you assume the worst but in reality this mod would be perfect for you

the vastness and creativeness of all the low and mid level quests are pretty much exactly what you described


i played some with a guy from these forums tonight, had a good time

first we killed some zombies in the crypts, defeated a ghoul that had stolen a magic dagger from a dwarven mercenary, then headed to candlekeep to help with their jail riot problem but were ambushed by gnolls.. it was not a happy ending

[Jetrel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_fantasy

It really ticks me off that my internal definitions for "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" are so incongruous with the ones demonstrated as "accepted" by wikipedia. This, because, in a contest between me and the rest of the world, I lose - I need to coin some new terms to express what I mean.


I had always seen the divide between "High Fantasy" and "Low Fantasy" as being not in terms of superficial content; such as the world contained therein, or the races used to demonstrate the plot, but being in terms of much lower-level content. Typically, most non-founding books in a subgenre are "low fantasy"; low-fantasy in my view is almost a way of saying "elevated fan fiction;" a book that borrows major elements from the source high fantasy book without borrowing the reason the high fantasy work created those elements in the first place.

For example, "Lord of the Rings" is high fantasy, while the book "Sword of Shanarra," which also contains elves and dwarves, is "low fantasy", because it really has zero reason to have them as a world feature other than that "they're cool" (whereas LotR has some major, fundamental reasons for coming up with the races they did*).

Ah, well. Maybe I could use "Deep Fantasy," vs. "Shallow Fantasy"?



* There are a few easy examples - one of the major purposes of non-human races in LotR was that all of them were a heavily skewed version of humanity, focusing on one aspect of human life often to the deliberate and complete exclusion of others. This, like "locking/controlling variables", actually makes it possible for people to fully buy into certain physio-emotive roles. A major reason to make the hobbits puny and childlike in form was to remove all possibility of the protagonist being fierce and heroic, and to force him into a physically frightful role - being forced to face a fighting man's danger's from the physio-emotive** viewpoint of a child.

For the elves, they offered a look at what man would be like if he had been (in the author's conception), perfect, both in body and mind (the latter of which most other fantasy is oblivious to - elves fundamentally thought differently than humans in LotR). They then asked certain theological questions; such as - for a creature which has few of the ostensibly 'sinful' impulses which mankind has, and furthermore for a creature which had direct experience with part of its pantheon (the angelic Valar) what could drive them to sin? Likewise, it was a speculative fiction on how well we would be able to handle the world if most of our usual handicaps (sickness, physical unfitness, idiocy) were lifted off our shoulders.

Sword of Shanarra was basically ... fan fiction. It has elves in it because the author thought having lithe, pointy-eared blond dudes was cool, even if there was no point to it besides that. Decent writing, [censored] plot.


** Our physical stature, or more accurately, our internal sense of our physical stature, has a very strong effect on our emotive responses to a lot of physical situations. Big tough guys can get used to being physically 'safe' from coercion by others; scrawny guys/girls can actually live in fear of a large part of the rest of the human race. Furthermore, many other physical aspects, such as clumsiness/dexterity, height, attractiveness, et cetera can have massive effects on the rest of the emotional spectrum.

This can produce very interesting results when someone has in these categories over time, such as when a puny, clutzy guy fills out at age 18-22, and becomes a great athlete, or when a girl goes from awkward/homely to being very attractive; or further, when a person with certain mental impairments (dsylexia/add) grows out of them and becomes very intelligent. Typically, ascendant changes result in someone who carries their newfound gifts with a good deal of humility, and descendant changes ... aren't very graceful.

[Kestenvarn]

Your definition was actually included in the entry - the term has more than one meaning.

Low fantasy is not a proper subgenre as such, but a catch-all term employed to describe works of fantasy literature described in an antagonistic relationship with the more well-defined high fantasy genre. As such, it can indicate fantasy that tries not to emphasise magic; fantasy set in the real world; fantasy that contains realism and a more cynical worldview; and Dark fantasy -- among others.

The definition I was referring to was in part the bolded one above and similar to the following view that seems rather widespread among roleplaying settings:

Low fantasy, is closer to realistic fiction that myth. These stories focus on people's daily lives and practical goals; magic provides a way to achieve those goals, and makes it interesting. A low fantasy campaign asks what it's like to live in a world of monsters, magic, and demigods.

...

Characters in low fantasy are more concerned with practical goals, less with great passions. A high fantasy traitor might be motivated by passionate jealousy, tempted by the devil, or perversely sympathetic to the other side; a low fantasy traitor wants thirty pieces of silver. Merchants and criminals are minor figures, or entirely absent, in most high fantasy. In low fantasy, they are not only prevalent, they may be the heroes.

[Zhukov]

It really ticks me off that my internal definitions for "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" are so incongruous with the ones demonstrated as "accepted" by wikipedia. This, because, in a contest between me and the rest of the world, I lose - I need to coin some new terms to express what I mean

...

Ah, well. Maybe I could use "Deep Fantasy," vs. "Shallow Fantasy"?

It would seem the major difference between your definitions and the "accepted" ones is that yours include a judgement on quality.

[Kestenvarn]

Aaaaand we seem to have gone off-topic. Sorry.

[elricz]

lol you assume the worst but in reality this mod would be perfect for you

the vastness and creativeness of all the low and mid level quests are pretty much exactly what you described


i played some with a guy from these forums tonight, had a good time

first we killed some zombies in the crypts, defeated a ghoul that had stolen a magic dagger from a dwarven mercenary, then headed to candlekeep to help with their jail riot problem but were ambushed by gnolls.. it was not a happy ending

Yes, it was fun, thanks Cackfiend. At least from I saw, many things to do for low level PCs, and a very nice mod.