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Game Overview

Plot

The story begins with the players being sent by Lady Aribeth to recover 4 monsters required to make a cure for the Wailing Death which a plague sweeping the city of Neverwinter. With the assistance of Fenthick Moss, Aribeth�s love interest, and Desther, Fenthick�s friend, the player is able to retrieve the monsters. While collecting these monsters, he is attacked by mysterious assassins from the cult that is behind the spreading of the plague.

While the cure is being made, Castle Neverwinter is attacked by Desther�s minions. He takes the completed cure and escapes the castle, with the player and Fenthick in pursuit. When they catch up to Desther, he surrenders after a short battle. Desther is sentenced to burn at the stake, and Fenthick, despite being unaware of Desther�s true intentions, is sentenced to hang.

When he arrives in Luskan, the player character hears rumors that Aribeth is joining with the cultists. These fears are confirmed when he finds her meeting with Maugrim and Morag, Queen of the Old Ones. They seek magical relics called Words of Power.

The player character retrieves all of the Words of Power except for one, held by the cult and discovers that the words open a portal to a pocket world inside the Source Stone, where Morag and the other Old Ones are. He confronts Aribeth, and depending on how he handles the meeting, she either surrenders to the player character or he is forced to kill her. He then confronts Maugrim for the final word. He uses the words to enter the Source Stone and battle with Morag. After Morag�s death, he escapes the stone as the world inside it implodes.

Gameplay

First a player must create a character and can choose the character's gender, race, character class, alignment, statistics , abilities , appearance, and name.

Following a small prelude, there are four "chapters" in the original game. Each chapter consists of a general storyline with many quests, subquests, and mini-storylines. Depending on specific quests completed, and specific items kept, some storylines are continued throughout the entire game. Completing many of the side quests will give characters more experience and special items, making him/her level up faster and continue to make the game easier as they progress.

The game's actual mechanics are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rule set � most important actions are based on a die roll. For example, when a fighter attacks, he would roll a 20-sided die to determine if he hits the target and then roll another die determined by the type of weapon to determine damage dealt. Although nearly all actions are based on a dice roll, the player does not see the dice roll and it is calculated "Behind the scenes".

Multiplayer

Many persistent worlds are still actively run with updates and improvements; notable examples include Amia, Avlis, Arkaz and Layonara. Servers can also be linked together, allowing the creation of large multi-server worlds. Two early examples include A Land Far Away and Confederation of Planes and Planets.

Because Neverwinter Nights lacks a global chat function aside from the supported Gamespy, players typically join "pickup" games through the game's multiplayer interface, or schedule games in advance with friends. Matchmaking sites, such as Neverwinter Connections, facilitate scheduling of games, and the experience is much like traditional Pen-and-Paper roleplaying games. Persistent worlds do this work for them by inviting players to visit their website and continue to roleplay there.

One important feature of Neverwinter Nights is the Dungeon Master Client. A tool which allows an individual to take the role of the traditional Dungeon Master, who guides the players through the story, and has complete control of the server. While not the first game to utilize this feature (one previous example is a more basic version in the game 'Vampire the Masquerade', based on the printed gamebooks published by White Wolf), Neverwinter Nights had the most evolved version of this feature and thus arguably created one of the most 'immersive' RPG experiences currently available in CRPG gaming. The DM Client allowed players to participate in regular campaigns, while also allowing persistent-world servers to flourish by permitting the Dungeon Masters of those servers to possess NPCs 'on-the-fly' for added realism.

Custom content

The Aurora toolset allows builders to create map areas using a tile system; the appearance and surface textures of the area are defined by the area's selected tileset. Builders can overlay placeable objects onto areas, and use the built-in scripting language NWScript to run cut scenes, quests, mini-games and conversations. NWScript is based on C.

Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment. Custom content is added to the game in the form of hakpaks. Builders have used the Aurora toolset in combination with hakpaks to create playing experiences beyond the scope of the original campaign. Despite the game's age, the Neverwinter Nights custom content community remains active.

Additionally, it has allowed for the creation of a number of ongoing persistent worlds, one of the largest being Arelith.

In terms of sheer user-created content, however, the major player is certainly the team that produced the Community Expansion Pack (CEP). Overseen by a small group of Neverwinter Nights builders, the CEP project was an enormous collection of player-made items, creatures and character appearances compiled into an interconnected series of add-on files. Content is only added to the CEP after being tested and approved by the CEP team, giving rise to one of the most widely-used player-made enhancements ever created for Neverwinter Nights, and (thus far) the only one to have received its own page on BioWare's official site.

Due to the extreme success and popularity of the CEP, a sister-project was started several years after the CEP's release. Dubbed the Community Tileset Project, it is attempting to duplicate the CEP's success, but the focus of the CTP is to create a collection of user-made tilesets, which are used to create a basic Neverwinter Nights map. While progress has been slow, the team itself is still working together.

Expansions

• Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) � Released in June 2003. It adds 5 prestige classes, 16 new creatures, 3 new tilesets, and over 30 new feats and 50 new spells, as well as additional scripting abilities for those who use the Aurora toolkit. It features a story line concerning a student sent out to recover some stolen magical objects. The story begins in the Silver Marches, eventually moving toward the desert of Anauroch and the old Netherese city of Undrentide.

• Hordes of the Underdark (HotU) � Released in December 2003, it expands the level-cap to level 40 (epic levels), and adds a number of spells and items appropriate to such characters, as well as adding further tilesets, prestige classes, feats, and abilities, and compatibility with the Intel Pentium 4 Processor, which was unsupported in previous versions. The story continues where Shadows of Undrentide ended, with a character of at least 12th level (if you start this expansion with a character below level 12, the game will level you up to 15), and leads into the vast subterranean world known as the Underdark. The first chapter of the story takes place in the Undermountain dungeon beneath the city of Waterdeep.

• Kingmaker � includes three premium modules, Kingmaker, Shadowguard, and Witch's Wake. In March 2004, an expansion known as the Community Expansion Pack (CEP) based on community material was released. This freely downloadable expansion was compiled by members of the Neverwinter Nights community. It combines a selection of previously released custom content into one large hakpak. BioWare had no involvement in creating content for the CEP, but provided resources to help promote it. Players must add the CEP to a module with the toolset to use CEP content.

Though not actually expansion packs, Atari released subsequent editions of the game following its first release in 2002. These editions are: Neverwinter Nights: Gold, which combines the original game with the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack; Neverwinter Nights: Platinum (in Europe called Neverwinter Nights: Deluxe Edition), which combined all three NWN products and came on a single DVD-ROM or four CD-ROMs; and Neverwinter Nights: Diamond (in Europe called Neverwinter Nights Deluxe: Special Edition), which includes everything in the Platinum edition plus the three additional modules from the Kingmaker Expansion Pack.

As well, in early December 2003, the Players Resource Consortium released the PRC, which is a group of hakpaks combined, which added classes, races, skills, and spells to the game. As of May 20, 2006, the PRC now has roughly three times the number of prestige classes the original game had. It also adds dozens of epic spells, and many normal spells that make better use of BioWare's Aurora engine. These include: Teleportation, Transposition, Mazes, Summoning Houses and more. As well, psionic powers have been included, which are essentially spells, but done with "power points", akin to the sorcerer class. Much of the PRC pushes the engine in ways that the designers never intended, so caution is advised when making use of the hakpak.

Premium modules

According to BioWare, the revenue generated is used to support their fan community and provide ongoing updates and improvements to the popular game. The modules that are sold in the BioWare store require an active internet connection to play, even when played in single player mode. The modules in the Kingmaker expansion were stripped of this requirement but are only for Windows. The modules included with Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition do not require Internet access to play.

• Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker � In November 2004, BioWare announced their flagship premium module, which later received the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences 'PC RPG of the Year' award. The player is called upon to defeat the evil at the Keep of Cyan, and win the throne.

• Neverwinter Nights: ShadowGuard with free Witch's Wake � At the same time as Kingmaker's release, BioWare also offered a bundled pair of shorter premium modules which included ShadowGuard, created by community member Ben McJunkin, and Witch's Wake, a remastered version of Rob Bartel's popular story-oriented module by the same name. The remastered version added new subraces, music, and substantial voice-acting throughout.

• Neverwinter Nights: Pirates of the Sword Coast � In June 2005, BioWare announced the upcoming release of a new premium module. The story begins in the city of Neverwinter, and leads to a lengthy ship-bourne, swashbuckling-style adventure. Characters start at the 5th level.

• Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker (Premium Modules collection) � Atari released this CD-ROM expansion pack in September 2005. It compiles the premium modules Kingmaker, Shadowguard and Witch's Wake. Neverwinter Nights: Infinite Dungeons � In May 2006, BioWare released this premium module which takes place in Undermountain below Waterdeep. The main feature is randomly generated dungeons, which are suitable for all levels of adventurer. The module is designed for single and multiplayer gaming. With the exception of the ability to respawn one's character, ID is very similar to a 3-D roguelike.

• Neverwinter Nights: Wyvern Crown of Cormyr � In September 2006, BioWare announced a new premium module produced by the DLA team. It features fully ridable horses, flowing cloaks, tabards and long coats, a new prestige class (the Purple Dragon Knight), and extensive new art, creatures, and tilesets. Characters start at the 6th or 7th level and module offers an approximate 18 to 20 hours of gameplay.