Home For Builders An Introduction to the City of Doors Initiative

An Introduction to the City of Doors Initiative

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk,
April 30, 2003

The Neverwinter Night's community has come a long way. The talent of the community started showing its vast creative potential even weeks after the game hit store shelves with a variety of stunning work. Now, nearly a year later, we are seeing projects of enormous scope and scale requiring major organization and dedication by volunteers. BioWare is very pleased to introduce a group that- if you have not been spending your free time in a catatonic state- everyone has been talking about: The City of Doors Initiative.

Led by the tireless Papermonk the tidbits that fans have been allowed to see have created one of the most anticipated projects thus far. We caught up with Papermonk to guide us through an introduction in the universe of Planescape…

1. What is the City of Doors? What is this crazy 'Planescape' you speak of?

Planescape was a campaign world released by TSR for 2nd edition AD&D. It was a pretty unique change for TSR as this was, instead of the more typical dungeon crawling, a campaign setting that actually emphasized cunning, politics, and role-playing as opposed to the constant die-rolling of earlier days (and you could always go to some prime world and kill things if you needed too, as well!).

Instead of a prime world (worlds like ours, Toril (Forgotten Realms) Athas (Darksun) etc.) these adventures and games all took place in and around the Outer Planes (the heavens and hells) and Inner Planes (elemental planes) as well, and the centerpiece of it all... was the City of Doors: Sigil. The city was located at the very center of the Outer Planes with portals to… well… everywhere.

So… this campaign was really something different. If you wanted to go fight in the endless Blood War between the fiends or if you wanted to go play on some rural prime world, if you wanted to hang out in the court of Apollo or meet the proxy of Loki - you could do it. It comes down to this, and as stated in one of the books, "In Sigil, the secret of survival ain't WHO you are, berk - it's what you know." And it really is. You could sit with a demon and an angel at the same table, and someone who wants to survive, even a paladin with issues - better know well enough to pick another time to be valorous.

2. What are the basic differences between Planescape and the Forgotten Realms?

It's really about location and ambience. The Outer Planes in the Forgotten Realms share some similarities with the Planescape setup (the more traditional Greyhawk 'Great Wheel'.) But the two are connected. There are portals in many places in the Forgotten Realms to Sigil.

But what it comes down to, really, is the ambience.

Forgotten Realms has some big cities, nice little villages, ancient ruins, etc. Sigil is.... well, unique. The city is absolutely massive (40 miles long by 5 miles wide) on the inside curve of a massive ring floating at the top of an infinitely tall spire at the center of the Outlands (the neutral Outer Plane). Yes, that's quite a mouthful. But everything is massive, weird and vaguely menacing in Sigil. Even the buildings. There are no trees or rocks or anything else in Sigil, so everything must be brought in through portals, so the buildings are made of anything they can find, and then torn down and the bits used again.

In Faerûn (the Forgotten Realms) you may see some demihumans in your normal village, but it's not that common.

In Sigil... prime races are only a small percentage of the population. You are more likely to see a Marilith walking down the street than a golden elf from Baldur's Gate. Also, all the planar races - Tieflings, Aasimar, Githzerai, Githyanki, Bauriar, Genasi, etc... All odd and bizarre. Add some of the most powerful creatures in the multiverse and you get the idea.

3. How on earth did you get this huge project off the ground?

I'm not quite sure, honestly. We started in July. It probably began first with a small level up/subrace module I did. This essentially gave skins and little items for spells for players to be something unique. Something like 45 races I believe. It started so I could play a Githzerai or a Tiefling. Until the Character Creator, I still used it.

A few weeks later I did a Plane of Fear (from Everquest) module with my roommate at the time, as he wanted something to play with his high-level character after finishing the main campaign. That was actually fairly successful (awful as it is! I believe it was published, or to be published, in a British magazine.) But next on the list, I wanted to do something from the typical D&D world so I picked the Beast Lands, and Outer Plane.

As I began that, I realized... "Hey, why not do Sigil!" If I only knew what I was beginning. After that it's kind of a whirlwind...

The continued success of this project really lies on some of the incredible people on the team that have kept this thing going no matter how hard and frustrating it sometimes became. But for the most part, it's been a blast.

4. What sort of people do you have contributing to this project?

All sorts! We have people from all over the world! But we have everything from tinkerers, to college students, to professionals in their fields. We're all working towards the same goal, and the amazing skills of these people are what make this project keep going. I am absolutely stunned on a nearly daily basis by some of the things this group does and comes up with.

But it's important to note, there really isn't any separation with what person is with what group. Our modelers help with story, our scripters sometimes model, etc. We try to let people do what they feel they enjoy doing.

Also, we're pretty good about training people up. They have to be willing to work, as we can't hold their hands, but we'll help them out and work with them to improve as much as we can.

A great example is GhostFactory, who just began this sort of modeling and texturing when he started with us and within weeks was putting out some incredible models and placeables such as the Mezzoloth and Maelephant. We're very proud of his work.

5. Do you have a plan for how things will be released or completed?

We're hoping to have our first module, Planescape: Foundations, out sometime next month. We were hoping for a release this month, but things sometimes come up, and they usually do.

After that, we return to work again on the Main Campaign, and Sigil Template, we're doing. We're hoping for a Chapter 1 release sometime during the summer to be followed up with three more chapters. The Sigil Template is essentially Sigil mapped out and set up with all important systems for people to take and place their own Planescape Adventures in. That was the original goal of the project, but honestly.... Our main campaign will blow absolutely everyone away; it's not like anything else that's been done yet in NWN, and I am terribly excited about it.

Also, we continue to support our NWN Character Creator with some updated scripts, and by maintaining a page to keep it all up. Ideally, we'll track all the haks and modules that support it as well as any changes we make in future versions. Thanks go out to Moomba for helping us with that page. We're also planning a new tlk editor to make it much easier to use these things, as it's a bit clumsy now, and hard on the end user.

We also have two large script packages due out soon. The CODI Core AI by NamelessOne is probably going to be released in the next few weeks. I'm quite proud of this as it really revamps the AI quite well. Creatures use strategy and cunning that will be more than enough to take out that next adventurer that stumbles through. Groups of monsters will regroup, buff each other, heal each other, etc. Depending on the alignment of the caster they will figure out how many of their own troops are worth sacrificing if they can land a fireball on the party.

Drow are a great example of the AI in action: if there are Drow spellcasters that can cast ultravision or true seeing spells, they will cast them on themselves and then anyone else on their side before casting darkness on the players. They will heal and resurrect when possible, and buff themselves pretty well before laying into you. I can tell you from personal experience these fights went from easy to devastatingly hard.

And it was great.

The AI is not CODI specific, but something that will overwrite the standard scripts for ease of implementation and use. It really makes a huge difference. We are doing a CODI version afterwards, but felt it was important to get this out ASAP to everyone.

Also due, after Foundations, is a new tradeskill system complete with lots of new placeables to go with it. It works great, and includes a small program that can easily make recipes for any players to use. This thing can make anything from arrows to poisons.

We've also got a few more things up our sleeves that will be big surprises for everyone, and after Foundations are going to start a new project tentatively called "CODI Sponsored Modules" which will entail us giving some top module-makers some nice new content with the agreement they do something Planescape-y with it. More on that later.

6. What is your vision for this project?

That's always been kind of my job on the team, keeper of the vision of it all. Most the time this meant explaining the wonderful thing we can do here, sometimes it meant curtailing tangents that went to far afield. But to me it's always focused on a few things.

First, to see Sigil and the Planescape campaign come alive in NWN. I started this project because I wanted to play Planescape. I wanted to see those amazing, massive buildings and lop around town on hooves as a Tiefling. And so did the rest of us as people slowly joined up with us.

But, what it comes down to.... I want to see Planescape and walk about it. I want to go into the Mortuary and sneak into Factol Skall's office. I want to hang out in a Bariaur bar in the Lower Ward.

I want to see our campaign: not to sound like I'm bragging, but I cannot confer the amazement I have with how that thing is turning out. It's the quintessential Planescape type of adventure with plot over plot over plot where you don't quite know who just did what to whom and why. Even after it's been explained. But you know it was a helluva ride.

I want to see our Template and creations used. I want to see people using the Character Creator and making new PC races, and I want to see people basing adventures in Sigil, and being hunted down by a manticore.

7. What can your adoring public expect from CODI next?

Well, next on the list is the CODI Core AI, which I believe will suitably blow everyone away by the intelligence the monsters suddenly have (and it does respond to the intelligence of the creatures using it). After that, our first module, Planescape: Foundations, in which a fellow is playing quite a dangerous sort of trick. Then we're going to take a long nap and eat some food and maybe go outside and see the light of day before getting back to work again. (Cracks whip.) I have a reputation to maintain, after all.