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Player Profile- Gruush

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk,
June 25, 2003

Locating a game you really enjoy enough is a bit of hurdle for the new player but once you have a great group how do you enhance the experience for everyone? How do you become the player that people looks up to and try to emulate in their own game play? Role-playing groups are always looking for innovative and serious players to add to an atmosphere of story-telling and adventure. Gruush has created the ultimate document to help both the new player wanting to start off on the right foot and the experienced veteran looking for advanced tips on how to bring their game up a notch or two. Where can I find this tome of knowledge? Download from Neverwinter Vault

Gruush spared some time to answer a few more questions about his NWN experience:

Your document "The Role-Players Guide to Multiplayer Neverwinter Nights" is a massive, detailed guide for new and experienced role-players. What was the origin of this document?

Neverwinter Nights was the first computer game I ever played online, apart from a brief flirtation with Gemstone and MUDs long ago. When I first joined Neverwinter Connections as a member, I looked around at all of the fan sites for something similar to help speed up the learning curve. There are lots of excellent role-playing guides out there, but nothing specific to the Neverwinter Nights milieu.

I also found that a huge number of forum threads on Neverwinter Connections and other sites ended up touching on the topics of "what makes a good player" and "how do we get new players up to speed quickly." It really began to crystallize in my mind when Rizzen's site began doing mentoring. Rizzen's creation of a Mentoring forum really began to focus newcomers to one location, and they all had similar questions. Neverwinter Connections already had documents that talked about the administrative aspect of that site, as well as an excellent short essay on role-playing by "Essobie," which ended up being one of my primary sources.

Additionally, I found myself playing in games where some excellent role-players did things that astounded me, and I thought "Wow! I wish I had thought of that six months ago!"

So I thought if I can bring this together in a way that would be helpful, but also not come across as "these are the hard and fast rules, and if you don't follow them you're bad role- player" then it would be worth it. That's what I tried to do.

What is your relationship with Neverwinter Connections?

Just an avid user. When I decided I wanted to try multiplayer, I started out jumping into open games via Gamespy. Like many people, I found that it was very "hit or miss," and I realized that my problem was that I didn't KNOW anyone else who played. So, somehow I found Neverwinter Connections, which is an amazing resource for meeting like-minded gamers. I play all of my games through Neverwinter Connections now.

What has been your own experience in multiplayer NWN?

Like many NWN owners, I grew up on D&D, 2nd edition in my case. But, I never wanted to game as an adult. I think, in a way, I fell a bit to those "nerves" where you feel entirely too geeky being a 30-something playing Dungeons and Dragons. But, along the way I played pretty much every single-player CRPG that came out, so I bought NWN really for that purpose. I really didn't pay much attention to the toolset or DM client, despite being a DM growing up. But once I started getting into some multiplayer games through NWC, I realized "Hey! This was what I loved so much about D&D when I was growing up!" When I finally played a DMed game, I was totally hooked. I especially love the fact that it allows you to be true to the "campaign" flavor of Dungeons and Dragons. I always stayed away from MMPORPGs because I feared getting sucked in and playing 40 hours a week. At the same time, in those systems you feel a lot of pressure if you DON'T game constantly. It's hard to "keep up with the Joneses" as it were. As a guy with a family, a job, and other interests, I love getting into a NWN campaign and playing once, twice a week on a regular basis. The funny thing is, after owning the game for nearly a year, I finally cracked open the toolset and the DM client, took Duncan's DM101 course, and I'm like a kid in a candy shop all over again on the DM/modding side!

What is the future of NWN multiplayer?

Hmm, that's an interesting question. I wish I could say I was a visionary, but I don't think that's the case. I think that NWN multiplayer CONCEPTUALLY is right where it needs to be, as you can probably tell by the great community response you've gotten. I think the game would be greatly served by any functionality that caters to those communities. For example, I would love to see the toolset and scripting capabilities expand and grow, but more important I think would be improvements on the player customization side. NWN has clearly shown, like Open Source in the "real world," how powerful toolsets can be in the hands of a large community. One of the biggest drawbacks of NWN, in my opinion, is the inability to create custom voice sets easily. Similarly, the shortage of player character models. One of the greatest aspects of the game is to see how players tailor their characters to suit their personalities. Right now that shows beautifully through custom portraits, but it's jarring to find that 3 of the 6 people in your party have the same voice set. Personally, I don't think the future of NWN is in voice, because I think that there are many players, like me, who find that not using their real identity or voice frees them from inhibitions and allows them greater freedom in role-playing.

The one thing I would love to see is NWN grow in such a way that, even if the engine eventually needs to be updated or replaced, all of the hard work of this community would not be lost. I'd hate to see "NWN II" come out in a few years, and be completely incompatible with all of the scripts, modules, haks, and so forth that everyone has created.