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NWCon: A Neverwinter Nights Online Gaming Convention

2004 Update: This year, NWCon events are running Friday April 16 to Sunday April 18 with a kickoff extravaganza on the evening of Thursday, April 15. For more information, visit the NWNCon Site, forums, and online store.

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk,
October 15, 2003

BioWare and Neverwinter Connections are proud to announce the first online Neverwinter Nights convention, NWCon. This community organized 10 day event, running from Oct 25 to Nov 2, will feature some of the best Neverwinter Nights gaming action found in the community, as well as a number of expert panels to be held via IRC. We spoke with the NWCon's organizer eliandi:

 

Why an NWN Online Convention?

The idea began as a thread on Neverwinter Connections about how to jazz-up the Neverwinter Nights community. Many ideas bounced around until community member Garnak mentioned maybe we could have a slate of organized games, which quickly morphed into the idea of an online gaming convention. Maybe because I was unable to attend Gencon -- one of the biggest game conventions -- this year, I jumped on that idea. In just a few pages of a forum thread, we had basically sketched out the foundation for the event. I simply tried to hold that vision, while maintaining a mantra of KISS (keep it simple, stupid) so we could get NWCon off the ground in a timely manner.

In a nutshell, NWCon is designed to give all fans of Neverwinter Nights a chance to play, run games as a Dungeon Master, or learn more about all the various aspects of Neverwinter and the Neverwinter Nights community.

What gaming will be offered?

We have a wide variety of game offerings, all scheduled through the Neverwinter Connections player matching service. All of the games are assigned times, and all have Dungeon Masters, just like a gaming convention.

See the games schedule on the NWCon web site.

The games break down into four large categories:

• NWCon Features: These are some of the best fan-created modules on NW Vault, pre-packaged and ready to run for any DM. The Features range from Team- vs-Team to serious roleplay, and we want to run many, many slots of these games to allow players unfamiliar with multiplayer or DMed games to try them out.
• NWCon Highlights: These games represent a few of the best-of-the-best DMs and DMed games in the NWN community.
• NWCon Gaming: We are inviting all DMs in the NWN community to pick and run any module they chose as part of NWCon. While we cannot "highlight" all of these games, we already have some really interesting offerings.
• NWCon Bastions of War: Bastions of War, or BoW, runs the most popular NWN team-vs-team arena server on Gamespy, and they will be holding scheduled events at NWCon. Test your Team PvP mettle in the BoW arena.

What else?

We will be using IRC chat during NWCon as a public meeting room, and for expert panels. We imagine the main chat room as the big commons room you see at most gaming conventions, where people hang-out between games, chat about games and gaming, and get into pick-up games.

We will be holding a variety of expert panels via IRC during NWCon. Check the Panels schedule for times.

The topics range from roleplaying to DMing to Building to the creation and use of Custom Content. We are excited to have panelists from The City of Doors Initiative, DragonLance Adventures, and Fleetstreet, among others.

Join the chat:

• You can join the NWCon chat using your internet browser if you have the latest version of java installed, and if you are logged into Neverwinter Connections.
• To join the channel with your own IRC client direct your IRC client to: irc.neverwinterconnections.com Channel: #NWCon and/or #NWCon_Seminars.

Sounds great -- do you need help?

Yes! As you can imagine, putting on an event of this size requires many volunteers. I have been impressed with so many people of the community stepping up and making this thing happen, but we can still use some help.

Dungeon Masters: NWCon can only offer as many slots as we have DMs. Right now we have about 500 player slots, i.e. 2 slots each for 250 players. I expect we will have more slots scheduled between now and 10/25, but I also expect there to be hundreds of players wanting to play a few slots. So we are asking all the DMs of the community to step forward and run a few slots for NWCon. Run a NWCon Feature module... they are turn-key and include extensive DM docs. Run any mod you like from NW Vault. Or run something you create, maybe a short section of your campaign. See this Neverwinter Connections thread for more information on the Features or DMing for NWCon.

Panel Moderators: We need panel moderators for each of our panels. IRC knowledge is a plus, but not required. Contact Elbast if you would like to volunteer.

Panel Experts: If you have a particular expertise you think would add to our expert panels, please contact Elbast.

For more information:

• NWCon Website
• NWCon Forums
• Neverwinter Connections