Do you yearn to crush your friends like the dogs they are in gleeful player versus player (PvP) gaming under the Neverwinter roof? Look no further than the world of NWTactics! NWTactics is a tested, balanced, and exciting way to flex your might.

This Player Versus Players mod, Capture The Flag style, depicts the tribal war between RedStone, GreenWood, BlueRidge, and SilverStream. Under the strict rules of their Dragon-Lords, the teams must strive and fight to hoard more gold pieces to please their overlords.

Use stealth and cunning to enter the enemy base, or brute force to break in, to separate your sworn enemy from their riches. Tougher still is the dangerous return trip to your own base with the enemy's greatest champions tracking you, seeking your blood.

Where is the main NWTactics website?

www.nwtactics.com

How are you involved?

PDL Northpal: NWTactics was started by DMJhenne more than 2 years ago, and he drew his inspiration from the first person shooter game, Team Fortress. NWTactics is a Capture The Flag game, much like the popular multiplayer CTF missions in games like Battlefield 1942, but with an epic and fantastic flavor instead of tanks and rifles. I joined the team in July 2002 after buying NWN and discovering this mod online. I was modding multiplayer missions for Ghostrecon before, I wanted to check other modding tools, aso I decided to get involved in the multiplayer aspect of NWN.

I have been a big fan of D&D for a long, long time, so it was an easy step for me, and I really liked what I saw of the Aurora Toolset. As I was also a regular player of Counterstrike and Ghostrecon, the idea of bringing the concept of these FPS to NWN really appealed to me, and allowed me to mix my two favorite type of games in one. So I jumped on board and brought in a web site as well as more D&Dish background (stealing gold for your Dragon-Lords instead of stealing flags).

With DMJhenne, we worked together for a few months until he decided to move on to other projects. I continued to work on the mod and got a lot of input and support from the community of the NWTactics players. The mod has been in Beta Test for 2 years and was released this year for NWCON II where we organized demos for new players. All this time, we received great support from various server admins, especially Blardov on his World of Blardov servers, and lately, Socks and LanWerX, a chain of PC game centers in the Pacific Northwest. I am not a server admin, so I did rely on those willing to host the mod, and I can't thank them enough for their help!

What is NWtactics?

PDL Northpal: What makes NWTactics peculiar is that, unlike most of the NWN mods, there are no experience points to gain. All characters have the same level and have access to the same resources, equipment, and kits. Nobody can bring anything into the mod from outside. Players are stripped of their gear when they go to talk with the GateKeeper, and over these many months this has been a regular surprise for players visiting us. This is also the key to establishing a balanced fighting ground. NWtactics is all about team play as there is no dominant build. Each build has its own nemesis and no character can be a one person army. The D&D combat experience is omnipresent--the need to protect your casters, the possibility to infiltrate the enemy base, the huge melee fights.... It's not just an arena where you create character builds to kill other characters. The main goal of the team is to bring gold back, and to achieve this, you really need to work as a group. As you are fighting other players as intent on winning as yourself, the combats are ferocious and very dynamic!

Because there is no experience, and as we want players to have a sense of progression, we publish daily statistics, much like the stats you can find for games like Counterstrike. Of course, they use the death/kill ratio a character can have, but just as important is the number of gold you brought back and the number of victories you helped your team achieve. The statistics are based on an ELO system, much like chess, instead of a cumulative kill/points ratio, and this allows you to assess fairly the level of a player regardless of the amount of time spent playing the mod. Players can thus track down the progress of each of their characters easily from our web site.

Outside of these, the main keywords for this mod are balance and diversity. We want to make sure that the game stays fun for every class and every build. Every single feat, skill, or spell is useful in the game in some ways. There are no banned classes or builds, but workarounds have been implemented to make the game experience enjoyable by all (yes, even if you are playing against shadowdancers...).

Do you have any advice for gamers interested in NWTactics?

PDL Northpal: Sure!

When you build a character, being familiar with D&D rules helps a lot, as NWN does a good job of modeling the 3rd edition rules. The only thing is, when you build your character this way, you can keep your skill points from one level to another. I myself would have preferred that skill points had to be spent level by level, but this was not implemented. So keep this in mind and use it, as most of the players do, to your advantage.

In game, you can only rest in your team sanctuary where you are protected from the enemy team. Once you enter the map you are in hostile territory. I see a lot of new players, especially casters, that go out of their sanctuary without any buffs. Main advice: buff up in your sanctuary. Most buffs' duration allows you to reach the other side of the map where the enemy base is, and especially if you are a mage, go there invisibly to check things out.

If you are not yet familiar with NWN, build a fighter or a barbarian. And the first time you go out on a new map, hang out with teammates. Follow them and stay close to them until you have an idea of the map. By the way, each map is different. There is a rotation after each game, and you can vote for the next map you want to play (much like FPS games, the server admins can put the maps of their choice in the rotation and keep the mod renewed regularly).

When you die, you will respawn after three rounds in your sanctuary and be ready to go out again and try once more to reach the enemy gold.

Now that the mod has been released, what are your other projects?

PDL Northpal: Well, there is always some work to do, and I have different projects to continue supporting NWTactics for a long time...

I'm just finishing the instructions on the web site to allow people to create new maps for the mod. The server administrators can then download the maps that people submitted and replace the standard maps with the one they chose. Thus, the game experience can vary from one server to another. In the same area, I'm also working on making sure that each server admin can get the stats relevant to the play activity that occurred on their own server so they can make these stats available for their community.

The main project I'm now focusing on is to get NWTactics Lords Beta Test started before the end of June. NWTactics Lords will be a version of the mod for characters level 20. This will be an important step for players to experiment with level 20 builds. A lot of NWTactics players have become expert in building level 12 characters, and this new version will open new horizons for them. Once again, balancing the spells powers will be a critical part of this beta test, like it has been for the level 12 mod.

Later down the road, I would also like to do a standard NWN adventures series of modules, from level 1 to level 20 (and maybe 40) called NWTactics Adventures, that will present the background story behind the NWTactics mod. There is a background behind the war of the Dragon-Lords, and I would love to tell this story.

What is LanWerX?

Bill Garnett: LanWerX is a chain of PC game centers in the Pacific Northwest. Our original center is in Bellevue, Washington. We have another location in Woodinville, Washington, and two more locations to open this summer. Our plan is to build out a nation-wide chain of game centers. We feature both PC games and console games, and we carry all game genres on our equipment. The first person shooters are played most, but RPG games are becoming more popular. One of our goals is to build RPG play up even more.

Games centers seem to be on the rise in North American where they were previously the domain of Korean gamers. Why do you think this is happening?

Bill Garnett: The attraction of game centers is the same as it is in Korea: the opportunity for social interaction. Gamers like to get together and play each other in the same room, and game centers give them the opportunity to do that on first class equipment.

What are your thoughts on the state of playing NWN on a LAN or at a game centre?

Bill Garnett: The main technical hurdle is the requirement for the CD to be in the computer. As the game is not immediately available to customers like all the other games we carry, players do not necessarily take the time to get to the counter and ask for the CD. Also, it forces us to make sure they return the CD. This tends to discourage players from trying the game.

Another problem is the need to rebuild characters at each visit to the center. We are meeting this challenge with a new system that will allow members to save their settings and characters to our server at the end of play. On their next visit, the player will be able to reload their files.

Still, LanWerX has been very proactive in developing Neverwinter Nights. We have a workshop every Thursday evening where the developer of the NWTactics mod teaches people how to build NWN characters. The multiplayer format of this mod is really adapted to the game center style of play. It is similar to Capture the Flag First person shooters games, like Battlefield, but with fighters, wizards, rogues, and clerics instead of tanks, choppers, or infantrymen! Players can drop in and drop out of the game easily, and we have set up our machines to provide default characters for the players who do not want to create their own characters so that they can still play right away. We are also hosting an NWTactics server, and plan to develop local rankings, as the logs on this mod can be used to generate play statistics. Overall, we are happy to see that this RPG genre can also provide a fun game experience when playing in a game center.

What role do you think game centers will play in the future of multiplayer games?

Bill Garnett: Game centers allow people in multiplayer games to get together. There is a real advantage for people to be sitting next to each other when playing. It builds a stronger game community. It allows for a better game playing experience as you play on the best equipment with the best internet connection.

Also, events like team tournaments can be organized, and in addition to getting players together, we can establish local rankings and give the players a sense of progression. LanWerX also participates in worldwide tournaments and events, which gives the local player community a chance to compete against the best and brag about it.