I never played the two games but I'm a big fan of RPGs and pen & paper RPGs and I'm pretty excited to give these a run but I have a few questions regarding the two games. The questions are really regarding both games so if something is true for one of them but not the other please specify which game.

1. I keep hearing that the best part of these games was/is the player modules? Where do I get this? Is it still around?

2. I assume these "modules" are like D&D modules, so like adventures? If that's the case, can I make my own?

3. Is it possible to play this locally with my friends or do I need fancy dedicated servers? i.e. Is it easy to host a server?

4. I heard there were persistent worlds back in the day. Are any of these still around?

Thanks for the help!

1: http://neverwintervault.net/

2: Yes. NWN1 is quicker & easier than NWN2

3: Never tried, some people have trouble but there is usually enough help on the forums to get them sorted.

4: Yes, you'll find links on these forum pages.

It's very easy to play locally; one player hosts a game, and everyone else you want to play with simply joins. On a side note, setting up the dedicated server client is also quite easy and pretty straight-forward.

Hall of Fame
http://neverwintervault.org/article/reference/neverwinter-nights-hall-fame

Awesome, thank you!

Have you made any modules? Are they very difficult to create?

No I haven't.
The problem with starting out today, is that most of the helpful links are broken.
They go to the old Bioware site (including the help section in the Toolset) or to the old vault.
But there are people at the bioware sites that will help you get started.

http://forum.bioware.com/forum/43-neverwinter-nights/

http://forum.bioware.com/forum/45-neverwinter-nights-ii/

WOW, thats a huge number of modules. I would like to try one of them one day.

Very helpful, thanks a ton!!!!! As a GM for pen & paper adventures, I'd love to be able to make some modules and play with friends :)

1. Yes, you've gotten the link to the current main source. Keep in mind that they can be wildly, wildly different and unique.

2, yes and yes.

3, locally is fine, only potential problem is port forwarding or DMZ.

4, yes, install NWNCX and most will be listed automatically. I have, the main two public releases are Siege of the Heavens and A Peremptory Summons.

"Unfortunately," I only got into NWN modding in the last, oh, 5-6 years and spent the first few years learning how to build/code in the first place -- so those modules were only released in the last year or two and thus they didn't get enough votes to get into the Hall of Fame before we had to migrate all the original content from the original vault. How do you know that you should believe me? Well, the mini-review on the Siege of the Heavens page is by RogueKnight...who made the Hall of Fame series Swordflight. So if he thought my stuff was good, then it probably is.

My point is not "MY STUFF IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD PLAY IT!" -- in fact, the modules I made are very different from "standard" D&Dish adventures and will highly appeal to some people while not being interesting at all to others. Rather, my point is that the Hall of Fame list is hardly exhaustive -- especially for content that's come out in the last few years. I happen to know that RogueKnight is working on the third part of Swordflight, for example, but I'm not even sure how it'll be "inducted" into the Hall of Fame list (if at all) on the new vault. So it's still worth poking your head around and asking for advice on overlooked modules.

Difficulty wise, well, it depends on what you want to do. My modules feature heavily involved boss fights that go far, far beyond the typical "Hey it's a boss with lots of HP" encounters that you usually find and require advanced and complicated scripting. In fact, I'd be surprised if more than, oh, half a dozen to a dozen builders in the NWN community could replicate what I did. But you certainly don't *need* that advanced scripting to make an engaging and interesting module -- I simply happen to be more interested in combat design than most. And wanted to see how far I could push the NWN toolset.

If you want, think of your question as asking "Is it hard to make a paper airplane?" Strictly speaking, it's extremely easy to make a simple paper airplane that's perfectly functional...but you can create something amazing with more effort.

Awesome, thanks for the links and for the post!

Did you have to spend a lot of time learning to code? I have VERY limited programming knowledge, but I'd be willing to learn (I should anyway for school haha).

Any particular guides or resources I should be looking at if I'm interested in creating modules for NWN 1 & 2?

I maybe wrong but I dont think you need to know any programming language or do coding to create modules in Neverwinter. I havent tried NWN1 but NWN2 toolset was too easy and I was able to create a mini game with some interesting adventures a few years ago. It took me a few days to get it how it works and it was like a 10 minute adventure but i was able to do it. Moreover, I heard that NWN1 toolset is even easier to work with than NWN2 toolset.

Good to know! Thanks, I'll have to check it out.

It's depends what you want to do.

MagicalMaster Already stated that made strange/custom boss battles, which not necessary win using the engine of the game (and probably most complex than turn on/off pedestal, plus people chanting specific strings in specific locations).

I did an antimagic zone more close to the D&D 3.5 with persistent storage for NWN1 and NWN2 (Though by strange reason I never figured that the script accepted structures and when I learned I searched for a strong wall to hit myself).

So basically, if you don't want to make things very custom, the standard tools are enough, I even enjoy a lot games where the DM only designed t he areas and fill everything at fly by himself (with certain tools but were imported from other projects), which put at minimum the time necessary to programming.

And yes, NWN1 toolset is more friendly, and due its limitation with the areas design you can create a lot of more areas with minor size in HD (My full PW was around 28 MB when in NWN2 a single town full in details was 32 MB). However the scripts remains very similar

I can only direct you as regards NWN (aka NWN1).

You can access user built modules for download and local play or use on a server at the site

http://neverwintervault.org/

The downloads are like D&D (tabletop) "modules" in that each is an adventure in itself, and allows a DM's interaction too. Some of these are meant for solo play, some are meant for party play. Be aware some 'solo' modules don't work well if you have more than one player involved (scripts sometimes are very picky that way).

You can host a server locally or via a 'fancy dedicated server' (like I do) If you have hosting questions ask and I'll help as best I can. It is fairly easy but not totally straight-forward, much depends on your lore with your OS and willingness to check a few details.

There are MANY persistent worlds around, info about mine can be found at

http://playnwn.com

You can find a server list (some are persistent worlds, others not) at

http://yourserverlist.com/

I strongly recommend NWN, it is the gold standard all others try to beat (and fail).