So, just picked up NWN and was excited to play through it for the first time in years. Install the game, run config, set the resolution to my desktop settings (1920 x 1080) and start the game only to have the game start in a tiny window in the center of my screen with black bars all around it.

So, I searched this forum (and others) for fixes but nothing has worked. Specifically I have tried:

1) Right-clicking on the .exe and in the compatibility settings turn of DPI scaling (suggested in the forums here)
2) Changing my desktop resolution to 800x600 (still plays the game in a tiny black box in the center of the screen)
3) Messing around with the refresh rate settings in the .ini (one person in these forums has said they got it to work by setting their refresh to 59 rather than 60).

Not sure what else to do. For reference, I'm playing on a bootcamped Macbook running Windows 7. Any help greatly appreciated.

Have you actually started playing the game yet? I ask because the menus all stay at a lower resolution, but as soon as you load up and get in the game proper, it should fill the whole screen at the resolution you selected.

This is true, although the UI elements shrink on higher resolutions. Personally I just play on 800x600 as a result.

Yes. The enire game plays inside a black box. The text is so small it is barely legible. However, it appears to be playing at a very high resolution within the black box. I suspect that when the game starts it is forcing my screen to the native resolution (2560x1600) and running the game at the resolution I set up through nwconfig (i.e. 1920 x 1080). When the game exits, there is a noticeable shift back to 1920 x 1080 as that is the resolution my desktop is normally set at.

(And before anyone asks, I tried setting the desktop to the native resolution and running the game at the same resolution, but I still got the box effect... completely baffling).

EDIT:

So after messing around with it some more, I can confirm that the game is overriding my desktop and nwconfig settings and setting the screen resolution to 2560x1600. I discovered that regardless of what resolution size I pick in nwconfig and regardless of what size resolution my desktop is set at, the game always starts in 1920 mode with a black border since the monitor resolution has been set to 2560. Changing the game resolution to 2560x1600 gives me a full screen but makes text painfully small to read. Setting it to any resolution less than 2560 causes the game to run in a kind of windowed mode with the game centered in the middle of the screen and a black box filling up any empty space. Turning high DPI scaling back on only causes the game to run in the bottom right corner of the screen (with some parts off game completely offscreen).

I mean, I only paid like $2 for the game so I'm not crazy upset but still it would be nice to be able to play the game without completely destroying my eyesight by squinting at text constantly. Any ideas on how to fix this?

It's not the game doing that. It's how your GPU/Monitor scaling are set up.

Turn on Aspect Ratio Scaling, using the GPU. Example in the NVidia control panel:
http://www.damirscorner.com/blog/posts/img/NvidiaControlPanel.png

That's the thing: I'm using an integrated graphics card (Iris 5100 to be exact) so those options aren't available anywhere as far as I can tell. Am I just SOL?

Problem solved! If you're using a bootcamped Macbook with only an Iris integrated card and trying to play NWN you'll need to be aware of the following.

First off, the Iris windows drivers that come with Macbooks from 2014 or earlier don't have the option to override scaling. Unfortunately, bootcamp doesn't play nice with windows drivers and any attempts to install the latest Iris drivers will fail: I tried both manually and through using the Windows Driver Update utility and both times you get the message that "the computer does not meet the minimum requirements" when trying to install. A quick google search showed that I'm not the only one who has that problem installing the graphics drivers--there are workarounds but they seem to be too much of a headache to be worth it.

Thankfully, google also revealed to me the first Iris drivers to provide the option for override scaling (Ver. 15.36.21.64.4222). [Tried posting the link, but I guess I'm too new to the forums or something so it won't let me--just google search for the drivers I listed.]

These drivers will successfully install even on a bootcamped Macbook. Once installed, right click on your desktop and go to "Graphics Properties" and then click "Display." At the very bottom of the page you should have a new option under "Scaling" called "Override Application Settings." Check that box, run nwconfig to set up your display, and the game should scale correctly.

Thanks to PeterScott for pointing me in the right direction.