Hi!

I have some questions about running a Neverwinter Nights server. I have never really played the game (ran through the first hour just to see what it was like), so I am pretty new to this. I've invited about two dozen or so friends to join my server. I am going to leave the server running 24/7. I've told them to hold off on buying a copy until I know exactly how to set this up.

So, my questions:

1. I have the game set to auto-save every 15 minutes. Is this too short of an interval? Does the game pause when it saves? If so, it might be best to only save every half hour to avoid interruption.

It does pause when it saves. Everyone's screen will go to a "Saving" screen similar to the saving screen in single-player.

2. When I start the server, it asks me which module I want to load. Thing is, I'd just like to play through the entire campaign with my friends. I see Chapter1, Chapter1E, and so on. What happens when one of us completes the chapter? Do I start a new server with the next module? And how will I know when the chapter is effectively "over?"

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure that the game will just move to the next module when the chapter is done. There's a way for the game to swap modules within the code. If you're playing a saved game, then you'd just select the saved game as your module (if I remember correctly -- I think I do).

3. I entered the server and saw that there was an option to manually save my character to the server. The autosave apparently doesn't do this automatically. Why doesn't it? Will we need to save our characters manually or risk losing them if the server goes down?

When you are manually saving, you're saving not to the server vault but to your local vault. They way you're playing, you'll be loading saved games anyway. The character data should be on the save game file. There can be instances where character data is not saved correctly, however, and they'll have to use their most recently saved game from the character vault on the server (from the last time you exited the server. When you do this, the local variables are not saved, so they'll usually mess up all their quests that way. I can't remember what makes it mess up, though. Possibly a server save when everyone isn't logged on?

4. Is full PvP too difficult for mage classes who likely have a lot of AOE attacks? I'd like this to be extremely challenging but not outright frustrating. We're going to play on Very Difficult.

The only way to play is full PvP. Mage AoE attacks are way too overpowered to use without the chance of hitting party members. I strongly recommend playing full PvP if you want the full experience. You can run into issues with henchmen and NPCs, so be careful where they shoot.

5. Is there any way to password protect your character on a server? It looks like when you save your guy, it just keeps him on the server for anybody to choose when they log in.

The characters are all password protected by their gamespy account (last I played anyway -- I heard things have changed with the server authentication, but surely you can't just play anyone's character). The characters are saved in the server vault under the character's log-in's folder. For instance, I'd have my merlin character saved as NWN\ServerVault\Tallima\Merlin.bic

6. It seems like I have to "fail" a GameSpy login before I can select a direct IP game, even when I use a shortcut designed specifically to avoid this (+connect {ip address}). What gives?

That's the authentication server being down. Direct IP isn't a LAN game, it was just a way to play with unlisted servers or to directly connect to a listed server without having to load the server list. I don't think there's anything you can do about it.

I guess that's it. Hah. Thanks in advance to anyone who decides it's worth the time to reply to all this nonsense.