Friday, December 15, 2006

Hero's Path Module List Updated

I was home today taking care of my daughter, who has come down with a handy pair of ear infections. She's doing much better than she was yesterday, so she wasn't napping much, which meant we spent a lot of time playing on the floor. But there were a few down periods, and during that time I was able to update the Hero's Path module list.

I've been maintaining that list for a year and a half now. Basically, it's designed to allow players to take characters that they already have and play them in other Neverwinter Nights 1 modules, thus extending their careers. As such, the list tries to identify modules for which it would be appropriate, with regards to both the level of combat difficulty and the story, to play with a pre-existing character who has already had adventures, rather than with a completely new character. I'm proud of the list. It has been very well received by both players and builders, and it seems to have also helped stimulate other sorts of player-maintained lists, such as the Themed Campaign list and the Class-Specific module list.

In fact, at the risk of being a bit (ok, very) narcissistic, I think it helped change something about how the Players-Modules forum works. When I started frequenting that forum, a lot of the discussion was actually just between builders, and often had to do more with building modules than playing them. I wouldn't say that this sort of discussion has disappeared, of course, but players seem to me to have a bit more of a voice these days in the forum. There's now a general recognition that players can contribute something positive and constructive to the community that goes beyond just giving feedback to builders on their file pages. I'm definitely not the only one who has brought about that shift in attitude, but I'd like to think my activities on that forum have helped in that regard.

Nevertheless, I think this is the last time that I'm going to update the Hero's Path List. I'm shifting my focus over to Neverwinter Nights 2 these days, and that's where I want to focus any of my organizational efforts. I am tentatively planning to start a similar list for Neverwinter Nights 2, assuming that I can get an moderator to sticky it for me. Presently, of course, there aren't any modules that would fit that criterion. But over time, perhaps 3-6 months down the road, we should have enough modules to make such a list worthwhile.

So that said, I had better go work on my review of the NWN2 official campaign for the Review Guild before QSW roasts me on a spit in her dragon cave. I finished the OC days ago, and yet I'm only in the second of 7 sections for that write-up. So, off I go!

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