What is a PW (a sort of definition)?

[76561198065047447]

I want to help people understand what (most) PWs offer, in general. If anyone has any general input, please assist. I've seen a lot of people looking or "coop modules", and I think much of the time what they describe would be served by a PW, and give them the opportunity to expand.

Persistence - For the most part, PWs store your progress even while you aren't on. So you can play a few hours, log off for an amount of time, then log back on and resume. Sometimes, due to server resets, you might have take yourself back to a geographical location to fully resume, but it's not much more.

Community - There is generally no requirement for you to interact with anyone, but people are there for you. You can play solo, with a group of your own friends, or with people you meet on the server.

Builders/Mods/Updates - Most PWs are curated by their creators, and often they seek your input in expanding their worlds.

I'd like to add more, but my brain is blanking. Look forward to hearing from others.

[Selphea]

I guess the elevator pitch is an always-on, shared NWN experience with other players from around the world and interesting customizations.

They can be fun but a lot of the time i don't think they're the casual, vanilla-like NWN people are usually looking for. Co-op modules and NWC do have their place.

Many roleplay PWs go for a hardcore experience and add extra systems like for Hunger/Thirst/Fatigue and slow exp down a lot - like try hitting level 2 when things give single digit exp a kill. That's great for hardcore RPers who prefer low levels but they're not for everyone.

Many action PWs go the opposite extreme and hand out +17 gear with 10d8 damage across 5 damage types and give you weird subraces like playable Ogres or Lizards so you practically run around in a zoo. Great for loot hunters but you end up playing a different game where many builds aren't viable because loot scales so high your buffs don't work. Then gear with immunities and Improved Evasion mean you don't need Rogue, but most enemies have crit imm and true seeing so sneak attack doesn't work anyway so you focus on the few classes with features that keep scaling.

PWs also tend to tweak something here and something there and then bury the changelist in a forum so there's a lot of relearning and a little bit of politics sometimes.

I honestly haven't found a nice middle ground and the most populated servers today exist in a bit of a bubble. They can be fun but it can be a timesink and don't expect it to resemble an SoU+HotU run with friends.

[Snafulator]

Originally posted by Selphea:

I honestly haven't found a nice middle ground and the most populated servers today exist in a bit of a bubble. They can be fun but it can be a timesink and don't expect it to resemble an SoU+HotU run with friends.

I'd like to think that my server Exiles & Tribulations finds a nice middle ground between hardcore RP and chaotic action. Yes, like most servers there are a bunch of homebrew balance tweaks to spells but it's all easily found on the wiki (http://exiles-nwn.com) & in-game.

Though every server creator seems to build around their own niche style of play, and that varies heavily depending on the person.

Either way you're always welcome to drop by. There are a few of us that get on discord and play together most weekends.