I have 6 pcs set up for NWN in my basement. The "group experience" with NWN is great and having a bunch of friends and food for a Saturday night is the best experience. That said most of the people that come over are very casual gamers that only play at my place, many don't even have computers at all or own copies of NWN. I often keep one PC set up as the DM Client so I can gather "lost sheep" back together and replace items that were discarded by accident or by some other error brought on by inexperience.
Because of all of this I try to playtest whatever module we might be playing to see how well it all works for a group of casual players. This brings me to some questions:
If a certain party member wanders off and initiates a conversation with an NPC is the game engine meant to gather the party together at that point or should a single pc be able to have a conversation whilst the other members of the party are in other areas doing other things? It has been so long since I played the OC that I don't remember how it worked.
Also, if I am playtesting a module and make requests of the builder to try to make the module more MP friendly how much work is that? I have no ability with the toolset myself and precious little with computers in general so I don't have a frame of reference.
Last question that comes to mind at the moment is what substantial differences are between a single player and a multiplayer module from a construction point of view? We played through HoTU multiplayer and couldn't see many spots where being MP was an issue (just the big battle at the Drow wall).
None of us can make the time commitment to play on a persistent world and it is more about getting together than the game itself but when the module is hitting on all cylinders (The Accursed Tower!) it is a blast more than anything else we do as a group so I want to be able to keep it going if possible.
In the main, I am just thinking out loud here and trying to come up with some new ideas.
Thanks
TG
