I haven't played NWN1 in awhile and decided to go look for a new place I've never tried before (MP or PW was my interest) -- figuring after all this time surely there would be a few decent ones about. Ugh. Boy was I wrong. If anything servers have gotten worse since last I played. Sure they are far prettier now. There are lots of detailed, often way over detailed, areas to wander through, with wonderful ambience and environmental effects...but game play is awful. I was surprised how many pointless quests I found that are completely lacking any sign whatsoever of creative thought, resulting in them being just plain boring. Rule designs that appear to be focused mainly on preventing play rather than facilitating it are rampant. No wonder there are so many with player counts that look like 1/60, 0/25, 5/30.

Thus, I suggest a new segment oriented around pointing out the crappy servers available so the community won't waste their time like I just did. Perhaps a weekly "dud" award or something. I'm not talking about those lagged out one-week builds. I mean the ones that have decent maps, apparant or acceptable scripting systems, clear evidence that considerable time and effort were put into them, are well staffed, have a descent player base somehow suffering through them, or otherwise show some sort of promise but have fallen well short of fun...even to the point of frustration. Make an effort to identify specifically why they suck so the builders can wise up and make them better, or at least worth a look. Maybe put up some player oriented polls to give some feedback to builders on what stuff to avoid & pursue because the majority of builders don't appear to have players in mind at all.

You could then further expand the segment with follow ups where you return to see if the builders bothered to listen to their players and have made any effort to "get off the dud list".

Axe, I understand where you're coming from with that opinion. But I'd counter that I couldn't think of as good an idea with as dreadful a set of repercussions as setting up a "dud" award/list. I can't see anything good coming of it even though the constructive intentions are there. I could also see it going quickly from a bully pulpit to a political tool for bullying, period, losing all credibility while driving otherwise productive members of the community out.

Having said that, I (and I'm sure many others) share the exact same experiences you have had. While I don't necessarily agree on the solution, I agree with you about the problem.

So what are some less potentially-inflammatory approaches in which the bar could be raised? And specifically, how could the Podcast (or the podcast medium) help facilitate that?

I would love to see a NWN Podcast: Builder's Edition (or something similarly named and themed) where extremely talented and generous members of the Community, like yourself, would be able to grab the mic and express your passion and your wisdom to that much narrower (but very important) builder's community. In a format which did not feel as though it had to cater to a larger, less-specific audience.

As in, no fluff chat: Being able to talk to an audience with the assumption that they understand your terminology.

I would love to hear people like yourself, Scarface, The Krit, FunkySwerve, FFBJ (just to pull a few off the top of my head) and even less-talented/well-known but promising scripters/builders- all sit down in some sort of regular format with a very strong moderator and discuss the state of things.

Or (especially) take questions from the Community at large and respond with your opinions.

Preferably, arguing the shit out of points that you care about, have opinions about- sparring with each other over likes/dislikes of various systems, occasionally agreeing, and maybe even use those discussions to ultimately collaborate on things. A low CPU-use mass NPC controller, a basemod- whatever. It could yield all sorts of unexpected fruits.

It would be like listening to a three-beer roundtable of Leonardo Da Vinci, George Stubbs, Joan Larson & Dagmar Anderson all talking about how to capture the essence of a horse on canvas: The participants themselves might not feel as though much is being accomplished but to an audience of eager listeners a wealth of experience and perspective would unfold.

It would help educate so many out there in the Community who maybe have the drive and the energy but lack the skills or the understanding of stroytelling, or the intersection of scripting and storytelling...help them learn, be better at what they do...and help shape NWN for the better.



Two minutes on CoolText.com. Take your pick or make your own! Got a headset with mic? $10-20. If you will accept the invitation to be the first person to sign on to spend an hour or so a week just talking with people on Skype about a subject that you are incredibly knowledgeable about, speaking to an audience who will almost certainly give a great deal of weight to your (and the panel's) every word, I'll do what I can to get co-panelists, a strong moderator (makes fluttery eyes at Skunk, Dragonstar or any of the hosts with scripting experience), and an audience to listen to you.

If you don't, I'm tempted to set up the shittiest possible version of what I've described above, with petulant, angry, axe-to-grind know-it-all scripters and every single episode we're going to talk about how it is impossible to make a chest with re-spawning treasure. Until you and the very exclusive group in which your skill set places you are compelled to participate- if only to stop the idiocy.

Podcast guys/gals- interested in helping? Maybe adding a subforum for them or something? Would compliment the podcast nicely.

Axe - Just say yes!

I don't really want to do more than tie a rope around your extremely-talented asses and smash you together and selfishly reap the ambrosia-like squeezings which would result. But I will happily try to contact folks if that's needed or drum up listeners or questions from builders.

Why not?

well i NEED to learn scripting as i lack the skills to it, as for story telling... i have to much of that written down already >.>

I agree with inayity on this one. I'd say that one way of allowing people to know whether a server is worth checking out or not, would be to use the IGN Vault voting system. Yeah, the voting calcualtion they use has room for improvement, but generally corrects out with the more votes that come in. Also, read the votes that people post, some are just hit pieces, others are just sloberfests, but take the time to read the 50/50's who articulate their points clearly and succinctly.

YES YES!! This is the kind of creativity Im wanting the podcast have!! YES!!

I agree a dud list might do more harm than good, and that the voting should to a degree tell you the duds. But the idea of Scripting Round tables sounds awesome!! You can talk about what makes these duds duds without naming names, and then offer solutions.

I will record the sessions for you! Just tell me when! Our regular scheduled recording session are every other Tues 9pm CST. Next one is Sept 1st or 8th.

I hope you guys make this happen!!

Heheh after reading your post inayity I can see that my choice of the term "dud" was unwise. I was in a kinda bad mood having just wasted several hours and I guess I was just looking for a place to rant about it. I should have taken more time to compose my thoughts. It was not intended to be an endorsement of a judgment panel to lay down criticisms against hard working world builders. And I don't believe it necessarily would lead to that perception if implemented properly. Rather I was thinking of providing a venue, where player perspective would rule, for the purpose of producing constructive, intelligent, and generally agreed upon feedback specifically directed to the builders who could and would ultimately benefit themselves and therefore the community.

In order to facilitate that sort of analysis I think it is important however to point out specific game world examples. Examples are far easier to talk about than are philosophies. I am not suggesting worlds simply be presented as a laundry list of faults. These crippled worlds I am referring to are those that are for the most part very well done, creatively planned, well staffed, present attractive stories, with decent player bases somehow struggling thru, enjoy sound scripting, and overall have far more good things to point at than bad things. And any such segment would neccessarily need include the really best aspects of them along with their faults. The segment I had in mind would not be useful without that and could very well devolve into the bully pulpit you alluded to. If there is nothing good about a world, then it is not worth evaluating to begin with. Still the focus needs to be warped towards its weaknesses. If it isn't broken then it does not need nor should it be fixed, yet to address existing problems the broken aspects need to be identified specifically if you expect to be able to repair them. We have the AME and vault voting systems which highlight the best, and they are both player opinion based. What is needed is that missing link which supports those mods somewhere between the greatest and the worst that get little to no attention at all. Those are the mods with the greatest amount of lost potential as I see it. Player opinion coupled with builder response can raise them to their due position among the best ever.

I also feel there must be a follow up portion to the segment to go back and review how the building community chooses to respond to the suggestions presented and criticisms levied. The idea is not to shut down any environments, on the contrary the purpose would be to build them up with a fresh set of new and better ideas and alternatives to incorporate into them. Thus they must also get a chance to redeem and showcase how responsive they are to those who in the end are the most important people involved -- the players. And if they don't then IMHO they are truley duds that deserve the losses they might suffer because somebody stepped up to point out their weaknesses. I have been active in this community for over five years now and I am far more optimistic about the people in it than you seem to. I think the vast majority of them are capable of recognizing an idea like this will be opinion based but will still be intelligent, capable, and mature enough to take the discourse with a grain of salt. I think most of them are willing and indeed motivated to see it as a beneficial effort. Sure we have see our share of bruised egos and forum trolls from time to time, but you never get rid of those entirely. Most of us have also seen at least some of those very people rebound and respond in a perfectly respectable manner. I imagine some would berate the idea as a judgement panel but I have no doubt that most will not. In fact, the podcast is perfect in that regard since it is a moderated setting and therefore highly unlikely to deteriorate into a flame war like you often see in forums and other online free association style places.

Let me give you a better idea of the motivations that inspired me to think up this horror. The reasons why I see it as a missing link in the NWN community and why the podcast is an appropriate place to help address it. My recent foray for a new server made me realize that there is a growing disconnect between builders and players. Maybe it isn't real but that is how I am perceiving it. Over the last two years or so with all the new custom content and game updates being pumped out the variety of options available to builders has just exploded. I see most every builder as a person with a wonderful vision but too many, presented with all these options have been drawn into sometimes monumental efforts to produce greater world realism. This trend would be excellent except for the fact that their visions are more and more attuned to the realism of the world, and somewhat less considerate of the fun factor given to their potential players. To be fair it is not simply the content additions driving this, certain elements in lots of mods have been suffering this for some time now, but to me it seems to be more pronouced as of late. Probably due mostly to my recent experiences. Nor is it fair to say every builder has been caught up in it or that those striving for the extra realism are ignoring player desires either. But nevertheless, I do see many worlds being damaged by the "world at the expense of fun" concentration. It is a subtle thing. Not at all encompassing of the entire module just little things here and there that for players build up that frustration level and eventually erode the community player base. Mostly dealing with rule systems employed to support the quest for realism and a certain but understandable "my way or the highway" attitude of builders. To make matters worse, these additions have, to a small extent anyway, complicated building even more than it already was. I can point to the horse and wing/tail additions as fine examples. Increased complexity to implement or suppress and sometimes no real player oriented purpose for adding them in. Suddenly lots of modules had jousting and mermaid tailed humans running about. Wicked, but ho humm. Builders spend lots of time thinking up their systems and the more complicated they are to develop, the more proud they are with them when they achieve their plan. And righteously so, they all deserve it every last one. But it does make it more difficult and sensitive to forward criticisims of them about the details and mechanics after they have spent so much effort getting it all to work the way they wanted. Nobody likes to spend huge amounts of time and effort perfecting anything only to find it not as well received as they expected. It is demoralizing and understandable to have a level of resistance to making changes after the fact, or even before. I have felt this myself and am equally guilty. But there is good news too. Most of the issues players have are I believe fairly minor. They like the grand plan but not necessarily every detail of the mechanics they must deal with on their end. That is how I am about it.

One of the main fuels for this problem is the fact that builders plan their visions without much knowledge of what players actually do prefer and hate. They must make speculations about what players will enjoy. It simply isn't available to them to find out until it is too late and even then many players do not bother to say anything. Maybe exactly due to the flames opinions tend to ignite. They either adapt to the idiosyncracies or bail alltogether. Only the most dedicated players show up in the game world forums to voice an opinion, most go unspoken and unheeded. It is a fairly rare thing to see a builder show up, at least in the Bioware forums, during mod development and ask players what they want. Even when they do, often it is other builders who answer by stating how they handled it...useful but devoid of the player's perspective on the matter. I'd also point out that those posts typically end up running several pages, so obviously it is incredibly important to have these discussions. This is where the podcast can step in to provide a general place for general preferences of the players to be voiced, analyzed, and to formulate solutions and suggestions how things could be easily tweaked to alleviate the issues if not eliminate them completely.

Couple of quick examples about what I'm saying. First is the fugue plane model. Some like it, some don't...that isn't important. For me sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't -- it depends on my mood so I like having the choice to play a mod that utilizes it or one that doesn't. Last weekend I stumbled across two modules with very different takes on the overall fugue plan, but both had the common problem of horrible mechanics. I won't mention which servers, if you've played them you probably already know that. I'll simply describe what I experienced and let you decide how much or even if the builders were really thinking about the fun factor for their players when they did this.

The first module had it so that when you died you got sent to a fugue area. You could wait to be rezzed by party members etc or you could choose to leave with a penalty. Pretty standard faire. Unfortunately, the builder decided it was important for you to have to wait for 5 real-time minutes before the option to leave would be available. Now I was playing solo at the time so maybe that's what got to me but here's what I mean by the fun factor. The fugue area is not very exciting. There is nothing at all fun to do there. Yeah I suppose if you enjoy exploring areas then the first few times you die you have something minor to do. But after awhile of playing it becomes unbelievably tedious. So I had to wait an entire five minutes before I could get back to the game. I did absolutely nothing but stand there waiting. I went to grab a soda and take a leak and still had to wait when I returned. There were a few ghostly creatures I could watch random walking, maybe dance around with, but that was it. They didn't even have convos to check out. All the fun I was having drained slowly away. Next time I died, I just left. Here we have a simple mechanical rule added that makes no sense in terms of fun. Yes in terms of realism it is logical that one who dies should not be able to spring back up for 100 bucks, death must be a real consequence yadda yadda, but the point is not to be real, it is to have fun. And this mechanic prevents that from happening. At least they provided the option to return to spawn point or death spot, so it did have a good feature to its credit. Solution? I have no idea. I would want to discuss and brainstorm alternatives with other players before coming to any conclusion. If you really want death to be real, maybe forcing them to start a new toon or reset their toon back to zero XP square one would be a better and funner method to accomplish it. Do that and I guarantee players will really start to be cautious and respect it, if that is truely what you want to force their behavior to reflect. Maybe giving them some very difficult quest to perform while in fugue to earn their way out would work better. But one thing I am adamantly convinced of now is that forcing players to wait in a completely idle state is not it. I won't play there until this is fixed.

Ok, the second module approached it quite differently. And IMHO this is the worst fugue plane I have ever seen although at least there was no wait to endure. You arrive in fugue and there is the obligatory monolith there which gives you all the info about what fugue is all about. Something you read once then never check again. I would have preferred an animate creature of death but no biggie. This one tells you everything you need to know except where to go to get out, the most important fact you need to know to get back to the fun of actually playing the game. A real killer for first timers. Now this area is probably 15 tiles long at least and has some minor features like walls and dead ends to sort of guide you to the other end. Again there is nothing at all in the area to do except read the monolith and walk around. It was also extreeeeeemly foggy, very dark, and hard to navigate because it was simply too hard to see where you are going...again not a real biggie, just a tad annoying to have to navigate it using the minimap. Anyway, you wander around until you find two doorways across the area at the other end FIFTEEN tiles away. Both lead to the exact same place and are not more than a tile away from each other. There is no other way out and no features other than the monolith. When you go thru the doorway you end up in this enormous 30x30 area completely barren of anything at all except a crushingly dense fog layer. No walls, no pits, no placeables, just floor everywhere. And no indication what direction to go whatsoever. No lights. Nothing. You are in the lower right corner and wayyyy over in the opposite corner diagonally (remember THIRTY tiles by THIRTY tiles in size), is a portal that finally takes you back to the spawn point. I was fortunate enough to surmise that being placed in the lower corner that the exit might likely be in the opposite corner. But had I not realized that, who knows how long I would have wandered around in there...again doing nothing at all. I died several times on this server and sometimes I was encumbered so I could not run which amplified the frustration factor to legendary levels. This place was so strikingly unfun I just can't imagine what the builder was thinking at all. It took almost as long to walk the distances across two barren areas to return to play as that other module that forced me to stand there for five minutes. Maybe it's just me but I don't think the player was considered much here to any extent. This one is also so simple to fix it is laughable. All you have to do is make it only one area instead of two and shrink the size of it down some. Maybe add in some directions, definitely some lights, and a couple of other features if you want tho that would not really be necessary...after all it isn't an area designed to have fun in. This is precisely why you want your players out of there as fast a possible if you expect to make it fun for them. And just to further this ridiculous scenario there were rules on the server stating that you are not allowed to log out while in fugue. Yeah right, I bet everyone observes that one. Perhaps you can give them some task to perform before they can leave I don't know, but the current solution is crap. From a realism perspective I did indeed feel like I was dead floating along in a vast emptiness believe me I most assuredly felt dead, but fun?...not a chance in purgatory. All it boiled down to was annoying mechanics forced onto the players. Want me back? fix it.

Second example is how new players are handled. Again I'll just tell you my experience and let you decide if there was a builder-player disconnect here. Imagine you start a brand new toon and the first quest you come across is so challenging that you have to drink all three of the CLW potions you are given to start with. The fact that the quest is difficult is not important at all in analyzing how fun its design is. When you finally complete it you add everything up and find that you've gained about 200XP and 100GP worth of goods. I died a few times and was penalized additionally about 120 XP and maybe 75 GP in respawn costs. Then I went to the store and found CLW potions cost 50 GP each and healing kits +1 were around 150 GP. Death would heal you up but not give you your spells back if you were a caster. This server also had unreasonably restrictive resting rules so you had to pay extra to rest in an inn, bling bling buy a room key, and also it puts several negative effects like ability and movement penalties every time you rest. To get rid of these you had to eat something after every rest, and yes you guessed it, they jack you for some more coin. Nice selection of food items tho. AND, I almost forgot, you can't rest even in the inn until fourty real-time minutes (might have only been 20 I forget) have gone by since your last rest. Now with an economic situation like this it is very hard to succeed and advance your toon. You are running a massive gold deficit and gaining very little experience in return. If you die at all you can't even try again until after you wait an eternity. At least you can run around role-playing a little to break up the monotony, but the main fun thing you play for, advancing your toon, is nearly impossible. You cannot even afford to restock your CLW supply or get better equipment for a retry. And this is the very first quest you find!! The battles being hard is not that big of a deal to me, but after it is all over I sure felt as if all that effort I went to was nearly pointless in the overall picture. Realistic? Sure maybe. Fun? Not much for me. Solution? Well I would advise that the first quest a new player runs does not necessarily have to be easy, but it should be excessively successful to give them a fun "boost" to get them rolling and wanting more. Again, easy to fix minor mechanics that consider the player fun factor. It wasn't there so I left.

Here's a fairly interesting yet unfun one I encountered years ago. You gain enough XP to level up but before you are allowed to, you have to perform a job for your home town. I think home town determination was race or alignment based. These jobs would be things like lugging buckets of water across several maps from a river to a well or taking a turn standing guard at the main gate for 10 or 20 minutes RT. You had your choice of jobs and the idea behind it I thought at the time was quite unique and interesting -- from a builder's perspective. Then I went and played it and wow did I hate those damn jobs. The buckets of water were giant anchors that slowed you to a crawl. It took an eternity to lug the quota of 5 or 10 trips, whatever it was. back and forth. The distance to the well was way too far and I ended up spending more time doing the job than getting to the next level after I complete it and leveled, which by the way I began to dread. Oh no, pretty soon I won't be able to play anymore became my main focus. I actually wanted to achieve less and less XP as my toon gained levels. The guard post job was even worse. You had to remain in a fixed area that was not marked at all. The land contour was your only guide as to where the guard post was. The time you had to spend there was entirely too long and you had to keep moving for the time to even count. I found at first that as I ran around not really knowing where the extents of the post were that much of the time I spent literally running around in a circle was not being counted because my circle extended beyond the unmarked post borders. So I spent even more time than I needed to doing this silly unfun circle jerk. And the worst part of the whole episode was that I knew for certain the entire time I was "patrolling" that the post would not be attacked while I was there. It was completely pointless, and therefore not fun in the least. I haven't been back there since so I don't know if that was ever fixed or not. They simply lost me as a player period. And that was an idea I originally liked alot -- it is endlessly creative, but mechanically unworkable. The plan was to slow down levelling but the only thing that slowed down was the fun game play I joined to experience.

I won't bore you with other similar worlds and scenarios I ran because I think you get my point. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of player consideration out there these days. All the servers I played were really beautifully detailed and the map layouts were outstanding I had no major problems with those things. The vast arrays of very interesting and beautiful items and equipment is wonderful. None of them lagged and scripting worked just fine. Players I met there were great to hang with, overly friendly and helpful as usual. Obviously well thought out worlds but mechanically lacking here and there. A podcast segment that focuses on stuff like this from a player's perspective would be a good thing to add I think. Not to shut down or berate crappy worlds, but to enable a mindset shift to propagate the fun factor back into them. Not to make them easy or power gaming places, just to tweak a few inconveniences that players don't particularly enjoy. Not to tell builders what the right way to do things is, but to help them identify the wrong ways that damage their astonishing visions. A means to put more butthairs in gaming chairs so all that amazing new stuff doesn't go to waste just for the sake of having it in there. And the first step would be some place players could participate more in the planning effort and builders could reference to get a feel for what players really do and don't like about their plans.

Plus it would afford the podcast more opportunities to include players in their broadcasts thus broadening its perpective and appeal as well as that of the whole community by extension. I doubt there is a single member of the podcast team that wouldn't find that prospect attractive and I'd wager many listeners would feel the same about it too. It is this aspect of the podcast idea that I think is its greatest asset.

Just my assessment and where the suggestion came from, you can take it or leave it.

Sorry I just realized I completely ignored your scriptcast idea.

While a scripting round table would have its uses in regards to discussing general overall scripting strategies to employ for various scenarios or systems, I have to disagree that the podcast is a good forum to teach scripting at any reasonably detailed level. And I think that is what most of the scriptless community looking for help is really wanting. Builders who have become intermediate to advanced scripters, those who know the lingo, pretty much already know how to script. They have learned the basic fundamentals that allow them to take an idea from concept to design to implementation independently tho they may struggle somewhat at implementation when they make mistakes or are working from an unsound design or encounter those strange engine caveats that ocasionally pop up. Even the best programmers in the world run into that. Those folks may benefit marginally from a technique style discussion which could only hope to give guidelines for maybe resolving particular problems they are running into but struggling to work around, or sound practices to employ that would help them more effectively design their algorithms to be more performant and less error prone.

But the hoards of people who want to build but "don't know how to script", as they always put it, would not. Furthermore trying to provide that kind of very detailed instruction in a purely audio environment would IMO only serve to confuse them even more. What they need are visuals to go along with the instruction. You must show them specific details using diagrams and examples and demos and alternative approaches, make them work repeatedly through simple exercises designed to teach specific problem solving practices on their own if they are ever to learn what they are truely looking for to enable them to build entire worlds knowing very little about what scripting even is let alone how to design develop and strucure code to achieve particular behaviors. An audio only classroom makes it too difficult and time intensive to describe things like script structure and syntactic elements that are the fundamentals of learning how to script in such a way as they will be able to grasp and learn from it enough to become independent scripters themselves. All the what's and why's that you need to pick up and can only pick up through direct experience cannot be easily explained at all.

What those folks need are tutorials, maybe video based would make it easier because most of them seem to dislike reading the numerous volumes of tutorials and walk-throughs already present just about everywhere you go. Frankly, what most of these people want to learn is already available but they are simply not motivated enough to plow through it all IMO. It is understandable to me, what I think they really want is to learn how to script without having to learn anything. They really don't want to learn how to script at all, they simply want to build. That motivation to move forward with the building overrides their desire to learn scripting to such an extent that they will never be patient enough to spend the time necessary to really learn how to script. I also think there is an unrealistic fear that they have with the whole process of scripting and it prevents them from just giving it a try. Most of scripting is not learned through instruction, it is learned through experimentation. The problem most beginners have is that they set their sites way too high. They try to do things they can't possibly achieve instead of starting with the myriad of simple mundane exercises that bring them slowly and steadily into the scripting world but accomplish absolutely nothing.

Most of them think that you can learn how to script by having someone who knows simply tell you how its done. To put that notion into a different context, that would be like expecting someone to learn how to fly a passenger jet or a spacecraft simply by telling them how the controls work. It just doesn't work that way. You absolutely must sit in the cockpit and do it yourself to understand how it all works. You can't start by driving down the runway you first have to know how to start the engines, retract the gear, read the dials and understand what they are telling you etc etc etc before you will ever actually get airborne. If you ask a flight instructor "Explain flight characteristics to me" and expect him to describe that topic to you orally, you'll be there all day long, get overloaded with all sorts of confusing terms and vast volumes of detailed engineering information, and at the end of the day only walk away with a cursory understanding of what you asked...most of it will have simply flown over your head.

What it realistically entails is having him show you many diagrams of physical principles like airflow patterns across various wing cross sections, lift & drag coefficients and how they apply under various weather conditions. Take you to a wind tunnel and a flight simulator so you can better see, feel and experience what he is talking about. It takes weeks doing these things over and over for yourself before you could claim a real understanding of it all. If you are not willing to go to all that effort first, you won't ever learn to fly. Naturally having an instructor sitting next to you to point out what you are doing wrong and answer specific questions you come up with along the way will aid greatly in how long it will take you to pick it all up, but he will never be able to simply describe how to fly and expect you to solo right away. Scripting is exactly like that. You only learn by doing it yourself, making the inevitable mistakes, having someone explain the specific, typically minor, mistakes you make, why they are wrong etc, so that you can understand the little details that all add up to scripting knowledge.

I just don't see the podcast as an effective means to diseminate that kind of information. The podcast would be far more effective at discussing more general principles to those alreay in the air like cross-wind landing techniques or the most effective way to develop a flight plan or what to do if your fuel is running low to enable you to reach that distant airport or when is the best time to put the flaps at level 4 instead of 2 knowing that the student already understands what flaps are and how they work and what they do to aircraft flight characteristics which they would also have to know all about in order to even grasp the meaning of the answers being given.

It isn't particularly difficult to learn the stuff, in fact most of the concepts are remarkably simple. You are not stupid or incapable of learning to fly because you don't know how. Learning to work a throttle, stick and rudder is as simple as pressing a pedal with your foot or moving a lever with your hand. You simply need to learn the very important part concerned with how far to move them and in what direction under what conditions. NW Script language consists of just 15 different instructions. Learning exactly what each one does puts you most of the way toward your goal. Failing to understand everything about any one of them and you'll crash and burn. Yet there are only 15 of them to learn about. Lots of people creating working scripts for their modules don't know how all 15 of them work, but they can still get stuff done.

It is a very time consuming process of trial and error to put everything together so it all works the way you want. There is never just one right way. The same thing can nearly always be done in many many different ways. Getting the right instructions in a workable order and learning the process of planning it out ahead of time so you have a good chance of having it work as planned when you get down to typing in the actual code...none of that can be described.

My first draft of a response was lost when I decided to start hibernation on my laptop and foolishly closed the lid, which apparently kicked off a sleep from which my laptop would not awake.

Sometimes those little things can be serendipity though.

First, wanted to make it clear that I didn't have you in mind when I made the comment about the "dud" list being tricky at best and abused at worst. If you look back at my previous post it should be apparent that I didn't aim it at anyone in specific- just a potential pitfall of an otherwise constructively-minded idea. I apologize if I gave you that impression. If it was at all, it was unintentional.

The podcast would not be for laymen- not intended to teach scripting- but to address that "middle ground" you alluded to: Individuals who are already competent scripters/builders/etc., having undergone the trial by fire of inner motivation but who might suffer, without guidance from a higher level of skill, a floundering of sorts once they're exposed to the larger world of possibilities around them in the open sea.

Individuals who seek direction, informed opinion, suggestions and analysis. The difference between mainstream television news an C-Span.

Again, you'd be able to explain anything you liked in a fashion in which it was assumed that your listener either already knew what you were talking about or had the drive to do the research & learning your direction indicated.

Compulsion to add detailed examples, notes, or links of any sort could be in the show notes but would by no means be required in such a format.

You could approach topics from any standpoint: Player, builder, Scripter, CC Author, 2da/TLK editor. Having helped contribute to the Lexicon, written the best "Here's what to expect..." for burgeoning CC authors, created your own TLK Editor, spoken on at least one occasion at the NWCon on the scripting panel, answered endless scripting questions ranging from the obtuse to the cutting-edge, and more, you're more-than-qualified to choose any standpoint which you feel held the most authentic say in the matter. Not to mention the implications of well-over two dozen heavyweight submissions on the Vault.

The moderator would put the topics in front of you, all you'd have to do would be to respond as you naturally chose- without regard for translating your knowledge into something more easily-consumable by laymen and women. Or, editorially, on anything endemic in the spectrum of the Neverwinter Community.

The opinions and wisdom of yourself and those at your skill level are what's important.

I did take the time to read your previous messages carefully and unfortunately I don't have the time to re-explore and attempt to defuse each of those points except to say I will plane any surface flat or build up any surface in order for you, and people like you, to eventually run your hands over the format and scope of this and feel comfortable with the topography.

Anything.

Pragmatically, the easiest thing would just be to say "Yes, I'll almost certainly spend more than an hour replying to your further messages if I resist any longer!"

I already know you've got a headset & mic!

Yeah I have those and am always willing to sit in on podcasts if I have the time and think I could contribute something useful. Wouldn't want to commit to a regular thing, but tell me when and where to go, schedule it enough ahead so I can determine if I can show up, and I'll agree to be there if I don't have other plans or have the opportunity to make time for it.

My feeling about scripting round tables even under the "more advanced" scenerio you laid out is just that I don't see how a half hour audio only discussion would be long enough to cover the necessary ground the listeners would be looking for and need. So the benefit would be marginal at best and not of much use to most builders most of the time. Nothing they could not already get elsewhere.

Frankly that NWCon4 event I sat in on last year seemed like a kind of waste of time from a learning standpoint. It was billed differently than it turned out. It was fun, interesting to meet some of the other people in person and all, but I don't think anybody who listened to that came out of it with any more scripting knowledge or solutions to what they were looking for than when they went in. We really didn't talk much about scripting at all there. What we talked about mostly was what it was like to be a scripter, what aspects of scripting each of us liked and disliked, and a little bit about our backgrounds in programming and building NWN mods. It wasn't useless unless you were looking to learn something about scripting rather than scripters. That's all we really had time for, especially with like 6 or 7 of us there taking turns -- we just didn't get into much about concrete solutions. I don't think that is what builders are looking for and expecting.

Maybe if you gave me an example of something really useful to plenty of builders that you think would be asked and expected to have answered in a half-hour podcast I could make a stronger point about why I think it wouldn't really be that feasible. It is just too short and too restrictive an environment to pass on anything of real use to people. Sure I'll give it a go if you like but I just think the podcast's limited time would be better spent and benefit the listeners more by covering other topics like the player discussions I mentioned earlier or the world reviews they usually put out which are applicable to more people anyway.

First, thank you! Second, no such thing as time limit on the/a podcast, as long as it doesn't go Fideo-Castro-speech long. AFAIK, anyway.

Here are just a couple. These are off the top of my head, specific to scripting but also cover, later, the issues you spoke about in your original message. This is the kind of thing I'd really like to see addressed individually and then briefly discussed among the panelists/participants:

* What, in your experience, is the least intuitive, trickiest, touchiest, most unreliable function to use, and what experience have you had to make you feel that way?

* What is the most overlooked function, which has the greatest promise but may not have been fully exploited? How do you envision a better/fuller exploitation?

* What rather normal-sounding functions have you found to be the most intensive, CPU-wise and, if possible, have you discovered workarounds?

* In your experience and opinion, what types of scripts are most-frequently written poorly when it comes to CPU consumption? Do you have recommendations on how to avoid or work around that?

* How can a new PW Admin most-easily use simple scripts to enhance the storytelling, immersion, tension but not necessarily realism in their each of their areas? (FFBJ podcast interview really hit home on this one for me)

* What aspects of storytelling are neglected, typically on PW's, and what easiest applications of scripting (generally) to help remedy this.

* What is the most common "turn-off" you spot on a PW- which basically lets you know the rest of your experience is not going to be as enjoyable as you'd hoped? What decision do you perceive so many PW Admins/builders are making incorrectly that leads them to implement the "turn off"?

* With the varsitility of the Neverscript it is ironic that so much material produced conforms to a certain (oft-times hackneyed) thematic formula. What "point" are these scripters, who have taken the time to acquire the skills to produce scripts, missing? What can they do to train themselves to help keep their areas fresh and enjoyable for players?

* Recent devlopments, among them the ability to use Java and Ruby to replace NWScript or heavily augment it*, indicate that the tools for scripters keep expanding but there's arguably a certain creative stagnation among the majority of those utilizing the tools, period. What, in your opinion, is the most useful recommendation to a builder/scripter to keep in mind to remedy this? (* I believe this is accurate and related to work being done by Elven under NWNX)

* True innovation is, historically, not always popular at the time it is developed. There are examples of innovative ideas from years ago which probably are rarely considered simply because of their age and lack of votes on the Vault. Are there innovative uses of scripting or ideas that you'd like to point to as examples of what aspiring/struggling NeverScripters should consider when trying to expand their view of what can be done in the gamespace?

* In seriousness, if you could wave a wand and command a script/script system be produced which could innovatively affect gameplay- what would it be?

* In seriousness, what hypothetical scripting systems are the NWN Community, specifically PW's, in dire need of to help assist their immersion and playability that produces an effect not easily implemented, maintained or possibly understood by builders/scripters of those worlds?

Some of those may boil down to the same question but my point is that all of those could garner just a few minutes' worth of answer, at most, yield a good group discussion after being individually answered and would provide varying levels of use to scripters/storytellers or where those two groups intersect.

While there aren't, per se, an unlimited number of questions of that nature (only answers, really) there are an entire trove of similar questions related to opinion on things like how to get enough realism into NPC's without overdoing it (both in a story and CPU utilization sense), approaches to persistency within the limits of CPU utilization, player death (as you mentioned in your example), the role of custom content versus creativity with what's available as stock material from BioWare (both via placeables, creatures but also script-wise) and so on.

I would eat opinions and analysis on those matters and so many more, like I eat my Ben & Jerry's- with the littlest spoon in the house so I can get the most out of every bite. I think a LOT of people would and, again, we're not talking about laypeople- we're talking about mid-level scripters/builders who typically need the help and wisdom most.

While material like that would certainly become dated in some sense, it would act as a valuable snapshot (which could be listened to far after the fact) of 2009 (at least) of what the thinking was- at least from some of the talented members of the community at that time.