I could take a whack at some of those. But first thing I would point out (no offense intended) is that hardly any of them are scripting questions, they are more oriented towards world design or story creation or community trends. Also most of them are very subjective or ambiguous. And some of them are assuming I would know much more about what people are doing than I could possibly know. So most of my responses would be purely opinion, preference based and limited in scope to my tiny little view of the overall picture. My conclusions or thoughts would only apply to a very small set of actual worlds or would differ depending on context. My answers might make sense for one world but not at all for most. I'd be happy enough to spout off what my opinions are but I seriously doubt anything I say would do a thing to help builders make intelligent scripting decisions or give them some granule of wisdom that would somehow enlighten them to suddenly recognize some new path to a better module.

Examples,,,

Your first question is really asking what functions to avoid because they are either too hard to use or don't work right. Answer is easy -- none. And I could elaborate why but doubt it would learn you anything that isn't common knowledge everybody already knows and agrees with. The question I would say displays a lack of understanding what functions exactly are and which ones are available and after explaining what I mean by that the answer would be obvious and nobody with that understanding would argue that there are none. The question is silly. It's like asking what kind of gasoline is too hard to use or won't work in your Harley.

Almost every one of them ask about most-frequently, most common, which decision (presumably amongst every one ever made), what is missing from most worlds, etc. Answer is easy -- how would I know, how could anyone know. Nobody has this vast knowledge of what every module is doing and how they are doing it and what decisions everyone has made, so nobody could possibly know what is most frequent or common etc. All I could tell you is how those relate to only the modules I've built, what is most common for me personally -- nobody else just me. That's all I know. Anything else would be pure speculation and guesswork.

Lots of uses of "innovative", "intuitive", "tricky", "versatile", "fresh", "enjoyable", "immersion", etc. All those are subjective terms, different definition for every person. One person's "innovative" is another's "dumb idea". Don't know if I could answer that, could you? Also there are problems with like "intuitive" meaning one thing in one world and another entirely different thing in some other setting. What is intuitive in an action mod might be convoluted in an arena mod even to the same player.

Third one from the bottom is entirely a story creation question. You should choose systems that fit into your planned story line. If there is nothing in the story to support the system, why would you put it in? It wouldn't be used. I could not possibly presume to tell you what would be best to support a story I know nothing about. And again, it would be different for every single mod.

As I said, I'd be more than happy to throw out some observations but there isn't gonna be many nuggets of wisdom, if any, imparted to anyone from most of those. There are a couple there tho like the one about functions that use the most CPU I could answer...usually the Lexicon tells you that already however.

Understood. That's too bad, I'd hoped that at least one of those would fit your criteria, spark some interest, as a useful (to the Community) question to be asked. I apologize for the poor quality of the questions (really) but the open-ended, subjective nature was intentional. It's my belief that if a panel of folks at your skill level are asked a series of subjective questions...your subjective answers, collectively could be distilled by the listener into something like an objective truth which then can help move the Community in (whatever) direction. I don't think it's likely that you're all going to agree on everything but I'd bet there would be aspects of at least some of your answers which would jive with each other.

From the Sanhedrin to the Supreme Court the same general distillation of different but presumed experienced opinions into at least "schools of thought" or even two basic opinions on the matter, applies.

Back to the quality of the questions, themselves. If a subject matter expert, being asked to evaluate a series of questions, feels the questions are too broad, show lack of understanding of the subject, etc., they're probably right.

So with that in mind what are some questions you feel would draw the most useful information out of you? In regards to any topic in which you believe your experience would yield anything outside of the pedestrian.

Ok let me be a little clearer...less mean. First off there are a couple in there that are fine for a scripting round table, most are not but a couple of them are. Sorry if I came across as just shooting you down on every point. I'm not saying those others would not glean answers useful to builders or that asking broad questions like those is useless. I'm just saying that if you are gonna have a scripting roundtable for the purpose of educating builders about scripting problems they are experiencing and expecting to learn how to resolve, those kinds of questions won't get you there.

Call it a builders round table or a story creation round table and those are all fine. And that would be a great idea for the podcast IMO. I'm just not the guy for those because there are many many others in the community with far more experience and creativity on that end than I have, and could give answers that would be more helpful to the audience interested in that focus. Player preferences would be a valuable addition to a discussion like that, so players should sit in on them and voice their opinion as well. To that extent, being a player, I would feel comfortable contributing along those lines. The nature of building, world design, and story creation activities is a subjective one. So one would expect that mostly broad subjective questions would be postulated. The audience would know that and not expect anything but opinion oriented suggestions to come out of it. They'd be able to pick and choose those that apply best to their plans or would be useful in directing them to alter their plans to accomodate the players describing what they are looking for in a world.

Scripting on the other hand is not a subjective activity. So if the purpose is to provide a scripting education, the questions that will get you there would have to be deterministic ones focused on accomplishing specific concrete tasks or illiciting specific concrete behaviors from the engine. Questions that are more oriented toward building design usually start with "What" or "Why", those that illicit scripting knowledge are gonna be "How". What I'm saying is that answering questions of that nature is difficult to describe in a podcast setting, unless they were very simple. But the simple ones are not going to be very educational to most builders because they are simple and most builders above the total noob level can answer those themselves or already have. Answering questions about what scripting could potentially be used for when building is not useless. But it is really not scripting you are discussing, it is still world and story design. You may be focused on that portion which scripting provides the tools to implement, and being a scripter I am better equipped to address that end of world design. But it would be disingenuous to bill such a discussion as a scripting classroom.

Of course there are gonna be execptions. No doubt people could come up with some good answerable yet concrete scripting questions. Clearing up misconceptions about what scripting does and does not do for you etc is something I could elaborate on. I'm not closed to the idea completely, I question how much real use you will get out of it for most builders looking to learn more about scripting, but I could be wrong. It is just my judgment that the podcast advantage would be better leveraged in a more builder/player oriented discourse that's all. More builders would get more use and ideas about how to best proceed with their vision from listening to player opinions and ideas from other builders than from scripters like myself. Once they have their ideas formulated then I could step in and provide help on how they might go about getting them done.

I am more than willing to participate in any round table regardless of topic (well...no religion, no politics). But I get the feeling that you may be expecting more out of me than I will be able to give. You are looking for creative designs that nobody has thought of before, and that is my weakest subject. Give me an idea and I can carry it through, ask me to think one up and I come up dry every time. It is very flattering that you have such a high opinion of me, I love that part believe me, but I doubt I can live up to it like you want. So consider yourself forewarned on that score.

wow people you have an awesome idea both for a Podcast and a Vidcast, and hell i would love to help you as well as the whole team now that i think of it, a Scriptercast can only add to the community and nothing more, on my part i fell it's a great idea to do, not to mention i'm a builder, and i'm fear scripting for one reason only, it's to much to learn in one stroke! The lexicon currently is low on appeal to work with just to add.

Wow...an amazing amount of text here.

Anyway..hello again Axe.

Indeed I can understand the frustration of not finding a server. I kind of have the same problem myself. The only good ones I have kind of "played through" or came to a stale point in the PC's development.

Some of the servers I play on get rediculus hard to get beyong level 6. If you die at that level youre kind of brought back to 4..and then if you die again...maybe level 3 and from there it is a long way to get back...

Meaning that I would have to go through the same quests that I had already done several times....a lot more times again.

So basically..I ended up with a couple quite good servers...but which are kind of spent for me. Then we have the good servers, populated by bad players and/or DM's. Many RP servers have turned so much social game type instead it is almost sickening. They are playing "Fireplaces & Cookingpots" instead of "Dungeons & Dragons" in a pathetic attempt to appeal to the DM's bogus idea of what RP really is.

My "main playing server" went down for real about a year ago...and even the last year it was up it wasn't that good.

So...I haven't been playing NWN the last half year. With some new things happening in the community now...with some seemingly great new custom content released I am thinking the almost impossible about starting to build a world myself now (again). With or without custom content I don't know..but probably with (despite the impact on performance).

Hanging out supposedly "bad" servers is not the way though. There are many reasons why a server is "bad", it is really complicated. Also most times it is on the eye of the beholder.

Take one example. Tell me why the top 5 PW servers are just that, at the top. They usually have bad design, ignorant DM's and stuck up players....so why are people playing there?

I think the NWN podcast is doing quite a good job in promoting NWN. I will continue doing so myself.

I probably posted something similar to this one the Bioware forums.

Axe, if you want tip on some semi-good RP servers..check my x-fire guild page (link below). Be warned though, that I shy away from "top 5 servers" so some of my suggestions might not be overly populated.

We forgot to get in game and level up I think.

wait i thought we are working on how to get around to it??!

Heheh no no I meant for the podcast.
We forgot to do that bit at the end.

oh that can be Fixed just ask Trey