Beginning Halfway

A Blog. It's something I never thought I'd have. The word itself still exists as some kind of jargon in my head. They're something people talk about in 5 minute segments on news shows on CNN or FOX. It is especially strange that they should hold this odd position of half-existing in my head, since my wife has a blog that she updates regularly and I see nearly every day. In fact, she is the one that suggested I create this blog.

In any event, here I am. My pre-made template website is a bastion for my thoughts and ideas in the tremendous ocean of the internet. ... That sounded a tad pretentious... nor did it make a whole lot of sense.

Neverwinter Nights. It is about time I mentioned it considering it is the reason I made this blog in the first place! I am an amateur module designer (I guess we all are) for this fantastic game. I got my start designing in early 2003 with Neverwinter Nights 1 and now I work with the Obsidian developed sequel. My name on this blog is the same as my BioWare forum name and my NWVault name, Inder. Feel free to look me up, you will see that I have contributed very little to the NWN community. It is something I feel a bit ashamed of, honestly. Over 4 years of practice with mod-creation and only one, average quality (at best) module released to the vault? That is a pretty poor work rate.

I think I am probably a very good example of the typical mod designer in the community. We have great ideas, they take over your mind and run wild with your imagination. You sit down at the toolset to give digital form to these ideas. You work for days and days... and then sometimes the daunting nature of your task looms ahead of you. Your eyes get tired and you start to think in C++. You take a break, months go by, a new idea appears and the cycle starts over. I probably I have 3 or 4 NWN1 modules still on my hard drive that are between 75% and 90% complete. One of my favorites, the Perils of the Black Road, was so close to completion and then NWN2 was right around the corner and I got the pre-release toolset. The poor mod was never finished (of course, I intend to create it in NWN2 one day but you know how intentions are).

With the extreme power of design we have in NWN2 my head is full of ideas all the time. This toolset is so powerful and so full of possibilities that I think I can finally create the greatest mod ideas running rampant in my head. I took the first 9 months or so with the toolset for practice, I knew I would butcher whatever I made due to inexperience with the toolset. I was right. My early NWN2 works aren't very good, but each one got better. Now I feel like I finally have the experience and skills to do justice to a module (rather, a campaign) that has existed in my head since I first ran it as a P&P D&D campaign (nearly 7 years ago). Alas, I rambled and now it is time to get ready for work. My next update will be to display my efforts in my largest endeavor ever, a campaign called "The Shadows of the Past".

-Inder