@ spick: can you recall when you installed nwn if it ran a compatibility test or something like that? it should. if it didn't, i think your copy is the problem.
also, what is yor vid card? i read somewhere in the bio forums that nwn seems to run fairly smoothly on nvidia cards, but not on other cards of comparable power. i only have a geforce 2 (thought on upgrading but held out for the meantime as i think prices of nvidia cards may fall further because of nvidia's recent releases) and 256 mb of ram and i hardly encounter any problems, except for some slowdown when enemy mages rain on spells like they're throwing confetti on a parade. well, at least my monk is still standing there barely injured despite all kinds of spells being hammered at him. ahh monks, supreme mage-killers as they are... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
@handedfood: interesting discussion. i think it's better to discuss an entire rpg-system rather than char creation. for an rpg to be succesful, much more interesting, it has to have all its elements functioning well together. synergy, so to speak. the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts.
let's take a look at some promising rpg's: toee - faithful adaptation of 3.5 ed d&d, the best turn-based i've seen, but extremely buggy. lionheart-i admit i haven't played this game, but one look at the reviews and i don't think i want to. reviews said its char creation is wonderful, but everything else goes downhill from there. dungeon siege-pretty graphics, you can play the game from start to finish without seeing a single loading screen, ever. but way too linear, and char development is not totally under your control. not much in the way of skills, either. iwd2-here's another game i tried hard to love playing, but i couldn't. i didn't mind the hack n' slash action much as i liked the story, but it turned out to be more like a chore to be finished than a game to be enjoyed playing. the pathfinding is horrible, there were many fights in the ice temple that i found 2 or 3 party members missing. when i got to dragon's eye, i just gave up. keeping track of 6 characters in a very difficuly, combat-oriented game is just too much for my patience. the fight with the lost followers is very difficult, even on easy mode. the fight with the guardian dragon is even more difficult, bordering on frustrating. and there were many instances that after a loading screen, you'd end up with monsters or enemies right before your faces, w/o the time to prepare for combat. it's like you're being fed into the lions' den. i've read on the interplay forums that people were getting close to throwing their monitors out the window or banging their keyboard. sigh, i can only sympathize with them.
i'm sure others can point out the pitfalls of other rpg's which had the potential but quite didn't make it.
