A turn-based game just doesn't do very well with more than 10 players, and even more than five can be slow unless everyone is coordinated, or at least there's some way to limit turn length or skip player turns. Or, the players are in different combat sessions but still working together (or competing, I suppose), but that's hard to pull off.
Is there a video of some really awesome GMing in NWN or NWN2? I looked before, but I couldn't find anything that actually seemed interesting. Probably weren't too many screencasts being made in NWN's heydey, but I could be wrong.
Originally Posted by HolmstN
Just took a look at the Editor/GM mode stream (took me long enough). Absolutely LOVE the idea of modder-created templates for GM functionality. Think that's a really wise way to go that adds tons of flexibility, but also allows a GM's life to be easy (or hard).
The only consideration in this is how an END-USER will grab these mods. This might be something we, as a community, have to develop. We need a robust website/game UI that automagically downloads all necessary mods. BUT, this also shouldn't bloat a player's game, which means some templates should be shared and not re-downloaded. It will be very difficult for anyone to create a functional pre-programmed system for this. Instead, we should focus on putting together 'community packs' of useful functionality that can be easily shared as a single download. Enhancing UX. Maybe Larian could curate the most popular mods and put them into endorsed/approved packs. A great mod community will only form if we have great user experience. Part of the responsibility rests on Larian to develop great systems. But part of that responsibility also falls on us, as a community, to develop great culture.
I don't see how Nexus/Steam Workshop won't fulfill this role as a supplier of various GM functions. Unless you're wondering if, say, a GM downloads a template for a certain function, then do the players also have to download it? Ideally, the players won't also need to download the template, since everyone is basically connected to the editor anyway, and most templates will probably merely be shortcuts to activate certain scripts that use all the base code.
If the players do need to download the templates, then it would be imperative that the player auto-downloads the templates upon joining a GM's game where there are custom templates. Every time you require several players to do something outside of the game, you drastically reduce the number of people who will partake in the game. They also should do this for regular mods, so if a player downloads a mod for the main campaign and hosts a game, then when another player joins, they can choose to auto-download the mods they are using (at the very least, for steam workshop mods, but preferably for mods from other places too. Basically, the other players should be able to download the mods from the host, so it shouldn't matter where they're from).
As far as bloat, I imagine most templates will be mere kilobytes if they're basically just text files that contain the scripts and the template code. Only templates that include custom content will be big.
