Hm...well, I started playing D&D (Basic Rules) in about 1980, did Basic and Expert, Moved on to AD&D First Ed., have played and run campaigns ever since, 1st Ed., 2nd Ed., and a bit of 3.0. I've played all the SSI Gold Box games, INCLUDING a year or so playing the ORIGINAL Neverwinter Nights Multiplayer on AOL, played the Eye of the Beholder series, the Ravenloft games, and virtually every other D&D based CRPG out there. Even the whatchacallit, the Dragonlance game that was a dragon riding flight simulator/combat thingy. (Also, I have played a number of non-D&D CRPGs/Fantasy games, and have pleasant memories of, for example, Ultima Underworld and even Stonekeep. Also spent 5 years playing Everquest )
In that time, I've dabbled with programming...nothing terribly significant, various versions of GWBASIC, Pascal, and Visual Basic...and have made several ambitious but eventually stalled attempts to write software for my own use to automate the DM'ing process. Last version in Visual Basic got bogged down while I was trying to devise systems for tracking up to 3 moon phases and generating weather patterns, while making it applicable to any climate and/or world...I.E., allowing the user to determine the cycles and so forth for the moons, length of days, months, years, seasons, etc., rather than using a standard one
Point here is, I've wanted to see some kind of tools to ACCURATELY automate the D&D Rules for a VERY long time. I've seen any number of halfhearted attempts, and attempts limited by the technology available. I think the tech is finally up to the task.
[Now, I PERSONALLY would love to see WOTC go back and come up with a "4.0" that would be a better balance between the very intelligent choices they've made to streamline the MECHANICS of the game, eliminating the various tables that all use different dice and different rules (Percentile thief skills, anyone?) and the interesting flavor and depth of the old 1st and 2nd ed. spell lists, magic items, and the like. Unfortunately, as much as I think WOTC has improved the game mechanics and made them much simpler and made D&D less about looking up stuff on tables and more about the game and story, I think they've really blown it on the game CONTENT.]
That being said, the current release is 3.5. So I'd like to see NWN2 implement and automate EVERY SINGLE FACET of D&D 3.5 that is even remotely feasible. I personally have no objection if they include 72 different spells and 39 skills that are absolutely useless to the OC...I'd rather they did that than leave them out. If they EXIST in the game, and you can actually cast them and generate some sort of result, then some mod builder will eventually make them useful.
I also find the debates going on here interesting. Lets me see a lot of points of view on this subject, and has made me think on any number of occasions.
Long winded, sorry
