The Blades of Netheril - About Luke Scull @ PC Gamer
Henriquejr spotted an arcticle about Luke Scull on PC Gamer:
This fantasy author can't stop making mods for the 21-year-old D&D videogame that first disappointed him, and then 'helped shape' his life
Like many, Luke Scull didn't gel with Neverwinter Nights' official campaign. Now he's working on a 60+ hour unofficial sequel.
Luke Scull, author of The Grim Company series of fantasy novels and a developer at RPG studio Ossian, did not initially have a high opinion of the game that would change his life: he excitedly purchased what fans expected to be the successor to BioWare's seminal Baldur's Gate series, then found himself devoting his summer to Warcraft 3 instead of the game he thought he'd be "falling in love with." Today, however, he credits Neverwinter Nights as the catalyst for his writing career, and is still creating custom modules for it more than 20 years later.
The main campaign of BioWare's follow-up to Baldur's Gate has a mixed reputation even among diehard fans—it's not "the greatest example of what can be achieved" with Neverwinter Nights' toolset, Scull thinks. The campaign was simultaneously rigid and never endingā —after a strong first act, you're just chopping through a ceaseless slog of content, and none of it all that interesting or all that open-ended for role playing.
Before BioWare managed to return to form with NwN's more dynamic and inventive expansions, the game had already been saved by its modding community. Thanks to a robust, yet beginner-friendly toolset, modders like Scull began producing new, exciting adventures or "modules" (borrowing the term from tabletop) with BioWare's engine. Something radically changed for Scull when he first started playing with the Aurora Toolset. "That lit something inside of me," he said, "some kind of creative bug that I'd always had."
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Information about
The Blades of NetherilSP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: RPG
Platform: PC
Release: In development