Archers can hire swordsman, and many players will be well served by the trusty halfling Tommy who earns his keep by disarming traps and opening locked treasure troves.

However, Neverwinter's henchman feature, which allows every character to hire an assistant, allows players to complement their character with a suitable warrior. As usual in RPGs, character creation dictates gameplay style, and it's entirely possible to create ineffective characters. including the ability to import face photographs. The character creation process includes plenty of options - races, genders, classes, attributes, etc. This, however, is a problem with most online games playing with friends is very important. However, random games with unknown DM's are likely to be frustrating, especially if you get a sadist DM. In this sense, Neverwinter allows far flung comrades to join up via the Internet and adventure together, again. Of course, the real fun of having a DM is generally getting together a group of friends. The only real fault of the system, as it was with the old pen-and-paper RPGs as well, is that the quality of the game depends almost entirely upon the skill of the DM. The DM mode is revolutionary, allowing cyber-dungeon masters to create episodes, dialogue, characters, and monsters, then manipulate everything in real time. These are picayune faults, however, and the good aspects of Neverwinter outshine its problems. It is not, however, the nearly perfect game that many expected - a humdrum story mars the experience. To Neverwinter's credit, it is a solid game with strong gameplay, innovative aspects, great multiplayer options, and a powerful level creation tool. Of course, with lofty expectations all too frequently come high standards, disappointment, and mediocre games. For everyone who missed the pen-and-paper role-playing games of the seventies and eighties (lots of people), Neverwinter sounded like a dream come true all the fun of the interactive D&D games, skillful DMs, and computers to handle the complex statistics. Neverwinter Nights was closely watched throughout its development because of what it promised: the ability to play old-fashioned D&D games, with powerful dungeon masters (DMs), through linked computers.

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