Dungeon Master
Welcome to Dungeon Master, PC Gamer’s regular RPG column. This week, junior cadet RPG correspondent Ted Litchfield is taking over for Fraser while he shanks a goblin for a studded leather jerkin, iron shortsword, and four gold pieces.
The ongoing Neverwinter Nights mod campaign, Swordflight, feels like the CRPG equivalent of fans circulating the tapes, a forbidden, perfect bootleg of the greatest hardcore set ever performed. It’s one of the most cleverly-designed, bracingly difficult RPG campaigns I’ve ever played, and it’s a hobby project one guy has been cranking away at since 2008.
Swordflight is a series of discrete playable chunks or “modules” for Neverwinter Nights, BioWare’s awkward middle child between Baldur’s Gate 2 and Knights of the Old Republic (that we still can’t help but love). NwN’s Aurora Toolset is one of those legendary mod platforms that balanced ease of use with power and flexibility, resulting in a flowering of fanmade projects.
Think the Doom or Thief mod communities: Not everything is a gem, but so many people took to Aurora and so many projects were made that the best of the best still encompasses several full games’ worth of RPG goodness. The Alazander modules, Aielund Saga, and Swordflight are among that best of the best.
Swordflight’s first module came out in 2008, and its most recent released in 2022, with at least one more chapter on the way to finish the story. It’s a zero-to-hero D&D epic like very few I’ve ever played: There are low-level adventures like The Temple of Elemental Evil and plenty of level 1-20 campaigns, but very few games or series of games that capture the feeling of coming back to the same character and dungeon master over a span of years.
Swordflight, the original Baldur’s Gate duology, and arguably Owlcat’s 100-hour campaigns like Kingmaker fit the bill. Many RPG designers rightly fear D&D’s early levels, wanting to juice you up to level 3+ as quickly as possible to get you to that midgame sweet spot and past early game one-hit kill, missing your attacks doldrums, but Swordflight creator Rogueknight333 embraced that design challenge.
He felt no need to rush players through Neverwinter Nights’ 40-level adaptation of D&D 3E rules, but instead has luxuriated at every possible stage of character development. Swordflight’s first chapter, for example, is easily a 10+ hour experience, but you need a fairly optimized character and completionist play to reach level five by the end of it.
Making guys
To date, I’ve only played the first two of five finished chapters, but multiple times each. That 60 hours or so of roleplaying has hit me with one of the worst cases of reroll-itis I’ve ever caught, tied with Owlcat’s Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Neverwinter Nights has a particularly excellent version of D&D’s class system—its 11 base and 12 prestige classes presaged Baldur’s Gate 3’s smorgasbord of 48 subclasses and Wrath of the Righteous’ triple-digit madness.
That’s already led me to plenty of hemming, hawing, buildcrafting, and rerolling in other Neverwinter Nights campaigns, but Swordflight squeezes even more juice with its gnarly difficulty. Like Wrath of the Righteous, part of the rerolling appeal is wanting to make a guy strong enough to rise up to the challenge.
Swordflight made me look at Neverwinter Nights, a game I’d played for hundreds of hours before even touching the mod campaign, in a whole new light. Rogueknight333 increased the duration of all potions and other magical buffs while making it all but impossible to rest anywhere but an inn with the door locked. Creative restriction of how often you can rest is a big part of difficulty balancing in any D&D-derived game, and most just let you take a nap to get all your spells and health back whenever you want.
Swordflight’s restriction makes it a game about planning, resource management, getting maximum value out of every tool at your disposal, and mounting little expeditions from your safe zones.There are potions I never would have given the time of day to in base NwN that become precious commodities in Swordflight—shout out to Barkskin—and you basically never want to go into a fight unbuffed.
Spellcasters have to be super-disciplined with their limited spell slots, but Swordflight makes up the difference with a generous and creative economy of consumable magic items. The aforementioned potions, but also wands, rods, and assorted geegaws. More than pure wizards or warriors, Swordflight rewards adaptability, being a fantasy boy scout with a tool for every occasion, and having a build that can effectively use as many magic items as possible.
Rogue and bard multiclasses are killer in my experience, but you also have to be able to tank or solo incredibly challenging combat encounters. Swordflight carcinization, in my experience, bends all builds toward some flavor of JRPG protagonist “jack of all trades spellsword who also hits like a truck,” but even in this niche, there’s a ton of variety. I’ve rocked:
- Fighter / Bard / Red Dragon Disciple
- Fighter / Rogue / Weapon Master
- Rogue / Paladin / Shadowdancer
And I’m feeling the urge to make yet another Swordflight guy, this time maybe a Rogue / Fighter / Shadowdancer with a greatsword to Hulk smash sneak attack helplessly knocked down opponents.
Something that’s always struck me is that these deep systems were always there in Neverwinter Nights, waiting like a sculpture in a chunk of marble, but no one ever took advantage of them. It took the unique perspective of this non-professional designer to tease it out, and that’s just cool to me.
[Paladin]: “Cool special Paladin dialogue goes here”
Another draw to constant rerolling is how much Swordflight takes your race, class, alignment, and prior choices into account at seemingly every turn. In the starting area of chapter one, people will comment on your class, there are dozens of special alignment and skill interactions, and one jerk has unique racist dialogue for every possible character creation choice—at least he’s equal opportunity, I guess.
In Neverwinter Nights, every character race is almost always suboptimal compared to human, given our extra feat at level one. Swordflight’s difficulty further encourages powergaming, but its high degree of written reactivity makes it so much more meaningful than usual to go with your heart and pick something fun. The fact that my customary half-orc is at least a little bit disadvantaged, requiring a mechanical sacrifice on my part, lends the choice even more meaning and value to me here. It’s like rooting for the White Sox: You gotta really love being an orc to stick it out in Swordflight.
Chapter two introduces special side quests by class, some better than others. Fighters get to clear some jerk’s basement of golems, while rogues get a full Thieves’ Guild questline. That last one gets to one of the weirder bits I love about Swordflight, part of the reason I often refer to it as RPG “outsider art:” Author Rogueknight333’s very specific, exacting standard of ethics and how he applies them.
Every single object stolen earns you an alignment shift toward evil. Even just unlocking an owned chest or disarming its trap: Evil. Killing wild animals unprovoked? Now that’s a point toward chaos, a distinction I’d definitely argue with. Swordflight chapters one and two both take place in Calimshan, a slave society in the Forgotten Realms, and I chafe against how Swordflight defines “law,” “good,” “evil,” and “chaos” in such a context.
But it’s so good at letting you roleplay and own your choices, I love encountering these disconnects with my far-removed dungeon master. It feels like I’m in conversation with the game and its creator, and this unfamiliar moral code makes for something truly substantial to push on and roleplay against. This is one of the only games where I’m ever comfortable being “Chaotic Evil,” for a given value of both chaos and evil.
Swordflight’s prose and dialogue can be stiff and voluminous, but it tells an interesting yarn with some clever twists and mechanical flourishes. Chief among them: You’re not actually the protagonist here. The true hero is endearingly annoying, YA novel lead girl wannabe Zarala Galhadr, while your created character sits at the intersection of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Gurney Halleck. Your own, personal development on D&D’s moral spectrum is mirrored by your ward and tracked across Swordflight’s chapters.
There’s so much more I could gush about, but I should try getting a character past chapter two first. RPG blogger Lilura1 is how I first heard about Swordflight, and she has a number of resources and guides dedicated to the series, as well as an interview with creator Rogueknight333.
Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition is compatible with Swordflight and every fanmade module I’ve tested, and can frequently be found on sale on GOG and Steam—I might buy this game yet again in the upcoming Steam Summer Sale to see how it plays on Steam Deck. Swordflight itself, meanwhile, can be downloaded for free from the Neverwinter Vault, and you can support Rogueknight333 on Patreon.
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