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Penultima by Stefan Gagne

Penultima... it's a kingdom where nothing of great importance ever happens. A place where the primary challenges of the day are not fighting for your life against hordes of orcs or scouring the local dungeon for shiny metal, but trying to find a good cup of coffee or debating proposed tax reform laws.

Oh, there are warriors and monsters and wizards and adventures aplenty -- but they're halfhearted echoes of the greater glories available elsewhere in the world. A perpetual lazy afternoon seems to settle over Penultima... an aura of modernized living, proper civilization, nothing out of place, nothing too alarming, nothing too exciting.

Shame it's all about to go to hell.

The Penultima campaign is a six-module adventure for Neverwinter Nights that combines action, fantasy genre parody, roleplaying and a little drama into an ongoing story. Each module features extensive scripting for interactive encounters (even in battle!), map layouts that had extensive tuning and testing, and a play experience called "better than chapter one of the official campaign" by more than a few playtesters. The campaign begins at a difficulty suitable for a lv3-6 character (or a party) working cooperatively, and progresses upward from there.


Penultima was created in 2002-2003 by Stefan Gagne[stefangagne.com], a writer and game designer. This is a creator-endorsed upload of the campaign, as maintained by me (as he's long moved on to non-NWN-related things). I plan to add any necessary bugfixes to allow use of the modules in NWN: EE, but I don't plan on adding other improvements. This is meant to be a "time capsule", rather than a remake.

If you enjoy Penultima, make sure to take a look at Arcade Spirits[arcadespirits.com], the newest work by the campaign's creator.


P0 - Penultima City: A social hub that also contains several minigames, minor plot elements based on the other modules, and a trainer that will get fresh characters up to the starting level for the next module.

P1 - Pest Control (lv. 4-6): Glod Gloddson has a problem. He's developed revolutionary new mining techniques and found a nice mine on the north side of Penultima... and shortly after he opened for business, a tribe of goblins moved in. Time to take out the trash.

P2 - Dewey's Decimal (lv. 5-10): The Penultima University of Thaumatological Science (or PUTS) is one of the finest schools in the land, provided you define 'finest' with a very wide margin of error. But it has one notable feature... a magical library which only senior students and aides are allowed to plumb the depths of, as freshman are unlikely to return. Guess who gets to play fetch-a-book?

P3 - Hazard Pay (lv. 6-15): The forest to the west of PUTS is unlike any other—for starters, it glows purple during the day and six legged werehamsters prowl its depths. Magical hazmat isn't a pretty thing—and you're about to get a look firsthand.

P4 - Clucking Hostile (lv. 7-15): Sucking up most of the central Penultiman plains is Johnson's Farms, one of the only corporate owned mass-production agricultural facilities in the forgotten realms. Daily living is routine; walk the dog, milk the cow, feed the chickens. Only now, the poultry want a little more than seed to feast upon...

P5 - Home Sweet Home (lv. 9-15): The dramatic arc of Penultima's fate comes to a close in the ruins of a dark castle... Good luck. You'll need it.

To get the full impact of the story, you'll want to play each of these modules in order. They're all suitable for small group play, but don't work with PvP, multiple parties, or persistent worlds. (You might be able to use Penultima City as a persistent social hangout with some careful handling, though.)


For spoilers and hints, see the stickied topics on the discussion tab.


This campaign has a sequel in the form of the Penultima Rerolled campaign.