This game is nearly impossible for me to rate. It's kind of a mess, the base campaign is pretty bad, but the expansions and wealth of premium and player made content is staggering, and more importantly extremely varied despite all stemming from the same core system.

I've been reading D&D books since well before I was old enough to even be playing them, rulebooks, modules, and The Legend of Drizzt Books in particular all come to mind. In highschool there were others who I played with, ofc none of them knew the actual rules and not wanting to be a nerd I never corrected them and let it play it out as a silly sort of theater of the mind type thing with friends. Which, to be fair, is sort of the idea, the rules exist to facilitate storytelling.

That's also why I find D&D games fascinating, seeing how much of it is merely adapting the rules of the various editions, and how much emphasis is put on capturing the idea, mood, or setting of what TTRPGS are all about. Neverwinter Nights, I think, shines the most in both of these regards compared to other D&D games; for better and for worse. The game can be jank, some modules have super detailed extra rulesets pertaining to specific things like jousting or base building. And that's what I like about this game, it might be a jank mess, the main scenario is basically not worth playing, but a lot of it makes a more genuine attempt at realizing what D&D is and the purpose of rules and rulings in TTRPGS being to facilitate storytelling. And I think that's neat.