so are all the game individual squeals?

[phillosopher]

I have got the whole collection think that that is what I needed to do to get into the other games. So now I am lost. Are they all stand-alone games? Can I import characters between them all? I am a totally newb here and lost on all fronts, especially just getting started.

[ChienAboyeur]

To be taken with a pinch of salt:

Are stand alone games: M&B, M&B:warband, M&B: with fire and sword. The DLC napoleonic wars is probably not a stand alone.

Imports characters from one game to another is not possible for the two firstly named games and very likely not possible for the two last lastly named games.

[MrLebanon]

think of Warband as an enhanced (graphically and a few gameplay tweaks) of the original.
Napoleonic Wars in a multiplayer only add-on for Warband that features line battles and historical armies

I have yet to play With Fire and Sword, but it is stand alone.. and from what I understand it's the time period when guns/muskets start being introduced and a lot of the combat is focused around that.

I haven't played the original warband from what I understand the single player is the same, with Warbands more fleshed out and cleaned up. None of the games are sequels

I got started with Warband Multiplayer to get a hang of the combat mechanisms, I tried out SP later on (it's brutal).

I'm now getting into some of the mods that expand the Vanilla Warband game (Floris mod) and seeing what else there is to offer... check out http://forums.taleworlds.com/ for more on the game, and a huge mod repository

[StephenT]

There are two main single-player games:

• Mount and Blade: Warband
• Mount and Blade: with Fire and Sword.

The general gameplay is similar between the two: in both you play a wandering adventurer leading a mercenary company and trying to win wealth, power and status. However the background setting is different for each game: Warband is set in a fantasy kingdom based on 14th century Europe and the Middle East; Fire and Sword is set in 17th century Eastern Europe. Muskets and pistols make ranged attacks more deadly in the second game, but they take so long to reload that you'll often have to resort to melee combat after the first exchange of fire. There are a few tweaks to gameplay as well (eg in Warband you can buy industries in towns; you can't do that in F&S, but instead you can invest money with bankers. That level of detail.)

Warband is an update of the original Mount and Blade, with the same campaign setting but a lot of new added features. The only reason I can see to play the original game is that a lot of mods for original M&B were never updated to M&B:W.

Napoleonic Wars is multiplayer skirmish mode only, with no single-player campaign.

[Samilou]

You can import and export characters between Warband and WFAS, if you change some of the names of skills and proficiencies into the correct ones, which is very easy to do since the files are text files that you can easily manually edit. I believe you can do the same between M&B and WB too.