Berliad's Blog

Essentials Race & Class List

2012-01-22T22:40:00.003-05:00

Very small thing: I'm rolling up (for fun) some characters from each of the Essentials classes. I created a small spreadsheet that shows the various ability bonuses you get, and the special abilities they use. I also identified which classes fit best with each race, based on nothing more than the key abilities noted in the Heroes books and the races that give you bonuses to those abilities. Here it is:

(if that doesn't work, here's a direct link to the spreadsheet)

A few quick hits:

Drow gets the most class matches, thanks to the Dex + Wis or Cha combo. Bah, I hate drow.
Half-Orcs not surprisingly make terrific slayers. But I was surprised to see them show up as elite athletic thieves.
Knight, Slayer, and Cavalier all clock in as having just one ideal race.
Least versatile race? Eladrin, which only make elite Mages based on the abilities (though teleport could certainly make an eladrin dexstriker, like a rogue or scout, pretty darn interesting).
Most accepting class? Hexblade, which needs good charisma and either good dex or con.

Module Review: Prophet, Chapter 1 - By the Will of Kings and Mortals

2012-01-03T21:53:00.000-05:00

My vote: 10 - A masterpiece, genuinely groundbreaking.
My character: lv. 8 halfling rogue/ranger from The Cave of Songs. Ended level 10.

The Prophet, Chapter 1, was released in early 2006. It did show up on my original nwn1 playlist, but for whatever reason--perhaps it was my general dislike of rogues at the time, for which I perceived the module was designed--I never played it.

Well, I finally sat down and played it over the past month or so. And I see what all the fuss is about.

This Elven City Tileset is amazing.

Without spoiling the prelude module, you find yourself in search of a long-lost king who vanished mysteriously many years ago. You essentially have two choices: try to find a bard who might know something, or try to find an ancient keep deep in the forest. I went for the first option first, which was certainly the low-point of the module; a slow and laborious delve into spider-infested mines that ultimately bears little fruit. From there, however, I went off to the keep, and the module really picked up. Ultimately, I was treated to one of the most visually stunning modules ever released for Neverwinter Nights 1. It is loaded with custom content, and that content is used expertly. The mountains are just glorious. Even more impressive, however, was the story. It begins as a tale of an ancient and perhaps insane king, but becomes far more personal as you interact (via notes, stories, and sometimes, ghosts) with the characters in this story. Eventually, both the PC and the NPC's find themselves directly involved in the tale, which leads to a variety of surprising revelations. It is masterfully done. Rarely have I played a module that sent this many shivers down my spine, but this one was loaded with those moments.

The module plays in a fairly linear fashion, but one thing that Baldecaran does very well is that he adds a variety of small vignettes that you can opt to take on as side "quests." Rarely are these assigned, per se, and some are just neat to look at. But you can often have yourself a fun little adventure and often gain a small amount of treasure along the way. Combat is pretty well balanced throughout, though it got a bit easy near the end of the module. I'll note that equipment is interesting here. Perhaps it's because I'm a rogue, but I found myself having a hard time maxing out my AC and weapon enhancement in this module due to limited selection...but on the other hand, physical damage resistance, elemental resistance, and protection against status effects (poison, disease, level drain) were all fairly easy to procure and extremely useful. I'm looking forward to the day I can find that really great shortsword. But for the time being, I'm making do with what I found. As a final note, level progression is pretty slow: I gained two levels during the entire module, and the author's estimated 25 hours sounds about right for total playtime commitment. This surprises, as I really didn't notice.

I don't vote a 10 very often. But this is a really special module. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here!

Additional Screenies

Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum on sale: $9.99

2011-12-20T21:05:00.003-05:00

Wow.

You get the original NWN2, plus Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir. You do not get Mysteries of Westgate, which is a shame. But that's another $9.99 at the Atari store.

Got my old gaming PC running again

2011-12-10T17:55:00.001-05:00

I've been playing NWN1 on my laptop, which works ok except that it invariably freezes after about 45 minutes of play. I'm not sure why. Might be heat thing. Or it might be Windows XP emulation thing.

So, I finally figured out how to get my old gaming rig (purchased to run NWN2) running in the family room. It's surprisingly accessible and non-disruptive to family life, though the fan is still loud as all hell. It's running NWN1 flawlessly, with sound via some wireless headphones I bought a while back. It's really great--I forgot how much difference a full-sized monitor makes.

Now if only I could find my nwn2 disks....but they seem to have gone AWOL. I have no idea where they might be. Would be fun to fire it up and see what people in the modding community did with it.

Scanning Tokens for use in MapTool

2011-12-03T23:42:00.001-05:00

The first adventure my group is likely to have upon arriving in Fallcrest is an encounter with the River Rats of the Lower Quays. I have this all designed in Masterplan, but I'm building it in MapTool so I can run it with my group online.

Tonight's job: Scan in my Threats to the Nentir Vale tokens. This was a pretty quick job. I scanned at 300 dpi, and then applied a blur filter in Gimp to get rid of the pixelation that seems to come with scans of printed materials like this.

Just add heroes!

The result is very nice (the blur just undoes some needless sharpening that the scanner seems to add), and very easy to copy over into TokenTool! Now that I have it ready, I can create tokens in MapTool quickly for anything in this second Monster Vault. The result, when coupled with an export from Masterplan's fabulous tile-based map editor, is an awfully darn good looking encounter (right).

I need to playtest a few possible ways to model the Market Green Grifter's "play dead" power. I could actually kill her in MapTool, but at this point I'm leaning toward just making her go unconscious for a round so that I don't break anything. That way, MapTool should properly handle area spell damage and such that might affect her... and heroes can still attack her if they can beat the insight check. We'll see what I come up with.

As a side note, I absolutely adore Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale. Monster Vault was fine, but the availability of a specific setting allows this one to be far more specific and far more interesting. The monsters are varied and each has interesting aspects to it: both stat blocks and story. The villains are terrific. And best of all, for those not playing in Nentir Vale, it's all pretty easy to plop the content down in anyone's home campaign setting. Highly recommended!

DnD with kids: use of maptool

2011-12-02T22:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't been very active of late. There are a few reasons for this. First, over Thanksgiving, I played a lot of DnD with "my group," which includes my daughter, sister-in-law, and her two children. We had a great time, but learned a few things in the process:

1. It's virtually impossible to play more than one encounter at a time with 5- and 6-year olds. And even then, if the encounter goes over 45 minutes, they're pretty much hopeless.

2. The math isn't a horrible barrier for 5- and 6-year olds. But with the focus on die rolling and math, the roleplaying immersion is easily lost, because it takes everything they have to make it work. This goes for me too--since I'm keeping track of the girls' HP in addition to the monsters, I'm involved in every move, and it's easy to forget to do things like roleplay the villain and have him taunt the players.

3. A level 5 encounter is waay too much for my party of level 1 players. If you've played Twisted Halls, you know the final encounter: three level 3 soldier skeletons, 1 hulking zombie, and 1 necromancer. The necromancer doesn't even get involved until one of the undead perish. Even so, the party was pretty overmatched, with our slayer going down in the second round, and damage dealing far outstripping the healing abilities of the party. And that's even with Smite Undead dispatching the zombie down the hallway for several rounds (pushed 6, can only move 4 squares).

I ended up having to fudge rolls like crazy to keep the party afloat. Even so, everyone was bloodied by the end, and everyone had spent ther healing spells and second wind.

4. Not playing often makes me feel frantic to play whenever we do have a chance to play. We ended up playing several times per day for three days in a row, which I think we starting to get old for everyone at the end of the day.

Solutions?

I don't have a solution for #3, aside from more slowing increasing the difficulty level than I had been doing. But I may have a tentative solution to #1 and #2: Maptool.

Maptool is a package that allows you to conduct DnD games (or most other games) online. This is why I looked at it in the first place, as half of the group lives two hours away and we only get together every few months.

Thanks to the impressive work of other Maptool users and developers, however, there are frameworks available for download that allow for varied levels of integration of 4e rules directly into the software. Some essentially are designed to just help you keep track of each PC and NPC's stats, and leave it to the DM to impose damage, conditions, etc, as appropriate. Others are more in depth and allow you to automate many aspects of DnD combat.

MapTool + Rumble + Masterplan is amazing.

The one I've been setting up is Rumble's 4e Framework, version 5. While its character management isn't as nice as some other frameworks, (it only tracks weapons and implements, doesn't calculate AC or defenses, etc), it is pretty easy to use this framework to automate most aspects of combat: attack/damage rolls, damage dealt, resistances, condition imposition and expiration, etc. In fact, the only thing it doesn't do automatically are a) forced movement (the DM still has to move the monster), b) delayed condition changes, like sleep spells causing unconsciousness on the first failed saving throw, and c) prompting a player to make a saving throw off of its turn in response to a cleric power (though you can include text reminders to prompt a DM to do each of those events). Everything else, for the most part, is done pretty easily with zero knowledge of scripting.

It does take some time to learn how the framework operates, and to get the characters and monsters into the software. But when you do, the result is something that almost resembles a video game! I think this will work very well for my group. Going back to the problems above:

1) This should speed up combat dramatically. What was once a minute long sequence of rolling, adding bonuses (kids take a while to do this), announcing the attack number, rolling damage, adding again, announcing the damage number is now three clicks: once to select your attack power, once to target, once to hit "ok" (assuming no modifiers are needed like CA, but even that's just another click away). The faster the combat, the more focused everyone will be at the "table."

2) Less math. There still will be some, and I'd like them to be aware of it. They'll see the numbers, and we'll talk about damage modifiers now and then. But at the same time, they'll have more fun if they can focus on the roleplaying, rather than just adding attack modifiers to dice rolls. It also frees me up a lot. I won't have to try to remember every status effect (even with colored hair band markers, that's hard to do) and everything else going on, which will make it easier for me to roleplay as well.

3) While this doesn't directly solve the problem of encounter difficulty catching me off guard, it will allow me to playtest challenging encounters on my own really easily. I want to do the occasional level+3 encounter, but I want it to be possible! With Rumble's framework all set up, DnD plays like a video game!

That said, I will have a hard time fudging attack/damage rolls using the software, so I'll have to have a back-up intervention scenario should I achieve a TPK...

4) We get to play outside of family gatherings. By playing online, we can be less frantic about getting our gaming in when everyone gets together. This should make family events less about DnD than this past Thanksgiving was. I know I'll like that, because it'll let me care a lot less about whether we get to play when people get together.

Anyway, I'll have more on MapTool (and Masterplan, which I'm also using and loving) in the future. But if you haven't checked it out, you should really do so. I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl with actual players....once I get my monsters and maps all set up for our adventure! :)

Going without the DDI Character Builder

2011-11-14T21:50:00.000-05:00

A little over a month ago, I spontaneously decided to subscribe to DnD Insider for a month to see what I was missing. I was generally pretty happy with what I got for my money. Dungeon magazine, in particular, as full of great ideas, and the monster editor was a fabulous resource as I started working on my first adventure.

Probably the most essential application on there, however, was the Character Builder. While I enjoy the process of character building, as a new player I'm prone to making errors (e.g. I just discovered a few nights ago that shields give you a bonus to both AC and Dex). Furthermore, the product that the character builder creates is very nice; the character sheets were far easier to use for my new/young players, and the power cards were terrific. Furthermore, I loved how easy it was to roll up a character, paruse the various feats and powers, etc. It reminded me a lot of the Neverwinter Nights character creation engine, in fact.

The problem with DDI is that it's expensive. My wife is already bothered enough by my return to overt geekery over the past few months. Spending $70/year on a subscription to DDI isn't something that is going to be an easy sell in my household.

So instead, as my subscription lapsed a week or so ago, I began looking around to see what else I could use to manage my characters. After a fair bit of trial and error, here's what I came up with.

The Character Sheet

I wanted something that would do some of the basic, repetitive calculations for me. The logical thing to do, therefore, was to build something in my old standby, Excel. After spending about 15 minutes working on it, however, and realizing how much work it would take to get it formatted prettily, I decided to look around and see what people had already done. :)

There are some very complicated spreadsheets out there that try to essentially replicate the Character Builder in terms of scope (e.g. this one). I wanted something more flexible, though, so that I could work up the characters myself and only rely on the sheet to do basic things like add my +1/2 level every time I leveled up.

I found this one by Rohin Joyce, which I just adore. It does all the basic calculations for you, but leaves a lot of room for customization. At this point, I'm using it with only small modifications to create my characters. But then, I'm pulling data from it to create a kid-friendly character sheet that I put together myself. Here's the result:

This represents my attempt to create a noob/kid friendly character sheet that, when used with power cards, has most of the stuff they will need to operate their characters. It is very slimmed down. You get defenses at the top left. You get your basic attacks and whatnot right below that. You get hit points right below that. The top-right has initiative, speed, and your passive senses. And the bottom-right has all the skills and attribute modifiers (borrowing from the Essentials character sheets, I'm nesting the skills within the attributes). Importantly, as these are kids, there's a huge portrait area that can hold whatever picture my player wants (as long as I can find it on Google image search).

Obviously, I left out a lot of stuff. I didn't even give them their attribute scores, for example--just the modifiers. But as Mike Shea has pointed out (somewhere, sorry, I don't have a link), all that really matters is the modifier anyway! Omitting attribute scores just saves newbie confusion. I'm also omitting deities (which won't play a big role in my game, at least for now), action point trackers (I use tokens), feats, etc. All of that stuff is on the other character sheet, which can be printed out and stapled beneath this one.

With the exception of the notes part, and the graphic, which will need to change for each character where it pulls its info, it's entirely automated. Fill out Rohin's character sheet and all of this populates. It's just more approachable for my players to use this in the game. If someone is interested, I'll post it. Just let me know.

What About the Power Cards?

A nice excel-based character sheet is great, but I really became infatuated with the power cards that the Character Builder generates. My players responded very well to them in our last session, so I wanted to make sure that I still have something workable. I originally planned to just make them in excel, but I ran across this thread about using a Magic the Gathering card editor, with an all-text template, as an alternative. Here is a screenshot of the result:

I absolutely adore these. I'm able to make cards that are bigger, cleaner, and easier to use than what the character builder generates. Even cooler, I can use it to generate treasure cards in advance that I can hand to players as they uncover magic items. Here's what I'm handing out over the rest of the Twisted Halls:

How cool is that?

What have you done to work around the DDI Character Builder?

Essentials Magic Item List

2011-11-13T22:10:00.001-05:00

I'm relying on the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master's Kit to distribute treasure in an appropriate way within my compaign. Thanks to R.M. Walker's Automated Treasure Finder spreadsheet, this is pretty easy--though I had to edit his spreadsheet to include a means of adjusting for party size.

The one stumbling block to this process has been finding appropriate magic items. The DM Kit tables will tell you to give an item of a specific level and rarity value (common, uncommon, etc). I'm currently running with only the Dungeon Master's Kit and Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and as a result I have a limited supply of magic items at my fingertips. This can make it hard to find, for example, a level 6 uncommon item, especially if I'm trying to get something for a particular player. And the process is made all the harder by the fact that I haven't found a good index of the magic items in these books. So, I decided to make one.

As I acquire other sources (I'd really like to get Mordenkainen's...), I will no doubt add to this spreadsheet. But for now, this is what I have. I'm posting it here in case someone else can use the info.

List of Magic Items, by level and rarity, in Dungeon Master's Kit and Heroes of the Fallen Lands

Today, we defeated the Frog Wizard

2011-11-11T17:26:00.001-05:00

After a bit of time off, we resumed playing rpgKids and defeated the Frog Wizard! Huzzah!

Damage by 3d6

2011-10-30T21:40:00.001-04:00

I'm kind of a sucker for these things. My favorite part of this one is guy drumming with a dagger, but some of the lyrics are fun. "Once again his armor class is not enough to save his ass!"

Hell, yeah!

Hat tip to critical hits link round-up from last week.

D & D Doodle Index (and Love)

2011-10-27T22:26:00.001-04:00

Edit: I discovered tonight (11/15) that the author below has removed a substantial number of his old posts. Whether that has something to do with this post, or is just a coincidence, I don't know. If I offended or otherwise freaked you out, Brandon, I do apologize. I just really enjoyed your stuff.

One of the fun things about being so late on the scene with DnD 4e is that I get to discover wonderous things that people have probably known about for a long time. One of those is the work of Brandon Kruse at DnD Doodle. His masterpiece reimagining of Fallcrest is to the right, and has been widely circulated, often without credit. I myself first found it at an Obsidian Portal website.

The thing that's so exciting about Brandon's work, aside from its obvious brilliance, is his cartoony style. Since I'm largely running my campaign for a group of little kids, I want to try to keep things a bit lighter than a lot of campaigns probably do. As such, the stock DnD art isn't always ideal. Kruse's area maps invoke excitement and fantasy, while his character sketches have a whimsy and humor that I think the kids will find very approachable. For this reason, I've largely abandoned my plan to get my players into the Forgotten Realms as soon as humanly possible. The Nentir Vale will work great, mostly because I get to use this art!

I'm using Masterplan now to write my post-Twisted Halls adventure, and one feature I really like is the ability to broadcast maps to the players via a separate monitor attached to my laptop. I'm planning to use this ability, and/or some powerpoint slides that do the same thing, to send a lot of Kruse's images to the screen. My players will be able to see the town, the buildings they will visit, and even characters via this interface. It should be a lot of fun.

As such, I've decided to do a quick index of Brandon's work here in this post. I'm doing this mostly for myself, but if someone out there finds this useful, rock on.

Maps
Along the King's Road
Cave Drawing
Dwarftown (his version of Hammerfast)
Dwarftown - Top Floor
Dwarftown Underground
Fallcrest
A Generic Town
Goblin/Bandit Camp
Harkenwold
The Lonely Tower
Nenlast
Nentir winding way out of vale
The Restwell Keep on the Chaos Scar
River Road Road to fallcrest - Similar to below scene, but more of a map
A road through the wilderness (DM + Player)
Rushbottle and Camp Ozborg (south of Vale)
Thunderspire and surrounding areas
Winterhaven DM Map

Scenes
Another road to Fallcrest
Fallcrest in Flames
On the road to Fallcrest/Moon Hills
Winter Ruins
The Rainy City
South of Nentir Vale
Wintery farmland...or blockade

Locals
Blue Moon Alehouse
The Lucky Gnome
Nentir Inn
Nentir Inn Second Floor
Nentir Inn First Floor
Raven Roost
Tower of Waiting, Nentir Inn, Blue Moon Alehouse

Named Characters
Princeling Ardjuna
Redlock
Serim Selduzar, Orest Naerumar, High Priestess Dirina Mornbrow, Par Winomer of the Blue Moon, and Lord Walden Faren Markelhay
Grundelmar, Lannar Thistleton, Lady Allande Markelhay, Sergeant Thurmina
Sergeant Gerdrand, Lord Amos Kamroth, A River Rat, Wisara Osterman of Silver Unicorn, Kelson of Lucky Gnome
Irena Swiftwater, Nimozaran the Green, Tobolar Quickfoot, Teldorthan Ironhews
Raven Roost Roster
Gragnok, dragonborne paladin

Random Characters
Random People
Vikings
Owlbears and Orcs
Owlbears and other misc
Mostly guns, but a few fantasy, including goblin king
Wizards, lizardmen, wolves
Wizards and barbarians
Adventurers and a Kobold
A noble, robber, knight
Kids, or hobbits, plus dark rider
Goblin Golfers
Half-Orc
Randoms, w/ briest, witch, devils
Skeletons with Turbins
Gnoll Archer
Mehrat Sorcer and other creatures
Dragonborne
Merchant on road

Custom Solo Creature: The Giant Crocodile

2011-10-24T22:46:00.001-04:00

I'm putting together a level 2 adventure for when my band of four adventurers finish up the Twisted Halls. I'm largely going to stick to the stock materials in the Monster Vault (I think), but I wanted a non-dragon solo monster for this adventure. So, I put together my first custom solo creature.

Set up: the adventurers are entering an actively used mine. As a minor (miner? haha) quest, the mine foreman asks them to try to figure out what happened to one of his miners. The adventurers walk through the mines and come upon a "break room." The room is a part of a cave that ends in a pristine underground river with good drinking water. The room includes bed rolls, a campfire, stools, a make-shift picnic table, etc. Miners often use this room to eat, sleep, etc.

Adventurers will notice that there is an abandoned pick-axe near the shore. As they approach the shore, a gigantic crocodile leaps from the water. If you've seen Crocodile Dundee, you might remember a similar scene involving a water bottle. If the crocodile makes a stealth check against the characters' passive perception, it gets a surprise attack round to open combat. Here's the monster:

As you can see, it's the crocodile from the DM kit, lowered to level 2, solo-ified, and then granted some special features from the Id Fiend (lv 1 solo from Dark Sun) and a fledgeling dragon. I also increased damage to be comparable to that of a dragon. I think it'll be a fun monster to face, though I may need to playtest it before I throw it at them in case it's too powerful.

When they defeat the monster, adventurers may cut open his gut to find a treasure parcel, which includes a locket bearing the lost miner's name. Returning the locket completes the quest.

First Impressions: rpgKids

2011-10-20T22:00:00.003-04:00

As I've been getting into DnD the last few months, my older daughter has been showing some interest as well. As I've discussed before, she is playing a knight in our family game with my niece and nephew, but she needs a lot of help to make it work.

Because we may go months in between sessions (rest of family lives a few hours away), I've been toying with playing a solo game with my daughter on the side. It was with that thought in mind that I happened again upon NewbieDM's rpgKids, a simplified game inspired by 4e dnd that is appropriate for a little kid.

I ponied up $5 for the original package plus his just released expansion pack. The rules are pretty simple, but there's decent depth to them. There are four classes (equivalent to ranger, fighter, wizard, and cleric), each with their own style of attacks and a unique set of skills. But regardless of your class, all combat ultimately comes down to competing dice rolls: the hero rolls a d12 against the monster's d12, and if the hero gets a higher roll, he hits the monster. There are a few roll modifiers, and you can complicate it as much or as little as you wish.

For example, I opted to add opportunity attacks and shifting to the game. This was easy to do, makes the game a bit more tactical, and will be good training for her when we go back to the bigger kid table with true dnd. I also opted to give the fighter-type class more "hitpoints," which I think are appropriate to help balance him against the other powerful classes. Coupled with opportunity attacks, this makes the fighter class an acceptable defender.

It took my 5-year old about 1 full round to pick up the core combat mechanics. By the end if the second round, she was pretty much independently playing her turns, which is great. That's not really possible in dnd right now. And she really enjoyed herself. She didn't want to stop when it was bedtime. She was into the story, loved defeating ghosts in our first encounter, and really enjoyed the artwork that comes with the manual. She even got creative using her skills--as a ranger-type, she had the ability to track a foe into the woods, and she did a good job of coming up with that use of the ability herself.

I had a blast too. Hopefully this will be a regular activity in our house! I highly recommend dropping $5 for rpgKids if you're looking for a fun, creative activity to do with your little kids.

Dexter's Laboratory: Monsters and Mazes!

2011-10-18T21:25:00.000-04:00

Via @TheAngryDM comes this brilliance from the archives of Dexter's Laboratory:

Dexter's Laboratory - D & DD

Vezi mai multe video din animatie

App Review: RPG Roller v.2.1 by Moondog Software

2011-10-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

At its most simple: tap the button to roll
whatever combination of dice you desire.

When I bought my first round of DnD materials, I bought three sets of dice. At the time, I expected that I'd be playing along with two other people, so this would cover us. Since that time, our adventuring party has grown to a total of five people (myself included), which means we're a bit short on dice. With that in mind, and in hopes of saving a little bit of time, I looked on iTunes for a dice rolling application. This is the one I settled on: RPG Roller by Moondog Software.

This is an application designed for efficient play at a game table. It does not try to recreate "the experience of rolling dice." Instead, it is a customizable random number generator. The most straightforward way to use the application is to use the Quick Buttons tab (right), which allows you to roll any combination of dice you could imagine (you sweep your finger to access bigger dice--d10's, d12's, d20's, and d100's). Simply tap the button you want and your roll appears as a huge number in the middle of the screen. If you blink/forget, it also shows the most recent roll in the upper right-hand corner. You can also access your roll history via the tab at the bottom.

Players can add customizable
buttons for each attack and damage
roll.

Perhaps more exciting is the Hot Buttons tab, which allows you to customize buttons to your specific needs. For my DMing session this weekend, I just made a page with the dice rolls I'd need for the adventure: 1d20, 1d4, 1d6, 2d6, 3d6, 1d8, 2d8, 3d8, etc. This way, I didn't have to sweep back and forth between the "big dice" and "small dice" pages. It also let me add a bit more space in between clusters of buttons, which helps me avoid pushing the wrong button.

But if you desired, you could do what is shown to the right and create buttons for each attack and damage roll. You can edit the formula to include any modifiers you desire. For example, a Fledgling White Dragon's bite does 1d12+6 damage. This can be programmed into a button. When you push it, it will give you a number between 7 and 18. It's neat.

For DMing, I prefer to just add in the modifiers myself, as the setup time to customize buttons for every single monster is a bit too much for my taste. But a player might find it worthwhile to program all of his/her rolls into the device, since there are fewer combinations. This could be especially helpful for younger players who are a bit slower with the math. You can use color codes to help you find buttons on the screen too, which is neat.

There are other nice little features. For example, you can go into the More tab and select "chart" and see a random distribution histogram for whatever roll you most recently submitted, along with summary statistics. Beyond tickling my stat-nerd fancy, I can see this being handy when explaining the difference between a 1d12 and a 2d6 weapon. There's also an option to prevent the iPhone screen from shutting down when the app is running, which is very nice when DMing so there's never a delay when I need to roll. You also can customize the sounds. If you like, the app can make a noise that sounds like dice rolling whenever you roll. I prefer a simple "click" sound to play along with the button press, and it does this as well.

I have two minor complaints. First, the buttons are a little small. Since I'm usually standing when DMing, I'd prefer to have the option to have buttons twice the height shown here so that I'd have a bigger target. That said, I've yet to actually hit the wrong button as far as I know, so it's not a big deal.

Second, the input syntax for multiple dice rolls threw me for a small loop. I tried to input a dragon breath damage role of "2d8+4." This should give a range of results between 6 and 20 (2d8 give you 2 to 16, then you add four). The software, however, will give you results between 10 and 24. It's adding four to both dice. I had to contact the author to figure it out; to get it to work properly, you have to input "2d8 + 4" (note the spaces; this apparently is designed to help minimize the use of parentheses on complicated rolls, though I'm guessing it causes a fair bit of confusion by end users). Once you do it that way, it works great.

All in all, though, this is a terrific little app. It's faster and quicker than rolling actual dice, and it frees up my physical dice for my players to use. And it's free! While there is unquestionably an aesthetic value in rolling the actual dice on the table, there are situations (like mine) in which you need an alternative. If you're in one of those situations and have an iPhone, I highly recommend RPG Roller.

Playing D&D with little kids

2011-10-16T23:29:00.002-04:00

Image via WikipediaOver this weekend, my group had our second D&D session...and probably the first one that really began to resemble anything close to real D&D (here's our first). We're starting off with the Twisted Halls adventure that comes with the Red Box set. We finished off an opening battle that the heroes began last time, did a skill challenge involving a conversation with a dragon, and ended with a rout of a couple of dire rats and some goblins.

Our group consists of my sister-in-law (Kathra), her son (8; Mindartis), her daughter (6; Keiio), and my daughter (5; Aiyot). We're all basically beginners, but my sister-in-law has some limited rpg experience. Her son's totally into it, and is largely the reason that we're playing (aside from my new-found D&D craze). But I've been surprised at how interested the girls have been, and how able they are to participate. I'm only a few sessions in as of yet, but here are some things that have worked (or not worked work) with younger kids.

The Story is the Draw

This is probably true of any type of DMing, but the story is a big draw with the kids. It doesn't take much with the kids, though. My DMing skills are pretty lousy right now, but I was able to revamp the opening to Twisted Halls so that they could all play as a party right away. A few memorable characters, and a simple "go fetch" quest later, and they were on board.

Playing with kids obviously is going to impact what kind of story I can tell. There was a fantastic monster/story piece by the Id DM at This is My Game, for example, involving a tragic female villain who was driven to evil when a priest executed her lover (also a girl). Beyond the lesbian issue (which I honestly think would be a non-issue at our gaming table), the description of someone's love being taken from them and killed is far too much for the kind of game I can run with these kids. I'm going to instead try to focus on adventures that are pretty light-hearted. I mentioned a while back that Snickersnack! could be a fantastic little module, and I'm currently trying to put together something inspired by it in Masterplan.

Keep it simple: little kids should play fighters

Mindartis is playing a mage, and is doing ok...though he's been far too reliant on magic missile thus far because it always hits. He did lead the last fight off using his encounter spell (Charm of Misplaced Wrath), though, and dispatched a trio of foes with a single freezing burst later in the fight. I think he's going to be ok.

The girls, however, I have playing a pair of fighters. Aiyot is playing a Dwarven knight, while Keiio is playing a Dwarven slayer. There are several advantages to this. First, the idea of being the two strongest and toughest members of the party appealed to the girls, simply due to their age. The idea that Keiio has to protect her mom and her big brother seems to thrill her. Second, as fighters, they can primarily focus on combat and can leave roleplaying to the older folks (for now).

And third, they're super simple to play. As a level 1 slayer, Keiio has two choices with each attack: do extra damage when you attack, or move up to three spaces after the attack. Because Mobile Blade still incurs opportunity attacks (as I read the power), it's almost always going to be better to just get the extra damage. Similarly, for a level 1 knight that my daughter is playing, she decides between attacking two enemies with one attack (cleave) and slowing one enemy (defend the line). With her defender aura/battle guardian combo, most of the time cleave will be the attack of choice whenever there's a pair of foes near her.

Beyond those choices, the only other things to keep in mind for them is their power attack encounter power, plus the use of action points. I'm just going to prompt them about that for now, at least until they start trying to use them on their own. Furthermore, I'm keeping track of their hit points and such behind the screen so they don't have to wrestle with that math, and I keep the character builder stats cards behind my screen so I can keep track of their key attributes. The girls just move their characters, pick who to attack, and roll their dice. It worked pretty well.

Keep it simple: skill challenges are hard for the kiddos to grasp

We ran our first real skill challenge today in the conversation with the fledgling White Dragon of the Twisted Halls. It didn't go very well. First, I think conversations make for pretty lousy skill challenges, especially when it's complex enough that eight successes are required. That's a ton. Halfway through, I was pretty much out of new information to tell them and was having a hard time coming up with excuses to keep putting off letting them win. I ultimately caved early (though they're getting 1/2 XP because of this).

Second, skill challenges are very abstract things. The idea of a "religion check" is hard enough to grasp. Having to come up with some reason that you're doing a religion check in order to convince a dragon not to eat you is very challenging for an 8-year old, much less a 5-6 year old. As a result, I had to do a lot of prompting, and it felt as though I basically just led them through the encounter (this is probably also part of the reason I ran out of useful directions to go in the conversation...but again, 8 required successes!? That's crazy!).

Therefore, I think, in the future, I'm just going to focus on using skills outside of formal skill challenges. I'll try to include opportunities for all sorts of checks as they explore their environs, but I'm probably going to avoid true skill challenges for the time being. ... unless a really good idea comes to me, of course.

Reign in the violence.

D&D's a violent game. That's part of the fun. But when you're playing with kids, I think you have to be careful about how much violence you allow into the game. I'm following two main guidelines.

1) No "people" enemies. The closest I'm going to get are foes that used to be human/dwarven/elven, but have undergone an irreversible corruption of some sort. For example, Maraleth, the chief baddie of the Twisted Halls, is supposed to be a human. Because he's a necromancer, I'm going to claim that he's been distorted by necrotic magic such that half of his body is already in skeletal form.

In most cases, though, I'll just reskin. A fight against four town guards in an earlier encounter will be instead conducted against four hobgoblins. Same stats, different appearance. If we do Reavers of Harkenwold later on (which comes with the DM Kit), I'll probably reskin the Iron Circle to be orcs rather than humans.

2) Death descriptions are muted. I'm going primarily for mild cartoon violence, probably not even to Bugs Bunny levels. Natural monsters fall on their faces, sometimes after spinning in a circle with little birds above them, and then just never move again. Foes from other planes, like an Imp, will probably just vanish with a pop when they die rather than falling to some gruesome fate. If I could get away from the term "bloodied" I would, but it's too entrenched in the vocabulary of D&D and I couldn't shake it. I do think I can get away with gratuitous violence against undead and constructs, though, so there we'll see arms, legs, and heads go flying in those cases.

Avoid player character death

This might be controversial, because D&D people love their character death. But I can tell you right now that my five-year old will not be able to handle it if her character dies at some point a month or two from now. She's already very proud of her, and will probably have a breakdown if something terrible ever happens to her. That would be the opposite of fun, and we're playing to have fun.

So, here are the house rules on death:
1) Players who drop to 0 hit points are too hurt to rise again, but are not actually "dying."
2) They make saves vs death per the rules to avoid falling unconscious. Skills like first aid work to prevent people from falling unconscious rather than dying.
3) If characters take negative bloodied damage, they fall unconscious (instead of dying).
4) Players who fall unconscious (failed 3 death saves, or negative bloodied damage) do wake up at the end of the encounter, but they do so at 1 hp and with zero available healing surges and thus must go for an extended rest.

Therefore, falling unconscious is something to avoid as much as possible, but it's not permanent.

In the event of a Total Party Kill, one of two things will happen. If the monsters are not killing for food, and are not particularly intelligent (e.g. some goblins or some kobolds), they will probably just assume that the adventurers are dead and dump them outside of their lair with some garbage. They'll then wake up and sneak away with their tales between their legs.

If that's not a believable scenario--say they're all devoured by a Bulette or something--I'm going to have to go with a god intervention/resurrection scenario. Since I don't have something planned for that right now, I'm probably going to have to make it a godfather thing delivered by an angel: "My [unnamed] lord is doing this thing for you now, but will require your services in the future. What say you?" If nothing else, it'll make for a good plot hook later on.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on playing DnD with little kids. Anyone else out their tried it? Suggestions?

The Last Will and Testament of James Darkmagic I

2011-10-08T23:55:00.003-04:00

I spent my evening watching the Penny Arcade guys play D&D 4e alongside Wil Wheaton (yes, that one) and the guy behind the PvP comic tonight. It's about 65% jokes and screwing around--and it's very funny--but interspersed in all that, Chris Perkins told a fun little tale full of memorable characters. I'll never get those hours back, but it was fun to watch and it scratched my D&D itch for the evening. Perkins is an extremely good DM. I'd like to watch him run a more traditional game sometime.

I get to DM my little family/kids game next weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. The party has changed a bit, and should allow for a fun adventure through the Twisted Halls... More on that later....

Savant of Aielund Saga on NWN Podcast

2011-10-04T22:09:00.004-04:00

This afternoon on my drive home I got a chance to listen to Savant on the Neverwinter Nights Podcast talking about his modules as well as his book. It was sort of a shame that the interviewers weren't really aware of his work, as Savant is one of the most accomplished module builders for NWN1, right up there with Adam Miller, Kevin Chan, and Stefan Gagne, and Alazander (to name a few). That said, there is no one doing more for the NWN community right now than the podcast guys, so it's hard to get too upset at that. :)

In all, I enjoyed the interview tremendously. Savant seems like a very nice guy, and I'm thrilled for him that he has a book out now. I went ahead and purchased it via kindle (using the iphone app...small screen, but I'll eventually upgrade to a ipad...I think), and will give it a read as time permits. If nothing else, it's a very modest donation for the time and joy that Savant has given me as I've played through his modules. :)

Speaking of books, I checked and saw that Alazander's book is still in progress (with an update as of Sept 21st). Any other book authors out there from the NWN community that I'm forgetting?

Module Review: The Aielund Saga I - Nature Abhors a Vacuum

2011-09-27T22:01:00.000-04:00

I'll never get tired of that castle.

It's been a while since I've posted, but the reason is that I've been playing Aielund 1. It's a pretty long module compared to the others I've been playing, and is plenty challenging. And my play time has been reduced to a few nights per week these past weeks because of the demands of my teaching load.

In any case, I finally finished it tonight. It was a thrill. Here are my comments.

My vote: 9.5 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone
My character: lv 1 dwarf fighter, reached level 8 by the end of the module.
I voted on this module, under a different name (Brandiles), back in April 2005. I just finished playing through a second time, which allowed me to experience all of the new updates to the module. These include the fantastic tilesets that debuted with Darkness over Daggerford, as well as a bunch of new touches and features. It's been long enough that I remembered very little of the module, so I felt like I was able to experience it all again for the first time.
Wasn't expecting to find you guys down here...

The strengths of this module are numerous. Combat is engaging, challenging, but feasible--especially if you pay attention to your usable items. The story is well delivered, though is a bit railroaded at the beginning before opening up considerably. The ending is more or less on rails too, but the story compels this and it seems natural. The characters, and especially the henchmen, are real delights, with well-defined personalities that add flavor throughout the module. And the module's final chapter really cranks up the intensity, and ends in a dramatic final encounter against a principle enemy that was staged well and was gratifying.
In the end, any critiques I can offer are pretty minor. I wish I somehow had more opportunity to learn about the main villain in this module, because named foes are pretty rare in this module and it seemed as though he was interesting (though I vaguely remember him coming up again later in the series). I also wish there was a bit more choice in the early goings. In particular, it seemed like there should have been an option to circle around the town once you gain access to the exterior. I understand the design reasons for it, but I don't think this was well articulated.
Overall, it's just an excellent module, and is a tremendous kickoff for the series. I'm looking forward to rediscovering the next one!

Some other screenies after the jump:

Horses! Not that I got to ride them...

Swarms of foes

Ogres are brutal.

Landshark!

I heart this tileset

That's what a church should be.

Playing: Aielund Saga

2011-09-10T22:20:00.000-04:00

I opted to start playing through the Aielund Saga again. The plan, I think, will be to walk through Saleron's Gambit, The Prophet, and Aielund more or less simultaneously, switching off at the end of each chapter of each series.

I never finished Aielund, though I played through at least the first several chapters and enjoyed it. Going back, I've been surprised to see it's been given a major facelift. Many of the areas have been reworked to include placeables from Darkness over Daggerford, and it fits beautifully.

Furthermore, I'm really enjoying how well it plays. My first two sessions were pretty linear, but as I ended tonight the sidequests were piling on fast! I'm not really sure what I'll do next. It's lots of fun, as many involve new areas to explore.

I'm also playing a fighter. I often look down on fighters, but there's no denying that it's fun to play the badass tank now and then. I love that he gets so many feats--makes me feel free to explore several weapon types (bastard swords!), feats I rarely take, etc. He's pretty smart, but unlike many of my characters, he (a dwarf) has a penalty to his charisma, so he misses many of his persuade checks. Somehow, that makes it all the more fun.

Anyway, more later. Time for play has been more rare since the semester started, so I cherish these rare chances..

Review: Heart of the South I - Kaer Mulden

2011-09-04T23:14:00.001-04:00

What is her deal?

My Vote: 8 (Fair, solid yet unremarkable...but with a lot of potential)
My character: lv. 1 fighter, did not reach level 2 by end.

I'm a sucker for anything Planescape. Or even planescapeish. This module, while not set in the planes or the City of Doors, and while never referencing the Lady of Pain, does a great job in the early goings of evoking the feel of Planescape: Torment. Flaws and all, P:T is still among the better games I've ever played, and from a story and atmosphere standpoint is second to none. You begin this module with absolutely nothing, and all the equipment and supplies you find throughout the adventure are below the quality of what you typically start with as a NWN1 character. There are quirky characters who seem to want nothing more than to manipulate you for their own sick larks, there is poverty, and there is a feeling of desperation in this module that is difficult to experience.

Unfortunately, beyond the atmosphere, the execution is poor. The story is very open ended, which is fine. But it does lead to one feeling rather lost at times, and while exploring randomly I happened upon a key event in the module that lead to what would be the next chapter. Combat is extremely difficult, and pretty frequent, so I have no idea why it's rated as combat light in the description. My fighter was hopelessly outclassed, and I ended up using a spoiler to figure out how to get a henchman to proceed in the module. Even then, I ended up dying frequently. In desperation, I started respawning...and discovered that there is no penalty for it. So, I ended up respawning every other encounter until I finally finished the thing. It was ridiculous. I think a dex-oriented fighter type might do ok here (?), but otherwise I'd recommend starting around level 3 or so.

It felt like the author had a very clear vision for the world he wanted to create. But when it came to the actual module, it just didn't come together. The story is mostly non-existent, combat is way over the top, and you never have the slightest clue as to what is going on. I enjoyed some aspects of this module, but I can't give it a solid recommendation.

First pen & paper session tonight

2011-09-03T23:03:00.001-04:00

I tried my hand at DMing tonight. I've spent the last week+ prepping for this, but somehow when the time came I felt pretty unprepared. I had my tokens all separated in baggies per encounter, pre-rolled monster initiative, notecards to hang on the screen for the turn order, etc. But when it was time to play, I couldnt find anything, I couldn't remember how certain powers worked, found myself rushing through monster turns, etc.

One thing I'm finding is that it's hard to run a PC--even one that's effectively a henchman--and DM at the same time. I wanted to have a third party member, and I like the character...and they badly need the cleric. But it's hard to use him effectively while simultaneously focusing on the monsters. With more practice I might do better, but if he dies it will be tempting to not replace him.

That all said, I had a lot of fun tonight. My nephew really enjoyed it, so hopefully we can continue this for quite a while during our visits.

In other news, I'm completely stumped on what to do next in Forbidden City. I left the author a note, but I'm about ready to hang it up and move on. I'm already probably 10 hours deep into this mod, and I feel like I've pretty much done the interesting stuff. I would like to get back to The Prophet series, but I'd also like to just play as a killing machine fighter for a mod or so. We'll see if anything strikes my fancy on the vault tomorrow.

Getting to know pen & paper

2011-08-27T13:02:00.002-04:00

My 4e starter kit arrived Thursday, and I've spent the last two nights reading through the solo adventure and the mechanics of the DM guide. It's been fun. I do like how you build a character through the narrative, and how it walks you through your character sheet. I just made a dwarven fighter, and he seems pretty effective--though I'd gladly exchange his greatsword for an sword/shield combo. This is not an option with the starter set.

I was surprised how many hp and such a first level character has (29 for my dwarf). I had read that level 1 is similar to level 5 of older dnd, and that seems about right. The monsters are pretty effective too, though. A goblin minion has a 15 AC, a +6 hit modifier, and does pretty significant damage.

After creating my fighter, I'm itching to work though Heroes and figure out how to roll up a character from scratch so I have more freedom and choice. Maybe later this weekend. I will probably make a cleric, rogue, and wizard using the starter set just to learn the rules of those classes, as they are nicely spelled out in the solo adventure.

The adventure that comes with the starter set seems fun. I will probably need to modify it, though. Counting my henchman, our crew will include three PC's--all novice players--and I'm worried that an adventure written for four PC's will be too hard. Fortunately, it looks like I will usually just need to pull out one npc per encounter to balance it for 3. Should be ok.

Mechanics of the encounters are fun. I see the reason for the power cards, because powers can become hard to track for a beginner like me. It looks like the standard (non-essentials) character sheets are designed to work better without cards, but I can see printing them for my players even after they have moved past the starter sets. Probably depends on how much time I have. I may be making monster tokens in that free time...

Anyway, I'm having fun. The dnd stuff has distracted me from Forbidden City, which is my current NWN mod that I'm playing. It's fun, but almost too open ended. At this point I'm just trying to find one last (I hope) boss to finish off the module, SP I'm scouring the city. I'm pretty ready to be done, so I hope I find it soon...

Learning to DM via Pen and Paper blogs

2011-08-24T23:09:00.000-04:00

Image by Chorazin via FlickrAs I mentioned a few days ago, I'm thinking of starting a small campaign with my nephew and maybe a few other family members. As I've waited for my 4/e stuff to arrive (darn you super saver shipping!), I've taken to reading a few pen and paper blogs. Here are a few of my early favorites:

NewbieDM.com
This blog chronicles a DM's early attempts (starting about three years ago) to start playing a DM. This post includes a host of very helpful advice and information. I'm particularly excited about his made-at-home tokens and status markers.

Roving Band of Misfits
This seems like a fun, general D&D 4/e blog. They have a very good podcast as well that I'm now subscribing to. I much prefer it over some of the other offerings I've tried. They do some fun crafts, like this cheap beholder miniature. I'm also really diggin' their Two Page Mini Delves series (I'm linking to the second in the series, which is fairly new). Since my "campaign" will invariably need to involve the use of very small dungeons and such, these are perfect...and have a nice flourish of creativity that keeps them from being a simple hackfest.

Sly Flourish
This is a site that is specifically dedicated to providing tips for DM's. He is hawking his books via the site, but his content is very good and very helpful. I was very happy to find his "Start Here" link, which lists many of his more helpful posts. His 4/e buyer's guide very helpfully turned out to recommend exactly what I've already purchased, so that was reassuring...and it helped me realize that I will want to get that monster vault at some point, along with some tilesets. I may buy at least one of the books on his site, as the freely available stuff seems very good.

Dungeons Unlimited
This is a newer site, but it's neat. Basically, the guy is posting some of his many dungeons that he has created. They're absolutely lovely, and should be printable for later use should I decide to use them. I would love to get a hold of the mapping software he uses, though apparently it is no longer downloadable.

That's what I've found so far. Any others I should be watching closely?

Reviewer's Remorse

2011-08-22T21:38:00.000-04:00

Back in the day, I wrote eleven official vault reviews for NWN1 (you can find them in my sidebar). I ran across one of them today while searching for planescape modules. It's for FK The Shadow Relic, a bridge module between SoU and HotU, and I wrote the review in summer 2006.

The review is a pretty mixed bag. It highlights some of the successes of the module. I still vaguely remember some of its amazing visuals, and a have a huge slant towards planescape stuff. But it also frustrated the hells out of me at times, and that definitely comes across in the review.

The module at this point has 8 votes. I just cast the 8th. I hadn't wanted to vote earlier because I felt like I had already had my say. It was just the 4th vote the module had received since my review.

Now, the module had been out a year when I reviewed it and had only received four votes. Clearly it wasn't marketed particularly well, and its vote/download total is abysmal. And a glance through the comments indicates that it was frustrating to a lot of players. But there's no way this module shouldn't at least have the 10 votes it needs by now to appear on the top 10 list.

One of the main reasons I got involved in the reviewer's guild was so that I could bring exposure to underappreciated/overlooked modules. I had at least one success with that: my review of Tiberius's Saleron's Gambit 3 did play at least a small role in getting his modules the attention they deserved. But the counter to this is a module like this one. I liked it and tried to hype it, but ultimately the author and his module may have lost an opportunity for more success because of the review.

I think I was largely fair. But I still feel a sense of regret at the whole affair. Blah.

Review: Celestial Chronicles, Part I

2011-08-21T21:52:00.008-04:00

My vote: 8.5 (Good, qualified recommendation)
Character: included lv. 6 human rogue

It all begins with what you find in this rock.

This is an interesting little module. It tells the story of a young archaeologist who lives in an ultra-oppressive regime. While archaeologists aren't exactly known for their rebellious nature in most settings, here, historic knowledge is repressed and guarded by the regime. This can place a archaeologists in a precarious spot if they "dig too deep." In this tale, our protagonist uncovers an amazing artifact...but just as she does so, things go horribly wrong.

The story and setting are interesting, and has loads of potential. I wasn't as excited about the execution of the module. Most of this adventure takes the form of a linear escape run, where you battle your way through a series of (fairly repetitive) encounters as you flee. Combat is frequent, but not very challenging. There is a significant part of this module that uses an entirely different setting, which is a cool twist and I won't spoil it (though I will say it had a certain Ressikan feel to it--if you must know, look it up!). But even there, you end up traveling on a long, linear path, battling repetitive encounters once again. There are absolutely some cool moments in this module in which you, as the player, really don't know what is going on (in a good way), and a few characters that are interesting and could be developed a great deal. The custom music is nice, as are some of the scripted cutscenes. But overall, I kind of felt a bit lukewarm toward the mod. I would love to see a more well developed module in the future, however, because the ideas behind the story are terrific.

Planning a 4/e adventure

2011-08-20T21:54:00.000-04:00

So I've ordered my DnD stuff and look forward to its arrival next week. And I've gotten parental approval from the nephew's mom, who also was interested in playing. So we're on track for a fun party-of-three adventure (I'll play a third party member, largely as a henchman). My wife is thus far completely uninterested, but that means she can watch our kids during the games. :)

I'm going to start with the Starter Set adventures, as that will help them roll up a first character and learn the most basic game mechanics. It will also give us a basic adventure to help me learn the ropes of a DM. After that, however, I'm getting interested in designing my own adventure.

Or an adaptation of an adventure. While I have an old module idea that I eventually would love to try in pen and paper, it would be fairly involved and perhaps too mature for an 8-year old. So I'm thinking that our first several adventures might be adaptations of NWN modules. Snickersnack!, which I just finished the other night, could be a great opening module, assuming I can recreate the humor of the kobolds (and find a more level-appropriate quest reward). It's simple, short, and fun. And Cave of Songs is another that might translate very well: powerful ideas, but very little required long dialog and a lot of stuff that could be cut or embellished as needed.

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here--they may try this and hate it--but this should be fun. DMing will no doubt require preparation, but I'd guess the hours requirement is at least an order of magnitude lower than creating an effective NWN module.

Now if only my books would arrive quickly. I'm looking forward to learning the 4th edition rules. I'll roll up one each of a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric, so I can choose a character to complement my players' choices.

Review: Prophet Prologue - It Cannot Be Denied

2011-08-19T22:02:00.000-04:00

My vote: 9 (Very good, deserves a look)
Character: Halfling 4Rog/2Ran from Cave of Songs, did not advance a level.

Halfling Village!

It almost feels wrong to vote on this module, as it's very much just meant to be the opening act in a larger saga. You begin the module in the Hopping Hobgoblin Inn after waking from a disturbing and vivid dream in which a halfling village is slaughtered. As you head downstairs, you meet a young halfling adventurer, who is alarmed to hear you describing his own village just a few miles from the inn. The two of you rush there to find out whether this dream of yours is a premonition...or just a dream.

The story is good here, with good pacing and execution, and it sets up the next chapter in the saga very well (though naturally there's little sense of closure at the end of this one). It is a very short adventure, and as such it is very linear. There was at least one interesting side-quest of sorts that I happened upon involving a fallen druid. What little combat there is seemed appropriate for the setting, and was never too challenging for my duo of halflings in the game. I did very much enjoy the halfling henchman's character, and look forward to seeing him develop in future modules. In the end, it's a fun but short module to play, and leaves you wanting a lot more by the end. And that's exactly what it's meant to do!

What monster is this?

2011-08-19T08:47:00.000-04:00

So actually, this is a spectacled bear that has some sort of skin disease. Poor thing.

But I swear it looks like something out of D&D. I can't decide what, though. Maybe a gnoll?

Baldur's Gate NWN2 module continues

2011-08-18T21:03:00.001-04:00

In early 2007, I wrote a post about a group that was trying to recreate the original Baldur's Gate in Neverwinter Nights 2. They had just released a demo, and it did a great job of recapturing the initial short prologue at Candlekeep.

Well, to my amazement, they are still at it, and may actually be getting close. Some excerpts from their latest posts.

drechner, the project founder and area builder:

Here's a (not) fun fact: I started this project in November of 2006 and expected it to be done in 2008. Needless to say, that was a gross-underestimate of the work involved! Therefore, never trust me; we're like 3D Realms with DNF, except we have no budget and far less people working on it :p
I only kid (sort of), but on a serious note, we're looking to get this project uploaded on the Vault before Skyrim is released (mid-early November). We could get it done before then, though more than likely it'll be several weeks afterwards, but know that this is our goal. If you're looking for a percentage complete for the game, it's probably somewhere around the 80% mark, though it's a bit difficult to estimate as we have chapters 1-4 completely scripted with chapter 5 partly done already. As for the areas, the only items remaining are the return to Candlekeep interiors, a few interior areas in BG city (which Shallina has been patiently awaiting), and Gullyking/Firewine Bridge areas. Most our systems are in and working already as are some of our art assets (we haven't shown the NPCs yet, but we will).

Shallina, who appears to be the main scripter:

Drew is making the area then he is sending them to me, I am scripting them and making them functionnal, all the items al ready exist, all the important NPC exist as well, but once I am done, I am making a "build" where everything done works together, wich I send back to Drew so he can polish all the visual of the game and things I had to change.
We can say that now we got a first "Beta Build" beceause all scripted area are now linked and working together as a game.
The project isn't anymore different piece of the remake, but a single "big piece" that is working.
We are at a stage where we could start "a full scale test" and not only "focus test" on specifics parts.
It's one of the best moment of the project where it s becomming a "game" that can be fully played and is no more only "a work in progress".

I am absolutely in awe of the fact that they are still at it. My hat's off to them. Kudos! And I do hope they are able to finish it.

Roll a D6

2011-08-18T12:34:00.000-04:00

Absolutely brilliant.

What should I buy for D&D 4th edition?

2011-08-17T00:30:00.001-04:00

I'm thinking about running a very small dungeons & dragons pen and paper thing with my nephew, who is 8. It would absolutely be an excuse for me to play pen and paper DnD more than anything else, but it also might be a fun way to bond with the kid. Eventually I can see adding more family members should they become interested. But it might just be a fun thing for us to do when I visit every month or so. I'd DM and play a henchman character that would complement whatever he chose to play.

I'm trying to figure out what to buy. I don't get a lot of traffic these days on this site, but if anyone reading this has some experience I'd be glad to have it. At this point, my current thought is to buy three things:

DnD 4th Edition Starter Set
My understanding is that this wouldn't get us past level 2 or so, and is made obsolete as soon as you have other stuff. But it comes with dice, which I don't have, and a nice-looking battle map. Anyway, I'm torn on whether to get this. The main selling point to me, beyond being inexpensive for what you get, is that it is supposed to be a very good introduction to the core game mechanics. That might be very helpful when trying to introduce new players to the game.

Dungeon Master's Kit
From what I've read, this kit includes most of what you really need from the Dungeon Master Guides, plus game pieces and grids. I do sort of wish we could just do completely abstract fights like I usually did in the past, but apparently the new rules system really needs tokens on a game board.

Heroes of the Fallen Lands
Rather than get the player guides, I've been reading that this book makes a good alternative. It profiles the cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard, and is completely compatible with the characters that you make using the starter set. This would easily get us started. Later I could add Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, which would let us do Druids, Paladins, Rangers, and Warlocks. But those, I think, are more specialty classes. The core four classes in the Fallen Lands are really all you need.

Anyway, while I could just get the starter kit at first, I get free shipping if I buy at least one of the other two items. And being the sort that I am (and having some amazon.com birthday money), I think I'm just going to go for it. Later, I might like to add the other Heroes book, plus the Monster Vault for more monster options and tokens.

Review: Snickersnack!

2011-08-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

My vote: 9.5 (excellent, recommended to anyone)
Character: Human Sorcerer, lv. 1 to lv. 2 in this module.

Kobolds done right.

Snickersnack! is a terrific little module. You are adventuring in the desert when you come upon a sign advertising the need for an adventurer, and promising great rewards. What ends up happening, without giving too much away, is that you are working for a tribe of Kobolds on a quest to save one of their kin. The kobolds are the stars of the module, and are incredibly well-realized. Each one has a unique name, and most have a specific job or role within the clan. There are an amazing number of animated sequences, short and long, that make this module delightful and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

What kind of strange contraption is this?

The adventure itself is very short, but is full of great little touches that kept a smile on my face. Sometimes it was the humor, and sometimes it was just wicked clever-ness. Also, there are a number of fairly hidden conversations and even at least one question involving my sorcerer's summoned animal and familiar. There's not a lot of action (as advertised, it's hack and slash light), but what is there is fine (although not very exciting).

Oldie but a goodie

2011-08-16T14:28:00.001-04:00

Review (sort of): Saleron's Gambit I

2011-08-14T21:50:00.000-04:00

I replayed Saleron's Gambit I last night. I somehow never finished the series, despite how enthusiastic I was about the first four. Those saved games and my character are no where to be found today, so I'm just replaying through the thing.

Here are my comments that I left on the module page:

Just posting to say I had no trouble playing through this module using NWN 1.68. Had to download the 1.68-compatible CEP 1.52, and then "upgraded" that to CEP 1.53. It's a bit of a runaround, but it works fine.

Also, this was my second time playing through, and the magic is still there. This is such a fun, unique module to play. Somehow, probably because it's so rare to have to do it (I wouldn't want to do it every time), I really enjoyed running around town trying to scrounge up 20 gp so I could buy some gear. Hint: sell your books! And that gear turned out to be studded leather armor and a club! Yikes. When I upgraded to Chain Mail and a Morningstar at the end of the mod I felt positively wealthy...

Beyond that, the townspeople are all very well conceived in that close-minded, small town kind of way. We didn't see a ton of it, but did get to feel something of the depth of the FR setting in some places as well. As before, it's a module recommended to anyone.

One other thing that I didn't note above but wanted to mention...I really liked how Tiberius was able to use the castle interior tileset to such great effect. The second floor of a castle in this module had lost its roof, and using exterior lighting and abundant trees, you really felt like you were up exposed and up in the tree canopy. Kudos.

That said, it's still pretty short, and has little sense of closure (given that it's the first in the series!). I voted 9.5 in 2005, but if I were to vote again, I'd probably drop it down to a 9 or so (very good, deserves a look). But I'm not going to go back and change vote almost six years later. :)

Oh, and what the hey, here's my comments from my first playthrough, posted 11-28-2005:

Salerons' Gambit, Ch.1 is a surprisingly good module for a 1st-level adventurer. All too often, your first level is treated as something to just get by as quickly as possible in many modules. This one lets you experience being a first level character as you would in a pen and paper D&D session. Not only is it a low-xp module (you won't hit level 2 until the very, very end of the mod), it is also low gold and low magic. I had to take out a 20 gp loan to buy enough equipment to even begin adventuring! And even though I played a fighter, I wasn't able to afford any armor higher than studded leather until the very end of the mod. I found this very refreshing and very different from just about any other module I've played.

The story is pretty simple for this module, but that's appropriate given who your character is at the start of the mod – you're aware that more could be going on here than meets the eye, but those questions do not even begin to get answered until the end. Nevertheless, the writing is superb. Especially notable are the fantastic descriptions of each of the main characters that play when you initiate dialog with them for the first time. Execution is overall very good, with good area design, well-balanced and challenging combat, and several nice surprises that occur as you play the mod. One wonderful feature is that the availability of certain dialog options and even some quests are determined by your characters attributes and skills.

Two moderate critiques: First, there is very little information about the character's background or the recommendations for character design in the readme. The meeting with the DM is fantastic, but this occurs after you've already selected a character. I think it would have been nice to have a lot of that info in the readme. Prospective players should note that while your character has humble beginnings, there are appropriate mentors available in town for any chosen class. The scripting of the mod is such that the backstory surrounding your mentor in town will shift depending on your character class (which, by the way, is a REALLY cool feature that I've never seen implemented to this extent before).

[****moderate spoilers follow****]

Second, it seemed as though my character had some sort of inkling, from the very beginning, that Saleron had some knowledge of my character's father. And yet he didn't say anything about this until the end of the mod. Maybe some of the dialog should be examined for consistence on this point...

[****end spoilers****]

Overall, though, this is a fresh, polished, and very fun module. I've played the 2nd and 3rd chapters as well, and they just improve upon what the author was able to do in this module. Definitely an overlooked series at this point! –B

Review: Science Macabre

2011-08-13T13:13:00.000-04:00

It might help to see the comments of QSW and Alazander to make full sense of my voting comments. Also, I've added this author's blog, Undead Men Tell Tales, to my blogroll.

My Vote: 9 (Very good, deserves a look)
Character: lv. 1 Human Bard

I largely want to echo the comments of QSW, who said it more eloquently than I will be able to. Science Macabre is a very nice little module, and works great as a showcase for the author's writing skills as he stated. The characters all have their own voice, and their own personalities, which is impressive given the relatively small amount of time you have with them. Kell, in particular, was impressive. Romance interests are very difficult to write convincingly, and almost every attempt I've seen in-module (including almost all of the official Bioware/Obsidian products) typically fall flat. And somehow, in one short conversation, I was completely on board with it. Furthermore, the three choices of response provided for the player during most dialogues allow one to portray a wide variety of characters. The roleplaying is very good here.

Furthermore, as Alazander noted, the setting is extremely interesting. Angels vs. Demons vs. Vampires is wicked cool, and has huge potential. As many others have said, I'd love to see more from the author on this front.

Review: Cave of Songs

2011-08-13T01:48:00.000-04:00

My score: 9.5 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone

Character: Began w/ lv. 2 rogue/ranger, ended level 6 (barely)

I'm a sucker for a great story. And that is a big part of what makes Cave of Songs so great. Not only is there a brilliantly creative concept at the heart of the tale, but the execution of that concept is terrific. You begin in a small tavern in a small town near the Grimwood forest, where you hear tales of a mysterious Cave of Songs. Everyone has heard a different story about what can be found there, and the stories only get more interesting as you make your way through Grimwood and into the cave itself. This is one of those stories that I will remember for years, at least in its general essence.

Beyond this, the atmosphere is just terrific. True to its low-level nature, I found myself scared to death throughout most of the module. A halfling rogue/ranger isn't a particularly formidable foe before he gets his AC up a fair bit (and gets weapon finesse), which took until about half-way through the module...and even then, he was basically just adequate. Even by the module's end, my character really couldn't take on some of the tougher baddies in the forest by himself. And by then, the henchman--who was invaluable early on--was starting to lag behind, becoming less useful as we went. Added to that sense of fear was an extremely creative setting, with neat twists on visuals, and good use of sound and music. Finally, the writing was top notch...concise, but provocative and descriptive.

In many ways, I was reminded of Torslunda, which was a classic, relatively short, low-level mod that was published several years after Cave of Songs. Both have a fairly linear but interesting story with sidequests, and are ideal ways to get that low-level experience. I recommend Cave of Songs to anyone.

How I'm going to score NWN1 modules

2011-08-13T01:01:00.000-04:00

For NWN2, we have a clear set of voting guidelines, which I played a role in developing. Folks haven't always adhered to those standards--there still has been voting inflation, to be sure--but if you did vote using them you at least had justification for doing so.

With NWN1, however, there are no written guidelines. As such, you pretty much have to judge modules relative to one another. Add over 1100 modules that have received at least 10 votes and you have a recipe for massive voting inflation. There are 60 modules with scores over 9.75. That means that you literally have to vote 10 on each of them or you will lower their score. Yikes.

I'm planning to get back to playing NWN1 modules. But I'd like to use a written set of standards so I can be more consistent in how I evaluate modules. Here's what I'm planning to do:

10.0 - A masterpiece, genuinely groundbreaking
9.75 - Outstanding, a must have
9.5 - Excellent, recommended to anyone
9.0 - Very good, deserves a look
8.5 - Good, qualified recommendation
8.0 - Fair, solid yet unremarkable
7.5 - Some merit, requires improvements
7.0 - Poor execution, potential unrealized.
6.0 - Very little appeal
5.0 - Not recommended to anyone.

I don't love it. I won't use a 9.25, for example, which is silly (then again, I think non-integer scores are silly!). But I think this largely reflects how people have been voting. Very compressed near the top, with larger and larger gaps as you move down. It'll work.

I'd be surprised if I ever give a score below an 8...probably because I'm unlikely to finish such a module. And because there are so many modules to play, I can be pretty picky about which I download. The only exception might be one of the newer modules. Given that the rate of module release is so slow at this point, I am going to try to play and vote on most newer releases, even if they are from one of the old Bioware module design contests. For the most part, though, I'm going to stick with the top rated ones.

Rediscovering the NWN community

2011-08-11T00:04:00.000-04:00

I'm continuing to plug away at Cave of Songs, and will post my comments on it once I'm done. They will likely be glowing.

I've also been rooting around trying to figure out what has happened to the community in my time away. Obviously it has contracted substantially. But despite my initial fears, it's not even close to dead. Thanks to VBJ at the largely silent Reviewer's Forums, I learned that the Bioware forums have been relocated to social.bioware.com. So I've created a profile there (wish they still had my old red dragon disciple image), and have started lurking around the nwn1/nwn2 modules forums.

I've also seen that the Neverwinter Nights Podcast is still going strong. I've added them to my iTunes and will give this month's episode a listen soon.

Finally, and most importantly, modules continue to be posted and updated. NWN1, to my surprise, has seen 24 new modules posted in the past year, and 25 modules updated in the past month. NWN2, on the other hand, has 25 new modules in the past year, and 15 modules updated in the past month.

I expected NWN2 to be going a bit better than NWN1, but by those numbers (at least) they're pretty evenly split. In my limited experiences with the two toolsets, I have to say that I liked NWN2's a lot better from a usability standpoint. But at the same time, it's probably the case that I could do a lot more with NWN1's toolset in a short amount of time, mostly because area construction was SO much quicker. This is something that a lot of folks warned us about, and I generally ignored as NWN2 came about. With the incredible flexibility also came incredible time demands, and I am sure that this is part of why NWN2 never saw the sort of incredible number of modules than NWN1 did.

I do see a terrific variety of prefab areas available on the vault, however. And most are far better than anything I could hope put together. I think that if I were ever to try to make another module--and I'm almost certainly not going to try to do this--that would be a resource that I would mine heavily.

That said, there certainly are a lot of modules for NWN2. I sort of missed out on what was probably the peak of them by leaving the community when I did. I don't have either expansion pack, but I see that I can buy the whole kit and kaboodle on Steam for $20. That'd easily be worth it. So, I'm thinking about it. That said, logistically it is much tougher to use the computer that can run nwn2 and not alienate the family than it is to hack away on my little laptop. So I might just play with NWN1 for now.

Playing: Cave of songs

2011-08-08T20:19:00.001-04:00

Here's an oldie-but-goodie that I missed. My first foray into nwn1 in a half decade is the Cave of Songs. I'm playing this in anticipation of playing through the prophet series by the same Author.

I'm about an hour in, and having a lot of fun. I'm playing a halfling rogue/ranger, and it's already become clear that I am pretty rusty. I barely remembered what the various skills did (almost used parry!!), and simple strategic things like not rushing into rooms full of monsters have been slow to come back to me. Plus, until I can get my character leveled up a bit to have finesse weapons and an extra Dex bonus, he's rather underpowered. I did start him out as a level 2 character as this mod is apparently balanced for multiplayer, and I hope that will be enough.

Character creation was a little problematic. For nwn2, I had my character creator mod. Here, I used Pretty Good Character Creator for xp/gold, but found it necessary to drop 3/4 of the gold it gave me. 2/3 might have been sufficient had I used an in-mod store, but PGCC's store is set too cheap: 100 markup/100 markdown. I've edited PGCC to 150/35 (iirc) now, but couldn't figure out the gold script and so will probably just drop 2/3 of it from now on.

Anyhow, I'm having some good nostalgic fun. Looking forward to more tonight!

I'm installing NWN1 right now.

2011-08-07T23:10:00.000-04:00

Don't know if anything will come of it. Probably not. But talking about some fantasy lego board game with my nephew got me thinking about the good 'ole days. I'm going with nwn1, as I'm running on my dinky work laptop, and I don't think it can handle nwn2.

Besides, there's a lot of great stuff on nwn1 that I never got to see....

Eternal Sonata Mini-Review

2009-03-10T09:25:00.000-04:00

My first true next-gen jrpg experience unfortunately fell a bit flat.

Reviews of Eternal Sonata for the XBox 360 indicated that it had a excellent story that was uniquely bound to true events from the life of composer Frederik Chopin. Neat concept for a story that did have it moments, but I found the execution to be dreadful. The characters were entirely 1-dimensional, and the writing--especially for the evil king and his cronies--was beyond dreadful. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I need a bit more subtlety in my villains. By the time I lost interest, there were some hints of a plot twist involving a Yoshimo-style betrayal. But it just wasn't enough to keep me going.

The other aspect of the game that was touted by the reviews is the new take on a jrpg combat system. Like the louded (and, in my view, overrated) Tales series, Eternal Sonata's combat system incorporates action elements that many reviewers found to be a breath of fresh air. While the Tales series is essentially a cross between a fighting game and a rpg, Eternal Sonata does incorporate a bit more strategy into its system. There is a neat special attack system, and a cool concept in which enemies and abilities change depending on whether they are in the dark vs. the light.

Unfortunately, at least for my taste, combat was still too twitch-based. In fact, it becomes more and more extreme in this regard as you progress through the game due to their "party level system," which, for me, made the combat progressively less and less enjoyable.

So, my take on it is that Eternal Sonata is a game that had a bunch of cool concepts underlying its design, but was executed with a lackluster story and unenjoyable combat. It does look pretty, but that again just wasn't enough. I give it a 3 out of 5 in recognition that others may enjoy the combat more than I did. Selling it on ebay.

Wii Micro-Reviews

2008-11-05T00:33:00.000-05:00

Here are some reflections on titles I've played in the past year. I'll use a 5-star rating system analogous to that used by X-Play.

Mario Kart Wii (*****)

Easily my favorite Wii game, this is a raucous arcade racer with a surprising amount of depth. The tracks are colorful, varied, and each has its own little tricks that you'll need to learn if you're to compete and do well in this game. The single player Grand Prix events are good training, but it's the online play where the game really shines. The item system helps balance the odds and keep poorer players in the race. But they also help better players recover from an accident or an unlucky assault of items. I basically plateaued right around 8000 multiplayer points, and I don't think I can get better unless I get really serious. And that's where I draw the line, as this just doesn't seem like a game that one is supposed to get that serious about. :)

Super Mario Galaxy (****)

As platformers go, this has to be about as good as you'll find. Incredibly imaginative level design with a physics system that is both absurd and intuitive. It was a lot of fun, especially over the first 10 hours or so. The game's downfall, for me, was that despite the creative and highly variable level design, the game started to feel repetitive. You go on a mission, get a star, and then return to your home base. Repeat 60 some-odd times. The return to base was so anticlimactic, and the missions often so easy (to a gamer who's not much of a platformer!) that after the 25th or so star that I acquired, I really didn't feel much desire to continue onward. After all, it's not like anything interesting was going to happen in terms of the story. The level design is the heart of the game, but unfortunately it's also about all the game has going for it. For me, at least, it just wasn't quite enough. Never finished it.

The Sims 2: Castaway (**)

It's a sims game on a deserted island. So, you start with no resources, no friends (except monkeys), etc. In other words, you have to do a fair bit of work before you can even begin to do any activities that make Sims games fun. I gave this game an evening of my time and then stuck it on a shelf. Maybe if I didn't have other games to play, I would have kept going with it. But I did have other games to play. I sold it on ebay a few weeks ago.

Super Paper Mario (****)

Despite the rpg elements, this is mostly just a platformer. And it's a good one, as I actually finished this game. The items make for a nice addition to the platforming action, with healing items to make precision a bit less important and attack items to provide some new ways to kill things. The story is barely tolerable in its absurd cutesiness and predictability, but as a (mostly) 2D platformer this was a lot of fun. Bonus points for nostalgia here--someone who didn't grow up playing Super Mario Brothers on the NES might not have the same reaction.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (****)

This, perhaps like Galaxy, was a great game that just didn't do it for me. It's wonderfully imaginative with absolutely brilliant art and sound design, an engaging combat system that elevantes my adrenaline without being overly twitch-based, and a surprisingly compelling story. The problem, I think, is that it's so focused on puzzles. I like puzzles now and then, but I guess I'm not into platforming- or adventure-style puzzles enough to really enjoy this game. I had a good time playing this game, but I ultimately saw my progress slowed to a tremendous degree simply because it was taking so long to solve some of the puzzles. Toward the end, I found myself playing with my laptop open to a walkthrough. And that was pretty much the end of the line for me--if you're interested, I'm in the monkey dungeon after getting the wind boomerang thing. I might pick this up again, but probably not for a while.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (***)

I thought that the gamecube Fire Emblem game (Path of Radiance) was absolutely brilliant, and played it last Fall on my Wii. Radiant Dawn still has the excellent turn-based combat system, with an interesting mix of classes and characters like we saw in PoR. But in crafting RD, I think the designers tried to get a bit too fancy. First, there are essentially three unrelated stories that take place in the game. As a result, you change party composition often, and don't get the opportunity to become as emotionally attached to your characters via cutscenes and combat as you did in prior games. Similarly, battles almost always include massive numbers of respawning enemies that will flank your team. As a result, I found the battles less immersive than in PoR--they were really just an exercise in trying to predict what the designers would do next. All of this made battles longer, more intense, and less fun than they were in PoR. It's a shame, because I really like this series and was looking forward to playing this game. I'll probably finish it someday, but for now I've put it on the back burner.

Rayman Raving Rabbids (****)

Sort of like Super Mario Galaxy, this is one of the more creative games I've played. While essentially a long series of mini-games, the art and sound design are so brilliantly inventive (and funny) that it stays fresh in game after game. The on-rails plunger-shooting is the best part of the game, but most of the other games are a riot to play in short doses as well. My only real complaint about the game is that, despite being a collection of mini-games, it just isn't a very good party game. Most of the games (except the shooting and dancing games) can only be played by one person at a time. For this reason, we usually bust out Super Monkey Ball instead of Rayman when people are over, despite the fact that Rayman's a much more enjoyable game. Trading off the controller with my wife during the single player campaign, however, has proven to be much more enjoyable.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (***)

More than a year ago, I wrote up a full review of this game here. But the short story is that the single player game seems outrageously hard and unfun, and so the multiplayer party games is where it's at. And of the 50 or so party games, I'd estimate that at least 5 are broken beyond all repair, and another 10 are extremely not fun despite working "properly." But the other 30 work well enough, and 10 or so are extremely enjoyable. Most seem to be best-suited for 2 players, but many will allow four players to play at once. The bird flying game continues to be my personal favorite--best use of the wii-mote I've seen to date. Seriously. Overall, it's a good game to have for a party, but if you're like most of us and don't have Wii parties every weekend, you're unlikely to get much use out of this game.

Trauma Center: New Blood (***)

Neat idea here and good execution. The graphics are beautiful, clear, and are stylized to a degree that they don't bring any kind of grossness factor (to me at least). And the Wii-pointer controls are extremely well done, with a more responsive cursor than any other game I've seen thus far. The story is also engaging, with good tension provided by good ER-style voice acting. I'm not the most skilled of twitchy-type gamers, however, and I found the game to be virtually impossible to continue by about the 15th or 20th mission. The multiplayer offers the opportunity for a really neat experience with a friend on the couch and the possibility to complete the more challenging surgeries. But for it to work well in the more complicated surgeries, you'll need a partner who is as dedicated to learning to do these pretend procedures as you are. I can imagine that there are couples out there who are practiced enough that surgeries become an unspoken and well-coordinated dance--it'd be fun to watch in person. But for most of us, one party is likely to just get stuck on epinephrine duty, and that gets old fast.

Dr. Mario (***)

I'm torn about only giving this one three stars, because to be honest, this, along with Mario Kart, is the game that my wife and I have enjoyed the most. There's not much new in this version compared to prior versions. There is a new dragging-based virus buster game, but we didn't find that very fun. Basically, we just start up a traditional game and play in flash mode, which makes for shorter and more frantic games (you only have to kill 3 specific viruses, rather than clear the whole board). What makes it work so well is that we're pretty evenly matched, and with the quick games that flash mode permits, we can tear through 8 or so games in just 20 minutes. Nice way to close out a night before going to bed. Ultimately, though, while it's very good at what it does, it's "just Dr. Mario"--this is the same game that has been available for years on Nintendo consoles.

Final Fantasy Chronicles: My Life as King (**)

This game has potential and was fun for the first 5 hours or so. Graphics are nice (though rather unvaried in the stand-alone release), and the concept is interesting. But the game has a striking lack of depth, which becomes clear pretty early on. The result is that after you've built one of each of the main types of structures, and started on your way to building a productive town, the game basically succumbs to being nothing but a grind. Send out your adventurers, get your gold and mana (or whatever it's called), and ultimately build something else. I guess there's some sort of story, but I didn't last long enough to develop it much. Much has been made about the necessity of buying downloadable content, but I honestly don't think that would help much--new outfits and building types still wouldn't result in there being any kind of genuine strategy associated with this title.

---

Well, that's it for the Wii. Looking up, it seems as though I actually have gotten a fair bit of gaming in over this past year. But of all of those games, I only completed ... well, I'd probably say that I've only really "completed" Mario Kart. And even then, there are a few mirror races that I haven't finished yet, as I usually just play multiplayer. My gaming sessions these days tend to be short, and so with little sense of progress in titles I seem to lose interest. ...

I think it's also the case that I've been playing out of genre for the past year. My love is and always will be in rpg's, and that's where I intend to return now that I have the xbox...

What I've been up to...

2008-11-03T09:32:00.000-05:00

Been a while...

Looks like the last time I posted was January. A lot's happened since then. Finished my Ph.D. this summer and got a great job at a small college in Central Pennsylvania. I'm currently in my first semester here, and I'm really enjoying it. It's been a LOT of work, but teaching has long been my main professional interest and I'm very happy to have the opportunity to focus so heavily on it.

In order to get all of that accomplished--the Ph.D. finale was particularly demanding (exhausting?), especially while also teaching adjunct in the evenings--I largely had to drop all of my hobbies and put all my focus on RealLife(tm). And so I haven't really been doing much gaming this year, at least compared to prior years.

What little time I have had for gaming has mostly been devoted to playing Wii titles. But recently, I decided to give myself a belated graduation present and bought an Xbox 360. With that decision, I've pretty much decided to convert entirely over to console gaming. Several reasons for this:

1. Most of the games that I've been wanting to play--Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Fable 2, Final Fantasy, etc--are designed with a console in mind. I think only Dragon Age is clearly a PC game that is on my "looks interesting" list, and even then there's the possibility of a console version (how that will work, I have no idea) being released sometime in the future.

2. I get to play on our "big" 37" LCD in the living room. And I get to sit on my couch.

3. Consoles are cheap! And they're so much more powerful than they used to be, with a lot more crossover between PC and console titles. Today, I could buy all three of the console systems ($250 Wii, $400 PS3, $300 Xbox360 = $950) and still pay less than I would to buy a new PC rig. And they have a comparable lifespan. And I probably won't buy all three systems, at least not at the PS3's current price tag.

4. Along those lines, my job provides a laptop for my use. Ditto for my wife's job. Which means that the home PC is now strictly a gaming machine. $1200 (my typical machine cost) is just too much to pay for a gaming rig,

5. I don't have to worry about hardware compatibility any more. And I don't have to worry as much about updating drivers and maintaining my rig's condition. Games are designed specifically for the hardware I'm running. Now that I'm in console-land, I think this is a bigger deal than I realized when I was primarily into computers. Crashes are RARE.

6. It turns out that I really like racing games. And racing games on consoles are better, I think.

7. You can sell used versions of your game much more easily. I recently sold a bunch of gamecube games on ebay, and got $15-25 for each. In some cases, I got more than I paid for them, which is insane.

Anyway, that's enough for now. As I think about it, I have a lot of other things to talk about... reflections on (the few) games I've played this year, the reason I bought an xbox instead of a ps3, thoughts about the recent spat of releases, etc. But that'll have to wait for another day. :)

P.S. How is it possible that Mysteries of Westgate still has not been released?!?

FRWCC lives on! ... Just not with me.

2008-01-08T02:12:00.000-05:00

I posted this on the vault page for the FRW Character Creator, but I thought I'd post it here as well:

I wanted to thank everyone for their continued enthusiasm and kind words about this module! I've had a great time interacting with everyone and putting this utility mod together, and I'm very proud of how it has turned out to this point.

As you could probably guess from the lack of updates, however, my interests have strayed away from NWN2 for a while now. This module was always intended to be an actively updated "support" module for modules in the Forgotten Realms Weave group, as well as a Berliad-proof way to level up your characters and not have them overpowered for most modules on the Vault. So letting this module just fade away was not something I wanted to see happen.

Therefore, I have decided to turn over full control of this module to another member of the Forgotten Realms Weave, ladydesire. I know she has some great ideas about further additions to this module, especially on the scripting side (which is an area in which I have zero expertise!!), so I'm sure it's in good hands.

Best of luck to ladydesire, and thanks again to everyone for your support and continued interest in this module!
-Berliad

I also wanted to thank everyone for continuing to pop by this blog every once in a while, and for leaving all those wonderful comments in my previous post. I really do appreciate it. Honestly, I do feel like I've abandoned a lot of friends in leaving the community, and I feel bad about it. My life has just become very busy (writing dissertation, applying for jobs, teaching as an adjunct faculty member, spending time with the kiddo, etc), and my interests have strayed away from NWN2. I may, someday, return to this community in some fashion or another, though my guess is that it won't be at quite the same level of involvement.

In the meantime, I will say that I've been continuing to actively follow and blog about baseball (if you look at the blogs for the Cinci Reds, you could probably figure out which one is mine). I've also been playing several games on the Wii when time permits. Personal faves include Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (gamecube version, haven't played Wii version yet), Guitar Hero III, Trauma Center: New Blood, and Raymond Raving Rabbids. Super Paper Mario was also fun.

I may post some reviews of these and other games on this site from time to time if the muse strikes me. I can see this blog eventually transforming into a more general interest gaming blog in the future. But for the time being, I just don't have the time to maintain two blogs at this point...and baseball has always been my deepest love. :)
-B

Mysteries of Westgate

2007-10-22T00:40:00.000-04:00

I wanted to send out congrats to Alazander, Hugie, Challseus, Tiberius209, Maerduin, and everyone else from Ossian about the recent announcement of their upcoming module, Mysteries of Westgate! It sounds like it's going to be nothing short of spectacular, and I'm looking forward to seeing materials from it. It must be incredibly gratifying for individuals in that company to finally have been able to produce something that will actually result in a cash return...especially in light of the premium module debacle of '06.

Also have to say that I much prefer the "adventure pack" descriptor to the term "premium module." :)

....

As for me.. Well, what can I say? I just haven't had much time or interest to devote to anything NWN2 related for a while now, except for a fairly brief return last month. This includes a complete lack of progress, very unfortunately, on my Vault review of Ryam Baco's module, which is pretty poor form on my part--first time I've ever really sat on a review, and I'm feeling like a pretty bad person for it.

I don't have the NWN2 expansion pack yet, and I'm honestly not really feeling the urge to get it. I'm excited to hear about some of the modules that have come out lately, and are coming out soon, but at the same time I'm not feeling much motivation to get out there and play them. Hopefully things will improve in a few weeks when the World Series ends (I'm rootin' for the Rockies, in case you're interested...After '04, Boston is now just another rich team from the northeast). But at the same time, I don't have a ton of free time, and I want to spend it doing things that I'm excited about. Lately, that's mostly been baseball, as well as a few Wii/Gamecube games (recently picked up Tales of Symponia used...not sure if I like it yet...story seems intriguing and the art is nice, but it might require too much twichiness to be enjoyable).

Anyway, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find myself back in the den playing NWN2 modules sometime in the next few weeks. But at the same time, it also wouldn't surprise me for it to be a while before I pick it up again. We'll see.

Thanks for visiting. I will try to continue to keep this space active, whether I'm posting about NWN2 or otherwise.

Maximus reports on his trip

2007-09-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

Maximus has posted a report of his trip over to Obsidian a week or so back to check out Mask of the Betrayer. He also links to one by the tileset gurus at Robinson's Workshop, though I haven't had a chance to read that one just yet.

Interestingly, Rogue Dao studios also had a chance to demo their upcoming module at this meeting. I've long been a fanboy of the Planescape setting, and from Maximus's description, and everything else I'd seen from it, it really sounds amazing. I'm actually much more excited about playing their module than the actual expansion campaign... In fact, I'd probably be willing to hold off on purchasing the explansion to see if I could snag the expansion as a Christmas gift, except that Rogue Dao's module will require the expansion!

Night Howls in Nestlehaven

2007-09-18T00:51:00.000-04:00

Below are my comments on Nestlehaven. It's clearly among the best modules yet produced for the Vault. If the sequel can fulfill the promise of this first effort, we could be in store for something very, very special. It's exciting to see content like this coming out for NWN2--it shows much of the tremendous power of this modding engine while living up to the rich history of story and setting than we have in the NWN community. It most certainly falls into the "must have" category of NWN2 mods, and I've only said that about one or two other modules...

My Vote: 9 - Outstanding, A Must Have
Character: lv. 9 human neutral good cleric from Keep on the Borderlands, advanced to lv. 13
Module Version Played: jul20a6

Night Howls in Nestlehaven borders on groundbreaking, at least for the still-young NWN2 modding community. The crowning accomplishment of this module is the realization of Nestlehaven as a living and breathing town. Jackyo123's Nestlehaven has a rich history dominated by two ruling families, the Boroldi (who wear blue) and the Bellerose (who wear red). The two families are evenly matched and have an arrangement to share power within the city. But it is an imperfect arrangement between two very proud houses, and the result is a history of tension that periodically boils over into genuine feuds. Now is one of those times, and the player character is invited by Nestlehaven's constable to help solve the mystery behind a series of gruesome murders that nearly have the ruling families at each others' throats.

The Capulet vs. Montague-esque split between the families dominates almost every aspect of the town of Nestlehaven. Most residents are allied with one of the two families, and they wear their affiliations on their sleeve--literally--by wearing their family's colors. In fact, in what I thought was a masterful stroke by the author, the citizens go so far as to paint the roofs of their homes to match the colors of their chosen families. The result is a town that feels divided, yet at the same time, tied together by their richly intertwined history.

Much of the first half of the module has the player exploring the streets and buildings of Nestlehaven, which feel alive thanks to a tremendous amount of detail. Commoners, many of which are customized well beyond the level we typically see in modules, move about the city muttering their opinions about current events. Many, if not most, buildings are enterable despite being unrelated to any of the various main quests and side quests (as an aside, while my character felt right at home in this mod, I think it would actually be best played as a chaotic mercenary-type, rather than a do-gooder, so that one would feel liberated to explore/plunder all the various private residences that one can explore). And there are wonderful variety of interesting minor encounters, both violent and pleasant, that one can experience while one explores the town. There are only a few modules for NWN1 that were able to create such a palpably alive city for you to explore...and they often were among my favorite modules, including Cormyrean Nights, Threat of Dreams, and Almraiven, among others. And there's nothing else like it available for NWN2, official campaign included.

All that praise actually leads to my primary critique of the module. While the setting of Nestlehaven is fabulous, and sets up a wonderful opportunity for political intrigue and espionage, it ultimately felt a bit tangential to the main storyline. In fact, while the first half of the module will have you exploring the many interesting locals within the city, most of the second half of the module has you either fighting baddies in the surrounding forests or trudging through the many dungeons underneath Nestlehaven fighting all manner of demons and undead. The only time one has a serious encounter with the leadership of one of the ruling families is during a bizarre mandatory fetch quest, which felt a bit tacked-on. Furthermore, what starts as a very open-ended module becomes almost railroaded in its linearity near the end. The main story itself isn't bad by any means, and is generally well-executed, but it seemed a bit generic...especially when laid in contrast to the potential richness of the feud between the two ancient houses. It's not the case that main story has nothing to do with the families. It's just that it feels like more could be done to take advantage of the fabulous potential conflict that the author created.

There is a LOT of fighting in this module. It's not really repetitive, because the author does a brilliant job of creating customized enemies--not just his customized and creative monsters, but even the various "thugs" and "guards" that you'll meet have individualized equipment, looks, and character descriptions, with few duplicate individuals to be found. However, I thought that most of the encounters "felt" like boss battles, often with 6-7 foes that one has to cope with at once...and this resulted in my party spending a bit more time in combat than I found enjoyable, especially during the last hour or two of gameplay. Furthermore, many of the actual boss battles felt a bit anticlimactic, probably because of the elaborate fights against the various squads of minions.

Fortunately, my party of 5 was always up to the task. I found combat to be well-balanced for my lv. 9 cleric, though I did play on normal difficulty most of the time to offset her low level. Blasting away with lightning and fireballs without friendly fire may be cheesy, but it makes combat a lot more fun for me--and makes fights go by a lot quicker. There were only one or two times when it probably made the combat easier than the author intended.

Critiques aside, this is a fantastic module. And as first modding efforts go, this is among the most impressive I've ever seen. The attention to detail here is mind boggling, the setting is fabulously realized, and I can't wait to see what happens in the sequel. After all, this is just the first chapter in the story, and the author clearly has a plan for where this is going. Many of the encounters in this mod, for example--especially those with the ruling families--clearly foreshadow more interesting encounters and plot development still to come. I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for the great module!

Back in the Saddle...

2007-09-16T19:20:00.000-04:00

Tonight I finally got back in game! I needed a bit of a break, and my gaming time has been filled with Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy VII, Super Paper Mario, and a healthy dose of Out of the Park Baseball '07. They all offer something different...but like I always do, I'm finally back to playing Neverwinter mods! :)

Anyway, I spent a good couple of hours with Nestlehaven tonight. I think I'm finally approaching the end of this module. It's strange--jackyo's module is among the best I've played for NWN2, and is ranked the highest of any NWN2 module by public voting. And yet it was while playing it that I decided I needed my break! :) I don't think that reflects on the module, actually, but more was a chance bit of timing--I'm prone to the impulsive and compulsive whims, and when the Wii bug hit, there was no resisting it until I got my fill. It also didn't help that we had relatives visiting for a week, and they stay in the computer room...

The good news is that there are a ton of new modules out to play! Here's my rough gaming schedule as of right now:

1. Finish Night Howls in Nestlehaven ~2 hrs left(?)
2. A Corpse, A Vote by Christian Mayr (I may take the Vault review of this one if it's still unclaimed) ~ 3 hrs
3. The Zelbross Affair by seryn ~4 hrs
4. Pool of Radiance Remastered 2 by Markus "Wayne" Schlegel ~6 hrs
5. Dark Avenger by Wyrin ~3 hrs
6. Tomoachan by Enoa4 ~4 hrs
7. Moonshadows, Ch. 1 by Hugie ~10 hrs
8. Conan Chronicles by John McA ~4 hrs
9. Tears of Ilmarid 1 by Hohiro Kurita ~4 hrs
10. Corruption of Kiahoro by human_male ~12 hrs

And then we'll see. :) That alone is ~40 hours of gameplay. Who knows when I'll work in Mask of the Betrayer! And there's still the matter of updating the character creator at some point as well.

As I've been saying for years, so many mods, so little time! But this fortunately means that I'll have lots to write about here in the future. Thanks for hanging in there folks--I've finally got my urge to play back, so I should start being able to produce some of the content I used to be able to do on a more regular basis.

Update: I forgot about Pool of Radiance 2! That's actually a pretty high priority one for me, so I stuck it just ahead of some of the most recent releases.

MOTB / Subtlety of Thay

2007-09-14T11:38:00.000-04:00

In what was a surprise announcement to me (at least), Maximus posted tonight--after what apparently was a special Obsidian event for key community members--that Mask of the Betrayer has gone gold! Ship date in the US is scheduled for October 9th, which is less than a month away! I really had no idea that it was so close at hand. It really is pretty cool that Obsidian allowed folks like Maximus to get the word out prior to the official announcement.

With Mask comes a host of new monster models and other toolset goodies that should be a real boon for our community, which continues to churn out excellent-looking modules--including Enoa4's recent release of Tomoachan, and Hugie's soon to be released first chapter of Moonshadows!

--------

Also, in what was a freaking massive oversight, I neglected to highlight the induction of dirtywick's Subtlety of Thay into the Hall of Fame. SoT is among the top three or so modules available for NWN2, so he deserves all the kudos in the world for his induction. Here's an excerpt from my comments about his module:

Subtlety of Thay is a tremendous module that is easily among the top two or three mods I've played thus far for NWN2. It has a wonderful story. What begins as a simple fetch and retrieve quest becomes a problem of epic consequence, ultimately causing one's character to play a pivotal role in a conflict between two nations. That might sound a bit generic, but the details of what happens are very creative and engaging. There are a variety of interesting and well-developed characters that are deftly interwoven into the story as you progress through the module. Several of them become companions, at least for a time, and there is a great deal of well-done banter between party members, as well as between the PC and these NPC's. The plot is executed very well, with excellent pacing and good justification for almost everything that happens. The story is generally linear, especially once you get past the initial quest. That said, I almost never found that it felt railroaded, because the need for an urgent course of action was always justified by the story.

Arcane Scholar

2007-09-08T15:22:00.000-04:00

The main feature in this week's update at Rob McGinnis's NWN2 blog is a feature on the arcane scholar prestige class. Here's the lowdown on the requirements/features of this class:

Requirements
Skills: Spellcraft 8 ranks.
Feats: Empower Spell, Skill Focus (Concentration), and Skill Focus (Spellcraft).
Spellcasting: Able to cast 3rd-level arcane spells.
Class Features
Hit Die: d4.
Base Attack Bonus: Low.
High Saves: Will.
Weapon Proficiencies: Arcane Scholars gain no weapon proficiencies.
Armor Proficiencies: Arcane Scholars gain no armor proficiencies.
Skill Points: 2 + Int Modifier.
Class Skills: Appraise, Concentration, Craft Alchemy, Diplomacy, Lore, Search and Spellcraft.
Spells Per Day/Spells Known: When a new Arcane Scholar level is gained, the character gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as though he had gained a level in whatever arcane spellcasting class gave him access to 3rd-level arcane spells. If the character has more than one applicable arcane spellcasting class, he must pick one to improve.
Bonus Metamagic Feats: At 1st level, the Arcane Scholar gains the Maximize Spell feat. At 5th level, he gains the Quicken Spell feat.
Spell Knowledge: At 2nd Level, the Arcane Scholar and any party members gain a +1 bonus to their saves versus spells. This bonus increases to +2 at 8th level.
Improved Empower Spell: At 3rd level, the Arcane Scholar becomes especially adept at empowering spells. Empowered spells now only use a spell slot one level higher than the spell's actual level.
Improved Maximize Spell: At 7th level, the Arcane Scholar becomes especially adept at maximizing spells. Maximized spells now only use up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell's actual level.
Improved Quicken Spell: At 10th level, the Arcane Scholar becomes especially adept at quickening spells. Quickened spells now only use up a spell slot three levels higher than the spell's actual level.

All I can say is wow. There's usually some sort of disadvantage that goes along with becoming a particular prestige class rather than keeping your "pure" class, but I'm not really seeing one here aside from the requirement of taking those skill focus feats. And the payoff is huge. "Free" maximize and quicken feats at level one make up for the "lost" skill focus feats, but the improved empower, maximize, and quicken spells are an enormous advantage--especially for blaster sorcerers. I'm sure this will be a popular prestige class, probably more so in the long run than the Red Wizard of Thay.

(Portrait by wyldcat)

1.07 Patch Preview - Premonition

2007-09-02T01:25:00.000-04:00

The big item of significance in Rob McGinnis's post this week at the official NWN2 blog are the patch notes for 1.07. This is the first "named" patch, and it will be interesting to see if that's a new trend that we see moving forward. If nothing else, the time delay in getting this one out the door justifies treating it in a special manner. Since 1.03, the patch by which all others must be judged, Obsidian has been operating on an approximate 2 month timetable for its patch releases. Nevertheless, it looks like 1.07 is going to come closer to three months since the release of the 1.06 patch.

I usually avoid doing this before the actual release. But things have been a bit slow around my house lately in terms of nwn2 activities (or gaming activities, period--everything else is busy!!), here are some of the highlights of the upcoming 1.07 patch, at least from my perspective:

Character Mode and Strategy Mode – In advance of the release of the Mask of the Betrayer expansion pack this September, we’ve included one of the major new revisions we’ve made to the camera and control modes. Now, the four camera modes (Top Down, Chase, Driving and Free Camera) have been consolidated into two modes that are more configurable and clearer to use than the old modes – Character Mode and Strategy Mode.

This was something none of us really expected to see until the release of Mask. But given how much grief Obsidian took with regards to its camera systems in the initial release, it makes sense to roll this out early and work through any issues before the expansion is actually subjected to evaluation by review magazines.

Overall, this feature seems more like a streamlining of the options for less experienced gamers than a real change in feature set--I have a feeling that my experiences in game will feel absolutely identical to my current camera scheme (Top Down view). But I do like that there are additional customization features available, which might let me optimize things a bit better. I'm also hopeful that some of the "jumpiness" of the camera near some placeables -- especially walls a buildings -- will be less of an issue with the new camera. But I won't hold my breath.

* Marquee/Multi-Selection Revamp – Marquee and Multi-selection have been dramatically improved to make controlling a full party much easier. You can see the new improvements to Marquee and Multi-selection in the new Strategy Mode.

I'll be interested to see what happens with the multi-selection stuff. I'm pretty happy with just having my companions follow my selected character. But it might be nice to occasionally have a party control style that is closer to that from the Infinity games.

* Party AI On/Off Button – There is now a button on the main game UI, next to the rest button, that will toggle the entire party’s AI on or off.

This sounds like a great little feature. Every so often, especially when setting up for a big fight, or sometimes even during big fights, I have to "disable" AI by telling everyone to stand their ground so that I can set people where I want them. My hopes is that this will make this process a bit easier. Not a big deal, but it could be something I use every five hours or so when playing.

* Bronze Dragon - New Creature! The Bronze Dragon creature has been added to the Toolset, so expect him to show up in new community content as well as Mask of the Betrayer.

This isn't new, as we've already seen screenies of this beastie--and I still think the mantra about there not being enough dragons is way overblown given our ability to tint the models we already have--but I'm always a fan of new monsters being added to the toolset.

* A Creature Appearance Wizard has been added. This will allow you to change the appearance of spawned creatures and creature blueprints, including race, gender, armor and armor attachments. This feature can be accessed by right clicking on a creature or blueprint entry. NOTE: This feature is currently in Beta, and there are plans to improve its functionality.

This is a big deal, and patches a major hole in the default toolset. It is true that Grinning Fool's plugin was a fine alternative, but there was no excuse for this not existing in the stock toolset from the get-go. I'll be interested to see how many features it currently has, and how their development of it goes over the next several patches.

* A new custom skydome system has been added to the toolset, allowing users to replace the NWN2 skies with skydomes of their own creating.

Skydomes were mentioned in a previous news posting, but again this should be a great feature that really improves what modders can do with the exterior areas.

* The distance a DM can zoom out has been greatly increased.

I'm not into multiplayer, so it's hard for me to know how much the DM improvements really extend the DM client. But this one is interesting, because one thing I often would like to do is zoom out further as a player. I realize this might make me take a fps hit, but I'm hopeful that I'll nevertheless have that option with the new cameras.

* Pasting encounter triggers with spawn points no longer crashes the Toolset.

This sounds like one of the bugs that I know several builders have had trouble with--not just the crashes, but the resulting corruption. I'm hopeful that this will solve that particular problem. Toolset crashing and module corruption continues to be perhaps the biggest problem with Neverwinter Nights 2.

Overall, this is one of the meatier patches we've had since 1.03. I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl once it's released...assuming that life has slowed down a bit by then!!

Obsidian Fan Art Contest Winners!

2007-08-25T01:20:00.000-04:00

Today, Rob announced the Obsidian Fan Art Contest Winners on his blog. Interestingly, three of them were featured in one batch, which I and several commenters identified as being an exceptionally strong set of entries. The winners are:

NPC/Companion Category

Meet the Party by Minttu Hynninen

The King of Shadows Enters Meredelain by J. Cullen Lisbony

Construct vs. Grobnar by MaeBe

Creature/Monster Category

Earth Elemental by Kamen Anev

Shadow Reaver by Vaei

Ogre Mage by Laban

Congrats to these authors, and thanks again to everyone who entered the contest. It has been a lot of fun showcasing your work here on my blog these past few months!

NWN2 News

2007-08-25T01:16:00.000-04:00

Through a combination of working through orientation week, a cold that knocked me out for about 4 days, and a bit (though not as much as I'd like) of console gaming, I haven't had time to do anything Neverwinter in a while. Fortunately, the community has hardly been standing still! Here are some highlights of the news:

Granny Released!

I'm massively late in reporting on this, but Obsidian released their Granny plugin on 10 August, which allows users to export animated models from 3dsMax that will work in NWN2.

I don't have the slightest clue how any of that works, but fortunately, there are folks in our community do! Amraphael (of Neverwinter Zork fame), one of the more resourceful builders in the community, immediately used it to create an animated trap door--one of the first things that I remember discovering in the original game. I don't see much on the Vault yet that makes use of this tool, but with the advent of the new contest (see below), I'm sure we'll see more in the near future.

NWN2 for Macintosh

With a hat tip to QSW, who hat tipped Lucky Day, it looks like there may be a Macintosh version of NWN2 in the future. This is terrific news, as it could greatly expand the population of players in our community. Mac users constituted an important minority of players in NWN1, even though the lack of a toolset prevented them from participating as builders. Let's hope that this NWN2 conversion provides them with a stable toolset in addition to a great game!

Modules, Ho!

There have been a slew of good-looking modules released over the past few weeks:

Dark Avenger by Wyrin_D -- Looks to be the best work yet by NWN2's most prolific author, it's out of beta and has gotten a warm reception.
Asylum: A Corpse, a Vote by Ryam Baco -- continues the story of the weird psychological thriller, A Bet, A Corpse. How in the world does this not yet have 10 votes?? (and yes, I'm at fault, sorry)
Conan Chronicles 1 - Legions of the Dead by John McA -- The first NWN2 module by McA, who the author behind the epic and wildly popular Sands of Fate series (among others) for NWN1. You get to be Conan! Who doesn't like the thought of that!? While the scoring hasn't been as high as a mod like Nestlehaven, this module has already gotten 27 votes in just one week, which tells you it's been darn popular.
The Corruption of Kiahoro by human_male -- Promising 12 hours of gameplay, this module, which was just released yesterday, looks like it has been the result of a lot of work. Looking forward to seeing the reaction to this one.
Edit (MASSIVE OMISSION): Pool of Radiance 2 by Markus "Wayne" Schlegel -- The sequel to one of the better modules yet released on the vault. This is going to be high on my playlist when I return.

A New Contest!

The winners of the fan art contest have been announced, but I wanted to give them a separate posting. So I'll move on to the next contest, which focuses on custom content. From Rob's blog, here are the categories:

Creature/Monster (requires animations)
Weapons
Buildings (can have animations if you like, such as a swinging sign, but don't have to)
Placeables (can have animations, but don't have to)
Clothing/Armor
Props & Miscellaneous (equipable items that don't fit into any specific category - such as books and bouquets of flowers)

Really looking forward to the results of this contest! With three months to work with, content creators should have plenty of time to put together high quality entries. I'm particularly keen to see what happens in the creature/monster category, because custom creatures were an area in which the NWN1 community really excelled.

I'm starting to feel the Neverwinter itch once again, but I think I'm close to finishing final fantasy tactics... Once that happens, look out!

Game Design 101 - What I Learned from the First Half-Hour of Super Paper Mario

2007-08-20T02:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, my wife and I made use of a fabulous 20% off coupon at Toys R Us (now expired or I'd link to it--sorry) to purchase our second Wii game, Super Paper Mario. My wife was a big fan of the original Super Mario Brothers on NES, while I'm a fan of rpg's--sounded like a good match.

Unfortunately, the game fell flat on its face right from the get-go. The reason? It quite literally took 15 minutes to sit through the opening series of cutscenes. And then another 10 minutes to play through the first non-action area, and then sit through another cutscene, to finally hear the first "da-da-doo-da-da-dit---dah" that would signal the start of the actual game. And by this time, my wife had her head down on a couch cushion, undoubtedly wondering if we'd just wasted 40 bucks. :) It might have been different if the cutscenes were actually riveting. But the story of Super Paper Mario, like most Mario games, relies more on cuteness and humor than suspense. But even with with Resident Evil-level drama, a half hour is a long time to go before you get to do something interesting in a game.

So to all you would-be game designers out there, please learn from Mario's mistakes! Half-hour cutscenes and dialogs to start a module are a BAD IDEA! As demonstrated in Subtlety of Thay and countless of other NWN1/2 modules, the exposition and the majority of the plot development can come later. Get the player involved in the game--preferably doing something exciting--as quickly as you can.

Fortunately, I can report that once we got past the initial slowness, Super Paper Mario is turning out to be a lot of fun. The concept of flipping between 2D and 3D "dimensions" for beings from side-scrolling universes is awesome, and flipping to the 3D realm and discovering hidden secrets is a real treat. And I love the use of HP (though I refuse to call them "heart points") in a platformer-style game. It might make it a little bit easy (so far), but for someone not blessed with particularly good platformer skills (in fact, my wife laughs at me whenever she watches me play...I can't jump from block to block to save my life), it's a lot more fun to get a second shot at jumping that chasm than having to start a level from scratch.

We have some relatives coming into town in a few weeks. I think we've decided to trudge through the cutscenes one last time and create a save just before the real action begins in case any guests want to play. Because it does seem to be a fun game. I just don't know what the designers were thinking when they put together the opening.

What's up?

2007-08-14T01:01:00.001-04:00

Sorry it's been so quiet over the past week. This post won't help matters much, but just an update on what I've been up to:

Ordered Wii, did a lot of research on Wii games.
Rediscovered Final Fantasy Tactics while getting reading to put PS1 into deep storage. PS1 now hooked up to TV again, and I'm playing through that game again. I'll write a review once I'm done--it might, at least, be relevant to those looking forward to playing the version for the PSP. ... I'm almost considering buying the PSP just so I could play Tactics on the bus. I just love that game.
Received Wii on Friday, threw out my arm playing Wii Sports, and am now having nightly battles across minigames in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz with the wife. Great fun.

I swear I'll get back to Nestlehaven and all the rest of my Neverwinter "duties" shortly. But I might need to take another week or so off before I get the urge to return to D&D land again. This happens probably twice a year, and I always come back refreshed and rearing to go. Hope ya'll will bear with me in the meantime while I get my console kicks in. :)

Wii In Route

2007-08-08T00:10:00.000-04:00

We ended up purchasing our Wii from PCConnection Sunday night. I'd provide a link to the product page, but it's already out of stock, of course. :)

In a $330 bundle, we got the Wii ($250), an extra remote ($40), and an extra nunchuk ($20)--that's a $310 value! :) But when you factor in free shipping and no sales tax, we actually come out ahead by about five bucks compared to buying it locally. We also ordered a component cable, but it's unclear whether that will be arriving with the package or in a later shipment.

Anyway, DHL says the package will arrive on Friday, in time for a weekend filled with lots of intense tennis & bowling action, not to mention some manic Mii design.

I've been doing a lot of research on games the last few nights, aided by X-Play, Gamespot, IGN, TheWiire, and, of course, the recommendations you folks posted here. Here are the games I'm thinking about, in rough order of priority, for purchase or rental over the first several months:

Rayman Raving Rabbids - too funny looking to pass up.
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz - looks like a similar game to Crash Bandicoot, which we enjoyed a lot on PS1.
Excite Truck - I've always had a soft spot for arcade racers, though I'd love to see a Grand Tourismo-style game for the Wii someday as well. Like so many things, the wii-mote seems perfect for a driving simulator.
Super Paper Mario - Wife likes platformers, I like rpg's, so this sounds like a fun game to tide us over until Super Mario Galaxy.
Mercury Meltdown Revolution - looks like a fun puzzle game, and at only $20 new, it should be very cheap used!
Warioware: Smooth Moves - Probably a rental candidate, it looks fun to play through at least once.

I'd eventually like to check out Zelda, but I plan to keep getting most of my rpg fix with NWN2. With the console I hope to rediscover the "twitch" gamer within, lost lo these many years, and focus on multiplayer stuff I can do with the family.

Actually, "rediscover" might be too strong of a word--but I've never owned a current console before, my only other one being a PS1 that I purchased long after PS2's were on the market. Growing up, I played with my neighbor's NES quite a bit, but at home all I had was my 8088. So this should be fun.

August 2007 Hall of Fame Inductions

2007-08-07T00:36:00.000-04:00

After last month's disappointment, when no modules were eligible, the August '07 NWN2 Hall of Fame class is probably the strongest yet:

Dark Waters 1: Highcastle by Adam Miller
Here's an excerpt from my comments on this module:

It's a wonderful setting. I guess you could call it Final Fantasy meets Waterworld--a very cool blend of traditional swords 'n magic fantasy with late 1800's-style technology, all set in an interesting post-cataclysm world that is just starting to come back to life. It's very deep and well-conceived, with a unique history, class structure, and feel. The setting alone makes it worth checking this module out.
...
But what really impressed me--and in this way, it reminded me a lot of Dreamcatcher 2--were the variety and creativity of the various puzzles you encounter along the way. None were particularly difficult, but they were interesting and original, and often dazzling.

B2: Keep on the Borderlands by Enoa4
Excerpt from my comments:

This is a fun, old fashioned, low-level D&D dungeon crawl. It's pretty straight and to the point -- there's a bunch of Bad Things living near the keep, and the local leader thinks it'd be great if you'd go kill them for him. So, off you go to the Caves of Chaos to slay evil and rid the area of their infestation. The thing I really enjoyed about this module was exploring the many intricate and interconnected dungeons that make up the many Caves of Chaos. Each cave housed a different tribe representing a different sort of monster, and each tribe had a "boss" leader of sorts that I needed to kill.

But while that sounds fairly simple, the caves are varied enough, and have enough twists, turns, and variable-sized chambers that it was hard to predict what lurked around each corner. Combat was pretty fast and furious at times, particularly before I advanced a few levels. Furthermore, the caves were interconnected such that sometimes accidentally stumble into a far more powerful tribe's territory, making for a harrowing few seconds as I re-organized my party to deal with the new threat.

Night Howls with Nestlehaven by jackyo123
Unfortunately, I haven't yet finished this one. I'm probably 6-8 hours into it by now, and so far, it's clearly among the best modules I've played for NWN2. How well it finishes will probably be what determines the score, but I predict I'll rate it very high. Expect to see my mini-review of this mod sometime later this week, assuming I finish it in the next few nights.

It is a bit surprising that Nestlehaven has already inducted, though, as it doesn't seem like it has been out all that long, and modules must be available for three months prior to being eligible for induction. I first mentioned Nestlehaven here on my blog on May 29th, and I think it had been marked final for just about a week by that point. That would indicate that it shouldn't have been eligible for induction until September. What has happened is this. First, Nestlehaven went online initially as a public beta, which began May 5th. NWVault uses that date as the date of its first availability for the purposes of its inductions. Even so, it still wouldn't have been eligible until September, except that the HoF induction was delayed until the 5th of this month for whatever reason (Maximus gets busy).

The end result is that Nestlehaven was probably inducted a month too soon, which means that it is going to miss out on a month of being featured on the Vault's front page. That said, it's hard to claim that the module or its author was a victim here--with 173 votes and nearly 12,000 downloads, it's gotten plenty of attention. :) But I can see this being a bigger deal for modules that have had extended public betas, like Sgt. Why's Red Hand of Doom.

Other NWN2 Inductees
Also entering the Hall this month is one of the first custom tilesets for NWN2, Robinson Workshop's Deep Halls. It looks like amazing, and I look forward to seeing this in future modules.

NWN1 Inductees
I played two of the inducted modules for the NWN1 Hall of Fame, but only completed one of them:

Pirates of the Sword Coast by BioWare
Here's an excerpt from my comments, dated 17 October 2005:

The writing is generally quite good, with lots of fun Arrrr's and Avast's as you'd expect. The visuals are stunning, with a tremendous rural/island tileset that I hope to see in a lot more modules in the coming year, as well as some great aquatic and desert island placeables. There are also a ton of custom items, most of which are gags…I spent a lot of time chuckling to myself while playing this game. There are also a lot of custom sounds here, including great wave noises and some excellent voiceovers by the narrator pirate captain. Unlike the official campaign, the voice acting (at least what is there) is awesome. Finally, there was a modified and innovative new system of skillcheck dialog options, including not only persuade checks, but also bluff, intimidate, taunt, and wisdom checks.

Drow Tales: The Librarian's Tales by by Capn Gherkin
Unfortunately, I never finished this module. It had a wonderful opening set of cutscenes and a great concept for the story, but after only about an hour of gameplay, I encountered a faction bug that I was never able to avoid--probably due to blowing lots of stuff up with the included Sorcerer character. The combat was also a bit over-the-top for my tastes. Still, the setting was wonderful, and really seemed to capture the essence of Drow culture. I always had planned to go back and play it again once it had been updated, but eventually stopped checking back. I do remember contributing to the pre-publishing peer feedback on Beemerchick's Vault review, which seems like a pretty balanced take on the module.

Also joining the Hall, via NWN1's rule about series inductions, were the rest of Sethai's NWS modules. I played two of these, for which I'll post excerpts of my comments below:

NWS - Daenarian's Tears by Sethai (my favorite of the NWS series)
Except from my comments, dated 23 June 2005:

Daenarian’s Tears is the second I’ve played in Sethai’s NWS “series.” Given the rumors offered in the module description about a mage knowing of unknown power, I took my lv 13 lawful neutral wizard in this mod. I thought this module, while very short (which, of course, is part of the point), was very good and has a more interesting story and far better dialog then many of the larger and more elaborate modules on the vault. This module features some fairly heavy fighting, but ultimately it comes down to an interesting decision that the player has to make. Someone else on this board described it as a 3-way lose situation. I’m not completely sure I agree, but you’ll certainly have to make a tough choice here. Bravo on this – it’s so rare to see ambiguous choices in modules, and Sethai always seems to anchor his modules on these sorts of “character” decisions.

NWS - Cradle of Cold by Sethai
Excerpt from my comments, dated 5 July 2005

The story was decent, and there is a decision to make at the end of the mod, but it pales in comparison to the surprisingly deep stories of Sethai’s later two modules. Still, the premise is good enough to motivate one’s actions in the mod, which is fine given how short it is. This one is well polished from a technical standpoint, and there were no bugs or typos that I encountered. The end result is a fun little hack and slash romp, and as long as you don’t expect it to be much deeper than that, you won’t be disappointed. It’s a nice way to spend an evening, and I continue to love the concept of these Neverwinter Snowflake modules.

Also being inducted is Scarface's Persistent Banking System, which might be something I can use for my character creator. I'll have to check it out...

Congrats to all of the great authors and content creators who had their work inducted this month! We all appreciate your contributions to this community.

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Finale

2007-08-06T23:41:00.000-04:00

Tonight, we're featuring the final three images from the Obsidian Fan Art Contest. One, by Patcha, is an updated and much improved version of a prior version that was posted here.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this contest--it's been a lot of fun showing your work on my blog! Good luck to all contestants, and to Obsidian as they go through the very difficult task of choosing the winners!

Khelgar by Tuyen

Bishop's Stare by Jeff Reid

Shadow Reaver by Patcha

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Monsters!

2007-08-06T00:02:00.001-04:00

Tonight, we're featuring three of the more sinister monsters in the official campaign: the dragon, the illithid, and, of course, the avatar of the King of Shadows. The latter piece is particularly impressive, and the download page for that piece features the artist with his creation. :)

King of Shadows enters The Meredelain by J. Cullen Lisbony

Dark Feast by JackTaylor (this artist also did a piece featuring Elanee, which was featured here)

Red Dragon by Silevran Moonflower (Silevran also had two pieces featured here, most notably for her Shandra piece)

The Wii

2007-08-05T03:21:00.000-04:00

So tonight, we were at a party at my wife's coworker's house. And he had a Nintendo Wii. All we did is play Wii Sports the entire time (as much as the kid would allow us to, anyway). And we had a blast. This is the first time my wife's been genuinely excited about a video game system, at least since we went through a mild playstation 1 phase a few years ago. So needless to say, we decided that we need to get one. :)

Obviously, supply is a major problem right now. But assuming that can be conquered, I wanted to figure out what exactly we'll need to invest into the thing in order to get up to speed. Here's my list:

The Wii -- $250
Extra controller -- $40 (we could get Wii Play plus a controller for $50...though I've heard that game might not be worth the ten bucks)
Extra nunchuk thingie -- $20 (maybe...not sure it'd be used much, except maybe for boxing)
Component Cable -- $20 (we recently bought a 37" HDTV, and while the Wii isn't HD, I want it to look as good as possible...and it does seem to make a big difference)

I'd also like to get the charge station, though we have a good number of quality rechargeable extra AA's floating around for our digital cameras, so it's probably not necessary.

So we're looking at roughly a $330 startup. And that's before we get any games. I'm sure we'll go the rental/used route as much as possible, but even used Wii games are pricey right now.

Any recommendations? Zelda seems like the only game that I'd be personally obligated to get, given my interests. But I'm more interested in games that my wife (a non-gamer) might like, and that we can play together...

Obsidian Blog Update - Skydomes and Sounds

2007-08-04T18:49:00.000-04:00

After a weeks' hiatus, Rob McGinnis was back posting to his blog yesterday. There were two significant pieces of news.

First, was the announcement of support for custom skydomes in the new expansion. This feature should help builders when they're using exterior areas but do not want the standard sunny day or starry night up in the sky. Maerduin mentioned these his most recent post, and they do offer some great opportunities--I can imagine that we might see some brilliant cutscenes if the sunsets he mentioned are ever implemented. Skyboxes were certainly a popular custom content feature in NWN1--I remember Hugie making great use of them in his modules.

The post also features some previews of some of the new sound sets for spellcasting. With the exception of the Warlock's spells, all spellcasting chants in NWN2 were originally taken straight from the original game. They work really well, but I'll be glad to have some new ones to listen to. The samples they provided sound a bit...well...silly without the swirling magic noises that typically accompany casting, but I'm sure they'll sound better in context. The Mass Fowl spell is pretty humorous in concept, though I worry that I might get a bit tired of hearing that particular chant if I use it with any frequency...especially the laugh at the end of it.

They also posted some screenshots of the new camera GUI. I'm with Maerduin in that I'm pretty happy with the current camera controls right now. But this new system seems like it will abolish some of the redundancy and complexity associated with the current four cameras, while at the same time giving users a bit more control. As long as the end result is basically identical to what I"m currently using, I'll be happy. Here's the strategy mode screenie:
----

Finally, while this isn't related to McGinnis's post, I wanted to send out some props to Amraphael. In the process of creating his ZORK module, he has created some awesome custom content that he is already releasing to the vault. These include a wonderful "birdies" visual effect, as well as a gorgeous rainbow. I can't wait to see these in game.

It's just so refreshing to see someone taking the initiative to personally produce any content needs he might have in terms of content in the game, rather than just complain about how Obsidian hasn't given them enough monsters/placeables/whatever. I'm sure we'll see more of that once the Granny tool is released, allowing folks to make animated custom content. But, for whatever reason, it's been fairly rare thus far.

Anyway, major props to Amraphael--looking forward to your module!

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Andir03 & Silevran Moonflower

2007-08-04T18:11:00.000-04:00

Today, we're showing pieces by Andir03 and Silevran Moonflower. I'm particularly fond of the Shandra piece--a character whose story was one of the real highlights of the official campaign.

Calm Before the Storm by andir03

A Gnome and his Construct by andir03

Shandra - From Farmer to Fighter by Silevran Moonflower

Dryad by Silevran Moonflower

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Elanee, Neeshka, Shandra, and Zhjaeve

2007-08-04T00:56:00.000-04:00

Tonight we're featuring four entries in the companion competition. All are either actual paintings on canvas, or are digital creations in the same style. I think it's another strong batch. The Elanee piece has been criticized for how true it is to the in-game model, but I think it's a fabulous re-imagining (though I always pictured her as being a bit more "granola"). And the Neeshka piece is one of the more dynamic entries we've seen in the NPC competition.

Elanee by Caleb Marlborough (oil on canvas)

Assassination Attempt by Jonny Ree (in OpenCanvas)

Blood Will Always Tell by Katie Irvin-Beaudry

Zhjaeve by Laban (Laban also did the humorous Ogre Mage/Grobnar piece featured here)

A Corpse, A Vote Release Approacheth

2007-08-03T03:16:00.000-04:00

One of the more... well.... unique authors in our community is approaching the release of his next module, A Corpse, A Vote. As the hype builds for this exciting event, Christian Mayr posted this video on the vault yesterday:

I'm excited about this, as I really enjoyed his first module, A Bet, a Corpse, and gave it a rating of "8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone." Here's an excerpt from my comments:

I personally have played well over 100 modules for NWN1, several of which fell into the "bizarre psychological abstraction" genre. But this one probably takes the cake for absurdity. Wonderfully creative ideas throughout. On the surface it's completely random, and yet there is a coherent story here, with pieces that actually do fit together as an intriguing metaphor for the player character's shattered mind. There's good humor here as well, but it's set against the backdrop of something terrible that has happened, which gave the module a very uneasy feeling even as a grinned my way through it.

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Companions

2007-08-03T00:45:00.000-04:00

Today's batch features well-done sketches of Sand, Qara, Neeshka, and Bishop. The latter two are by PatroLi, who shows what you can do with a set of crayons if you have some talent.

By my count, there are 14 more pieces to feature in the contest, which should take us through the weekend.

Alchemy Lab by Pinguicha (this artist also submitted a fabulous portrait of Bishop earlier in the contest, featured here)

Qara in Pencil by Quillmaster (this artist has two other submissions in this contest: another of Qara, and one of a dragon, both in ink)

Neeshka by PatroLi

Bishop and Karnwyr by PatrioLi

Obsidian Fan Art Contest - Galil

2007-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Tonight, we're featuring the four submissions of Galil. They've received some criticism for looking a bit like rushed cartoon storyboards, but I think their roughness is part of their appeal. Nice contribution to the contest.

Pixie by Galil

Glow Spider by Galil

Qara by Galil

Torio by Galil

Obsidian Contest: A Very Strong Batch

2007-08-01T01:01:00.000-04:00

This batch contains two of my favorite entries in the monster category thus far. These two entries, by Kamen Anev and Vaei, really try to re-imagine a monster rather than duplicate its appearance in-game. The results are far more compelling and interesting pieces than some of the others we've seen. It doesn't hurt that the artistry itself is spectacular. ;) I continue to be in awe of the quality of work we've seen in this contest.

Earth Elemental by Kamen Anev (I absolutely love the faces on these things)

Shadow Reaver by Vaei (transforms what I considered a rather silly-looking monster in the OC to something that's legitimately terrifying)

Elanee by Buckyg

Construct vs. Grobnar by MaeBe (wonderful use of lighting)

Obsidian Fan Art Contest: Everyone Loves Elanee

2007-07-31T00:53:00.000-04:00

Four NPC pieces with tonight's update, three of which feature Elanee. Elanee was one of my favorite NPC's from the OC (I've managed to repress that awful come-on scene right before battle at Crossroads Keep--yet another case where the optional romance is better avoided). Yeah, she's a bit of a stalker. But she's a strong and otherwise mature female character, and those were otherwise pretty much absent from the companion roster--well, except maybe for the Gith, but I liked her too. I wish I could have used Elanee in my party more often when I played through the campaign, but her skills overlapped a bit too much with my cleric's...and in the end, I'm a bit too much of a power gamer to put up with suboptimal party composition for very long. :)

There have been 10 contest submissions in the last 48 hours, which puts me massively behind in this series of posts. But that's a good problem to have. :) I'm sure this will continue today and tomorrow with the contest deadline being tomorrow, but I'll try to post four a day for the rest of the week--I expect we'll still get through them all before an winner announcement is made.

Elanee by Firestorm2117 (Firestorm also has submitted a painting of Neeshka, which I posted last week) - This is my favorite of this batch.

Elanee by WWT (pencil)

Elanee and Dragon by BuckyG (a 3D studio submission)

Zeeaire by Tuyen (ink)

Obsidian Art Contest - 4 days left

2007-07-28T02:23:00.000-04:00

Entries are starting to pour in with the contest deadline looming. Tonight we have a pair of Digital Studio pieces of Sorcha Ravenlock, and two hand-drawn entries from other artists. The use of programs like Daz Studio was somewhat controversial, as comparing that work to more handmade work can be difficult because so much of the "work" may have been done by the package rather than the artist. This problem was solved when Rob decided to allow two new categories for digitally-created artwork like this, which is a fine solution--kudos to Rob.

Unshed Tears by Sorcha Ravenlock (in Daz Studio, with post-work in Photoshop) - Easily my favorite in this batch, very moving. Maybe I'm I sucker for babies. Being a father'll do that to ya.

Elanee by Sorcha Ravenlock

Tholapsyx! by msykes (hehe)

Khelgar - Monk by combobreaker

Dear Diary...

2007-07-27T00:49:00.000-04:00

Dear Diary,

I know I've been promising an update to the FRWCC for about a month now, but I have to be in a certain mood to build (i.e. not tired!!), and the few times I've been in that mood over the past few weeks have resulted in me working on my other passion (baseball), rather than plugging away in the toolset. It's still a high priority item. But when I'm not feeling particularly chipper at night, and yet still want to avoid going to bed for a while longer, I often just want to play games.

So a few nights ago, I downloaded Night Howls over Nestlehaven. About an hour and a half in, I can already see why it's so highly rated. The little bit of it that I've seen has a tremendous amount of polish, with a bunch of creatively designed npc's. The story seems both sinister and intriguing, with a great open-ended feel.

Anyway, unless the mood strikes before then, my plan is to play through Night Howls, because it's been so much fun. And there's a possibility that I'll play the Zelbross Affair too, as I want to include materials from that module in the update as well. But by then, I should be able to take the time to get working on the character creator once again. Features in the next update will include:

Full support for the persistent companion system, including several companions that you can add to your persistent roster for use in modules that support that system, as well as database functions.
An NPC and (perhaps) items from Red Hand of Doom. NPC has been provided by Sgt. Why already.
An NPC and items from from Night Howls over Nestlehaven (provided the author grants permission).
Items and (perhaps) an NPC from The Zelbross Affair. Items have been provided by seryn already.

Neverwinter Nights 2: The Israeli community

2007-07-25T00:54:00.000-04:00

Via FlameofUdun's post on the NWN2 boards, I thought this video was kind of amusing.

Crossroads of Fate

2007-07-23T00:52:00.000-04:00

Crossroads of Fate was a submission for the 1st Obsidian Module contest, but unfortunately the author didn't get a chance to finish his work within the tight contest deadlines. Fortunately, he continued to push forward with it and recently released a finished version on the vault. I played it over the course of a couple of nights this past week. Here are my comments:

My Vote: 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 16 Dwarven Defender (leveled up after Grimm Brigade)
Module Version Played: Dated 5 July 2007

This module does a lot of things really well. The companion NPC's are well-defined, and the author succeeds in the very difficult task of making companions that you've just met in-game seem as though they've been the life-long friends that the story requires. Combat, particularly in the second half of the mod, is challenging and over-the-top high-level action. The introductory movie is extremely well done, and the closing movies do a great job of emphasizing the consequences of the actions you take in the module. Area design is generally quite good, especially the beautiful exterior rendering of the docks district of Tsurlagol. The module successfully nestles itself within the Faerun, and named characters from source books make substantial appearances. And most importantly, the module challenges the player with a difficult decision, in which, no matter what path you choose, there is no ideal outcome.

All that said, there were some aspects of the module that limited how highly I can recommend it. The first is its brevity. It's perhaps unfair to critique a module for this, as it was an Obsidian Contest module, but what we get to play feels essentially like the last hour of what could be a 5-10 hour module. The author does a good job of catching the player up on what has happened in the story, but I can't help but feel like we missed out on all the great stuff that lead to that point. Furthermore, the scale of the area design is large enough that the module feels a bit underpopulated. There are NPC's with which one can interact that fall outside the main plotlines, but there weren't really true side-quests (that I could find, though there are hints of some) that would make the city feel alive and real. In fact, the fairly superficial interactions that are present and the sometimes rough English (it's usually very readable, but I still recommend soliciting the help of a native English speaker to make your dialog flow better), made the mod as a whole still feel a bit unfinished.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that what's there is good, thoughtful, and worth playing. I love the fact that there are three endings, and that the outcomes are far from predictable given one's decisions in the game--though they make perfect sense. I really look forward to playing more of your work. I had a hard time scoring this one, but I think my impressions best match this line from the FAQ, which indicates a 6 is the most appropriate score: "perhaps you found it enjoyable/useful, and something that you're generally positive about, but also found that it has enough drawbacks that it's not something you can recommend without a caveat."

Gametrailer Mask of the Betrayer Video - Treants!

2007-07-23T00:41:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the heads up by QSW at NWVault, I watched the Gametrailer MotB video this evening. It shows a character wandering about a snowy terrain (using snow textures), fighting off some of the baddies that live in that area. The white of the snow is a bit over-saturated, so it's hard to see the detail of the texture very well, though I'm sure that this has to do with how the video was captured more than the actual game's graphics. The video clip also shows the mountainous area we saw in Feargus's video earlier this month, which Nathanial Chapman (the Obsidian rep) identified as being a location in Thay. The combat seemed fairly boring, with Wyverns going down as fast as Gnolls, but I'm sure this was mostly likely due to the fact that they're demoing the game with an overpowered character.

The coolest part of the video, however, were the close-ups we get of four new creature types: the two-headed Fell Troll, the Shambling Mound, the Wyvern and the Treant. They all look great. This is the first time I've seen anything indicating that a Treant will be among the new creature models, and it makes the Tolkien fan in me happen. It looked a bit small for my tastes (about the size of the 7-year old Ash tree in my back yard), but the toolset's scaling features make that an easy fix for builders.

Thanks to gametrailer's easy embedding features, here's the video if you haven't already watched it:

The above Treant image was by Leo Winstead. Here's some other Treant art from around the web:

Warlord: Treant

Thornwode Deeps: The Treant by Stephanie Pui-Man Law

Blasted Treant by Tom Galambos:

Treant by Denmark

And, of course, the brilliant Treant model by DLA's Elryn for NWN1:

Obsidian Fan Art Contest - Companions

2007-07-22T02:49:00.000-04:00

Tonight's update on the Obsidian Fan Art contest features three of the more memorable companions from the official campaign: Elanee, Qara, and Neeshka (twice). Only 10 days left in the contest!

Elanee by Jennofurr (hand drawn + photoshop)

Qara in Ink by Quillmaster (ink on paper, photographed)

Neeshka by Firestorm2117 (hand drawn + photoshop)

Neeshka Out of Her Element by Dan Bruington

Daark Twins

2007-07-20T01:15:00.000-04:00

Also among modules that I played over a week ago, but never got a chance to write comments for, is Daark Twins by E. C. Patterson (aka ciViLiZed). Despite what you might assume from the author's 133t-speak handle, this was a well-done module, with professional-feeling polish and a surprise at its end. My comments:

My Vote: 7 - Deserves a Look
Character: included character, lv. 5 wizard Jacob Daark.
Module version played: v.1.1, released 23 June 2007

There haven't been very many modules for NWN2 that have deviated from the standard hack 'em up plus story rpg standard. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the traditional rpg's, but it is nice to play modules that march off the beaten path now and then. Daark Twins is one of those modules. It's essentially linear, though there are a few possible endings to the module. But it essentially plays out as a series of challenges. Some of these do involve combat, but others involve either puzzles or tough decisions. What holds it all together are a decent little story (with a surprising punch line), as well as absolutely superb area design.

Attention to detail is fantastic. Walking through the forests, you'll see wolves scamper out of your way and run down a wildlife trail. And some of the visuals in this module are spectacular, especially in terms of how skillfully lighting is used. There's a castle on an island in the middle of a lake that is simply breathtaking, as well as a beautiful puzzle that makes great use of the visual effects editor (I'm guessing). The writing is also very good.

The only real critique I have of the module is that it seems a bit anticlimactic. Granted, it is a contest module, and therefore had to be short to satisfy the contest rules, not to mention the limited time in which it was built. But after everything one works to do to get to the ending, the final encounter was rather tame. And even though the ending of the tale is surprising and unexpected, I still didn't feel completely satisfied after playing it. That said, it's still absolutely worth a look. It's polished, enjoyable, and perhaps best of all, different. Thanks for sharing the module, and I hope to play something more of yours in the future!

A little linkage...

2007-07-17T01:18:00.000-04:00

I did a bit of work on the blogroll links tonight. If someone hadn't posted in six months, I removed their blog. There was also one case in which a blog was declared closed, so that was removed as well. If folks want to be re-added, I'm happy to do so, just let me know.

I also have added a few new entries to the list over the past few months, and I thought I'd highlight them briefly:

Amraphael, who is working on a conversion of ZORK to NWN2. His thread on the official boards even has Rob McGinnis excited. :)
Andurga, who is working on an FR module called Thayvian Nights. It deals with Thay (surprise!), and promises a "large and intricate plot full of twists and turns."
Inder, who is working on another FR module called Shadows of the Past. It is set in the Silver Marches, and has your character running as a fugitive from the law.
Lorft, who authored the Obsidian contest module Cry Wolf, is working on a module called Planescape: Legacy. Anything set in planescape is immediately at the top of my radar, of course, so I follow this one with great interest.
Storyteller2007, who is working on a module called Through the Looking Glass - An Unjust War. The module seems to be in its very early stages, but might be interesting.
Wyrin D'njargo, already author of three modules for NWN2, and has just released an alpha of the first chapter of his next module series, Dark Avenger.

Do give all of these blogs a look when you get a chance. :)

The latest from the Obsidian Fan Art Contest

2007-07-17T01:17:00.000-04:00

With this post, we're up to date on the fan art contest! This is, perhaps, the most impressive batch we've seen thus far. I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite--good thing I'm not judging this contest!! :)

Dragon in Ink by Quillmaster

Driannasi--Painting Before The Great War by Black Feather

Ogre Mage by Laban

Bishop - L'enfant terrible by Kathrin Richter

A Walk in the Woods

2007-07-16T01:16:00.000-04:00

I apologize for how long it's been since I've posted something that wasn't just news commentary or what have you. I played A Walk in the Woods over a week ago, wrote up the bulk of these comments then, but somehow never got a chance to finish them and vote on it. So, here we go:

My Vote: 6 - Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 1 human female chaotic good warlock (finished lv. 4)
Module version played: version 1.1, released 5 June 2007

A Walk in the Woods is a good little module that is very much in the spirit of the Obsidian Brothers Grimm module contest. Another commenter mentioned that it reminded them of Shrek, and I think that's a great observation. Though it doesn't quite have the level of humor of Shrek, you do get to interact with a sampling of characters from Grimm Brothers stories, including Snow White, Rapunzel, Hanzel & Gretel, out of context from their stories. Your ultimate goal, however, is to help Prince Charming recover from a terrible spell that has been cast upon him by an evil sorceress, all so that he can marry the beautiful Cinderella.

Somewhat like Grimm Brigade, the module consists primarily of a series of mini-adventures with characters from different fairy tales. They are typically hack and slash, but vary from fairly typical dungeon crawls to less conventional mini-adventures. Accompanying you throughout your adventure are two henchmen, Tom Thumb (a very short halfling rogue) and Thumbelina (a fairy wizard). There is a great deal of banter between the two throughout the module, and in my opinion, their interactions were really the highlight of the module.

All that said, in the end, I just never really felt engaged in the module. I can't quite put my thumb on it. Maybe it's the fact that there's not much explanation of who the PC is, and what role they play in the setting aside from being a strong arm. Maybe it's that the story is pretty predictable, and is so light-hearted that it's hard to feel much tension. Maybe it's the combat--it isn't easy, and even features some creative and novel creatures, but the boss fights weren't particularly memorable or difficult. Maybe it's the rapid rate at which you gain experience and the even faster rate at which you accumulate loot. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing that's really wrong with this module, and it's clear that the author put an enormous amount of effort into this, especially given the time constraints of this contest. It's just that the module didn't grab me.

As such, I had a really hard time scoring this one. Looking at the Voting FAQ, I see this written under a rating of 6: It does a few things well but maybe it's a bit routine...it's a good piece of content, but it's a little hard to find superlatives for it. That's pretty much where I'm at with this module, so that's what I'm voting. It is intended to be a positive vote, even if it is one of the lower you've received. Thanks for your submission--I'm looking forward to playing your other modules!

Obsidian Contest Update

2007-07-15T13:07:00.000-04:00

Here's our latest update from the contest:

Elanee and Friend by JackTaylor ("cheap pencil on cheap typing paper")

Khelgar and Neeshka by Hellcow/Spajk (in Painter with a wacom pad; my personal favorite in this batch)

Bishop by Ernie (in Photoshop)
Shadow Reaver by Patcha

Sicko

2007-07-15T03:08:00.000-04:00

Tonight, my wife and I went out and had our first dinner & movie date since before our daughter was born well over a year ago.

We saw Sicko. This is the third Michael Moore film I've seen, and it was the best of the three.

I'm going to be brief about this: I feel disappointed in and embarrassed for my country right now. Yes, like all Moore films that I've seen, it is one-sided, and prone to oversimplification and hyperbole. But also like all of his films that I've seen, there is enough substance to his argument to be both compelling and impossible to ignore.

I can't pretend to know the best solution for health care in this country. I'm going to wager that it will probably not be exactly the same as what works for other countries. But I am certain of two things. One, there is a very real and very serious problem here, and it is completely unacceptable. And two, we as a country have a moral obligation to fix it.

...I won't let my politics become a regular intrusion on my postings here, as I know that's not why you folks come here. But at the same time, part of the reason I have this blog is so that I can have a voice about things I care about. So I'm going to go ahead and be off topic this time. Future posts will be back to focusing on hacking and slashing. Mostly.

Feargus Interview

2007-07-14T00:53:00.000-04:00

I spent 15 minutes watching the E3 Mask of the Betrayer Gamespot video just now. There's not a ton of new information, but a few highlights:

The character customization options with the Genasi look pretty fun. They show one of the water genasi's hair syles, which essentially looks like cephalopod tentacles sticking out of one's head. Not that I get that excited about character appearance, but it should make the multiplayer crowd happy. :)
The new camera settings look promising. They don't seem all that revolutionary, but if they did more to prevent the camera zoom from darting around in top-down mode, I'd be pleased. It also looks to me like you can zoom out farther in top-down mode (or, as it's now called, strategy mode), which should be really nice.
If you fast forward to 11:30 or so, you get a fairly long look at a Wyvern in the distance. Unfortunately, Feargus decides to fight Gnolls instead, so we don't get to see it in action. But the passive animation is neat, with its tail darting back and forth. :)

Update: In the new screenshots at IGN UK, there's a shot of a great looking golem(?). It's great to see some of the new creature models that will be in the game, as they should prove extremely helpful to builders:

Obsidian supporting its contest / Wyverns!

2007-07-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

I'm making it a weekly habit to report on Obsidian's blog entries, but they've just been so good this past month.

First, the lead feature had to do with Obsidian's fan art contest. I think it's wonderful that Obsidian is doing this mid-term feature on their contest, as it's something that a lot of community members wished they'd done more of during the module contest. There are still a few weeks left for you artistic-types out there, so be sure to get your entries in.

Second, they released a new screenshot of one of the new monster models that will appear in Mask of the Betrayer--a Wyvern (pictured top right). Pretty amazing looking critter--I'm looking forward to seeing it in game! :) It is a bit different of a design than we saw from DLA in Wyvern Crown of Cormyr (below). More avian than reptilian (though aves is technically a clade within reptilia, of course...).

Update:
I decided to grab some more pictures of Wyverns from around the 'net, just because I think they're neat creatures:

Wyvern Hunting by Donato Giancola:

Ochogames:
Draconika:

Another Wyvern:

Obsidian Fan Art Contest Update

2007-07-10T02:44:00.000-04:00

Here is our next batch of fan art for Obsidian's Fan Art contest. This seems like a particularly well-done set!

Sand Portrait by Minttu Hynninen, in Photoshop CS
Meet the Party, also by Minttu Hynninen (make sure to click on this one so you can read the dialog)

Bishop by Pinguicha (my personal favorite of this bunch)
Khelgar and Neeshka by Richard Gulick

Interview with ADK

2007-07-08T02:13:00.000-04:00

There is a nice interview with ADK at the Vault. I played both of his Kunoichi modules and enjoyed them. They offer good roleplaying, and offer a great respite from the more typical fantasy adventures we see among NWN modules. I'm excited to see that he is working on both a prequel and the conclusion of his Kunoichi series, though I do tend to wonder if I'll ever get a chance to play them--I still haven't reinstalled NWN1 after my hard drive issues, and sometimes I wonder if I'd be able to go back without getting frustrated by both the graphics and the game engine. I'm pretty committed to NWN2 at this point.

Anyway, here are excerpts from my comments on both of ADK's Kunoichi modules. Both were posted 14 October, 2005.

Kunoichi 1

Kunoichi is one of the most controversial modules yet produced because of its content. Nevertheless, it is a quality module that emphasizes roleplaying and allows the player to make decisions that have meaningful effects on the outcome of the story. You play a female recruit to a group of ninja assassins. There is honor in this sort of occupation, but being an assassin is a brutal business.
...snip...
For its roleplaying virtues alone, this module is hard to beat. If you can stomach the emotional ending, I would recommend this module to anyone interested in a short module that will test your principles and allow you to make meaningful decisions.

Kunoichi 2

The structure of the module is similar to the first – you are given a series of missions in a nearby town and sent on your way. This time you'll be accompanied on your trip over to the town by Miho, your friend who joined up with the clan at nearly the same time as you. This gives some opportunities to further your relationship with her, and is one of several NPC's with whom you have the opportunity to develop a relationship that started in the first chapter. Once again, there are multiple quests, but this time there are only some in which there are multiple ways to complete them successfully. Some require successful skill checks (persuade is very important here), and the final quest requires you to work through some very creative and interesting puzzles. I'm particularly fond of the crime scene investigation puzzle, although I also liked the one that required you to interpret a painting.
...snip...
In general, however, this module is a set up from Kunoichi 1, in that its missions are more interesting and the characters are deeper than before. There is some real plot development that occurs both early and late in the module, and I'm itching to play the next mod in the series.

Bronze Dragons & Console Commands

2007-07-07T18:28:00.000-04:00

I meant to post about this when it happened, but forgot. Anyway, Rob McGinnis posted yet another really exciting update to his blog this week.

The piece of info that has gotten the most attention is the surprising addition of Bronze Dragons to the toolset as of patch 1.07. There has been a lot of criticism of the fact that only two dragons were included in the original release. I've always found that a bit of a strange criticism--the tinting and scaling capabilities of the toolset allow you to do an awful lot with the two models that are available, and I'd much rather have them flesh out some of the other underrepresented monster categories (golems, shapechangers, etc) than focus on more dragons. But whatever, I'm certainly not complaining about getting free content. This should make a lot of people happy--and it is a gorgeous model.

Perhaps more important, however, was the news of a number of new DM commands that will be available in the next patch. I think this means that these will be available in the in-game console under DebugMode, as well as the DM client. The reason that is so important is because these were among those commands that will be added:

dm_getvarfloat : Returns the value of the specified variable.
dm_getvarint : Returns the value of the specified variable.
dm_getvarobject : Returns the value of the specified variable.
dm_getvarstring : Returns the value of the specified variable.
dm_giveXP : Gives the specified amount of XP to the current target.
dm_givegold : Gives the specified amount of gold to the current target.
dm_god : Turn player character invincible.
dm_jumptopoint : Jump to the specified points. Syntax is: float float.
dm_setfaction : Your current target will have its faction set to the one specified in the command line.
dm_setfactionreputation : Where: faction1 and faction2 are the names of factions. x is an integer value indicating the value to set the reputation value to. Description: This function will set the reputation value for how faction2 feels about faction1 (0 is hostile, 100 is friendly).
dm_setvarfloat : Sets variable specified to the given value.
dm_setvarint : Sets variable specified to the given value.
dm_setvarobject : Sets variable specified to the given value.
dm_setvarstring : Sets variable specified to the given value.

These, particularly the dm_setvar* series, are absolutely essential for players, as they allow us to get around occasional variable-related bugs in modules. They don't happen often, but I still probably used them 10-15 times in modules over the past few years. Without these commands, I'd otherwise have to reload from an earlier part of the module, or even worse, restart from scratch. This is a big improvement--kudos to Obsidian!

June Hall of Fame Inductions

2007-07-07T01:30:00.000-04:00

Neverwinter Nights 2

There were no modules inducted into the NWN2 hall of fame this month. That's a shame, but I think we're likely to see that from time to time. NWN2 module production is happening at a much slower rate than it was for NWN1, and the requirement of an 8 or higher is a steeper requirement under the new voting standards. I think we'll see a steady series of releases for a long time to come, I don't see any signs that the rate of release is likely to escalate. Fortunately, there are several modules that will be eligible next month, so we'll certainly see some inductions then.

The only NWN2 inductee I have any experience with is Ar Pharazon's cave roof, which has already been used in several modules, including Once Upon a Time... by Mungo_D. It allows you to use exterior height maps to create much more varied and complicated cave environments than are possible with the caves tileset. There is also some nice looking Asian-style armor by Schazzwozzer, which might help spark some asian-themed NWN2 modules at some point. I always enjoyed those in NWN1.

Neverwinter Nights 1

The only inductee here that I have first-hand experience with is Sethai's NWS - The Black Dragons, a former feature in the Overlooked Module Project, and a module for which I was an early voter. The highlight of the module was its opening battle, in which your character joins a desperate and inexperienced militia on the battle field as they seek to defend against an onslaught of an army of rebels calling themselves The Black Dragons. If you've played NWN2's OC, imagine the opening battle in West Harbour, just with more variation in elevation, and constant waves of foes. It was exhilarating. Here's an excerpt from my comments, posted 21 June 2005:

The story is, on the surface, fairly simple: you answer a call for mercenaries to assist in the defense of a small little village from a veritable army of rebels. Odds are not in your favor: there are 6 purple dragon soldiers, 8 townsmen who’ve been trained to fire a bow, a hardened general, and 2 other mercenaries besides yourself against upwards of 200 troops! Strong defensive position or not, this sounds desperate. The mod does a superb job of getting you into the story, not to mention quickly into the action. And as the story progresses, you learn some of the background surrounding this conflict. There’s more nuance in this short story then there is in a lot of longer modules I’ve downloaded on the vault.

I was shocked to discover that this is Sethai's first time being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Congrats!!

I also want to congratulate Avi Maxwell for her demo module, Dusk of a Samurai, getting inducted. I never got a chance to play it (I was waiting for the official release, which now seems unlikely to happen), but I played and reviewed one of her earlier releases, Ronin: Kensai of Kyoto. It had a few issues, but it also was clear in playing it that Avi had tremendous potential and talent.

Congratulations to everyone who was inducted this month, and thank you for your contributions to our community!

Obsidian Art Contest Update - ATOM

2007-07-07T01:12:00.000-04:00

It's been a few weeks since I last posted submissions for the Obsidian Fan Art Contest, and since then, there has been a ton of submissions. Today I'll post four submissions, and I'll try to follow this up with more frequent postings like this as I catch up.

Today, I'll feature the work of ATOM, who has four submissions in the contest. All are digitizations (is that a word?) of acrylic paintings.

Neeska, Khelgar, and Me
Atom the Axe battling undead
Sand, Khelgar, and Neeshka Troll Attack!
Hope someone's got some mechanism for generatin' some fire in that last shot, or they're going to be in for a world of hurt. :)

The Rampion Champion

2007-07-02T15:20:00.000-04:00

Last night I played the module that placed third in Obsidian's first module building contest, The Rampion Champion. Despite its relatively low Vault scores, I found that it was surprisingly enjoyable, even if very brief. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of some of the better submissions in the Bioware writing contest--very short, but enough to it to be interesting and engaging. My vote reflects more on its brevity than on its quality. I probably still would not rank it 3rd in the contest overall, but I can see how it could be that well-received.

My vote: 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 1 human male rogue/fighter (advanced to lv.2)
Module version played: v.1, released 29 May 2007

With one of the more delightful, tongue-in-cheek titles of any module I've played, The Rampion Champion is an enjoyable, even if very short, little module. Some users have reported being finished in 5-10 minutes, but I was occupied for closer to 25 minutes, not including the time it took to create a character. The module is light-hearted in tone. You play the father- or godparent-to-be of Rapunzel, and are sent by Rapunzel's pregnant mother on a desperate quest to retrieve rampion (basically radishes) from a nearby enchanted garden. Along the way, you'll encounter some light combat and meet some strange creatures before your adventure comes to a dramatic(?) end.

The most remarkable thing about this module are its fabulous cutscenes, which are highlighted by the use of still images that the author somehow created from in-game screenshots. The effect is something that looks like it came straight out of a book of fairy tales, and yet clearly uses NWN2 content. Really awesome stuff. The writing is good, with a nice amount of humor and a couple of interesting characters. There is a fun riddle with a few possible solutions, and the one you will uncover is determined by one's characters' attributes and skills. The combat seemed well-balanced for a soloing lv. 1 rogue (I can imagine the no-rest nature of the garden might make it a bit tough a wizard or sorcerer, however), though it is quite light. Impressively, there are multiple endings for this module, though the end result is not dramatically different.

I did encounter one bug in the dialog scripting. But the main limitation of this module is its length. It ends a bit abruptly--I expected that there would be at least one more interior area in which I'd get to sleuth about. Still, it represents a nice first effort by a new builder, and I hope that she will consider putting together another module in the future.

The Subtlety of Thay

2007-07-01T01:22:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned last night, I finally finished Subtlety of Thay. I say finally not because I was relieved to be done, but because I'm so impressed at how long this module is. I didn't keep track of my game time, but I'd estimate it took well over the estimated 8 hours Dirtywick projected. Maybe closer to 12 or 15?

Below are my comments. As seems to be typical, I'm about a point more conservative than most voters, for whatever reason. In this case, I think this probably could have been a genuine must-have module, except for some of the polish problems I encountered (minor bugs, typos, and area design issues). Nevertheless, it is absolutely one I'd recommend to everyone and anyone interested in NWN2 mods.

My Vote: 8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone
Character: lv. 4 chaotic good female wood elf ranger, previously used in Witch in the Wood (advanced to lv. 8)
Module Version: SoT v.1.7, dated 4 June '07

Subtlety of Thay is a tremendous module that is easily among the top two or three mods I've played thus far for NWN2. It has a wonderful story. What begins as a simple fetch and retrieve quest becomes a problem of epic consequence, ultimately causing one's character to play a pivotal role in a conflict between two nations. That might sound a bit generic, but the details of what happens are very creative and engaging. There are a variety of interesting and well-developed characters that are deftly interwoven into the story as you progress through the module. Several of them become companions, at least for a time, and there is a great deal of well-done banter between party members, as well as between the PC and these NPC's. The plot is executed very well, with excellent pacing and good justification for almost everything that happens. The story is generally linear, especially once you get past the initial quest. That said, I almost never found that it felt railroaded, because the need for an urgent course of action was always justified by the story.

Stylistically, the writing is excellent, though there were a fairly large number of typos in the version I played (these may have since been fixed--and if not, I'm forwarding a long list of these to the author--check your @aol email). There was also one conversation in which about ten new obscure names of people, places, and organizations were mentioned in rapid sequence, and I got totally lost. For the most part, however, there is plenty of exposition for someone with only marginal Forgotten Realms Lore skill (like me) to understand what was going on. Furthermore, the dialog options were well done, with numerous hidden skill checks (I found this a nice change from the typical declared skill checks we usually see) that dictate both whether you see a particular option, and whether you are successful with a particular line of conversation.

Combat was generally very well balanced, varied, and fun. I was particularly fond of the final series of battles, which required a bit of puzzle-solving in addition to good strategic combat. It became very important to have both cold iron and alchemical silver weapons, even early in the module, and switch between them was a common necessity--it really enhanced the strategic element of combat, which I loved.

Almost all of the combat areas, be they dungeons or external environments, were interesting and creative. There was, however, one dungeon area that was not much fun. It contained a repetitive series of "filler" spawns that included a type of monster that I would argue should never be used as filler, as they're just too interesting for that. It also contained a long but very narrow corridor with a huge number of very easy, but still very annoying little critters. I understand what the author was going for in this sequence (I think), but the result was that I felt I was battling nwn2's pathing as much as I was these animals--and the fact that they kept respawning over and over again made it even more of a chore.

Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, these critiques are very minor. I would absolutely recommend that everyone play this module that is interested in NWN2 mods. It's a tremendous debut effort by a first-time modder, and has me very excited to play the sequel when it is eventually released. Thanks for a genuinely great module!

Finished Subtlety of Thay

2007-06-30T03:29:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I finished the Subtlety of Thay. It's an excellent module--I'll write up comments tomorrow. I think I'm largely (though not completely) in agreement with BGP Hughes' review of the module, which was just posted to the Vault today.

For now, though, I need to go to sleep. :)

Banned!

2007-06-30T01:02:00.000-04:00

So, I got banned from the Bioware Forums today for the first time! Here's proof:
I was responding to this thread. Here, as best as I'm able to recreate it, is the message I was trying to post:

Yeah, I can certainly understand not want to give a low vote. My general rule of thumb is that I only vote on modules that I complete. And if I'm not enjoying a module, I will generally not complete it.

Nevertheless, I wanted to echo Childhood's suggestion to at least try to leave constructive feedback. Most builders are very happy to receive feedback, even when critical, as long as it is written in a constructive tone. One thing I always try to do (in addition to being sure to highlight the good as well as the bad) is to accompany any criticisms I have with suggestions for how the problem might be addressed. This helps me to emphasize how an author might improve his or her work, and to keep the tone positive and encouraging.
-B

Let's see here. No obvious swears. No words that I see that could contain a bad word, like "cumbersome," "shittake mushrooms," or even "craptacular." Heck, I don't even think I was saying anything that could be construed as controversial! Anyone have any ideas? I haven't gotten a response from Bioware yet as to what the heck is going on, though I certainly hope I will. :)

NWN2 Mods Needing Votes

2007-06-28T02:13:00.000-04:00

One of the features that the old Vault (pre-2005) had that the current Vault software is lacking was the ability to generate a report of modules needing votes to get on the top rated list (requires 10 votes minimum).

While there haven't been as many NWN2 modules released compared to what we saw with NWN1's release, there actually are a surprising number that have yet to cross the 10-vote threshold. And several look like they'd be worth playing.

Therefore, I thought I'd take a quick jaunt through the NWN2 module list and create a report of those modules that need more votes to reach the "immortals" list so that they may avoid getting lost in the ether. I ignored modules that were declared to be in beta, as well as modules that were geared toward builders (script examples, builder utilities, etc) and not players. Trainer modules, PvP arenas, cutscenes, etc, were fair game, as long as they were geared toward players. Here are the top-15 modules on the list, sorted by votes needed and current score:

Title	Score	Votes	Comments
Treasure Hunters	7.64	9
Alternate NWN2 Ending	7.61	9	cutscene
The Final Journey	7.32	9
The Rampion Champion	6.07	9	contest module - ranked #3 by Obsidian
Heroic Dream	9.75	8	utility
Happily Never After	6.96	8	contest module
The Garden	6.17	8
Curse of the Timberclaw	5.71	8
Road to Glory	2.67	8
Village of the Mutes	1.00	8
dmraist's Trainer Module	8.10	7	utility
Grimm's Patchworld	6.05	7	contest module
The Otherside Chronicles	7.38	4
PvP Mod + Items/XP/Gold	7.33	3
War Grounds X	7.17	3
Rise to Power	5.58	3	utility

If you have tried these modules and have yet to vote, please go do so! And if you are looking for something new to try, why not check one of these modules out?

This was somewhat cumbersome to compile, so I can't promise I'll update it. But you never know...

Rob's NWN2 Blog: Genasi & Purgatorio

2007-06-28T01:54:00.000-04:00

Pretty amazing update today on Rob McGinnis' Official NWN2 Blog. I'll highlight two items that caught my fancy.

First, he has more detailed info on the Genasi, the new playable race(s) in the upcoming expansion. All seem to get a penalty to Charisma, which makes them unsuitable for some classes. I'm guessing (I could probably look this up) that they will also feature an ECL penalty. But still, they could be interesting races to play. I'd be particularly excited if someone decided to do a Genasi-specific module at some point. That could be extremely cool.

Second, he posted some screenshots from Rogue Dao Studios' upcoming module, Purgatorio. They apparently have custom monsters in game, including the much-needed Slaads. I think they look awesome, particularly the Green Slaad. Can't wait to see them animated--and I can't wait to start hacking them up. :D This continues to look like it will be the biggest community release of the year.