Ill Met in Lankhmar

Ill Met in Lankhmar is a novella in the guise of a Neverwinter Nights module.  Designed as an ode to Fritz Leiber's classic story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, playing this module allows you to experience the story.  If you enter the module with that understanding, it makes the whole thing work a lot better.

I haven't had the pleasure of reading the original story, but I've added it to my to-read list on goodreads as a result of playing this module.  The writing is witty--almost to a fault, but not quite.  While the adventure takes on a dark tone as the story progresses, the style of the dialog, in particular, is whimsical and delightfully engaging.  I'm guessing that the vast majority of the writing came directly from the book, and I think the zeal of the module's author for the source material comes through in spades.

The areas are extremely well designed, with lots of little flourishes to enhance the experience.  The city streets are filled with a kind of unhealthy smog, for example, and the player character of Fafhrd is rendered larger than life using custom content.

The main critique is that this module is probably the most linear that I've ever seen.  There are a handful of optional interactions, including a few stops at merchants, but that's it.  There is a ton of dialog, and there were times when nearly 30 minutes went by as we moved from cutscene to cutscene.  I was just trying to get to the next down moment so that I could save, and the result was a late night.  That all said, it was a neat experience.  I enjoyed playing the module, and especially meeting these characters who have so far not caught my eye.

Humble Beginnings and Lowena

Wait, the goblins took what?

The first Neverwinter Nights 2 module featured by the Adventurer's Club at The Vault was actually a pair of modules by Jezla: Humble Beginnings and Lowena.

Humble Beginnings, by the author's description, is more of a sidequest than an actual adventure.  You happen upon a girl in the woods who has recently been accosted by goblins.  Assuming that you are willing to help her, you plunge into the caves in pursuit.  Lowena, on the other hand, is a bit larger in scope.  After accepting a caravan job, you quickly find yourself stuck in the middle of a distressing political conflict that threatens to destabilize an entire region.

Both modules ultimately bring the player to a critical, often challenging choice.  In my mind, there was no clear "good" vs. "evil" choice available in either case, which I liked a lot.  I was inspired to play a Lawful Good monk in this module after running across one of the Broken Ones as an NPC while playing Saleron's Gambit 3 the night before.  He was a follower of Ilmater, and therefore was dedicated to not only fighting evil, but taking on the pain of the masses for the betterment of the greater good.  It was this latter principle that I used to guide my decisions.

The areas were beautifully rendered, with a number of little touches to bring the world to life.  For example, a little housecat roams about in a bar, and seagulls fly overhead as you approach a sheer cliffside.  Musical choices were also superb, with several stirring pieces that I don't normally hear in modules.  I also really liked the setting: you are living in the remains of a toppled empire, with small fiefdoms (city-states?) representing the only meaningful government in the region.  It reminded me a bit of the Nentir Vale, although with far less danger of the monstrous sort...and more of the political sort.  It has a ton of potential.

Breathtaking cliffs...and I love the seagull

If I had criticisms, it was mostly just that the modules were so short!  There was pretty minimal combat, and as such a lot of the module just seemed to involve running back and forth between NPC's across areas (lots of running involved!  Thank goodness for the monk's speed boost).  This was intentional in terms of the author's vision for the module, but I still would have enjoyed something more.  I also found some of the NPC's actions to be a little forced... but it wasn't that big of a problem, and probably necessary for the story to work.

Adventurer's Club, Round 1

The vote are in, and the first two modules have been selected for the Adventurer's Club!  The discussion will begin on Monday, August 11th.

For Neverwinter Nights 1, we're playing ILL Met in Lankhmar by Udasu.  This module was nominated by Werelynx:

Game: NWN1
1. ILL Met in Lankhmar by Udasu
2. http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/ill-met-lankhmar
3. Pregenerated Fafhrd character fighter1/rogue1
4. About 1 hour
5. Module by Udasu, storydriven, loosely based around Fritz Leiber's epic heroes, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouse. Short for starters to try out how to orient our adventruing gears in this club.

For Neverwinter Nights 2, we're playing a pair of short modules by Jezla.  The first is very short, and they form a small series.  The modules are:

Humble Beginnings was nominated by Sir Adril:
Game: NWN2
Module Name & Author: Humble Beginnings by Jezla9
Neverwinter Vault Link: http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/module/humble-beginnings
Character starting level & info: Starting Level 1, ending Level 3-4
Estimated hours of play (if available): ~10 minutes
Why submitted: Short, with little to no combat, this module is the first in a series that is meant to be played with other adventures interspersed to bring you up to the correct level.

and

Lowena was nominated by its author, Jezla9:
1. NWN2
2. Lowena by Jezla9
3. http://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/module/lowena
4. Level 5 (new characters will be leveled up on entry)
5. 1 hour
6. It has the same virtues as Humble Beginnings for being short with largely optional combat.  Despite the length, it has four possible endings, some use for skills, and is (if I may say so) very polished. 

I've played all three modules, and have written up preliminary comments that I've saved here.  I'll post those here once the discussion begins on Monday.

Hope to see you there!

NWN Community Update: Sorrows, Heroes, and Adventurers!

It's probably pretty obvious that I'm getting back into Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 again.  My copy of NWN2 is finally working (no idea what happened, but windows xp suddenly allowed steam to load!) again, so I am finishing my trek through the very impressive Tales from the Lake of Sorrows by PJ156.  I've entered into the last act of that module, and the difficulty has spiked considerably!  The story is excellent, however, and I'm enjoying the heck out of this campaign.

Several updates this week.

The Adventurer's Club

First, Sir Adril had a terrific idea on the Neverwinter Vault forums to start an Adventurer's Club.  The concept is to run a "book club" style group, but instead of reading books we will be playing Neverwinter Nights modules!  How fun, right?  Well, the group has formed, and we are currently taking nominations for our first cycle.  There will be concurrent discussion of both NWN1 and NWN2 modules.  Finally, Sir Adril also produced a fantastic newsletter / advertisement to kick us off.

Hero's Path Module List

Second, I decided to reestablish the Hero's Path Module List.  This was probably my first big project for NWN1, and it was an attempt to catalog the modules that were best-suited to players who wanted to play with the same character across multiple modules by different authors.  It was last updated in 2007, and so in addition to being woefully out of date it was also was full of broken links in the post-ign vault world.

Therefore, I updated it with working links for all modules that have been posted to the New Vault.  And because I was in the mood, I also created a similar list for NWN2 modules!  The latter is something that I always wanted to do, but there just weren't that many NWN2 modules that had been published yet when I stepped away from the community.  I am going to keep these lists at Neverwinter Vault as articles for visiblity, but I have added links to them in my sidebar menu on this forum.

Forgotten Realms Weave Character Creator

Third, after some hesitation, I've taken the FRW Character Creator project back on.  At this point, it's been transferred only, and I have not updated it yet.  But my plan, in the near future, is to make a small update to include:

• The usability updates that ladydesire included (e.g. leveling to lv. 30).
• A new +4 item store, currently accessible through Chatter.
• Ability to access lower-tier stores for characters level 5 and over.  This is handy if you just want a pair of cheap boots.

Most of that is already done.  Just a bit more conversation work, plus some testing, and we'd be set for an update.

Ladydesire added persistent companions while she was running the module.  While I love the idea of persistent companions, I hear that this hak is pretty badly broken by the SoZ expansion.  Therefore, I'm leaning toward removing those hak's moving forward.  I would keep her last version accessible for those who might like to take advantage of them.