Are NWN1/2 blogs good things for the community?

I had the great opportunity to be interviewed at NWVault this past week, and the result was just published. One of the questions got me thinking. Here it is, along with my response:

10) You’ve recently started a NWN blog, where you post your own observations of modules you’ve played, links to other builders, and important news items. How important do you feel this type of communication is to the community?

You know, I'm not sure. I started the blog to give myself a home base for my activities in the community. I'm really happy with what it's become, both in terms of the content I've been able to release and the reception it has gotten from the community. ...snip...I think, for example, that it serves as a good source for concise nwn2 module reviews and comments. The blog also gives me the chance to draw attention to other people's work, be they creators of modules, UI mods, scripts, art, or other custom content, and comment about current community news. From time to time, there have even been good discussions among myself and my readers in the blog comments. And I have a terrific time writing for it--it's a great outlet.

But whether that means a net positive for the community is another question. Some (though not all) of the posts I make on the blog would otherwise probably have been made in the NWN2 Modules forums, which gets more traffic than I could ever hope or deserve to have. And I've been far less active in the forums in general since I started the blog, be it answering questions, musing about what makes a great module, or getting involved in some larger project to promote modules. So one could make a legitimate argument that the community would be better off if I ditched the blog and focused my energy on interacting with people in the forums (that's assuming that the community benefits when I'm around--might not be a good assumption!).

Personally, I really enjoy reading the various developer and player blogs that have popped up around the community in the past year or so. They allow me to keep in better touch with some of my online friends than I was able to before, and learn about cool upcoming projects. Furthermore, I think the posts on these blogs tend to be more thoughtful, insightful, and provocative than what you typically see in the forums. So again, for me personally, I think they're great. But I do wonder if they're perhaps partially to blame for the somewhat fragmented state of the current NWN2 community, at least compared to the NWN1 community that I knew back in 2004-2005.

I guess what I'm wondering is what you folks think about this question? Are blogs a good thing for the community? Or do they result in less interaction, more community fragmentation, etc?

To be clear, I'm not considering shutting down, even if we decide that they are net negatives for the community. I enjoy doing this too much to give it up for some noble cause like supporting the community. But I am curious. -B

B2: Keep on the Borderlands

I finished Enoa4's B2: Keep on the Borderlands this earlier this week, but between following the baseball first year players draft and responding to an interview for the Vault, I'm just now getting a chance to write up my comments. It was a fun module, and is worth checking out if you're up for some low-level hack and slash fun.

My Vote: 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look
Character Played: lv. 1 Human Female Chaotic Good Cleric, advanced to level 5 by end.

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. The overall mood in the module was great, with lots of flavor text from both companions and foes during fights, well designed areas, and good use of the stock music. Equipment rationing seemed just about right for most of the module, though there were a lot of a certain kind of necklace that allowed my character to build up enormous gold reserves near the end of the module.

I realize you (the author) are probably not going to be building again, at least for a while, and I'm not sure how much more you'd want to do on this module so long after its release. But I did have a few comments and suggestions. First, I found that while the combat started as a nice challenge, it ended up being pretty easy over the last three or so caves. One thing that might have spiced it up a bit more would be to make the Chief bosses a bit more powerful and unique. They clearly were tougher than their underlings, but rarely did they do anything special, like cast spells, use grenade items, etc, that might set them apart and add challenge to the fights

The effort made to flesh out the companions was worthwhile, but it left me wanting more. The interactions and story with the dwarf and the elves were great until their quest was completed. After that, they rarely said anything else for the rest of the module, or if they did, it was a quick bit of text over their heads. Similarly, I'd have liked to have more times during the cave clearing process when I could talk to the Castellian and get new responses. Finally, there still seemed to be a fair number of polish issues remaining, and I also ran into the occasional bug. I'll provide a list of these items in a separate post, in case you decide to address them.

Nevertheless, this module was well worth playing, and I think folks should absolutely take a look if they're interested in a low-level hack and slash adventure. Thanks for sharing, and congrats on the release. If life ever slows down and you get interested in building again, I'll gladly download and play whatever you build! -B

FRWCC in Hall of Fame

Today, my little NWN2 module project, the Forgotten Realms Weave Character Creator, was inducted into the NWN2 Hall of Fame. It's pretty exciting to have the module achieve this honor, and, of course, to know that I now can have the "Hall of Fame author" prefix attached to my name. :)

I do not consider my little mod to be anywhere close, in terms of the quality or impact, to the other two modules that were inducted this month (Stormchaser and Pirate Cards). I'm sure that my total development time, for example, is a tiny, tiny fraction of what FalloutBoy and Adam Miller invested into their modules. But I do feel comfortable with the idea that this little utility module is among the best of its kind available to the community. It's not the best choice for some purposes (e.g. optimizing different character builds), but for others (e.g. creating balanced characters for use in community modules), I think it really is the best available option. So, I'm quite proud of it.

I do want to send out a few significant thanks--while this has been my "baby," I've had an awful lot of help:

• The inspiration for a limited, balanced character creator supporting the FRW modules came from flem1 in the NWN2 forums.
• Several of the essential scripts for the character creator, particularly the level up/gold giving scripts, were written by Lord Niah in the original version of his base mod. I modified them slightly, added some other scripts of my own to make the conversations work better, and repackaged everything my little inn, but he did a lot of the hard work.
• Much of this modules' attention and downloads, especially early on, can probably be attributed to Phoenixus's module, A Tragedy in Tragidor, which required level 6(ish) characters and yet provided no in-house way to create such a character. I initially made it in large part so that I could have a well-balanced character to play his mod.
  
• I am deeply indebted to the advice of numerous community members who have helped me make this module as well balanced and accessible as it is today through their comments. Thanks to Lord Niah, Phoenixus, dirtywick, vendalus, Lariam, Styraxian, Maerduin, bietu, Seryn, madchem, Wizbane, NuclearSorcerer, and Drakenon, as well as anyone else I forgot.
  
• I also ripped some scripts, as well as inspiration, from caesarbear and his wonderful NWN1 utility module, Zorco's Keeps. And believe me, if I could figure it all out (I've tried), I'd rip his database scripts from that module as well. I still would like to some day add persistent storage to this module to give it a true waystation feel.
• Finally, thanks to everyone who has downloaded this module, enjoyed it, and posted favorable feedback. I really appreciate your time, and I'm glad so many have found it useful.
  

...
Also making the Hall today (for the thousandth time) is Hugie, with his excellent little module, The Island. Congrats to him! :)

Aessinus & Zaknafein on Mask of the Betrayer

Aessinus and his son were able to catch Obsidian's presentation of the upcoming expansion for NWN2, Mask of the Betrayer, at A-KON last weekend, and have filed a report at NWVault. Interesting tidbits about the expansion from their report:

• 4 new character races will be available for player characters, the elemental Genasi (Fire, Water, Air, & Earth).
  
• A new base class, the Favored Soul, which is essentially a sorcerer-like class using the cleric spell list. It sounds really interesting. As far as I can tell (based on that link), these are the major differences between a Favored Soul and a Cleric:
• Spontaneous casting of a limited repertoire of divine spells (no spell book), much like sorcerers do for arcane spells.
• Emphasis on Charisma, rather than Wisdom. Clerics usually need high scores in both attributes to be effective, especially when it comes to turning and other divine abilities.
  
• Limited to Medium Armor instead of Heavy Armor.
• Better reflex saves, while still good will and fortitude saves.
  
• Weapon Focus & Specialization for their diety's favored weapon, even if it's a martial weapon.
• Innate energy resistance against a chosen elemental type.
• Wings at lv. 17...
  
• Damage resistance at lv. 20 (either cold iron or silver).
• Not sure on this one: Perhaps no turn undead ability.
  
• A Red Wizard of Thay prestige class will be added (non-good, specialist wizards required), and one of the companions in the OC will be one of these Red Wizards. I don't think he'll get along with my PC. :)
• Apparently there will also be some sort of celestial/fiend called "One of Many" as a companion.
  
• The official campaign will feature random encounters during resting, which should help increase the suspense considerably...and hopefully make for less instances of repetitive dungeon clearing like we saw in the OC (e.g. the warehouse raids).

Update:
According to Kunikos, there have been two other base classes added to the game: the spirit shaman and the duskblade. I haven't seen references for this information yet, but I haven't been following the MotB news that closely. But I added some links to D&D source info on the classes. Both look intriguing. I'll comment more on them later.

Hacking and slashing

I spent tonight playing Keep on the Borderlands. I think I still have a long way to go, but I'm having fun. I felt that the module started a bit slow, but now that I'm knee deep in dead goblins and their kin, I'm having a great time. The caves you fight in are often long and interconnected, making for a lot of underground exploration...which can result in some surprises when you encounter tougher than expected enemies in a new room. There's also a nice amount of customization of the enemies, and the loot is just right for my level. I'm currently level three, and yet I cannot yet afford full plate at the store for my cleric or her fighter companion, much less magical gear. I love it when discovering mundane half-plate on the body of a hobgoblin actually is exciting because it means an upgrade! :) Good low-level fun.

NWN2 Modding has life...

All the sudden, I'm feeling like I'm massively behind in my gaming!

Thanks to the NWN2 module contest, I had a chance to play a good number of fun, small modules this month. I had intended to play all of the contest mods, but at this point that doesn't seem likely to happen. I'll certainly be watching for the announcement of the winners, and will play any that I might have missed that place.

But the thing I'm really excited about is that there are now at least three important, reasonably lengthy, high-quality NWN2 modules that I have yet to play:

• Keep on the Borderlands by Enoa4 (currently rated 8.27) - 6 hrs
  
• Subtlety of Thay by dirtywick (currently rated 8.91) - 8 hrs
  
• Night Howls in Nestlehaven by jackyo123 (currently rated 9.44) - 5 hrs
  

The latter is one that I admittedly haven't been following closely, but it has had a testing thread in the Modules forums for a while now, and its initial scores have been off the charts. Anything marked "Roleplay: Heavy" and receiving the sorts of votes and comments Night Howls is getting is going to be high on my to-play list.

I'm planning to play through these mods in roughly this order, though I may pause briefly to play Hugie's joke module, which I'd forgotten about but just noticed as I was looking at the top rated list.

Other intriguing modules I still would like to play (in alphabetical order):

• The Legend of Ivalice, Part 1 beta 3 by Cleitanious (I loved FFTactics...)
• The Otherside Chronicles by Kevin Deyne
• Passage West by Blakavare
• Palace of the Silver Princess by Wyrin
• Prophecy of Aracas by Carlos "Fusil" Rahlwes
  
• Roads of Flinrock by thibbledorf26
• What's Bugging Costen? by Wyrin

I'm excited. There are finally enough modules out there that I feel like I can actually be selective in what I'm playing. And best of all, there's more coming.

Interview with Tiberius

There's a nice interview with Tiberius209 over at the vault right now. I threw a couple of questions QSW's way for this interview, but obviously the most interesting part of an interview are the responses of the interesting person being interviewed.

Here's one of my favorite excerpts, from a bit on his upcoming NWN2 module series, the Maimed Gods Saga:

A final goal is to make a world in which the side quests you complete and the way you complete them matters. The agents of the evil deity you’re confronting have a region-wide plan in action. Putting an end to their plans in one area, for example, may deprive them of some of their troops, making a boss fight easier in some cases, but it will also alert them to your presence. That in turn will cause them to enact their contingency plans. Now that they know you’re around, they might dispatch agents to assassinate you, or maybe they’ll move their plans forward. Maybe they’ll need to create diversions to allow them time to rebuild their operations. They may need to release additional spies into the area to track you, so characters may appear in some cases that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Also, for the record, the question asking about his Ossian stuff originally had a smiley face at the end of it--I knew we wouldn't get anything good from it. Just wanted to build up some hype for that project. :P

Oh yeah, I'm back. Downloading Keep on the Borderlands as I type!

Subtlety of Thay released!

Congrats to dirtywick, whose module The Subtlety of Thay, is now available on the Vault!

I did a (very small) bit of beta testing for him a while back, and was impressed with what little I saw of the module. I'm looking forward to playing it.

I have a lot of packing and some cleaning to do tonight before leaving for four days tomorrow, so I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to get the new FRWCC posted tonight or not. My guess is that a Tuesday or Wednesday release is more likely. Not much more to do (one conversation, updates to module description and readme, etc), but I don't like to rush things out the door--especially not before leaving town! But I still might have the time.

Update: Check out the feature list in the module description. It sounds spectacular.

Update2: I threw caution to the wind and went ahead with the FRWCC update! Hopefully nothing will be badly broken.

Pushing along with the Character Creator

I think I've nearly completed my next update of the character creator. Just in time too, because I'm leaving town for Memorial Day weekend and won't be back until Tuesday...at which point I dive into teaching summer school, which will be five weeks of grading hell.

In addition to the basement with its library and shrine, there are now four new NPC's in the pub, plus an extra (currently underdeveloped) NPC downstairs who sells basic crafting materials. It feels far more lively in there than it ever did before--much closer to my original vision of what the module could be like. Sal's (overpriced) store is also much more interesting, thanks to new items from the Pool of Radiance and Subtlety of Thay.

The only major item I still have planned for the coming release is to modify Sal's dialog a fair bit to highlight all the new features and personalities of the module. Might be a touch up thing or two as well, though I think I got most of those items tonight.

Aside from continuing to add new NPC's and items as FRW modules are released, the only other major improvement that I'd like to make to this module is to add persistent storage. For now, however, that remains a pipe dream...

Two videos worth watching...

Purgatorio
The new Purgatorio trailer is out. It shows off some of the cool custom content in the module, including both custom models and some good voice acting, but the most intriguing part to me was the first 30 seconds, describing a strange marooned boy devoid of sight, vision, and speech...

Rogue Dao's module is now in internal beta, which is great news for all of us eager players. ... Though one almost has to worry about whether the incredible hype for this project is going to push expectations to absurd levels.

Birdies!
This is a bit old, but by way of showcasing Obsidian's upcoming release of their Granny animation tools to the community, they posted this video on their blog of birds flying around a windmill. I can't seem to get a screen capture of it, but it's freaking spectacular. The first time I see this in-game, I'm going to pee myself.

Progress

I made great progress tonight on the character creator. I did a lot of re-organization of the items in the blueprints to make things easier moving forward, added credits to all items already in the module, and then imported a host of items from Pool of Radiance into Sal's Store. More importantly, I imported Sasha (the clerk from Pool of Radiance) and wrote her dialog, which I think came out well. It's good to have another NPC from FRW modules present in the pub!

At this point, just a few more characters from the other released FRW modules and this sucker will be ready to go. Feels good to finally have made progress again.

Grimm Brigade

Tonight I finished a module I started a few nights back, the Grimm Brigade. It's a short, fun hack and slash with great style. It's a great choice if all you're in the mood to do is go kill something. My comments and vote:

My Vote: 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look
Character: Lawful Good Fighter/Dwarven Defender, went from lv. 1 to lv. 9

The Grimm Brigade is a fun and well-polished one-night hack 'n slash. I guess I'd describe it as G.I. Joe meets forgotten realms meets children's fairy tales. It has a fast and furious pace. Combat was challenging and did require some serious potion sipping (or berry eating?), but it was varied and entertaining for my dwarven defender. I'm not sure how well other classes would cope with the challenges, though it sounds like the author has spent time trying to balance it for other classes.

Areas are nicely built, particularly the first and last locations to which you travel. I also liked the use of tinting and scaling to spice up the monster selections. The module moves along in a strictly linear fashion, and the story is mostly just a convenient means of stringing together the action sequences. Nevertheless, the use of Grimm's Fairy Tale themes in the different areas was cleverly done, often with a humorous slant. Writing in general was excellent though brief. Overall, while not a particularly deep module, the emphasis is on fun, and it delivers in full.

Updates from around the blogosphere...

I thought I'd check in on what some of the builders from around the NWN2 blogosphere are up to in quick-hit fashion:

• Adam Miller seems to have just about finished his first pass of module construction in the second chapter of his Dark Waters series.
• Dirtywick is reporting in the FRW forums that his module, the Sublety of Thay, might be released on the vault early next week!!!
• Enoa4's module, B2: Keep on the Borderlands, has been a great success, and is high on my list of modules to play...though I probably won't get to it 'til June. ;( The good news is that he's actually thinking that maybe sometime in the future he'll possibly consider writing another mod. :)
• Hugie continues to plug away at the early stages of his upcoming module, Moonshadows.
• Maerduin has decided to drop his (perhaps overly ambitious) Mysteries of the Moonsea epic in favor of a smaller and more manageable project that he is currently calling Harp and Crysanthemum.
• Markus "Wayne" Schlegel, after finally solving a module loading problem he'd been encountering, is making great progress on the second chapter of his excellent Pool of Radiance series, reporting that he's hoping to be working on Alpha 3 with his team this weekend/next week.
  
• The Ossian Studios team, which includes Alazander, Challseus, Hugie, and Tiberius, perhaps among others, are continuing to report lots of work on "uhh...secret stuff." Alazander continues to drop hints that an announcement is not far off.
• Phoenixus is organizing a team to push forward with his Tales of Asberdies module, the sequel to Tragedy in Tragidor.
  
• Rashidi is pushing forward with his module, Fianchetto's Fable, and has recently enlisted the help of a writer to continue to make progress on his module.
• Ryam Baco doesn't update his blog very often, but has said in a comment on this blog that work continues in chapter 2 of his surreal Asylum series.
• Seryn seems very close to releasing a beta version of his module, the Zelbross Affair, to the FRW folks.
  
• Tiberius209, despite his commitments to Ossian, is also making good progress on his first NWN2 project, the Maimed God Saga.
• Vendalus is also making progress on his SKS series, and has circulated an alpha version of the first module to the FRW folks.

And those are just the projects I'm following somewhat closely. A few others have active threads in the NWN2 Modules forums--sorry for not highlighting those as well! Best of all, with summer here, we might start to see some of the student-types invest more effort than they've recently been able to into their projects. It's going to be an exciting summer!

Update: Oh yeah, one last bit of news--I'm going to try to spend the next week or so pushing out a new version of the FRWCC. Been a while since I worked on it, and an update is overdue.

Cry Wolf

Last night I played Cry Wolf by Lorft, which was surprisingly good given how little attention it has received from the player base. The vote of 7 might have been a bit conservative...I'm more and more enthusiastic about the module the more I think about it. Nevertheless, it doesn't quite rise to the level of something that I'd recommend to anyone...though I certainly think everyone should give it a look. :) My comments:

My Vote: 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look
Character: lv. 6 half-orc barbarian
My score: 98%, didn't solve the puzzle.

A well-polished module with a clever concept, an interesting take on the Grimm's Fairy Tales theme, the occasional good puzzle, very challenging combat, and a dollop of good humor, Cry Wolf is an overlooked module in the Obsidian module contest. In fitting with the theme, the module is narrated via a series of cutscenes with an old storyteller talking to a group of kids. The story itself is a twisted take on fairy-tale fantasies, which in this case are used to subvert and control a small village.

Combat in this module is, at times, very challenging, especially if you have an eye on the custom score system; resting drops your score by a percentage point each time, so if you're going to get a high score, you have to be careful with your spell usage. The challenges are variable, from single gigantic foes with massive hit points and damage dealing potential, to numerous foes who you have to engage with care, to foes who use mental attacks to disable your adventurers. Furthermore, almost all of the foes you fight are unique and interesting--not much here in the way of generic filler. I had a good time with these fights, though I think I might have found them a bit too difficult if the module had been longer...but it's not, so it worked! :)

I think the only real suggestion I have is related to the "beauty" theme that was introduced late in the module. I think this could have been better used if it was interwoven into the module's theme from the beginning... I don't have a great solution for how to do this, unfortunately, but it seemed to come out of no where at the end. Perhaps more development of the druid's character might have been the key to making it happen?

Nevertheless, an very good little module and one that I had a lot of fun playing. Thanks for sharing it with us, and good luck in the competition. This module should place very well.

Being Good

Before bed last night, I played Christian Mayr's contest module, Being Good. As you'll see, I had a lot of fun playing through this strange little module.

My vote: 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look
Character: lv. 1 Human Female Illusionist Wizard (with the elderly fairy godmother face and hair, of course!)

Christian Mayr's first module release, the delightfully bizarre Asylum: A Bet, A Corpse, put him on the map as one of the more ...non-traditional builders in our community. This module does nothing to change that peception, though instead of the dark foreboding of Asylum, the mood Being Good is decidedly light and fun. If I was going to try to describe this module via comparisons, it would probably be something like a blend of Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Looney Toons, and yes, Batman . It's extremely funny, particularly near the beginning, when I literally was laughing so hard I had to rest my head on my keyboard wrist support. Mayr continues his use of extreme lighting and tinting in places, though it wasn't so severe in this module as in his other module, and actually makes for an appropriate effect early on. In addition to the bizarre concept, what really made this module stand out the use of custom sounds and music, which set a tone completely unlike anything you'd get using stock nwn2 content.

The module plays out well and is fun, even though it's pretty short and is essentially an "adventure"-style game (there isn't any real combat) with very little in the way of challenging puzzles. The story is creative, and everything makes sense in a twisted and absurd kind of way. The one possible critique I might have would be that the writing is still a bit awkward at times, though it's actually quite good for a non-native English speaker and seems to be substantially improved from the (somewhat early) version of Asylum that I played. Thanks again to the author for a fun little module, and I continue to look forward to the next Asylum module!

Once Upon a Time...

Tonight I also got the chance to play through Mungo_D's contest module, Once Upon a Time. My comments:

6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 1 chaotic good human barbarian

Once upon a time is a modest, humorous little adventure with a cool premise, and ultimately is a decent way to start off a character and get him or her to level 2. The premise--that people are just pawns, their lives shaped by stories, which repeat over and over again--is really cool and deserves exploration. I thought that this was going to be a really cool exploration of fate and destiny and a character's fight against impossible odds. Instead, while there's an element of that, the author opted to use the premise as a running gag throughout the module. His take is funny and clever, and I recommend it for that. The module also has a cool underground mines area that was built exterior areas, as well as a spectacular effect during the opening sequence.

The actual adventure itself was fine, though perhaps not particularly memorable. Dialogs, as others have mentioned, were fairly minimal and were quite linear, though they were well written. It seems like this could have been a great hack and slash mod for a level 1 character, but I found the combat to be a bit light for that genre. Granted, I played with a fairly uber melee character, which might have made it too easy, but I think that a bit more combat & a bit more exploration (especially in the mines) might have made this a more enjoyable module. Of course, that might have been inconsistent with the punch line... :)

Witch in the Wood: A Grimm Fairy Tale

Last night, I played Lord Niah's contest module Witch in the Wood: A Grimm Fairy Tale. It's an enjoyable little adventure. My comments:

My vote: 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation
Character: lv. 4 chaotic good wood elf ranger

Witch in the Woods is a very short, but still enjoyable little adventure. While it is more true to the classic tale it is based on than some of the other contest modules, it still takes liberties with the story to spice things up a bit. As the readme indicates, the best fit for this module is a ranger, as essentially you are tasked with tracking down two lost kids and saving them from whatever fate has befallen them.

The highlight of this module is its custom scripting, which includes an interesting "search" system in which you can check an object (like a hollow tree stump) for items or other bonuses using your search skill, as well as a few special-use items. It's a nice variant from the typical "click to open and loot" approach that is the default in nwn2, especially in this setting (a forest). The writing is good, and the plot is decent even in its brevity, with a (sometimes humorous) twist or two to keep it interesting. The action was fairly easy for my ranger (a level-3 character might have been better balanced), but I like that what combat is there fits the setting, without any obvious "filler." Finally, the area design is fantastic. The author makes great use of scaling to create a gigantic redwood backdrop, beneath which lies a thick understory. When coupled with the ambient noises of an untouched wilderness, the module gives a great sense of walking through a thick forest.

The reason I "only" give it a qualified recommendation is that, at about a half-hour of game time, it is such a short module; it seemed to just be gaining some momentum by the time that it ended. You could probably describe the whole module as something that would make for a fun little side-quest in a larger adventure. I understand the constraints that the author worked under, of course, so this is understandable. But one thing that might have made this module more enjoyable is if the tracking phase of the module had a bit more meat to it. As it is, while there is some effort to include spot checks for signs of the kids, you basically just stumble upon the children. Perhaps if something more akin to the tracking system used in Kale's Rangers (NWN1), or even the "chase-the-odor" sequence in Stormchaser, had been used, it might have been a bit more dramatic when one finally locates the house.

Overall, though, it's a fun little module and is worth checking out, as long as you are aware of its limitations.

Mouse-over Health Status!

As I played through Dark Waters and The Birthday the last couple of nights, I noticed a small but substantial improvement to the NWN2 user interface that goes back to a beef I had about the game from the moment I started playing: mouse-over health status for all NPC's has been added! Here's a screenie of it in action:
Here, my mouse cursor is hoving over the "Unseelie," and it reveals his approximate health status. This is how NWN1 worked, but it was initially absent from NWN2. Prior to this improvement, the only way to discover a character's health status was to right-click on that character. There was no quick way to assess the health of a large number of foes in the middle of battle. And now there is! While it's a little thing, this already has greatly improvement my comfort with the game--and has decreased the clicking I've had to do!

I guess this was an addition in the 1.05 patch, but I didn't see mention of it in the patch notes. Kudos to Obsidian for making it happen.

The Birthday

Last night I finally got a chance to complete my first contest module, which was The Birthday by Maerduin. I expected these modules to be of higher quality than those submitted for Bioware's Writing Contest, but given the constraints, I still had relatively modest expectations. But if Maerduin's module is any indication, I'm going to have a blast playing through them this month. My comments:

My vote: 8 – Excellent, recommended to anyone
Character: Neutral good female human druid.

An excellent debut module! This is an absolutely delightful little adventure. There's a way in which I didn't expect a lot from these contest modules, but this one really showed how brilliant a module can be if a lot of creativity is exercised when developing it. The plot is excellent, with a host of fairy tale references and themes sprinkled throughout, even as one or two turn out to be the ultimate inspiration. There are actually multiple endings, which is remarkable in a module of this size (and one created on this short of a time frame). The pacing is excellent, with a satisfying amount of gameplay that never feels rushed. Most impressively, by the end, you actually feel like you accomplished something, even though only 1.5 hours have passed.

Writing is genuinely excellent, with great humor scattered throughout the dialog, and especially in the item descriptions. There are some excellent roleplaying opportunities, as well as the opportunity to earn extra xp via skill checks. Even the combat is satisfying; it's reasonably well varied, and very well balanced (for my druid), with a challenging, memorable final battle. And I also want to particularly commend the exterior area designs. The town's rolling hills are spectacular, and the forest area is among the most dramatic NWN2 area I've seen yet, thanks in large part to its wonderful trees.

Just a few minor comments. First, I encountered one bug related to a cutscene, but it was solved with a reload. Also, I'd recommend exporting the character at the end of the module so that those of us who like to keep their characters can use them later on. Finally, in the future, I'd highly recommend using a hakpak rather than forcing us to put things in our override folder. Less likely to cause problems for users in the future, as I have a tendency to forget when I put things in my override. Plus, it's simpler for novice players--just put the *.hak in your override and be done with it. :)

Tragedy in Tragidor and A Bet, A Corpse enter Hall of Fame

I'm a bit late on reporting this, but A Tragedy in Tragidor by Phoenixus, and A Bet, A Corpse by Christian Mayr were inducted into the Hall of Fame this month. Congrats to both authors!

Here is an excerpt from my comments on Tragidor (my vote: 9 - outstanding, a must have):

Tragedy in Tragidor sets a high, early bar for what modules can be in NWN2. It's immersive, fun, and has a good, tight story that generally is told well from start to finish. I think this is a great example of what authors can do when they try to stay within themselves. It doesn't try to be too big, but it still has enough to it to make for a very satisfying experience.

And here is an excerpt from my comments on A Bet, A Corpse (my vote: 8 - excellent, recommended to anyone):

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 I grinned my way through it.

If you haven't checked these two modules out, there's no time like the present... Also, Christian Mayr has released a module for the NWN2 Grimm's Fairy Tales Contest: Being Good. I'll have comments on it soon (promise! -- been a really busy week with the semester ending, but I expect to have more module playing time in the coming week).

Finished Dark Waters

I did end up finishing Dark Waters last night. Lots of pros, but some cons as well. The setting is fantastic, the custom content is overall very nice (nice resource for the community!), and the scripting of his various puzzles and mini-games was really well done. On the other hand, while the story is also excellent, its execution, particularly in the latter part of the module, wasn't very good. It seemed rather rushed, and was pretty confusing. There are also still some lingering bugs, but the show-stoppers seem to have been resolved.

Anyway, I've requested the review of Dark Waters with the NWVault Review Guild. Hopefully Adam Miller will agree. It might not be a gushing review, but I think it'll be very fair.

Update: Adam Miller wants to wait on the review until he fixes a few more bugs. Fair enough, though to be honest, I don't think that'll change the results much--I wasn't going to penalize it much at all due to bugs, as they didn't affect gameplay much. But who knows, maybe his subsequent version will make some other parts of the module work better. So I'm going to hold off on my comments for now. Hopefully he will eventually submit it for review.

Looking forward to playing Maerduin's The Birthday tonight...

Contest Watch

Update: Rather than keep this stickied all month, I've opted instead to move this list into the sidebar.

Here is the final list of NWN2 Contest Modules. Congrats to all of these authors for meeting the tight deadline!!

• Being Good by Christian Mayr (ryam_baco)
  
• Birthday, The by Zach Holbrook aka Maerduin
• Crossroads of Fate by Novalis
  
• Cry Wolf by Lorft
• Dark Twins' The Wizard and His Creation, The by E.C. Patterson (aka ciViLiZed)
• Ebha by B.B.
  
• Grimm Brigade by Jason S. Roy
• Grimm's Patchworld by Patcha
  
• Happily Never After by Allyndn_The_Beggar
  
• Once Upon a Time... by Mungo_D
• Prince of Light, or Shadow by Saorsa
• Queen of Lies, The by Adoniram
• Rampion Champion, The by Death Quaker
• Sathmar - Invasion Chapter 1 by Lord Mephisto
  
• Walk in the Woods, A by Wyrin
• Witch in the Wood: A Grimm's Fairy Tale by Lord Niah

Interview about Mask of the Betrayer

Somehow I never got around to reading this, but last week Gamebanshee published this interview with Kevin Saunders, who is the lead designer on the Mask of the Betrayer expansion for NWN2. One item really caught my eye:

GB: Are there any plans to introduce any new prestige classes or sub-races? How about epic levels?

Kevin: Absolutely! We are adding new prestige classes (and a base class) and new sub-races. We’ll be sharing more information on those soon, but we think you’ll be excited about our choices. ;) One of the prestige classes is completely new and was designed through consultation with our colleagues at Wizards of the Coast. As far as the leveling goes, NX1 will feature epic levels through level 30.

Added emphasis on those last two words. This is really exciting. Unless this is a typo (and I doubt it is), this upcoming expansion will only have epic levels up to level 30. NWN1 went to level 40. My interpretation? This is the first real indication we've had that Obsidian is indeed planning two expansions! The first to go to level 30, and a second one to go lv.30 to lv.40.

Yippie! More expansions = more content = more time with ongoing support for the community!

Another cool tidbit was the mention that the monsters that they're going to add in the expansion include the Night Hag and (a favorite of mine) the Treant (here's the Treant made by DLA for NWN1).

Added to this news is a feeling that I've been getting around the modding community that we're going to start finally seeing a lot more frequent significant module releases in the coming month or two. That, combined with Ossian apparently getting somewhat close to announcing whatever it is that they've been working on, and with the contest starting next week, things are really looking encouraging in nwn2 land right now.

Also, one last thing. Obsidian is doing a better job of updating their blog with readable and relevant information. I've added it to my blogroll in my sidebar, as well as the blogs of several new builders I just became aware of.

I'm up and running!

NWN2 is finally up and running. I had some trouble getting it to re-install. Kept running into read errors or something as the dvd drive was trying to switch between different files during during the installation. I don't know if the problem was the dvd (it looks clean and undamaged) or my dvd drive. But I managed to rip a dvd image, mount it onto a virtual drive, and install from there. I have to have the actual DVD in the real drive to run the game (thanks SecuRom), but at least it finally worked. I'll deal with any additional hardware issues later, 'cause I wanna play a game for once.

Which means I was able to spend some time playing Dark Waters. It's a really interesting module. About as light in the combat department as you can get, and the puzzles have (mostly) been a lot of fun. I still am really enjoying the voice acting, and I got reasonably far into the module tonight. The two main companions are extremely well done, and tonight I finished a sequence involving conversations with an odd chap--the voice acting really brought it to life. Overall, I'm very impressed. I think what I've learned from this is a) voice acting can actually be done well by the community, and be a great strength of a module, and b) that one should focus on the good talent and just leave the other lines silent.

So far, so good.

The replacement hard drive arrived today, and this evening I've managed to install windows xp, update to service pack 2, flash my bios (which I had never done), install various motherboard drivers, install ati's drivers, and finally install mcafee, and firefox. And in just a few minutes, I should have completed copying all files from my temporary 40gb drive to my "new" (well, refurbished, but whatever) drive.

Feels good. I love using computers with fresh installs of windows on them. A month from now, it'll start getting gummed up with crap again, but right now everything feels fresh. Looking forward to installing NWN2 tomorrow night, at which point I'm going to download Dark Waters and play through it. And after that, I'm going to play Keep at the Borderlands. And after that, the contest entries. ;)

I'm excited to get back to playing games again...been well over a week since I've had any gaming fun. :(

Contest deadline is approaching!

The deadline for the first Obsidian NWN1 Module Contest is now less than a week away! While no one has uploaded a module yet, there are a number of entries that are apparently close to being uploaded to the vault. Here are a few of the ones I know about:

Lord Niah and Mungo_D, both experienced builders from NWN1, and members of the Forgotten Realms Weave, have contest modules that are currently in the beta testing phase.

Maerduin reported on Sunday that his entry, The Birthday, is close to completion.

And while I don't know them, there are a number of builders on the forums who sound likely to release a module: Wyrin_D'njargo, jackyo123, ryan_baco, Lorft, and ciViLiZed have all recently indicated that they're either on track, or are desperately trying to stay on track, for an on-time submission. I'm sure there are more as well--lots of builders aren't terribly active in the forums, especially when they're busy building. :)

It will be exciting to see what shows up this week! Given that no changes may be made to modules after the deadline, it would probably be a good idea to get entries uploaded ahead of time whenever that's possible so they can get some initial playtesting comments from players. Of course, given the tight deadline, that's not always going to be easy...

Keep on the Borderlands released!

I wanted to send a huge congratulations to Enoa4, creator of the Hythum series (among others) for NWN1, who just released his NWN2 module, Keep on the Borderlands. If you've been following Enoa4's blog, you'll know that this module has been a major battle to get out, both in terms of the time required to build it and the various setbacks he encountered due to the still-buggy toolset. So huge kudos for hanging with it and getting it out.

I'm planning to play it as soon as I finish Dark Waters...and get my computer back together, of course.

Hard drive update

Tonight I was able to install windows on an old 40 gb hard drive that I had laying around (it used to be in my tivo box before I hacked it and put in a 60 gb instead), start the computer, and copy off all important files. So that's a relief.

I then downloaded Western Digital's diagnostic program and had it run the quick scan on my drive...and the drive promptly failed. Fortunately, Western Digital seems to have an outstanding RMA system. I didn't even have to call them or jump through any hoops. I just filled out the RMA request form with a brief justification and (if I'm understand this right) they're going to send a new drive out to me--holding my credit card for collateral of course. My only obligation will be to send back my defective drive within 30 days...I might have to pay for shipping, but maybe not, I'm unclear on that.

I'm hopeful that the new drive will be here by next week, which would mean that I'd have time to get back up and running before the contest modules start pouring in at the end of the month.
It's still kind of a shame though. I had just started playing Dark Waters and was really enjoying it. I can see why there have been complaints about the lengthy cutscenes at the start, but I actually enjoyed them--and most surprisingly of all, with one painful exception (which I think is Adam Miller's mom), I found the voice acting to be pretty darn good--especially that of the two major companions, Heather and Daniel. I agree with Maerduin that bad voice acting can kill a module, but so far, so good. The story also is really interesting and potentially really deep.

But, I have saved my saved games (and, in fact, everything /mydocuments/neverwinternights2), so everything should be there when I return. In the meantime, I'll probably occupy myself with my other hobbies, as I don't want to clutter up my new windows install with graphics drivers and such--I want it to be crisp and clean so that it'll be ready to go the next time I have a problem like this.

Update: The replacement has already shipped. Truly impressive service. It's UPS ground, so it should arrive mid-late next week (the tracking number isn't visible yet).

Hard drive...

As I type this on my laptop, I'm running chkdsk on my desktop's hard drive. This evening I couldn't get it to boot, and it's been acting strangely the past few days, and giving errors that now (in hindsight) seem like they could be the result of my hard drive dying.

So far, the drive seems to be scanning ok (got here by booting with my windows cd and getting to the command line), and if nothing is picked up I think there's a slight chance that removing my sound card might help matters. But if not, I'll probably need a new hard drive.

I hate it when my computer goes down. Hopefully the drive isn't actually damaged, or at least not so much that I won't be able to get any information off of it. If everything is unrecoverable, I don't think there's too much critical info on here, though I'd probably lose my work on the frwcc since the last release. I think i could recreate that in a few days of effort, but it'd still be a shame as it's looking pretty snazzy right now. The biggest loss, though, would be some baseball research I've put together over the past few months, mostly in the form of excel files. It's all reconstructable, but I'd spent a lot of time on it to get it where it is.

::sigh:: We'll see. I hate this feeling.

Quick hits...

There's been a variety of news items over the past few days:

• The NWN1 Module of the Year 2006 contest is over! Congrats to the winners:

1. A Dance with Rogues by Valine
2. Darkness over Daggerford by Ossian Studios Inc.
3. Exile of the West (Bastard of Kosigan episode 1) by Fabien Cerutti with help from Ginni Swanton
4. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr by DLA & Bioware

• Tiberius209 has a blog! Tiberius is the author of the excellent Saleron's Gambit series for NWN1, and is currently a designer for Ossian Studios. And now, he's joined the elite ranks of Neverwinter Nights bloggers. Looking forward to seeing more from him, even if it's about medieval literature. :)

• The first NWN2 Expansion Screenshots have been released. Looks like we've definitely got a nice snow texture as well as snowy trees to play with. :) Also looks like an Astral bear(?) and some wyverns. The wyverns were present in some of the first NWN2 screenshots for the OC, but apparently were cut and saved for the expansion. Nice to have them back though, as they're a cool monster. I'm hoping we'll see a stream of additional screenshots as the release comes through. Certainly you'd expect to see a beholder one of these days...
  

Update: Whoops, been meaning to mention:

• Enoa4 is very close to the release of his module, Keep on the Borderlands! In fact, he has a pre-release version available to interested parties.
  

NWN2 EXP: Mask of the Betrayer

Well, today came the biggest news we've had about NWN2 since it's release: there will be an expansion, due Fall 2007, of NWN2. An excerpt from the press release:

Set in harsh, spirit-rich Rashemen, near the powerful nation of Thay, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer will present players with an exciting new campaign; epic levels; dozens of new feats and spells; new races, base classes and prestige classes; new companions; new weapons, armor and crafting options; hordes of new monsters; and enhanced modding tools.

Lots in there to be excited about. As expected, epic levels will appear in this expansion, which might make a second expansion pack less likely. Still, it will be nice to have that flexibility, and I'm sure that feature alone will sell a lot of boxes. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with in terms of new spells, feats, races, classes, etc. NWN2 included pretty much everything that had been done in NWN1 save for the epic stuff. Including a host of new monsters is also very welcome news, and is something that is desperately needed by modders.com

The campaign setting also looks interesting. We've pretty much been stuck along the sword coast and its northern and southern borders since the initial release of Baldur's Gate, and this moves into a rich and uncharted territory. The Red Wizards of Thay are a sister bunch, and Thay's proximity to Rashemen makes it likely that we'll see them make an appearance.

As for the story itself...well, here's the hook:

In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, players are transported back to the Forgotten Realms shortly after the events detailed in the original Neverwinter Nights 2. Following the climactic battle against the King of Shadows, the player awakens alone and stranded deep beneath the earth. Surrounded by a horde of evil spirits, the player embarks on an epic adventure that reveals his true destiny.

I'm sure it makes good business sense to allow players to use their characters from the OC (even though they are not exported!!) and continue that story, though I personally had hoped for a novel story. When I character gets as absurdly powerful as ours did (my character is a lv. 20 Aasimar Cleric), it's hard to tell a convincing story--especially one set somewhere in terrestrial Faerun. I imagine we'll see a lot of planar travel or something to allow there to be believable combat opponents.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with this announcement. I'm a bit surprised that there isn't a website with some graphics and such to go along with the announcement, though I'm sure we'll see that in time. Congrats on Obsidian and Atari for being in a position that they can make this announcement--nothing will bring players back to the community like the release of an expansion.

Dark Waters to be released tomorrow!

While we haven't yet seen any entries to the module writing contest (no surprise--I'm sure most will turn up on the last day or two of the month, as they will take a while to put together), another big boost to the community comes tomorrow with the release of the first module in Adam Millers' Dark Waters series.

Miller has been working on this series since completing Demon two years ago. Here's an excerpt from Miller's website describing the intriguing setting:

I'm trying to combine swashbuckling and high adventure with a more somber exploration of the human mind. The story is also set against the backdrop of a myriad of island nations, only now recovering from a devastating war that changed the face of the world. It is into this world that three friends grow into adulthood and learn about joy, loss, and secrets that have long lain hidden.

On top of the cool setting, the module promises to be well written and contain a TON of custom content. Custom score, full speech, custom models, psionics, flintlock pistols, etc. It should be very interesting. I plan to start playing it this weekend, so you can probably expect to see my comments on it sometime next week.

Patch 1.05 released

Patch 1.05 was released today. It took a bit longer than I expected to go through beta, but it still represents a nice trend of ongoing support from Obsidian. Yay.

You can read my comments on Patch 1.05's feature list here.

A Shot in the Arm - Obsidian NWN2 Mod-Making Contest

Tonight, Obsidian announced that the long-awaited NWN2 Mod-Making contest is on! From the news announcement on the Vault:

For this first contest, the theme will be "Grimm's Fairy Tales." The final day to submit modules will be Monday, April 30th at noon Pacific Time.

You can remake one of Grimm's Fairy Tales or do anything else as long as your mod has something to do with the theme.

I'm really excited about this. We've talked about how the builder community hasn't been very productive thus far, and this contest could be just what we needed. It offers a chance to get a lot of good modules pushed out in just one month's time...and even if some of the entries aren't very good, it might help a lot of people get their feet wet with the toolset, who might then go on to do great things in our little community.

The immediate comparison one might make for this event is the Bioware Writing Contest of February/March 2006. In that module, conditions were extremely cramped: one 4x4 area, a maximum of three NPC's, no combat at all, and a cap on word count. Most modules took about 5 minutes to play through, though some of the clever ones, including the eventual winner, Myranni's Magic by Mat Jobe, might have taken 15 min. The result was 300+ modules being submitted. Unfortunately, due to the severe constraints, many of them weren't terribly fun or engaging. Still, in my role as one of the nominated community judges, I played through around 90 of them, and saw a lot of really good ideas out there (as an aside, Mat Jobe's module was luckily in my initial batch of modules to review as a judge, so I felt some level of pride to see it win it all...not that it wouldn't have won had it gone to anyone else's batch!).

This new contest has much more open-ended rules, though the expected product must be larger in scope: between 30 minutes and two hours long, two to five areas (one must be an exterior), and must follow (on some level) the Grimm's Fairy Tales theme. It also doesn't carry with it the opportunity to gain potential employment in the gaming industry like the Bioware writing contest did. Therefore, I think the result is going to be that there will be far fewer modules that are submitted, but the ones we get are almost certainly going to be more enjoyable than those of the writing contest.

I can't wait to see the entries start to pour in. I briefly (like...for about 3 seconds) toyed with the idea of trying to come up with a submission of my own, but with the start of the baseball season and everything going on at work, I have too many distractions. :) Instead, I'm going to try to play and give comments on as many as I can, as I think this could be a cool feature for the blog. Stay tuned to this space...

Update: Maerduin is apparently planning to put in a contest submission. Great news!

Update2: It looks like a lot of folks in the NWN2 Mods forum around going to give it a whirl.

Hall of Fame Inductees - April 2006

Yesterday, the second round of inductions into the NWN2 Vault Hall of Fame were announced.

This round's inductees included the first Hall of Fame story-based module: Pool of Radiance Remastered - Chapter 1 by Markus "Wayne" Schlegel. You can read my comments on this module here, but this is an excerpt of my opinion on it:

The town feels cramped and overcrowded, the people have real personalities and are desperately just trying to scrape by in this new outpost, and the strained, self-serving interactions between the adventurers and the town officials do a great job of conveying the unique circumstances of the setting.

It's an excellent module, certainly among the top two or three available on the Vault today. Congratulations to Wayne on making it into the Hall!

Also making it into the NWN2 Hall of Fame this month is clubok's Less Obtrusive Spell Buffs. This is an absolutely essential tweak to the user interface that I highlighted here. Congrats to clubok--and many thanks for making this game much more playable for magic users.

Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to Heresiologist, whose NWN1 module, UK2 - The Sentinel was FINALLY inducted into the Hall of Fame. It's long, long overdue--her module has been overlooked for quite some time. Here is an excerpt from my comments on this module, dated 23 June 2005:

The best thing about this module is the detail that was put into it in terms of creating an atmosphere. This is a PnP conversation (I have not played or read the original pnp module), and it shows with the elegant maps included with the documentation, and some of the surrounding backstory in the module. The author has put all of this detail, and certainly some of her own ideas, into this mod. There are some downright beautiful descriptions (though occasionally these are a bit verbose) of the areas in which you travel, much of which is done through pop-up texts. Lighting is also handled well in most areas—I was particularly struck by a forest scene during sunrise, where gorgeous yellow light streams though the leaves. Stunning.

I also want to acknowledge jfoxtail, who ramped up a small campaign to get that module the last few votes it needed to be eligible for the Hall.

Kudos, congrats, and thanks to all of April's inductees of both games.

Music Taste

Maerduin's post about his favorite Modding Music reminded me of a post I saw some time ago on another blog (don't remember where) that asked folks to provide a slice of their music taste by putting their MP3 player on shuffle and reporting what songs came up. So I've done that. Here are the first 40 tracks:

1. Jealous of the Moon by Nickel Creek
2. Your Song by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge Soundtrack)
3. Drain You by Nirvana
4. Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight by Amos Lee
5. Turn You Inside-Out by R.E.M.
6. Out in the Woods by Poor Alfred
7. What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
8. Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles
9. Tush by ZZ Top
10. Crazy by Barenaked Ladies
11. Free Fallin' by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
12. Heart of Gold by Neil Young
13. You Are the Everything by R.E.M.
14. Don't Come Around Here No More by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
15. Kentucky Moon by The Kinks
16. Someone Else's Song by Wilco
17. Strange Currencies by R.E.M.
18. Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues by The Kinks
19. Desire by U2
20. Hey Joe by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
21. I'm Always in Love by Wilco
22. You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon
23. Have you ever seen the rain (cover-live) by R.E.M.
24. The Late Greats by Wilco
25. Star Me Kitten by R.E.M.
26. Talula by Tori Amos
27. The Past and Pending by The Shins
28. Handshake Drugs by Wilco
    
29. What's the Matter Here by 10,000 Maniacs
30. Alabama Song by The Doors
31. Where Did You Sleep Last Night by Nirvana
32. Yesterday by The Beatles
33. Leave My Wife Alone by John Lee Hooker
34. Cool #9 by Joe Satriani
35. Speak To Me/Breathe by Pink Floyd
36. Sedan Delivery by Neil Young
37. Rebel Yell by Billy Idol
38. Beloved Wife by Natalie Mechant
39. Cuckoo's Nest by Nickel Creek
40. Fall On Me by R.E.M.

I'm not proud of everything up there, but I do admit that I like all these songs. :)

As you can see, I'm not particularly eclectic in my tastes, though there are a few bands on that list that you might not know.

Distribution and representation is interesting. I admittedly do have several R.E.M. and Wilco albums on there, but it's not so biased as this would indicate. While he made appearances, my large collection of Neil Young albums is fairly underrepresented. :) I'm also a bit lacking much in the way of new content--I basically just listen to what I did in high school and my early years of college. ;) Suggestions that complement my interests are welcome--and I'd love to see others around the nwn blogosphere do a similar exercise!

Dark Waters getting close to release

After all the doom and gloom from our discussion post a few days ago (btw--thanks to everyone who posted, it was exciting to have so many intelligent comments!) , it's nice to see some positive news. From Adam Miller's blog:

As March comes to a close, it feels like the module is increasingly getting close to release. I wasn't able to do a full walkthrough yesterday, but I did a lot of spot checking. ... At this point, I want to get a final build out to the testers. ... I'd also love to do another full walkthrough this weekend, though with my family coming back, I might be hard pressed to pull it off. If I can make it all the way through without any significant bugs, well, I'll break out the champagne when that actually happens.

Very exciting stuff! From the sound of things, a release before mid-April is a very real possibility. It should be worth checking out. Adam Miller is perhaps best known for his custom content and scripted mini-games, but he also is a good writer, with a great knack for creating well-paced, compelling adventure series with intriguing companions.