Tchos’ Gaming and Modding

A note on WoW and Nostalrius

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sun, 08 May 2016 22:36:00 +0000

I've written before of my increasing dissatisfaction with the direction that Blizzard took WoW with each expansion. At one point I started making a list of all of the RPG and flavour elements that I had liked, more and more of which Blizzard systematically removed from the game with each expansion. I even witnessed the removal of some of it, as I was trying out some of the Cataclysm content with a free starter account at the time when the Mists of Pandaria expansion was released and forcibly applied to my installation. It is no exaggeration to say that the game in its current state is a very different game than the one I paid for in 2007.

I write today, a month after the shutdown of the private server Nostalrius, not to lament the loss of a functioning preservation of the game as it was in 2006, but to address an argument that I've seen parroted unchallenged in many places.

"People who played on Nostalrius weren't there because they preferred vanilla, but because it was free."

I don't understand how this claim continues to be repeated, when it doesn't stand up to even the most casual of scrutiny. There are many private servers maintained by fans, and they represent a wide range of preferences. Some focus on specific expansions, while others include the most current content. Some focus on PvP, and have little care for quests. By far, the majority of them feature accelerated leveling, accelerated gold and skill gains, and overpowered gear, and are intended as playgrounds (small wonder, considering faithful recreation of the quests and scripting takes a great deal of effort). A minority strive to be "Blizzlike", with quests, leveling, and content as close to the source as possible.

Nostalrius was a vanilla Blizzlike 1x server with no accelerated leveling and no special bonuses, made to resemble WoW as it was as closely as possible, and it existed in a sea of servers that support Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and yes, even Warlords of Draenor. If people were only playing on a private server because it was free, why did they specifically pick a vanilla server instead of the "latest and greatest" of the expansions?

Obviously, they weren't playing there because it was free. The reasonable conclusion is that they were playing there because they preferred vanilla.

More Neverwinter Nights 2 modding

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 04:45:00 +0000

One should not take my lack of updates here as a sign that I'm not gaming. The truth is, I play other types of games as well as RPGs, and I'm not sure that they'd fit well on this blog. After finishing the module that occupied much of my time over the past couple of years, I expanded back out into a wider variety of game types, and played many other games to completion, though I did also find the time last year to add a Halloween expansion to my campaign. At any rate, the itch to play and mod Neverwinter Nights 2 has returned.

I've played many modules recently too, of course, and I've even written reviews of them, but I'm not comfortable with posting those reviews. As a reader may note from my previous reviews (including of NWN2 modules), I can be a harsh critic, and I have rather high standards. Those standards have only risen higher since those last reviews, since I've not only played a good number of exemplary modules, but I've also seen for myself exactly what can be done in the toolset. I want my criticism to be constructive, but it's hard to disguise the frustration I sometimes feel at certain common mistakes that cause problems in modules, especially when they're reported to the author and are never fixed. So as yet I've remained silent.

I've started on another expansion to my campaign, but it's very preliminary work so far. I've made some new custom content. One is a recreation of the green devil head, the iconic trap in the classic Gary Gygax module Tomb of Horrors. This has no real use outside of that module, and I'd hate to see such an iconic trap being used for generic decoration, so the only point to creating this was to test out a sculpting method in Gmax, which was cutting shapes out of a plane and moving vertices around. It worked very nicely, so I can see myself making more interesting objects now.

Another is a new shiny tintable floor, which was inspired by a description of the evil cleric's room in the classic pen & paper module The Keep on the Borderlands. Most NWN2 assets suffer from poor texturing. Low resolution diffuse maps, overwrought normal maps, and very little specularity. My content is intended to make up for that.

Another is a set of tile floors based on the dungeon floor tiles in the official Wizards of the Coast map tile packs. These are also shiny and tintable in several ways (you can tint them in ways that make them appear less shiny, and can optionally tint them in a checkerboard pattern). The scale is not the same as the original official map tiles, however. The original dungeon tiles were a single tile to represent 10 feet, aligning it with one of the standard measurements (the other is 5 feet). However, since NWN2 tiles are 9 m to a side, I decided to have 12 tile squares per 9 m, which makes each square approximately 2.5 feet. This means that a set of 4 tiles creates a 5 ft x 5 ft square, or 8 of them makes 10 ft x 10 ft. This makes it easy to map out interiors based on the old D&D maps.

Although I have some ideas in mind for my expansion already, I've decided to go through some old Dungeon magazines for inspiration and details, especially for special encounters, traps, treasures, etc. Each room is a set-piece in many of these older adventures, each containing something new to see or do. This sort of design goal fits in well with one of my other design goals, that of spectacle and discovery. Then again, there are also some adventures that contain plain empty rooms. I'm not particularly concerned with this kind of realism. I want the rooms to have things in them that are interesting for players to do in a game, whether or not it's more realistic to have empty, looted rooms in a place that's supposedly occupied, or to have traps and puzzles in each room, or just to have rooms piled high with junk or objects too large for an adventurer to move. Likewise, in a world where everburning torches are a common enough item, there's no real need to play the "realism" card in terms of lighting.

Anyway, here's to more fun times ahead.

Bioware: "Gaming's moved on from Neverwinter Nights, we've moved on from Baldur's Gate."

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 17:05:00 +0000

I read an article interviewing Cameron Lee, producer of Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's a year old, but it was recently linked in a topic on the Neverwinter Nights 2 forum. Due to its provocative content, I thought it would be better to comment on it here, rather than on Bioware's own forum.

"Gaming's moved on from Neverwinter Nights, we've moved on from Baldur's Gate."

This quote jumped out at me, even before I saw that the article author pulled it out to highlight it later in the article. It confirms what they had been avoiding saying for many years, that they've abandoned much of the audience that they attracted with their earlier games. "Moving on," as if one of the best games they ever made were a bitter, failed marriage, or at best a death of a loved one, much as the article's author opines in the text leading up to the quote.

Showing the quote in a little more context, the most relevant part says:

Inquisition allows me to move into a tactical camera view and control my party from overhead, but BioWare prefers to show the game from its third-person view. [...] But I also suspect that BioWare wants to distance itself from the games of its past--Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, namely--and be mentioned in the same breath as Elder Scrolls. Lee's words reinforce this notion. "Gaming's moved on from Neverwinter Nights, we've moved on from Baldur's Gate," he says.

I do remember a much earlier interview in Wired magazine that supported the author's suspicion, specifically in regard to Skyrim. Commenting on the poor reception of Dragon Age 2, Ray Muzyka was speaking of plans for improving what would become Inquisition, saying:

“We’re checking [Skyrim] out aggressively. We like it. We’re big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product,” he said. “We think we can do some wonderful things.”

More like admirers of the product's financial success, I'd wager. And so Inquisition features a zoomed-in perspective and a seamless open world, both noticeable features of the Elder Scrolls games. At least they didn't copy the Elder Scrolls' solo, one-man-army gameplay style. But, then, Bioware's Neverwinter Nights didn't have the controllable party that Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age: Origins had. Obsidian gave us that proper party system in Neverwinter Nights 2.

Back to the more recent interview, producer Lee continues after mentioning NWN:

"Neverwinter Nights, when you think about that is a transition point from Baldur's Gate, being 3D at that point. So that would have had a similar question, just from the change in perspective, and the change in the pacing. So it's more of an evolution in being immersed in the world, and I think that this kind of freeform movement to the world, giving you a massive place to explore, is just an evolution of the world."

What is he talking about here? This, combined with the first part above, is the entirety of the quote. Perhaps it would have helped if the author had mentioned what the "similar question" was referring to, but he didn't mention it because he found the bit about NWN and BG more interesting. Is he talking solely about graphics or style, and not the game? That their games have "moved on", first away from 2D, then away from a long-view party-focused gameplay to an Elder Scrolls-style up-close single character gameplay? If so, it's hardly saying anything.

But, then, he didn't just say that Bioware was moving on. He claimed that gaming, as a whole, had moved on from Neverwinter Nights, and by extension from Baldur's Gate as well, which lends itself to the way that I and the article author took it: that gaming as a whole has moved on from that sort of game.

I have to say that I disagree with that statement, given the renaissance of RPGs of a class similar to Baldur's Gate starting a few years ago and continuing today, with games like Divinity: Original Sin, Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Pillars of Eternity, and more still in production, not to mention the successful re-releases of the Baldur's Gate games in "enhanced editions". To me, it looks more like gaming had a period of famine caused by the big publishers' lack of interest in serving the needs of that customer base, which was finally relieved by crowdfunding and other similar means.

Thanks to this renaissance, it's been a while since I (and others in this particular audience) have had to "settle" for the smaller and smaller scraps the larger publishers deigned to throw us.

I have not yet played Bioware's latest offering because of how much I hated the Dragon Age 2 demo. From videos and demonstrations of it, though, it looked like it was closer to DA:O than DA2 was. I was willing to see how it came out. It seemed that they were no longer quite so confident that it would be more profitable to abandon the fans of the original in pursuit of a newer, presumably larger audience.

However, when one of my relatives happened to get DA:I as a X-mas gift, I watched him play it, and I determined that it still had strayed too far away from the kind of game I want to play.

They had it right before. They don't now, and that's fine. Others do.

The Black Scourge of Candle Cove released

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 21:44:00 +0000

An adventure module for characters around level 10
Download pages, with screenshots:

A notorious sea hag pirate has been terrorising the port town of Candle Cove with her crew of ogres, plundering ships and sending men, women, and children to a watery grave. Now she's gone even further, and seized control of the local lighthouse, preventing any ships from coming or going at all!

You and your party of adventurers have just come into town. Can you do what it takes to defeat the pirates and free Candle Cove?

This campaign is for a party of up to 5 members, and features a range of recruitable companions of seven different classes around town, in addition to allowing you to import or create your own party. SoZ party chat will allow your own created party members to chip in their unique perspectives in conversations, as well as the recruitable companions' unique dialogue. Play whatever class you like as your main character, and build a well-balanced party to deal with a variety of situations, both in combat and in social situations.

Characters should be around level 10 to play this module. You can import a character of an appropriate range, or select options within the starting area to level a new character within a range of easier or harder levels, with a level-appropriate amount of gold to use to purchase equipment from the well-stocked vendors around town.

Go diving! Sailing! Sandbox questing in town and around it! And when you're strong enough, face the larger challenges! Have fun, and play it as you like.

Neverwinter Nights 2 module update

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:35:00 +0000

Although I've been rather quiet on this blog, I've been steadily posting updates on my progress on my adventure module for Neverwinter Nights 2 on the forums of the Neverwinter Nexus and the Bioware Social Network, where by now I've posted somewhere around 150 updates about it. I don't think I said much about it here, actually, although I've posted several videos from it on my Youtube channel.

The summary of it is that it's approaching completion, and it's large.

After this module's completion, I can get back to more frequent updates here -- which is certainly not to say there won't be anything here until then.

What I've learned

I've learned an unbelieveable amount about modding and making games from this experience, far beyond my previous modding in other games. My module for Dragon Age: Origins was a dipping of my toe, and this has turned out to be swimming in a vast ocean.

I've become comfortable with fairly complicated programming/scripting, which turned out to be not only a basic necessity, but a creative opening of the doors that allow me to make any kind of quest I can imagine. I've also learned the value of writing detailed comments in my scripts, to document what I'm doing and why, and how it affects other scripts, or is affected by them, and where I'm storing variables and other information.

I've recently expanded my asset-creation knowledge from my existing forte of texturing, to learning how to make custom models, and creating new UV/UVW maps for them, using Gmax (a sort of "lite" version of 3DS Max, if I understand correctly). I've created a number of new placeables for this project, first by simply retexturing existing models and by texturing the models supplied by others, and later by making the meshes in Gmax.

I also learned how to use other tools to import custom music and sound effects, and performed mass extraction and conversion of the game's sound assets so that I can more conveniently browse through them and pick appropriate sounds for my module's situations. The built in "sound objects" that can be placed in the game are convenient for many purposes, but they don't include anywhere near the entirety of the assets available in the game files.

Before that, of course, I had also learned about how to made the graphic user interface elements in XML, and I used my graphic design experience to make them look nice at HD resolution.

I'll have to make a post to showcase the new placeables at some point, and ultimately I'll be releasing them as a pack separately from the module that I made them for. I'd like to showcase the scripting systems, too, but code doesn't lend itself well to showcasing in that manner, despite being very interesting in other ways.

Lighting in this engine is another thing I've been learning about. I can see that there were some mistakes in how the original campaigns were lit, and unfortunately those mistakes are what prompted me (and no doubt many others) to disable point light shadows. And the poor engine optimisation caused many others to eschew even medium-level shadows. A great shame, since with full shadows enabled, and a module with properly adjusted lights, the lighting can be very beautiful in this game.

I don't use these cinematic cutscenes, preferring the text box for its much longer capacity for each line (and perhaps more importantly, how it gives the user the ability to absolutely control the pace of the dialogue), but if I were to use the cinematic cutscenes, I would certainly use a classic studio 3-point lighting setup, and specifically chosen camera angles (rather than the default random angles) to create an appealing and dramatic scene. Lighting is often not given the attention it should be, though it plays a very important role. Some conversations I've experienced in some modules have taken place entirely in the dark, and not for any artistic reason that I could tell!

Likewise, I have come to believe that the washed-out look that I'd noted in some areas and objects in my original playthrough of the original NWN2 campaign is due to the fact that those assets were intentionally designed with a low colour saturation so that they could be tinted as needed. And some level artists apparently didn't tint them.

One of the first things I learned was how to handle the game's two-dimensional array files (2DA). Understanding those is really the first step in using almost any custom content. I can clearly recall how foreign and mystifying they were when I first attempted to use one, which was the restsys_wm_tables.2da file used to select random wandering monster encounters for the resting system that was added in Mask of the Betrayer.

For that matter, learning to create a campaign and to import systems added by the expansions was a very valuable experience. Creating a campaign was thankfully simple enough, since there is a very good tutorial for it by Kaldor Silverwand. Importing the other systems, on the other hand, involved a lot of reading through scripts and examining settings in the official campaigns.

And of course, several mishaps underscored the importance of backing up your work often. Fortunately, my backups have been frequent enough as to prevent the loss of more than a day's work. If you're reading this, and you haven't backed up your current work in more than a day, take a break from reading and do it now, just in case.

Ways of learning more

Since there are no intermediate-to-advanced tutorials for creating modules that I could find, I think there's nothing better that you can do than to open up the default scripts and read them. Especially the include files, and the scripts for special events and encounters in the campaigns. Many of them have decent documentation that teaches you a great deal, and since these scripts were written over a period of years, and also by different people, there are a lot of different approaches shown in them. In the few months I've been working on this, I myself have used multiple approaches for the same tasks, based on different factors, such as directness, extensibility, reusability, elegance, brevity, ease for other people to understand it, and others, so it's no surprise to see so many methods on display in the core scripts, especially those left over from NWN1.

In addition to just reading the scripts, it's extremely helpful to just play through the official campaigns, and take note of when the game has you performing a particular task that's similar to something you want to have in your module as well. You can open up that file and see how they did it, and then use that knowledge to make your own version.

Anyway, I've really been enjoying this process of learning and discovery (aside from a few annoying things like working with the walkmesh). So back to work for me!

The Temple of Elemental Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 12:02:00 +0000

The Temple of Elemental Evil is one of the first games I bought from GOG back in 2010, and my initial attempt at playing it determined that I was not yet ready for such an excellent, hardcore game.

I found this game extremely confusing when I first tried to play it about 2 years ago. First of all, I was more or less unfamiliar with the D&D 3.x ruleset. In the intervening time, I've played both Neverwinter Nights games and pen and paper Pathfinder, so now I have a much better idea of what I'm doing.

Another stumbling block was that I had no idea where I should go or what I should do first. I made the mistake of heading straight for the moat house after delivering news to the head priest at the local temple, since it seemed like that's where I was supposed to go next. When the head priest told me about this moat house quest, the dialogue included an option to head out to the moat house immediately, and so naturally I thought that it would be designed for a level 1 party.

In this first attempt, on the way to the moat house, my party was ambushed by two giant frogs. Aside from the opening vignette, this was my first taste of combat in ToEE. I did my best with the unfamiliar controls and the inadequate gear, but things clearly weren't going well, and I knew we were doomed when I saw two more giant frogs join the fray. I couldn't do anything but watch helplessly as, one by one, the whole party was grappled by the tongues of the giant frogs and then swallowed. TPK.

Let me tell you, this party was in no position to be going to the moat house. After trying a few in-town quests instead, I learned just how pathetic and vulnerable we were. There's a quest to find out who's poisoning a farmer's sheep. I found the person doing it (he was just standing around out there for hours all night, so it wasn't hard), but I couldn't get any information out of him, so I tried pickpocketing him to see if I could get some evidence that way. Apparently that doesn't work at all, because I was successful multiple times, but never found anything new in my inventory, but when he spotted me and entered combat, this somehow aggroed the sheep on the farm, and they attacked. My party was then wiped by sheep.

I checked online for some advice on where to begin, and a couple of places recommended going to Deklo Grove (which required finding someone in town to give me the quest, which I don't think I ever would have found) and just grinding on random spawns there until level 2. Not very fun. I did get to level 2 that way, but it took a while. When I did, I ended up taking the Toughness feat on several of my characters, which in retrospect was an unwise choice. It grants you a meagre 3 extra hit points, which seemed like a lot at the time, when the health of all of us could be measured in single digits, but after just a few more levels, 3 HP is rather insignificant, as I discovered when I hit level 2, and saw my HP nearly double! Really, when I made this first attempt about 2 years ago, I didn't even understand that each level added another die's worth of HP.

Anyway, I checked the Circle of Eight site, and saw that they had released a new version of their mod since I last checked. It wasn't compatible with the previous one, but it had some new content that I wanted, so I had to start over. But maybe that wasn't so unfortunate, because with my new understanding of the D&D rules, I could now understand that some of the pregenerated characters I was using were not very well suited to their roles. For instance, I had a wizard whose intelligence was rather average, but who had very high dexterity, which wasn't doing her any good. I had just assumed that the pregenerated characters that came with the game would have been ideal characters, but now I believe they were made with intentionally random ability scores, just to make it that much more hardcore.

So I started again with a new party of six members (the mod pack allows party sizes up to 7), some of whom were custom made, to use in the Co8 mod pack version 7.0, which includes several new areas, including one designed for level 1 characters. Perfect! I went through the process of obtaining the quest, which was rather verbose but well-written, and ironically played up as something extremely dangerous, when it was in fact the most level-appropriate thing I could be doing, unless you count the social quests in town. When I got to the new place, Welkwood Bog, the first creatures I encountered were...kobolds! Whew! After giant frogs and giant spiders, I found the kobolds quite reassuring.

The Welkwood quest was fairly short, but gave my party a much-needed level increase and gave me some spell scrolls and some better starting gear. It had an interesting story behind it, too. Ordinarily I like social quests, but I think the awkward interface in this game, as well as the dull, low-saturation art design contributes to the lack of fun in that regard. I was happy to take this alternate route.

Interface and game information

The Temple of Elemental Evil has the most detailed, in-depth set of options for a player's actions in any computer RPG I've ever seen. Stances, grappling, trips, attacks of opportunity and more! Unfortunately, these are arranged inside a horrible radial menu with layers within layers of flyout "spokes". Remember me complaining about the inscrutable icons in the NWN radial menu, and how I wished for a simple text menu? This has text, but it rotates it to match the angle of the item on the menu, making it unnecessarily awkward. Please, please, give me my spells in a nice simple list where I can get to them without having to delve through multiple levels of flyouts on a radial menu! I liked the way NWN2 did this, with all of my spells available at a glance, with descriptions, grouped by spell level, with the touch of a single key. I did eventually get used to the interface, but I would never call it a "good design", and I really wish I could change it.

One thing that partially mitigates the awkwardness of the radial menu is the ability to assign shortcut keys to individual commands (for instance, I assigned keys for Coup de Grace, 5-foot Step, and Charge Attack), though many of the keys I wanted to use were reserved.

The font they chose for all of the in-game text is a boldfaced sans-serif font like Helvetica or Arial, and is rather small. Sans-serif is not as readable at small sizes as serif fonts, because the serifs aid the eye in interpreting the letters. (Likewise, mixed-case is easier to read than all-caps, due to the relative distinctiveness of the letterforms, but fortunately this game used mixed-case.) The font cannot be changed, nor increased in size -- at least not easily. I saw a hack out there somewhere that was supposed to increase it, but I think it said I'd have to start the game over again, and I wasn't ready for that. Instead, I settled on playing at a lower resolution than I prefer, since the text doesn't scale. This means poor-quality screenshots, I'm afraid.

The game contains a wealth of information on game rules, rolls and modifiers, and what things do. If you open the combat log, it describes the actions of each turn, with highlighted words that can be clicked on for more detail. There, you can see exactly what number you rolled for your attack/save, what items, effects, or feats may be modifying that roll and by how much, and what number you had to beat in order to succeed.

I used this information screen in one of the few instances I've come across where picking a lock was necessary: in this case it was a chest added by the Circle of 8 mod. Of course, my wizard knows the Knock spell, but this chest turned out to be spell resistant. I no longer had a rogue in my party, and my ranger wasn't able to pick a lock even though she had some points in the open lock skill. (Due to the level caps on skill point distribution, I sometimes had extra points left over, and spent them on cross-class skills.) So I temporarily hired Furnok, a rogue NPC staying at the nearby tavern, and had him try to pick the lock. He failed several times, so I checked the log, and saw that even though it was awarding him rolls of 20 (the maximum), the modifiers weren't high enough for him ever to succeed. So I lent him the Gloves of Dexterity I had crafted, which I saw added a little to his modifiers, but still not enough. I had my druid cast Cat's Grace on him, and tried again. Almost there, but 1 point shy! Finally, I had one of my clerics cast Prayer on the party, which added 1 more point, and he was then able to pick the lock.

By comparison, Neverwinter Nights 2 shows the rolls right in the main window, and tells you if success is possible, but doesn't break down exactly where your modifiers are coming from like ToEE does.

Similar to these skill check reports, you can also get a detailed breakdown of your character's attack bonus or armour bonus, which is immensely helpful in intelligently building and outfitting a character, so that you know which feats, enhancements, and other bonuses are in effect, and which don't stack, and why.

Other aspects of the game and interface are quite unhelpful by comparison. There are signs outside the buildings, but they're just decoration, and aren't readable like in other games, where you might hover the mouse over them to see what they are. At least the map screen allows you to place notes on it. Also, there's a key to highlight usable objects on screen like in Baldur's Gate, but most of the time it doesn't highlight anything! I couldn't find anything highlighted in Hommlet, and only a few things (dead bodies with loot and doors) highlighted in one of the interiors. The quest journal is also extremely terse and lacking in detail, and it doesn't change to reflect new information, so you may need to take your own notes.

Spell descriptions are likewise laconic, including none of the flavour text from the sourcebooks which the other D&D CRPGs included. They also occasionally omit very relevant information. For instance, near the end of the game, I had been using the Raise Dead spell several times, but at some point it told me that I couldn't use it, because I didn't have enough gold. I checked, and sure enough, it had drained my party funds dry! I checked the spell description again, and it said nothing about costing gold to cast it, whereas other spells like stoneskin and identify did mention that. I checked the manual, and in the manual it mentions that Raise Dead requires 5000 gp's worth of diamonds as material components. That's something that it really should have mentioned in the game itself. I shouldn't have to consult the manual before casting a spell to see if it has requirements not listed in the game itself.

This is not a complaint about the spell being expensive, though. I really like that some spells, especially powerful ones like this, require expensive material components. It raises the stakes in fights, unlike in other D&D-based games, where raising the dead is free or even automatic. The only complaint is that I wasn't warned about the expense in-game.

Other nice inclusions are such things as a druid's Reincarnation spell being mentioned as not being guaranteed to bring the character back as their original race, and the fact that paladins can fall from grace due to their actions. Fallen paladins must seek atonement, which is prohibitively expensive to discourage casual out-of-character behaviour. However, my paladin fell from grace unexpectedly when I spared the drow priest when he begged for mercy, and accepted his offer to escort me to a back entrance of the Temple of Elemental Evil. It was not adequately telegraphed that this would entail the chaotic evil drow joining my party. My solution was to kick the paladin out of the party and roll up a dwarven fighter.

Also nice is the inclusion of nonlethal damage in addition to the normal sort. Things like fistfights and drinking contests involve nonlethal damage on a separate health bar. When your nonlethal hit points run out, you fall unconscious. This provides an alternate way of dealing with trolls, incidentally, who can normally only be hurt with fire or acid damage. Everything else deals nonlethal damage for them, but the interesting thing is that once they fall unconscious, you can choose a coup de grace attack which kills them instantly.

I also appreciated the pop-up boxes of DM-text that appear when you enter significant new areas, describing the area to set the mood, much as a dungeon master would do in a pen & paper game.

The crafting menu has its pros and cons. On the pro side, it gives you a full list of crafting recipes, and shows you what is required to craft them, such as level, spell, items, gold, and XP cost for Craft Wondrous Items. You can easily add effects to items with Craft Magic Arms and Armour, and rename your items. On the minus side, it's sometimes unclear why some of the effects can't be added (it doesn't tell you which condition isn't met), and many of the wondrous items are missing descriptions, or have inadequate descriptions, so I can't tell what they're supposed to do! The game manual is excellent and extensive, but doesn't include descriptions of these wondrous items either. I have to look them up in the online d20 System Reference Document to find out.

Speaking of recipes, this is the second Troika game I've seen that includes an actual food recipe in the manual, at the end. Arcanum has "Grandma Cookhill's Three Bowl Bread", a halfling's banana bread. This one has a recipe for "Chocolate Chip Cookies of the Gods", whose description indicates it also probably came from a halfling, though it was stolen by an orc. I especially like the bit where it stresses the importance of waiting for the dough to chill thoroughly, saying "If you cannot wait, do not expect cookies of the gods."

Bugs

I've heard that the game was very buggy when it was released, as per usual for a Troika game. The Circle of 8 mod pack appears to have fixed most of those bugs, and provided workarounds for most of the few that remained. I only encountered three, myself.

One was when one of my characters walked across the Spike Growth I had cast, and acquired it as a permanent effect. Even after resting more than 24 hours and performing heals on her, she still had the debuff, and the timer countdown never changed. Periodically she would get hit as if she were still walking across the spikes. I found this addressed in the Co8 guide, which said to go to the druid Jaroo in Hommlet, and ask to be healed of permanent spell effects. This fixed the problem.

Another bug was inside the moathouse dungeon. When fighting the big crowd of fighters, I ran into a game-breaking problem where there were two foes that didn't seem to actually exist, but they were in the queue for combat turns. The game paused for a while when reaching one of them, and moved on to the next one, but it just never recovered from the second one, leaving me stuck in combat forever. I tried fixing it with some console commands, which seemed like it might help at first, but just led to more problems. I reloaded to a save before fighting the group, and tried again, and this time there was no trouble.

Lastly, there was a game-breaking bug on exiting the Welcome Wench tavern in South Hommlet, in which the party (and all NPCs) would be frozen once we got outside. Effects like smoke from chimneys still functioned, and I could toggle in and out of combat, but none of us could move. This bug occured twice from that saved game (when I did the same thing both times). I evaded it somehow when I instead did a tavern brawl quest and then rested some more before leaving the tavern. The Co8 guide says that freezes like this become more common in South Hommlet as the game progresses, and that players should avoid that area when possible. I got through the rest of the game without any more such freezes, though, although there were other, unrelated freezes that were fortunately temporary in some places.

Storm of Zehir inspiration

I noticed that there were some elements in this game that I also noticed in the later-released Storm of Zehir, the NWN2 expansion. One was the use of the Survival skill allowing the party to detect and avoid random encounters on the overland map.

Sometimes there were friendly encounters, such as when I encountered messengers who wanted to reward me for rescuing some of the people I found in the titular Temple of Elemental Evil, and sometimes there were encounters which were ambiguous. One of them listed the encounter participants as "a party of adventurers", with their names and portraits in the list, so I was curious enough to hail them. Sure enough, it was just a party of adventurers like mine, who at first mistook us for "another bandit encounter", to comedic effect.

There were some others like that, and it's nice when a game that includes random encounters takes the care to make them diverse, and not all about combat.

Speaking of which, it was interesting how sociable the denizens of the temple were. Although the majority of monsters attacked us on sight, there was a significant number of characters who were willing to negotiate, join up with me, or allow to join up with their factions. Some even offered quests! There were numerous factions within the temple, working against each other even as they seemed to be working toward a common goal.

End game

The game got much, much easier as I gained levels and added enchantments to my weapons and armour with crafting. I noticed that my dwarven fighter tended to score a lot more hits than my human barbarian, who missed against higher level enemies much more frequently, despite having near-identical enchantments and appropriate weapon focuses. Encounters were almost always of the "tank & spank" variety, except that in this case, this tank was also the one dishing out the most damage.

There were two really tough fights, though. Well, only one was really tough (others, like the group of beholder-kin on the ice plane and the group of fireball-flinging noble salamanders on the fire plane were tough, but not really tough), and that was the Balor on the fire plane (the D&D equivalent of the Balrog from LotR). I had to retry that fight maybe 10 times, and most of the fights ended with the Balor having taken no damage at all. By contrast, Zuggtmoy was only average!

I even sought tips online for beating the Balor, but they mostly didn't work with the Co8 mod. Several posts recommended using Cloudkill against him, but when I tried it, it said "Target is immune!" so I guess the Co8 team figured the Balor wasn't hard enough.

Summoning the bosses from the other elemental nodes didn't seem to help either, aside from providing more targets to distract the boss. More often than not, these summons cast AoE effects that resulted in friendly fire, dispelling my buffs, sickening my fighters, causing my party members to flee in terror, etc.

The fear was the biggest problem. I read that "circle of protection against evil" is supposed to make party members immune to fear, but it didn't. They were all within the protective circle, and they all ran away. I had a bit better luck with the individual (non-circle) "protection from evil" spell, though, and I think that was instrumental to my eventual victory. My fighter resisted fear the entire time, though my barbarian succumbed a couple of times, and had a problem with missing the enemy. Regardless, the rest of my party (who were mostly useless against the Balor except to help cast buffs) dealt with the trash spawns while my dwarven fighter steadily whittled down the Balor's HP until finally, finally, it was dead. After that, I went to face Zuggtmoy.

As stated, Zuggtmoy was much easier than the Balor, though I thought the rendering of her character was beautiful, as was the surrounding area of the lower temple. Again, it was mainly my fighter who beat her up, while the others dealt with buffs and summons (and fear). Great Cleave and weapons of Mighty Cleaving were a great help against these spawns. Hasted, my fighter dealt four attacks each turn, at around 25 HP each, when she didn't miss.

Zuggy interrupted the fight at some point to try to make a deal, and I took my time in answering, but while I was considering it, I was surprised when one of the spawns started moving again, and the dialogue box disappeared before I had a chance to choose anything! I wasn't going to make any deal, but I still wanted to see what she had to say about it.

This level of the temple has many rooms, but is empty except for one room of mushrooms. Word has it that Troika ran out of time and couldn't put any of the encounters in that location that they had planned. I haven't seen the original P&P module, so I don't know what was supposed to be there. I'm surprised the Co8 pack didn't put anything in there.

Co8 does hold off the game from ending with the death of Zuggtmoy, so that you can go on to play some higher-level content in a new town. I haven't done that yet, but I will eventually. To end the game with the Co8 mod, you have to choose it specifically from the dialogue of Brother Smyth, so I went and did that to see the ending slides that I would have seen after killing Zuggtmoy originally. The ending slides were better done than the ones in the NWN2 OC -- I can say that much.

Conclusion

The game is intimidating to a new player, and very tough and unforgiving at low levels. It also includes many pre-generated characters with poorly-assigned ability scores for their classes, which can cripple a player unfamiliar with the rules. Its art design is adequate, but bland, at least until you get to the Temple, and also very dark, requiring me to turn up the gamma to see. It could have been improved with a larger number of interesting characters and interactions, because the ones that were there were quite fun.

Despite this, once I got through the first few levels, I found it to be an extremely fun game with rewarding challenges, plenty of quests, and a variety of environment styles. Once I started playing it, I didn't play any other games until I finished it. I think it's the best turn-based RPG engine available, despite the non-optimal interface.

Extra screenshot gallery

Dragon Age 3

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Since I haven't been following the news, I'm a bit late to comment on Dragon Age 3. Firstly, that it will exist, which is a surprise enough in itself.

After that, the announcements that state that it will not only continue to involve a voiced protagonist, but also another "I said what?!" inaccurate-paraphrase dialogue wheel were enough to make me stop reading right there. Those two things alone are symptoms enough to make a diagnosis. I predict, based on those elements, that it will also include loads and loads of non-interactive cutscenes. It's baffling, but I'm glad at least that they're bold enough to come out and admit that they're just plowing on ahead in that direction that their metrics interpretations have chosen for them. It saves me a lot of time and trouble to know in advance that Dragon Age 3 does not concern me at all.

At the early planning stages of Dragon Age 2, after having enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins, I was very interested in the news, and vocal about my concerns about their direction, but that turned out to be a waste of my time in light of all the good it did. I myself don't need a weathervane to know which way the wind blows.

Dragon Age 3 will come out at some point, but I expect I'll be busy having fun with games that are actually made in a style that I like, such as Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity, and the more recent Spiderweb Software games. I'm finished hoping that games that have become something else will get back to what attracted me to them in the first place. What happens in Thedas will stay in Thedas, and it's quite likely that it won't be happening to me.

Humble Indie Bundle 6

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:20:00 +0000

The most recent Humble Indie Bundle is one of the better ones. Several of the games included are ones that caught my eye on Steam when they were first released. It includes Rochard, a physics-based puzzle-platformer with a gravity gun, Vessel, a physics-based puzzle-platformer with Lemmings-like minions, Shatter, a block-breaking game, SPAZ (Space Pirates And Zombies), a real-time strategy game (I think), Dustforce, a sort of momentum-based puzzle-platformer, and Torchlight, a Diablo-like action RPG.

I think this bundle has the highest ratio of games that I want versus ones I already have, since this time, the only one I already had was Torchlight. But even with Torchlight, the Humble Bundle DRM-free version was attractive to me because Runic Games never delivered on their promised patch to remove the irritating DRM they had on the game, after three bloody years. Shame, shame, shame.

Being what really is a fantastic implementation of the honour system for buying games, allowing you to set your own price, the last few Humble Bundles have been using a slightly modified strategy. They pick a single game to hold back as incentive to pay more than the average price, and this time that game is Dustforce. It seems like a reasonable strategy.

I appreciate puzzle-platformers and block-breaking games as the light, casual entertainment they are, while I use RPGs to give me a good challenge. Realtime strategy games like SPAZ, though, are a bit beyond me, I think. It's attractive, and looks to have a great amount of depth and interest, but I've never found myself able to get into that genre when I've tried it in the past. Turn-based strategy is a different story.

So, I can see myself playing almost all of these games at some point. A great deal, I think.

Obsidian, Kickstarter, and the bright future of gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 15:23:00 +0000

I'm very happy.

At the time I'm writing this on the 15th of September, less than 24 hours since it was unveiled, Obsidian's new Kickstarter-funded game called Project Eternity has not yet reached the $1.1 million of pledges that it requires to receive its funding. But it will. There's no doubt about that. It has raised 87% of that goal so far, in less than a day.

The game will be an isometric, realtime-with-pause RPG in a similar style as the Infinity Engine games, such as the Baldur's Gate series, the Icewind Dale series, and Planescape: Torment. This is exactly what I foresaw in my bright future when I saw the Wasteland 2 project, and why I was so happy to see it happening. The genre is being reborn!

I'm also pleased by what I hear in their pitch video. Free from the restrictions of the publishers and IP holders, which they say is the reason they could not include mature themes and content, they're looking forward to making an M-rated game (aka PEGI-18). I wholeheartedly approve. It will be extremely refreshing to see more games in a fantasy setting that aren't restricted to child-friendly content.

I have only two concerns. One is that since it will be a new, original IP, it might not have the amount of depth, detail, and variety as licensed properties. I saw that in Bioware's move from D&D to their original Dragon Age setting. I really want a complex, detailed, and difficult game. Obsidian has good, creative people, though. Some of the best in the genre, in fact! So I think there's reason to be optimistic that they can create not only a solid, detailed fantasy world, but also a solid ruleset that'll satisfy fans of those Infinity Engine games.

And with their emphasis on mature content, I'd like to think they won't treat us gamers like the fragile-egoed children that publishers seem to think we are, making games so easy they've become hardly worth playing. A casualty of the crass pursuit of the mass market. Not so with a project like this, where they can focus on a hardcore niche audience.

The other thing is not so much a concern, but a small disappointment. I wish it would be turn-based rather than realtime-with-pause. RWP has always been a compromise -- better than nothing, but with its own problems and annoyances (wizards having to "lead" their AoE spells, for instance, or trying to wrangle the actions of a full party of characters who are all acting at the same time).

Still, it's better than pure realtime. I'd guess that decision was made to ensure that all the Infinity Engine fans were strongly on board, but with the phenomenally fast funding (it's gone up to 88% in the short time I've been writing this), they probably could have taken the chance. I notice that they list the Temple of Elemental Evil in the credits of the works of some of their members, which has the most detailed turn-based RPG engine I've ever seen.

At least Wasteland 2 will be turn-based. And with the assured success of this game, I look forward to a future project -- a party-based, fantasy-themed, turn-based, isometric RPG. So far we've gotten two games with 3 out of 4 of those elements each! Not bad at all! The future is bright for gaming!

Path of Exile

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 05:15:00 +0000

Earlier this year, I signed up for a weekend stress-test of the upcoming game Path of Exile, a hack & slash game in the tradition of games like Diablo and Torchlight. I played it for the full weekend, and enjoyed it. It has good gameplay, fun loot, a nice visual style, and an extremely large skill bush (the view that you see there is not the full image. Drag it around to see the rest of it). The quests had a good amount of flavour, as well. I played as the Witch.

I mention it because I just got an email that says they're having another free stress test this coming weekend, from the 14th to the 16th, so if you want to try it out, that would be a good time. I won't be participating in the second stress test, since I don't want to repeat the early content at this time, and I'm low on hard drive space, and also busy with my modding and other playing, but I thought others might like to know, if they weren't aware of it.

The Privation of WoW

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:42:00 +0000

Since the Starter Edition came out for World of Warcraft, being an unlimited free trial with a cap of level 20, I occasionally drop in and play the post-cataclysm low-level quest content that was all new to me, or try different races and classes.

I typed up all my experiences and impressions of that content, but never finished the article or uploaded it here. The basic summary is that they had stripped the gameplay and the leveling experience of at least half of its previous depth. Perhaps in the future I'll explain why I feel that way.

Now, with the new expansion Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard opened up the goblin and worgen playable races to the Starter Edition, enabling me to create a new character of each of those races and experience their unique 1-10 leveling zones.

In so doing, however, despite the new (to me) content to experience, I found that they've removed even more gameplay, depth, and immersion from the game.

At one time, you got to know your choice of class through interactions with your class trainer and class-specific quests, which provided a grounding in what it means to be whatever class you chose. New abilities were given as rewards for going through certain rituals or rites of passage, and class quests would send you out to assemble unique items perfectly suited to your class, which taught you what kind of gear you should be looking for in the future, though these class quest rewards were often so good, you'd be using them for the next 10 levels before you could find anything better.

In general, class quests were integrated into the questing experience at least all the way up to level 55 (pretty much the end of the vanilla game), when every class was funneled into the Sunken Temple for their class quests, so really, you could go through the entire game and experience new content all the way through just by picking a different class. They really made classes feel distinct and interesting, with plenty of backstory.

Cataclysm removed most of the class quests. What previously was a reward for a chain of interesting quests was turned into something you just pay to learn at a trainer. If you didn't play it before, you'll never experience the flavour that used to give it meaning.

They also removed most of the class-specific items. Warlocks don't really need soul shards anymore. Hunters don't need ammunition or pet food. Rogues don't need to brew their own poisons.

Okay, so that's all just a little summary of a couple of the small things that were changed in Cataclysm (instead of the long unfinished article on that and many other things), as a lead-up to what I've just experienced in the changes brought by Mists of Pandaria.

The biggest thing is that now, in MoP, they give you all your class abilities automatically, for free, with no training. Trainers are now nothing more than providers of basic information and respecs. The last tenuous connection to that old sense of involvement in the game world is now broken. I no longer feel like I'm a part of something, at all.

Moreover, what was previously a gold sink is now gone. What am I supposed to do with all this gold, now that I don't have to pay for talents or class-related materials?

Really, the only vestige of what class quests used to be is now only to be found in the repeatable quests for cooking and fishing. There are 5 randomly-assigned daily quests in each major city for each of those professions that send you off to do things related to that profession, with the quest text providing some feeling of being a cook or a fisher in that world, and giving quest rewards related to that profession. That's fun! And it's a shame the classes have had that sort of thing taken away from them.

Step by step landscape

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 01:13:00 +0000

Here's a little post showing me sculpting a landscape in the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset for my upcoming module, just for anyone curious about the process.

Here's how it started. I took the flat plane, filled it with a sand texture (for the ocean floor), and sank most of it so that it left only a little island in the middle, and a mainland on one side. I put a tower and an NPC on it for scale reference. Then I added a water plane, laid down a little blue tint for later, and started smoothing the island. I caught some of this on video, due to an unintentional Fraps activation, so here it is:

I continued adjusting the height and basic shape of the island until it was approximately roughed out to the right size and shape. Next, I started going over it again with a smaller brush for finer control.

Here, I started picking textures for the island and laying them on. Once I had the basic areas sketched on, I used the texture swapper to try different combinations of rock, dirt, and grass, until I found a combination that looked pretty good together.

After that, I added rocks, grass, trees, and bushes, as well as a dock and some rowboats. I adjusted the water and atmospherics too. Here's a brief video showing the island at this stage:

Then I threw on some textures for the mainland. Since this is off in the distance and shrouded in fog, it's not important to have fine detail, so I used camouflage-style large blobs of colour.

And here's a screenshot of the mainland from the lighthouse island.

New NWN2 module underway

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:02:00 +0000

I've officially begun work on the module I've been planning. I'm calling it The Black Scourge of Candle Cove, and I'm discussing my progress on it in threads on the NW Nexus and the Bioware Social Network.

Neverwinter Nights 2, part 6 (ending)

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Aside from some new upgrades being available to build at the keep, and some new keep-related resources to collect, the order of the day in Act 3 is to gather some potential allies for the upcoming fight against the King of Shadows (I agree with the Luskan ambassador in regard to the silliness of the name). Basically, that means that Crossroad Keep has become a new quest hub, with the world map now being restricted to locations that relate directly to this purpose. All except for the town of Ember, which has no one new to recruit. I went down the well to see if I could gain the friendly goblins as allies, but there was no new dialogue with them. There were also some characters available to recruit to work at Crossroad Keep, which don't seem to be directly related to the upcoming battle, like a dancer for the tavern and a couple of extra merchants.

The other locations (with one notable exception) were pretty small and self-contained, not like the similar ally-gaining quests in Dragon Age: origins, which had very large diversions for each one. In at least one case (Highcliff), it seemed like they might have planned them to be larger originally, because they involved some boss-level fights with groups, phases, and adds, but these were all located right there, without having to crawl through a dungeon to reach them.

The simplest of these was also the hardest. I had to fight a character named Light of Heavens in a one-on-one duel. Again, me as an unarmoured spellcaster, and her as an armoured sword-swinger with knockdowns, high hit points, and lots of spell resistance. Once again, with this fight, the devs show their disregard for clothies by requiring it to be a solo effort. This was a slightly laggy location, with dozens of citizens spawning from houses and evacuating the city, but not enough to interfere with the gameplay. It took several tries, but I finally beat her with the use of about 10 summoned creatures (in a series, since I could only have one at a time), 2 or 3 blast globes, just about all my spells, and lots of running around the marketplace in a big circle to gain enough distance to cast spells at her, since my speed was just slightly higher than hers. The process was basically starting with a summon, running away until it got her attention, then casting spells at her until she killed it (which didn't take long), then running away far enough to summon another creature before she reached me, then running some more until it got her attention, and so on.

The one in Highcliff where I had to fight a lizardman shaman king was a much better fight, and much more fun, but it was, again, right there in town.

The druid circle one involved two of the companions, Elanee and Bishop, which gave it more character, but I don't see why it needed Bishop there at all. He was a forced companion when I went to that area, but didn't seem to do or say anything that made his presence mandatory. This was a minor annoyance since I had stripped him of all his gear when I left him behind at the first opportunity, and when he showed up I didn't have any armour on hand that he could wear. I never gave back his dagger, either, because I have Neeshka using it. The only reason I can speculate that Bishop might have been required, since he didn't contribute any unique action, and his commentary was inconsequential, is that perhaps his having witnessed the events there might play a part in a later development. There was some conversation back at the Keep from an earlier plot development when Bishop made some comment about what "we" went through, even though he hadn't been in the party at that time. I don't trust this chaotic evil ranger, and I don't like the fact that he's making his home in my keep, away from the watchful eye of Duncan back at the Sunken Flagon.

The Alliance with the Wendersnaven bit finally addressed the bard issue I had mentioned earlier. Finally, I got a bard instrument (the only one in the game?) that actually boosted bard skills rather than yet another equippable item that does nothing but cast some low-level spells when activated. Finally, a gameplay reason for my bard to carry an instrument!

There was an encounter with the ghost of a dragon in a location revealed to me by Ammon Jerro, which was plot-related, but separate from the "recruitment" theme of the rest of them. The dragon had information about how to reforge the silver shards into the sword we needed to kill the King of Shadows (why it would work this time, when it didn't work the first time, is unclear.) Apparently, Ammon had spoken to this ghost several decades ago when he was researching where to find a weapon to fight the King of Shadows in the first place.

The dragon's ghost was chained to this area due to a giant floating crystal dragon heart being physically chained up in this location, guarded by a couple of smaller dragons. By the ghost's request, I fought those guardians and destroyed the heart to release the spirit. This led me to yet another return to West Harbour, and at least this time one of the companions expressed a little emotion over what happened there. Grobnar did, too.

The best quest in Act 3

The recruiting of the Ironfist clan was the most developed of this section. It's almost out of place compared to the other ones, but you won't hear me advocate scaling it back to match the others. This one had much more companion involvement, and its task actually took place in multiple locations, and brought back events from way back in the storyline, involving an artifact-level pair of gauntlets that we had found at that time, the Gloves of Ironfist.

But talking with other voiced members of Khelgar's clan made me notice that Khelgar's the only one of his clan with that "Scottish" accent! I seriously can't understand how production companies keep doing this sort of thing. It's like Deanna Troi being the only Betazoid with her accent (her mother doesn't have it, and her father was apparently American), or Ambassador Delenn being the only Minbari with hers, or Londo Mollari being the only Centauri with his. Khelgar might have been a required companion for this section (if not, he should have been), but I can't tell because he was already in my party, reclaiming his role as the party tank after the death of Shandra.

To gain the support of the dwarves, we had to prove to the clan that Khelgar was a member in good standing, and not an outsider who had deserted them. To do this, we had to recover the second of the clan's patriarch's artifacts: The Belt of Ironfist. With that and the matching gloves, Khelgar would have the augmented strength necessary to lift the Hammer of Ironfist, once wielded by King Loudram, in a kind of sword-in-the-stone test of worthiness.

The belt was in the possession of some fire giants, so it was off to Mount Galardrym to find them.

Mount Galardrym was the biggest outdoor area I've seen in the game, if I'm not mistaken, and it was the absolutely best designed area. The long, winding paths leading up the mountain, overlooking lava pits, were clearly crafted with love and care. There were numerous watchtowers with trapped approaches, guarded by groups of fire giants and hell hounds who were fun to fight (though perhaps too easy for giants). There were several points of interest and several separate destinations to reach. One spot offered a scouting overlook to any surviving giants that our party may have missed by taking alternate paths, and offered an opportunity to push some large rocks down onto their heads as a surprise attack.

But the highlights of this area, aside from its aesthetics, were the two boss battles, one at the end of each path. One led to a big red dragon, and the other to the powerful fire giant king with his retinue of more giants and hell hounds than I had battled on the way up. Each of these bosses wanted the other one dead, as it happened, but I was not inclined to make any deals with either of them, so I fought each of them in turn. First the dragon, and then the giants.

The dragon fight was very challenging, and a lot of fun. My party was wiped on the first try. On the second try, I memorised a whole different set of spells in preparation, buffed nearly the whole party for immunity to fire damage (as many as I could with the spell slots available), and made sure all my offensive spells had significant damage even if save rolls were made. It was a brilliant light show! I've never had such an enjoyable dragon battle in any game before!

At the end of it, adding to the satisfaction of defeating a worthy opponent, the dragon's treasure hoard waited as a tantalising bonus. A huge pile of gold, and trapped chests filled with high-end gems, scrolls, and enchanted gear. This blew away the most recent other dragon battle I experienced, which was in Dragon Age: Origins (the dragon in the Brecilian Forest ruin, not the Archdemon). The fight there was less fun, and the hoard was much smaller. Here, I actually got to send my staff to haul the piles of gold back to my treasury! My standards had been lowered so far from previous games, I really wasn't expecting to be able to do that.

After I'd finished savouring my victory, I went around the mountain to the other side to face the fire giant king, which was another pretty good fight, but an anticlimax in comparison.

After gaining the Ironfist alliance, there were a few outdoor battles with the King of Shadows' forces, including a rather funny bit where we found part of his vampire army sleeping in their coffins during the day. Breaking the coffins open resulted in a crowd of vampires running around shrieking in the burning sun!

Ammon Jerro's remorse

I came to like the character of Ammon Jerro over the course of the game, despite the ruthlessness of his actions -- especially where it was completely gratuitous. Now, some of his murders were for revenge, though I don't recall if he explained what exactly their offenses had been against him. Other murders, however, were wanton and unnecessary, like the employees at the Moonstone Mask. While it turned out that he was motivated by the goal of recovering the shards to fight the King of Shadows and prevent a larger number of deaths, and considered some innocent casualties along the way to be acceptable losses, in some of these cases he could have just gotten what he came for and gotten out, without killing the people who were not fighters, and who were incapable of actually preventing him from getting the shards.

Spoiler: Click to display/hide

This hidden spoiler block contains spoilers about the death of a particular character

Solution to a major plot bug

There was a game-breaking bug in the battle at Crossroad Keep, after the siege tower battle, when Black Garius showed up and was giving his speech about how he was about to crush us by summoning an avatar of the King of Shadows, but it was actually pretty funny when it happened. In the middle of his speech, he apparently wandered a little too close to one of the soldiers, who sucker-punched him. This cut off his speech and he started fighting the soldiers, and never got around to summoning the avatar. Unfortunately, he was also plot-immortal at this time, so the game couldn't continue.

The solution is to open up the console and type:

rs 3541_death_nwalker

This loads up the cutscene that should play after you kill the King of Shadows' avatar, and the plot can continue from there. You will miss out on actually getting to participate in that fight, however.

I was also proven right not to have trusted Bishop in this section, since he was the one who just unlocked the gate to let the enemy in after the siege battle.

The ending

The ending was quite the mixed bag, but I'm inclined to forgive the visible signs of the time/money running out. There were subtle signs before, throughout the campaign, such as the design of Highcliff (the "tavern" bit I mentioned in a previous post), some conversations with companions that never went anywhere, and the large difference in scale between the various alliance-gathering missions, but the first really obvious sign I noticed was when I was looking to see what there was to do in the merchant district in Neverwinter during the evacuation. There was a dead man near an outhouse named "Privy Man", who had a mysterious journal on him that described some fearsome beast under the outhouse. I looked around, but found nothing else to do with him, and when I looked for answers online, I learned that it was the remnant of some cut content -- the Archmage Startear would have sent you on a quest to kill a lich who lived under that outhouse.

Nevertheless, whatever else they cut, Obsidian at least made sure to deal with all of the named adversaries introduced throughout the campaign.

Things really started showing the time/budget strain when what I thought was going to be another major battle turned out to be me watching a slide show of retouched screenshots, with voice acting, of Lord Nasher leading his troops to battle, and then a major event in the battle, and its outcome. Surely this was originally at least meant to be a cinematic, if not something in which the player was meant to participate!

Then there was the ending scene itself, which came after the final dungeon. After defeating the King of Shadows (it shouldn't be a spoiler to know that such a thing is possible), I was treated to another very unsatisfying slideshow of retouched screenshots describing the immediate aftermath of the battle (more on that in a second), narrated by a clearly non-professional voice actor (who someone on Youtube described as "Norman, from Accounts"), which then went on to describe what happened with various people and places in the next few years.

What happened directly after beating the boss, I was told by the narrator, was that my whole party was wiped out by the collapsing lair, because the King of Shadows was a "load-bearing boss". In other words: Rocks fall, everyone dies. I was incredulous. I couldn't believe that's how they ended it. And that was the good ending!

I spent the next few hours reading other people's reviews of that ending, as well as watching the "evil" ending on Youtube. Interestingly, while looking around on Youtube, I found that dialogue of my companions had actually been recorded to act out what I was only told had happened, and Youtube user RandonB put them together and posted the dialogue. I think that version of the ending would have been much better than the poorly narrated version, even if they had done it with the slide show method they had previously used for Lord Nasher's battle. It would have certainly been more poignant, as opposed to the whole "Then, offscreen, this happened. But never mind that -- here's what happened elsewhere over the next few years." Doing it the way they did, it actually reminded me a bit of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (the final book in the series) in how the epilogue chose to answer questions that no one had even been asking, while keeping mute on issues of actual interest and relevance.

But aside from the actual ending, I enjoyed the climax very much. First was the showdown with Black Garius, and his attempts to seduce the members of my party to join his side, one by one. I actually went through this scene twice, because I wiped on the first attempt. The first time, he succeeded with Sand and Bishop (though Bishop had defected to his side earlier than in this scene), but the second time, he succeeded only with Sand. Although my influence with Bishop was predictably very low or nonexistent, considering I never included him in the party and didn't like him, and I hadn't said anything to try to convince him not to fight us, for some reason he decided to abandon both sides the second time through.

Neeshka was able to resist Garius' demon-binding on her through the power of friendship, since I liked her a lot and had a very high influence with her. I had high influence with everyone, really, except for Sand, who I neglected as much as Bishop, and much for the same reasons. So, with Khelgar, Neeshka, Grobnar, the Construct, Elanee, Qara, Casavir, Ammon Jerro, and Zhjaeve, we beat the stuffing out of Black Garius, at last, in a long battle with barriers, multiple add spawns, and several full heals on Garius' part. The rod of resurrection I was given earlier saw numerous uses during this fight. This battle also incidentally showed that it's possible to have a party of 10 fully-controllable characters, and that the previous party number limit had not been hard-coded.

After that mini-boss, it was time to face the King of Shadows himself, after a rest to heal and refresh our spells. It was nice of him to delay his passing through the portal until my party had rested from the Garius fight. This was a major fight, and with 10 party members, it resembled a raid boss. There were several phases to the fight, involving several strategies and objectives, and this made it particularly fun. It turned out that the Silver Sword of Gith was actually necessary after all to beat the KoS, but only because it was the only weapon that could damage the portal to the shadow weave, which is apparently the direct link KoS was relying on to stay alive (even though he had managed to forge a link to it out of nothing in years past, when he was dying, so it shouldn't have been any big deal for him to just make another one). Really, this whole climax was fantastic, right up until the slide show ending.

Obsidian bit off more than they could chew, but I prefer it that way. It was already a huge campaign with a massive amount of content, and I for one am glad that they aimed high, even if they ultimately had to abandon some of their plans.

And now that I've finally gotten the last part of this review posted, I can get started on my module.

Quest indicator mod additions

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sun, 06 May 2012 08:12:00 +0000

I think this system is as developed as it needs to be to use it in my NWN2 adventure module, but there is one thing that only recently occurred to me to try that might make it that much more convenient to use. It's pretty convenient already, though, since I've gone through and made it all generalised to the point where you don't have to touch the scripts once you attach them to the appropriate location on your NPCs or objects.

Instead, you assign local variables to your placed instances, and modify them through conversations or by firing scripts on conditional actions, such as "On Enter", "On Inventory Disturbed", "On Death", etc. In other words, anything that triggers a journal update will just need to have this script fired too. Everything else is handled through local variables.

This way, you can also have one questgiver begin the quest, and a second questgiver finish it, which is very important for certain kinds of quests (like breadcrumb quests). Anyway, I've been documenting how to use it in detail.

The video also shows my modification of the dialogue panel from my HD UI mod.

I'm close to getting ready to start on the adventure module itself. I just want to play the game a little bit more first, but I'm really getting anxious to start.

Neverwinter Nights 2, part 5

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:38:00 +0000

My apprehension at keeping all of my blog posts in a single file was justified. One surprise error while saving caused the loss of a month's worth of blog writing, about half of which had not yet been posted. I'll need to find a more stable solution, but in the meantime I'm making more frequent backup saves. This is what I've reconstructed of the second-to-last post about the NWN2 original campaign.

Crossroad Keep

The game is much longer than I was expecting. After battling what seemed to be a major enemy at the ruins of Crossroad Keep, I found that as a reward for my service I had been given the keep and its lands as a fixer-upper project. So now, apparently, I'm a landed noble, with a personal army, administrators, and my own peasant farmers to work the land, if I understand correctly. It'll be a giant gold sink, considering all the repair work that needs to be done, so it's a good thing I haven't spent much on the higher-level gear I've been seeing at some merchants.

This keep is much better laid out than the stronghold I was given in Baldur's Gate 2. Even though it's very large, there are characters stationed at all the important spots who I can talk to and be teleported to any other area. Additionally, there's a lot more to do there, such as making decisions on local policy, forging alliances, and sending other characters out on quests instead of doing quests for other characters.

The basement has a storage shelf and all three crafting stations, so perhaps this is what I should use as storage, instead of keeping it all on Casavir.

The improvements to be made at the keep are split into two areas -- manpower and repair/expansion. After talking to each of the heads of those departments, I decided to start by expanding and fixing up the roads that pass by the keep, to attract more merchant caravans, and I also told the chief of staff to recruit more soldiers, so I can later train them and set them out to patrol those roads, which is another necessary step to attract more merchants.

Guyven of the Road was there, too, and he talked about maps and finding nooks and crannies, but he didn't have any details, so I assume that's for later development.

While I was in the area, I went back to West Harbour to drop off a tithe box I'd been asked to deliver there, and see what may have developed on the homefront in the meantime. Nothing had, apparently. People were still walking around injured, houses were still wrecked from when I left, and I could still hear sound effects of fighting and screaming, and house fires in some spots. I did manage to finally get this "Wizard's Arsenal" quest out of my log book, though. It was a quest from the beginning of the game, which I had successfully completed at the time, but which was inexplicably re-added to my quest journal shortly thereafter. It had been stuck in my journal ever since then, even though I had entered that house several times trying to trigger something to get rid of it. Entering the house again at this later time made it disappear again.

Also in West Harbour, I found that I could bring one of the local farmers to Crossroad Keep to get the farms productive again. I think this keep might be an opportunity to help out that miner I met back in Port Llast, as well, who was looking for work. In any case, it seems that the keep adds a significant management minigame to the overall game, and it's a welcome improvement over other games' strongholds.

Incidentally, Crossroad Keep uses one of the tilesets with the worst kind of overdone normal maps (see picture). The stonework in the interiors looks like it's been exposed to about 2000 years of harsh weather, or else the stonecutter's guild was working with extremely crude chisels. Seriously, some of the normal maps in this game look like they were trying way too hard to point out the realtime shadows of the engine by making everything rough and pitted to absurd extremes.

Ruins of Arvahn

We were directed toward these ruins as part of the main quest. Approaching them caused that "Wizard's Arsenal" quest to pop up in my log book again! I was just walking along, and suddenly "Ding! *scribble*" my journal was stuck again with the quest from the beginning of the game to scrounge for starter weapons back in my hometown.

This was a pretty lengthy area, where I had to find and activate 5 statues, though the design of the place was rather uninspired. The first statue was right in front of the first fork in the road, three more were in dungeons in this zone, and the last one had to be reached through a portal that only opened once the first four were activated.

This area contained several tribes or factions that could be befriended or eliminated. I chose to befriend the first tribe of orcs, who seemed reasonable enough, refused an offer of alliance with a small band of infiltrators inside a dungeon because they were arrogant and threatening, and fought the ogre mage inside, because he was also rather arrogant and attacked me even when I merely declined to kill the orc leader for him.

The dungeons were pretty fun, with their own themes and objectives, and story exposition. One of them, Riverguard Keep, involved a kind of collection quest to gather items to open a door that led to one of the statues.

The gem mines involved a little puzzle in herding certain ghosts past obstacles into a central room, where they could perform a ceremony that would summon another one of the statues. This was also the site of a pretty funny bug, in which I was in conversation with one of the ghosts, and during the conversation, someone detected a nearby trap. I was surprised to see Neeshka automatically walk over to it and disarm it while we were still talking, and in the process, she apparently caught the attention of some enemies. So while my character was still stuck talking to this ghost, I was hearing the sounds of battle from offscreen, and seeing what little glimpses I could see of it when the fighting overlapped the cutscene camera angle.

The Temple of Seasons presented a series of season-themed challenges, each in an appropriately decorated room, and once all of the challenges were beaten, the door to one of the statues was opened. That one was the quickest run of the lot.

After passing through the final portal, I was redirected to (and I'll hide this in a spoiler tag) West Harbour, my hometown.

Spoiler: Click to display/hide

This hidden spoiler block contains an event spoiler

In regard to that, surely the designers must have had some kind of plans for an emotional connection for this scene. Why else would they have sent me here? There's nothing for me to do here. The portal was supposed to send me to the nearby Merdelain, to that one building that couldn't be unlocked when I passed through that location earlier in the game.

Anyway, I passed through that place and came to the last of the statues, in that building. Alas (or happily, considering it means more gameplay), there is another complication, and the statue is destroyed. But the foe within tells me that someone else had just been here and had received the statue's blessing, so now I just have to find that person. I figured it would be Bevil, my childhood friend, who was mentioned as having been heading into Merdelain when I had previously been in West Harbour.

Haven

Next stop was Ammon Jerro's Haven. Ammon Jerro was Shandra's grandfather, who she remembers as a kindly wizard. This was confusing to me, since I already knew that the mystery warlock is in fact Ammon Jerro, though it might not have been mentioned in the game yet. Anyway, the door to the Haven was magically barred against everyone except relatives of Ammon Jerro, so of course Shandra was there to open the door for us.

But Shandra's ancestry wasn't everything we needed. We also had to pass a few trials before we could get in, and that involved going around the area outside the Haven to gather items and kill mobs. The area's design showed some notable improvements over many of the previous areas. There were points of interest at different levels of elevation, a refreshing change of texturing that made even this dry desert area look good, and the mob placement was nicely distributed as well. The encounters were rather simple, though, and it left me wishing there had been a little more to do in this area.

Once we got inside, we were treated to a series of encounters with some bound demons who were willing to negotiate with us if we'd agree to help them out with their workplace bickering, getting their petty revenges and such. Shandra had been separated from us, and it seemed fairly comical at the time that she kept teleporting around trying to find us, always leaving a place just before we got there.

It was pretty straightforward getting through this place, though I had to watch helplessly as Shandra did some unnecessary things with no way to intervene, and it all culminated in a boss fight with Ammon Jerro himself, and ultimately the worst, least-engaging death scene yet.

Afterward, I was given an opportunity to rest and swap any party members if needed at the tavern on the property of Crossroad Keep, before a suddenly rude Sir Nevalle showed up to insist I go to Castle Never right then, with a little threat that I shouldn't get too comfortable here at Crossroad Keep, because it could be taken away from me at any time. Bizarre behaviour, considering the reason for summoning me turned out to be that Lord Nasher wanted to grant me full knighthood. This marked the end of Act 2.

Act 3 interlude

Act 3 started with the most frustrating and irritating thing I can imagine. Yet again, a developer gets the asinine idea that it would be a wonderful gameplay mechanic to suddenly strip away all my companions and drop me into a horde of elite vampires and wraiths after a bloody long cutscene with many unskippable parts! Arrrrghhh! I'm a squishy caster, not a tank! Why do so many bloody games do this? Developers: I hate this, and I don't respect this kind of design decision! I'm playing NWN2 for its party-based gameplay. If I wanted to be playing a solo hack & slash, I'd be playing an Elder Scrolls game.

After numerous reloads, even after setting the difficulty to the easiest level just to get through this moronic meatgrinder section (which I've never had to do in this game yet), only to find more shadow priests, shadows, and elite vampires waiting for me when I went "down the hall" to look for a secret door Sir Nevalle told me to find. That's when I resolved to get through it by any means necessary, so I could get back to an enjoyable part of the game.

I have to guess that the "party roster" option from the player menu at the bottom left of the screen must have been added by one of the expansions, because I was able to use it here to re-add my companions to my party, even though the setup here expects me to be playing it solo. I used that to get past the monsters, and then stuck through the rest of it solo (just in case it might have interfered with game scripts if I had a party), and eventually I was returned to Crossroad Keep with a new set of quests ahead of me, and all my companions gathered around to greet me. What a relief!

I think one more post should finish the OC, but like I said, this game is really long. I've skipped over a lot of things, and barely touched on others. I'm impressed.

Dead Nasher, or just a knockdown?

Neverwinter Nights 2: Dark Waters, chapter 1

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:56:00 +0000

A few days ago, I started playing Dark Waters, a module in 3 chapters for Neverwinter Nights 2 by Adam Miller. It was one of the ones that has been in my priority queue since I started playing NWN2 and heard much about it, but I chose now to play it because I'm planning to have some ocean material in my own upcoming module, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't unknowingly rehashing old ground.

"Set sail on the high seas for this grand piratey adventure. From humor to horror this epic story spans dozens of islands, contains new powers and weapons, and countless voice actors. Grab your flintlock and raise your Jolly Roger today!"

--description of Dark Waters on its download page

Even before I got started, though, I had read an interview with Adam Miller, and he said that the nautical theme doesn't really show up until after the first chapter. Still, I expected there would be some in the first chapter, considering the title and the above description. Unfortunately, the entire first chapter (aside from the intro and the flashbacks) took place inside a mountain "clanhome", which seems to be the kind of undermountain city I tend to associate with dwarves, and tells the story of some youths growing up in a tiny village in the aftermath of some kind of war between the psionically "Gifted" and the "Normals" -- a war that left the world's ocean level permanently risen, with only the mountains remaining, as islands in the global ocean.

Following are my thoughts that I wrote out as I was playing through the module, with all the ups and downs and changes of opinion left intact.

The beginning

So far this is the most unconventional module I've played yet. It appears to be told in an omniscient narrative, because the point of view is constantly changing. I've barely had 5 minutes of free roaming gameplay, with the rest made up of jumping around into different characters' heads and roleplaying their parts in conversations. And just when I thought it had basically settled into a cast of characters, I was suddenly sent into a dream vision, in which I took the role of yet another character in another group of strangers!

Roleplaying one of my companions' parts

Once my party of three got into the mysterious sealed complex, though, everything got much more interesting. The story seems to have stablised, as well. No more jumping around from character to character. Now, the backstory is unfolding gradually through notes and museum plaques, and I'm being introduced to some of the interesting features of this module. First is the gem socket system, which I think is a substitute for the enchanting/crafting system in the vanilla game. The other is a nice little achievement tracking panel which displays various accomplishments and statistics.

The banter between the characters is also fun, and well-written. It's not only well-written in terms of believable and enjoyable dialogue, but it has proper spelling and punctuation, as well!

Throughout the module, you can also have chats with your companions. They have different things to say as the story progresses.

Beginning forgiven

Once the story progressed to the "war" flashback, the purpose of the flashbacks became clear. This is a kind of reincarnation story. It's a good one, too. I can forgive the rocky start now, though it would have benefited mightily from better pacing in that area. We players should have been given more time to play as this set of characters to ground us before introducing the flashbacks.

There was a "ghost" level, which reminded me of some of the good parts in Thief: Deadly Shadows (notably the note from Widow Moira, and the ghost of Laurel). It loses some points, however, for being dark. There were no lights, and it was a very large level with a lot of running around without my companions. My candle, when I tried equipping it, cast no light. I don't know if it was burnt out from all the use in the previous level where it did work, or if there was something specific to this level that was preventing it from working, but it was annoying. It is my position that function must take precedence over form when it comes to playing a game. That means being able to see, even if in the real world, a place would be pitch black.

It's possible that the game expects me to be able to use one of the two Gems of the Morning to provide light, since that is one of their properties, but that property only works on weapons, and as a druid, I had not yet found any weapons with gem sockets that I was capable of wielding. (I found a socketed dagger after this part.) Fortunately, as a druid, I did have the light cantrip, and resting was permitted, so I was able to keep casting that spell, and resting every time I ran out of uses.

Eventually, I was reunited with the party, power was restored, and I found two weapons that various party members could use to generate light. When it rains, it pours.

I think these levels could have been a lot smaller. As it stands, it felt a bit artificially padded out due to the size of the maps compared to the running speed. I noticed many rooms were very sparsely furnished, and occasionally completely unfurnished. Exploration seems to have been the intended design of this place, and a reduction in scale would have made that exploration more enjoyable.

Puzzles

Scattered throughout this module are unique gameplay elements, especially in the puzzles, though some others seem to have been included just as novelties, with no clear purpose in the game itself (such as the magic hockey game). One of the puzzles made no sense to me (the one needed to turn on the fan), but an alternative was kindly provided to bypass it.

Another of the puzzles was frustratingly designed -- the combination lock based on a girl's birthday. First of all, it was unclear which date-writing format the author was using (was the year at the beginning, or at the end?) I couldn't tell, since the numbers were 1 and 2 digits, and I have no idea in what year system this story was supposed to be set anyway. It was especially frustrating, since one of the numbers was a single digit on one side, but it expected a leading zero on the other part of the answer. I conclude that puzzles are quite a risk to include in a module, since the potential frustrations are rather high compared to the potential player delight. I don't think I'll include any puzzles in my module.

I did like the crafting of molotov cocktails, though.

Puzzles again

Well, once again this module has made me change my mind. It turns out that the next level was almost all puzzles, and it was the most fun section yet. The choice of music contributed to the sense of fun, as well.

The party was greeted at the stairs by a phantom academy proctor, who explained that he (and the ghost girl from the previous level) were bound to the earth as ghosts by the main character's prior incarnation, as a favour. At the base of the stairs was also a dead body carrying a gem that acted as an academic record, presenting me with the goals for the level -- pass a series of exams. Now, why my character would hang around playing these mini-games and working on the exams was a question I couldn't answer. I just assumed it was a prerequisite for advancing through the game. I eventually learned that I was correct, but I didn't get that confirmation until after I had finished all of the exams and made my way toward the exit. I think the proctor should have made some reference to the exit being off-limits to anyone who hadn't passed the exams when he appeared at the beginning of the level.

This was also the first level outside of the flashback sequences that had any substantial combat. A good thing, too, since combat is rather tedious at level 1, and the party had just reached level 2 before this section of the game. As has been the case throughout, gear continued to be slowly doled out, until most of us were comfortably outfitted. I'm glad to say that the combat was provided in small, manageable chunks between going from mini-game to mini-game.

Some of these mini-games were fun in their own right, like the dice game, and I wanted to play them more than once, but the proctor usually told me that I didn't need to do it again since I'd already passed. There was one instance where I actually had the option to go again, "just for fun", and that was the tank battle.

The climax and end

After the puzzle level, there was an underwater level in a flooded room that required breath management, and then an even more massive level to explore than the previous ones. This one was broken up into several sections, all radiating out from the ultimate destination in the centre of the complex. Here, there were yet more new gameplay mechanics to try, in the form of psionic power crystals that temporarily allowed my characters to cast some spell-like abilities. It seemed to be little more than a novelty, though, because the crystals only lasted a few minutes before disappearing, whether I used them or not.

There was a strange, unexplained item as well -- a focus crystal that allowed me to summon the ghost of Lucy, the little girl from earlier. I tried it several times, in many locations, but the result was always the same. She would appear, say "Hi!" and wave, and then stand there for a few seconds before disappearing again. I wasn't able to talk to her or anything. I thought maybe if I summoned her in a special location, it might open up a special dialogue or event, but it never happened.

Another unexplained mystery involved one of my party members. On entering a particular room, I think on the same level, Daniel disappeared from the party after a brief fade to black. When he reappeared, he was not in the party, and when I talked to him, it said "Daniel simply smiles". After visiting another room, I came back to that hallway and found his dead body, which didn't respond to anything. Ultimately, he returned, good as new, with nothing to say on the matter.

There was also the matter of locked doors. The game addresses the frequent use of locked doors, but there were some that I was never able to open. It's possible that I was meant to go back throughout the earlier levels with the late-added party member who seems to have a talent for opening secret doors, but I really didn't want to run through those massive levels yet another time.

I have to say I didn't like the bit where I had to take control of a lizardman to open a door from the other side. It seemed like I was supposed to sneak through it with stealth, but the enemies always detected me. I had to fight through a large number of enemies on that side, who regarded me as hostile even though I was one of their own, and every time I died, whatever weapons I had picked up to fight with disappeared. I was eventually reduced to a tedious series of kamikaze attacks, trying to get in at least one bare-handed attack before I was killed in one strike and had to respawn. This was probably the worst part of the whole module.

The final showdown was well done. The enemies seemed fairly organised and fought intelligently. One shortcoming was that the "villain" of the final big confrontation was a bit...vague. Although we started getting hints and information about him early on, the information came from an unreliable source, and I wasn't sure he was the villain at all. We also never actually saw him or any hint of his presence until that final confrontation.

Epilogue

It all ended with a very nice epilogue, with the party members saying farewell to their families and going off on an ocean adventure, where the second chapter of the series will pick up. I wish more games ended this well. Some stories (such as my earlier reviewed Witch's Wake) just end with poor cliffhangers, leaving everything unresolved, or ending with more questions than answers. I hate those endings. This module did it in the best way -- a solid ending, with the primary conflicts resolved, with the beginnings of what is clearly the start of a new story showing up as a preview. The old friends set off to follow the map onto the wide open seas, unsure of what they would find there. It was a bittersweet ending, full of regrets for things lost, and uncertainty of what was gained, but with the promise of each others' company along the way.

Not to mention an optional final joke. Self-aware jokes like this are scattered throughout the dialogue, and I personally appreciate them.

What few bugs I encountered weren't major, though the game did crash a scant few times while playing it. There was a very minor bug during a dream sequence, in which my normal PC was present on the level and selectable in the portrait list. She was stuck in a no-walk zone, though, so there was no trouble with her accompanying me where she shouldn't have been. The bit with Daniel's mysterious smile may have been a bug as well.

Since I'm running the full campaign, it transitioned seamlessly into the second chapter, but I stopped and saved at the beginning of that for now. It's looking very exciting, though, and it seems to go fully into the nautical theme I was expecting at the beginning. According to the journal entry, I can expect a very developed seafaring system, complete with trading and tactical ship-to-ship combat with ship upgrades and strategy, sounding very much like the systems in Patrician 3. This should be fun!

More NWN2 modding

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:44:00 +0000

I decided some time ago that I would make an adventure module for Neverwinter Nights, after my earlier Dragon Age: Origins quest mod experiment. I just can't really start on it until I have a decent-sized block of time I can spend on it, and I expect that will be this summer. In the meantime, I've been tinkering, reading the forums, and browsing the Vault's script repository, to determine what can be done in this toolset. From that, I'll decide what will be done.

For my first venture in NWN2 questmaking, I elected to begin with something relatively limited in scope. Any first work with a new set of tools should be small, in my opinion. As a learning experience, a smaller scope can prevent constant revisionism as one's skill and experience grows, by enabling the project to be completed quickly enough that such desires don't have time to develop.

That said, I intend for this to be the kind of module that I myself enjoy playing, and I'll judge my success or failure by how well I accomplish this.

Trouble In Rainesfere took two weeks to complete, not counting the viewing of the toolset tutorial videos that inspired me to create it in the first place. As with that module, I'll document my experience of learning the toolset and making a module, from my perspective as a beginner, which I hope will serve to inspire other beginners to give it a try if they haven't already. I'll allocate 3 weeks for this one, plus another week's worth of research and contingency time interspersed within.

This should be more than enough time, since, unlike with TiR, I will not be designing all of the areas myself. Having browsed through many of the prefab areas designed by other NWN2 players and modders, I was impressed with all of the fine quality work available, waiting to be used by other builders in modules. I don't know which ones have or haven't yet seen such use, but I can certainly do my part to showcase a few. It will save me some time as well, even though landscape design is one of the parts of modding that I find most enjoyable.

In addition, I've opted to adapt a pen & paper module for this project, which will save me some time in creating a design document. It's rather bare bones, and doesn't even include any sample conversations, or NPC builds aside from the main antagonists, so it'll require a bit of embellishment. My aim is to include everything described within, with encounters that have multiple approaches based on player choice and party skills.

Other mods in the meantime

Before I get into that module, I'm just taking whatever free time I can spare and feeling my way around the toolset and the game files, and making some minor cosmetic mods like some "beautiful people" heads for a few of the races, including humans, elves (including drow), half-elves, and halflings. The drow still needs some work in the eyebrows. I had some trouble with the specular maps, but got them to behave well enough.

I just finished something else, though, which I had been wanting to try for a long time in various games. After playing around with some visual effect mods, I had a basis for understanding how to use the Visual Effect Editor. So, after determining that it should be possible, I hacked together the parts I needed to create a DA:O/WoW-style system of quest indicators for NPCs, to make it easy to see at a glance whether someone has a quest available, and whether the conditions have been satisfied to complete it. Such indicators are especially useful in cases where an NPC may not have anything to say until certain conditions are met, or when an NPC you've spoken to before may have something else to say later, which you might miss if you have no reason to think the NPC has something new to say.

I know some people don't like visual gameplay elements in the 3D world for various reasons, but I intend my module to be an enjoyable game, and not an immersive cinematic experience. My module will contain no voiced dialogue, and what few cutscenes I plan to employ will be brief and for the purpose of calling attention to important events or points of interest during the gameplay. Cutscenes take control away from the player, and thus should be employed as minimally as possible.

In the NWN2 OC, they tended to use triggers to ensure that the player didn't miss some available conversation. If you walked anywhere near the NPC, your main character would be forced into conversation or a cutscene. I didn't like that. It was especially egregious during one time in the courtyard of Crossroad Keep when I was trying to walk over to the boy so he could teleport me out to the world map marker, and I was instead intercepted by the Luskan ambassador, and Sand brushed him off and force-teleported me inside the keep, where I didn't want to go!

I'm also going to try to find a way to make the game allow you to attack enemies before they become hostile. I hate those situations where you spot your mortal enemy from afar, but are unable to make a preemptive strike against him because the game requires you to walk up and talk to him first.

Anyway, I made the icons and the associated FX files on that first day. I wanted to make a little test quest just to try out and demonstrate the indicators, but of the quest wizard plugins on the Vault, two were database-dependent for persistent worlds, and the other was compiled for a previous version of the toolset. I don't know why plugins broke every time the toolset was updated, but most of them were dutifully recompiled until the final patch. Quest Maker was one of the ones that wasn't. Fortunately enough, the author provided the source code.

I had never touched anything like Visual C# Studio, but if I wanted to compile this plugin so I could try it out, I had to learn. A tutorial informed me that the necessary tools were free, so I installed the software and did everything it said to do, though some bits were harder to follow since the program had different names and locations for commands than the tutorial said.

I had to do some troubleshooting, since I told it to compile the DLL directly into the toolset's plugin folder. This caused the toolset to crash on open, and the reason seemed to be that it had placed a lot of unnecessary files in there. I cleaned them out and recompiled elsewhere, and dropped only the DLL into the plugin folder. It still didn't work!

Finally, my search led me to a forum post, where Marshall of the Legends Plugins had encountered the same problem, and most importantly, where he had reported how he solved the problem. The answer was that it had to be compiled for VB 3.5 instead of the default 4.0. This time it worked. Thanks, Marshall!

Quest indicator success

The next day, I spent maybe 6 hours figuring out how to get the quest indicator system working, and writing a quest to demonstrate it.

I'm still very much working in the dark with this script, and my hacks involve a great deal of trial and error. Getting the exclamation point to appear over the NPC's head was the easier task. Getting it to go away when I wanted to change it to a question mark or remove it entirely was the part that took many hours. I searched through tutorials, reference works, and forum posts, and tried three or four different functions, and changed variables and coding structure, all to no avail.

Additionally, the QuestMaker plugin I compiled yesterday seemed to only work partially. Possibly I did something wrong when I used it. I used it to create an "explore an area" quest so I could easily test the indicator system, but for some reason it didn't actually create the trigger with the code that would advance the quest, so I had to figure out how to script a trigger. I tried using the generic one and applied some variables to the instance, but I apparently did it wrong. I ended up trying out LilacSoul's Script Generator for the first time, and that succeeded. I really wish Marshall's Legends Quest Plugin worked for single-player modules.

Finally, I found a forum post that mentioned a function that I hadn't tried, and that successfully removed the effect from the NPC. Finally, it worked.

The code's not pretty, and it needs a little more work to generalise it, but I can use it in my module as it is now.

A bit more on my choice of quest indicators: It's much like the difference between making every barrel in the city lootable, with most of them empty, or having the barrels with contents stand out from the others somehow (such as by not allowing the empty ones to be opened). This is all about determining who is important to talk to, and who is only there as decoration.

I consulted some friends about their preferences in this regard, and got a reasonable range of responses. One was mildly against them, but thought it would be fine to use them the way I have in mind -- solely to mark the questgiving NPCs, and not to point out anything quest-related on the map. Two were okay with them, as long as they could turn them off, which I should be able to code.

Others were more positive and enthusiastic about them. One brought up how they would have been nice to have in Mass Effect, notably in the between-mission "party camp" on board the Normandy. With the party members being spread out between several decks, and knowing that they would have new things to say on occasions throughout the story, players like them (and me) got tired of running back and forth through the ship and up and down the decks to check each party member, only to get told over and over that they're too busy to chat because they're in the middle of some calibrations.

I've heard other systems proposed, as well. Questgiving NPCs could be distinguished by giving them occasional text barks or gestures to beckon the player to them. I like this idea as well, but I don't think it would work very well in a city environment with a lot of unimportant NPCs walking around, who I also want to have text barks to liven up the place. Of course, I've heard some players don't like text barks at all, and insist it ruins the immersion to see text floating over characters' heads, but all I can say to that is that those players will not enjoy my module.

Questgivers could be the only ones with proper names, with everyone else having names like "Commoner" or "Townsperson". That could work fine, too. I don't prefer it, though, because I don't know of any ways to make NPC names always be visible, rather than having to mouse over them to see the names. I would actually like to have visible names in addition to the quest indicators.

Other, more minor visual indicators are things like having questgivers dress in brighter colours, or wear a special badge or piece of gear, or have them emit a subtle glow, or even have all questgivers share a single appearance!

In any case, I like the exclamation point solution best. Personally, it delights me to walk into a new area and see lots of new quests for me to accept, and I think nothing does that better than the exclamation point!

This of course opens the door to a wider range of visual indicators, such as for merchants, healers, or innkeepers, but I don't know if I want to take it further than just questgivers. Those NPCs tend to be easy enough to recognise as long as they're located in logical locations (such as in a shop, in a temple, or behind a bar), and it would probably be enough just to have their names indicate their role.

Kickstarter: This is the way.

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:07:00 +0000

Another lost, lamented genre of classic gaming is now primed to rise from the ashes, as we saw a few days ago in the realm of point & click adventure games, from Double Fine Adventure's funding success.

Now, we can have Wasteland 2, a turn-based, top-down, party-based RPG made by Interplay veterans.

Fund this! This is the harbinger of the new golden age of good games being made by people who care, without the meddling of publishers!

Neverwinter Nights 2 interface mod

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:51:00 +0000

Installing user interface mods is one of the first things I did for this game, but it was tricky to balance the different things I wanted. These mods work by replacing the XML files for each piece of the interface, and sometimes I liked the changes made by two different mods that affected the same UI panel. For instance, I play at a high resolution, so I want big panels that take advantage of the large screen size, and also large fonts so it'll be readable.

Usually, portraits are vertically rectangular, somewhere around a 1:2 aspect ratio, including painted portraits of real people from history and modern photographic equivalents. It's simply more aesthetic to have the head and the shoulders in the picture. The ones in NWN2 are square, which not only looks cramped, but since it shows only their heads, and the characters are made from the same 3D models and are all facing the same direction with the same expression, it's rather difficult to tell any of them apart, especially at the tiny size those portraits appear as in the dialogues.

I have a large collection of good looking portraits at a 1:2 aspect ratio (like Baldur's Gate and NWN1 used), and I wanted to use that aspect ratio for the portraits rather than the square ones. I found a good mod that added support for 256x400 pixel portraits, as in Neverwinter Nights 1, called Character Sheet NWN1 Portrait support, and that worked very nicely, though it was made for resolutions a bit lower than what I'm running.

I also wanted all my inventory slots showing as one big bag, instead of them being broken up into multiple bags that I have to flip through to find things. I know some people prefer to organise their items by putting them in different sections, but I prefer to have as much visible at once as possible. Again, I found a mod for that, though again, it was made for slightly smaller resolutions.

I would also prefer the inventory icons to be large, like in NWN1 (though perhaps not quite so large as that), so I can more easily distinguish items at this resolution. I haven't found a mod for that, and I may make one at some point.

I tried using a UI creator program from the Vault, but on starting it up, it claimed there was a newer version available and insisted that I download it, and refused to run this allegedly "out of date" version. I checked, and the version number on the web site was exactly the same. I redownloaded it anyway, but this freshly downloaded version made the exact same claim, and refused to run. This raised my suspicions about scams and malware, but whatever the reasons, the effect is that the program is non-functional.

Eventually, I got around to examining the XML files myself to see what I could do with them by hand. I downloaded and skimmed through Lance Botelle's NWN2 XML & GUI Coding For Beginners, mostly looking at his examples of what different formatting codes looked like. Then I examined the code of two of the mods I was using. One of them had some comments telling what the original values were and what the mod was trying to accomplish, which was useful.

My dialogue box mod

Before adding frame

In this case I was working on a mod for the conversation panel (what the game files call the "quick chat" panel). I prefer the dialogue to be presented in this manner, rather than the "cinematic" style that's the default in the toolset.

But I wanted the box to be much bigger, since I consider the dialogue to be an important part of the game. You can't do anything else while you're in a conversation, why not make it the main focus of the screen while you're in it? Putting it in a little box in the corner is no good, especially at this resolution, where the font is rather squintworthy.

While I was working on this, largely through trial-and-error, I found that I could just keep the game running, make my changes to the code, and then switch back to the game and start conversation again with a handy nearby NPC to immediately see how the changes looked. I was glad I didn't have to reload a save, or restart the game, which would have made progress painfully slow for this kind of trial-and-error work.

The code on which I based this had already changed the background image and font colours to a black-on-parchment style instead of the white-on-charcoal. I actually thought the original colour scheme was fine, but I do indeed find that black-on-parchment is easier on the eyes, so I just made tweaks to that -- I changed which of the parchment textures it used to better fit the larger box I coded, and changed the dark green of the response text to a deep burgundy colour to better go with the parchment colour.

I made the conversation portrait twice as large as it was, to put more focus on the subject of the conversation (though still only half the height I set for the character's dialogue), and with the portrait aspect ratio change I was able to just put it in a kind of "column" on the left, with both the NPC name and the dialogue in a second column to the right of it. One note about the altered aspect ratio, though...I couldn't find any parameters to adjust the camera placement for the default "rendered" portraits made out of snapshots of the character model, so it basically looks like a slightly off-centre closeup. The custom portraits at the intended aspect ratio look perfect, though.

Final version

The portrait frame didn't look good when stretched to the new dimensions, so I commented it out and left the portraits unframed for a while, until I found a more suitable replacement. Now it looks good, and I think it's a pretty good size for both the NPC's dialogue and the list of your responses. Now you can have up to 10 response options visible at once without the scrollbars appearing, if they're all of a typical length. How much empty space you see is, of course, dependent on the amount of dialogue written for any given part of the conversation.

After using and enjoying this new conversation panel size and style, I did find one reason the parchment background isn't the best of ideas. The OC has a couple of places where descriptive text is delivered in this panel using near-white text, which is nearly illegible against the light parchment background. Additionally, user-made modules sometimes use bright colours for special text as well. So, I think it'll have to go back to the white-on-charcoal, even though it's not as optimal for readability. I'll offer the first version I made as an option with that caveat.

Next, I expanded the portrait selection window to show much larger portraits, to make it easier to choose one. I tried to make it more than four columns, but I couldn't get the portraits to appear correctly in the additional columns, so I just left it at four.

Finally, I expanded the column of portraits for your party members to use the full height of the screen at 1920x1080. Even in the vanilla game, there are times when you can have 5 full companions and enough animal companions/familiars/summoned creatures to make you have to scroll through the portrait column to check your companions' health or status effects. Now there's less unnecessary scrolling at 1920x1080.

Some of the male and female portraits from the NWN1 art, in my expanded selection panel

Since my conversation panel mod depends on the portraits being in the NWN1 aspect ratio, and other code based on the work and examples of Ragnorak, Shin-Anubis, Thanatos2001, Fire&Ice, and WhatIsSol, I'll have to include that code in my distribution, as well as the other panels that would affect, though some time later I can design another version that keeps the square ones, even though I don't like them.

Although the mod is functional and ready, I need to figure out how to handle its packaging before I upload it.

Edit: It's online.

Neverwinter Nexus

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:57:00 +0000

It's not officially open yet, but it's a new place on the Nexus mods site to upload and download Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 mods. (For builders who haven't used this system, I think it has all the features you may have wished the Vault would have.)

Neverwinter Nexus

The categories aren't yet final, and the tags are yet to be decided, but it's open to uploads and downloads now. The official opening will be once it has enough mods uploaded to show.

This would be a good time for me to pretty up my NWN2 UI mods and package them for others.

Neverwinter Nights 1: Witch's Wake

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:22:00 +0000

A short review for the shortest of the premium modules I've played as yet -- Witch's Wake.

When I first tried playing NWN years ago, I tried this module along with the OC, but I didn't get very far. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, and I didn't understand what I was supposed to do with all the crafting materials I scavenged at the beginning. I stopped playing when I died to enemies in the graveyard.

Yesterday, having had some experience under my belt in the meantime, and an understanding of Neverwinter Nights gameplay, I picked it up again. I finished it the next day. I have mixed feelings about that.

In general, I'm going to say I enjoyed this module, with some reservations. Following are some of the module's pros and cons.

The bad

Just so I can end on a positive note, I'll start with the complaints. I only have two of note: I didn't like this module's cliffhanger ending or its respawning trash mobs.

I think I can see a possible reason for the infinite trash mobs, who swarm you as a low-level character and only give a single experience point if you kill them. The module has a special event for when you die (sending you to a plane of death over which the Night Hag has some power), so I would guess the designers restricted resting and loaded up the module with combat to ensure that players die several times before the module is over. It took a bit of exploring before I realised that the trash mobs would never end, and that there was actually no point in exploring certain locations, because there was nothing in there except for this pointless and unrewarding combat. By the end, I was cursing the constant swarm of rats, who even spawned in to interrupt my dialogue with the final NPC -- several times!

The module ends abruptly -- even more abruptly than Kingmaker, which at least had a little cutscene and a dialogue box wrapping things up. This one stops in the middle of a conversation to show a cryptic message, and then the credits roll. In the end, nothing is accomplished, and more questions are raised. I plowed through all those rats for this?

I know that this, as are all of the premium modules included with NWN Diamond, was originally intended to be a series, and I knew from the outset that there was no continuation of them, but this one left me extremely unsatisfied at its lack of any kind of resolution. A good cliffhanger should end the first plotline, while starting another to get you wanting more before it lowers the curtain.

One extra thing I didn't like about it was that it was another solo adventure. I thought I was going to get a companion at one point, due to an option to invite a character to come along with me, but it was a false hope. The character refuses.

The good

Amongst the module's good points are the characters, themes, and setting.

The setting was not the Forgotten Realms or any of the other D&D world settings, but something original to this module, as was Kingmaker. As such, I can't know anything about the races, magic, and history of this place other than what was exposited in the game itself. The titular "witch" is a night hag, but I don't know if that means her race came from the Grey Wastes or not. I had read in one of the developer accounts that at this time in the Premium Module program, developers were told by whomever was in charge that the settings should be original, and that some time afterward the exact opposite was decided, and that they all had to be set in the Forgotten Realms. I wonder if that has anything to do with why certain premium modules are no longer available for purchase.

I liked the German names for the dwarves. I think it fit them well.

The characters were well-realised and interesting. The Night Hag was described as fey, so it was appropriate that her motives and inclinations were inscrutable. She treated me nicely, and often made gestures of assistance, but some of them seemed to have possible negative consequences. She also once confessed to using me for her own purposes, and said we could never be friends. This seems fitting for a mercurial fey creature, and I liked her, even if I couldn't really trust her.

There were numerous opportunities in the dialogues to use character skills to attempt to open up certain avenues of conversation or to obtain favours or gain rewards. I always appreciate that kind of dialogue in games.

The ambivalent

As mentioned at the beginning, this is an extremely short module, which is unusual for a Premium Module. I think some of the Grimms' Fairy Tale contest modules had more content than this one. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. The only reason I played it when I did is because I knew it was short, and I wanted to play something short at that time. If it had had a proper ending, its short length might even have been a good thing.

The plot was rather common and familiar -- you've lost your memory, and there's something important about your past that you need to remember. At least in this game you're not the only one suffering from amnesia.

The beginning segment on the battlefield, where you scavenge from the dead, which confused me in my first play attempt, seems to have been intended mostly as an opportunity to scrounge up enough gold from the various crafting supplies to be able to buy some basic gear to start out. There's not much else gear to be found in the game, though, and even less gold, but the game is so short it hardly matters. There are two other opportunities to buy supplies -- from the blacksmith and the magic dealer in the dwarven village and from the Night Hag herself. There's also an "infernal contraption" in the magic shop which functions as a slot machine, which I suppose was included to offset the lack of opportunity to accumulate money in the usual fashion.

Conclusion

You wouldn't lose much time if you decided to try this one out, and if you use a higher level character (I started at level 1) you can breeze through the combat and experience all the unique things about this module on their own merits. As long as you understand that it has no resolution, and that there will never be a sequel, you might find it a worthwhile experience.

Neverwinter Nights 2, part 4

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Neeshka's companion quest

Blacklake is the place where Neeshka's personal quest comes to its resolution. I have to say that it seems like her quest underwent many changes during production, because it's pretty incoherent. It goes something like this. An old rival of hers named Leldon, with whom she once worked, threatens her when she enters the city. Neeshka then decides it would be a good idea to break into his house and steal his lucky coin from him, to show off how much better a thief she is. We do it, and it's easy. The thing that makes me think something was changed during production is that the quest journal says Leldon confronted us at his house, but that never happened.

Later, a street urchin gives us a message from Leldon to meet him in the park. So we do, because the game doesn't give us any sane options like staking the place out and sniping him with arrows or setting up traps for him. Now they're saying that the coin wasn't Leldon's after all, but Neeshka's lucky coin, which he stole from her. Leldon makes more threats, there's a fight, and Leldon runs away. Leldon is painted to have a psychotic hatred of Neeshka, but she just goads him on, which isn't wise (but wisdom is her lowest stat, after all).

Next, an acquaintance of Neeshka's shows up and gives her a tip that Leldon's going to pull off the heist of a lifetime, and Neeshka decides to get there first, steal everything, and taunt him about it later. This is the part where it happens in Blacklake, and it's the strangest quest of the lot. We break into a collector's mansion, and immediately the heist goes to hell, because guards detect Neeshka (even though she's in stealth and I left everyone else in the entrance hall), and they attack, resulting in dead household guards. So now what? This isn't just a burglary anymore, it's a full-on assault on someone's household, and wanton murder for the purpose of theft. Those guards were the good guys! If anything should cause an alignment shift, it's this! And yet after killing the guards, nothing changed, and no party members complained, so I just went on.

I continued having Neeshka sneak around in stealth mode, but this was once again ruined when I snuck into a small servant area, and was suddenly forced into dialogue with a servant when I passed a trigger point. And remember what happens in those instances? The main character is teleported across the house to talk to them, of course. Yay, my cover was blown, and the servants all got a good look at me to describe to my fellow City Watchmen later. I left them in peace, anyway. Obviously, this "theft" quest was not meant to be played stealthily, but it really should have been. There should be no triggered dialogue for stealthed characters, ever, unless the NPC detects them! Nevertheless, I forwent the stealth from that point on, not that I had much choice.

Next, I exchanged a foot massage with the master of the house's mistress for a key upstairs, and also learnt that this collector has become obsessed with a simple painting of a ship at sea, which he found in a refuse heap, and that he treasures it above all his rare valuables, and stares at it for hours on end (and neglecting his mistress). It sounded like there was some plot afoot involving an ensorcelled painting!

However, the rest of the information given doesn't indicate that this was anything other than an ordinary painting, and that his fascination with it was simply due to his unfulfilled wish that he had been a sailor himself. It's an unsatisfying ending, since he is truly fixated just on this one painting, to the point where we had the option to use the painting as a hostage to get the collector's key to the vault. If there was no enchantment involved, then why is it just this one painting? Surely he had seen paintings of the ocean before. Surely he has seen the ocean! Neverwinter is a coastal city! Why isn't his house full of ocean paintings, and why doesn't he collect other nautical items like anchors and ship steering wheels? Why hasn't he remodeled one of his rooms to resemble a ship captain's cabin? Why does he do nothing but stare at this low-quality painting all day? These questions are never answered.

The quest does provide a little puzzle to solve to open the door, but as soon as I accomplished that, Leldon came stomping in to confront Neeshka one last time. More thieves just walking around citizens' homes with impunity! Here, the dialogue once again changes its mind about who this lucky coin originally belonged to. Was it Leldon's or Neeshka's? Why are they so dead-set on provoking each other? Are they suicidal, stupid, or both? More unanswered questions. But with Leldon dead, this convoluted diversion seems to finally be at its end.

As a thief quest, it was terrible. Aside from the blatant breaking and entering, killing of guards, and being seen by everyone, this "grand heist" amounted to less than 1000 gold and some jewels, with a couple of pieces of gear, one of which I couldn't even use. It also doesn't seem to involve any thief skills except for using dexterity to pull a key out of a fireplace, but that was implemented through dialogue, meaning you have to do it using your main character. Pointless, since if you're doing Neeshka's quest, you're probably not a rogue yourself. You also can't pick the lock to the vault, and one of the keys you need can't be pickpocketed, which is why I had to hold that painting hostage earlier -- because the only alternative to that was to kill the man! What a farcical heist.

And in the end, I couldn't even give the poor man his painting back.

Act 2

The original campaign storyline requires certain characters to be in your party at various points in the game. Currently, Shandra Jerro is a "free" party member (not using up one of the available slots), so I have her on tank duty, leaving Kelgar at the inn. The mage Sand was required once I set out for Port Llast, and that's an annoyance. He's a wizard, and I already have more than enough capable magic-users in the party. Also, his personality clashes with my actions, and I'm losing influence with him left and right (once, I lost influence with him just for being polite and diplomatic in Lord Nasher's court).

Act 2 begins with a newly-restricted world map, and a task to gather evidence and friendly witnesses for my testimony in the trial the Luskans set up by slaughtering the town of Ember. The incident in the collector's mansion never comes up.

Duskwood (the area around Ember)

Ember was basically deserted, except for the dead bodies of helpless villagers, who all had text describing how cruelly and unjustly they were killed. A merchant in Port Llast named Nya had given me a bag of some kind of herb that was supposed to sanctify the bodies so they wouldn't rise as undead, and so I set about doing that. Guyven of the Road showed up again (a character I'd met a couple of times in other places) and offered some more expositional text. The only other thing to do was to investigate the well. I thought this would involve pulling something nasty out of it, but it turned out I needed to go down into it.

The bottom of the well turned out to be a spacious cavern, but the most outrageous thing about it was the door in one of the walls. I guess whatever source that's keeping this well full of water never gets it up that high, eh? Fine, I decided to stop standing in the village water supply and see what was behind the door.

A tribe of goblins! Of course! They must be very quiet for the villagers never to have noticed that their town is built on top of a goblin settlement. Well, at least they're peaceful goblins, which I suppose explains why they never poisoned the well, despite their easy access to it. Of course, the villagers were all dead by this point, so it hardly mattered anymore. In any event, I accepted their truce (in exchange for killing some giant spiders) and explored their cave. The only rules I had to follow were to not kill any goblins, and to leave their "glowstone" alone.

I found the room with this "glowstone", and I don't really know what it did, except that the goblins considered it very important, an evil dryad wanted it, and Grobnar was alarmingly drawn toward it, like the pre-Gollum Smeagol's fascination with the One Ring when he first saw it. Knowing we were being watched carefully in this room, I was worried that Grobnar might act outside of my control and turn the whole cave hostile on us, so I left that room quickly.

In another area, I found a giant non-hostile spider, and gained a quest to find it some food.

I found that this cave had a back exit, leading outside the village of Ember. Okay, this explains how the goblins could go out and get food or other supplies without going up the well and being seen by villagers, but I really find it hard to believe that no one in the village ever looked around the area to see if there was anything they needed to be concerned about, especially when they were building the village in the first place!

The door exited into the area called Duskwood, and the trees created a strange magic-dampening field all over this area that caused my spells to fail most of the time. With me, Qara, and the forced Sand in the party, this was a serious handicap, but I decided to go through it as-is, without switching out any party members. The OC is pretty forgiving, even at core rules difficulty. There was no way to avoid or put an end to the magic suppression, but there wasn't much to do in Duskwood anyway -- only two encounters.

An evil dryad was the first Duskwood encounter that I found. She delighted in the slaughter of Ember, and helped the murderers set me up as the patsy by providing them with a magic disguise that made one of them look like me. But they never held up their end of the bargain, which was to take the glowstone from the local goblins and give it to her.

I refused to accept her quest to go do that same thing, and Sand complained that I wasn't taking the opportunity to gather evidence to use in my defense by making a deal with her. I lost 2 influence points with him for that, and I didn't get those influence points back when I obtained the evidence anyway without making any deal. I'll be generous to the game writing and ascribe that to his personality, being not only arrogant, but also unable to admit or acknowledge when he's wrong. I can't understand why some people like this character.

Next, after plowing through a field of wolves, we found two gnome entomologist sisters by a cave, who spoke with interesting complementary speech patterns and flirted suggestively with Grobnar, who seemed more interested in their extensive insect collection than in their scarcely veiled invitations to a ménage à trois.

Something wasn't right, though. Their dialogue left hints about that, and the fact that they didn't want me to look in their cave. I somewhat wish I didn't have to go in and see what was up, because they weren't at fault for what happened to them, but it was the only place left to look for one of the quests I picked up in town, and in retrospect, it was a good thing that I did it. Not only did it satisfy two quests, but it opened up something later in the game.

The trial (or, "Good morning, Worm Your Honour!")

When it came time to present the evidence at the trial, I ended up having to play through that section 3 or 4 times, because the dialogue was often unclear in regard to what I would be skipping or otherwise choosing to do with the available options, and I actually lost the trial every time until the last one. I never got to see the actual evidence presented in any of the runs -- that was handled offscreen. But several times I chose options that seemed normal enough, but somehow forfeited my right to question witnesses or speak up in my defense. Other times, the options given to me all seemed bad and out of character. In one instance, I was unable to fully use a witness to my advantage. I could either use an argument from ethos by pointing out the good character of one of my traveling companions, who was known to the witness, or I could discredit the witness by reminding her that in a previous conversation she had admitted the possibility (without any evidence to support it) that she had actually seen someone disguised as me. But I had that evidence now! I had recovered a magic disguising powder from that evil dryad earlier, so I could show exactly how such a thing was possible. But the option never came up. Once she had admitted the very flimsy claim that "maybe it was someone else", she was taken off the stand.

Sand advised me not to try any diplomacy, bluffing, taunting, or intimidation on the prosecutor, since she was an expert in those techniques, unless I was certain I would win. I don't know how many skill points I would have needed for those things, but I tried anyway on a couple of the runs to check, and even though my diplomacy skill is rather high, it did indeed fail, even though the arguments offered in those skill checks were good ones.

Sand also mentioned the possibility of using the prevailing ethnic hatred of Luskan (a city-state hostile to Neverwinter, and the origin of these accusations) to my advantage in gaining the support of the jury, but this never seemed to work, and simply made me look like an arrogant hothead.

I also had the option of simply letting the super-intelligent Sand handle all the arguments himself (he does have a very high intelligence stat). When I chose that option, it cut to a conclusion implying that Sand had argued for several hours, and yet that was one of the cases where I lost.

It turns out that it doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, because one way or another you have to fight in an appeal-by-combat, whether it's you or the Luskans who demand it. I don't see what this is supposed to prove, considering both sides can select anyone to be their champions, and don't have to fight themselves. So it's not me against the diplomat Torio Claven, but against the giant Harbourman named Lorne, whose name had been popping up throughout the story, and who was the actual perpetrator that was disguised as me during the slaughter of Ember.

One suggestion: Do not accept Qara's offer to fight as your champion in the trial by combat. She may indeed be a very powerful sorceress, but her claim that she can incinerate the opponent before he reaches her proved several times to be an overestimation of her abilities. Lorne is a berserker who immediately attempts to close the distance between to melee range, and this gives enough time for only one spell. The instant-death and incapacitation spells I tried all failed (he ran right through the web and tanglefoot bag).

The fireball did a fair amount of damage when it successfully landed, but it would have taken 3 or 4 to bring him down, and I never got that far with Qara. Once he got in range and started chopping into her with that huge sword, she could either attempt one more spell (likely to fail from the assault), drink a healing potion (only postponing the inevitable by one turn), or try to get out of range (he runs just as fast as Qara, so this only works the one time he pauses to buff himself, which didn't help in my case.

So I picked Khelgar as my champion instead, who was furious about the injustice of the situation. Khelgar, by contrast to Qara, kicked Lorne's arse. But I saw in that fight how futile Qara's attempts had been. The berserker becomes unkillable during his rages, so she would have had to survive or avoid that, which I think would have been impossible. His HP was at 0, and yet he wouldn't die, despite Khelgar beating at least three times his original HP out of him over the several rounds of this berserk rage. Finally, it ended, and Khelgar was able to land the killing blow.

As the main character, I had been getting jerked around and manipulated quite a bit during this story, especially during this whole setup, trial, and being forced to join Lord Nasher's house as a squire to avoid being tried and executed in Luskan. But it became a bit worse at the end of this whole trial chapter when Nasher introduced me to a Luskan ambassador, because it introduced a meta element. I know this ambassador is evil and responsible for certain deeds, even though my character has never met her before, because it was shown to me in cutscenes. But my character doesn't know, and this essentially reduces me to the watcher of a horror movie helplessly telling the character onscreen "Don't go down into that basement!"

Granted, my character has reason to distrust Luskan officials in general after that trial, and Qara did mention that she sensed that the ambassador was hiding a lot of power, and the ambassador was quick to repeatedly silence her more friendly and straightforward assistant, so perhaps it wouldn't be entirely unreasonably nationalistic to be wary of this ambassador.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Grimms' Fairy Tales contest mods

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:44:00 +0000

There have been several "firsts" surrounding this game, which ended up also being "lasts", such as Mysteries of Westgate, which was described as the first adventure pack for NWN2, with the promise that there would be more to come. Alas, Atari's handling of that program looked about as disastrous as the Premium Module program for NWN1, and the release of Mysteries of Westgate was delayed for a year and a half after it was finished and ready to go (allegedly for some nebulous, asinine DRM-related reasons, but more likely because Atari wanted to release the two official expansion packs first), and it became the first and last adventure pack for NWN2.

Other such "firsts and lasts" were in community projects and contests, such as the excellent but overly optimistically-specified 2008 Halloween community pack reviewed earlier, and Obsidian's own community contest, which I'm reviewing here. Early after the release of NWN2, Obsidian held a contest for modmakers to make a short module with the toolset, with the theme of Grimms' Fairy Tales. As far as I can tell, this was the only contest that was held, and I wish it had been only the first of many, as they had planned it to be.

I would think, since Obsidian specified the versions of the stories as collected by the Brothers Grimm, that they wanted the modules to be the harsh, often undeveloped or half-remembered Germanic oral versions of the stories, rather than the watered-down derivations from modern times, or the older Italian and French stories many of them originated as (Perrault published some of them over a century earlier than the Grimms in Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé, and Basile published some close to two centuries earlier in Il Pentamerone). In practise, the modules ran nearly the full gamut, from dark Germanic, to Disney, to patchwork spoof (which may be redundant when in the same sentence as "Disney" in this case), so the actual theme of some of these modules was more along the lines of fairy tales in general rather than Grimms-specific.

A little note about the Grimms themselves, and how to refer to them. I see many variations in spelling and punctuation whenever the topic arises, many of them wrong. The two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, can be referred to correctly as "the Grimm brothers", "the brothers Grimm", or simply "the Grimms" (plural because there are two of them). The main confusion arises when referring to the stories they collected and published. The translation of the title they used themselves was "Children's and Household Tales", but the stories were published under many titles over the last 200 years, some of which used incorrect grammar themselves, all relating to where and when to put an "s" at the end of the name or use an apostrophe. Here are a few grammatically correct variations: "Grimms' Fairy Tales" (plural possessive with the apostrophe at the end), or "tales from the Grimms", "tales from the brothers Grimm", "the Grimm brothers' tales", etc., etc.

All right, enough historical and grammatical pedantry -- on to the modules!

The Birthday, by Zach Holbrook

This was the first one I tried, and it was very well-done, despite being a solo adventure. If I had played as a mêlée character I would certainly have had an easier time of it, but I was a ranger, and unprepared for the amount of solo combat this module contained.

I had trouble getting this mod to run properly, but this was entirely my fault, due to a mistake in installing it.

This author went with a stark German feel with the names and overall story themes (aside from the fairy tale source material itself), though it also had a strong French/Celtic/Scottish influence with the unseelie fairies and redcaps (I don't recall the Grimms writing about redcaps, aside from Little Red Riding Hood, who they called "Little Redcap", but I could be forgetting something). Regardless, these elements were highly welcome, and gave a very different feel to this world than usual D&D settings. The overall plot is based largely on The Wolf and Seven Kids, but I can't think of any fairy tale the "village secret" theme might have come from.

There's a side collection quest, though I'm not sure it's necessary to formally take the quest in order to get the rewards, since the items you collect are all pieces of gear that you can use in their own right. These items have names and descriptions which make reference to other well-known tales. They're hidden all over the woods, the trees of which are very large and dense. I played the mod with the fading trees turned off, and it made for a nicely claustrophobic experience.

The module is well-written, and features multiple endings depending on a critical choice you make during the course of the main quest. Recommended.

The Rampion Champion, by Death Quaker

This second module I tried was much shorter, and took a more lighthearted approach. It focuses entirely on the prenatal period of the story Rapunzel, and you play as the husband of the pregnant mother-to-be who craves the rampion growing in the enchantress Gothel's garden. Your house interior, where you begin, and the garden itself are the only two locations in this module.

The house is a typical NWN2 interior, and is rather larger than it needs to be. It also has no lighting at all, and I could only see by the dim ambient light. Having seen this kind of poor lighting in at least one other module from the early times of the game's release, I suspect this is due to people typically having played the game with shadows turned off at that time, since they were a little too processor-intensive for many computers of the time. Anyway, after receiving the quest from your wife and picking up some equipment from the armoire, you end up in the garden.

The garden is very large, and rather pretty. Time doesn't advance here, and it's always night, and as an exterior it's free from the poor lighting of the interior. There are two tilled patches -- one for maize and the other for rampion -- with "garden gnomes" working the land, glowing friendly pixies flying around, and several enemies. One patch has a macabre "scarecrow", and the other has a guardian dire wolf. Reading the descriptions of these various creatures and items is recommended for the full experience.

The task is to collect 3 samples of rampion. One of these is obtained through a quest given by a water nixie, whose character is well-written. She wants you to deal with a "merciless manikin" (which brings Rumpelstiltskin to mind), who asks you a riddle taken from yet another story!

This one also features several endings based on a choice you make near the end. I recommend this module as well for a short bit of fun and interactions.

Happily Never After, by Allyndn the Beggar

This one was quite a disappointment after the other two. It was much longer, but all of that extra time was basically running around the unnecessarily-restricted paths. It also suffered from the nonexistent interior lighting, and whatever scripts were supposed to fire near the climax didn't entirely work.

The writing was uneven, and dialogues were all delivered in cutscene style, with very long pauses that couldn't be advanced past manually. I would have preferred that the dialogues had been delivered in the box-style.

The goblin mine was perhaps the best part of the module, and I can see what the author might have been trying to accomplish with the landscapes in the search for the prince, but it just wasn't quite there.

The graveyard was exceptionally tedious for me as a solo player, and was just filler combat with no plot relevance. There were several crypt buildings with doors that could be partially manipulated, making me think I needed to get inside them, but those turned out to be (probably unintentional) red herrings. The troll who guarded the entrance to the graveyard forced dialogue and re-demanded payment every time I passed the trigger, which I did several times in trying to deal with the creatures in the graveyard.

When I finally found both of the plot-required elements and returned to the house (which I had previously explored first), there was no new dialogue, and no way to go upstairs. Possibly the module expected me not to have spoken to the stepsisters until after finding the prince and the monk. At any rate, I force-attacked them, and one of them dropped the key.

When I got upstairs, I was treated to a mostly-broken cutscene with the camera pointing at nothing because the AI had gone off to do its own thing, and when it was time to fight the final boss, the two "allies" simply ran around the room the whole time, speaking battle lines, but lending no aid.

It was a nice idea, but I can't recommend this, though you could always give it a try if you use a high-level character to bulldoze your way through the fights, and have a permanent haste effect to speed through the very long pathways.

A Walk In the Woods, by Wyrin

This one is very nicely put together. It begins with a brief cutscene to introduce the story, then an interactive conversation between my character, Thumbelina, and Tom Thumb, which establishes us all as friends and co-workers (and party members), and their different personalities. The prince had run off after being turned into a frog by the villainess, and our task was to find him before the spell becomes permanent. Each of the companions had conversations available if I chose to talk to them, including comments on "our current situation", which appeared to change whenever we were inside one of the houses.

The enchanted forest is pretty, colourful, and always night time, and the path leads through a roundabout with locales and characters from different stories, such as Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rumpelstiltskin. I stopped by Snow White's mining operation first, where she told me that the dwarves had failed to return from the mine, but that she couldn't let me in until I had found something to lure them back out with.

Next I stopped at a gazebo where Rumpelstiltskin stood with a loom and a spinning wheel. He offered to spin materials into gold thread for me, and the dialogue suggested I could use that to rescue the dwarves, but first I would have to find a suitable material to spin the thread from.

Next was Grandma's House, where an eloquent woodcutter stood waiting for reinforcements before entering the house to investigate the savage sounds from inside. With him joined as a third party member, we went inside. There were wolves and wolf cubs to fight, loot to be found, and an encounter upstairs that follows the Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood straight. The woodcutter said farewell afterward, but didn't actually leave the party.

Next, there was a house on a hilltop where a dryad called "Collector of Stories" stood. She asked for a story, and I was presented with a large list of options for skill checks involving telling a story. As a bard, I chose the "perform" option, and I was given a choice of three possible rewards for my successful check (which also earned comments from my companions).

A witch wearing the appearance of Sydney Natale awaited me at a secluded cottage, marked by a trail of bread crumbs and an unsecluded sign stating "Splendiferous sweets and tasty treats await all good girls and boys!" A Hansel and Gretel section, apparently. Her dialogue indicated what the graphics did not -- that her house was made of sweets. She sent me on a quest to find some apples, which she could make into applesauce for her dinner of "suckling pig", which she invited me to share as the quest reward. Well, obviously it wasn't really pork she was roasting, but her cottage door was locked beyond my party's ability to pick, so there was nothing to do but find apples. I recall Snow White offered a "magic apple" as the reward for her quest, which she wasn't aware was poisoned. I like how these quests all seem to depend on each other.

Next I approached Rapunzel's tower. Ah, that's no doubt where I'd find something to spin into gold -- her hair!

The tower was actually a rather short one. Perhaps there weren't many tower-like assets in the vanilla set. At its base, an NPC called "The Prince" called for Rapunzel to let down her hair. In conversation, Tom Thumb said we shouldn't be wasting our time, since we needed to go rescue "The Prince" without acknowledging that this NPC was also called "The Prince".

This prince joined the party when I offered the scissors I had obtained from the woodcutter to use in clearing the chamber of Rapunzel's hair, which was blocking his entry.

The tower consisted of several hallways full of "hair golems", arranged in a square around a central room, so I think it was meant to give the impression of a kind of winding staircase. At the top, Neeshka played the role of an evil sorceress harvesting hair from Rapunzel to make these golems. After a boss fight yielding plenty of loot, we rescued Rapunzel.

As expected, we received some hair. The prince said he was going to stay with Rapunzel in the tower to finish destroying the sorceress' works, but like the woodcutter, he didn't leave the party either. I manually booted him out.

I gave the hair to Rumpelstiltskin and barely passed a skill check on getting him to hand over the golden thread he spun out of it. On my way back to Snow White with the thread, I found the missing frog prince at a pond. He said he needed something to eat in order to break the spell. So it looks like these side quests were actually necessary to the main plot (even though logically, working for the crown as I was, I should have been able to just run back to the castle and get as much food as he needed).

Snow White offered the dwarf Sneezy as a companion for the mines, which were infested with undead, some bat-like creatures, and some cave locusts. It was full of loot as well, to the point where I needed to start leaving some things behind, because my party couldn't carry everything anymore, and lots of traps. There was one little stretch of hallway that somehow pulled the entire population of a room that I couldn't even see to attack my party at once, resulting in a couple of deaths before it was over.

When I encountered a single mummy, it was a prelude to finding what the dwarves had recently excavated -- a tomb that had contained a hibernating necromancer, who was now keeping the dwarves hostage. This was a challenging fight, and I barely survived with a single standing party member. I enjoyed it! The necromancer dropped a large amount of loot, including a special mirror item with special abilities.

Snow White rewarded me with the apple, which I then took to the witch to make into applesauce (though this is another place where I should have been able to go to the prince, since this was "something to eat"). The witch made plenty of veiled references to the true nature of the "piglets" in the basement, and said that I should check on them before she roasted them. Of course it was Hansel and Gretel down there, and I had to fight some hellhounds before going up to confront the witch.

The witch turned invisible, so I used that magic mirror to see invisibility, which seemed like it helped. She dropped a huge amount of loot, and I was rewarded with Hansel & Gretel's leftover bread crumbs, which the quest log told me I could feed to the frog prince as his "something to eat".

The prince accepted the food and turned human again, joining my party to confront the main villain, Maleficent (spelled Melificent in the module). We found her at the bridge to the palace, with Cinderella. There was a showdown, during which Cinderella (a sorceress) joined the party, and we fought one big final boss battle with plenty of dialogue and challenge! Then, alas, the module was over.

What a ride! This was far and away the best module of all contest entries I've tried. It has excellent writing, great characterisation and dialogue, well-designed and interesting quests, and appealing locations. The interactions between Thumbelina and Tom Thumb made it especially entertaining, and the module was extremely satisfying all around. I must look for more modules by this author.

Daark Twins, by E.C.Patterson

This one casts you in the role of a pair of siblings named Daark, an analogue to the Grimms. I used the included character, a wizard, and my bard sister joined automatically, forming a party of two.

The back story is that we travelled from a small town named Anaatnas (no doubt "Santa Ana" spelled backward) to find out about some "wondrous thing" a white wizard was working on in a tower in the middle of a lake. Along the way there was an interesting and somewhat bizarre encounter that resulted in some water-walking after it was done.

I interpret the wizard's exposition to mean that a large and ambitious module, which was under construction, has gotten out of control and was released with a lot of bugs, and he wants us to retrieve it so he can finish it properly.

I'm not happy with the spell selection that was provided with this character...basically no offensive spells at all, and the bard sister makes a poor tank. I was wiped twice by a group of unruly "kids" once I got to the tower. The "kids" appeared to represent yea-sayers and nay-sayers amongst mod downloaders and players.

The next floor had more modding metaphors, this time in the form of some miniature pit-fighting to decide which module was the best. It also ended in some combat. I ended up turning the combat settings all the way down for this module.

The next floor was full of near-dead gnomes at workstations, who the leader explained were working on bugfixes and implementing requested features. In the middle of the room was a familiar colour-changing puzzle. It didn't work as it was supposed to, though, and I ended up beating it in only two moves, which I shouldn't have been able to do. In any case, it rewarded me with a "fix" item to use on the rampant module (called "The Creation").

After a brief encounter with an ominous woman whose purpose seemed to be to provide a safe environment for practising a game mechanic to be used immediately afterward, we advanced to the boss -- fighting the Creation, which was a giant blade golem. This was the only enjoyable combat for the module, since two other characters joined in to help, making it a reasonably-sized party at last. It all wrapped up with the Daarks telling the story in a tavern.

Even though it didn't seem to relate itself to the theme of the contest at first (aside from making the characters analogues to the Grimms), the Grimms' collection does include some allegorical entries, and this module was certainly an allegorical tale. There was some fun and novelty to be had here.

Witch in the Wood, by Lord Niah

This was a good module based around Hansel & Gretel. As was suggested, I played as a ranger (3rd level), though I had only played that class once before (in The Birthday), because the author said there were little extras for that class. I'm not sure what they were, but it could have been notifications about finding bread crumbs, or perhaps finding things when searching placeables. The Grimm brothers themselves make an appearance as vendors near the starting area.

The first half of the module is exploration. The woodcutter wants you to find his kids, and to do that, you have to go off the path into a dense forest. The area is designed with plenty of variation in terrain height, lots of vegetation, and a mix of normal and large-scaled trees. I still played it with "tree fading" turned off, so I used character mode and zoomed in pretty close to the character in order to see around all of the plant life. It gave the exploration a closer, more intimate feel, and sometimes I really did find things by just stumbling over them (like a body).

There were some wolves scattered around, and also a couple of ogres. The ogres were a bit superfluous when looking at the module as a whole.

The gingerbread house was an appropriate approximation, and not so much like a regular wooden house like the same situation in one of the other modules. Once inside, there were some good conversations and interactions, and the kids became full companions! There were special items and some good readables. Some placeables could be searched, others didn't respond. Afterward, there was an obstacle that seemed to have multiple solutions (I got past it using an item I had found earlier in the forest). Definitely worth playing.

The Mount of Evil Counsel, by Nir Idan

This one was the most unique of all I've tried so far. The story doesn't seem to be based on any fairy tale in particular, but it sounds like it could be, being the story of an evil cannibal witch who grants fertility to childless couples in exchange for a yearly payment afterward, "repossessing" and eating the children when the parents inevitably default on their payments. You play as one such child, having been sent by your failed parents to give yourself over to the witch. The file description suggested playing as either a fighter or a rogue, and offered some skill point suggestions. I tried a fighter first.

The scope of the module is small, as expected, but the titular mount is densely packed with NPCs, puzzles, and interactive spots which comprise the uniqueness I mentioned at the beginning. This module has a large number of choices, and I saw many places where my choices could open up or close off alternate paths through the story. Unfortunately, in my first attempt as a fighter, my only useful skill for these encounters was the Intimidate skill, and it wasn't useful for all of the encounters.

Another unique element is that the dialogue and descriptions were all made in the form of a written story. Instead of my dialogue choices saying only the words I would speak, it described the conversation as would be done in a book. For instance:

"Served to the witch?" exclaimed Solveig Siger. "The witch eats people?"

This first time, I tended to fight my way through the servants of the witch, as most of them seemed to be unrepentant in their actions. I obtained a disguise kit and a brooch from these fights. The only trouble with these items was that none of them had descriptions, so I didn't know what I was supposed to do with them. I found that the disguise kit was something desired by the werewolf in the cave, but that dialogue ("I have the disguise kit you wanted") should not have appeared, because I was unable to pass the diplomacy check needed for her to tell me that she wanted it in the first place.

This was the first module that included reactions by the NPCs of certain actions of mine. There was a locked cabin door which I began to bash, but the nearby shepherd ran up to me when I did that and told me to stop! There was another locked door inside the witch's house that had a special event for bashing as well. It's also the first one I've seen that seems to actually let you stealth past a talk trigger if the NPC doesn't notice you!

Of the many interactive items and possibilities, I don't know which ones were done correctly, or what some of them were for. For instance, I was able to obtain some wood pieces from inside the house, and combine them with another item (not sure which...possibly the disguise kit) to fashion a pair of fake hands, but I have no idea why I should have wanted a pair of fake hands. I thought it might have something to do with fooling the blind cook, because I was able to use her oven to cook a poisoned meal with some meat from the hunter's cabin and a particular mushroom, but I couldn't find a way to make use of them.

I ended up trying to fight the witch, but my weapons were useless against her, and I inevitably failed, even when I reloaded and used the mushroom instead on my weapon to make it enchanted against evil. Not really a surprise that a level 1 character should fail against a witch powerful enough to commit these kinds of misdeeds with impunity for years, though.

I started over again, this time as a rogue, with points in bluff and diplomacy, and things went much better that time. New items appeared with my spot skill, which I was able to use elsewhere. I also tried out some of the alternate dialogue options this time around, and found that it changed the tone of the entire conversation in some cases. This time, I found that I was able to make deals with the little man and the fairy, and get an item that caused the cook to conspire with me against the witch. However, I couldn't figure out what to do with the little man's suggestion about tainting the fairy's tree stump. I found the stump, but the only item I had that showed up in the options for it was the mushroom, and when I used it, nothing different happened with the fairy, and I lost the mushroom, so I undid that. This playthrough also revealed something that was a red herring on the other playthrough was actually part of the plot in this one.

I found what was supposed to be done with the well, but it turned out to be an evil action, even though it was against a man who was fattening up two little girls in a pen like livestock, for his mistress the witch. This is a very dark-themed module, considering how long the witch has been doing this.

There were quite a few evil actions that could be taken in this game, and the ending even offers two possible epilogues based on one final choice you make, though I personally achieved the good one. This module is pretty remarkable for all its choices and options, and I know there are things I missed! Also, based on the bits and pieces of possibilities I see, I believe there may be three different ways to defeat the witch, but I only succeeded with one. I never found out how to use the fairy's powers against the witch, or what to use the fake hands for, or what the brooch might be for, and there were at least four different things that could be done with the mushroom. There might possibly have been a way to combine the brooch, hands, and disguise kit to disguise myself as the hunter to fool the blind cook instead of gaining her as an ally by curing her blindness.

In any case, this is an excellent module, and I hope to find more modules with this kind interactivity, flexibility, and puzzle design. This is the only NWN2 module available from this author, I'm sorry to find.

Cry Wolf, by Lorft

This one has a framing narrative, with you playing the part of someone sitting to listen to a story being told by a storyteller to an audience of children. As he tells the story, the scene changes to you participating in the story. It cuts back to the storyteller between what you might call "acts". The description suggested playing as a level 6-8 character, but I noticed that several people in the comments section said that the combat was too hard for that level, so I went with their alternate suggestion of level 12. I'd prefer that over setting the difficulty low, as I prefer to play on "core rules" difficulty.

Some of the special rules and mechanics in this module include penalties for resting (counts for some kind of points tally at the end, if I understand correctly), hunting for special items and puzzle pieces, and enemies who have special attacks. In one case, there's a gardening spade that can be used to dig in any location, with a chance to find small amounts of gold and at least one special item. There's also a good amount of effective comic relief.

The story involves a town that has vanished, houses and all (the name of the crater sounds like a reference to a similar missing town from Planescape: Torment), and one of the Grimm brothers (both wizards in this module) disappeared as well. The remaining Grimm and a sturdy dwarf both join you to investigate. Along the way, into a canyon filled with slaadi to fight, a cleric also joins the team (though the dwarf calls her a druidess). Even with a good party like this, and my slightly higher level, the combat was indeed rather lengthy, with the enemies having very high amounts of health. This made the resting penalty rather punishing, considering the supplied party includes two casters (and I myself was also a caster), since resting is necessary to replenish all those spells we burned through to bring down these trash mobs. It was only a final point tally penalty, though, so no harm done.

Most of the mod takes place on an alternate plane, where the ruler of the plane keeps the people in a kind of induced coma, dreaming about different fairy tales, while she drains them of their energy. Several times there were skill checks to determine whether I could find/do something or not. These were all-or-nothing chances, so I missed one entirely, and had to obtain another without the clue the skill check would have provided. I actually wasn't able to complete the puzzle-piece hunt, because I was transported away from the location of one of its pieces unexpectedly, before I had finished exploring.

There weren't many dialogue choices in this module, but the other mechanics and novelties made up for it.

I particularly enjoyed a surprise vendor in a cave -- a genie who appears with his inventory when you rub a lamp. The best part was asking him for 3 wishes, to which he invited me to purchase a "Ring of 3 Wishes". The ring, when I examined it, only gave +1 to three stats, and its description said, "A ring of three wishes, providing those wishes were: I wish I were a little more strong, dexterous, and hardy."

It was also amusing that when I was rescuing my scattered party members, I naturally assumed that the dwarf would be found in the Snow White & the 7 Dwarves set, but in fact it was the elf cleric that was imprisoned there. What was a real laugh was where the dwarf actually was imprisoned!

There was a maze which was rather unfair, with hidden triggers that transport you back to your starting location. I made numerous honest attempts, attempting to make sense of Rumpelstiltskin's clues and signs, but it became rather unpleasant. The module came with a spoiler file, and I read it to find how to escape the maze. The reason this maze was unfair is that the clues and signs are all red herrings, and the actual way out requires less thinking and more noticing something subtle on the floor.

I don't know how he did it, but there's a pretty convincing scene of Rapunzel actually letting down her hair to climb up.

The documentation said there was supposed to be a design document included, for those interested, but I didn't see one in either of the archives, nor on the Vault page. I was interested to read it. I probably should have gone with a level 10 character instead of 12, especially if I picked a more mêlée class. I had planned it that way, but I didn't have a level 10 character in my vault, and 12 was the closest second. But I wasn't playing this one for its combat, so I don't regret my decision. This module is certainly worth a look for its special mechanics and its occasional comedy.

Crossroads of Fate, by Novalis

This one's documentation states that it was inspired by the triple-vignette "Stories About Snakes" in the Grimms' collection. I wasn't familiar with that selection, though judging from its vague content I may have simply forgotten it. That story in the collection looks like one of those which I mentioned above as being a tale barely remembered by its teller, with much missing. This module was inspired not by its plot, characters, or setting, it seems, but by its ambiguity, and the way in which none of the snake stories ended well.

It seemed very open-ended, and perhaps larger than it actually was. I was given a choice fairly early one, to either escape on a ship, attempt to rescue a friend from execution at the hands of Umberlee priestesses in a sacrificial ritual, or try to get an important book from a group of thieves and Red Wizards of Thay who had killed some of my party members before the story began. Escaping on a ship might have ended the game immediately (note: yes, it would have), or it might have led me into complications in attempting to board the ship, and more story there. I chose to rescue the captured friend, and not use her (literal) sacrifice to get the book.

There were numerous other choices here and there, though not usually as extreme as those. There were also a lot of story hooks placed here and there. I could talk to a group of adventurers at the tavern who were planning out an adventure, and ask to join them when they're ready. There was a halfling anxiously waiting by a locked door downstairs, waiting for one of the girls in the brothel. There was a kind of slave market, where the slaves tried to entice me to buy them by offering information on treasures and such, and the dealer told me to get a license from city hall if I wanted any of them other than the grumpy dwarf. A paladin of Kelemvor asked for my assistance with some undead. All of these things seemed to be only hooks, and could not be fulfilled, beyond getting the dwarf and/or a Kelemvor cleric as henchmen (not full party members).

This module included an intro movie and several ending movies, in the form of image slide shows with text. Most of the NPCs here were named and had unique dialogue. A couple of them, however, were inside vendor tents, and the walkmesh didn't allow me to get close enough to speak to them. One of those might have offered ammo for sale, because none of the others did. There were many grammar errors throughout the module, but I reserve my grammar and spelling critiques for native English speakers, and this author is not a native speaker.

There were certain places where party members made useful interjections. For instance, when I tried to open a locked door, but one of the other party members held the key, instead of it just telling me the door was locked, my character said "Who has the key? [Name], come here and open this door!" with [Name] identifying who actually had the key.

The Umberlee temple was very good in design. It looked a lot like its counterpart in Baldur's Gate in the interior. I don't know if it would have been possible to rescue our friend without making a frontal assault, because we didn't have a rogue in the party (the rogue was the one we needed to rescue). I would have preferred to pickpocket a couple of keys rather than make such powerful enemies. I'm guessing it's not possible, though, because the hard-coded ending movie states that it was a violent assault. What also seemed hard-coded was that my character often expressed a kind of worship of "lady luck" and Tymora, despite Tymora not being my chosen deity.

The battles were very tough, but that's because I kept the difficulty on "core rules" instead of the author-suggested "normal". The sorceress party member had a very large collection of spells, though.

I went and replayed it to try out the path leading to the Red Wizards, and found there was actually more content in that area than with the Umberlee temple. The city district is large enough and detailed enough that I think it must be part of another module somewhere, or possibly a prefab. It would be a shame if all this detail weren't used in a larger mod!

In any case, it turns out that the first choice I mentioned above was the "critical path", and the game ends after you accomplish any of those three tasks, whether or not you would have attempted to accomplish others. I went ahead and watched the other two ending movies, and they all end in death or despair/disappointment, which is how it relates to "Stories About Snakes". It was an interesting module, but it left me wishing that some of the other story hooks would be expanded in the future.

Grimm Brigade, by Jclef

This one's documentation advised me to prepare for fights using many consumables, and to take its story in the spirit of "Van Helsing", which I assume refers to the movie by that name in this case. The movie was a swashbuckling mashup of various movie versions of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman, and was enjoyable in that regard, so I'll be expecting something along those lines with fairy tales in place of the monster movies.

The Grimm brothers run a kind of government agency here, set in an attractive library with no actual exits aside from the colour-coded portals that lead to the missions. It looks like there are four missions to go on, with Jacob telling you which to do first, and Wilhelm acting as the quartermaster. The documentation said "mêlée preferred", so I played as a barbarian.

The first mission is Little Red Riding Hood. Upon walking through the portal, LRRH herself (a halfling bard in this incarnation) is fighting two forest goblins, and is near death. She asks for help surviving the trip to Grandma's House, though in actuality she's immortal. I discovered my own mortality was quite permanent, though, as I was taken down by a group of goblins and wolves, and got a "game over" screen. I learned from my mistake, and survived the rest of the module on "normal" difficulty.

The forest makes great use of terrain elevation for aesthetic interest. There were several good approaches to forests amongst the modules in this contest, and it's hard to say which I liked better, since they seemed to have different goals. This one, I think, beats the forest in The Witch In The Woods for being a believable forest (though the other one better accomplishes the feeling of being in a forest). There is, however, only one path, and Jacob Grimm appears to quickly usher you back to HQ once the escort task is complete, and LRRH offers her hood as a reward.

The second mission is The Brave Little Tailor. The design of the mountain is interesting, but it doesn't try to hide the fact that it's a single winding path to the destination. This may have been intentional, but I would have preferred something else for aesthetics, though I have to admit that it does make for some striking screenshots. The tailor is the escorted character this time, going up against a giant and the mountain orcs who stand in the way. The orc shamans are the most dangerous foes here, I think, since they have some kind of vampiric attack that steals your health.

Again, once the main foe is felled, Jacob appears to return you to HQ, and the tailor offers a reward.

Mission 3 is Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. This one leads through mines and Illefarn corridors, with each of the 7 named duergar featuring as minibosses. This one's longer than the others, and is the first one with traps and locked doors and chests, which make up for the less interesting scenery. As a barbarian, I was able to detect, but not disarm the traps, and I'm glad that these traps didn't stretch all the way from one wall to another, so I could walk around them. This one differed from the others, in that Snow White didn't offer a reward like the others did, and Jacob insisted on a quick departure.

Mission 4 is Hansel & Gretel. This features a forest of a different style, set in a blue-green hue. The woodcutter lives with his two children in front of an alarming unfenced cliff dropoff, but this was not the cause of their disappearance.

I like the design of this forest much better. It's lush and varied, with some scenic overlooks and good use of textures (some of the footpath texturing by the witch's house was very nice), has particle effects that make it feel more enchanted, and has a variety of enemies to combat, including treants, which I actually hadn't seen in any NWN content before now. Amusingly, and I don't know if this was intended or not, a nearby ferret and rabbit came to my aid when I started fighting, though they didn't last long.

There were also trolls to fight, and I was worried about that, since I hadn't made any preparations against trolls, but I found that my inventory contained some alchemist's fire anyway. Whether this was a random drop or if it was specifically provided, I'm not sure, but I'd guess it was intentional. I think this mission was the best of the lot.

This module lacked in certain areas such as dialogue options and quest design, and it was a very linear experience, but that is what it advertised itself to be, and the way the module wrapped itself up with a feel-good epilogue made it a satisfying experience overall.

Grimm's PatchWorld, by Patcha

This module draws inspiration from dozens of different stories, according to the documentation. Apparently Patcha had larger plans for this module, but had to scale them down for the contest deadline. The author is not a native English-speaker, so I won't comment on the grammar, except that I was able to comprehend it without problems. This module contains a few novel features, such as chairs the player can sit on, and beds that the player can sleep on.

There are two basic goals in this story: Kill a wolf that has eaten numerous villagers and livestock, and find out what has happened to the missing queen. Most of this is accomplished through exploration and dialogue, and it's possible to complete the story with only one fight, if you choose to form alliances and make plans befitting a fairy tale. That said, taking the more interesting story route involves a bit too much running back and forth between the village and the very dense forest. Points of interest are spread a bit too far apart in general here.

There's a good amount of humour spread throughout, though much of it is very well-hidden. The conversations are enjoyable and have several roleplaying options just about every time, and I appreciated all the references to lesser-known stories (including ones that I may have forgotten).

There were some mysterious things here and there, but most of them were cleared up by reading the text file that the author included for the purpose of reading after finishing playing the module. A particular locked house with a name plate in front was in fact a joke, as the name translates to "Mister Not-At-Home". But the text file was still a little unclear on the purpose of the mysterious graveyard. There was a sign with what looked like a riddle written on it, and items all around the graves that each referred to a single line of that "riddle". I thought that if I activated each item in the same order that it appeared on the sign, it might unlock the locked tomb, but it didn't happen. It seems, based on the explanation, that those items are just referring to a story, and don't actually do anything, and the tomb can be unlocked by any rogue (I played as a ranger).

As implied above, there are numerous pathways through the story, and the ending has minor variations as well. The town crier will update his news based on your actions and ending accomplishments. All in all, it's not a bad module. If Patcha had expanded it after the contest deadline to include all the cut content, I would have played that as well.

Being Good, by Christian Mayr

This is a module with a very unique sense of humour. The premise is that your character is graduating from a "tear-avoider academy" (a school for making people happy, whose unusual name I attribute to the author not being a native speaker of English), to become a fairy godmother. The documentation stated that level and class didn't matter, so I employed my trusty halfling bard.

This module blends The Three Little Pigs, The Wolf and Seven Kids, and Mother Hulda (Frau Holle). The situation you need to solve to prove your worthiness of the title of fairy godmother is that some pigs are feeling sad because they're surrounded by unwanted houses that make them feel as small as a halfling (to which my halfling objected), and they had contracted a professional big bad wolf to come blow them down, but the wolf never showed up to fulfill his contract. You're given two special items to accomplish your tasks, but these items are always used through dialogue. I never had to open my inventory at all during this module.

While the level designs are fairly sparse, the unusual choices of custom music (the blues, I think) and the lively conversations made up for it. It's pretty funny! I especially liked the part where the wolf was on his way back to do his duty with the houses, but the pigs wouldn't let him in, because they believed him to be an impostor, in another link to the Wolf and Seven Kids. He was supposed to have grey fur, but the snow-obsessed weather goddess Mother Hulda was covering everything with snow, including the wolf, making him white. "You don't let me in because of the colour of my fur?" the wolf says. "You're all racists!"

A very short module, and easily completed in 20 minutes or less, due to its linearity, but fun to experience for the conversations and situations. It was also pretty fun and whimsical to take control of the wolf and blow down the houses as the pigs cheered me on.

Once Upon a Time... by Mungo_D

Heavily advised in this one's documentation was to use a level 1 male human or half-elf fighter. I went with the closest I had available -- a male tiefling rogue. That worked fine.

This module begins with a short essay on the significance and importance of stories, and posits a metaphysical component to their nature which guarantees that you, as the youngest of a trio of brothers, have no choice but to succeed in a quest where your brothers failed. Unfortunately, that essay is the most interesting part of the module.

"No choice" is pretty much the whole theme of this module, since you can never choose not to do something, and your only dialogue options are to obey cheerfully or obey begrudgingly. The conversations lack the kind of personality that can make this entertaining.

The area design and texturing is very bland, especially compared to the masterful work exhibited in many of these other modules, and the long hike up the mountain means I had plenty of time to look at it. Once at the top, and inside the mine, my task was simply to walk down through several tiny mine rooms, kill the 2 or 3 goblins in each, and return to the top. The author was at least kind enough to provide a way to teleport back to the top of the mine, but then I had to hike manually back down to the bottom of the mountain, where the module reached its conclusion.

I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this module.

A Prince of Light, or Shadow, by Saorsa

Another one requiring a male level 1 mêlée character. Here comes my tiefling again. Though the documentation says that it should give me enough XP to level up to level 4, so I don't know why I needed to use a level 1 character to start. Why not start with a level 4?

I was relieved to find myself in a beautiful autumn woodsy area. A nearby dwarf related a tale of woe, revealing himself to be the last of the famed seven dwarves. In this version, a trio of witch sisters and their mother murdered the rest of the dwarves and kidnapped Snow White out of a hatred of anyone being happy. The dialogue began with a choice between a good or an evil reply, and once I made that first choice, I was given only a single option for the rest of the conversation. The dwarf then gave me a warhammer to use in my quest against the witches. Unfortunately, as a rogue, I couldn't use warhammers! The documentation didn't say I needed to be a fighter, just a mêlée class. I decided to make the best of it and plow on ahead this way, and used the levels I was granted to take martial weapon training. I was not, however, given enough XP to get to level 4 -- only to level 3.

Things took a turn toward the surreal and symbolic when I set out onto the path to the rocky grasslands. I encountered some kobolds called "nagging doubts", who dropped vials of "a small hope" which acted as health potions. This theme continued throughout, with larger enemies dropping larger "hope" potions. I also started coming across pieces of armour with evil-fighting properties. Unfortunately, I couldn't equip most of them. I should have taken a fighter level instead of just martial weapon training, so I could have gotten those abilities as a batch.

This grassland turned out to be the land of the first witch, named Discord. I lied to her, swearing allegiance, turning me more chaotic, and locking me into the "lie" course of dialogue. She let me pass to the next land to meet the next sister.

This next witch's land was a spooky dark forest with zombies and wraiths, with the witch named Deceit standing in a pond of blood near the centre. This forest was nicely designed as well. I continued my ruse, and was passed on to the last witch sister.

This one's realm was a striking rose-atmosphered place full of flowers, trees, pleasant paths, and a gazebo. Many unhostile succubi were standing around chatting with each other, and the sound of conversation and laughter was all around. The final sister, Decadence, referred me to the tower on the hill behind her, where their mother lived.

Inside, I was treated to multiple twists and surprise revelations! Even the fairy tale kiss brought something completely unexpected, as well (before the end, that is)! Bravo! Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug that required some reloads to get through. When confronting the witch mother, I can choose to either declare true allegiance to her or tell her that I'm actually against her. If I do the former, I'm locked into an evil path, with no way to take it back, and if I choose the latter, she immediately attacks me solo, and nothing further happens after she's dead, whether I check the mirror or Snow White. It becomes a dead end. To get around this, I had to check the mirror before speaking to the witch mother. The journal and her dialogue assumes that I've spoken to her already, and she gives me a choice to join her or oppose her. This time, if I oppose her, she summons her daughters, and after the fight I get a new option with the mirror that allows me to proceed.

This was the only bug I encountered, and it remains an excellently-designed module, both visually and in plot. The paths were linear, but provided visual interest for the journey, and the somewhat surreal, symbolic nature of it kept me guessing.

The Queen of Lies, by Adoniram

I left this one for last because I thought (based on the wording of the documentation) it was going to be longer than it turned out to be. It actually might be the shortest of the whole lot, though due to its variations you'd have to replay it several times to experience it all.

The documentation told me that I'd be playing predefined characters most of the time, and that my own character wouldn't matter, so once again I brought out my level 4 halfling bard. The documentation didn't tell me that it would be expecting a male character, and didn't make any checks for gender, so I was referred to as "brother" (this sort of thing happened in several other contest entry mods, in fact). It begins right away with what turns out to be the theme of the module. "Did you, or did you not drink my ale?" It took me a while to figure out what the purpose of all these questions was, since I was just assuming that it was going for the fairy tale theme of rewarding honesty.

This module tells the story of three brothers on a quest to rescue a princess, each taking a separate path. You play each brother, one at a time. It says there are 12 story variations, so I hope it won't be too much of a spoiler to describe how mine went.

The first brother's story has a timed event, where you have to find some firewood before your torch goes out, or a wolf will attack you. I took a little too long the first time I tried, reaching a tree just as my torch went out. I fought the wolf, and was killed. It looked like it would have been possible to win with a little more luck, though. The story went on to the next brother, but I wasn't content to leave the first brother dead, even though the documentation said it would be incorporated into the story, so I started over. I had to start over from the beginning instead of reloading my last save, because of some problems mentioned in the docs with saving in this module. The second time, I reached the tree in time, and figured out I had to bash it to proceed. The story immediately went on to the second brother's scene when I chopped the tree.

The second brother had just a short path to a cottage, and a curious friendly wolf pup on the way. Inside the cottage, a woman introduced herself as the princess! Something seemed fishy, though. She started asking some questions that sounded contrived and leading, designed to test my honesty rather than my suitability for marriage. I wasn't under the impression that this quest had marriage to a princess as a reward -- I rather assumed it would be a monetary consideration. So, I didn't go along with her prompting to puff up my accomplishments to prove myself worthy to marry her, and the story transitioned to the third brother's scene.

As the third brother, I found myself in a familiar location. This was the same area where I had found the tree as the first brother. I recognised the small stream and the large anthills, but there was no tree. I thought this might be a simple reuse of the scenery. Anyway, there was a woman here, who looked like the same princess in the cottage. She claimed to be the princess, too, but refused to come back home without her "precious" ring, stolen by a frog. So I agreed to guard one exit of its burrow (one of the anthills) while she made noise on the other end to scare it out. She conspicuously warned me to keep my eyes on it at all times, so I was expecting her to do something behind me. What happened was that a bat appeared, and my character automatically turned around and killed it. The princess then asked me if I had kept my eyes on the exit the whole time. Well, no, obviously I hadn't, because of the bloody bat, and I said as much. "Well, did you hear any loud splash, then?" she asked. No, I hadn't. And I said as much, even though the dialogue offered me the option of saying that I had heard a splash, and it must have been the frog. But I didn't hear a splash. She then turned into a "hag" (really a zombie) and accused me of lying, because she had thrown a rock into the water to make a splash! I was then turned into a tree, ironically, for the first brother to have chopped down in the first scene I had played.

Then everything came together, with all three brothers in the same scene, except one was burnt up in a fire pit. So the second brother demanded to know why the first brother had used brother 3 as firewood, and to explain the blood on his hands. I was presented with two options, neither of which were true. He had been mistaken in the dark, or the blood was from cutting himself? He clearly wasn't mistaken, because brother 3 was a tree at the time. It would have been a lie to choose that one. And I was never told that the tree bled while being chopped, so I chose the other option. Surprise lie! The hag appeared again and used this lie to turn brother 1 into an axe. Then I had to fight her alone, and died. The story ended with a little epilogue.

So now that I knew which of the dialogue the game thought was a lie, I played those parts again so I wouldn't accidentally lie this time. This time with brother 2, I listened carefully when that bat attacked me. Still no splash! I picked the "yes, I heard the splash" option anyway, and this time the "princess" turned into a tree! Now, when it cut back to brother 1, he found himself chopping into a princess, and as she "died" she asked him if he would promise to tell the king that he had killed his daughter by mistaking her for a tree. I chose to truthfully promise, and she got angry, turned into the hag, and decided to kill me, even though it wouldn't benefit her at all to do so. The other two surviving brothers showed up to help me fight her, and we beat her, though she did kill one of the brothers, and the dead stay dead in this module.

The story didn't end, and there was no indication of what to do. I checked the loot from the hag's body, and found a "necklace of lies". It didn't seem cursed, but it was hard to tell with a custom mod. It had a "remove curse" ability, though. I put it on, to see if that would end the module, but nothing happened. I looked around and tried examining the small brook again, which I had checked before, but didn't do anything. This time, it said that I could hear a voice in the brook! So I used the necklace to remove a curse on the brook, and voilà! There was the princess, and it all ended happily, except for the dead brother.

I'd say it's interesting enough to run through a couple of times for variations.

Afterthoughts

As with the Halloween compilation, this contest presented me with quite a wide variety of styles and approaches to a single theme. It confirms to me what I had speculated before, that this toolset and engine combination is indeed a flexible platform for games of many types and genres beyond the RPG style of the original campaign. I'm a bit sad that I wasn't around to see this wealth of content as it was in the process of being made, but I'm also glad that such a wealth exists now for me to enjoy, and that people continue to add to that significant body of work.

BouncyRock's Neverwinter Nights 2 Halloween module compilation

noreply@blogger.com (Tchos) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:10:00 +0000

BouncyRock's Halloween module perfectly embodies community spirit. It begins with a Halloween TV special-like introductory credits cutscene, and then a friendly rhyming beholder disguised as a pumpkin explains to you the framing setting. It's Halloween night, and you are in a gazebo in the middle of a breezy, well-designed neighbourhood, with grinning, glowing jack-o'-lanterns in front of the houses of the more than two dozen modders who contributed their own segments to this module. The focus is on the individual houses, but the exterior neighbourhood is also really top notch and deserves high praise.

With glowstick in hand (which acts as a stone of recall/hearthstone to bring you back if you happen to get stuck), you're free to trick or treat in this large neighbourhood (strangely bereft of other trick-or-treaters) in any order you choose.

My enjoyment of holiday-themed entertainment is not contingent on the actual calendar date, so it doesn't matter that I'm playing this mod somewhat later than the Halloween time window. The content of the houses runs the full gamut from whimsical and wacky to true no-nonsense horror, which suits the "trick or treat" theme well. Each house is a unique experience, with content inside that so far has been of the length most contest seem to go for -- about an hour or two per house, on average. If that time frame holds, then this module as a whole must contain anywhere from 25-50 hours of content. Impressive!

I started this with a new character, because I didn't notice the field on the module's page that said "level 5 minimum" -- I usually look for that kind of information in the general description text or the readme file, and haven't yet gotten used to looking in that spot on the Vault pages. Nonetheless, the initial dialogue gave me the option to give me enough XP to level me up to 5, so I did. I decided to try playing as a bard for a change, since they seem like they could be more than just a support character, which is how I usually saw them in Baldur's Gate, and how I had used Grobnar in the NWN2 OC.

I was hoping, however, that I wouldn't need to do much combat in this module, since I really do hate solo adventures in NWN2. I'm sure they're perfectly fine for those who prefer to play mêlée classes, but I don't. So far, there hasn't been much combat, though.

So, as I play through this mod, I'll describe the different houses I visit, in the order I visit them.

Small shop

This is just what it says on the tin. Starting as a new character, this is the first place I went, because I had no equipment, and I didn't know what I might be facing in the houses.

This is actually one of the best-designed shops I've visited in NWN2, either in the OC, the expansions, or any of the modules I've played so far. Shops in most of these games, including the professionally-designed ones, tend to be far too large for what they're supposed to be, and have a remarkable lack of inventory on display. Sometimes, the only way you can tell that you're in a shop at all is that there's an NPC standing there with a "vendor" tag on them, or who has an appropriate dialogue option.

This place was different, and should serve as a model for other in-game shops to emulate. It was of a much more believable and appropriate size for its function, it was lit atmospherically, and it had shelves upon shelves crowded with items and curios. It even had a whimsical little coin-operated mechanical fortune-telling device, for a bit of comedy! The shopkeeper was a grumpy monstrous humanoid of some kind, which I'm not yet experienced enough in this game to be able to recognise by sight. Perhaps a goblin.

After outfitting myself to the best of my limited budget, I went out to explore the town some more before choosing a house to try out first.

Jonny Ree & Liso's house

I chose this house to start with mainly because it was so far outside the rest of the neighbourhood, past the walls and in the unpaved hilly area in the countryside beyond. Basically, I had walked that far, and didn't want to walk back to look around more (though it didn't occur to me until now that I could have used the glowstick to teleport back to the gazebo).

This one seemed like it was going for a survival horror theme, with a television filled with distortion being the sole light source in this cramped room, with no one sitting on the solitary sofa. It recalled to mind a similar scene in the earlier Silent Hill games.

However, upon interacting with the television, this house took a turn for the wacky, as I was sucked into a world combining Teletubbies with Dr Who. Not entirely wacky, though, since I found two of the Teletubbies lying dead under the mound where I found the Doctor imprisoned. The goal of this module was very short and simple, and involved freeing the Doctor and getting past some Dalek-possessed periscopes to reach his TARDIS, where we could be trasported back to the real world. The showcase was really the world, which reproduced the bright colours, music, sound effects, and the baby-in-the-sun that I know to be from Teletubbies despite never having watched an episode.

Fighting the periscopes turned out to be the longest part of the module, for the aforementioned reason -- that I'm not a mêlée fighter.

At the end, I was given a sonic screwdriver as a reward, which appears to function as a low-powered long-range weapon, dealing sonic damage, appropriately enough.

The Grumpy Strumpet Tavern

Like the small shop above, this tavern should serve as a model for all game taverns. How many times have I seen "taverns" in games that are colossal meeting halls with almost no furnishings, and more importantly -- no tables?! Too many times, that's how many.

By contrast, the Grumpy Strumpet Tavern is exactly what I would expect or hope a tavern to look like. A short entrance hall, a central fireplace with chairs around it, walls lined with booth tables, and several free tables in the intervening spaces. Moreover, customers filled the place, sitting at seats, eating, drinking, playing cards, or standing and talking animatedly with each other. A waitress walked around, as well, but not aimlessly wandering. She went from table to table, welcoming customers, taking their orders, and asking if they needed anything else.

Behind the bar was a bartender, and behind him was a door into a large, well-decorated kitchen, complete with a cook, a boy stomping grapes in a vat for winemaking, and a freezer room with an ice mephit supplying the chill. The only thing missing in this kitchen, from what I could see, was fire for cooking. There were several ovens along the wall, but none of them were lit. The kitchen also had a door to the basement -- another well-designed and believable storage basement for a tavern. It, predictably, had a rat problem, but here that trope was played for laughs, and supplied the more interesting of the two quests I found in this tavern. I won't say what happens, but that it's fun and unique, and it starts by drinking from a bottle in the basement.

To the side was a door to upstairs, where there were three rooms -- a large, well-furnished one where the owner of the tavern (Mokah) lived, and two other, smaller rooms, presumably for guests to rent. Mokah's journal mentions the rat troubles in the basement, and also that she's been experimenting with using kobolds alchemically for her drinks (probably to point the player to the experimental still in the kitchen, where you can mix potions that temporarily transform you into various monsters). It also mentions a reason for her absence, being some kind of moonstone expedition. The reference, if it is one, is lost on me.

The other activity in this place, aside from the rat one, is to hunt for a total of 20 letters to the Grumpy Strumpet, which are hidden all over the place. I could only find 18 of them, missing #10 and #15. None of them are readable, even though they're supposed to be. Activating them brings up a book-like interface, but the pages are blank. On the forum, the author explained that they use an interface that's supposed to be include with the mod, (Readable Books), but even after installing that mod separately, the letters cannot be read. A nice idea, but I would rather the letters be made into the same kind of readables the rest of the game uses, so I could actually read them. [Addendum: it might have worked if I had tried this version of Readable Books instead.]

Actor of Veil's house

This house is actually a large castle on the inside, and is almost completely unfurnished, with unnecessarily long empty spaces to run through to get from one point of interest to another. It started out well, as a rather comical take on a theme park-style haunted house guided tour, with a ghost-host explaining the tragic story of each room, before disappearing and letting me speak to each spectral inhabitant with wacky dialogue. Each of these encounters ended with a sudden "boo!"-type moment, with a hand-drawn illustration of the ghost's terrible secret, accompanied by frantic organ music.

If it had continued on along those lines, I would have enjoyed it, but the "tour" elements stopped as it went on, and the rooms and hallways got bigger and emptier with nothing happening between them, and ultimately what had at first been a benign exploration mod took a sharp turn toward difficult and unfairly balanced combat for my level.

The ending was abrupt, with only a note saying "The end" on the way to the exit, where the rest of the mod had been full of hand-drawn cutscenes and dialogues. It all came across as rushed and unfinished, and could have been greatly improved by reducing its scale by at least 80%.

Chaos Wielder's house

The town wall was broken in one area, and a little path led down into a nicely-designed swampy area with the houses of Chaos Wielder and Skunkeen. I visited Chaos Wielder's house, noting the sign in front that suggested putting away any light-emitting items, like torches, for the best effect.

Lighting was the showcase in this mod, as well as atmospheric sound effects and a creepy manor-type décor. One of the creepier painted portraits was a repeated motif here, often lit up with an eerie glow. The Silent Hill feel was very strong here. Most areas were very low-lit, with coloured lights in interesting combinations, with rooms that seemed very realistic for a family manor. There was even a bathroom with bath and toilet.

Certain rooms had extremely harsh red lighting with stark black shadows and scary ambient sounds, with solitary elements like a shiny rocking chair, or grim statues.

When I got into the basement, the whole place had that kind of lighting, and moreover the walls and floors were crawling around. Creatures moved behind barred doors, and there was a strange cutscene when I went through a door down there, which transported me to a plant-filled room, with a friendly lizardman. He broke character and addressed me as the author of the mod, and basically told me that his part of the module was finished. The door, however, led nowhere, and I would have been stuck down there if not for the hearthstone glowstick provided by the module's framework. Overall a good house for atmosphere, but ended very abruptly.

Skunkeen's house

This was the other house in the little swamp area. I feel like I'm missing something in that one. Skunkeen himself was standing in the middle of the room, dressed like a fancy bard. In his conversation, he offered me a musical instrument, which I accepted. I'm a bard myself in this game. I don't know if he offers other items to different classes, or if it's just my luck. There was nothing more to the conversation, and no explanation for the ghost child, the dead body by the table, or the levitating hag by the upstairs door. Neither of them spoke, and the only other door was locked. Perhaps if I get the lockpicking skill or a knock spell I can see if there's something in there, but otherwise, there's nothing special about this house, unless it's broken.

Addendum: After obtaining lockpicking skills, I returned to this house and tried the door, only to be told a specific key was required to open it. If there are some hidden activities in this house, they're hidden too well. I can only conclude that the house is unfinished and that the unexplained elements are red herrings.

Tiberius' house

Now this one's shaping up to be good! The house is modestly sized and well-furnished, and right away I could see there was something going on. A portal glimmered in another room, with the sound effect of a jacob's ladder, evoking old Frankenstein movies. Well, it wasn't Frankenstein, it was Dracula! The author of the module (Tiberius, whose name is misspelled as "Tiberious" in one place in the module) was trapped in a glowing sphere by a gnome who lay dead on the floor, apparently killed by Dracula, who was brought to life out of fiction by the module author. So, to combat Dracula, the author told me to go read some of his books and pick a character or three for him to bring to life to accompany me (all apparently from his previous modules).

This is the first segment in the module that actually provided me with a party! And since I had no idea if there would be any others, my immediate reaction was to leave the house and go to some other ones, because the dialogue stated that Tiberius would send the characters back to their own worlds once Dracula was dead, and I didn't want to lose them. I just wish one of them had lockpicking skills, so I could try out that locked door in Skunkeen's house, and the locked cabinet at the Grumpy Strumpet, where maybe those two last letters are hidden! (Addendum: No, both were key-locked.)

JClef's house

This one is a much more normal Halloween trick or treating house. The author's avatar JClef and a woman named Ms Macabre wear masks in the central room of their house, which is set with small tables of Halloween goodies, like bowls of candy, grab bags, cups of "pumpkin cider", and a plate of fruit for comic effect. "Lame!" says the character. The candy can be munched, the cider gulped, and the grab bags each give you a potion or some other item, which may be random. There are also two books, one of which only has a description, and refers to the Misery Stone, which I assume is a reference to the module by that name set in the Ravenloft world, which I plan to play in due course. The other book tells, in a dialogue window, an abridged version of the story of the origin of the jack-o'-lantern. A simple but enjoyable Halloween house to visit.

Vendalus' house

Very interesting. This one is a classic murder mystery! As an outsider, my task was to interview the party guests, most of whom had motives to kill the victim, and determine the killer. I did wonder if it was a normal sort of party murder mystery, where it's just a big game, but the host actually had an answer for that question, and assured me it was real.

There was no combat in this game, as it was entirely a 1-room affair consisting of the suspect interviews. Vendalus wrote some very detailed backgrounds for all of the characters involved, and how they were involved with each other. Information was doled out piecemeal as I spoke to each person and learned small bits of info that I could use either to barter for more information or to elicit minor confessions and interesting revelations. Some of these led to bonus rewards! In the end, it was all tied up neatly and satisfactorily. I recommend it.

Shaughn's house

This one starts out alarmingly, as I began in a single, cobwebbed, dimly-lit room with the exit missing. A note in the middle of the floor described the "game notes". A couple of blue-flame braziers and a sealed door with a talking knocker was the only other element.

Upon opening the door, I was led down a hallway, interrupted every few steps by things like signs appearing and ghostly children running by. At the fork in the hallway, I ignored the direction the sign was pointing and went the other way, further ignoring the "stop!" sign and voice that appeared to warn me away. It ended in a little alcove designed to satirically extol the necessities of planning out your mods and to decry the perils of tinkering aimlessly with the toolset.

The rest of the mod went in a similar fashion -- half serious narrative and puzzles, and half modding in-jokes. Like Tiberius' house, it made reference to what appears to be other characters created in another mod by the same author. The serious parts of the mod were well enough designed to stand on their own, without the jokes (especially the vampire puzzle), but it was nevertheless interesting to read the author's thoughts and experiences in modding.

It ended with what I assume to be a representation of the author's actual house, with as modern furnishings as could be approximated with NWN2 assets from the looks of it. There were many locked doors, however, which would have been better if they had been non-interactive, because they made me think there might be something behind them to experience. And maybe there is, because I managed to catch a glimpse of a mind-flayer through the wall behind one of them! I got enough experience points by this time to level up and add some points into lockpicking, but all the locks are set to 99 difficulty, so I'm guessing I'm not supposed to be able to open them. The module is designed for level 5 players, after all, or is supposed to be, and you can't have that much skill in lockpicking at that level.

Adam Miller's tomb of discomfort

There are three buildings in this nicely designed graveyard, and this is the first I entered.

Adam Miller's avatar is rude, and cast a shrinking spell on me, and the dialogue even includes the option "I thought you'd be less of a jerk," as a farewell. I had trouble with this one at first, but I believe it was due to the scripts not expecting me to have companions. I tried it again without the companions, and it worked fine. The first time, he simply shrank me, and I remained in the same spot, with his servant Grunto making comments behind a locked door. The second time, I was shrunk and teleported to a small cage in the room on the other side of that door, and my task was to escape from the cage and figure out how to use the items and situation to bathe myself in water, as a nearby book helpfully advised me to do, to reverse the shrinking spell.

It was a pretty straightforward but enjoyable task, though for some reason I had to repeat it three times, since I was not returned to normal size on the first few showers, no matter where I stood in the flowing water. I thought I might have to find a way to move the empty washtub under the faucet, but it was not an interactive item. The shower eventually worked, though, and I was released from the room.

A book in Adam's bedroom makes some remark about stealing ideas from other modders and covering it up with sex and comedy, which can be taken as either cynical or bitter. Adam also gave me a strange-looking piece of candy, that appears to do random things when used.

House of BlackRain

The sign out in front mentioned the Umbrella Corporation, so I expected zombies, because that's the company in the Resident Evil games, which I know mainly from references to it that I've seen here and there over the years, and a brief time playing one of the games on a friend's console years ago.

In fact, this segment is a giant tribute to the Resident Evil games. Right from the beginning on entering the house, I could tell that that's what the author was going for, as it began with a cutscene of my character entering the room and looking around, as tense custom music played (presumably from the Resident Evil games). The camera controls suddenly became awkwardly set in two of the modes, as well. I think this mod was trying to take control of it in the same way the Resident Evil games would often use dramatic camera angles whenever you entered new rooms or certain areas of a room.

In the other room was a representation of a Playstation console, and when I activated it, the real tribute began. What seemed to be the original audio taken directly from one of the RE games formed the soundtrack to a recreation of its opening cinematic. My characters were nowhere to be seen, and the usual user interface was gone. When I was given control again, I was controlling Jill Valentine, following the orders of Albert Wesker and Barry Burton in exploring a mansion in which we took refuge from zombies. This whole thing was heavily scripted and included many cinematics while exploring. All the while, Wesker, Burton, and Valentine spoke lines that clearly came from that game. In between rooms, loading screens displayed trivia about the Resident Evil series.

Eventually, the screen shattered, the Playstation broke, and I was returned to the normal controls and world, where, as expected, I was attacked by zombies before given a final reward.

An interesting idea, and a well-executed tribute, and it didn't wear out its welcome by being too long.

Church of Dave Eat2Surf

Dave himself greeted me in the entrance hall of this room. He was standing near a desk with a computer, with references to modding with the toolset. He welcomed me to his house and invited me to look around, maybe try some thunder bowling upstairs, but warned me not to pull the level in the bell tower.

Several rooms surrounded the central room, which led upstairs. I explored the downstairs rooms first. Dave's wife tasked me with killing bugs and spiders and cleaning out the junk in the corners, and picking up stray toys. Many objects spawned these bugs and spiders when activated. Various containers had loot. The "toys" were little living action figures, whose desciptions said they'd summon a creature if I used them.

One room was the "tiki room", which had tiki statues and a little waterfall and some plants, and played a tiki room song every so often.

I tried the bowling upstairs. The "pins" were big mushrooms. A container held the balls, and activating it started an automated scene where my character threw it at the pins. Both times I tried, it destroyed all the pins, so I figured there was no point to keep at it. Various windows showed descriptions claiming that the night outside was a bit too dark and quiet.

I went up to the bell tower, and looked around. There were more ominous windows, and the lever. I decided not to pull the lever yet, and instead go back downstairs and see if Dave's wife had any reward for all the cleanup I had done, but when I tried to use the ladder, it said "You almost fell down the ladder!" and I stayed in the same spot. I tried again, and it did it again, but this time the game crashed.

I reloaded, and this time I went straight up and pulled the lever. Zombies spawned, and during the fight, the game crashed again. I decided this house was not to be, reloaded, and just did the downstairs stuff and left. I don't know if there was supposed to be any resolution to the activities there or not.

Wylonus' house

This house had "under construction" appended to its name on the world map, and it does indeed look unfinished. I won't say much about it in its existing form, but it probably would have been an interesting house if it had been finished. I don't think it should have been included in the compilation as-is.

ENoa4's house

This house is another in the very popular genre showing the modders talking about the experience of modding the game. Ernie Noa takes a self-effacing view of his projects, as represented by a basement workshop full of junk, broken 2DA files, and half-written dialogue. The monsters are manifestations of these modding problems, including spirits of dissatisfied players.

The environment was well-designed and interesting, and the themes were fairly amusing as well, though it suffered a bit from being used by so many others in this module. Several NPCs from this author's other modules show up here to talk about their roles in those other projects (even unreleased ones), which was actually a pretty clever way to inspire some interest in playing them.

However, one very bad thing in here was a "Demon of autosave corruption." It appears that when this demon dies, it releases a fireburst that does 100 points of damage to the whole party (or rather to the player, since the only reason I have a party at all is because of Tiberius' house.) At level 5, none of my party has that many HP, so it's an instant wipe with no respawning. Was this supposed to be funny? A statement that autosave corruption ruins everything? It was not funny, since I had to reload and retreat a lot of steps.

I left the basement soon after that. I think I saw everything there was to see in there anyway. But then I found that this was another house whose front door didn't work from the inside, so I tried to use the glow stick again to teleport back into town. The glow stick didn't work either! So I had to reload a save from before I entered that house at all, which was a ways back. Good thing I keep so many saves, even for a casual module like this!

AmstradHero's house

This one seemed to focus not so much on area design, but other kinds of content. There were several books with synopses of spooky tales, and various items and set pieces that could be examined for some spooky flavour text. The host offered a "treat" to be found somewhere in the house, and it turned out to be a mini-game of a kind of tower defense variety, where you have to use some statues to banish good and evil souls to upper and lower planes, as they come in heavier and heavier swarms, until it's impossible to banish them all because of the time it takes between one activation and another. As a reward I received an item that would let me cast Bless or Bane.

Eguintir Eligard's house

This author made his in-game avatar look like the same red-hooded elder gentleman in his forum avatar. Strangely enough, the author chose to portray himself as rude and unpleasant, as had one or two of the other authors in this compilation. Well, it seemed strange at first, but after more dialogue, it seemed that this was just a colourful character portrayal designed to fluster him when he had to make accomodations in the face of possible disruptions to his dinner party plans.

First I was given a guided tour of the house, with dialogue and NPC interactions with the maid (conspicuously brewing a gigantic stew) and the butler. I was warned not to touch anything (and to step only where Eguintir stepped, as Gandalf had once said), but there didn't seem to be anything touchable anyway. One such exhibit was an aquarium which was supposed to have fish in it, but did not. Possibly something was missing from the compilation, similar to the Grumpy Strumpet unreadable letters.

Then there was the dinner party, with amusing conversation (albeit one which used the word "despot" nonsensically). Near the end of the conversation, I noticed the pattern to the names of the visiting dinner guests...notably the inclusion of a "Colonel" and a "Baroness". Those, along with the maid and butler, and the fact that the module didn't end with the dinner party, but had me going off to join the others in the guest rooms for the night, indicated to me that this was going to be a longer module, modeled after either the board game or movie version of Cluedo/Clue. Fun!

Well, after playing it through, it was an amusing story, but it was almost all made of cutscenes, with almost no interaction on my part aside from a token spot or two where I just had to walk from one end of the hall to the other to trigger the next bit, or click the only dialogue option given. Occasionally there were more dialogue choices than that, but it was more of a little movie than a game. I'm glad there wasn't any combat in it, anyway, since it really didn't warrant any.

Elysian Manor

This may have been my favourite house of all, at least so far. A man with a smooth Spanish-sounding accent welcomed me to the deceptively bright and clean house, and explained a few things before leaving with ominous parting words. This segment was primarily puzzles, almost in adventure game style, where you pick up everything, combine items in useful ways, and use the resulting items to progress through the game.

It used brief cutscenes and changes of scenery to great effect, and succeeded in being both atmospherically scary as well as providing a good puzzle framework that required some thought, but never made things so obscure that they couldn't be solved.

Of course, using an item to reveal a doorway was made much easier by the fact that I could see the doorway sticking up halfway through the ceiling on the other side of one of the walls. I've been meaning to talk about the upstairs doorways in the OC tilesets, and I'll do it at the end of this post, since it has nothing to do with Elysian's excellent mod.

JasonNH's home

This was a small house which started out sinister with the host, but changed to a more eerie/sad ghost story feeling shortly afterward. There was a lot of scripting involved, it seemed, and I think my having a party interfered with some of the scripts, because there were numerous times that things froze up, failed to advance, or party members were reduced to zero health during cutscenes. I ended up removing the party members for my last time through, and that worked without problems. A gnome girl (I think) was creatively used in this mod to represent a human child, which got around the problem of the standard human children always wearing rags and having very little customisation.

It was a poignant story overall, and I enjoyed it, though I ended up not being sure of who was a ghost and who wasn't (Were the hags? Was the girl?), and what exactly the hags had in mind with their plans, given those considerations. I might have taken things the wrong way due to certain similarities between this mod and the movie The Others.

BouncyRock HQ

Having finished the houses in the central area of the neighbourhood and the southwestern and western sections of the area beyond the walls, I went the the northeast where BouncyRock HQ was portrayed as a castle on a hill. I admired the pathways and design of the approach, but when I got there, the door was marked "closed for Halloween". The door was not key-locked, but had a difficulty of 118, which was far beyond my abilities. I really hate not knowing if certain doors are not meant to be opened, with nothing behind them, or if they're worth trying to get open later. Isn't there any way to make static doors in this toolset, which won't imply interactivity?

Anduraga's home

This was a nice tower on a smaller hill near BouncyRock HQ, and the design of the area was lovely. It made me wish I had assets like that for my Trouble in Rainesfere mod for Dragon Age.

Once opening the door, I found myself to be still outside, but dead, and with some stranger weeping over my body. A ghost greeted my ghost, and became a party member. Since this module provided me with a party member, I removed my others until this one was complete.

The forest area was convincingly designed, but the path to our destination was not clearly marked, and there was no marker on the map, so I wandered off in the wrong direction until I hit a barrier, and circled around it until I found the new tower. This was a very different tower than the one back on the world map -- much larger and more sinister with a giant skeleton as part of its design, and another dead body lying near its door.

Inside, it was spooky and interestingly lit. Large golems stood watch at every corner of this hall, and fountains and waterfalls flowed with red liquid that was no doubt blood. The interior did not look like a tower's interior, but a castle of some kind. The tileset was much better than anything I've seen in the OC, and fixes the things I mentioned as shortcomings before -- those mainly being the over-wrought normal maps and poor specular mapping, making everything look like excessively rough but clay-like stone. These walls, instead, were only as rough as they needed to be, and there was a gloss to parts of them that looked good in the low lighting.

In the middle of this room was the focus of this module -- a chest containing stones with single words on them, like life, laugh, truth, blood, etc., surrounded by four pedestals, and a book of instructions at the head. The pedestals each had separate bits of verse with missing words, and the task was to figure out which of the words on the stones fit the poems. They had to be added in order, the book said. I failed on the first pedestal, but I didn't know it yet, because I chose a different word that seemed to fit with the poem in a similar way, but there was actually a more appropriate word. When the second pedestal lit up after I added the stones, I knew the first one must be wrong, so I retrieved the stones from that one and went on to do the 3rd and 4th before seeing which stones were left for the first one.

Once all the pedestals lit up, the door opened, and I ended up free of the tower, and no longer dead. The module's host greeted me and told me it was all an illusion and that my treat awaited in the next room. That was a surprise. I was expecting more, considering I was given a companion. He never said anything after joining me, and there was no combat in the module. Perhaps there was more content planned.

I enjoyed this one, for the design, and the puzzle.

Amraphael's house

Another pretty small mod, but a beautifully designed interior. I loved the lighting and colours. Some of the décor was rather familiar by now, though, such as the levitating hags with their arms crossed, which I've seen in 3 or 4 mods now. This must be something from Mask of the Betrayer, I'm guessing, since I know it involves at least a hagspawn.

Here, the host offered riddles, ghost stories, and candy, though he played a trick on me with the candy, claiming it was poison, and I needed to quickly pick the antidote. At least I assume it was a trick. At any rate, I followed advice and didn't die. Then I went and explored the rest of his house, found a secret passage that led to a little fight, and then spoke to his wife, who asked me another riddle. A short, but fun house.

Mooncalf's Carnival of Souls

This house supplied 4 party members -- a pair of star-crossed lovers, an undead sorcerer, and Bishop from NWN2 OC. Irenicus from Baldur's Gate 2 made a cameo appearance as well. The main carnival area has a merchant and several NPCs that offer flavour dialogue. The merchant offers a book of hints for this module, which was useful. There are also some coincidental Skyrim parallels (couldn't have been intentional, since this was released in 2008, 3 years before Skyrim's release): one of the companions is named Lydia, and the host says (almost exactly), "I used to be an adventurer like you..."

The idea here is that on one night a year, damned souls can attempt to complete some challenges in exchange for a chance at being returned to life. Somehow, even though I'm still alive, I also get to participate in this challenge. Those who lose are eaten by some kind of hellhound.

There are 5 or 6 challenges to choose from, with interesting names like "Witchfinder General" and "Puzzle of the Imps". Some are easier than others, and their length varies, but they're all pretty short. Some rely on dialogue, some on skill checks, and some on having a party member present. I'd recommend saving before each challenge, though, because one wrong move can cause you to lose a companion or two permanently.

One problem in this mod is that the sorcerer Professor Bones can't cast any of his spells, even after resting. I can't see any reason for this. I was unable to use him for this reason.

Another problem is that there are portals that take you back to the carnival after each challenge, but they're destructible. Three times, in challenges that included combat, errant AoE spells destroyed the portals, and made it impossible to go back, except by using the glowstick to return to the town centre and walking back up to the house. This also seemed to be the cause of the game not recognising that I had all three of the necessary gem fragments -- it didn't give me any acknowledgement of it until I had completed another challenge that didn't destroy the portal.

Still, it was a fun and varied mod, with plenty of interesting dialogue. I went through all the challenges for the fun of it, even though only three were necessary.

Gaming Parents Studio

This was a very good house as far as design and horror elements go (nice exterior too). Sound effects, voices, and spooky evidence (a severed hand, a cleaver, and a doll's head) create an excellent atmosphere, with horrific imagery in one place, à la The Shining.

It ends very abruptly, though, and I get the impression there was going to be more, since the three items mentioned above served no purpose, and the hosts only mentioned them as a side note (we'll just take those back from you when you leave). Definitely worth visiting for the atmosphere.

Wyreen's house

The entrance hall to this house was amusing. There were two grand fountains, with a heavy flow of water issuing forth from the groins of the imp statues on top. Wandering around the floor was a cat, who said things like "OH HAI" and "I can haz cheezburger?" when I clicked on it.

There were two sections to this house: the trick and the treat. I picked the treat first. It turned out to be an homage to the movie Army of Darkness (Evil Dead 3). Lines from the movie were quoted verbatim, similar situations and creatures were set up, and weapons were reproduced. Not bad. I had actually watched this movie again right around Halloween of this year, so it was fresh in my mind. Also, a lich version of H.P. Lovecraft showed up to say a few words about the Necronominon, since he was the one who had invented it before it was used as the MacGuffin in the Evil Dead movies.

The "trick" was a story that involved a possessed baby, a birthday party, a vengeful ghost, and a choice about who to believe and what actions to take. I made what appears to have been the correct choice, given the followup, but there appears to be no "good" ending to it. Enjoyable house.

Dark Cave (Lair of the Beast)

Nothing happened in this cave, and I didn't find anything to do in the two "rooms" There was no scenery, nothing to activate, and no creatures. A shame, since it was so nicely designed on the outside. [Note: more on this later.]

Dirtywick's house

Tavern music played, and people in colourful clothes mingled in this large room, amongst tables set with food and drink. The partiers' lines had a slightly questionable ring to them, saying how they have these parties every year, that they expect I'll be back next year, too, and that this is the only night out for most of them. There was also a strangely unused kitchen, which I thought at first might have been an oversight, but I think it was more likely intentional here.

Upstairs, Herbert West greeted me and invited me to drink large quantities of alcoholic beverages. Well, I recognise the name Herbert West from Lovecraft's short story "Herbert West: Reanimator", and the loosely adapted movie, so I guessed that all these party guests are reanimated dead. I was not disappointed. Everything changed, and led to some moments that would surely be horrific in retrospect to anyone who didn't see the change coming. ("Mmm! Tastes like chicken!" "Well, it's not chicken. Maybe next year you can help us prepare it.") An effective, well-scripted house with an interesting backstory.

Berra's estate of horrors

Entering this house, I was greeted by another rude and condescending reception, except that it wasn't the host himself who was rude this time, but his apprentice. The hall was set up with mannequins, a couple of exhibits, and some NPCs offering some conversation. It seems that the author chose to use this exhibit room as an advertisement for his other works.

Talking to the host is what starts a conflict event, and the NPCs recommend saving it until last. Berra, the host, sits in one of the corners, and comically stands up and sits down frequently during his conversation, even when the apprentice goes crazy and decides to destroy Halloween.

The special effects are pretty nice when that happens, and going into the transformed "basement" is an interesting experience. The land is different than I've seen in other mods, though navigating the terrain was a bit counterintuitive. I thought I was doing something wrong by climbing up impossible slopes until I got to the enemy at the top.

After fighting the very easy demigod, I was sent to a new room, presumably part of the original building I was in before, where I was given my reward and some more advertisements for the author's other work.

Hallows' End

A cosy little tavern was occupied only by a barkeep, who started to tell me about why his tavern was empty of customers, and then broke the fourth wall by telling me that JClef ran out of time and rushed his quest (I guess he did two houses, since I already went through a house marked "JClef's home"), giving me a very laconic journal entry that said, "You've heard the story of the urban legend which haunts the local area. Destory!!! [sic]" And then nothing. Where was I supposed to go? There were no doors or other interactive items in this tavern, and the barkeep had nothing further to say. Was this all?

I reviewed the chat log for any further details to make up for what wasn't written in the journal entry, and noticed it mentioned a "beast". Perhaps that was referring to the empty "Lair of the Beast" cave I explored earlier.

That's what it was, all right. The barkeep really should have been a little more informative, because I could have missed that. It's pretty much the opposite extreme as Berra's estate, which told me repeatedly what I could do and what I could expect to happen before I did it, which was a bit too informative.

Anyway, the Beast was just a large imp, and when I killed it, the journal was updated, ending the quest. The barkeep had nothing further to say. JClef wasn't kidding about being rushed.

Raith Veldrin's home

The last of the houses! This one was very dark, and I needed to use a torch to see anything. Then I saw it was using the monochromatic black-and-white filter. Yuck. Raith was standing around the corner, made a reference to some tragedy a year ago, and offered me a potion, which was done in an amusingly surprising way.

Raith's dialogue was rhymed, and one of the responses was "I hope you knows, you speak in prose." It's verse, not prose. Prose is what I'm writing here: text without any metrical or poetic structure.

Tiberius' house, part 2: Back to Drac

Having finished with the rest of the houses, the time was right to return to Tiberius' house and put these companions to the use for which they were intended!

When I stepped through the portal, the howls of wolves rang in the distance as my companions began to speak. Charissa, a paladin of Tyr, predictably demanded to know the alignments of the rest of the party. Tancred the ranger (neutral good) reacted with exasperation at this typical paladin behaviour, and she immediately judged him to be evil, to which Saleron the wizard (lawful good, just like the paladin) pointed out the logical fallacy she employed. I laughed along with him until I saw that my only dialogue option was to say, essentially, "Huh?" Then the ranger of all things went into a detailed lecture about denying the antecedant, and Saleron lumped me in with the paladin in his estimation of ignorance. I checked the character sheets afterward, and my INT is 2 points higher than the ranger's, so what the hell?

The approach to Dracula's castle had a couple of encounters. The music, sound effects, and décor were all pretty straight, but the dialogue was often flippant, so I'm not sure really what the tone was supposed to be here. Even the encounter with Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde (who spoke of the Headless Horseman) was more or less straightforward classic horror all the way. Hanged men and bodies impaled on spikes also announced the cruelty of the new noble in the castle, while a ghost warned us away, and a statue spoke of riddles to come.

Inside the castle, I found the first puzzle, and it was to determine which painting hid a key to open the door to advance. I have to admit, although I enjoy puzzles, I found this one to be too obtuse. The paintings were all said to look toward the one that had the key, and I checked all of them, until they sent me into a loop, with one pointing to another that had already been checked. Then I checked the one that was never betrayed by the others, and found that the painting stared straight ahead with confidence. Surely that was the one that held the key! But no. It was actually the daughter-in-law's portrait that held it, even though she pointed to another painting.

On the other side of the locked door was the laboratory of Dr Frankenstein, with his "modern Prometheus" on the slab! This module has been a real tour of classic horror literature! The puzzle in here is to figure out which of a chest full of different power crystals is the correct one to bring the creature to life. The wrong one will still bring it to life and make it open the door so I can advance, but I would have to fight it afterward. The statue claims that I need "the smallest", and a book on the table gives more cryptic words that may or may not be hints. Are these descriptions of crystals that were tried and failed, or the correct one(s)? It mentions "one with crack", and the only cracked crystal is a large one, not "the smallest" as the statue suggested. At any rate, I tried three of the smallest crystals, one at a time, and all failed, so I don't know what's going on with these puzzles.

There were two more puzzles, though both of their doors led to the same room, so only solving one was necessary. I tried both of them anyway.

Again, I regret that the puzzles eluded me. One was a room of eight statues, one of which was "fake", whose destruction would open the door. A book offered clues, but it didn't rule anything out. "Some say it was this one, others say this, or maybe this." A sundial was in one corner, and a gong in another. The statue in the direction of the gong (probably alluding to the "thunder" in the clue book) was the correct choice, but I destroyed several other statues first.

The other room had several puzzles. There were red and yellow vases by the door, one mounted animal head with missing eyes and another head with ill-fitting eyes, a painting that pointed toward a secret scroll, and a yellow and red stone. The statue said that colours were the key, so I did the obvious and put the yellow stone in the yellow vase and the red stone in the red vase. Nothing happened. I put the eyes from one head into the other head, and it spawned a bear to kill. I read the scroll that I found and it summoned the Invisible Man, who dropped a red jewel and a yellow stone just like the one I had already put in the vase. I tried putting these new red and yellow stones into the vases, and still nothing happened. Finally, I gave up and used the other door that led into the same place.

Dracula himself lay beyond his herald gnome, who declined to stay. Before I spoke to Dracula, I examined both of the wooden stakes I had found, but neither of them could be equipped or activated. After some dialogue, we fought Dracula, and he returned to his coffin. There is where the stakes came into play, because when I activated the coffin, I was given the option to impale his regenerating body with a stake, and did so.

This won the game, and I was treated to some final farewells from the companions and the host. This made a fine ending to the Halloween module compilation, and I'm glad I saved it for last.

Afterthoughts

I think this review may set my record for most screenshots in a single post.

I wish there had been a trash can container in the central area, or in the small shop, or perhaps the tavern. Many of these mini-mods left me with several unsellable items when I was finished with them, and very few houses had any containers at all. Just dropping items to get rid of them is slow, because you have to drop them one at a time, and each one leaves a separate bag on the ground. Chaos Wielder's house had a few chests in it, so I ended up dumping several mods' worth of items in there. There is a box container at the Grumpy Strumpet, too, but I was already using that to store all the letters I had found, and didn't want to clutter it up with junk. I never found the last two letters in the Grumpy Strumpet.

Regarding stairs in NWN2 in general, it's a surprise to me that I haven't seen any fixes for these upstairs/downstairs doorways that only go halfway up or down, oftentimes with a room on the other side of that wall, which that doorway would open up into if it weren't just a fake black passage behind it, and which often texture-clips into that room's wall anyway. Dragon Age: Origins handled stairways much better -- it had a tile where you would just see a doorway with a little stairwell in it, leading up or down to the side, not straight on, and you just click on the doorway to transition to the next level. That worked very well. Alternatively, just a simple closed door on ground level with a label saying "upstairs" would be enough. Let the player assume there's a staircase behind that door. No need to go up to floor 2.5.

I wish there were a good readme included with spoilers for all the houses, so I could go through and see if I'd missed anything, especially in those houses that seemed unfinished. Perhaps some authors will find this review and add their comments or explanations.

It took several days to get through all the content in this module. As a showcase of the variety of mods and range of talents out there on the Vault, I think it makes an excellent sampler.

Next, I'll go through the shorter list of minimods which were entered in Obsidian's module contest with the theme of Grimms' fairy tales.