Compromises and companions

When I started on Dark Avenger I wanted to create something that felt like a story with D&D elements rather than a D&D mod with story elements... if you see what I mean. I put the comment 'this is less about killing rats in basements' in the description to try and convey what I intended... the rats in the basement type quest was back in the gorund of Candlekeep and is used in several mods to provide some quest based xp and items usually to get a character on their feet and maybe with an extra level or two. But scripting can do those things too...
You don't get those kind of starts in heroic fantasy - Rand al'Thor isn't driven from his village by rats as a boy, Conan doesn't long to crush some mice, see them driven before him, and to hear the lamentation of the little baby meeces... True, the Dread Pirate Roberts did combat rats, but they were Rodents of Unusual Size, so I think thats the exception to prove the rule*
...But after all that, I do find myself working on a 'Someone's in my fruit cellar!' quest at the moment that is essentially more rats in the basement, but hopefully with enough of a twist to add something different. But it is a departure from the story driven mod I planned and more traditional D&D dungeon adventuring. I'm hoping it will add something for those who found chapter 1 too linear and by tying it in with a companion's back story it shouldn't feel too out of place. It's compromising what I had in mind slightly (as was the H&S bandit approach in chapter 1, which I know I didn;t pull off as well as I'd hoped), but I'm trying to focus on atmosphere to help this feel right in the story.
*(apologies to all those reading who have used rats in basements! I am of course exaggerating the issue here!)

Speaking of companions, thanks to all who've filled in the poll so far. I'd been toying with adding a new companion but an wary of the additional workload it includes. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on the companions generally, and what could be changed or added. I always think it's a little sad when you read comments on modules, and the companions are referred to as 'the dwarf' or 'the cleric' - it kinda means that the immersion and story telling has lost something, and as a writer, you'd want to have the players thinking of the characters by name. Reading the forums, it's obvious companions are such an important thing to so many players, it's key to get them right.

Off on hols to Mexico at the end of the week. Will post some development screenshots before I go.

Hive of activity

Due in part to having surgery at the start of the year, it's now almost November and I have 25 days leave to use up before the end of the year (started with 40(!) days this year as the company were being particularly nice to me!). All this is sounding good for me to build up a head of steam in the toolset again.

Which is what I've been doing so far. I'm focussing on a sidequest based on one of the companions (Briars the gnome), which will allow me to play on a bit of party tension if Gork the goblin is also present. Added in a side-sidequest too to allow casters and crafters to use their skills more to create a temporary henchman they find dismantled in an abandoned temple of Gond. Also managed to get him to explode on death, which is amazing given my scripting talent, or specifically lack thereof!

So chapter 2 is progressing apace - but also not been neglecting Chapter 1. Updated with portraits, I've also now implemented the resting system and interface from MotB after a post from sgt_why (Red Hand of Doom, which I should replay now its come on a long way since I first played it months ago). Pretty simple to do, after cutting out the spirit eater code from some of the k_mod scripts - and resting feels like it actually has meaning now as day passes into night rather than 5 seconds drfiting by. Got a nice vote/comments from Alazander too, which is greatto have feedback from one of the Ossian team.

Other news - I've had a request for a review on A Walk in the Woods, my module contest entry, from the vault. Keen to see what the feedback is. I've also decided to re-use one of the areas (the mine) from that in Dark Avenger, as it will save time. Annoyingly, Unearthed Arcana doesnt work post-MotB, and I can;t see an easy solution as it was a bit of a cheat I used to get bloodlines working in the firstplace. Given the lack of interest, I doubt I'll pursue this one anyway.

So what's next? Haunted mine and the BBEG therein. The haunted village is finished - more accurately, I'm stopping myself from continuously tinkering with the textures, trees and grass, especially as i've set it very dark and misty so you can hardly see half of them anyway...

Good to be more actively building again, and needed the break - although certain announcements from certain Studios make it seem like I'll be distracted again soon...

Evil Dead Halloween tribute

Wyrin is currently preoccupied spending Halloween defending his cabin in the woods from hordes of evil deadites, trusty chainsaw and boomstick in hand. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Hail to the King, baby!

oooOOOoooh shiny!

One of the nice things the new version of the toolset allows you to do is to use custom portraits very simply - so companions can have the images you want - or NPCs for that matter, showing up when you right click on them as a target.
So of course rather than do anything productive with my time on the toolset, I trawled the internet for portaits for all the Dark Avenger companions, just adding a layer of shiny uneccessary baubles that made me feel like I was doing something productive.

Seich was a tricky one, but I think I found the right 'troubled-looking dwarf'. Given my old love of wargaming, I've always been more inspired to follow the Warhammer take on goblinoids rather than the by-the-book D&D system - and found a great miniature that summed up Gork. Contessa was easy - I knew exactly the image I wanted for her...

So there is an updated module on the vault - the main thing I got to do is finally make Black Death a horse! Was glad they gave the horse model some decent animations - unlike some of the other wildlife. The attack animations for the horse are pretty good actually, so it seems to work quite well.

MotB Thoughts

Just finished MotB and very satisfied with the ending. Overall an excellent campaign, with better pace and writing than the OC. Companion interaction here just shows how much it adds to a story and the playing experience.

That said, i's just reaffirmed for me that I'm really not that keen on high level / epic play. I played with my OC character - the original Wyrin D'njargo inspired by a PC from the days of the 2nd Ed D&D Bard kit,the Blade. Finished as a Ftr4/Bard16/DivChamp5/NWNine5, and by the end even the climatic encounters were over by the time I'd unpaused from issuing commands and my poor processor had caught up with the flow of play. The problem for me is balance - critters either become a cakewalk, or have to be twinked out so much it removes the point of being epic, as they are all your equal. Luckily in MotB for me the great story was a welcome distraction form this.

Even in my ongoing pen-and-paper campaigns, I'm not fond of high level play. I'd say levels 3-15 are my favourite, where the character comes into their own, but still have foes to challenge them. But from a long time of playing D&D, its clear for every player, there's a different view on how the game should/preferably be played. I mean, I love Dungeons and Dragons, but would be quite happy never going in an actual dungeon. But that's another rant about distintegrates and vertical dungeoneering...

ANyway, my period of playing rather than building is kinda coming to a close - gotta restart Sands of Solvheil now new versions aare up as my last trek through got a little out of sync, but not much else drawing my attention at the moment

...apart from the Toolset...

More toolset insights - (beware spoilers?)

Some more previews of the new content in the toolset - hopefully nothing to give the game away much yet. Interesting to see bloodstains and waterfall effects included given the community content available, and also there's lots of snow-covered placeables too. New content all looks really great, and will be cool to add more variety to interiors especially. Great range of new corpses, boulders, banners, statues etc.

MotB first impressions

Very nice. Graphically a lot smoother for me, and I'm getting less slow-down in fights. AI still a little screwy IMO. But plot intriguing so far, voice acting good, companions interesting.... and lots of nice things I'm seeing that will be great additions to the toolset - waiting for you outside the first town is a horse (woohoo!), which is long-past-due.

Good to hear some new music and will be using that liberally in the future I think.

Here's the new critters - quite exciting to see, and giving me lots of ideas.... and they've only gone and included tentacles!! (see here for my earlier crude attempts).

MotB

Well, I'm sitting here at work knowing that Mask of the Betrayer is probably dropping on to my door mat at home about now - preordered it (first time i preordered anything - mainly because I won a £100 amazon voucher through work and had money to burn). Quite looking forward to it.

Really enjoying focussing on playing. Moonshadows was fun, had some really nice ideas, and has picked a a buzz on the vault. Had been geeing myself up to play Sands of Solvheil - especially as it's nice to see a good world-building effort going into this (as a DM of my own homebrew setting, it's nice to see other's ideas). Will try and at least make a start befor the lure of MotB pulls me away, as this looks a great effort.

I released a mini side project i'd been toying with for a while - Unearthed Arcana - new character and roleplaying options based on the book. Fancy being a dwarven warrior with the blood of a gold dragon coursing through your veins? After ironing out a few of the inevitable wrinkles, it seems to be working. But as I suspected, it's a little too unwieldy to be taken up by many players as it requires overides files to work, and I know that scares some off. But the override file does let you use the modifications in any module, which can add something new to the experience.

As I said, playing is helping me enjoy NWN2 more for now, and with the pressure off building for a while, I'm getting more ideas for when i get round to starting work on Dark Avenger Chapter 2 again, which is good. Once I've played with MotB a little, I'll delve back into the toolset and take it from there.

On holiday for a few days...

...meanwhile, back on the vault...
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2ModulesEnglish.Detail&id=186

Realism

Hm. Progress with Dark Avenger is very slow - mainly through lack of time, but i also fear that it's the realisation that the project is probably not going to see the light of day for a VERY long time, making it harder to focus on with real enthusiasm. I've been thinking for a few weeks now about this - and maybe putting aside my own projects to offer help to some of those that are more likely to be finished - much as E.C. Patterson, skilful creator of the Daark Twins has done by putting aside Garden of All Evils to help out Jackyo with NHiN2. I still feel I have lots of ideas, but not enough time to flesh them out as much as they deserve in one go.

Coupled with this, is the fact that MotB has gone gold (got my preorder in, thanks to winning a competition on Amazon), Purgatorio will soon be out, as well as releases from others like Hugie - that's a lot of playtime coming up! And the bar will be pretty high after all that. I've seen some lament the lack of solo builders as more collaborative/joint projects go ahead (Phoenixus had quite a coup getting dirtywick's help for Tragedy 2, at the cost of us not seeing the Thay story developed, I suppose). But i do think it's difficult for one person to build... (especially someone nearing 30 who's meant to have a grown up job an' all...)

So I'm having a short break, whilst I work on a secret mini-project that will hopefully be feasible with only a few weeks work. But I suppose this is also a call out to anyone who might want someone to help with their projects - dodgy scripting skills, abstract area designer, enthusiastic roleplayer and D&D fan! Dark Avenger will lurk in the background... waiting.... calling, no doubt, but I think I need a healthy dose of realism. And the building community is something I only really discovered with NWN2, but enjoy and want to remain a part of if i can.