Tiberius' (Mostly) NWN Blog

Putting the Exclamation Mark on TMGS

2011-06-16T11:18:00.008-05:00

As far as modding goes, I'm still in limbo. TMGS has been out a year, and my interest in another major project still hasn't returned. I think it's time to put that one to bed permanently. I'm not the only one, however. Nemorem's expressed antipathy as well recently. In that post, he wrote:

However, I have to note that there's one thing that's very different this time around. When I went back to work on my NWN mod, there was still a vibrant community from which to draw energy and inspiration. There was a giant CEP hak coming out with loads of new creatures. Mods were getting thousands of downloads a month on Neverwinter Vault. Bioware was strongly supporting the game. In short, NWN still seemed to have a bright future. I'm not sure I can say the same thing about DA.

I agree, but I'd go further and say that I'd say the same at this point about NWN2. However, as I mentioned in my comment in that post, there doesn't seem to be a better option currently or in the near term than the current NWN2 toolset. Therefore, for those who like modding, that's as good an option as any. However, the heyday when the individual modder might expect 10,000 or more downloads is probably over until the "next big thing" emerges.

To be honest, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. It might sound elitist - and to hell with it if it does - but I'd rather be downloaded by 2000 people who appreciate a crpg game for its story more than for it being the current fad with the best graphics and biggest visual effects.

Which brings me to the topic of TMGS. When I performed my statistical analysis of NWN2 scoring and downloads, I grimly noted that TMGS would probably never make the Hall of Fame due to a lack of downloads. Then the Vault changed the criteria from 5000 downloads to 2500. Suddenly, TMGS is a shoo-in, and it will either happen (barely) on July 1st or, if not, definitely on August 1st.

That's lit a bit of a fire under my ass to get version 1.02 out with fixes for the last few bugs before it is actually inducted. If it happens in July, I won't make it, but if it holds until August, I should be OK. So I guess I have a little more toolset work ahead of me.

In Memoriam: Elisabeth Sladen

2011-04-20T08:30:00.011-05:00

I just heard the news and I'm shocked. It's unbelievable how saddened I am to hear of the passing of someone I've never met. I didn't even know she was sick, and I'm not alone. Even her former co-star, Tom Baker, claims he was taken completely by surprise.

Crazy. Utterly crazy. 63? Really?

Yes, this is a forum for mostly RPG-type stuff, but I couldn't let my little corner of cyberspace go without some sort of tribute to the amazing actress who portrayed Sarah Jane Smith...

I know Doctor Who has the reputation for being a children's show. Or maybe it's derided for being "just genre stuff" or (in the 60s through 80s) cheaply-made. But when it was good, it was great. And I mean great television, period. Above-and-beyond any other consideration.

And there was no better era of Doctor Who than the one which featured Lis Sladen. Sarah Jane was my favorite companion and she traveled with my favorite doctor. She, Tom Baker, producer Phillip Hinchcliff, and script editor Robert Holmes put together the most amazing era of Doctor Who ever, and I still get great enjoyment watching the episodes those four (and others, of course) put together.

I'm not alone, of course. The most recent testament to her popularity among Doctor Who fans is that she above all other classic companions was chosen to return for the new series. She was also picked to star in one aborted spin off and one successful one. She was chosen to return for the 1983 Five Doctor special. It seems every time Doctor Who looked to its past for a popular companion, Lis Sladen was the obvious choice.

And now she's gone. The world no longer has Sarah Jane in it. I still can't believe it.

PS: While reading the copious testaments to Lis Sladen, I learned that Nicholas Courtney, aka the Brigadier, also died a couple months back. It seems it's been a bad year for fans of the classic Doctor Who era, and we're not even half through it yet. R.I.P Nick Courtney.

Dungeon Design Example: Westmount

2011-04-13T10:53:00.000-05:00

All of the recent talk of dungeons has led me to outline an example of my own current thought process as I put one together, a task I've now done for a NWN1 series, another NWN2 campaign, and a NWN2 adventure pack, all of which have won some measure of acclaim. I wish I had solidified my thoughts on the subject years ago; I actually don't think some of the early SG dungeons are very good anymore - TONS of newbie mistakes.

So I'm going to discuss the process by which the "dungeon" of Westmount from TMGS came into existence. To be clear, it's a small dungeon and I don't mean to suggest that it's a great dungeon worthy of any top 10 list (not close), but a lot of the thoughts from my previous few posts did come into play as I was designing it. So without further ado...

Summary
The basic steps were as follows:

1. Quest Conception - This was the step that developed the need for the dungeon and tied it to the overall game world. This step also defined the exact locale and locked in a few very basic core goals.
2. Dungeon Layout - This results from knowledge of how the dungeon came into being and should make sense given that knowledge.
3. End Boss Development - Pretty self-explanatory.
4. Dungeon Population - This comes from imagining how the current denizens use the dungeon... and how the party will find it when they enter.
5. Finishing Touches - The final step adds in some cool items or encounters that put the dungeon over-the-top.

A greater explanation of how these steps applied to the development of Westmount follows.

Step 1: Quest Conception
Westmount was pretty close to the last thing added into TMGS campaign. As I was play-testing the supposedly-finished campaign, I became wary that every side-quest was directly related to the critical path. To be clear, that was a decision I had definitely made at the beginning. I didn't want Navatranaasu to feel like a bustling metropolis with all sorts of people throwing their problems upon the PC. Rather, it was to be a small, desolate village where most of the inhabitants' problems ultimately had the surrounding Malarite cult as the culprits. (Compare this to Waterdeep, where two people hand you totally unrelated quests in just the short time you're there... but then Waterdeep is a completely different animal.)

Nevertheless, I eventually decided that it would be better if there were at least a couple optional quests and so Westmount was born. Other quests added around this time for the same reason include the Haunted Tree and the Legal Conundrum posed by the two fools in the tavern.

I knew right off the bat that a large Durlag's Tower-style dungeon wouldn't make sense given the setting; nothing that big would be near so small a town without being a large topic of conversation. So the dungeon had to be small enough to be believable within the setting.

A second desire was that I wanted all of these unrelated quests to have one thing in common with the core path: the central theme of justice, a topic near-and-dear to every Tyrran and the thread that holds the entire campaign together.

With these two goals, I began to toss around ideas for a few days. Fortunately, I was helped in this task because I had already written a detailed history of the area and so had established the previous existence of a ring of defensive fortifications built by the town's founder, Alred I, which had slowly fallen to ruins in the three to four generations thereafter. I soon seized on one of these ruined forts for a ready locale that was believable within the setting, but how would this lend itself to the central theme of justice?

The established history of the town again provided the answer. The town's past already included a series of wars against local orc tribes. I could extend this to include the notion that one of the defensive forts fell to demi-human enemies several decades before. The notion of justice came in by adding rumors of collusion between the fort commander and the invaders which led to the fort's surrender and the slaughtering of the garrison. Since that time, the family had been shunned in the town as the descendants of a traitor. Needless to say, they had tried to prove their ancestor's innocence, but none had had the adventuring skills required to investigate the ruined fort. Today, the current member of the family, Fahl Derrickson, comes to the PC asking him or her to find the proof for them.

Fortunately, the outer forts and the demi-human wars had already been written into the dialogs of several of the town's inhabitants, so everything was entirely believable within the setting. If this hadn't been the case, I would have needed to amend certain conversations or else develope an entirely knew locale unknown to the inhabitants. Fortunately, I could skip this because I had done a lot of homework with the town history up front.

So everything until now had shaped the outline of the quest. Obviously, a quest is not a dungeon, but the narrative created above would dictate how the dungeon developed.

Step 2: Laying Out the Dungeon (or Westmount, the Bad Old Days)
When mapping out the dungeon, I turned my mind to the way the fort must have been used in the past. My original concept was of a hilltop fort reminiscent of - but not an exact replica of - a motte-and-bailey from medieval Europe. The exterior map is shown below.

The hilltop fort is built on a hill with a surrounding moat (in this case without water) and an interior wall at the top of the moat. A bridge leads across the moat to a small gatehouse that serves as the fort entrance. All structures are now in a state of disrepair.

In the past, the hilltop fort would have been surrounded by small wooden buildings holding some of the more dangerous or uncomfortable functions (such as black-smithing), but these temporary buildings have since been destroyed with the wooden pieces used for other purposes. In case of an attack, a few guards could have held the gatehouse against a much larger force, but if the worst happened, the bridge could have been destroyed and the interior wall held against a much larger force.

The first floor map is shown below. Note that green boxes are meant to illustrate where doors are.

I think the notes on the picture are sufficient to explain how the fort would have once worked, so I'll refrain from further comments on that. My estimate is that there would have been three officers, including the garrison priest, and around 20 - 25 soldiers manning the fort.

The lower level map is shown below.

This is where the nasty business happened. Note that the part outlined in yellow is the portion of the map that wasn't part of the original fort. It is meant to model the point where the invaders tunneled into the fort. The passage has since collapsed and from the area that is accessible to the player, it looks as though the "tunnel" goes on for some time.

Why go through this exercise? Because examining the motives of the people who built the fort helps me determine exactly how large the dungeon should be, what the general layout should be, and what material should be in each room. For example, even if the banquet hall is no longer used as such, knowing that's what it once was helps the level designer (still me in this case) use the right placeables and effects to tell the room's story. This step starts the dungeon's story, and we'll finish it as we go.

Sometimes, of course, the builders of the dungeon will be the current inhabitants. Even so, that doesn't mean every room shouldn't have a purpose or a place. It just means this step and the fourth are pretty much the same step and can be treated as such.

So back to the example, the fort garrison was slaughtered 90+ years ago, but the demihuman mob that overran the fort has also moved on in the meantime. So the question confronting me, the dungeon designer - and eventually the player - is what's moved in since?

Step 3: The Big Bad
The big bad is an important piece of giving a dungeon it's personality. Since this dungeon was by definition separate from the core path, I had absolute freedom to create a new villain with motivation entirely separate from the Malarites. I knew that the party would consist of a single cleric and a single ranger of about 8th level at the point they would arrive, so whatever enemy I chose had to be a suitable challenge for that party structure.

I tossed several ideas around but eventually dismissed most for one reason or another. A couple of these level-appropriate options were:

1. Yuan-Ti: Navatranaasu was already established as a mountainous environment, which wouldn't fit them, and the yuan-ti had already been done extensively in SoZ.
2. Demon/Devil: Generally too powerful and most are immune to normal weapons. Since the party would only have normal weapons at this point and an encounter in which the PC would take possession of a magical weapon already formed a crucial and unchangeable part of Act III, I had to throw this group out.
3. Powerful Human/Playable-Race Demihuman: A possibility, but the campaign was already heavy on human villains (the Mistress, Eton Skye, and Dezlentyr), so I wanted to use this chance to feature non-human monsters.

In the end, I chose an ogre mage. I've always liked them for some reason - maybe it's the combination of brains and brawn - and I don't think they've been overly done in official games. I used one in SG V as a boss in the sewers beneath Tyrel's Pass and I thought that went well.

However, part of making a dungeon memorable is making its boss memorable, and part of making a boss memorable is giving it a bit of a different spin, i.e. surprise the player a bit. So I started by giving him an admittedly-slight back-story. He was supposed to be an ogre with a gift for magic that had been exiled from his society for studying the work of a now-deceased human illusionist named Melifluorius. So enamored by the work of this illusionist was he that he actually took the human's name for himself. Although the ogre mage was aware of the Malarites in the region, he was not allied with them. In fact, he had little respect for their transmutative magics and so had come to despise them. He had even come into conflict with them on rare occasion, though never seriously enough to cause one to wish to eliminate the other.

This was all I came up with, but even this slight background began to shape the boss encounter. Most obviously, it influenced the encounter dialog, which provided hints - assuming the player asked - of the ogre mage's motivations. Second, I wiped the spells of the standard ogre mage template and instead gave him spells suitable for a wizard who had studied illusion magic. Finally, I was led to a quick thought on combat tactics that would allow me to do something a little unique. I imagined that an enemy who was an illusionist would make themselves invisible once they realized their home had been entered so that they could observe the intruders from a position of safety and make a surprise attack first, if needed. I hoped all of these would keep jaded players overly-familiar with D&D and CRPG conventions just a bit on their toes and provide a slightly more memorable encounter. This was accomplished by having the ogre unleash a fireball as the encounter begins, thereby revealing his location, unless the player has already been able to unveil him and thwart his plans.

Step 4: Populating the Dungeon
The ogre mage had already been decided, but what else is there now in Westmount? To answer this question, I needed to return to the idea of dungeon ecology. What would the ogre mage permit to live there, or what could live there in spite of his wishes? Also, I needed to understand which of the already-existing rooms would be inhabited by which monsters.

I started to answer these questions by remembering that every high-level wizard needs some evil henchmen. I imagined that some lesser demihumans would have been drawn to the ogre's power and these in turn would be useful to him as workers, fetchers, and guards. Having taken the bottom level for himself, the ogre would have given his underlings free reign of the upper level. He would want his privacy, of course, and so would not want them to come to the lower level. When he needed something, he would shout his orders up at them or communicate via a projected image. After playing around with goblins and gnolls, both of which were discarded as being too weak for 8th-level adventurers, I settled on bugbears. The map below shows the upper level as it currently exists. The red box outlines the area currently inhabited by the bugbears.

The front room has become their main living area while the area once used by the soldiers as a barracks has been converted to storage and also a small shrine to one of the bugbear gods. For the most part, the bugbears only inhabit the main room and the immediate grounds outside, where they spend most of their waking hours. (Indeed, this is where the player first meets them.) The bugbears freely roam into the right-most wing of the ruins, but only rarely, as anything of interest to them has already been stripped and hoarded into their main living area. After some play-testing, I settled on five as the population that provided the most suitable difficulty level for a party of two 8th-level adventurers.

Even though the bugbears roam into the right wing of Westmount, a group of giant rats has found a way to coexist within this same area. For the most part, they stay hidden when the bugbears approach, as some of their number has ended up in the stew pot. Normally, they scavenge for food in the interior, only occasionally venturing outside through holes too small for the PC or bugbears to use. However, they are not very well-fed, and when creatures other than bugbears approach, they are liable to leap from the holes and attack.

There is one denizen of the first level that has moved into the left-most wing, and it's one the bugbears have learned to give a wide berth to. A giant black widow spider has taken up residence in the rafters above the old dining room. It lies in wait until someone ventures too far into the room, and then it descends in such a way as to cut off escape through the door and attacks with its venom. One of the bugbears has been killed earlier and so the others now fear the spider and have closed off the room. The spider, for its part, doesn't have the sentience required to fear the bugbears in the same way. It almost certainly would if it could, as the combined strength of the bugbears would overpower it, but it is content to inhabit only its small territory. For the most part, because the bugbears rarely enter the "no-man's land" between the two territories, the spider must resort to feeding on birds, snakes, and other carrion.

Those are the ecological rationales, but the selected creatures also work from a combat diversity standpoint. The bugbear group was formed into a more balanced party by including a shaman in the group of five, and the black widow's poison provides a completely different type of challenge to the party. By having the spider descend from the roof only after it can place itself between the PC and the door, the PC is put on notice that an "empty" room doesn't necessarily mean it is truly empty. The rats are a nuisance that will likely only nick the player, but they do seem to swarm the player from all sides and may serve to keep the atmosphere a bit tight.

A last comment before I move on is to note the projected dungeon flow, which I give with the green arrows. If the player picks the leftmost path from the interior, it is possible they could bypass most of the level. Since they must already confront the bugbears outside and the rats and black widow are extraneous to the main narrative of the dungeon, this is an acceptable scenario. However, as a practical matter, most players will take the opportunity to explore, even if they've already found the means of advancing forward, and so will encounter these monsters too.

The current map of the lower level is given below.

Note that even though there was once a door between the prisons and the torture chambers, I "blocked" it with a huge desk so that the flow outlined by the green arrows is forced upon the player. It's not an important detail, but it's one of many I included to show how the current inhabitants of the fort utilize it differently from the previous ones. Whereas it once made sense to have a direct path between the prisons and the torture chamber, the ogre mage prefers there to be only one path into his sanctum, and of the two paths he could have chosen, he selected the one that leads more fully through the lair of his undead guards.

Speaking of which, I decided that the ogre mage has raised a few ghouls from the remains of those who died in the prisons. These serve as his final guards as well as posing as a buffer against the bugbears in the event they decide to try to overthrow him or steal his treasure. For the most part, the ghouls roam the prison area in search of food that has long since been consumed. Hence, they are ravenous and attack anything - except their creator - that enters the room... including the bugbears. Occasionally, Melifluorious captures a creature either for his research or to torture them to learn information (he even nabbed a careless Malarite once!). When he finishes with these unfortunates, he throws their remains to the ghouls, but these snacks do little to sate their endless hunger.

The actual end fight starts with the ogre mage invisible, and he'll try to question the player to determine their reason for being there. During this dialog, the player can learn of the ogre mage's interest in illusion magic as well as his disdain for the Malarites. If they have "Detect Invisibility" memorized, they can even strip away his disguise (and avoid his initial fireball attack). Regardless of how the conversation progresses, however, Melifluorious will sense the PC's inherent power and attack.

The final room before the rockslide includes the evidence the PC has come here for and will allow the completion of the quest. (As an aside, I decided to have the evidence prove the treachery instead of disprove it, a slight twist to the quest that is outside the dungeon design.)

As far as combat goes, the entire challenge for this level comes from the boss himself. The ghouls would provide some stress to nearly any other class, especially given their stun ability, but an 8th-level priest can destroy them quickly. Hence, like the rats, the ghouls are there because the dungeon ecology demands they are, not because they pose a real challenge to the player, although they do flesh out the flavor of the dungeon. As a practical matter, the only combat encounters that will challenge the group for the whole dungeon are the bugbears, the black widow, and the ogre, and I adjusted the difficulty of these three encounters - especially the first and last - accordingly.

Step 5: The Final Touches
I wanted to add a couple neat non-combat things to Westmount as well. One of these actually necessitated itself during one of my play-throughs when I got hit by the black widow and suffered an ability score drain when my PC didn't have a restoration spell memorized. That proved a problem, so I added the option to use the old chapel within the "no-man's land" on the first floor. By cleaning up the Tyrran altar, the player can pray and relearn spells, if necessary, allowing a second full dose to handle the lower level or the learning of a restoration spell if one is required after battling the black widow.

Ever since my P&P days, I've also tried to place some unconventional treasure now and then. Again, variety is the spice of life, and gold and jewels aren't the only valuable thing out there. For example, in SG V, I had a painting in one of the manors that was exceedingly valuable, and the player could take it if they passed a lore check identifying it as a lost masterpiece. I returned to a similar idea with Westmount. The red dot in the kitchen on the right is the location of an old vintage bottle of wine that is still in good enough condition to be sold for more than many gems or necklaces would bring.

In Conclusion
So that's a quick outline of my methodology in creating a dungeon. It's not remotely good enough to be considered a classic, but it serves its purpose, which is to provide a couple hours of fun and a memorable quest for my players.

Dungeons That Didn't Make the List

2011-04-11T08:52:00.006-05:00

OK, so my personal list of 10 greatest D&D-Based CRPG Dungeons is complete, but several big and/or popular dungeons didn't make the cut and some may wonder why. As an aside, I've just finished replaying the Windspear Hills dungeon and am more convinced than ever of its greatness. But here's a number of popular dungeons and the reason I didn't put them on the list. I understand that this may come across as negative; I'm not going to spend the time talking about what each of these did right, only the reasons I feel they're not top 10 worthy. Note that many of these dungeons would still rank between 11 and 20, so they are all very solid designs. They're just not the best of the best.
I'm going to group them by game and roughly in their order of awesomeness for that game and discounting any dungeons that already made the top 10.

IWD1
Severed Hand (IWD1): This came very close to making the list, but in the end I thought the lack of any end boss at all (that you fight) and it's over-reliance on undead adversaries was enough to keep it off. I also thought some of the dungeon flow was lacking, as one of the tower levels actually required you to access the level from two different staircases to clear it. Fortunately, by the time the IWD2 version came out, this flaw had been corrected. Yes, it's nitpicking. It would probably rank in the 11 to 12 range for me.

Dragon Eye (IWD1): Dragon Eye was a bit too large for me, featured repetitive fights, and the dungeon theme totally changed between the 3rd and 4th levels, going from a cave to a stone-walled temple. Yxunomei was a decent boss but not great.

Black Wolf Temple (IWD1) This was the final contender from IWD1, but it suffered from a lot of the same flaws that the Severed Hand did. There was no end boss (that you fight), pretty much only undead adversaries for level after level, repetitive fights, and in addition, there were no non-combat encounters. Still a memorable dungeon, though.

IWD2
The Ice Temple (IWD2): This temple featured way too many repetitive fights and was definitely too big for the number of fresh ideas that it had. I couldn't help thinking it was made bigger simply to lengthen the game play time. Also, I wasn't wild about the lay-out and the end boss, Oria, was lame.

Dragon Eye (IWD2): This had many of the problems of the IWD1 version, but it also had the totally frustrating time-travel puzzle at the end. Even if IWD1 Dragon Eye had been on the list, that annoying puzzle would have booted this version right back off.

BG1
The Cloakwood Mines (BG1): This was the closest contender from BG1 proper and would almost certainly have landed in the 11-15 range overall. The exterior set-piece against the party of four bounty hunters was great as was the second level, which featured a great set-piece against two rooms full of guards. The third level was still pretty good and offered a nice array of enemies. But the first level was a total waste, I thought there were a couple of unfair traps, and Daevorn was not a memorable dungeon boss.

The Nashkell Mines (BG1): First, I didn't much care for the layout. To a degree, any mine will stink because there are tons of corridors and far too few rooms in which set-pieces can be staged. Also, there was virtually nothing here except kobolds, although a couple ghouls and spiders showed up near the end. Finally, Mulahy, the dungeon boss, was just a goon working for the Iron Throne.

BG2
Spellhold Asylum Dungeon (BG2): Spellhold's major problem was that it lacked a cogent narrative. Why did the Cowled Wizards make this place? Just to torture people? Just to dump their prisoners? I thought Spellhold was to house their prisoners? Why not just kill deviants when you're done. Why throw them into a dungeon and have them pass a series of tests so they can prove they're sane after all? And if they do, what then? Do the Cowled Wizards really let them go? Bah! There were some cool individual ideas in Spellhold, but as a narrative it sucked.

Irenicus’ Dungeon (BG2): Irenicus' Dungeon would certainly be somewhere between 11 and 20, but it's a bit too disjointed in its ideas (a frankendungeon), and there's no end boss whatsoever (yet). Also, its place in the game means it can only be traversed with a limited combination of party members (the PC, Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc, or some subset thereof). That's not a fault of the dungeon design, per se, but it does limit the repeated enjoyment.

Umar Hills (BG2): In my review of what makes a good dungeon, I mentioned how much I loathe the Amaunator ritual "puzzle." In addition, every enemy inside is pretty much undead, and the dungeon is also too small. The Shade Lord is an interesting boss though if you count the Shade Lord as the boss, and the Shadow Dragon is a pretty cool boss if you count him instead. However, it lacks the personality of Firkraag. Oh, and I love Mazzy better than most BG2 players, I'm sure, but she's not really a part of the dungeon design.

Planar Sphere (BG2): I do like this quest, but I'm forced to admit the dungeon design is lame. The core idea of a plane-traveling sphere made sense, but not the room layout or enemy selection. Every room did not have a purpose that I could see. For example, what was up with the dirty cave that housed the feral halflings? For that matter, what's up with the feral halflings? What about the fire and ice rooms? They might be cool rooms, but would a travel machine really have them around just for the hell of it? Even if those rooms were needed for some kind of pseudo-science "energy-flow," then why the need for the room before them except that there needed to be a place for Tolgerias and the Cowled Wizards to make a stand? Otherwise, it's just a blank room. I get the impression all this just existed to make the dungeon longer, and that's always a bad sign.

ToEE
Temple of Elemental Evil (ToEE): I'm sure many will disagree here, but the Temple of Elemental Evil has a major problem. It's too big and seems to be a mish-mash of ideas thrown into one. All four elemental temples in one? Yes, I guess it's one "idea," but it's four dungeons! And it drags on like four dungeons with far too much filler. Oh, and Zuggtmoy wasn't nearly a cool enough boss to pull it up despite these flaws. This whole idea would have worked better as a series of dungeons, each devoted to one element but with different spins and monsters.

NWN1 Franchise
As I hinted at earlier, I think the NWN1 graphics and design decisions regarding "henchmen" make the game unplayable at this point, but beyond that a review of the list of dungeons in the franchise really bring home how crappy all of them were. What a bunch of time fillers! Remember the prison from the peninsula district? How about Helm's Hold? The troll caves near Port Llast? The Host Tower? Klauth's Lair? The Source Stone? All of these had a decent idea or two, but none was a real contender for a great dungeon.

Btw, I thought some of the quests were cool. The snow globe quest had a neat twist, but there wasn't a dungeon attached to it. Therefore, NWN1 was a waste for great dungeon design. The same could largely be said for SoU. Undrentide itself was just average but had enough flaws that I never felt it was remotely worthy of consideration. As for HotU, I've already listed the Drearing Deep Cult Compound, but there was only one more dungeon of note.

Maker's Island (NWN1: HotU): Maker's Island was too small, and the second level was really only the framework for a single quest involving two competing ations of golems. It was an interesting idea that wasn't exactly well-executed, but even if it had been, it doesn't make for a great dungeon. The first level was better and had some neat ideas and a pretty good puzzle. The end boss was a pretty cool monster (a demilich) that was the first of it's kind for the NWN franchise, but wasn't cool enough or memorable enough on its own to make up for other deficiencies.

Addendum: Kobold Caves (NWN1: SoU): As I prepared this post, I saw that JFoxtail recently commented on the Dungeons # 1-5 Post and argued for the inclusion of the Kobold Caves from NWN1: SoU. This is another one that had a couple neat ideas. Yes, kobolds jumping in a bucket was interesting as were the stampeding cows in the lower level. Tymofarrar was a decent enemy who showed some craftiness. However, I can't realistically view it as a great dungeon for many of the same reasons as above. It's a cave with mostly kobolds in it, the flow is highly linear, the endless tunnels all look the same. I honestly felt much of it was uninspired.

NWN2 Franchise
NWN2 was another game with occasionally decent quest design but epically bad dungeon design. Bad layouts and nasty repeated encounter triggers featured throughout. In fact, NWN2 remains the only game I've ever bought I've been unable to finish. I got right up to the final showdown and so feel competent to judge the game, but I couldn't be bothered to care enought to kill the King of Shadows.

MotB was the day to NWN2's night. An amazing game that nevertheless had few true dungeons. I struggled with the Thaymount Academy. Can it be called a dungeon? My gut was that it was a cool setting with some interesting quests but no, it wasn't a "dungeon." However, there were a couple other good examples (the Skein I've already mentioned).

Death God's Vault (NWN2: MotB): This one suffers from being a "dungeon" that requires two trips to traverse it, at least in practice if not exactly in theory. First, you will almost certainly go there near the beginning of the game (Kaelyn's family sends you there right off the bat!), but the lower levels including its entrance to the Fugue Plane is not meant to be accessed until the end game. And in practice the denizens of the lower level before the gate are incredibly difficult until the party acquires the levels and equipment spread throughout the mid-game. There were some nice encounters and several good ideas, and the Vault is incredibly atmospheric, but it's just too disjointed in its flow to be a great dungeon.

Okku's Barrow (NWN2: MotB): Totally honest here, it's hard for me personally to get excited about a dungeon in caves, so I was totally lukewarm about this one. Yes, that's just personal preference. Okku was a pretty cool end boss made more memorable by his later role in the game. Yes, that's a little beyond the dungeon, but he's still cool. There were too many repeated triggers with very similar encounters too many corridors for the number of set-pieces, and too little variety to the challenges. The Illefarn portions of the dungeon didn't fit well enough to warrant them, although there were some interesting ideas there. I do, however, think those portions would have worked better as a small sidequest elsewhere. Finally, like Irenicus' Dungeon, this one suffers in my memory because, being right at the start, your only choice is to traverse it with a PC and Safiya.

As for SoZ, there's only one dungeon that should remotely be considered due to size alone.

Yuan-Ti Temple (NWN2: SoZ): Honestly, this dungeon had nothing that stuck out at me other than the final battle against the Herald of Zehir and some scrubs. There was one puzzle using Se'Sehen's almanac that was decent, but most of the battle encounters were against some variant of yuan-ti. The trap placement was OK and there were some neat role-playing opportunities, but there just wasn't enough to make me go "wow" or care very much after it was done.. Finally, about the Herald of Zehir, he was OK but I have to think he should have been a much bigger bad-ass than he was, and the opportunity to make the player hate him much more not only throughout the game, but even throughout the dungeon, was lost. I really do think the final encounter could have been much better.

So that pretty much explains my thinking about the dungeons that didn't make my lists. I thought I was done with this topic, but I thought of one more thing I'd like to discuss, so in the time-honored tradition of blogging, I'm going to stretch an already-tired subject one more post.

TMGS: A Scooby Doo Hoax?

2011-04-07T15:41:00.002-05:00

Every so often, I Google "Maimed God's Saga" and even still "Saleron's Gambit" just to see what, if anything, is being said about them. My last search produced this link to the TV Tropes and Idioms page Nemorem recently mentioned. Scroll down to the video games portion to see that someone felt compelled to add TMGS to the page for the Scooby Doo Hoax... except that they then say it really doesn't fit at all.

For those who care, the Scooby Doo Hoax is when an area with purported supernatural activity is eventually found to be rife with earthly criminal activity that is using the supernatural legends as a mask to hide the criminals' true nature. I can see how a player may initially think that's what will be revealed in Navatranaasu, but no, that's not the truth behind the town's mystery.

Now, there are tropes galore in TMGS... How about The Treacherous Quest Giver? How about the Well Intentioned Extremist? I could probably find a hundred that fit.

The Top Ten D&D-Based CRPG Dungeons: Nos. 5-1

2011-03-24T10:13:00.006-05:00

Are you ready for some controversy because you're about to get some! This post will go a long way to explaining my own views on dungeon design, so without any further delay, let's get on to the completion of my list of the ten best D&D-based CRPG dungeons.

No. 5: Durlag’s Tower (BG1: TotSC)
Once I bypassed Watcher's Keep, I'm sure many had Durlag's Tower pegged for the #1 spot, but sadly, the same two problems that plagued Watcher’s Keep also plague this dungeon. But as always, I'll start with the positives. Durlag's Tower is, hand's down, the best back-story of any of the entries on this list and it's mostly that back story that lands it above its BGII sibling. As with Watcher's Keep, there are an array of monsters, traps and secret doors abound, and tactical combat is plentiful. Many of the non-combat encounters and puzzles are interesting, though not all. The entire portion of the dungeon above ground – including 4 whole levels in the tower – are fantastically entertaining and might have warranted consideration for this list in their own right, but it's only once the party descends to the lower levels, the portion of the dungeon that stands as a monument to Durlag's pain, loss, and insanity, that the real fun begins. Once below, the first level of the cellars is one of the best individual levels of any dungeon anywhere, and the second level isn't too far behind. Enemies include doppelgangers, spiders, a host of undead, wyverns, and many others, and the saga played out over and over again by the ghosts of these dwarven halls hits all the big emotions: grief, fear, anger, vengeance, and ultimately triumph.

On the flip side, the dungeon is again a bit too large and there are a couple annoying puzzles, although the bad puzzles are mercifully not as irritating as those in Watcher's Keep. Specifically, I mean the puzzles accessed from the 4th floor where the player has to answer historical questions posed by the statues. (Remember the one where the correct answer was something like, "we came from the west, then the north, then the east, then again from the east, and finally from the west again." – Ugh!) As a point of fact, the entire 3rd floor could be lopped out of the dungeon along with the horrid chess board where only you have to play by the rules. But even still, that level isn't quite the loss of the 3rd level of Watcher's Keep. Finally, the boss is a bit of a let-down because, although the demonknight is hinted at a few times, he doesn't really come to the fore until very near the end. To the contrary, you can complete 80% of the dungeon all the while thinking it fell simply to an external attack on Durlag's clan before finally learning that the doppelgangers were merely a manifestation of "the evil that was already there." Nevertheless, a better story and fewer irritants land Durlag's Tower above its BGII sibling.

No. 4: The Ruined Moathouse (ToEE)
Here's another entry that will have a fair number of people exclaiming "WTF," but I think there's a general dislike for low-level adventures out there that will have many disregarding this dungeon on principal. Yes, it's meant for 1st to 2nd-level parties, but that doesn't change the fact that it's also very well designed and incredibly fun. In a sense, it almost has to be a classic, because it was first seen in Gary Gygax's own 1979 P&P module Village of Hommlet and so has been entertaining D&D fans now for 32 years. As for the computer version, in an otherwise forgettable game, this dungeon is still a real gem. The ruined moathouse near Hommlet only has two levels, but the exterior has enough to almost count as a third. Therefore, it's very nearly the perfect size. The diversity of enemies is amazing and even includes a nifty encounter with giant frogs on the moat's drawbridge. It was very cool to watch one swallow one of my characters, who then had to be cut out after the frog was dead. The atmosphere was suitably creepy, and its backstory as an outpost of the Temple of Elemental Evil that has been re-inhabited lent the dungeon an oppressive air of foreboding. The number of traps and secret doors was perfect, the subplot of freeing the prisoners provided an interesting diversion, and the ability to wear the temple cloaks to bypass certain encounters allowed for some neat role-playing. As mentioned, it is a low-level dungeon, which will undoubtedly put some people off, but for those who don't mind adventuring with such weaklings, the reward is great.

I only have three slight criticisms. First, there wasn't quite enough empty space; indeed, some of the monsters were right on top of each other. Second, there were no true non-combat encounters. Finally, the end boss, a cleric named Lareth the Beautiful, while having an interesting moniker for an evil henchman, is just a more powerful adventurer with no apparent motivation other than being a bastard in service to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Nevertheless, this dungeon is nearly 100% pure fun.

No. 3: Soloria (NWN2 Module: Trinity)
If the ruined moathouse at #4 came has a shock, this one will really get some heads shaking. Yes, I actually believe an amateur module ranks among the best dungeons of all times. If you believe it doesn't belong on my list because it's not in one of the games I originally mentioned, I'll just say it's in the NWN2 franchise. Also, you probably haven't played it because anyone who has certainly wouldn't come up with reasons to exclude such awesomeness.

Soloria is damned near perfect as a dungeon in every way. Its backstory as an old school of magic in the fabled elven city of Myth Drannor means it's chock-full of lost tales, not to mention powerful loot and old forgotten magics. The atmosphere is utterly amazing with every detail really bringing to life this relic of a bygone age. But while the dead certainly rule here, they are not alone. The party must face hags, giant spiders, rival adventurers, and even a well-placed doombat in addition to the shambling corpses and ghosts of long-dead students. And a Death Tyrant, while technically dead, poses a completely different kind of challenge as well. But combat is only a small number of the obstacles the party will face in Soloria. Collapsed bridges no longer span wide chasms that nevertheless must be crossed, barriers of ancient magics must somehow be dispelled, and magical mouths demand answers to questions long since forgotten. There are traps galore, though none stand out as being particularly unfair, and there are so many secret doors and compartments within that I am certain I have still not seen all that Soloria has to offer. Finally, the dungeon's boss, the ancient lich Azimer, is memorable not only as a powerful adversary, but as a character. Hints of a lost love and regrets from his time as headmaster of the academy appear to have driven Azimer mad, causing him to fondly chide the party's wayward ways one moment (i.e. believing them to be students at a still-functioning academy) and then trying to kill them the next.

If Soloria had any negatives as a dungeon, they would be slight indeed. First, it's too small. This would be a petty complaint if I was judging this module strictly as an amateur work, but since I'm placing it on a list of all-time best dungeons, it gets the same treatment as everything else. Second, it does have a little bit of a confusing layout, and one wonders how it could have successfully operated as an academy back in the day. Finally, related to point two, it's a bit of a frankendungeon. I gather parts of the academy have caved in, so the dungeon regularly switches from stonework to earthen tunnels and back, sometimes seemingly at random. But these are only meant to be the slimmest of criticisms for a mostly awe-inspiring dungeon.

No. 2: The Windspear Hills (BG2)
The Windspear Hills dungeon is a fantastic, if too short, dungeon that features the second-best end boss on this list. But the dungeon really works well before you get to him. There is a nice mix of adversaries: orcs and hobgoblins, a troll, vampires, werewolves, golems, and then some. The layout makes some of the battles difficult, but not in such a way as to make it a pain to get around the dungeon. I don't recall any secret doors, the traps are few, and there are no real non-combat encounters, so the variety of challenges is a bit small, even if the variety of combat is not. Firkraag is, of course, the dungeon's crown jewel, and while a living dragon isn't innately as cool as a dracolich, Firkraag still stands above Vix'thra (at #8) as a boss because of his personal connection to the player. Vix'thra is a soulless monster that preys on the innocents of Drearing's Deep and is in league with the Valsharess. He definitely needs to die, but it's just a job. With Firkraag it's genuine hate. He hates you because of Gorion. You hate him because he framed you for murder. And then he dismisses you as an insignificant gnat. And he's got reason to because he's a bad-ass that will probably slap you around the first time you challenge him. So you'll remember him. And you'll come back. Just to even the score. That's the kind of end boss that pushes a dungeon way up the list all by himself even if the dungeon did nothing else right. But this one does so much right.

So why isn't the Windspear Hills at #1? Honestly, I'd have no qualms pushing it all the way up the list, but in the end I placed another entry a hair above this one. The Windpear Hills has a couple minor problems. First, it's basically one level with only Firkraag's lair and a small cave with a couple encounters outside that level. Second, there isn't a solid non-combat encounter. Third, the subplot with Samia and King Strohm's tomb is interesting, but misplaced, and it ruins the dungeon's narrative. Is this dungeon a tomb or a dragon's lair? If you think I'm being nitpicky here - maybe you think the dragon moved into a tomb and expanded it for his own purposes - then answer why greedy ol' Firkraag wouldn't seize the existing treasure for himself, especially since the sword and shield are designed to slay dragons. Perhaps it was the guardians that scared him off... oh, wait. They're fire-based guardians and Firkraag is a red dragon. Oops! See? No consistency, and we have to try real hard to concoct a story ourselves to make it fit. And then how did Samia get in past Firkraag's henchmen? Shouldn't we find either her corpse or the hobgoblins' corpses in the front room? But this negative doesn't ding the Windspear Hills as much as the 3rd level of Watcher's Keep, for example, because while it was inconsistent with the dungeon, it wasn't boring and frustrating as an objective. Inherently, collecting mask fragments so you can see an otherwise-invisible guardian is kind of cool. So these really are minor quibbles with an overall masterpiece.

No. 1: The de'Arnise Keep (BG2)
Yes, the choice will no doubt cause controversy, but this dungeon pretty much hits every point needed to be truly great. It is the perfect size and well laid out. The back-story is well-defined, and the ruined castle is quite atmospheric. It has a nice mix of encounters, plenty of creepy places to investigate, and just the right number of secret doors and traps to keep things interesting. Finding and reassembling the Flail of Ages, rescuing Daleson, the Lady Delcia, and Glaicas (if you break the domination spell on him), and opening the drawbridge all provide non-combat objectives. The golem-guarded treasure room on the second floor allows for a neat diversion entirely separate from the main quest while remaining consistent within the dungeon's narrative, and there are five different types of monsters (troll, yuan-ti, umberhulks, golems, and an otyugh), thereby ensuring a fair number of different encounters types. Finally, the monsters are well spaced-out, meaning it is easy to envision (i.e. role-play) a small crack party being able to enter the keep and wiping out its inhabitants a few at a time without having to suspend belief too much.

If I had to say anything bad about this dungeon, I would have to say that its boss, a big troll named Torgal, is on the weak side as a character, although his hints of a larger alliance against the de'Arnise family are intriguing shadows of something more. (Later we learn he was probably in league with the Roenalls, but that's outside the dungeon experience.) All-in-all, Nalia may be annoying to deal with, but her family's keep most definitely is not.

So when deciding on #1, I had to choose between a dungeon that did everything right except for have a slightly weak boss or a dungeon that had a couple minor flaws but a kick-ass boss. In the end, I chose to reward the one that was better over the first three hours over the one that was better for the last ten minutes.

I'm going to have one more post in this series in which I discuss some of the other major dungeons in the various franchises and why they did not make the list. Stay tuned!

The Top Ten D&D-Based CRPG Dungeons: Nos. 10-6

2011-03-22T13:37:00.021-05:00

Last time I discussed what made a good dungeon. That got me to thinking about specific examples and what I would choose as the single best dungeon of all time. That, of course, would be an incredibly difficult choice to make, so since this blog is primarily about CRPGs, I thought I'd restrict it to just those.

Then I realized that would still be difficult, as I hadn't bothered playing Dragon Age yet and the Ultima series is so long ago I can't remember it in detail. Then I'm sure some would argue for "dungeons" out of games like KotOR or Mass Effect. Therefore, I'll restrict this list to what I'll call recent D&D-based games. This includes the BG series, the IWD series, the NWN franchise, ToEE, and PS:T.

Even so, this list will likely not be without controversy, as I'm reasonably sure I have a few opinions that are not necessarily widely shared. Nevertheless and without further ado, here's the first half of my personal top-10 list.

No. 10: The Severed Hand (IWD2)
The IWD1 version of this dungeon isn't too far off this list, but the IWD2 version does enough right to make it. No individual level is all that big, but the main tower has four full levels and then four smaller towers that each have three or four levels above the main tower. There is no end of things to do, as the dungeon is an active citadel/fortress for the bad guys. You can free some slaves, solve a bit of food theft, and do a number of minor quests more reminiscent of a town than a proper dungeon. When the fighting starts, the variety of enemies is a bit restricted to demons and devils, but there are a fair number of golems, elementals, and humanoids to give a little variety. The dungeon is light on traps and devoid of secret doors, but the atmosphere manages to stay tense throughout as you are always aware that every living being in the place can turn on you in a moment if they ever discover you're an imposter. This is the enemy's stronghold, after all. Oh, and about that enemy? The dungeon bosses, the demon-siblings Isair and Madae, also happen to be the game bosses. They aren't the greatest bosses as games go, but for dungeon bosses, they’re pretty cool.

No. 9: The Skein (MotB)
The Skein beneath Coveya Kurg'anis has a number of slight problems, but it does one thing better than anything else on the list: atmosphere. The endless cackling of an insane hag alone would make it a strong contender for best atmosphere, but the mood-setting portion of the area design (lighting, flooded lower levels, shadow door entrances) put it over the top. The puzzles, such as reactivating the machine to deactivate the air elemental guardians, are well-designed and the selection of enemies isn't bad, although it also isn't great. I'm not wild about the layout of the Skein - too many corridors - and it's a little small with only one true level and a few encounters on the exterior and an upper level. Finally, the boss "fight" in the lower level is weak, although the hag's revelation that she's Gann's mother is a neat twist that gives her some characterization. It is true that the real bosses of the dungeon are the floating hags above, but most players will simply talk to them. In short, despite its incredible atmosphere, it doesn't do enough right to contend for the overall crown, but it's still an enjoyable romp.

No. 8: Drearing’s Deep Cult Compound (HotU)
I’m going to do my best to overlook the fact that NWN1’s graphics have aged worse than even the Infinity games because its second expansion pack produced the greatest dungeon in the official NWN franchise and one of the best ever. Drearing’s Deep was a perfectly depressing city where the inhabitants lived in fear until the day their number was called for them to be sacrificed to the cult’s god, Vix’thra. It’s a perfect recipe for a hero, and the cult compound turned out to have more than a few surprises. It had an awesome non-combat encounter at the dark altar on the upper levels where you could “Bless” your weapon into becoming one of utter evil. The idea that you needed a rope to be able to descend down the pits into the lower levels was cool. That you actually needed to stake a vampire once you killed it to keep it dead was new to the NWN-franchise (although BG2 had beaten them to it). The weak points of this dungeon were its comparatively-small size and its overreliance on undead for adversaries, including the level boss, the high priest Soldaris who you actually have to beat twice. Oh, but wait, while he may be the level-boss, he isn’t really the dungeon boss. That’s left to the so-called “god,” Vix’thra. If a dragon is a cool end-boss, then an undead dragon is even cooler. And this battle with a dracolich is one for the ages.

No. 7: Goblin Fortress/Warrens (IWD2)
This entry is something of an enigma to me. The above-ground portions are first-rate whereas the below-ground portions leave me a little - though not completely - cold. The size is a little large but almost perfect, and most of the dungeon is well-laid-out. The exception is the upper level of the warrens, which is essentially a big, long, snaking corridor. While not completely annoying, this level could certainly be scrapped. The range of enemies is larger than might be supposed given that it is a goblin fortress, with trolls and a demon featured alongside the expected goblins, orcs, orogs, and so forth, but the vast majority of enemies are still humanoids of some type. The set piece battle in the fortress courtyard is a gem that lends itself to a variety of party tactics, and the fortress interior leads nicely to the end-boss tussle with a giant bugbear named Guthma. And while a simple bugbear may seem to be the lamest boss of all the dungeons on this list, he poses a suitable challenge for the party level and there are just enough hints of his personality and motivation written into the narrative to make him a believable character in his own right. There are a ton of orcs and goblins stuffed into these warrens, but in this case, it makes sense according to the dungeon's back-story (the enemy is amassing troops for an assault on the Ten Towns), so I can overlook it. There aren't too many traps and no secret doors at all (at least according to my memory), and although there are some non-violent ways to bypass certain battles, there are no truly non-battle encounters.

No. 6: Watcher’s Keep (BG2: ToB)
The behemoth dungeon that came with BGII's expansion pack, Throne of Bhaal, is almost certainly considered by many to be the quintessential dungeon in CRPGs - or at least D&D-based CRPGs - but I can't go that far. First the positives. The back-story for the dungeon is terrific, and the atmosphere is first-rate. The first floor is probably one of the best individual floors of any dungeon anywhere, the fourth floor isn't too far down the list, and the number of different enemies and different types of challenges is staggering. And, of course, Watcher's Keep boasts the best end boss, bar none (assuming you've got the cajones to take him on). So what's the problem? First, at five levels, the dungeon is a bit too big, but the most egregious problem is the third level, a "puzzle" that demands the player choose the correct sequence of exits from each subsequent screen to get through the supposed "maze." Amazingly, simply removing the third level from the dungeon would solve both of these problems, almost certainly leading to the top ranking. As it is, even given that 20% of the dungeon is total garbage, it's still good enough to land at a very respectable #6.

Stay tuned for Nos. 1 through 5!

What Makes a Good Dungeon?

2011-03-21T13:07:00.017-05:00

I'm still working on the NWN1 portion of my statistical analysis of modding, so I'll have to get to that another time. However, I've recently replayed Baldur's Gate I and have moved on to Baldur's Gate II. One of the last quests I completed in BGI was Durlag's Tower. It was a dungeon I hadn't faced in several years and so seeing it again got me thinking about my own ideas for what constitutes a good - or even great - dungeon. A quick brain-storming produced the following list.

1) The dungeon can't be too big. I'm sure several people will scratch their heads over this rule. I don't list the converse, which is obvious, but this less-obvious rule is just as true when you think about it. A great dungeon should have several memorable encounters, but the bigger the dungeon the less likely each additional encounter is to be memorable. And simple fodder encounters add little awesomeness to any dungeon but potentially add irritation. After all, very few players enjoy meaningless fights unless their objective is experience farming. Plus the bigger the dungeon, the more likely we are to face the dreaded repeated encounter trigger giving us (in effect) hordes of the exact same thing coming at us. All designers should learn and/or know that when the good ideas for encounters run out, so should the dungeon.

So what size is perfect? In my opinion, three sizeable levels is just about right. This doesn't count one-off encounters outside these levels. For example, a couple guards on an exterior map before you enter level 1 doesn't make the exterior map a "level."

Take a look at this map I pulled from the web by simply Googling "Big Dungeon Map." Now honestly, would anyone like to get lost in this? If a DM I was playing with pulled this out, I would fire him. And if he were doing it for free, I would stop being his friend. Utterly Ridiculous.

2) The dungeon should have more rooms than corridors.
This goes doubly for a party-based game. Take a look at the map to the left. It's the Firewine Bridge ruins in BGI... and it's terrible. A big NO. Getting six characters around that maze of corridors is a nightmare. They each run every which way and get themselves into some dumb trouble before I know what's going on. Oh, and corridors are boring. Far better to have a few big chambers with interesting content than what we got here.

3) The dungeon should feature different types of adversaries. The more types of monsters, the better. Note, this doesn't mean having an orc, an orc soldier, and an orc chieftain. It doesn't even mean having a Fire Salamander and an Ice Salamander, although this is better because each is immune to different energies. Rather, I mean having a few totally different species that require different abilities and pose different dangers. Essentially, if you've used three or more of the different creature groups from the NWN2 editor (i.e. Undead, Humanoid, Magical Beasts, etc.), then you're probably good to go.

4) The dungeon should feature at least one memorable non-battle encounter. In modern CRPGs, this encounter most often falls into the puzzle category, but it doesn't have to. At the very least, it doesn't have to be a traditional puzzle. The NWN2 module Trinity featured a collapsed bridge that needed to be crossed. Durlag's Tower had a room that constantly exploded fireballs and could only be crossed during safe intervals.

4a) Make sure all puzzles don't suck. A corollary to point #4 is that if you do go the puzzle route, try to make the puzzle non-annoying. Mostly, this means allowing the character to do something other than reading lengthy texts or endless dialogs. Durlag's Tower had statues that asked questions about the Tower's history. This was a real drag. The Umar Hills Temple Ruins in BGII had a point where you had to detail the daily rituals of Amaunator - information that could only be gleaned from actually reading the scrolls scattered around the dungeon. *yawn*

But an even bigger no-no as far as puzzles go is the endlessly repeating and/or random rooms and locations. These are the "puzzles" where the trick is to learn the correct sequence of map exits in the correct directions to get through a supposed maze. Often, this comes combined with the endlessly respawning enemies every time you reload a map. Nothing gets me headed to the walkthrough sooner than this tired idea. The worst offender ever was The Fell Wood in IWDII. Yes, I know that wasn't a "dungeon," but it still sucked. Watcher's Keep Level 3 in ToB was another unfortunate example in an otherwise wonderful dungeon.

So what are examples of good puzzles? The Machine of Lum the Mad on Watcher's Keep level 4 is a good one. The HotU puzzle on level 1 of the Maker's Island (in which you deactivate the golems) is another good one. While the NWN1 campaign was generally dire, most of the puzzles were pretty good - or at least I've managed to forget the bad ones. Remember the creator ruins that took you back in time so you could learn the correct sequence of notes to play to open a door in the present? That was a pretty good idea.

5) The dungeon needs enough traps and secret doors to keep things interesting, but not so many that you destroy the flow. Let's face it. Finding hidden stuff is part of what exploring is all about, and the rogue in my party needs a time to shine and feel all manly (or womanly, as the case may be), but I do like these items to be in places we would all at least suspect. Traps on chests are obvious. Traps around that odd statue or the evil altar on the dais are fair game. Even traps in the middle of an open, empty, inviting room are fine. After all, the wary and/or intelligent adventurer might ask why the denizens of a dungeon would leave such a nice spacious area alone.

But the 100+HP trap of death in the hallway in-between all this is a sign of suck. Why? Because it then means that I literally have to have the rogue creep inch-by-inch throughout the entire dungeon. Move forward a bit and wait. Then move forward a bit and wait. Rinse and repeat forever, and that equals no fun.

6) The dungeon needs a memorable boss.
This is almost self-evident, but it still needs to be stressed. All the coolness that is your dungeon needs to build up to the coolness that is the dungeon's master, and there are a couple of ways to do this. First, the boss can have a cool back-story that grips you as a player. This is probably the way to go for humanoid adversaries. Second, it can be a monster that is awesome just for being awesome. Either way, it needs to be a suitable challenge for the party. Firkraag was a cool boss that was a bad-ass monster WITH a cool back-story. Durlag's Tower fell down a bit with the Demonknight because you spent the whole time talking about dopplegangers and Durlag, but he was still pretty cool. The all-time coolest end-boss was Demogorgon in Watcher's Keep. On the other hand, the Ice Labyrinth in TotSC... had a dude with a cape. Not cool.

7) The dungeon needs a compelling reason for being. Note the word "compelling." Durlag's Tower took this to an extreme. In fact, it was essentially an entire expansion in itself. You could learn an entire new story independent of Sarevok's plans in BG1 just at this tower, but you don't need near that level of detail. A beholder cult sprung up beneath the city works fine. So does a dragon's den. Each of those creates a narrative for your dungeon that provides a framework for everything else (layout, creature selection, traps, loot, etc.). You do, however, need something more than a hole in the ground with a bunch of creatures in it. The ankheg warren in BG1 is an example. Is it realistic to think a few ankhegs would be burrowing around some farms? Sure, it certainly works logically, but it isn't the makings of a great dungeon.

8) The dungeon should have a logical ecology. It's a point I've made a dozen times, so please excuse the boredom if you've already heard this, but every dungeon should have a proper ecology. What I mean is that it should be logical that all the creatures therein could live together and survive. A carrion crawler in every room doesn't work for a number of reasons (the boredom of repetitive fights, for one), but it also doesn't make sense logically. Where do all these monsters find enough food to eat? It would have to be the cleanest dungeon in all of Faerun.

Along the same line, it is possible to jam 300 orcs into some caves if you've made some provisions for how they will eat. Are there supplies picked up from highway robbery that's feeding them all? OK, but do they have enough room to sleep?

Finally, do you really think that basilisk and troll are going to live in adjacent rooms in harmony? Don't most creatures carve out a territory? Let's try to avoid monster overload.

So when every room in your dungeon looks like the picture below, time to rethink your design.

8a) Some empty spaces are awesome and awesomely scary. This is the corollary to point #8 because if every creature has carved out its place in the dungeon, then there must be some empty spaces between them. This leaves room for other kinds of cool encounters (see points 4, 4a, and 5 above) or neat details that will really bring a dungeon to life. And sometimes the anticipation of the next encounter can be more scary than the actual encounter.

9) Just say "No" to Frankendungeon. With only the rarest of exceptions, a dungeon should look like it flows together. And the exception is when your characters have somehow traveled into the mind of a schizophrenic. The vast majority of dungeons, however, should utilize different tilesets (or styles) sparingly. This goes back to the dungeon's narrative. If it has a good reason for existing, then it should be consistent within itself. Throwing a bunch of things together just because they are individually cool creates a dungeon that overall sucks. Most often, this rule is broken between levels, but an example of this within the same level is Irenicus' Dungeon from BG2. Much of the dungeon was consistent, but then we had these odd rooms seemingly out of nowhere: a mineral cave, a copse of trees, an entrance to the Elemental Plane of Air. There was a lot of strength in Irenicus' dungeon, but the Frankendungeon aspect kept it from ascending to elite status. Is this dungeon a laboratory for experimentation or a prison or a shrine to a lost love... No wonder Irenicus failed to dominate the mind of an ascending god. He couldn't even control his own...

10) Like all real estate, it's about location, location, location. Certain types of locations are naturally more atmospheric than others. A tried and true winner is the abandoned castle/fort/temple. Almost all my favorite dungeons have the bones of an old medieval stone building. I concede that this entry on the list is much more a matter of my personal preference than the others (it obviously fits with my other interests), but I also believe I'm in the majority here. As proof, think back on what you consider the "classic" dungeons, and I'd wager that most of them fit this profile even as far back as the P&P days. Temple of Elemental Evil? Check. Keep on the Borderlands? Check. Village of Hommlett? Check. Isle of Dread (the abandoned temple in the middle)? Check. And so on. I don't think this is coincidence.

On the other hand, when was the last time a bunch of caves became a dungeon for the ages? How about mausoleums and tombs? Tomb of Horrors is a big classic for this group, but by-and-large they're pretty forgettable too. BGII had a couple dungeons that were completely outside the box like the Planar Sphere and the Astral Prison, but these never quite sang to me the way other dungeons did, and my totally unemperical gut feeling is that I'm not alone here.

I mean, this is a cool map to look at, but it isn't the makings of a great dungeon.

11) The dungeon must be fun. This is the one rule for which you can break all previous rules. All great dungeons must leave the player wanting to restart a new game just to go through that dungeon again. Thinking back on them years later, the player is likely to remember them with the same fondness reserved for first loves...

OK, maybe that's stretching it, but you get the point.

So what are examples of great dungeons? I'm glad you asked because that's the topic of my next couple posts.

NWN Modding Statistical Analysis: Part 2

2011-03-02T10:39:00.012-05:00

Some of the most interesting studies I've ever done resulted in my discovery that the initial assumptions that lead me to the study were wrong. This is one such case.

Last post looked at download and voting rates for NWN2 modules. However, I also wanted to discuss module scores, as it seemed to me that scores were increasing over time. This occurred in NWN1, and there were many explanations posited. One of the most common was that as time progressed, modules were getting better and more sophisticated. Therefore, the rising scores actually did reflect rising quality. Wouldn’t the same phenomena apply to NWN2?

I admit that my initial thought was "no" for three reasons. First, the community-made content for NWN1 increased at a much more rapid rate than it has for NWN2. It is undoubtedly true that some of the community-made tilesets far exceeded those developed by Bioware for the initial game, and the same would apply to a host of creature models, placeables, and so on. NWN2, on the other hand, hasn’t seen nearly the same amount of content. Therefore, newer NWN2 modules use the same tilesets and monsters older ones did and so don’t look decidedly better as a result.

Second, NWN2 started from a higher standard than did NWN1. Very few people just played around with the toolset and released a half-baked mod for NWN2 whereas several dozen did that within the first few months of NWN1's release. Therefore, there wasn’t as far to go up in terms of quality.

Finally, one of the earliest NWN2 modules I played was Zach Holbrook's "Harp and Chrysanthemum" - a module I shall dwell on quite a bit in this post – and with absolutely no false modesty here, I firmly believe that module, released in December of 2007, is every bit as high quality as TMGS, although shorter. Therefore, the Module of the Year for 2007 is not substantially different in terms of quality from one of the top mods by vote score of 2010.

Therefore, I set out to see if I could discover if module scores were really increasing, and if so, why. I took the top 50 modules from the NW Vault, which is all of them from the first page. The only one I removed was "Mysteries of Westgate," which checked in at #46 because it really wasn't a "community-made" mod. Otherwise, everything from the front page was included. I then graphed (1) the current score as of February 28 vs. the release month and (2) the module rank vs. the release month. These graphs are below.

As can be seen, I did denote which of the modules were not traditional adventure modules – things like character generators or OC add-ons – but I included them on the graphs anyway. Now, looking at the first graph, it is clear that scores are generally increasing over time. The equation represents the linear "best fit" for the scoring of only the traditional adventure modules. Theoretically, an adventure mod of a quality to get on the Vault's first page that is released today (x = 0) should get a score of 9.67 whereas one from the beginning of 2008 (x = 38) would be 9.32. So the average adventure module has seen its score increase by 0.35 in a little more than three years. Although I didn't include the equation here, the difference is virtually the same if you include the non-adventure modules, although all scores generally increase.

The information is shown a bit differently in the second graph. Here, the module rank is on the y axis, so only one point can have any given value of the y-axis. Every y-value from 1 to 50 is represented here with the exception of the missing #46 ("Mysteries of Westgate’s" rank). Again, the modules represented to the left of the graph – meaning they’re newer – generally have a lower rank. As can be seen, none of the eleven modules released before December 2007 currently has a rank better than 33rd while none of the twelve modules released in 2010 or later is ranked worse than 35th. Clearly the newer modules tend to be doing better.

As an aside, another major trend jumps out at me, especially looking at the second graph. The non-adventure modules tend to be scoring better at every stage of NWN2's life than their adventure mod counterparts. This trend started early. Looking at the modules released in 2007, "Harp and Chrysanthemum" is far and away the best performing adventure mod, and it's still ranked an amazing #14. However, "Bishop's Romance," released a mere two weeks before H&C is ranked #6. Even today, of the top 10 modules on the Vault, an overwhelming EIGHT – including all of the top FOUR – cannot be considered adventure modules. These eight are "Lute Hero", "Romance Pack for the OC", "Halloween", "The Heist at the NW Lights Casino", "Bishop's Romance", "NWN2 OC Makeover", "SOZ Holiday Expansion", and "DM101 for NWN2" (a new addition to the top 10). The only two modules to buck the trend are "Planescape: Shaper of Dreams" at #5 and TMGS at #7.

This trend, at least, should be easy to explain. Niche modules are apt only to be downloaded by people looking for those types of modules. People looking for said modules are likely to be favorably impressed by them. After all, who would download "Bishop's Romance" except someone looking to romance Bishop? And if that's what you're after, I'm sure the entry does a sterling job and so it will garner high marks. There's very little room to misinterpret what you'll get with such an entry.

To be quite honest, even "Planescape: the Shaper of Dreams" and TMGS are on the niche side of adventure modules. The Planescape setting isn’t for everyone, and I imagine I've lost quite a few downloads from players who have no interest in playing a cleric, much less a Tyrran specifically. Even the Ravenloft setting of "Misery Stone" at #11 might make it a niche module.

But getting back to the main point, it seems pretty clear that some vote inflation is occurring. Now the question is why. My initial thought was that a different kind of player predominated in the early days of NWN2. This player was in the community only because NWN2 was the "new" thing at that point. They bought the game, played through the campaign, downloaded everything that came out, easily had their attention diverted elsewhere, dumped a module if they weren't grabbed by it in 10 minutes, and then left the community as soon as Mass Effect or Dragon Age became the new "new" thing. Now – four years later – we’re only left with the truly dedicated, those people who appreciate D&D and well-developed stories, and their votes aren’t being as diluted by the more transient masses.

Right.

My test for this hypothesis was to look at the votes of some older modules. The Vault registers the date on which each vote was cast, so we can look at voting trends on the same module over time. If the prior paragraph were really true, even established modules should see their votes trending upwards over time.

My perfect test case for my hypothesis was the oft-mentioned "Harp and Chrysanthemum." H&C came out in December, 2007, and it has the most votes of any NWN2 module on the Vault at 505. So I logged every vote H&C has, split them by month, and then calculated both the score for that particular month, and the aggregate for all scores up to that point. For example, in December of 2007, H&C had 108 votes that averaged 9.55 for that month. At that point, the module score was (theoretically) 9.55 but because of the way the Vault doesn't count the top and bottom 10% of votes, the actual score at that point was 9.63. In January of 2008, there were another 60 votes that averaged 9.62 for just this batch of 60. However, the aggregate score of the 168 votes through that point after discounting the top and bottom 10% was 9.65. The complete chart is given below.

As can be seen, the hypothesis that H&C's votes are generally rising doesn't hold up. Every month since the beginning, the aggregate score has been between 9.63 and 9.66. In the 14 months since January 2010, six months have had monthly averages below the aggregate and six months have had averages above it. Two months – May and October of 2010 – had no votes at all and so have no data point associated with them. To confirm, I looked at the average scores for each year. In 2007, H&C had a score of 9.63. For 2008, it was 9.67. In 2009, it was 9.64. In 2010, it was also 9.64. Thus far in 2011, it's 9.83, but that only includes five votes thus far, two of which (the high and the low) must be thrown out according to the Vault algorithm, so this is thus far statistically irrelevant.

So I wondered if H&C was a unique case due to its overwhelming early and enduring popularity, so I then looked for something a little newer that still had a fair number of votes. I saw that "Asphyxia" was released in April of 2008, has 179 votes, and is currently ranked #26. The data will come in a bit, but the long and the short of it is that the same trend is apparent. The total score for "Asphyxia" for 2008 was 9.49. In 2009, it was 9.51. In 2010, it was 9.39. Thus far in 2011, it’s 9.5, but that’s only one vote.

Splitting Asphyxia's votes into quartiles, the first 45 votes covering from April 1, 2008 to May 15, 2008, averaged 9.48. The second group of 45 votes, covering until July 30, 2008, averaged 9.54. The third group of 45 votes, covering until January 2, 2009, averaged 9.54. The final 44 votes averaged 9.48. Again, no substantial increase over time, whether that time is defined in years or votes.

So I looked again for a third module. The first two I had looked at had the vast bulk of their votes cast before 2010, and I wanted one that had a substantial number of its votes cast both before and after Dragon Age's release. My idea was that that might be the game that took away all the great unwashed I discussed earlier. I therefore looked for something that released around mid-2009, say April through August. There are surprisingly few that fit that single criteria. "Dark Waters (Full)", "ZORK", "Last of the Danaan", "Serene", and "Lolthanchwi" are it. I removed "Dark Waters" because it is a re-release of a couple already existing modules. "ZORK" only has 26 votes. Among the last three, all have roughly 5400 downloads, but "Serene" has 115 votes compared to "Last of the Danaan's" 69 and "Lolthanchwi's" 51. Additionally, 32 of these votes, or about 27.8% come after January 1, 2010. This is about the same percentage as the others, but the sample size is bigger. So "Serene" was my choice.

The votes for "Serene" for 2009 averaged 9.32. The 2010 votes averaged 9.49. The six 2011 votes to date average 9.35. This module came closest to proving my hypothesis (because the 2011 vote total is still statistically insignificant). However, I'm still not convinced. Even though I picked "Serene" because of its closer proximity to Dragon Age, I'm still left with the obvious fact that the first two modules also garnered a number of votes after January 1, 2010, and they didn't show the same pattern. In fact, H&C has had 31 votes since New Year's Day, 2010, which compares favorably with "Serene’s" 32 votes, although this represents a much smaller percentage of H&C's overall total. Also, a closer look will reveal much more scatter in the month-to-month votes for "Serene." Breaking down the voting further, it started out with a high peak, then came down sharply, and then slowly rose a bit during the time of Dragon Age's release. It's just not the pattern I would have expected if my original hypothesis were correct.

Finally, I did the same analysis for TMGS for my own interest. Because it's only been out 7 months, I don't think anything interesting can be gleaned from those numbers, but for the record, the score has been coming down for it. The monthly aggregate scores for the four modules are given below. Again, note that these are only the monthly aggregates calculated as I described above.

So this analysis sort of shot down my thought that we would see score inflation for all modules, not just the newer ones. There are, of course, problems with the preceding analysis, so I'm not 100% sure I was wrong yet. It is possible that people are less likely to vote on a module that already has a bunch of votes. There may be the thought that their vote doesn't count when there are 500 others unlike when there are only 10-15 votes. People may also vote with the crowd. If they know that H&C has a score of 9.65, they may approach voting from a standpoint of deciding whether it should be a 9.5 or 9.75, even if they would vote a 10 or an 8 if they did not see the score before-hand. To get a much better idea of voting patterns, we'd need to look at the behavior of individual voters, and that gets into psychological factors, not to mention I have no interest in calling attention to individuals here. To get the best idea, we'd have to somehow wipe everyone's memory, re-release H&C today, and see what it would score. That, of course, is impossible.

From my own standpoint, my thoughts on voting have changed recently. When I first played and reviewed H&C in December 2007, I said it was "in the 9.00 range and probably higher" by the new NWN2 voting standards. Right now, I say it's a 10.00 because it's pretty obviously near the pinnacle, if not actually the pinnacle, of NWN2 mods. By the time I reviewed "Trinity" in March of 2010, I didn’t mention a score, but I was pretty ready to call it a 9.75 if not a 10.00. Today, I'd go all the way and say it's a 10.00. So I guess I would admit to some voting inflation of my own... if I voted. I bet there are a number of people who feel the same way.

So another post and I've solved few of my original questions. I am convinced vote inflation is occurring, but I assumed it was occurring universally across the board even for older modules. That doesn't appear to be the case. It's the reason I'm not sure about.

NWN Modding Statistical Analysis: Part 1

2011-02-24T12:01:00.012-05:00

A while back, I was perusing the NWN2 section of the Bioware Social Forums when a discussion of the download and voting rates of the current top new mods caught my eye for a reason that will soon become clear. The OP of that thread was disappointed over how few votes he was getting compared to his downloads and was wondering if he’d hit 10 votes by the time his module was off the "Newly Released" list on the right side of the Vault main page.

I've long thought it was just a generally accepted fact that only about one to two percent of downloaders will vote. However, I’ve been thinking over that conversation for a few weeks and I decided to do a little digging. So I took the current list of top 15 new mods from the Vault sidebar (as of February 24, 2011). Note that these are only the ones that haven’t yet achieved the Vault Hall of Fame section. The raw data for these 15 mods is given below.

Now to be clear, some of these download numbers appear to be such that the module should graduate to the HoF (5000 downloads). In these cases, I’ve included downloads of all different forms of the same module. For example, some modules have a self-extracting download and then a manual install download. Neither of these are individually above 5000, but they are above 5000 when combined. I've added the two download numbers up because I think it's reasonable to conclude that these two groups constitute different players. On the other hand, several of these have multiple modules attached to the entry (such as TMGS), all of which are required to play. Therefore, these do not represent different players and so I only took the largest number. For TMGS, for example, the download count is that for Module 1, which is the individual module with the most downloads.

Now it should be clear why this conversation particularly caught my eye. Whereas most of the modules have vote percentages in the one to two percent range, one module stands out as a significant outlier: mine. In an effort to explain what was going on, I looked at the downloads per month for each of the 15 modules. While TMGS is at the upper end of the group, it certainly isn't the highest. "Path of Evil" is more than doubling TMGS' pace, although it has only been released two months and one would expect the biggest surge immediately after release. On the other hand, "Planescape: the Shaper of Dreams" has been out seven months longer than TMGS and has almost 150 more downloads per month... and yet the vote percentage is still under one percent.

I was interested to see how these numbers compared with some of the "classic" modules from NWN2's past, so I looked at the top 50 modules overall and pulled out some of the notable ones. The only criteria used to select this group over the others was that I remembered them being big news when released. The expanded table is given below.

So again, even the older modules have the same roughly one to two percent voting rate, so I'm at a loss to explain why TMGS seems to be almost tripling the voting percentage of most of the other mods out there.

However, I was also interested to see how download rates have changed over time. It is obvious that the player base is smaller, so download rates must have diminished, but by how much? So I put the data into a handy little chart shown below.

A few points. First, the x-axis is the months since release, meaning further out along the x-axis represents longer ago. For reference, I've put vertical lines where the change in years occurred. Two months ago was the change to 2011, 12 months before that was 2010, and so forth. I also added in the release points for both NWN2 expansion packs and a couple other fantasy-themed RPGs to see if that might shed some light. Dragon Age released in November 2009 and SoZ was in November 2008. MotB and The Witcher both released in October 2007.

The first thing that stands out to me is the tremendous scattering of the data, although the obvious trend is still clear. The downloads per month is generally going down. The linear "best fit" trendline as calculated by Excel and its equation are also shown on the graph. According to this, a module released today (x = 0) should expect a download rate of about 232 per month.

However, I looked at the list of 15 top-rated new modules and noticed that several aren't traditional adventure mods. I don't wish to debate the merits of including such modules in a list of modules here, but I did wonder if removing these from the data would tighten up the scatter a bit. So I removed "The Heist at the Neverwinter Lights Casino", "NWN2 OC Makeover", "SOZ Holiday Expansion Project", and "Tanithiel." I also had to remove "Halloween" from the legacy group. The culled-data graph is given below.

What is interesting is that all of the five removed modules were below the line in the first graph, which means they were all being downloaded at a rate below what would be expected (perhaps an indication of their niche nature). As expected, this moved the line up generally, but especially on the right, meaning the slope increased. I refrained from doing the rigorous math because even by eye it is obvious the scattering decreased a bit. However, the prognosis for a module released right now was basically confirmed. One could expect about 228 downloads per month.

From examining the release points for the expansion packs and other games, it looks like Dragon Age did a decent job of damaging NWN2. "Trinity", "Misery Stone", and "Planescape: Shaper of Dreams" were all released within a month or two of Dragon Age, when several players were presumably giving NWN2 a last hurrah while DA bugs were found and fixed, and these maintained a fairly healthy download rate of above 400 per month. And yes, other modules were getting considerably less than this, but after that point, no module except "Path of Evil" is coming remotely close to that rate, and that module is still too new for me to be believe that rate will continue. For the most part, the top downloaded modules now are pulling in what the bottom downloaded (but still highly-rated) modules were doing even fourteen months ago.

Another observation. Using the non-culled data of the first chart, the trend line will cross the x-axis at -36.93 months, which is March of 2014. Using the culled data with a steeper slope, it will be -25.59 months, or April of 2013. What does this mean? Well, that’s the point when, theoretically, a newly-released mod will have a download rate of zero per month. In other words, it is the functional end of NWN2's life unless something happens to arrest this curve.

Also, based off the first line, TMGS projects to end with 5993 downloads in March of 2014. Based off the second line, it will end with 4633 downloads in April of 2013. What this means is that there's the very real possibility - even the probability - that TMGS will never make the HoF.

Now I know there are problems with this over-simplistic analysis. First, the data set is comparatively small. There are 154 NWN2 modules on the Vault, although using the bottom half to project the success of future highly-rated mods would be useless. Still, using all of the top 50 instead of only 25 of them would be better. Second, the download rate will never truly go to zero, so some type of true curve with an asymptote at the x-axis would be more accurate. Finally, all modules get downloaded more in their first couple months than at other times. However, I have no download by month data, so I don't have any way of knowing how many of "Harp and Chrysanthemum’s" 27 thousand downloads were in year one, year two, and so forth. It is almost certainly not getting 700 downloads per month now while it must have gotten fifteen hundred per month or more at its height. Finally, any true analysis should factor in promotional efforts by the author. For all I know, it might be possible to greatly exceed these numbers with an unrelenting ad campaign.

For the record, I've graphed the data for votes per download for all the above modules (full and culled). These graphs are below, and they show what we already knew from the raw data. The vote percentage has remained pretty flat over time, indicating the time of release is pretty irrelevant in this case. In the first graph, the slope is -0.0002, and it is roughly -0.0003 in the graph. The negative slopes actually show that it is slightly better for newer modules over all, but not very significantly. A second point for these graphs? There's TMGS in the top left of both as a major outlier. And so we've come full circle with no more answers than when I started. For some reason, TMGS seems to compel a greater percentage of people who play it to come back and vote.

I have two more analysis I want to do with this series. My next post will look at voting over time. I say this because the current top 15 new mods are all in the top 33 mods of all-time. Half of the top 10 all-time is within the current new top 15. That seems statistically unlikely unless vote inflation is occurring. My final piece will take a look at the same kinds of stats for NWN1. Perhaps that will shed further light on the expected lifespan of NWN2.

The Holy Grail

2011-02-16T08:25:00.006-05:00

Long time readers of this blog may suppose – given my interest in medieval history – that I’m about to write about the Knights Templars or some DaVinci Code crap, but that isn’t the case. Rather, I’m talking about the Holy Grail of CRPGs...

First a bit of history. Back in the 80s, I became enthralled in D&D P&P sessions, and I had a small group that would occasionally play games when we could. By about 1990 or so, that phase had ended for me. My college days focused more on games that could be easily played over the dorm LAN such as Warcraft II, Starcraft, or Fortress Quake, but after I graduated in 1999, I started looking at CRPGs. By 2000 my eye fell on Baldur’s Gate II, and I was instantly captivated by how amazing RPGs had become.

Over the next couple years, I bought BG1, the Icewind Dale series, Planescape: Torment, the NWN series, and even Temple of Elemental Evil, all of which I loved to one extent or another, but Baldur’s Gate has always been the gold standard to me.

I also have always been a D&D homer. This probably stems from my childhood memories, but I can honestly say that my interest in playing Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, and World of Warcraft is zero, and my interest in Dragon Age is just barely north of zero. On the other hand, if a D&D-themed game came out tomorrow, I’d be there to buy it unless the reviews were terrible. And I mean REALLY terrible. I bought ToEE after all.

Needless to say, this makes the current situation between WotC and Atari quite annoying.

So a couple weeks ago, I reloaded BG1 onto my computer, and I must say that while some of it still holds up, it is certainly showing its age. I don’t necessarily think the graphics are all that horrible, although the Infinity Engine is certainly archaic. Rather, the simplicity of the dialogs and quests along with the horrible pathing and blatantly bad AI all make the game frustrating to those accustomed to more recent improvements.

That got me thinking about BG III. I remember a couple years ago – give or take several months – that I was talking to an Ossian-mate about potential new projects when I called BG III the "Holy Grail." For the record, he disagreed and thought something else was... but that’s a story for another time.

But my point was that the BG series is unique in the history of CRPGs, and not just for me. I would imagine that the great majority of CRPG fans / modders would have BG III very high on the list if they were told to make a wish about any project they would want to be green-lighted for. However, with the pending litigation over D&D rights, not only is BG III not a realistic idea for the near future, I don’t even think any serious D&D-themed RPG is. And, no, I don’t count Cryptic’s MMORPG as a serious RPG. Actually, by the time the dust is settled, I doubt a BG III ever comes out. It’s already 11 years since BG II, and I can’t think of many games that had 15 or more years between sequels... although Starcraft comes close.

So then that got me thinking. What if a group of modders just decided to make BG III in, say, the NWN2 toolset? I’m thinking about a major effort along the lines of Misery Stone or Purgatorio. It would certainly be possible, although it would take a lot of dedication from many people with little or no recognition for years. That's tough. After all, Misery Stone, though a great game as is, was admittedly hurried out the door towards the end. I assume the group realized continued interest by the development team was flagging and needed to just get it out. And Purgatorio is, well, in purgatory.

But if it could be done - so long as the game was offered for free - it would be perfectly legal. And if enough word of mouth could be generated, might it even become a somewhat "official" version in the absence of anything else?

But what would BG III look like? What would be the "must haves" without which one couldn’t lay claim to the title? My (probably incomplete) list would look something like:

* Single player campaign
* 80 – 100 hours of gameplay
* A minimum of 10 – 12 NPCs that can be substituted in and out from a party of 6.
* NPC-based quests
* Romances
* A story-line somehow tied in to the Bhaal-spawn legend
* Most of the game taking place in a city environment, although large portions can be outside the city

My gut is that, as the Bhaal-spawn is now either a god or has turned down the Throne of Bhaal and is merely an incredibly powerful mortal, I would think the third chapter would start over with a new protagonist starting at level 1 and perhaps going up to level 10 or so. However, I wouldn’t put this as a "must have" to be a legitimate successor.

I think all of this is more than possible with a two-year development time, so long as the team didn’t have to develop an engine (which it wouldn’t in this scenario). MoW took roughly six months to build once all the design documents were done and another couple months of testing. MoW clocked in at around 20-25 hours and had 3 NPCs. Expanding the six months to two years would lead to 80-100 hours and 12 NPCs. As each of those companions already had an associated quest, this work is already included in the 3 NPCs in 6 months metric. The only additional effort would be to include romances... a topic for a different post. Anyway, yes, the analysis is simple, but it gives a rough order of magnitude. I do think it could be done...

But it won't. All of this is obviously just a bit of day-dreaming on my part. Truthfully, I’ve finally accepted that the BG series is dead and now relegated to the warm, fuzzy, halcyon days of yesteryear... right alongside my memories of the red box set.

But what a pleasant dream it is.

TMGS II: What Might Have Been, The Conclusion

2011-01-25T16:43:00.003-05:00

Proceeding with the breakdown of the aborted TMGS-II, when Act II ended, the party had just returned from another dimension where they had been pursuing a priestess of Moander. They hadn't caught her, but they had determined the location of the Heart of Moander - the buried ruins of the city of Tsornyl in the Forest of Cormanthor.

Act III: The Heart of Decay
The party could have used one of two portals back home, either the one opened in the lair of the False Prophet or one from the ring they had picked up from the Moanderite leader in Act I. Either way, the party ends up back in the Priory of First Union, the final location of Act I. The trick is to then arrive at the Forest of Cormanthor, and to do that in a timely fashion, they need to use the portal described in my post on Act I. This portal requires rearranging the elven runes such that the portal takes them to the proper locale. Functionally within the game, this serves as a "puzzle" before they could proceed.

Traveling through Cormanthor, the party would battle blighted treants, Bits of Moander, and various undead of a suitable level. Along the way, I was planning on having an elven village that the players would need to ally with in order to find the actual location of the buried city. Securing the cooperation of this village would have proven a challenge and may have led to the addition of an another companion; I was thinking maybe an eldritch knight character.

Eventually, the party would have found the lost city, and this would have been the final dungeon complete with suitable tricks, traps, and encounters. The party eventually would have passed the corpses of the 12 baelnorn who had been guarding the heart along with numerous Moanderites. At this point, a cutscene would have shown the priestess fusing the Moanderite essence with his heart, allowing for the rising of Moander's avatar - essentially a big shambling mound. The avatar would have killed the priestess and the final battle would have been on. Again, the party would have comprised 5-6 characters of about 16th level at this point, so the challenge would have had to be suitable.

After the battle, I would have had a few wrap-up scenes, the last of which would have set up TMGS III. My gut is that the above would have expanded quite a bit to allow for at least a little bit of freedom at certain points, kind of how Waterdeep and the Bastion exterior allowed for a small bit of exploration in the otherwise linear final act of TMGS I. I didn't have any firm plans yet, although the elven village seems an obvious point to do this.

As for TMGS III, the basic premise was that the refugees from Veronsport would have arrived at the Bastion and, realizing St. Cuthbert held no power in Faerun, would have converted to Tyr. The Grand Prelate would have set aside some land for them to build a small village and then appointed the PC the village's lord and spiritual guide. Deacon LaRue would have served as the players' deputy in the religious order and Lord Roberts would have served as the mayor and secular leader under the PC's aegis.

The land would have had a small abandoned temple of one of the evil gods and so I would have made a small interlude where the PC and either Tancred/Verona alone would have cleared the place out. Then TMGS III would have been a stronghold-based campaign that I really hadn't planned too much yet. The stronghold would have been the cleared out temple in case that wasn't clear, and the refugees would have built a small town around it. Some evil deity would have featured, but there were a ton of candidates as yet. Talona kind of holds some interest for me, but I really had no firm ideas.

And that's it! Summarizing the plot only took about two years less than making the module. Next time will be something different... maybe an announcement. We'll see.

Mid-Winter Cleaning

2011-01-17T09:38:00.002-05:00

Did some quick clean-outs of my blog roll and got rid of those that hadn't updated in at least six months and then added the new blog from Ossian-mate Nemorem (aka Mat Jobe). There are some interesting posts there already, including one about the modding scene for DA, so check it out.

In other news, the composer of the music for TMGS, Strange Cat Productions, has released the TMGS soundtrack on Amazon with all the tracks remastered and a couple bonus tracks too. A quick perusal shows that it's something like 90 - 100 minutes of music. If you enjoyed the music and want to support a guy who's just breaking into the business, this would be a great (and reasonably inexpensive) way to do it.

TMGS II: What Might Have Been, Part II

2011-01-13T12:50:00.002-05:00

Proceeding with the breakdown of the aborted TMGS-II, when Act I ended, the party had just entered a portal into another dimension in pursuit of a priestess of Moander.

Act II: The False Prophet
The party arrives in Veronsport, a moderately-sized town with cobbled streets, an assortment of wooden houses, and a large, but empty, port jutting out into an endless sea. Yet a pall of darkness hangs over the town, and the sky is tinged with a sickly green. Although there are people on the streets, the majority keep their heads down as they go about their business. The grass, trees, and shrubs around town, while technically alive, all look sickly and discolored.

The basic idea of the alternate dimension was to create a world in which the players would be very uncomfortable. Everything they “knew” about Faerun would not apply. The power structures and conventions would be different, the pantheon would be new, and monsters would have powers they would not expect. Maybe a few goblins would come at them and the player would assume it was going to be an easy fight only to have several fireballs hurled at them because "goblins" in this dimension are more powerful than on Faerun. My supreme hope was that I could get either Jonny Ree or someone like him to make me one or two odd monster models that would be a complete mystery to the player.

The alternate dimension also served as a warning as to what might happen to Faerun if the player did not succeed. In other words, I could eventually destroy it with absolutely no repercussions to the player’s world, but seeing that destruction adds urgency to the primary mission. There are now real consequences for Faerun if the party doesn't keep Moander dead.

Finally, the PC will pray here through a dialog with his/her holy symbol, since there will be no Tyrran altar. Although spells will be restored as normal, any attempt to ask Tyr a question during prayer will be met with silence. Eventually, the player will realize (or be told) that Tyr’s presence on this dimension is too weak (due to lack of worshippers) to be able to physically manifest and take an active role in this adventure as he did during TMGS I.

After some investigation in Veronsport, the player eventually learns the following:

1) The power centers in town are the mayor, Lord Roberts, and the Church of St. Cuthbert, headed by Deacon Holden LaRue.

2) Moander has slowly overtaken the entire realm. Everything beyond the gates of Veronsport has been absorbed by The Wasting, a creeping manifestation of Moander’s power that rots everything in its wake. Villages overtaken by The Wasting are now ghost towns filled only with rotted vegetation, decayed buildings, and bleached bones.

3) The townspeople have managed to keep the Moanderites at bay due to a well-trained militia, the determined resistance of the Church of St. Cuthbert, and a location on an easily-defendable peninsula, but there is little hope the town can resist The Wasting much longer. Already the initial signs are manifesting that the town is coming within its thrall (see the plants for examples).

4) The richest citizens who had boats or could afford to book passage have already fled the city. Although there is no other refuge on the continent, there are several islands far out to sea that no doubt have several years left before being overrun.

5) Several years back, there was an old man who spoke of the coming of Tyr’s Champion. Because Tyr was largely unknown in this dimension, and those who knew of him knew him to be a deity that had “died” here many years before, the man was derided as a False Prophet, mocked, and spat upon at every opportunity. He vanished some time back, although no one can really say when or even remember much about the circumstances of his disappearance. The player will be referred to Deacon LaRue for further information, as the Deacon was about the only friend he had.

At the Temple of St. Cuthbert, the player discovers that Deacon LaRue is away for the moment. If the PC asks about a Moanderite High Priestess that recently came through, the Cuthbertians will only say they know nothing. If the PC asks about The False Prophet, the Cuthbertian priests will note that they remember such a character but he spoke exclusively with the deacon. However, the church library does contain the False Prophet’s diary; Deacon LaRue had insisted that they save the document. If the PC reads the diary, they will learn – among other things – that The False Prophet had discovered the whereabouts of Moander’s decayed heart.

If the player approaches Lord Roberts, the mayor will note with interest the presence in town of some powerful adventurers and will only comment that he might have need of them shortly. This might allow for a sidequest from the mayor. Otherwise, it is obvious he is too busy planning the town’s final defenses.

This leaves the player to explore the town and engage in other sidequests. If they try to leave through the front gates, they will only be told that the gates are closed by order of the mayor in order to prevent any encroachment of The Wasting.

At some point, the St. Cuthbertians will send for the party. When the group returns to the temple, they will learn that Deacon LaRue isn’t simply away; he actually led a small elite band on a mission to strike at a nearby fortress that serves as the Moanderites’ forward base for their assault on Veronsport, but no one has returned. At this point, the St. Cutherbertians are convinced that something is wrong and would like to task the party with investigating the Deacon’s fate. They will also note that the fortress is likely to be where the High Priestess the PC is pursuing went (assuming the PC has revealed their mission here). Either way, the Cuthbertians point out the fortress’ locations and give the party a pass to leave the city.

The player quickly finds that his/her characters’ strength and constitution slowly decrease as long as they are within the Wasting, although the PC can restore these attributes with restoration spells. (However, the attributes will immediately begin to decrease again after the spell restores them.) Also, the Moanderite fortress – and anywhere else inhabited by the Moanderites – is free from this effect and the losses will cease so long as the players are within these buildings.

After battling through several odd monsters within The Wasting, the party finally assaults the Moanderite outpost and destroys the garrison there. Deacon LaRue can be found in some cells, where he will reveal that the High Priestess did, in fact, stop by for a sliver of Moander’s divine essence, but she has already procured this and returned to her own plane of existence. In addition, in case the player didn’t read the diary, he will reveal that the False Prophet had found the location of Moander’s heart. Finally, the deacon will volunteer that The False Prophet “disappeared” from Veronsport when he sailed across the sea some years before. He had been an old and sick man and, having won no new converts to Tyr in Veronsport, he had given up hope and retired to the Isle of the Dead to die.

As the Priestess now has a divine sliver of Moander, the only thing left is to stop her from fusing it with Moander’s heart, and the only person who knows that location is The False Prophet. However, obtaining a boat to the Isle of the Dead in a port devoid of ships will be difficult.

Back at Veronsport, Deacon LaRue will consult with the party and Mayor Roberts about using the Mayor’s personal yacht. The mayor will note that the destruction of the Moanderite outpost has bought the town a few more days, and in thanks, he will agree to loan the PC his yacht... on two conditions: that the PC allow the entire remaining population of the town to use the portal back to Faerun once their mission is complete and that Deacon LaRue join them on the journey to The Isle of the Dead. It is assumed the player will agree to this, and they will be able to depart for the Isle of the Dead with Deacon LaRue in tow.

The Isle of the Dead was to have been very much like the old P&P module “Isle of Dread” complete with dinosaurs, dragons, oversized animals, and a lost temple. The party would consist of six or so 13th-14th level characters at this point, so the challenges would have to have been pretty tough, and this area would have been organized something like Saleron’s Gambit Part IV.

After several adventures, the party penetrates to the depths of the temple to find a single skeletal figure praying at an altar to Tyr. The figure will rise, address the PC as Tyr’s Champion, and then tell a strange story.

In life, he was a devotee of Tyr living as a hermit on Faerun and spending most of his days on a mountain in prayerful meditation and solitude. One day, Tyr came to him in a vision, saying there was a mission uniquely suited to him. He was to proceed through a portal into a new dimension in which the last Tyrran had died decades before. Because there were no Tyrrans in this alternate dimension, Tyr held no power whatsoever there, but if he were to go to that dimension, his existence would allow Tyr to grasp the slimmest of toe-holds.

(Note that in TMGS I, when Tyr talks to the PC on the snowy mountain during the Trial by Tyr's Justice - when the ranger companion is looking for them - Tyr will mention that Malar was able to enact his plans in secret partially because Tyr's attention had been drawn to Tethyr and a distressing situation developing on another plane entirely. This was yet another presaging of TMGS II.)

The False Prophet briefly attempted to win converts to Tyr as a means of increasing Tyr's power in this dimension, but his primary mission was to keep an eye on the Moanderites, uncover the location of Moander's heart, and determine when and under what circumstances the Moanderites would attempt to raise him again.

Eventually, it became obvious that The Prophet would fall asleep before Moander's plans came to fruition, but instead of allowing him to die, Tyr converted him to unlife. The Prophet needed to live long enough to maintain Tyr's miniscule hold here. In addition, because Tyr's power here is not enough to manifest at will and state the information directly, the Prophet would be able to pass to the coming Champion the information he had gleaned about Moander's plans and the location of his heart.

Next, he will present an arcane text to the PC that details how Moander’s heart is being guarded by twelve Cormanthyrian baelnorn (good liches) in the ruins of the ancient city of Tsornyl in the depths of the Forest of Cormanthor. Finally, the False Prophet will note that his life’s purpose is now complete and that he has earned his rest, and his bones will simply collapse to the floor as a portal opens behind him.

The party can use this portal, but Deacon LaRue will note that the PC made a promise to Mayor Roberts about saving the people of the town. The player will be able to return to the town and use the Moanderite ring to reopen a portal to Faerun in town or else they can give the ring to the Deacon, have him return, and use the existing portal. Ideally, returning to the town will lead to a tougher Act III – as the Moanderites will have more time to prepare – but add a few resources in TMGS III, as the party will be able to save a few more people from the Moanderite siege there. Whatever path they take, the party is on its way back to Faerun and Deacon LaRue leaves the party for good.

Note that Deacon LaRue, Mayor Roberts, and the refugees from Veronsport would have all played a role in TMGS III, but that’s for another time.

Next Post: Act III: The Heart of Decay

TMGS II: What Might Have Been

2011-01-06T10:52:00.002-05:00

OK, I've taken a couple months off and I'm more convinced than ever that I'm done with large projects. It's not that I'm out of ideas; I've got enough of those, but as I stated previously, I can't justify the time expenditure given other more important commitments. My problem is that TMGS I took well over two years of pretty intense work. Backing off to a level I'm comfortable with would mean TMGS II wouldn't see the light of day until 2017, and that's simply ridiculous.

I am, however, inclined to put out small projects of only one to two hours of play time more akin to good sidequests than anything else. I'm building a belief in my mind that that's probably the way to go to be able to indulge a bit in a hobby without sacrificing other things that are important. Nothing that I've said until now is new for this blog except that my mind is still resolved on that after a couple months, but everything I type from here on out will be first time.

I've already started a bit on a small project. It's a small continuation of TMGS with the same cast of characters, but I'll delay further announcement on the specifics for another time.

For now I've been thinking about releasing my thoughts on where I would have taken TMGS in future full-length campaigns. All of this would have been secret, of course, had I committed myself to releasing them, but now that I've committed to the opposite, there's nothing to lose and I figure some people might be curious.

If you don't want to know, stop now. I'll wait...

OK, if you're still here, you must be interested, so here goes.

First, while TMGS I concentrated on establishing the relationship between the PC and his/her principle companion - either Tancred or Verona - TMGS II would have returned to a full party with the ranger love interest forming just one of the group, albeit one that would have required further exposition and greater attention.

TMGS I also focused on establishing a second crucial relationship that would have flourished in part II: Gron. In part II, the orcish prince would have played the part of bad-ass tank and bruiser. He would have been something like a barbarian 7/divine champion 4, had very high strength and constitution, and sliced and diced with his massive battle axe. The core relationship would have been one of new convert & mentor with him asking a variety of tough theological questions that the PC could have answered a number of ways.

This was why so much time in TMGS I was spent on a seemingly innocuous side story at the orc village and the Tomb of the Just Ones. I always "knew" that Gron was coming back, and he needed to have an established reason to implicitly trust the PC and also accept him/her as an authority figure, at least in a religious sense.

So that gives us the cleric PC, the ranger love interest, and Gron. The fourth member of the group was going to be a female moon-elf bard with an as-yet unsettled name, although for current purposes we'll call her Sylvaria (a likely candidate). This character, an ambassador from the Church of Oghma, would have been met at the adventure's outset and would have, in fact, been the initial quest giver. More on that later.

The final member of the party was as yet still murky. I had a few thoughts but the two most likely were a male human rogue or a male half-drow wizard. The background of each and where they would have been met were different from each other and still not 100% set, but the most likely scenario is given in my summary of Act I below.

The level range would have been set to start around 12 and end around 15-16.

Now for the plot.

Act I: Darkness Rising

The player is recalled to the Bastion of the Maimed God by the newly-elected Grand Prelate. After some scene-setting, they are led into the council chamber – the same one in which Dezlentyr gave his speech in TMGS I – in which a meeting of the church elders is being conducted. Central to this meeting is an Oghmite ambassador, Sylvaria, who has come bearing news of an ancient prophesy that foretells the return of the Darkbringer when certain signs are manifest. These signs, including a comet in the southern sky and a great earthquake in the east, have now come to pass, and the Oghmites seek aid from a religious order with more military might to stop the impending return. Note that “The Darkbringer” is a well-known nickname for Moander, so the identity of the new threat will be immediately known in contrast to the plot structure of TMGS I. For those who may not know, Moander, the one-time lord of rot and decay, was killed during the Time of Troubles.

Next the new Grand Prelate introduces the PC, a rising star in the church who now has a reputation for resourcefulness and solving special problems, and the trio of Sylvaria, the PC, and the PC’s love interest, either Tancred or Verona, depart for the Starmounts, a range of mountains deep within the High Forest that are the only locale specifically mentioned in the prophecy.

The group has a few adventures along the way, one of which leads to the addition of Gron. Gron claims to have had dreams in which he was ordered to aid the High Witch/Great Shaman against the enemies of Tyr and so he left his village to come west to find the PC. Another possible addition in one of these adventures is a human rogue.

Once in the High Forest, the party infiltrates a ruined mountain outpost of the ancient elven empire of Earlann, an empire of special fascination for both Verona and Tancred. As the party works its way up levels towards the mountain’s peak, they encounter several tricks, traps, and unique battles. Not all of these tricks are “mad wizard” puzzles; some are nothing more than finding a way across a fallen bridge or around a collapsed tunnel. Within this dungeon, the party encounters an old forge still manned by a ghostly blacksmith who presents Verona/Tancred with a magical short sword, long ago forged for the warrior of nature that would defeat the Darkbringer. (Note that this scene was presaged in TMGS I if the PC managed to convince the companion to discuss their dreams during one of the fireside chats.)
Atop the Star Mounts, the party finds the Priory of First Union, a temple jointly devoted to Corellon Larethian and Sehanine Moonbow and their initial union of blood and tears that first formed the elven race. On the snowy peak, the group confronts and does battle with another high-level party of Moanderites with as-yet unknown motives. This is the boss fight for Act I. After defeating these adversaries, the group finds a strange ring on the corpse of the party’s leader, but without any other clues, they have no choice but to enter the temple.

Within are histories on the wall that tell of the defeat of Moander by the elves of Cormanthyr (to be clear, these defeats are not the final one that caused his death - way different eras) and still more prophecies of his eventual death and return. The group will learn through ancient texts that the heart of Moander lies dormant in the forest of Cormanthor and only awaits a sliver of Moander’s divine energy to rise again. As they explore the temple, the party finds a room with a portal. An investigation may reveal – depending on the PC’s skills – that the portal once allowed instant travel to any part of the elven empires and even into other elven strongholds. The destination was set by assembling a series of magical runes into the sides of the portals with each combination of runes accounting for a specific destination portal. Further on, the party comes to a final altar room that has been ransacked and now contains the freshly-killed corpse of a half-drow wizard.

The party members will strongly suggest the PC “raise” the drow, a power now well-within the abilities granted by Tyr to the PC, so that they can interrogate him. Once done, he reveals that the Moanderites hired him to guide them to this temple so that they could learn exactly where the heart of Moander was located within Cormanthor. The Moanderite High Priestess apparently discovered the location in one of the texts and took it with her. But before she left, she killed him to prevent him from revealing just the information he now gives to the PC. In addition, he learned through communicating with the Moanderite party en route to this temple that they intended to gain the requisite divine spark in another dimension where the cult of Moander still holds supreme power. Each of the two Moanderite leaders had a ring that would allow a portal to that dimension to open. The PC should now recognize that the High Priestess had one but the second must be the ring they found on the corpse outside the temple. Finally, the half-drow mentions he is a wizard of some power and asks to join the group so that he can enact revenge on the Moanderites for the betrayal. There will be some hesitation on the part of Sylvaria (a moon elf) and Gron (an orc), but they will eventually agree if the PC presses the need for more strength before journeying into the Moanderite dimension.

With everything now settled, the group uses the ring to open a portal to the new dimension and chase after the High Priestess, not only to stop her acquiring the divine spark of Moander, but also – as a last resort – to learn the specific location of Moander’s slumbering heart.

Next Post: Act II: The False Prophet

For the record, all my acts have names, although they are never seen on-screen. For TMGS I, the three act names were “Descent into Darkness” for Act I, “The Curse of the VanGhaunts” for Act II, and “Excommunicate” for Act III.

The NWN2 Toolset

2010-10-15T09:47:00.007-05:00

A couple posts back when I ruminated on my NWN2 future generated an interesting exchange that I thought I'd just make a whole post on.

nicethugbert started with:

Why did TMGS take so long? What tasks consumed the most time?

I responded:

Sorry, thugbert, didn't see your comment until now.

There are literally over 200,000 words of dialog in TMGS. That's the equivalent of a 400 page book, assuming 500 words per page. Thattakes a long time to write, edit, proofread, and so forth.

There were around 55 maps for the entire campaign, and the majority were exterior maps. Each exterior map can take a good two days of solid work to put together. That's two weekend days, not days where I just work a couple hours after my day job.

Testing and troubleshooting took a good six months. Each complete playthrough takes 20 hours including note-taking, replays to confirm, etc. And then you have to implement changes, do scenario testing, and so forth. Player choices early on really do filter through the rest of the campaign, and I'm not sure a player can really appreciate the extent of this on just one play-through.

nicethugbert responded:

Does NWN2 make any of this difficult? What I'm driving at is the quality of NWN2 as a tool.

Obviously, a 400 page book is a problem in itself and a modern word processor would be more help than obstacle.

I responded:

All I've worked with are the NWN1 and NWN2 toolsets. As far as exteriors go, NWN1 was far easier, but it also allowed far less customization of the area. I actually think the dialog editor is much better in NWN2 and allows for reduced numbers of overall scripts.

I do use a word processor for the first draft of almost everything I write. It's still a laborious process.

To clarify, I like the NWN2 toolset, but I haven't used anything else other than the NWN1 toolset. My general thought is that the NWN2 toolset is much more powerful and of an overall better quality than the one for NWN1. Yes, there were some odd behavioral bugs up front, but those seem to be gone now.

That said, I have no experience with any of the other toolsets, such as the one for DA. What I've read hasn't really inspired me, but I'm still mulling expanding into other directions. For now, I'm interested in any insights or experiences others have in this arena.

I do have a small announcement upcoming, but that comes later.

'Nuf Said

2010-10-13T07:06:00.004-05:00

FSU 45, Miami 17

More Entertainment

2010-10-06T07:13:00.004-05:00

Ossian News
I know many of you have already heard the news about Ossian's impending release of the Shadow Sun for iDevices. However, the first screenshots of the game were released yesterday, so head on over to the Ossian website for a look. I know that if the Shadow Sun is successful, the plan is to port the entire intellectual property over to the PC. I'm not aware of too many really big CRPGs in the works, so there is certainly the need for another.

TV List
While I continue to mull my NWN2 future, I've been catching up on lots of entertainment I've put off... or in this case, I've rewatched a series I first saw a few years ago. However, my latest guilty pleasure does have at least something to do with TMGS in addition to being a fascinating six hours of viewing.

First, I have an admission. I am a reality TV junkie. Not the truly horrid stuff like Flavor of Love or Megan Wants a Millionaire that literally melt your mind as you watch, but I do like shows like The Amazing Race and Survivor. On occasion, though, reality TV actually reaches a higher level and becomes educational as well as entertaining.

Enter Manor House - although I understand it's called The Edwardian Country House in the UK - in which a modern family and fourteen strangers now playing the role of servants move into an Edwardian-era mansion and return it to the life it had one hundred years ago.

So what's the connection to TMGS? Well, I first viewed this series when my parents gave it to me around 2004. I am forced to admit that the images stuck with me as I turned to my imaginings of the VanGhaunt Mansion and how it must have once worked. Of course, I knew that the mansion had to be largely decayed and empty today, but I wanted there to be the ghosts of something grander, something much more along the lines of what is depicted in Manor House. The layout of the VanGhaunt Mansion, most notably the inclusion of a dance floor, was inspired by the series. Casting Thess LeHugh in the role of a Lady's Maid, Jellica's memories of the grand balls of her youth, and the book outlining the kitchen operation all had their genesis in this series. Most directly, the Rules for Servants book found in one of the lower bedrooms was a direct rip-off of some of the information found on the series' website. Whereas Navatranaasu itself is more reflective of my interest in medieval history, the mansion itself is much more modern in feel, and that is most directly attributable to my memories of this series.

First, I see on Amazon that the DVDs sell for roughly 40-45 dollars. I wouldn't pay that, but if you have a local library or even NetFlix or a more reasonably priced digital download (legal, of course), it's definitely worth the time, although it isn't perfect. So having said all that, I'll review the series.

Manor House sees a modern family, the Olliff-Coopers move into Manderston House as a newly-lorded Edwardian couple. "Sir" John and the Lady Anna Olliff-Cooper are a businessman and ER doctor in the 21st century, but they are dramatically elevated in class for this series. In addition, their two sons, Jonty and Guy, and Lady Anna's sister, the unmarried Avril, also join in on the experiment. (Incidentally, during my Google Searches for this write-up, I learned that Jonty is now a "senior researcher" with some kind of Progressive Conservative think-tank in England, so he's obviously entered into politics in the nine years since this show. And no, I don't know what a "Progressive Conservative" is either.)

Meanwhile, fourteen others move in to fill the "downstairs" side of the upstairs/downstairs equation and assume every position from the butler at the top of the downstairs ladder to the scullery maid at the bottom. What follows is a intriguing look not only at lifestyles a hundred years ago, but also human psychology. It is both fascinating and horrifying to see how quickly people who are given so much come to both think of it as theirs and justify how they deserve it.

The Olliff-Coopers seem like they are a perfectly nice family and "normal" in almost every way... in the 21st century. Once back in the early 20th, however, they adapt a little too easily to the role of aristocrats. Sir John, of course, is at the very top, and it takes almost no time for him to pompously complain that the staff discipline isn't high enough. When he institutes punishments, the kitchen maid complains, only to then be told that it isn't proper for someone like her to talk to someone like him. In fact it isn't by the conventions of the day, but most of us in the 21st century would (I hope) have a problem actually saying that. Not Sir John, however. A month after becoming a lord for the first time, he is already entrenched in the mindset. In his private diaries, he confesses somewhat high-handedly that he isn't blind to his staff's plight, but what can he do? As he says another time, "if they're not serving him, they don't have jobs." To the end, he remains entirely blind, believing that his staff loves him as he loves them, and is literally in tears as he walks out the final day. Of course, those tears are for the loss of his staff not as people but as his servants. He opines that he alone of all the people in the house will be diminished in status when he leaves whereas all the rest will presumably raise in status when they return to the 21st century. He doesn't make clear as to whether he thinks his own wife will be diminished or raised.

Speaking of the Lady Anna, she is the most fascinating psychological study in the entire show. In the 21st century, she is an ER doctor with a high degree of literally life-and-death responsibility. Upon entering the house, she is reduced to augmenting the prestige of her husband. She spends upwards of five hours per day getting dressed several times, as she must wear different clothing at each meal. She has a Lady's Maid to prep the clothes and help her get in and out of the overbearing outfits (think corsets and endless skirts). Then there's the constant hair pampering, make-up and so on. All this so she can entertain her husband's guests by chatting them up in the parlor and... well, I'm not quite sure what else because the downstairs staff does all the cooking, cleaning, and serving. Her early comments on the absurdity of it all show that she is quite bored. And then...

It isn't long until this ER doctor finds herself entirely entranced by the fairytale. The endless dress-up sessions with a myriad of jewels and new hairstyles, once so tedious, soon become a joy. Whereas early on, she laments the loss of quality time with her youngest son due to the rigid separation of spheres of influence, this seems to stop bothering her later on. She admits as she lays in her bath - drawn for her by an overworked maid - that she has lost track of her youngest son and that she is sure he is with the servants downstairs. But her sole concern is that he will need to put distance between himself and the servants because when he inherits Manderston, he will need to give them orders... Oh, wait. It's all make-believe, and he will never inherit Manderston. Even she temporarily seems bemused at how quickly the fiction has become her reality! At another point, she remarks casually that it really isn't a chore to entertain at Manderston; even a grand ball is no problem... as the downstairs staff of fourteen have their normal workdays of 16 hours increased to 18+ just to get the extra work in. By the end, much like her husband, Lady Olliff-Cooper laments that she will need to return to the 21st century. "I am more at home in this time," she practically sobs. "All these other people will return to the homes when they leave here. I alone will be the one leaving my home." Oy, vey! This 21st-century highly-educated doctor who takes to her new role as a mere bauble on the arm of her husband like a duck to water will almost certainly make modern feminists cringe.

The downstairs staff are too many to go into detail for each, but the star of the entire show is undoubtedly the butler, Hugh Edgar, an international architect in real life whose grandfather was a butler. As the master of the downstairs servants and one of the few who actively engages the upstairs family, his observations are almost invariably the most interesting and the most prescient. One has the sense that he is at least the social equal of the family in the 21st century, but he takes to his new 20th century role with as much gusto as anyone. He seems determined to try to understand his own grandfather's life, and it is the insights he gains that are the most poignant. At one point, he mentions that his grandfather was intensely strict with the motto that children should be "seen and not heard" and "speak only when spoken to." A short while later after handling a disciplinary issue brought about by a 21st-century-inspired slight loosening of the rules, he turns to the camera and laments that he has made a most terrible discovery this day, for he finally understands why his grandfather had to be the way he was. Two sentences in a review don't do justice to the moment's pathos, but it was quite moving.

The other great personality among the staff is the temperamental French chef, Monsieur Dubiard, who creates his own fiefdom in his kitchen by terrorizing the kitchen and scullery maids. Slightly hunched-shouldered and wearing spectacles perched on the tip of his nose, he's almost stereotypical in his ranting and raving as he demands his stove be constantly kept hot or the footmen get the food up to the table before it gets cold. At one point, the egomaniacal chef learns that Sir John is complaining about the unendingly rich food and lack of any roughage - a diet typical of the day but one that is wreaking havoc upon his digestive track - and so Dubiard responds by literally cooking a whole pig in untold sticks of butter and serving it face towards the family at the next dinner. He merrily waves at the face and chimes that he'll "see you soon" as he closes the oven door on it. Sir John, for once unsure the 20th century is for him, complains that it's hard to eat when the beast you're eating is looking at you and promptly sends it back. As the show wraps up, the temperamental chef feels the need to confront Sir John just so he can call him a fraud.

The rest of the staff aren't nearly so interesting. There is a point where the hallboy, Kenny, and the scullery maid, Ellen, begin a romance but have to sneak around to keep it secret. Frankly, the whole thing gets tiring as does the general complaining by most of the servants. Yes, the conditions are horrible and yes, no one in the 21st century would work under them, but this is a one-off experience lasting only three months that I presume they auditioned for. In that case, they need to buck it up and do what's required.

And that, ultimately, is where the weakness of any of these kinds of experiments lies: namely it is very difficult to get modern people - at least those among the downstairs staff - to forget the 21st century. Their arguments about their "rights" and "fair labor practices" are all arguments we would universally accept today, but they'd be utter rot a hundred years ago. No manor of the day would have accepted such complaining and one suspects that virtually all of the junior staff would have been canned and living on the street at the time. The senior staff, including Mr. Edgar and Monsieur Dubiard, generally "get" the uniqueness of the opportunity whereas the junior staff generally does not. To be fair, however, the senior staff all have slightly more interesting jobs than, for example, the maids, who literally work 16-hour days vacuuming (by brush), polishing, mopping, and waxing. Personally, I think it would be interesting being a butler and trying to make a house of that size run smoothly. Being a kitchen maid... not so much.

The six-part series has a set-up and conclusion episode with the middle four episodes each focused on a grand event held at the mansion. A few minutes of each episode is used to explore the events of the day. Theoretically, time "progresses" from 1905 to 1914 during the three months, so the family and staff see papers detailing the death of Edward VII, the sinking of the Titanic, and Emily Davison's tragic demise at the Epsom Derby, among other things. Another few minutes are devoted to various participants' musings on what their lives are like or insights they've had. Most are interesting; a few are whiners that grate on me by the end. Finally, there's the inevitable drama that comes from nineteen people living in close proximity to each other.

The series is narrated by Derek Jacobi, who provides excellent insights into what may or may not have been appropriate or true for the day. Everyone doesn't play by the rules 100% of the time, so this is necessary clarification. I'll also note the main musical theme played mostly as each episode ends is both grandiose and haunting, evincing both the majesty of the house in its prime and also the faded grandeur of the house now one hundred years on. Otherwise, I didn't notice the music very much, and I suspect that large parts of the series had none at all.

One of my main bones of contention with the series, however, is the overwhelmingly negative view it takes of the past. Mr. Edgar at one point summed up the overall theme when he said, "[this society] was sick... and it was swept away!" Certainly, things today are better on balance, but it is a tremendous vanity for the modern person to assume there is nothing we can learn from the past. I won't go into my exact thoughts on the merits of 1910 vs. 2010 any further, but suffice it to say I thought it was unbalanced with only the scantest of off-handed comments during the participants' diary sessions in defense of the past.

The series ended with a couple nice touches. First, it posited a likely fate post-1914 for each of the participants given the immediacy of World War I and the enormous social change on the horizon. Although the viewer understands that all of these people are modern, they do help personalize a theoretical 1914-era mansion that would see many of its inhabitants dead on the fields of the Somme in short order. Secondly, as each of the participants leaves, they are transformed back into their modern clothing. It is nice to see these people we've come to know as they actually are in the 21st century, and the effect simultaneously serves as a sort of time machine to further illustrate the now faded history. Given his prominence in the series, it is fitting indeed that it all ends with the modern-day Mr. Edgar pulling the massive gates shut behind him with a forlorn smile, leaving Manderston a relic of the past once more.

Reading List

2010-09-30T08:10:00.005-05:00

First , my thanks to the responses to my last post that suggested various projects I might become involved with. I may take up some of those suggestions in the future, but for now I'm having plenty of fun taking it easy, at least regarding NWN2. I do have one small personal idea I might follow up, but I'll have to save revealing that until later.

In the meantime, I've been catching up on some reading. The last book I've finished is the latest offering from one of my favorite authors, Bernard Cornwell. The Burning Land is the fifth in what the author estimates will be a seven or eight-book "Saxon Series." I love these books, and if anyone out there is interested in historical fiction set in the Dark Ages, you should really try them out.

The series centers around a 9th-century warlord, Uhtred of Bebbanburg (modern-day Bamburgh Castle near Newcastle). At this time, there was no "England," but rather four major kingdoms - Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria - and several smaller autonomous entities. These kingdoms were originally (for this period) ruled by the Saxons, but eventually the Vikings came in droves, began settling in the country, and one-by-one began conquering its kingdoms. Within short order, all but Wessex had fallen, and even Wessex, the eponymous "Last Kingdom" of the series' first book, was beseiged on all sides.

In the first book, Uhtred is taken by his father, also called Uhtred, to aid the Northumbrian Saxons against the Vikings in the seige of Eoforwic (modern day York). During that seige, which finally doomed the northern kingdom of Northumbria, the elder Uhtred is killed and his son is captured by a Viking Jarl named Ragnar. For the next several years, the younger Uhtred grows up a Viking, learning their language, their customs, and their battle tactics. As a childhood friend of the warlord Ragnar's son, also confusingly called Ragnar, Uhtred eventually becomes accepted into Viking society and is a full-blown Viking warrior by the time he is twenty. During this time, both Mercia and East Anglia have fallen to the Vikings, leaving only a single kingdom in the hands of the Saxons. Thus does Uhtred as a young warrior come south to Wessex looking for plunder... an event that changes his life.

For it is there that he meets the last Saxon king, Alfred of Wessex. It is this relationship between an unorthodox king and a Vikinized Saxon that defines the rest of the series, and Uhtred manages to be involved in several of the major events of the day.

Overall, Cornwell manages to blend fact - at least what we know - with fiction amazingly well. He takes mere scraps of sentences or lists of names found in ancient chronicles and weaves an amazing narrative out of them that bring real life to dusty historical figures.

Alfred of Wessex - now called Alfred the Great - is comparatively unknown today, but he is a seminal king that preserved the island as a non-Viking land and was the first to truly have a vision of a united England, one land for all the Saxons. Unlike the other Saxon kings of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, he understood the nature of the threat, was willing to use as many carrots as he did sticks in his diplomacy, and also instituted a number of military and civil reforms that ended up frustrating the Viking would-be conquerors.

He was also the first intensely-Christian English king, and many of his advisors - much to the chagrin of the pagan Uhtred - were priests and bishops. Further, he demanded that his nobility learn to read and write - another annoyance to Uhtred - but essential for clear communication by letter instead of relying on couriers to relay messages correctly. Finally, he was sick for most of his adult life, and he flirted with death on-and-off for several decades. All-in-all, Alfred was not the image of a king that could withstand the Vikings, but resist them he did, and better than anyone else.

I have some minor quibbles with Cornwell's depiction of Alfred, but overall I think he is fair, and he's certainly a compelling character. Other historical characters fare worse. Cornwell openly admits that he murders the character of Aethelred II, the King/Ealdorman of Mercia and one of Alfred's vassals. Aethelred comes across as weak, conniving, and intensely resentful of Alfred, his overlord and father-in-law. On the other hand, Aethelred's wife - and Alfred's daughter, Aethelflaed, is an amazingly complex character who starts in the shadows but eventually gains strength of purpose. Although she isn't there yet in the books, history tells us that she will rule Mercia alone after her husband's death. We can certainly see Cornwell establishing that strength as the narrative goes on.

Then there are the various real-life Viking warlords, with colorful names such as Guthrum the Old and Ivar the Boneless, that come and go throughout the narrative, and I am constantly surprised how even minor characters, such as a mayor of Lunden (modern day London) or a bishop in Alfred's court, turn out to be real historical figures. Bishop Asser, for example, is one of Uhtred's main antagonists in the novels, despite their ostensibly being on the same side.

Cornwell uses his fictional protagonist, Uhtred, simply to illustrate what would be typical for the era, for he shares many common characteristics with protagonists from some of his other series. He is, I admit,the kind of hero that guys would find more appealing than women - although "hero" might be too loose a term; maybe "antihero" is more apt. Uhtred thinks often of war, glory, treasure, and of leading legions of men. His primary dream is to one day be so rich and powerful and have so many warriors under his command, that he can return to Bebbanburg, storm the impregnable castle, kill his uncle (who took over after Uhtred's father's death), and reclaim his lands. His honor - in the form of oaths - is paramount to him. He curses and fights for the smallest of reasons. He beds down a series of women, most of them beautiful and few of which he cares for. He is an absentee father, although this isn't unusual for the nobility of the era, and he openly despises his eldest son, who he claims is weak and shows no inclination to war. He's a religious hypocrite. He openly mocks the Christian god and occasionally goes out of his way to torment his followers, but when he's in a tight space, he's not above throwing a quick prayer his way "just in case." He kills people in cold blood - even unarmed ones - simply because they lie to him or otherwise get in his way. He does all this and yet, somehow, Uhtred has just enough honor and "goodness" - not to mention a wicked sense of sarcasm - that I like him. Objectively, he sickens me and yet I can't help rooting for him.

Cornwell has really done a lot of research into the era, and never does he shine more than when he depicts battles. Whether the battles are major engagements, such as Ethandun, or smaller skirmishes between a handful of men, you can practically smell the blood, sweat, urine, and fear. If you want to know what it is to stand in a shield wall and stare down a hoard of Vikings, this is about as close as you'll get.

But Cornwell's historical detail extends beyond battles. His is a haunting description of Lunden, a city at this time replete with Roman architecture - the splendors of a bygone era - and thatched huts. There are humorous moments when the Britons admit they can't understand how the old Roman floor heating works... and so they just build a fire in the middle of the marbled hallway. Additionally, Cornwell gives vivid accounts of crossing the seas in a Viking longboat, and it's obvious that he's spent quite a bit of time researching the whys and hows of Norse seamanship. Architecture, agriculture, art, diplomacy... small historical details are thrown off seemingly at will as characters "in the moment" think of them as if they are normal, which for them they are.

Cornwell's writing style is not complex; it'll never be mistaken for Shakespeare, but it gets the job done. It's perfect for brain-candy. Or maybe slightly above; there is some educational value here - actually there's a lot of educational value here if you're the type to pay close attention to the details - but it can be equally enjoyed entirely as an action-hero story set in Dark Age Britain. In that sense, Cornwell's style is masterful.

For the record, the five books thus-far published in this series are (1) The Last Kingdom, (2) The Pale Horseman, (3) Lords of the North, (4) Sword Song, and (5) The Burning Land. Check them out; they really are addicting.

What's Next?

2010-09-17T11:39:00.002-05:00

That's the question I've been asking myself recently. Since the main focus of this blog the last three years has been released, now what?

In the immediate future, the game's been played and commented on enough for me to have a pretty complete list of the remaining bugs and minor issues, and so I know a version 1.02 is coming. After that I confess I don't know.

I have a four to five page outline for TMGS II, and I spent quite a bit of TMGS I setting up some of the structure for that campaign, but I think I'm at peace with the fact that TMGS II will never see the light of day.

I spent basically three years and hundreds (probably thousands) of hours on TMGS I. That's longer than I took for all five parts of Saleron's Gambit... combined! Looking back on that fact, I have two thoughts. First, if I had known it would take that long, I would have never started. Second, it's painful thinking how much useful stuff I could have done with that time. Maybe that sounds more harsh than I intended it to; it's just that I occasionally get a bit reotrospective on what I'm doing with my life and that represents a lot of time I could have given to my family, friends, dogs, etc. It's a choice I simply will not make again.

So does that mean I'm "retiring" from modding? I'm not prepared to say that. In fact, I enjoy it too much to abandon it anymore than I would abandon any other hobby. It just means my projects - should I choose to engage in them - will be much smaller in nature.

So goodbye TMGS II. It would have been an epic continuation of the saga. Maybe one day I'll post a summary of my thoughts on where part II would have gone. Or maybe not.

So that's what's not next. But what is next?

Well, I'm sure many in the community have heard the news of Ossian's upcoming release. I've known about this for several months, but I now only know probably 1% more of the details of this than the average fan, and that only because I had a brief conversation about the history of certain technologies with Alan Miranda around the beginning of the year. I've no idea if anything we talked about made it into the game. While some fans have expressed disappointment with the game being limited to the iPhone, I am 100% sure that Ossian wants to port the world to a PC format. If they do, I'm willing to help. Indeed, there are some indications that I may have a small project for them in the near future, but everything is still very much up in the air regarding that.

In the absence of Ossian, I've found myself tossing around the idea of another group project - something similar to the Bouncy Rock Holloween module released a couple years ago - if only because that would limit my time commitment. There are a few ideas floating around the community, but all of them are moving in directions that restrict the imagination of the individual modder - as most group projects must do to be successful - but which ultimately dampers my enthusiasm.

So my best idea is to maybe release only very small modules, maybe something akin to a sidequest in one of my larger efforts, but that doesn't entirely satisfy me either. After the massive 15-hour campaign that is TMGS, how could I "settle" for a 1-2 hour module? But that doesn't make sense as a criticism because I started with the notion that I don't want another project the size of TMGS.

Then, of course, comes the nagging thought that there is only a very limited NWN2 community at this point anyway. And while that doesn't negate the enjoyment I get from modding, sharing those creations with others is kind of the point. So I've considered whether it makes more sense to switch to another toolset (say, Dragon Age)? I'm not sure there's much more audience there, although I would have to think that there is if for no other reason than DA2 is in development.

So I guess I'm saying I'm confused which direction to go... but then I've always thought that indecision is a kind of decision in its own right.

TMGS Version 1.01 Goes Live

2010-08-29T19:59:00.002-05:00

The tile says it all. All bugs reported to date have been fixed. I think the game should be darn near bug-free now... so if you haven't played it yet, what are you waiting for?

Maimed God Gets to 10+ Votes

2010-08-21T21:51:00.004-05:00

Four days to get to 10+ votes. That's the first big milestone because it means TMGS should be in the main module list after tomorrow's update. Thanks to all who have played and left feedback/votes.

A few bugs - about 4-5 common ones - have been reported. It's annoying; not the reports, mind you, but the fact that I missed them. But then I'm forced to admit that even five bugs in a 15-hour campaign isn't attrocious. I've already fixed most of them in my home version, but I'm going to wait to get all the weekend feedback before wrapping it up and releasing the update. I'm also figuring out where the most common sticking points are, so that will help me update the hint sheet.

Thanks again to all.

Edit: And now I see TMGS listed on the right of the Vault screen in the Top 15 list, and the one that got booted off the list (i.e. the #15 module as of yesterday that is now gone) is... Mysteries of Westgate. That's a bummer...

Release!

2010-08-17T16:26:00.001-05:00

Wow, it didn't take long for the Vault guys to get it all put together. The Maimed God's Saga is released. Download it here!

Submission

2010-08-17T06:23:00.002-05:00

Last night, I submitted all files to the Vault - 1 day earlier than planned - so it's now out of my hands. I'm thinking two or three days until it shows up on the download list.

Estimate: Day R Minus 8

2010-08-12T06:04:00.004-05:00

Tonight, my run-through of TMGS will end; I have only the final boss fight and the denouement to go. However, I've been fixing all the issues I've found as I go, so the list of things left to do after that will be very short. For the most part, I'm now playing with stuff as inconsequential as comma location in my dialogs, but I did find a couple odd events that only happen under very peculiar circumstances. So I should have all that done by tonight.

Tomorrow night I want to replay a sidequest and then fix whatever I find there. Saturday, I'll absolutely finalize all the extras and zip them up along with the music, movies, and hak pak. Sunday and Monday nights I'll devote to target-testing a couple specific situations. And Tuesday, I'll devote to ftp-ing the submission to the Vault. Give the guys there a couple days, and I'm estimating a release on Friday, August 20th.

Which makes today "R Minus 8 Day."

So those who have been waiting, clear your calendars next weekend.

To whet your apetite further, I'll give another example of the music for the campaign. There is a rather significant subplot involving a band of orcs, so this is the Orc Theme. As with all the other music, it was written by StrangeCat Productions. Enjoy.

All Done but the Testing

2010-07-19T07:41:00.003-05:00

Big news. As of last night, I am done with everything regarding The Maimed God's Saga except the final testing. After a few starts and stops, the ending movies have been edited and added to the campaign. I've also added in all the music pieces (32 in total) and handled all the scripting for them. And now it's done...

Except I want to do a final play-through using a male PC and another with a female PC and then fix whatever I find. That means I have about another 50-60 hours of work on TMGS before releasing. So close!

Maimed God Intro Movie

2010-07-05T19:07:00.003-05:00

I promised it, and here it is! I'm finally as happy with it as I can be given my limited 2D skills. I originally wanted something like the pages of an old book turning, but that would require more resources than I have. As it is, the sepia filter goes a long way towards giving the pictures an old-time flavor while actually bringing some consistency to the art. Incidentally, those of you with access to the D&D manuals may recognize some of the pictures; none of them are mine.

The music, as with all the music for TMGS, is by StrangeCat Productions.

A word about the music for TMGS. The composer may have also originally envisioned it, but I know I requested a heavy use of a chorus in the score. I originally asked for Gregorian Chant, which is primarily if not exclusively male, but that was then expanded to all ranges and genders. I have no reason to believe the Tyrran Church has music, much less that it features voices, but I think the sound of the campaign's music will evoke a religious "feel" in the average player of TMGS, and that's exactly what I was aiming for.

Two main themes are present in the movie. The first is the only one I actually wrote (and the composer was kind enough to put in.) It starts with the opening chant and is the core prayer/meditation theme. The second is Tyr's theme which starts at the frame showing the raging battle and was also featured in a track in a previous posting.

So without further ado:

Robin Hood

2010-06-30T06:58:00.016-05:00

So everyone knows the basics of the Robin Hood legend, so I won't recount them here. One of the positives of the more recent Robin Hood movies is that they at least try to set it in the proper historical context. Compare this to the early movies such as the Errol Flynn version that were little more than dudes jumping around in tights. The Kevin Costner version clearly set the action against the backdrop of the Crusades, and the 2010 movie was set against both the Crusades (through a brief bit of dialog) and the early Plantagenet attempts to maintain the Angevin Empire. However,"try" is the operative word, as both movies mostly failed. As one reviewer said, Robin Hood: Men in Tights was probably the best Robin Hood movie of them all because it at least knew it was a joke.

OK, a short bit of background. The Plantagenet dynasty of England began with the ascension of Henry II, the thertofore Count of Anjou, to the English throne in 1154. If a count seems an unlikely choice to become king, Henry's mother was Matilda, who was the daughter of Henry I of England and herself fought a bitter civil war against her father's successor and her distant cousin, King Stephen. Stephen died without a living heir, and the younger Henry was then crowned. Henry II was then followed by his eldest surviving son, Richard I, in 1189 who was in turn followed by his younger brother, John, in 1199. These three kings - Henry II, Richard I, and John - are oftentimes called the Angevins (as in "from Anjou") to distinguish them from later kings in their dynasty because in the reign of John, Anjou was lost in the wars against the French kings. Thereafter, the English kings would (with only brief exceptions) no longer control their ancestral homeland.

As can be seen in the attached map, in addition to Anjou and Normandy (Normandy had been in the possession of the English kings since the Duke of Normandy, William, invaded England in October 1066), Henry also married Eleanor, the Duchess of Acquitane, and then the duo essentially conquered the Duchy of Brittany. Combined with Henry's early military pushes into Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, this all put an enormous amount of land under Henry's control, and this entity is now called the Angevin Empire. One can see why the French king, Philip Augustus, upon looking at this map in which one of his subjects controled over half of France while being backed by the military and financial resources of a separate and independent kingdom, resolved to break the Angevins and put the two entities on a course for war over the next several centuries.

So in the end, it was King John who lost much of the empire, and this is one reason, though not the only one, that he is normally considered a "bad" king while his elder brother and father are considered "good" kings. His father and brother gained and maintained the Angevin Empire while John lost it. In my opinion, it's an unfair criticism of John, as he ultimately suffered for his father's and (especially) brother's overextension of English forces, but it explains the basic backdrop of any Robin Hood story. Richard I is the good and just king while John is the corrupt and cowardly one.

With the background out of the way, there were a couple historical inaccuracies, such as the manner of King Richard's death, but the biggest problem was one that so many Hollywood films make in historical pieces and one that inevitably turns the films into utter dreck: namely anachronistic attitudes. This first creeps up in Robin's initial confrontation with King Richard. One night, the king walks around the camp to determine his soldiers' mood. He comes upon Robin and asks him essentially if he believes in the mission. Robin tells him no because of the massacre of the prisoners at Acre and that Richard's army is therefore damned by God...

Now does anyone believe a soldier in the late 12th century would think this way? Would anyone in the 16th century think this way? Yes, our 21st-century sensibilities balk at the cold-blooded execution of 2700 prisoners, but if any soldier in Richard's army thought the same way, he was 600-700 years ahead of his time. By the way, I'd say the exact same thing about any soldier in Saladin's army, lest anyone think there were significant differences in thought on this issue.

Then there was the whole Constitution/Magna Charta subplot. I'm a bit unclear as to what the movie was really trying to do here, but I'm guessing they were angling towards probably the only thing that the average modern viewer would know about King John: Magna Charta. Nevermind that Magna Charta was at the end of John's reign in 1216, not the beginning in 1199, but the interpretation was pretty daft. The movie shows the whole idea essentially spontaneously brought up by fields full of commoners who are being rallied by their local lords, but it's more anachronistic crap that should be saved for the 18th century. Unfortunately, Magna Charta is most often taught to American students as a sort of precursor to the Constitution, but this is a great disservice because it said virtually nothing about the commoners. Rather, it was initiated by the nobility as an attempt to curb the absolute power of the king and protect their own rights. It was a precursor to the Constitution only in that it theoretically broke apart rule by one man, but only then to allow rule by one man and a "Parliament" (yes, the term is anachronistic here) of a few of his most powerful nobles. A spontaneous eruption of the masses who yearn for their freedom? Give me a break.

Finally, the final battle on the beach was a bad joke. OK, I'm no military strategist, but even I know what was shown was diabolically bad. For those who haven't seen the movie, the French king has decided to invade England (btw, there's a nub of truth to this element, but nothing like what was depicted). The beach they land on is overshadowed by a cliff. As the French exit their boats and start to assemble, the English infantry and cavalry draw up at one end of the beach. The archers assemble on the cliffs and begin to pelt the French to great carnage and bloodshed. Then, for no apparent reason except that Russell Crowe needs some glory in some battle scenes, the English cavalry charge... even though the French army is being obliterated by arrows, are in total disarray, and have no chance of charging the archers due to their being on a cliff... not a hill, mind you... a cliff.

So the French army can be obliterated with no danger to you, or you can charge in like a jagoff. Now I understand that Russell Crowe needs to feel manly and simply sitting there while arrows finish off the army is pretty lame... but then it's his movie. Can't this crew construct a battle in a fictional movie, whose scenery you entirely control, to show the need for a cavalry charge? Dumb.

The truth is in that situation, the French army never would have landed. They may have put out scouts if the army was well-hidden, but hiding 5000 people massed on a cliff and another 5000 massed on a beach from a fleet out at sea with no visual barriers in the way is brutally difficult and would itself defy belief.

Assuming the French were dumb enough to get themselves in that situation, the English would never charge before the arrows were exhausted. In all medieval battles, the bane of armies was the inevitable shortage of arrows. It was a common tactic for each army to pick up the arrows of the enemy archers and fire them back. The great battle of Agincourt, famously won by the English archers, was nearly lost when those archers ran out of arrows and had to run out amidst the dead bodies to scrounge for whatever still-useable arrows they could find. Crecy, Poitiers, Hastings... any of a thousand battles from this era fit the mold. The movie could have shown the arrows running out and THAT necessitating the cavalry charge while the French were still recovering. That would have been easy, but no, the only rationale was the need for an epic climax. Again, dumb.

And then there was the grand PC moment of Cate Blanchett running out onto the battlefield with her army of little boys on "cute" ponies. Could there have been anything more 20th-century than this? If it had been Narnia, I'd have accepted it as part of the created world but not here. In real life, Robin would have laughed at her crew and told them to get the hell out of there, but then that would have meant Crowe would have needed to do something other that glare menacingly across the battlefield as he mulled his glorious charge, and there was simply no time for that.

And so, as I've said about The Tudors, of which I've been generally positive, I can forgive movies for incorrect facts. I'm far less forgiving for getting the "feel" wrong, and this movie was crap in that regard. I'd have thought better of the film if they'd dropped the commoners yearning to be free and instead dressed them all in Reeboks. It still would have been ludicrous, but I could have handled it better.

Now let's look at the merits of the actual artistry of the film. In case it's not clear, I'm not a big fan of Russell Crowe. I think he's a bastard in real life, and he's not a good actor. I thought he was great in Gladiator until I realized that was all he had, and Robin's essentially the same character just 1200 years later. Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, I generally love, but I can't help the feeling that she's checked out as Maid Marian. And the two of these budding lovebirds together generate enough heat to make fire freeze. I'd love to know what Blanchett was thinking when she signed up for this. Maybe she was drunk, but my advice to her from now on is to (1) read the script a second time before accepting a movie and (2) if it has Crowe, then it's a no.

Mark Strong as Sir Godfrey is really making a career out of being the Big Bastard in every film he's in (see also Sherlock Holmes and The Young Victoria). Honestly, I didn't care that much about him here. Again, they tried to make him bad because he's a traitor to his country (i.e. betraying England for France), but the whole idea of the nation-state is a modern concept. The movie had set up that he had personal ties with the Kings of France as well as England (not uncommon in this era), and in a feudal society, personal ties are far more important than the exact spot you were born, especially as members of the nobility often had land grants from all over the place in both England and France and often beyond. As I said, I didn't care.

One performance I did enjoy was Max von Sydow's Sir Walter Loxley, the land barron that adopts Robin after the death of his true son to prevent his lands from returning to crown after his own demise. Incidentally, this little plot device was one of the few from the movie that genuinely intrigued me. Anyway, von Sydow brings both humor and gravity to the role and provides some of the genuine high spots of the movie. Because he draws the viewer in with his performance, his death is the only one that brings genuine sadness, and I can't help but think that the old man blindly waving his sword against his attacker shows a great deal more genuine courage that Robin ever does. He also raises Blanchett's game in their scenes together, as she actually displays genuinely believable emotion in his presence. Mostly this is exasperation, but there is clearly a warm regard between them. Amazingly enough, Crowe almost attains acting respectability in their scenes together as well, as his bemused expression at von Sydow's antics show the first glimmer of something new... although, it may also be that Crowe is actually not acting at all, but rather is genuinely bemused at witnessing someone who can.

Oscar Isaac's performance as King John, once you accept the characature the movie makes of him, is also pretty good. Isaac turns from a groveling prince to a sneering and domineering king chillingly well. The whole performance would easily lend itself to total ham complete with hand-wringing and maniacal laughter, but he never goes over the top. Rather, Isaac's John is no stranger to charm when he needs it, and the fact that the audience feels there is a constant interior scheming behind the smiling exterior only adds to the character's menace.

Music? Check. Costumes? Check. Yup, the movie had them, but I can't remember much about them a month later. Take that for what it's worth. I do remember thinking that the green leggings from one of Robin's early costumes could have been taken straight out of Men in Tights. Maybe it's historically accurate, though I doubt it, but it looks ridiculous either way. The cinematograhy was good for the most part, but I can't forgive Ridley Scott, the director, for his diabolical set-up of the final battle. That's all on him.

So that's it. There were a couple good efforts from minor characters, but they can't save this dreck. It's anachronistic and has poor performances from its principals. Personally, if you haven't already seen it, save it for the 99 cent rental. It might be worth that.

A Little Maimed Music

2010-06-24T06:24:00.005-05:00

As promised, I have a couple of the pieces that will be in The Maimed God's Saga for general preview. There will be something on the order of twenty new pieces in TMGS, so it should sound quite different from other adventures. As a reminder, I have posted one bit of Verona's Theme before. Today, I'm going to post pieces with both deity's themes.

First up, we have a general piece that introduces a couple of the major musical themes of the module including Tyr's at about the 1:12 mark.

Second, we have the evil deity's "Doom March."

While there's a bit of work left, figuring out how to make the movies is the last thing I haven't done before. However, I think I'm pretty close with completing the opening movie. I've worked out the timing of the slides in relation to the music and now I just have to convert it to the proper format, so I think I'll be able to post that in short order. Stay tuned!

Upcoming Flurry of Activity

2010-06-21T07:29:00.003-05:00

Hi all,

There's not been much to say recently because... well, there's not been much to say. However, most of the music is now in. Most importantly, I have the music for the movies, so I can finally finish them up. Then I need to add them in, update the 2da with the new music pieces, integrate all the music into the adventure, and then do my final run-through. Lastly, I'll finalize all the documentation and release. There's a lot to do, but at least I'm back in control of the schedule.

I have several posts that will be coming out shortly. These will be - in no particular order:

1. A couple samples of the music
2. The starting movie (when I'm done)
3. A bit of news on the personal front. I've just returned from my summer vacation, so I'll add a couple pictures.
4. A review of the new Robin Hood movie. As a warning, I'm not going to be kind.

So after a couple slow months, there's going to be a lot going on here the next couple weeks.

Not Much to Say

2010-05-27T15:38:00.002-05:00

Hey all. Not much in terms of updates recently. For one, I've been traveling for work quite a bit recently. Second, I'm still waiting on some of the music, but I'm closing in on making the decision to just wrap the thing up anyway. One way or the other, I'm releasing in the second half of July. That decision is final.

Trinity

2010-03-29T08:28:00.006-05:00

Since I'm now in wait mode for TMGS, I took the opportunity to play through Trinity, a module that first came to my attention when Alazander reviewed it a few weeks ago. Note that there are some spoilers below.

Overall I was incredibly impressed. In fact, the adventure was so much "my style" that I'm able to say very little negative about it. Sure, there was the occasional odd behavior and typo, but I'm genuinely hard pressed to find anything meaningful to criticize.

What impressed me most was what I gather the creators were trying foremost to accomplish: namely that the whole adventure felt as though it were a P and P session. This was accomplished by the implementation of several non-combat oriented challenges. The most obvious and impressive example is the floating stone bridge in the depths of Solaria, where different paths are available for different characters with varying strengths. There were other examples, of course, such as the copious use of secret doors, the use of ropes to grapple down cliffs, and there are probably others that I didn't see the first play-through.

The second truly impressive aspect of the module is the four different companions. I absolutely agree with Alazander's assessment that they were "well-realized without being extraordinary." They were well-realized in that each had a discernable personality and motive. Although one proved a traitor, I was actually more impressed by the one who chose not to return to collect the reward, opting instead to make off with one of the recovered artifacts rather than risk it being confiscated by the authorities. It somehow felt "real" to me that five heroes rode off on the adventure but only three returned. On the other side, they were "not extraordinary" in that none were over-the-top in the way that Minsc was in the BG series or freaks like so many in Planescape: Torment or even MotB. My only slight criticism is that the companion banter more often than not consisted of insulting each other, often in clever ways. That's actually getting tiring to me now, although I can't criticize it too much seeing as how I've all-too-often fallen into the same pattern in the past as well.

A third aspect I appreciated was the ecology of the dungeon. I can think of only five creatures (or groups of the same creatures) that live normally in the dungeon of Solaria. By the time the party gets there, there are some other adventurers that have wondered in, and the dungeon boss does summon some additional undead minions to help defend its home, but on a normal day only those five live there. This is in (I think) five maps worth of dungeons. In between these combat encounters are the various tricks and puzzles I referenced earlier. I still believe - and this is something I strive for in my own adventures - that "blank space" makes the occasional combat all the more exciting and dangerous, and if that blank space is made otherwise interesting as it is here, you have the makings of a really first-rate dungeon.

There was also an obscene amount of custom content, so the entire game felt fresh at every turn. There were new tilesets, placeables, heads, backpacks, and music, although much of the music I recognized from other sources. Nevertheless, this is minor in my opinion; after all, all the eye-candy in the world won't help an otherwise boring module. As it is, Trinity has so much going for it that the eye-candy forms the cherry on a magnificent sunday.

Additionally, the area design was first-rate. The outdoor areas were beautiful (proving that every module team has someone with a better eye than I have), although I thought the forests proved a bit too restrictive in their allowed movement. The interiors were well-realized and - most importantly - interesting, as I have already mentioned.

The writing was the one area that didn't really stand out to me, although it also didn't stand out in a bad way. It was fully competent and got the job done. I will say that I was impressed by the game design in that there were numerous choices that I gather affected the final outcome. Most noticeably, there is a final confrontation that appears to allow a lot of flexibility as to how the entire module will be resolved. I'm guessing you can go all the way from full-fledged traitor to stalwart hero - I chose stalwart hero - and even several shades in-between. That's top-notch.

So overall I agree with Alazander that Trinity feels very close to a professional-calibre module. I'd already pay for it as-is, but add a little VO and knock out the few small remaining points that need polish, and it would be a no-brainer. If it seems like I'm gushing, I am. As I said, this adventure is exactly my style. The best compliment I can give Trinity is that I will definitely be playing it again in the very near future, if for no other reason than to see all the things I missed, and that's something I say about very few modules.

Checklist

2010-03-25T17:21:00.002-05:00

Playthrough - DONE
Personal Notes Addressed - DONE
Beta Feedback Received - DONE
Beta Comments Addressed - DONE
Music Received - IN PROGRESS
Music and Movie Integration - NOT STARTED
Final Playthrough - NOT STARTED

My beta testers proved quite valuable in rooting out some odd bugs resulting from a play-order I'd never think of as well as odd behavior from different machines. I've received about ten pieces of music in their final form thus far and there are at least a few left to go. I also realized that, because each of the companions has different music, I'll need to replay the campaign two more timed to make sure all of it's in place. At this point I'm not sure I'll make my May 1st goal.

Next time I'll post one of the new pieces, so stay tuned!

Pulling into Station

2010-03-02T07:37:00.002-05:00

The title comes from a realization I recently had. I need to finish TMGS. I'm sure there are still going to be some small issues, but I'm to the point where the time I'm devoting to this game could be better spent elsewhere, so I'm wrapping it up. Here's the schedule.

I just finished another play-through this past weekend. Fortunately, I've been correcting most of the issues I found as I go this time, so there are only about 30 or so more to do. There will be some targeted testing with some of those items. Then I'm waiting on two more reports from beta-testers, and I'll address whatever they come up with. After that, I have to incorporate the music whenever that comes through, although I've been told it will be March. When all that's done, I will personally do one final, but thorough, play-through to convince myself it's all properly integrated, and then it's time for release. I think a conservative estimate would be about May 1st, but that's dependent on the music coming in March.

People may be wondering how I can play so many times and still come up with 150+ issues every play-through. The answer is that there are over 200,000 words of dialog in this adventure, and several tens of thousands more in the journal, item descriptions, creature descriptions, etc. Also, as in the SG series, many of my quests have multiple ways of completing them, and then there are consequences later on for if you complete a quest one way or another although some of these are so subtle that I'm probably the only one that would realistically notice. There's even differences based off which companion you have. As I've said before, the two have very different personalities and so will notice different things or give different advice in certain situations. Every time I play through I try different choices and that means that inevitably a bunch of items pop up that need more polish. This last time through, I took the personality of an aloof, uncaring protagonist who was oft-times rude to the companion, and it was the first time I had chosen most of those dialog options.

By the way, assuming about 300 words per page, 200,000 words is the equivalent of a 667 page novel, and that's without the journals, etc. And man, it feels like I've written that much! Good thing I didn't know it would come to that when I started, or I never would have. But don't worry everyone! No one will read nearly all that in a single play-through!

My Little Poll
The poll came out exactly as I thought it would: overwhelmingly in favor of the bug staying in. Someone in the comments suggested possibly removing the bugged feature, but there's a major problem with that. You see, I tried to describe the feature enough for people to understand how it would be used in the adventure so that they could vote appropriately, but not enough to spoil the surprise it's used for. Suffice it to say that if I got rid of that aspect, I'd just have to chuck the whole project in the garbage. We're talking a MAJOR plot point here, so it simply cannot be disregarded.

When I came up with the original novel-to-game conversion (recall that TMGS was supposed to be a novel at one point), I knew that we could access a character's spells via scripting because of my work on the SG series, so I kept the idea in the story and built the entire adventure around it. It was only during testing that I realized (accidentally) that getting to the Domain spells is bugged. Very annoying, but it's in now and not going to change.

Misery Stone

2010-02-17T07:02:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned last time, I took a short break from TMGS and played through Bouncy Rock's Misery Stone. I was impressed to say the least.

The signature aspect of Misery Stone is, of course, that it takes place in Ravenloft, the Demiplane of Dread, and this leads to an unremittingly dark feel that is well-realized at every moment. The maps are mostly well-done with an eye for detail I lack (but can appreciate), and the color desaturation feature is used to great effect. Sometimes, it seems that the only non-gray that can be seen is the red of the copious amounts of blood that flow through the storyline. This world of gray and red might sound dull and it wouldn't work in most other adventures, but the Ravenloft setting means it's perfect.

The storyline and writing are also strong points. Everywhere one travels on the island, one finds only death and decay. Numerous mini-adventures all wrap up into one cohesive picture of a petty lord gone mad and terrorizing the people who live under his rule. The insane asylum is well-realized as is an extensive dwarven stronghold, both of which have now fallen into decay. And the town of Misfield with its mechanical people that literally burst apart when spoken to is dreary and depressing.

The three companions are a further strength, as each has a well-developed backstory and motivation for traveling with you. In short, you are all trapped on the island under the thrall of its dark lord, and you all have the same ticket out: namely the defeat of the lord. There has been some criticism that the companions fall a bit mute later in the game. While this is true to an extent (but by no means completely), I don't think it's particularly a failing. My opinion is that, as the climax approaches, I'm not exactly keen on philosophical discussions with my allies. Once the stage is set, I'd rather just allow the act to proceed UNLESS some kind of twist in the plot necessitates a new set-up. This isn't the case with Misery Stone.

At this point, Jonny Ree has done so much fantastic modeling work that it would be easy to just gloss over this aspect in a review, but we really shouldn't. Jonny has established himself as the preeminent 3D modeler in the NWN2 community for good reason. The new beholder, drider, and werewolf models are all as good as or better than the game's official models. I even enjoyed the retexturing of the normal horse model to make the zombie horses in Brom's barn. Really, the new creatures stood out in just about every respect.

And the new creatures are only a small part of the custom content for the module. There are new heads for the companion and main villain, several new placeables, some new effects, and a couple new feats (I think) for one of the companions. A custom cave tileset is also used, though I'm not sure if Bouncy Rock created that one, and I believe there's some retexturing of some of the existing tilesets. If this last point is not true, then the area designers did an even better job in making the game feel fresh and new than I already gave them credit for.

The game featured several new music tracks, most of which were between decent and good. Sadly, the only one I can remember is a rock theme used sparingly for battles. Most battles utilize more traditional battle music, so when the rock theme comes, it's jarring and out of place. There is a valid stylistic reason to use rock themes for battles (though it's not one I would ever make), but I think the game really should either use all rock for combat or none. As it stands now, it's just odd.

The loot, especially the Dark Warrior items acquired from the six crypts in the cemetery, was a bit overpowered and made several of the final fights, including the game's boss fight, too easy. Other than those six items and a suit of +5 plate acquired off the corpse of a death knight, however, I thought the loot was appropriate for the level.

My only other nitpick is ironic considering my last point. I chose a starting character of Fighter 6/ Weapon Master 3 with my weapon of choice being a battleaxe. The opening scene allowed me to purchase a +1 battleaxe. Then I played the whole module looking at a variety of +2 and even some +3 loot of nearly every conceivable weapon come up (quarterstaff, sling, HALBERDS). But no battleaxe, so because that was my Weapon Master's weapon of choice, I ended up completing the game with my same old trusty Battleaxe +1. But they really need to give the battleaxe some love.

BUT these are all nitpicks. Overall, Misery Stone was a triumph on every level.

You Should Vote, But I Won't
So why don't I go vote on Misery Stone? A short story will suffice.

I remember when the NWN2 campaign came out, I criticized the companions (outside Khelgar, Neeshka, and Sand) for being boring and one-dimensional. Even these three, I said, had stereotypical elements that didn't really make them stand out. I was then informed by one of the community fanboys that, "the next companion I write that's as good as Khelgar will be my first." Now, there are numerous comebacks I could (and did) make to such a vapid point, but the core idea was clear. Somehow, as a module author, I am unable to critique other work because any such critique implies to some that I'm saying I could do better. Interestingly, the original snooty fan didn't apply the same standard to himself. Did criticizing my companions imply that he could do better? Of course not.

But just because it doesn't make logical sense doesn't mean people still don't think that way, so I'll just recuse myself from the voting. BUT, I encourage everyone else who plays to let your voice be heard. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, but in this case I can live with that.

Limbo

2010-02-05T08:25:00.004-05:00

I finished up my last play-through and have already addressed the 120 or so notes it generated. That's a significant improvement over the ~180 from my last play-through, especially seeing as how the vast majority of the notes this time were text formatting, a couple typos, and rewording in various dialogs. I also managed to wipe out a couple nagging bugs that had defied all previous efforts to fix them, including the odd area bug I discussed last time. Thanks, Starwars, by the way, as your suggestion seems to have done the trick.

So now I'm waiting on a few things. First, I have feedback from another beta-tester that's incoming. Then there's the music. After I get all the pieces, I'll need to edit the music 2da, add the pieces to the different areas and dialogs, and finally integrate the movies. Then I'll want to test it all again.

I'll probably run through the entire thing again before the music comes anyway, but it's getting tougher and tougher to be motivated to play the same 18-hour campaign for what would be my 10th time or so, not to mention all the partial run-throughs I've done.

My thought is that I'll take a break, maybe try the recently-released Misery Stone to get my mind on something different, and then come back to TMGS.

That's the big picture. However, a somewhat serious issue arose during my last play-through regarding domain spells. Apparently, the engine has a difficult time determining if the player has any memorized. This introduces potential bugs that can't be fixed by anyone but Obsidian - and they're not exactly frothing at the mouths to work on NWN2 anymore. You see, I have numerous points where the game is supposed to determine if a player has a spell memorized, allow certain actions if so, and then decrement the number of times the spell is memorized. It works perfectly for normal cleric spells and even for wizards, druids, and other spell-casting classes, but it goes all to hell if that spell happens to be a domain spell.

After banging my head against the wall for days on end, there appears to be nothing I can do about it. The bug is just going to be in the game I guess, and it's going to piss me off to have near-continual "bug" reports that I can do nothing about. I have begun to even think about editing the domain 2da so that no domain spells at all are available. That would end the bugs, but it would overpower those domains that grant extra feats instead of extra spells. I've even thought about wiping out the domains period for the campaign, but that obviously goes against established D&D rules. There's really no good solution here I'm afraid.

So now that you know my dilemma, feel free to vote on the sidebar. I have a feeling I know which way the poll is going to go, but I'll formalize it anyway.

The Big Surprise That Wasn't

2010-01-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm flying through my latest testing of TMGS, and I’m reasonably pleased with the number of notes I'm taking of things to correct. There's virtually nothing left that would constitute a real bug, and I'm still well below 100 comments while being a ways into Act III. Nearly every note I've taken can be handled quickly.

My two beta testers, however, both came up with a rather nasty bug. Specifically, two small interior maps in Act III cause the game to crash in some instances. After examining the error logs, it appears that the problem isn't with the module or even with NWN2, but rather with the NWN2 call to the MicrosoftVisual Studio 2005 runtime DLL, probably during a screen draw. I'll need to hunt down exactly what the issue is, as the fact that both of my beta testers ran into the same problem is probably a sign that I'm in for a lot of grief when it's released to the general public. Funny enough, neither I nor Alazander had this issue, so it’s not universal, but there’s definitely some hardware or software configuration that doesn’t like those two maps.

Note that if anyone out there is a wiz at external API invocations and thinks they can help me track down the exact issue, I'd appreciate it. I've got both error logs.

Once I track that down, I should have a very polished version. However, I'll have plenty of time to continue testing because in what was the worst-kept big surprise of all time, I recently agreed to collaborate with StrangeCat Productions on custom music for TMGS. The process was initiated early last week, but I'm already excited about the results. I've posted a small snippet of Verona's theme (the love interest for male PCs) below.

Also, I managed to find enough pictures of a similar style on the net to make start and ending movies viable. I’ll be sure to post the start movie as soon as the music for it is ready.

So these two developments mean that the final production will have the far more professional feel I was originally hoping for. Things are looking up!

Alaska is Cold in January!

2010-01-19T08:56:00.008-05:00

The title may seem obvious, but first-hand experience is an eye-opener regardless. I have just returned from my (hopefully) last business trip to Alaska for a while, but this one just had to come in January. I will say that -35 degrees F (-37 degrees C) with no wind feels a LOT warmer than even -5 degrees F (-20 degrees C) with a 5 mph wind!

Then there was this poor bastard. It wasn't the worst I saw, but it was the worst I saw when I had a camera handy. I can't believe people actually agree to live like this full time, but I guess the world needs all kinds. On Saturday, I woke up to -25 degrees F in Fairbanks, AK, and ended up in 75 degrees F in Melbourne, FL. That means I actually made up 100 degrees in a day. Crazy.

Maimed God's Saga
One of the benefits of my week in Alaska was that I returned with renewed fire to wrap up TMGS. I just received the detailed feedback from my first beta tester, and there are several small issues to handle. However, his wrap-up comment was as follows:

Can I also note I think is is a much stronger piece of work than the SG series despite the character restriction. By the end I was thoroughly enjoying playing the priest character!

I'm currently waiting for the feedback from my second tester, but he seems to be near the end.

In other TMGS news, I have an exciting announcement coming up, but I want to get a little further in before I reveal exactly what. If it all works out, it's going to be cool.

Preliminary Maimed God Business

2010-01-06T09:08:00.004-05:00

The World of TMGS
Juan's question in my last post leads me to remind people what the map of the Maimed God's Saga Campaign looks like. As he remembered, the world map was indeed made using the Civilization III toolset, as I revealed in this post. The overall map has not changed since then.

The campaign starts in the center of the map at the village of Riverford, then moves to Navatranaasu, and then moves to the area around Waterdeep. To be clear, the map has a colorized insert of the area around Navatranaasu.

Character Creation Guide
The starting level for TMGS is 6. Enough XP will be given at the beginning of the module to bring the character to the player's choice of between levels 5 (for those who like a challenge) and 7 (for those who like it easy). However, I know there are some who like to take a character all the way from the beginning, which means you'll need to find a suitable adventure for levels 1-5. For those who are ready to start getting their character ready now, I've uploaded the character creation guide here.

Happy 2010!

2009-12-31T17:36:00.003-05:00

Happy New Years, everyone. May 2010 be as good as 2009 if this year was good for you or better if it wasn't.

I also get to mark another year gone without TMGS seeing the light of day. The good news is that it's now close and getting closer all the time. The major bugs are all out and I don't imagine I'll need to add any more content. I like the way it plays, my alpha feedback was generally good, and I've already finished the adjustments to account for the few significant suggestions for improvement I received. I'm now to the point where I can say it will be released as soon as I am confident in its level of polish.

That's where the beta-testing comes in. Yesterday, I got the campaign to my lone beta-tester. Yup, that's all I've got for now, so most of the beta will be me, and I've simply got to take a short break before I play through it all again.

In the interim, I've been playing through SoZ again... oh, and watching football and eating, etc. And then I've received my copy of Tudors Season 3. Gotta get through that!

Schadenfreude

2009-12-15T08:54:00.007-05:00

Well, all my changes from Alazander's comments are incorporated and I'm well into my next play-through. In fact, I just started Act III, which means I should be finished in a day or two. Right now I am at 124 comments, and that will almost certainly reach 160 or so by the end. Granted, most of these are very minor things like dialog formatting and very few at this point are genuine bugs.

However, it's disheartening that not a play-through goes by in which I don't find 100+ items to fix. I don't want to release a non-polished module, and I don't think I can feel really comfortable with a final release until a play-through only finds about 10 to 15 items, all of them minor.

Nevertheless, I'm not going to let this stop my beta phase from proceeding. Once I correct the comments from this round of testing, it's on to the beta. I still have room for other beta-testers, by the way, if anyone is interested. (And it would still be appreciated.)

So switching gears, what does the title of this post refer to? Another question will yield the answer, and that question is why is this man-boy crying?

Well, it probably has something to do with that top line and the fact that 13 < 32. Actually, in mathematical terms, 13 << 32. Any sports fan in the US who has not been in a cave these last couple weeks knows one thing: that Tiger Woods has ruined his image. But if they know two things, then it’s that the so-called best college football team in the country got DEE-STROYED a couple weekends ago, leading to the copious quantities of tears that emanated from the face of the tough guy above.

And I have to admit, I soak it up. Why? I hate that team, and I'm not fond of the goofball who leads them. That would be Tim Tebow, who the media obsesses over almost as much as they do/did Tiger. I blogged about Time Tebow before, for those with a good memory. If I'd been there, I'd have licked the tears off his face because to me that's the nectar of the gods.

Thankfully, the Alabama Crimson Tide saved my favorite sport for me. I was really starting to hate football...

I'm Back

2009-12-01T19:39:00.006-05:00

So updates have been scarce recently. Lot's of reasons for that, but my time-table for testing TMGS is still on track. I'm working through a couple remaining issues from one of Luke's comments that required some reorganizing of a few dialogs, but progress is steady, if slow. I do think the end result will be better.

Caribbean Cruise
So my wife and I went on our first ocean-going cruise this past week. There was some good and some bad to it. Overall, I wasn't real thrilled with the lack of flexibility and the comparatively small amount of time in the countries we visited, but having the hotel essentially move with you is nice. We spent a couple days in Mexico, one in Belize, and one in Guatemala - very different from our other trips. We got to see a few Mayan ruins and zipline through some rain forests. Pictures included.

Our next trip is shaping up, and we're pretty much 100% set on spending a week on our own driving through Ireland. Should be fun with that whole left-side-of-the-road thing. Be scared, ye Irishmen and women.

So as we're going to be free-form and the itinerary is currently wide open, I'll put it out for the faithful readers who are either Irish nationals or familiar with the country. Is there anything that is considered a "must-see" in the country? This could be either a city or a specific site. Hopefully, we'll find some really great things that aren't necessarily in the guide books. We'll obviously fly in and out of Dublin, but anything else is open.

Cleopatra and Antony
One of my big reads during the cruise was Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston. I won't review the book here, but it was one of my selections following my viewing of the se cond season of Rome. It did a great job of filling in the gaps in the very fast-paced narrative of the final episodes and made several of the scenes make more sense. It also confirmed the number of small details that the TV series included that were absolutely true. (For example, Antony really did challenge Octavian to individual combat after his defeat at Actium.) I'm still going to read a few other books before I settle on my opinion of the depiction of the Egyptian court.

Overall, it was a very easy read for anyone interested in the period. In other words, it was written for the general enthusiast as opposed to a scholar.

The End of NWN2?

2009-11-13T08:20:00.006-05:00

So Dragon Age arrived... finally. And it had to come just in time for me to release TMGS. Oh, well. Truth to tell, I'm getting more and more eager to just finish the damned campaign. I'm looking forward to moving on to other projects (non-modding-related), or maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mood today.

The truth is that NWN2 has been in its death throes for maybe a year now, but it's been allowed to linger on because there was no CRPG successor. But with Dragon Age out, the dagger's just been driven through the heart of the NWN franchise. Honestly, it saddens me. NWN was a fantastic community that thrived for five years. NWN2 flashed for half that long... maybe. It could have been so much more and so much better, and I guess I'll never understand why some things went the way they went.

But enough of the vague lamentations. It's not like I can divulge anything more than I have, so complaining about it serves no point. Maybe Dragon Age will revitalize the genre because I don't see much else in the pipeline. That said, let's move into more positive directions.

Alpha Testing
I got feedback from one of my alpha testers over the last couple days, and I'd say it was generally positive. There are a few bugs he noted as well as a few suggestions for improvement. As I agree with nearly all these suggestions, I have some work to do. There's nothing that's going to take an obscene amount of time to implement, but a few of them aren't trivial either. That will serve as my work for the next week.

So who was my alpha tester? Ossian lead designer Luke Scull. Most of his comments are specific and therefore contain too much spoiler information to reveal, but some of his general quotes about the overall campaign follow. Before you think that the whole review was glowing, most of the specific comments regarded things that needed to improve (as one would expect).

"Let me just say that was a fantastic adventure ... it took me a good 18 hours overall. The whole thing was excellently designed and really well written. In fact, the last third contained some of the best writing I've seen in a game in a long while."

"Overall, the game was a really terrific piece of work; probably the best module I've played for NWN2."

I've been working on the project documentation as I've waited for the alpha testers to finish, and I'll be releasing the Character Creation Guide shortly. As a head's up, one issue that did arise is that the start level for the game is going to move to 6 with the ending level being 10.

So the schedule: The next week will be spent implementing improvements. The week after that (Thanksgiving week here in the States), I'll be on vacation and out of the country. When I return, I have 3+ weeks until Christmas vacation. That will be spent target-testing the new material, playing through the entire campaign again, and then implementing fixes from that play-through. By Christmas break, I anticipate releasing the Character Creation Guide to the general public and getting 2-5 beta testers to try out the campaign. I have a couple people in mind already, but if anyone else is interested in joining the beta group and playing TMGS over their Christmas and New Year break, let me know. Note that it won't be all fun and games; I will expect detailed feedback if you join up, and the payment will be sincere gratitude.

Rome, Season 2

2009-10-26T08:26:00.009-05:00

While I'm awaiting comments from my alpha-testers, I'll review the second season of HBO's Rome, which I recently completed. As I wrote in my review of the first season, the series is a mixed bad with some bad and a lot of good. Overall, I would recommend it to any who are interested in this period of history.

The second season begins within minutes of where the first season left off with Julius Caesar's body still warm on the floor of the Roman Senate, and the ten episodes take us through the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra and the final triumph of Octavian, a span of about 17 years.

Rereading my review of the first season, most of my comments still fit. The series is still magnificently shot with lavish sets and a grand scale, though not too grand. The DVD commentary makes it clear that they didn't show Caesar's funeral or any battles because keeping true to their vision was simply out of the budget. Therefore, they chose to cover the events by having the characters simply talk about them in a number of ways, often by montaging several conversations together in a quick succession of scenes. This isn't a criticism; if the money truly wasn't there, then it's an approach I agree with. I was especially impressed by some of the directorial decisions by John Maybury, who directed episodes five and ten. His use of overhead shots and the first person depiction of Antony's drug-induced haze in episode ten made his episodes stand out in a good way.

As an aside, the Egyptian court is shown as one of complete decadence with near continual orgies and copious drug use. In fact, the commentary for episode 10 even admitted that they hired actual porn stars to play the extras in most of the Egyptian scenes. I'm not remotely qualified to comment on the accuracy of the portrayal, and the commentary leaves little doubt that the writers did much research, but in my case the series did what it was supposed to. It intrigued me enough that I have already picked out several books on the subject and will be receiving my shipment from Amazon shortly. Whether it's accurate or not, it was compelling and made interesting viewing.

Several performances are noteworthy. I wasn't fond of James Purefoy's Mark Antony in season one, although I appreciated the character's depiction. Indeed, Antony is shown as little more than a "strong man," essentially a thug enamored only with sex and violence and, though he engages in the political process, he is mostly unable to appreciate the nuances and instead opts to kill those who oppose him. For the most part, the depiction holds true this season as well, although I came to admire Purefoy's acting a bit more. His final scenes in episode ten run the gamut of anger to overwhelming grief to false bravado to drugged-out lethargy. The entire performance runs dangerously close to ham territory without ever going over the top. Instead, it all works as an extension of a man who is utterly incapable of keeping his emotions and base desires under control, a trait that ultimately proves his downfall when pitted against the seemingly emotionless and ruthless Octavian. As an aside, listening to Purefoy's commentary of episode nine was a real treat, and it showed that the actor had a keen grip on the history and how he was trying to portray it in his performance.

The two "average joes," Pullo and Vorenus, played by Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd, respectively, gave solid performances and didn't seem to be quite in the center of the political whirlwind as much as they were in the first season, probably because they were given their own independent storyline of trying to gain and maintain control over the gangs of the Aventine that only tangentially involved the major political figures... although Vorenus did predictably get to share Antony's last night on Earth with him and ended up being the one to hold the sword on which he committed suicide. Anyway, these two really are strong actors and end up giving a nice double act for the bulk of the series. Given their storylines, which are often more reminiscent of a soap opera than a period drama, both get to run the gamut of emotions, and both do so very well. McKidd does an exceptionally good job of portraying a father who knows his relationship with his children isn't right but doesn't know how to fix it. The awkwardness, missed moments, and frustration and final devastation when he realizes he's been betrayed by them can all be seen poignantly written onto his face. Stevenson's instant turn from grieving lover to cold-blooded killer at the end of episode nine is his moment that stands out for me. The ease with which his tears turn to a look of seething rage as his hands clasp around Gaia's neck is chilling indeed.

I can't go far in my discussion of performances without mentioning my favorite from season one, Max Pirkis as Octavian. Unfortunately, Pirkis gets little air time, for by episode four, the narrative is fast-forwarded several years and the part is recast with Simon Woods portraying the older, wiser, and colder version. As I noted before, Pirkis always portrayed Octavian as a bit emotionless with ruthless streak that bubbled just under the surface, but Woods takes it to a whole new level. In his portrayal, those trait have completely overwhelmed the character to the exclusion of virtually anything else. There is barely a scene in which the new Octavian does anything short of stare intently at his target and speak in a monotone. Even his one explicit sex scene, he simply stared at his wife with the same look and went through the motions with the same intense emotionless demeanor. Frankly, though I enjoy the depiction of Octavian as supremely competent, it was a bit too one-note for my tastes.

The recasting of Octavian really highlites the second season's primary weakness: namely the wildly uneven pacing. There is a good reason for this. The second season was originally meant to bring the narrative up through the defeat of the republicans led by Brutus and Cassius. The third season was to center on Egypt and end with the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra. However, halfway through the second season, the crew learned the series was being canceled, and so they quickly wrapped the story up.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the "progression" of Antony and Cleopatra's love. In episode 2 when Cleopatra comes to Rome, the two clearly don't like each other. At the end of episode 8, Antony still professes his love for Atia before being banished to Alexandria. By the opening of episode 9, however, Antony and Cleopatra have already been lovers for some time. By the middle of episode 10, they are committing suicide together. After slowly building up Antony and Atia's affair for a season and a half, we're suddenly told to just accept that Cleopatra is the love of Antony's life, and we're never told how two people who originally loathed each other came to fall in love. It's understandable given the behind-the-scenes circumstances, but it nevertheless weakens the series.

I'm also left wondering why the second season only had 10 episodes while the first one had 12. Perhaps it was cost again; as they were planning a third season, it certainly wasn't because of a lack of something to write. I have to believe that another two episodes would have greatly helped the pacing of the final part of the season, although it still wouldn't have been perfect.

One characterization that does progress nicely is the afore-mentioned Atia's. In my season 1 review, I mentioned that Polly Walker succeeded in playing the somewhat-likable bitch fairly well. In series two, she still displays that side, but many more facets come out. In the wake of Caesar's assassination, she is clearly worried over what will become of her now that her great protector is gone. Desperately she clings to Mark Antony, her "sex buddy" who becomes the de facto lead of the Caesarian party. Even when her son, Octavian, is formally named Caesar's heir, she dismisses him as incapable and does what she can to bolster Antony instead.

By the time Antony and Octavian come to blows, she is clearly falling for Antony beyond what political prudence dictates. She eagerly agrees to be Octavian's envoy to Antony in a bid to seal their alliance against Brutus and Cassius. Later, when Octavian suggests a marriage between their two houses, she happily chatters away about wedding plans, assuming she will be the one Octavian chooses. She is devastated in Alexandria when Antony refuses to see her, and her grief at the news of Antony's death is palpable, even as she puts on a brave face. The tears just beginning to well up in her eyes in the final scenes as she attends Octavian's triumph during which a likeness of Antony is paraded around to jeers from the crowd is perhaps the most emotional scene of the entire two seasons.

In the commentary for episode 10, the creator of Rome, Bruno Heller, stated that he considered the series to be in many ways Atia's journey, and after thinking about it for a while, I agree that hers is one of the most important. The one-time scheming bitch has gotten her fondest desires: her rival, Servilia, and Servilia's son, Brutus, are both dead, her son has attained the preeminent position in Rome, and she stands as one of the city's richest and influential citizens... and yet, she can't enjoy her triumph because of the steep price she has paid for it. The old proverb "be careful what you wish for" has come true. Overall, Polly Walker does such an outstanding job of bringing a sense of pathos to the role that she simply must get the standout performance of this season.

It's really a shame that the HBO brass ended up canceling the series before a third series could be made. I can only regret what might have been had they allowed the show to progress naturally. As it stands, season 2 - and Rome in general - is a fun, if flawed, adventure that should please anyone interested in the period and even many who are not.

Alpha-Testing Commenced

2009-10-11T18:52:00.002-05:00

Good news! I was able to play through the entire campaign from start to finish, so woo hoo! There were, of course, many minor bugs, but these fell into the category of journals not updating properly and so forth. Nothing major.

So I have now turned the campaign over to two alpha-testers to see what they have to say about it. I think the campaign is a good one, but am I full of dung? Have I made a flop? Are my characters horrible? Am I right about it being good? Something in between? They'll let me know, and then I may pass along some of their comments.

As it turns out, the alpha-testing comes at the perfect time. I leave tomorrow for yet another business trip to Alaska for two weeks. I am going to take a break from TMGS, but at least some work on it will still be getting done in my absence.

Act III Finished!

2009-09-28T11:21:00.003-05:00

I'm a little behind the schedule I had hoped for last post, but that's it. I'm calling Act III done. The last playthrough was largely successful, though it generated several small issues (misspellings and the like) which are now all taken care of.

So last night I started through the entire campaign and have already come across a couple show-stoppers that I need to clean up. I haven't really looked at Act I in a great many months (years even), and it's obvious that one of the patches did some damage. Luckily, Act I is rather small in comparison to the others, and most of it seems to work just fine. I think I'll only need a little bit to get all back in order and then proceed onwards. Acts II and III have been largely completed and tested since the last patch came out, so I don't expect anything similar to crop up later.

The other source of possible issues is that I'm doing my campaign-level testing with a male PC and the majority of my testing to date has been done with a female PC. The only difference is that the companions are different, have different dialogs, and have a few different interjections. I don't expect much to go wrong because of this, but it's likely to be a bit rougher than a female PC would be at this stage. Fingers crossed!

Mongo Progress

2009-09-15T12:47:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've been both highly motivated and had lots of time to work, but this past weekend was one of those times. I finished incorporating the comments for Act III that I discussed last time, and I then completed another play-through that got all the way to the final fight before a game-ending bug. However, I'm pretty sure the "bug" was actually a result of playing Act III as a module instead of as a campaign, as the problem was in the transition to another module.

That said, I still had 65+ comments I had made up until that point, some of which were pretty serious. For example, I didn't like some of the pacing and so I had to rearrange things in some places and add some content in others. However, this has all been done, and I've also shuffled some maps between modules to reduce the number of module transitions. Last night, I managed to do some targeted testing of the new areas and reshuffled maps to ensure it all works.

So I'm ready for another play-through of Act III, and I have every reason to believe it will be the first to be successfully completed with no hitches. I'll fix whatever issues I find, of course, but if all goes to plan, I'll be done with Act III testing come Sunday. Then I just want to play through the whole campaign from start to finish to make sure it all works together - it should, as I've independently verified all three acts and both internal transitions - and then I enter alpha testing with a couple chosen reviewers. Once I get their comments incorporated, it'll be time for around five beta testers.

Hold tight. We're getting there!

Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 4

2009-09-09T06:33:00.006-05:00

As always, beware of MoW spoilers below.

A Word on Official Product "Editting"
One of the comments last time got me thinking that maybe it would be good to give some incite into how the internal review process goes, or at least went in the case of MoW. Every word I wrote went through three levels of review before it made it into the game.

The first level was Ossian, who generally wanted to guarantee that nothing we submitted would be embarassing to the company. This meant verifying the writing was of professional quality and that the topics and language were appropriate. This was the level that weeded out Gracie's possible suicide in the Tortured Hearts quest, although this was done early in the design stage, probably because Alan knew from experience that it wouldn't pass the next level of review...

The second level was Atari, whose sole interest seemed to be to eliminate anything that would garner a mature rating for the game. I remember this level as being pretty benign, probably because the Ossian brass did such a good job of self-editing.

The final level was WotC, who cared mostly that their intellectual property was respected and accurately depicted in-game. There was a lot of discussion about allowing the player to become a vampire at the end, as the powers and limitations had to be strictly enforced according to the official rules that governed that transition. This was also the level that required the change in Porthyria's illusionary race in The Knot of Shou Lung quest. There were a slew of comments that came back about changing the genders and races of several characters, I guess in the name of maintaining diversity within the Realms. That Porthyria comment was the only one that affected one of my quests, but I remember several characters were changed from male to female, though I don't remember exactly which ones changed in quests that weren't mine. I've always admitted to being human-centric, but I guess a dude-centric adventure is the result of having all dude designers.

Random Elements
I'm sure that everyone already knew that the designers handled the side quests, the companions, and the layout of the main path (though the main path was done long before I came on board), but the list of other things designers handle is pretty extensive. For example, there are over 100 unique items in the game - I think it's more like 130 items - that all have individualized descriptions. There are the landmarks around Westgate, the ones that give the Tourist feat if you visit them all. There are the curiosity items in Mintassan's shop. Then we had to do the descriptions you can read when examining every creature and clickable object. Finally, all the ambient characters and one-off encounters you see throughout Westgate that make the city seem alive. The designers are also the ones that decide where the loot is to be found and how it's to be spread around the campaign.

There are so many of these little bits that I wrote that it's impossible for me to remember them all, though I certainly can pick them out as I'm playing through the game. In general, if an item is found in one of our subquests, it's one we designed. One item I do remember clearly is Mordecai's Mesh, a suit of armor found in the Trouble at the Track quest. Originally, the armor was infused with spider glands that gave it the On Hit: Web spell property, which I thought was a really cool idea. However, when Alazander was playing testing the quest, the spell went off so often that the insane graphics slowed his computer to a crawl. So now it has the Hold Person spell instead. It's not nearly as cool, but people won't have their computers explode playing the game now.

There is one ambient character I created that I became rather fond of, and that is Bohemund the Beligerant, the street "entertainer" who had multiple vitriolic exchanges with his audience. The idea came to me from all the entertainers you see throughout many of the larger cities in Europe. I've always wondered what kind of outrageous acts you might be able to get away with, and I've thought about an over-the-top insult comic... a guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and so he insults them because he hates that he has to demean himself for money by performing stupid tricks for the great unwashed... (Note, this is not to say street performing is demeaning; this is simply his take on it.)

Anyway, this thread in the MoW forums is rather funny (scroll to the bottom two posts). For the record, Bohemund was never intended to be a companion in MoW; he was always a one-off, BUT... I came to like the character so much that in one of Ossian's now-defunct proposals for another project, I suggested using him as a companion, and the suggestion was accepted. So yes, there was a point in time in which he was slated to join the PC in future battles. This, of course, necessitated a complete character concept including a reason why he was in Westgate in the first case. So, in short, Bohemund is one of those seemingly vague one-note characters that I now have four pages of background for. If you want to know the true background of Bohemund, just drag your mouse below.

Bohemund, originally hailing from Halruaa, is actually a loose ally of the Harpers (though not a member of the organization). He is in Westgate in pursuit of a Priest of Cyric who is escorting a very dangerous child to the eastern lands and plans to catch a ship across the sea. His Harper allies have rented a house across from where Bohemund performs and are scanning the crowds attracted to his act. Not long after the events of MoW, the Harpers are ambushed and killed, leaving Bohemund alone and in need of allies.

Main Path Characters
At the putset, the main path characters were all divied up to the designers by Alazander. The first toolset work I did for Westgate was Captain Merrig's dialog, meaning he was written in February of 2007. I was quite nervous at the time, as (1) he was the first character I had ever written that had been invented by someone else and (2) it was the first "official" toolset-level work I did for Ossian. I ended up going through the Westgate design document twice highlighting every word I could find about Merrig. That amounted to about 3-4 sentences, so the character was still pretty undefined. However, one of the things that Alan had mentioned to me on the phone during my interview was that there was a character named Merrig who he envisioned as needing to spit to clear his mouth every two sentences. I don't remember that detail being in the design document, but I included it in the game anyway.

An additional consideration is to economise every dialog that had to be VOd. Merrig was alotted 750 words of VO budget, and that meant that everything he said had to be condensed into 750 words. That's not a lot to be able to get all the plot in and still give a flavor for a unique character. Alan's spitting idea helped with the latter, though, and I also thought a while on coming up with a good, yet cheesy, pirate-themed joke to start the conversation off. Writing for a VO budget is a not-inconsiderable restraint, but hearing the actual words you wrote out loud is a thrill, so it's a net positive in my view.

Other main path characters I wrote include Kajeel, the illithid (including baby Kajeel), Latasha, Orbakh's female vampire henchman, and Rumboldt's butler, cat, and safe. In fact, it was I who made the suggestion to add the ability for rangers and druids to ask the cat for the safe's combination. As far as Latasha, the Westgate document called for meeting her three times over the course of the adventure: in the ship, in the safe house, and finally in the catacombs. I was certain I wanted the player to be able to brag about already beating her twice upon meeting her for the final time, but that then necessitated the need for a good retort. That's why writing her final dialog was a bear. It's frankly difficult for someone whose ass had been kicked twice already to believably have a sufficient amount of bravado about round three.

Voice Over
One of the most commented on aspect of MoW is the lack of voice over. I can't speak to the exact cost of VO, but I know it was expensive because of how strictly controlled it was compared to everything else. A 750 word budget on Merrig, for example, didn't mean exactly 750 words, but we couldn't be far off.

This was especially problematic with the companion quests. We were given 750 words to introduce the companions, so all their initial introductory dialogs are completely VOd. Luckily, this only had to cover a few plot points and the flavor of the character, as we'd be able to continue developing them later. However, we were only given 1000 words for their related quests, and this didn't remotely cover everything for the Tyrran Enclave. I tried outlining what I thought was important, but it wasn't long before I was Skyping Alan begging for a bigger budget. Eventually, I wheedled another 500 or so words out of him. I also inquired as to whether there was a male actor I could use for a few words. As it turns out, one of the male actors had a few words left over because someone else's dialogs had come back a little lite. This allowed me to voice some of Sneed's dialog exchange with Charissa, but I still only had enough of a budget to cover the lines that I thought were most crucial to the character development arc, such as when Charissa argues with herself over Sneed's eventual fate or her reflections on her actions after leaving Sneed's chapel. People have argued that the in-and-out VO was distracting, and I agree somewhat, but I can honestly say I argued for as much as I could get, and Alan stretched what we could do to the limit.

As an aside, the VO was done by a professional studio Alan had worked with while at Bioware. I think the same studio had done the VO on a lot of the BG series including ToB. Early on, a copy of some of the early takes of the dialogs was passed around to the Ossian team. These contained some bloopers, some of which were hilarious. I rememberthe actresses for one of the female companions (I believe it was Charissa, actually) was trying to make the death gurgle for her companion sound set - something like "aargh!" - when she just busted out laughing and said, "Boy that sounds pornagraphic!" And it really did. That was not the death sound that made it into the final cut. In fact, I remember probably a 10-15 second clip that was just a concoction of different death sound attempts by the actors involved that was rather humorous. Maybe I'll see if Alan can put that up on the Ossian download site.

The Schedule
For those interested in how long it took the team to accomplish certain tasks, my recollection is as follows. I came on board on just about Feb. 1, 2007, at which point toolset work had been going on for two to three weeks. I guess story development and approval and project planning took from around October 2006 to just past New Years of 2007. We were pretty much done with the main path writing by the middle of March and had a couple weeks of testing just that. Throughout April and the first half of May, we finished up all the sidequests. The second half of May and June were filled with the extraneous design stuff I outlined above. From July through September was play-testing, fixing bugs, and adding stuff that had been overlooked. That means that by July 1st, the heavy work for the designers was largely concluded, and we became extra play-testers on occasion. The level designers and scripters were still working hard through August. By October 1st, 2007, the project was more-or-less in the can. One year from the initiation of project discussion to ready for distribution. That shows what a talented and highly-motivated team of around 15 people can do. The delay after that I won't discuss.

Questions?
So I think the four parts together are a pretty good representation of what was going on from my vantage point, but there's obviously only so much I can put on a page, and I've tried to write only the most interesting bits. However, if there's anything I've left out that any of you are curious about, feel free to ask. The only thing MoW-related I know I won't answer at this point are questions about the delay.

Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 3

2009-09-04T09:56:00.014-05:00

As before, spoilers for MoW follow.

When I first came onboard in early 2007, my second initial task done in parallel with the development of my companion concept was the creation of several sidequests. These sidequests were broken down into four categories: companion, "fed ex", minor, and major. These categories are pretty self-explanatory, but a couple comments are in order for the last three.

"Fed ex" did not mean literally what we think of: i.e. bring me a book or deliver this wood to the shop at the corner. Rather, it meant a quest that could be done in 10-15 minutes using only one or two encounters with "encounter" meaning either a battle, a trap, or some kind of character interaction. Contrary to the traditional fed ex quest, there was supposed to be some kind of twist to it that made it interesting. Minor quests were to be around 30 minutes and major quests around 45.

I was fortunate to come on the project late in that I could peruse the sidequests already developed by the others and so try to do some different things from what had already been done. For example, if I had found a lack of hack-and-slash quests, I would have written a couple. Had there been a lack of skill-heavy quests, I would have focused in that direction. As it turns out, with one small exception (outlined below), I didn't really find any inbalances, so I could proceed with the type of quests I like with an easy conscience. Beyond that consideration, the only instruction I was given was that Alazander thought Undergate was a bit bare and so wanted me to direct some of my quests to that quarter.

Minor Sidequest: Trouble at the Track
I finished Saleron's Gambit, Part V in the summer of 2006. One of my sidequest ideas for that module was to place a halfling village in the Hullack Forest that the PC would pass en route to the penultimate showdown with The Priestess. In the village, the PC would meet a halfling who had made a drunken boast - followed by a sizeable bet - that he could outrun a deer, a bet he would have to pay off if he couldn't somehow rig the race. Que the PC... I had visions of a cutscene with the halfling hasted in some way allowing him to speed across the finish line ahead of the deer.

Ultimately, I decided the quest was out of place. At that point in the module, the player was rapidly moving towards the end, and it didn't make sense for someone to stop to help someone rig a race. But the core idea was one I still liked.

Eight months later, Ossian gave me the opportunity to resurrect the idea, but the different setting of Westgate demanded that the specifics be changed. The seediness of the city allowed gambling readily enough, not to mention the idea that people would try to rig the races, but the deer had to go. Fortunately, dog racing was common enough in civilization. The idea of a gambling house in a city filled with criminal elements led me to change the one rigging the race from the quest giver (in the original SGV quest) to the entity the quest giver is racing (in the final version). One nod to the original idea was that I kept the quest giver as a halfling.

I immediately envisioned the house owner being a thug of the fighter class. The new idea that the house was magically rigging races naturally led to the inclusion of an arcane caster that could brew the potions. The need to maintain the animals led to the inclusion of a druid. With this, I only needed a rogue to complete a balanced enemy party for the player to battle. In my design document, I therefore gave the tavern owner a brother named Haman, a rogue who formed his connection to the Night Masks and explained how his profitable business could be allowed to operate without molestation. These four, then, would form a suitable final boss fight.

However, I generally love to include ways to utilize character skills in the completion of quests. This led to some of the design choices for the other encounters. First, the player has numerous skill-based ways to get past the half-orc door guard: bluff, lock pick, and so forth. Second, players can brew the antidote to the speed potion if they have the Brew Potion feat. Third, there is a guard that the player can talk into giving up the antidote with any of the talking skills.

In my envisioning of the inner workings of the gambling house, I pictured a slave-goblin doing all the menial cleaning. This led to the encounter the player has with the goblin when it witnesses the player tampering with the dog bowls. The goblin runs away no matter what the player does, but I thought it was a cool flavor encounter that might ramp up the tension that maybe the party will be discovered.

One pain that the sidequest presented was the obvious thought that the player could just slide a potion of speed into the dish, so why go through all the rest of the work to come up with a specially-made potion? This necessitated the confiscation of all potions of speed by the door guards. While at first I thought that made things unnecessarily complicated for relatively little added roleplay value, I came to appreciate it because it did remove the ability for the player to use one particular buff (potion-wise) during the final battle.

As an aside, I was incredibly pleased by the work the map designers did on the Track. It looked better than ever thought it would and far better than I could have done. I do know that there were several rounds of cursing on the scripters' part as they tried to get the racing cutscene right. I guess the pathing proved problematic at points, so all I can say is thank God it wasn't me!

Overall, my satisfaction with the way this quest turned out was a 10 out of 10. It was pretty much exactly as I envisioned. As I'm not going over the Tyrran Enclave again here, I'll say that my satisfaction for that quest was a 9 out of 10. In case you think I'm being too much of a homer, my grades for the next two I designed will be decidedly lower.

Fun fact: Originally, I wanted to call this quest "The Amazing Race," but the title was vetoed due to copyright concerns regarding the popular reality TV show of the same name.

Fed Ex Quest: Tortured Hearts
It may seem odd, but making a fifteen-minute quest unique and fun is actually incredibly hard. There are, after all, only so many unique one-off encounters you can do without blatantly ripping off old ideas. I'd actually rather just do a full sidequest than a so-called fed ex quest. Anyways...

Back when I was young - I'd say in the range of 10 to 12 - I remember watching an episode of the old Twilight Zone in which a woman has been in a tragic accident that required extensive reconstruction surgery. Her face is entirely covered in bandages with only slits for the eyes, nose, and mouth visible. The whole episode is essentially a series of home-life vignettes and trips to the doctor's office in which the doctor tries to prepare her for how she'll look disfigured and deformed when the bandages come off. The episode is unique in that the view is always shot so that only the woman's bandaged face is visible. Everyone else is seen from behind, standing in a shadow, at an odd angle that only shows their lower body, and so forth.

Finally, at the end of the episode, the bandages come off to reveal a total hottie, but when they give her a mirror, she screams in disbelief at how ugly she looks. Then the camera pans back to show the doctors and nurses staring at her, and the viewer sees that they all have the same series of disfigurations, meaning that in this world, the disfigured is normal, and what we see as normal is disfigured.

Place that idea in the Forgotten Realms and add a magical rationale for the "disfigurement," and you have Tortured Hearts. Two factors went into the exact form the quest took. First, the fact that I could use almost any race for the protagonist was what ultimately allowed me to use the idea without the need for bandages, etc. Simply, to a lizard folk, humans must be ugly. Second, the use of lizard folk as the important NPCs in this quest also played into Alazander's request that I utilize Undergate as much as possible.

In the end, I can't help feeling the quest is incomplete, but I think that's a general aversion to fed ex sized quests in general. Therefore, I can't give this quest more than a 7 out of 10 in satisfaction.

Fun fact: In the original draft, if the PC revealed to Gracie that her love, Sarl, has already moved on, her body would later be found in a sewer with evidence that she had killed herself. However, in an official product, suicide is a no-no, so in the final version, she ends up wasting her days away drinking and gambling at the Track. Apparently, killing thousands of bad guys is ok, but killing yourself is not.

Major Sidequest: The Knot of Shou Lung
This idea sprang from the legend of the Gordian Knot, the great Turkish puzzle that promised conquest of Asia to any who solved it. I knew that I did not want the same answer that Alexander the Great used to solve that puzzle, but otherwise I started only with this historical kernel, ideas from a book I was reading at the time on the organization of medieval European guilds, and the idea that I again wanted to take the quest into Undergate if at all possible. Additionally, the only shortcomings I noticed in the list of sidequests already confirmed for the game was that there was a shortage of puzzles, so I tried to add some in here.

And that was key. At heart, I wanted the quest to be what the actual Knot was: a big puzzle. This led to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the trophy's dissappearance, the riddle in the case, and the puzzle door lock in the lair of the riddler. The prominence of the riddle led to the idea that a sphinx would be the quest giver, but there were no sphinx models in the toolset, and creature models are simply too expensive to do for just a single sidequest. Therefore, the sphinx became polymorphed into bipedal form. The poem itself went through a few iterations, and the final form was heavily influenced by Hugie, who turned out to have a bit of a poetic streak in him.

Undergate necessitated an enemy or faction who would be at home there. As I thought - and still think - the drow are overplayed, and I'd already used monstrous creatures for Tortured Hearts, I settled on the duergar. Once I had the final enemy, the backstory of the Knot began to formulate as an artifact of the wars between dwarven factions, and once the artifact became dwarven in origin, the truth that the Knot is simply a marvel of ancient dwarven construction popped out.

The duergar also brought to mind another game in which they were prominent: Icewind Dale 2. I remember in that game that as the party exits the cellar of the Black Raven Monastery, they are ambushed by several duergar who had aided the party earlier. The first time I played the game, I was just clicking my party towards the door, and some unfortunate pathing issues left my party scattered when the ambush was sprung. The resulting battle was brutal and required all my wits to survive... and almost ten years later, I still remember the immense satisfaction I got when I beat those bastards with only two characters left standing. With the duergars slated for The Knot of Shou Lung, I decided I wanted to replicate that battle if at all possible. To do that necessitated a situation where the duergar could appear to be helpful only to then ambush the party.

Originally, however, the party had to penetrate the duergar compound, and I specifically requested some interesting battles up front. In my quest document, I didn't specify what they were, and so I was dismayed when I didn't see any battles at all in my initial play-through. It was Alan Miranda of all people came up with the solution when I pointed this out. The crossbowmen on both of the raised platforms as the party tries to fight their way to the ladders are all his idea.

That also illustrates one of my design philosophies. I hate making upper-level enemies by simply making superhero versions of lower-level enemies (like the Thayan Gnolls in MotB who must be 15th level). I would rather increase difficulty level of battles by giving lower-level enemies superior position, numbers, or some other advantage. In this way, the player gets to keep the "specialness" of his advanced levels while still being challenged. All of the duergar in that battle except the bosses are 5th level, though some of them are rogues which gives extra oomph to their blind-side attacks.

Incidentally, that same philosophy applied to the fight in the main room of the Thayan Compound of the Tyrran Enclave, in which the player must bash through crates, navigate a grease-covered walkway, and dodge explosive barrels, all while getting pounded from all sides by elemental-arrow-wielding 3rd level rogue archers.

With all the twists and turns, the quest ended up being a very long one. Nevertheless, I do not feel it offers enough variety in how one can solve it. I don't have any ideas for other options, but I normally favor quests with a great deal of openness to them, so I can't really say I'm more than 7 out of 10 in terms of satisfaction at how this turned out.

Fun fact: Originally, Porthyria's polymorphed form was a human woman, but WotC's insisted she be changed to an elven woman, as they sought to increase the racial diversity in the game. As far as I'm concerned, she's actually a sphinx, so who cares what she looks like.

So these are the four quests I wrote. Of the 17 total sidequests, I believe the breakdown is as follows: Alan Miranda - 1, Hugie - 2, Me - 4, Nemorem - 5, Alazander - 5. Sorry to anyone I might have short-changed.

Next time, I intend to discuss a hodge-podge of other topics regarding Westgate.

Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 2

2009-09-01T11:01:00.002-05:00

Well, I can now reveal that my wife and I went to Las Vegas for her birthday this past weekend. It was a first time for both of us, and we had a blast. We're not big gamblers, so the only cash we lost was on the entertainment and meals. I bought us tickets to see Cirque du Soleil: KA at the MGM Grand on her actual birthday, and it was an amazing show. Other than that, it was just experiencing the city, which is rather unique in my experiences.

And then I got to update my US graph below to now include Nevada. Moving on...

Mysteries of Westgate
So last time I told the story of how Charissa came into existence. Now I'll give my take on the character and describe what I was trying to accomplish with her. Note that there are MoW spoilers below.

One of the things I try to do with most of the major characters I write is to make them three dimensional and lifelike to the extent that can be done in a game. Note, I said major characters, which describes only a very few, but Charissa definitely fell within this group.

Many people who play MoW and spend little time talking to Charissa will probably view her as opinionated, caustic, judgemental, and rigid in her thinking, and she would no doubt be proud to know she projects that image, but the crux of her character is that she is profoundly unsure of herself. In fact, she is in the throes of a deep internal philosophical crisis. It's what I now call a "Charissa moment." I recently had one, and I bet most people have one at some point in their life.

Essentially, this occurs when two "truths," often formulated during the simplistic idealism of youth, become no longer compatible in a single world. For Charissa, these two truths are that (1) her parents are innocent of the crime they are accused of (aiding in the kidnapping of Falucca Ardabrent) and (2) justice is an absolute principle. When her parents were arrested, she inately believed that they were innocent. When they were then found guilty, she began to search for answers, eventually arriving at the Tyrran church that promised justice would triumph. She has tried to merge these into a single universe, but over time, these two competing principles have proven unable to coexist, and no matter how long she searches, she cannot find a way to force them to. Fundamentally, if justice is universally true, then how do her innocent parents sit behind bars?

This, then, is the core of her restlessness. She believes that if she can find the pirate captain, Pharros Sneed, he will have the explanation as to how everything can be made right. He is the one who can prove her parents' innocence and allow justice to prevail. That is her sole mission, and anything else she engages in either is a means towards that end or serves as a proxy for it. (In other words, by destroying other evil-doers, she vicariously destroys her own.)

Charissa has, of course, reacted to this profound self-doubt by giving off an air of supreme confidence. She is determined to allow no one else to see her weakness. That is why, contrary to what one might expect, she lambasts Mantides and goes easy on Rinara. In Mantides, she sees a reflection of herself, and she handles that reflection the same as she does everything else she doesn't like: by bludgeoning it to a pulp. Though Rinara's world view is one she can never agree with, the certainty with which Rinara holds it is calming to her. As she says during one of the companion exchanges, "she'd rather be around with someone who knows what they believe - even if it is wrong - than one who is wavering in their belief."

This also explains one of the most controversial aspects of the character: namely during the Tyrran Enclave quest, why does a lawful good character abandon the slaves to their fate simply for vengeance? That's not lawful good! It's more like evil!

First, one must understand the Tyrran mindset is one that stresses justice first, so I never believed the choice here is all that clear-cut for a Tyrran. That being said, I would still think saving the slaves first is the more preferable choice. However, and this is key, Charissa is not a perfect example of her religion. Regardless of whatever principles the religion espouses, in this instance, the shock of at last finding Falucca overrides any thought of right and wrong. Here is a woman who can prove her parents' innocence, and she will apprehend her regardless of the consequences. I guess I could agree with giving her an alignment shift in the evil and chaotic directions, but I wouldn't agree that temporarily allowing one's passions to overcome one's mind is a reason to change alignments entirely. This is perhaps Charissa's most human moment in my opinion. The world is full of imperfect people who imperfectly live according to the values of their religion, even when they legitimately hold those values dear.

I have over time become wary of what is often termed "navel-gazing" characters, so there is no point that Charissa ever actually spells any of this out. Rather, one would need to talk with her often, look for subtle clues, and use their own human intuition to glean any of it. For those who simply want to get to the adventure and forget talking to the companions, they'll never get more than a surface-layer view of any of them, and that means the image Charissa projects will be the only one they see (just like real human relationships). But those who spend time with her should pick up several clues, such as the one mentioned above with Mantides and Rinara, that should reveal there is more to the character than just the bombastic, self-righteous priestess.

As an aside, Charissa's quest, the Tyrran Enclave, explores many themes. The obvious one is the fate of Charissa's parents and the beginning of her final resolution of her "Charissa moment." But there's something else for Charissa there. As her two key principles begin to come together, a third one gets added: compassion (or mercy). No matter which way she deals with Sneed, she has begun a process, which she articulates immediately after leaving the Tyrran shrine, in which she begins to think about the roles mercy and compassion have in her religion. The player isn't meant to be able to guide her along to think exactly as they do; Charissa's already too experienced and independent an adventurer to be led around by the nose. But she has begun a process of introspection that will lead to greater wisdom (important for a priestess).

There are other themes as well: love, fate, redemption, justice, and questions of the greater good. The first two are explored in the story of Falucca and Sneed, the third and fourth in Sneed's subsequent life, and the final one in how the player chooses to deal with the slaves and Falucca. Sneed's ultimate fate is not meant to be an easy choice for the player. (Obviously, Charissa is the one who makes that choice, but the player gets to advocate one way or the other.) As a pirate captain, it can be assumed that Sneed engaged in all kinds of theft, rape, pillaging, and murder, even if he is innocent of Falucca's abduction. However, he changed his ways several years ago and has since acted for the benefit of mankind. Does any future good he might do outweigh his past crimes? Is there any good to be done in punishing a man who has a clear track record of having mended his ways? Does that even matter since his past crimes have thus far gone unpunished?

As for the question of the greater good, many people probably view that as saving the slaves. It's certainly the more immediate good, but if Falucca escapes to set up shop elsewhere, there may be hundreds or even thousands of people who are sold into a lifetime of slavery as a result. So which is worse: killing ten people or enslaving thousands? Of course, there are other considerations such as the definite knowledge that the ten will die versus the hypothetical scenario that thousands will be sold into slavery, but that only adds a further dimension to the dilemma. One of the things I really wanted for this quest was to present choices that weren't easy or obvious. Hopefully, I succeeded.

Next time, I'll give some incite on the origins and intents regarding the other three sidequests I designed.

Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 1

2009-08-24T07:47:00.012-05:00

Maimed God Update
Progress has been slow. I was sent on another business trip to Alaska last week, which meant zero progress was made. At the end of this week, I'll be taking my wife somewhere for her birthday. It's a surprise, and she sometimes reads this blog, so I'll have to reveal exactly where later on. Then it looks like I might have another business trip after that.

But yesterday I did manage to thoroughly test one of the areas I hadn't tested all that much yet, so I think it's pretty good for now. In addition, I finished writing a new dialog for a new "flavor NPC." Essentially, after working to add content to Act II, I thought some of the areas in Act III were bare in comparison. So more content got added.

Anyway, I have some more targeted testing this week, and then I think I'm going to do one more complete pass-through of Act III and then it's on to campaign-level testing.

Mysteries of Westgate
Since progress on TMGS is slow and I can't post screenies of Act III anyway without spoiling the hell out of the adventure, I'm going to turn to a subject I've been patiently waiting to write about: some behind-the-scenes of the Westgate development. Note that this is not going to delve into the whole "why was it delayed" saga. I almost definitely don't know everything, and what I do know is secret. However, I will reveal how I became involved and what my thoughts were as the project came together: essentially a Developer's Diary but after-the-fact. Right now, I envision this being a four-part series, but this could change if I think up more interesting content.

The Beginning, or How I Became Involved
It was January, 2007, and I had just handed in my resignation for my previous real-world job. During the time I was cleaning out my desk and ticking down my final days, I had little to do, and so on a whim, I logged into my hotmail account and - a very rare event - I checked my trash bin to see if any legitimate messages had been caught by the spam filter. Yes, I was very bored.

Well, in between all the advertisements for penis enlargements and new methods to make my girl happy, I saw a note from Alazander. Thinking back, it was odd that it got flagged as spam, as we had exchanged a couple e-mails previously in regards to some comments he made about "Saleron's Gambit," but there it was. Fortunately, it was only a couple days old at that point, so I could still answer in a reasonably-timely manner. Opening the messgae, I was surprised to learn that he was now involved in Ossian (like everyone, I had played DoD), and there were some openings coming up. They needed a scripter, but they also might need a new developer, and would I be interested? After a few e-mails, I had a phone interview with Alan Miranda, who mentioned that, though he hadn't played the SG series, he had noticed that SG V was rated right under DoD on the new modules charts (#1 and #2 - yes, I remember). By the end of the conversation, I was in. It was only left to decide in what capacity.

Of course, I would have done either the scripter or the designer jobs, but I mentioned I'd rather be a designer. As it turns out, one of their designers ended up leaving the team later that week, and I was slotted into his place. Honestly, I don't remember who that was, but I do remember he was someone pretty well known in the NWN community at the time, and he had developed some mods on his own that I had heard of. Thanks to him whoever he was...

The Birth of Charissa Maernos
So within days, I was in heavy planning. The storyline for Westgate had been finished for a while, and most of the sidequests were planned as well, but very little content had actually been done in the toolset. I was probably only one to two weeks behind in actual toolset time. Anyway, I needed to quickly come up with a companion and several sidequests, get them approved, and start writing.

I already knew that two of the companions were a fighter named Mantides and a rogue named Rinara, so I thought up a character concept for a wizard, but when I spoke with Luke, there was silence on the other end of the phone, at which point he said that because of the heavy undead content in the story, they'd rather have a divine healer.

As an aside, prior to my involvement, the third companion was going to be a female bard named, I believe, Eudice. Because bards have access to healing spells, this was agreed to even though bards are not technically divine casters. I got the impression, however, that bard was not the preferred class for the third companion (strictly my impression here), and they didn't need to worry with me. At the time, I didn't much care for bards, although my feelings on the class have modified recently for the better. What it did do was pin down the gender of the companion. As Eudice was female, a female voice actress had already been hired, so that placed an additional restraint on my companion.

So it was now back to the drawing board. Keep in mind that this was all pre-MotB, so there was no Favored Soul or Spirit Shaman, so the list of divine casters (minus bards) was Cleric, Druid, Paladin, and Ranger. Rangers aren't much in terms of spell-casting. Neither are paladins, and this would have trampled on Mantides' back-story anyway, so that left Cleric and Druid, and I just decided that Cleric worked better in a city-based adventure. Honestly, this didn't thrill me, as I was then writing a novel centered around a female cleric, but I set to work doing what I could.

It was around this time that I decided I didn't have the patience to write a novel and so changed TMGS to be a NWN2 module instead. However, I liked the protagonist I had envisioned, Sheridan Steele, and so I took most of her mannerisms and ported them over to the new companion. In TMGS, the novel, Sheridan was a tall, blonde, Amazonian, tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners enforcer who had trained with an elite cadre of paladins in her home town of Neverwinter. There, she had learned to use both a tower shield and a warhammer. In the only battle scene I had written to that point, I had envisioned one of her favorite battle tactics as essentially bull-rushing opponents with her tower shield, pinning them up against walls, and using her weight to bash them into submission. She was also left-handed (unfortunately unable to be duplicated in NWN), and this made her tough to handle, as her blows came from the opposite direction that most adversaries expected. In demeanor, Sheridan was unyielding and merciless... at least to begin with. This created the basis for tension with her companion, Tancred, who was deeply distrustful of the Tyrran church.

So those who have played Westgate can see how Sheridan became Charissa, but only externally. I was determined that I would not give Ossian that character in case I wanted to come back to her in the future, and so I resolved that the new character would have a different name and a different backstory. When I release my character creation guide for TMGS, one of my hints will be to not make the character from Waterdeep because the story doesn't work if the character already has contacts in that city. I already knew this, of course, and so I deliberately chose Waterdeep as the home of my new character, as this would force me to think beyond the character I had already created.

So I downloaded the Waterdeep source book from the Ossian server and began to just read. I'm not sure I can really outline how all the ideas began to come together from there, but the pirate theme from Westgate's lore combined with the Waterdhavian nobility to coalesce into a new backstory that featured both aspects as well as slave-trading. Looking through the businesses of all the noble houses of Waterdeep, I saw that the Maernos family had once specialized in slave-trading, though it is now illegal in Waterdeep I believe. From there the name and backstory just worked itself out.

Because I was already working on TMGS in a couple forms, I didn't want Charissa to be a Tyrran. Originally, she was a Lathanderite, but this was vetoed by Alazander because of the heavy inclusion of the Lathanderite church in MoW. On my own, I tried to work Charissa into the churches of Ilmater and several others before reluctantly coming to the conclusion that, because her backstory dealt with the theme of justice or lack thereof, Tyr made the most sense. Thus, in a sense, when Charissa mentions to the player that she tried several different churches before settling on Tyr, it's the truth.

So by mid-February of 2007, Charissa had been born in her final form. Next time, I'll give my interpretation of the character. Despite her apparent one dimensional nature, she is actually the most complex character I've written to date, though some in TMGS will best her. But all that's for another post.

Musings

2009-08-04T09:16:00.016-05:00

I returned from Maryland a few days ago and got right back to work on TMGS. I've finished my last play-through and have already handled most of the issues I noted. There are a few left, including a couple rather serious ones. For example, there was a bug I found by handling quests in a different order from what I originally envisioned; a needed character for one sidequest leaves at a certain point in the core path making the sidequest unworkable. That's pretty much a "DUH!" moment, but it's amazing how blind you can be when you're so used to thinking about the adventure in a certain way. It's easily correctable, though I will need a bit of time to implement the change.

Still, overall I was very pleased with how polished it was. Release is getting closer all the time.

Thomas Cromwell

One thing that my trip to Maryland did for me, though, was that it forced me away from the computer and therefore made room for me to churn through some of the books I've been meaning to get to. Actually, I got through one book: "Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII's Most Notorious Minister" by Robert Hutchinson.

I can't remember where I saw the comment now that caused me to buy the book, but in the back of my mind, I had the impression that one of the author's ideas was to present a case for Cromwell being much more active in Anne Boleyn's downfall than is generally accepted. Having read the book, I don't really see that as his case; he pretty much took the standard line on the subject... to the extent that Anne even featured in the book, that is.

My biggest gripe is that the author didn't seem to know what he wanted to do. As a quick explanation, there are two extremes to historical writing, either of which is valid and useful. On the one hand, you can write for a professional audience, in which case you present a clear, logical case with copious notes and well-documented sources for any argument you present, no matter how small. The only things that are not documented are facts so universally accepted as to not be in dispute. This type of book is tedious for any but the most interested reader.

The other extreme is what is sometimes referred to as "popular history," in which the author uses notes sparingly or not at all. Often, these are written almost as a narrative or story designed to hold the attention of a reader who is potentially only mildly interested. In the latter, the book is written for a reader who will mostly assume that the author is a superior authority on the subject and so will just accept what is written as true. In the former, the audience is likely not to consider the author a superior authority on the subject and will need convincing if they are to agree with a view different from the one they already hold.

With the book in question, however, the author seemed to jump back and forth a bit too much for my preference, though he obviously tried more for the former style than the latter. As such, it's hard for me to recommend the book to a serious scholar and impossible for me to recommend for those merely interested.

"Thomas Cromwell" is certainly negative in tenor towards Cromwell, as could be gleaned from the title. This is another big sign that the author isn't entirely interested in an academic treatise, as he has no problem interjecting his opinion of the man. Oddly, however, the epilogue then credits him with several useful and even positive changes in English government. These include reformation of the tax system and a curbing of some government abuses, though the author points out that this did not extend to Cromwell himself. Indeed, Hutchinson claims that Cromwell so enriched himself, both legitimately and illegitimately, that by the end of his life he was the third richest man in England after only Henry himself and the Duke of Norfolk. (Incidentally, if the claim is true, then that would make him wealthier even than Suffolk, which would be quite the accomplishment.)

What I do find interesting is that this book seems to be one of a recent slew of offerings on the subject of Thomas Cromwell, which leads me to believe he is drawing increased interest lately. It might make an interesting juxtaposition with another recent publication, "The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant." The strange parallel in the titles, publication dates, and even the similarity of the covers make it look like two neighbors got together and decided to have a sort of mini-debate in the presses.

John Adams

2009-07-24T08:31:00.022-05:00

TMGS Update
I'm pretty excited about "The Maimed God's Saga" right now because the end is definitely approaching. I've worked out the module transitioning issues and have heavily debugged the scenes that bridge the second act which takes place in Navatranaasu, and the third which takes place (nominally) in Waterdeep. In addition, I've worked a bit on the intro into Act III to sharpen the opening moments and fix a couple issues that must have been introduced with the later patches, and I'm now ready to really buckle down and finish up the play-testing of Act III. As long-time readers may remember, I've already done serious work on the final act, so it should go faster than previous acts. And when that's done, I move into campaign-level beta testing!

I also made one other decision. Originally, the adventure started at 5th level and would take the PC to 8th level, meaning that 8th level would be achieved right after beating the final bad guy and gaining the last big chunk of experience for the adventure. After some play-testing, I realized the full adventure was going to last around 14 to 15 hours. After some thought, I concluded that 3.75 hours per level advancement struck a better balance between leveling too fast (and levels not meaning anything) and leveling too slow (and players becoming frustrated) than 5 hours per level. This decision then necessitated increasing the difficulty of the later encounters including virtually all of them in Act III.

Travels
I will be slowed next week, though. I have a week-long trip for work to the Baltimore area (Fort Meade), so work will be zero for several days. Bummer.

John Adams
Looking at the IP map of my readers below, the heaviest concentration - no surprise - is from North America and Europe. However, it is interesting to see the spots from some more exotic locales (from my perspective). Hello to whoever's in Sri Lanka, Siberia, Iceland... And it looks like there's only about one person each in New Zealand and Mauritius that cares, but they come back a ton by the size of their dots. But I digress...

Where I was going is that John Adams will be of limited interest to half my audience, but for those who have no reason to know, he was the second President of the United States. Among the first few Presidents and their associates, collectively called the Founding Fathers, he is among the lesser known even to Americans. His administration, the only one of the first five to last just a single term, is nestled between two of the giants of American history: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

To briefly place Adams a bit more into historical context, several of the first few Presidents are generally considered among the best there have been. Washington, of course, established the basis of almost everything that the office entails, and his revolutionary credentials as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army lends him additional historical weight. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and, as president, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, which gave the geographic impetus to the unofficial U.S. policy for most of the 19th century known as Manifest Destiny. James Madison wrote the Constitution and, as president, oversaw the efforts in The War of 1812, which confirmed the results of the American Revolution, even fleeing into exile as British soldiers burned Washington D.C. James Monroe was the youngest of the group and had limited Revolutionary credentials, but his eponymous doctrine set the philosophical basis for American foreign policy in the 19th century. In between all these is John Adams, who did what, exactly?

Several years ago, David McCullough wrote the definitive biography of Adams, and his reputation has seen steady improvement over the last decade. It was this book that led to HBO's production of John Adams, a seven-part miniseries that details the events of Adam's adult life. Last night, I finished the seventh part and have mixed feelings on it.

The series opens during the Boston Massacre of 1770. I did not remember until I watched the series, but Adams was the lawyer who defended the British soldiers in the incident, eventually winning their acquittals. This made him tremendously unpopular among Bostonians at first, but it eventually played into a reputation that he was a man of principal, a reputation that helped him get nominated as a Massachusetts representative to the First Continental Congress where he would meet and befriend many of the men who would become the core of the Revolution only a year or two later.

Up front, my biggest gripe with the series is that it was too short for the subject matter it wanted to cover. From 1770 to Adams' death in 1826 is a long time to cover in seven episodes of an hour and a half each. This results in break-neck pacing that makes the episodes feel more like a series of vignettes than a complete narrative. The producers made the choice to cover all the important stuff, but as many of these events were years apart, it means the viewer often careens wildly from one situation to the next, often with very different political backdrops that aren't well explained. Friends in one scene are enemies ten minutes later without any explanation as to the events that led there.

I also think there were some pretty horrific casting choices, the worst of which was Rufus Sewell as Alexander Hamilton. Now, I've seen Sewell in other work, and he's a competent actor, but Hamilton he is not. He simply fails to convey the notion that he's a financial wizard, instead appearing flighty and intellectually vapid. Incidentally, Hamilton's relationship with Adams is the basis for my comment above about friends becoming enemies in literally ten minutes for no apparent reason.

As bad as some casting decisions were, others were brilliant. The two leads, Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail, completely nail their roles. It is their relationship, more than any other, that defined Adams and his career. In a series that too often took a strictly factual approach to its narrative, these two managed to get the lion's share of characterization moments, and they made the most of them. The two laugh together, argue, exchange knowing glances... in short, do everything necessary to show that, whatever we may think of marital relationships in the 19th century, these two were both the best of friends and intimate confidants. They cry with each other through the bad times (the deaths of two children) and bolster each other through the darkest days of his administration. It is not for nothing that Abigail Adams is considered among the most influential first ladies of the 19th century.

For example, in part 6 Adams is contemplating whether his course of neutrality between Britain and France is wise. (In Europe, Napoleon was quickly rising, and the two nations were already openly hostile to each other.) He is contemplating giving in to those in his party who want war with France and is wrestling with the decision during a sleepless night following news of the American ambassadors' humiliating dismissal by Talleyrand in Paris. News of the dishonor is rapidly being disseminated in the press by those who desire war and are trying to apply pressure to Adams. Yet it is Abigail in the dark of the night who hugs him and urges him to stand firm in his conviction.

But the support also goes the other way. In one scene, Abigail reads an editorial in the paper to John as they sit for an afternoon tea together. Ever more irritated, Abigail is practically screaming as she gets to the finale, in which the writer calls Adams (essentially) "an ugly, vain, toothless, and condescending cripple." She throws the paper down in disgust, at which point Adams only peeks out over his teacup and proclaims wryly, "Well, I'm not crippled." Abigail smiles but is not really mollified. She returns that they would never have said the same about Washington, to which he again looks at her over his teacup a bit mischievously and replies, "They would have called him toothless." (Washington had notoriously bad dentures.) The tact finally works, as Abigail looks him in the eye, realizes he's winding her up a bit, and then the two begin to laugh together. These scenes are just two of many that illustrate the deep bond the two share.

However, as good as these two were, on a personal level I was most struck by Stephen Dillane, who played Thomas Jefferson. While he obviously got no where near the screen time that the leads did, he nevertheless stole what time he got. Most amazingly, he did so without saying very much. Jefferson was notoriously quiet, choosing to listen much and speak little. A shy man more inclined to introspection and solitude, he still managed to achieve the Presidency, a fact which argues for incredible personal magnetism. Dillane managed to achieve all of this, conveying most of it with very few words and a quiet, yet powerful, voice. I had never heard of Dillane before, but if his other work is anywhere near the quality of this, I'm a fan.

There are many striking moments in Dillane's portrayal, but I'll pick just one to illustrate. In an early scene, Adams and Benjamin Franklin argue over the words of Jefferson's initial draft of the Declaration of Independence. They eventually decide that Jefferson's phrase "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable..." should be rewritten as "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." and then look to Jefferson, sitting some ways off apparently lost in his own thoughts (see the last picture), for approval. He only shrugs nonchalantly. Taking this as an affirmation, they turn to the next phrase before he quietly inserts, "Every phrase was chosen with utter precision." Dillane manages to deliver the line with a subtle sense of authority that perfectly conveys a sense of how the quiet Virginian would become the basis for a political party and an entire movement.

I don't normally comment about make-up in my reviews, but the work here was striking in this case. Seeing as how the actors all had to portray their characters from the thirties on up in some case to their nineties, the make-up artists had their work cut out for them, and I must say they did a spectacular job. (Of course, the actors all did a good job as well.) With only a single exception in the last episode, I was overall amazed by how seamlessly and believably the characters aged, and the last episode gets a pass a bit as it covered the time after Adams' presidency (almost 26 years.)

That said, I do look forward to the historical series that doesn't feel the need to show how grubby life was by having the obligatory surgery scene where some poor soul is getting a body part sawed off without anesthetics. Liquor him up and have him bite on a rag while we saw through bone... It was new in "Gone with the Wind," but eighty years on I think I've got it. We should all be thankful we live in the 21st century. Ah, well... Two scenes, but mercifully, they were both short.

The costuming was plush, although not on a scale of "The Tudors" or "Rome," but then it never could be. Life in colonial America was never going to possess the color or richness of life in the Tudor court. It certainly got the job done.

The music didn't stand out for me. I'm noticing that this is a common note in my reviews, which is strange seeing as how I love music. That said, most of the time I notice music is when it detracts from the show, and it certainly didn't here. I thought the main theme was suitably majestic and "colonial American" sounding, but my wife didn't care for it at all. So the vote there's 1-1.

As a side note, to any who watch the series, there's an especially well-done scene about midway through when Adams is appointed the first U.S. ambassador to Great Britain (under the Articles of Confederation). I didn't realize he had been, so when this scene came up, I looked to my wife and said, "Boy, is that going to be awkward!" And it was. The point where he is first introduced to King George III, played by Tom Hollander, was one of the most deliciously pregnant pauses followed by a series of unsure glances and exchanged "ummms" in the history of television. Who knows how the moment actually went, but the two participants in the scene certainly provided a memorable moment that will stick in my mind for a while.

Overall, I'd recommend the series to those interested in the subject matter. It's certainly not flawless, but it is entertaining and well worth the ten or so hours you'll sink into it.

Places I've Visited

2009-07-16T07:56:00.004-05:00

As I surfed the net, I found a couple cool applications that allow one to track the places he or she has been. On a whim, I checked off my travels and included them at the bottom of my blog. What I learned is that there are so many more places to go. Actually, I already knew this, but a graphic representation really brings it home.

This coming November, I'll hit Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. My wife and I have gone to Europe a number of times (and I went several times before I met her), but we're excited to be going somewhere a little different this year. Eventually we'll get to Asia. But the Atlantic seems to take forever to cross; I can't even fathom the boredom associated with crossing the Pacific.

John Adams
As a heads up, my wife and I have been chugging through the HBO miniseries "John Adams" on DVD. I'll review it when we've finished. Thus far, I'm impressed. It might be of limited appeal to those outside the U.S., but then again, good TV is good TV, and if you like history...

I Hate Cutscenes!

2009-07-12T22:44:00.008-05:00

I hate cutscenes worse than any other part of mod making, but I sucked it up and finished the major one I spoke of last time. It's still not quite what I envisioned, but it certainly works, and I think it remains pretty compelling. That finished my work on all notes I had from my last playthrough of Act II.

I then turned to Act I again. I rewrote a couple dialogs, cleaned up some scripting, and added another encounter. Then I started another play-through from the start of Act I intending to go through the end of Act II and even into Act III. As it turns out, I need to look into some issues regarding changing between modules within a campaign. It should be easy to figure out.

During the play-through, however, I managed to find about twenty issues, mostly misspellings or bad punctuation, and I wiped all but one out already. I still have a little polishing of Act III that I know needs to be completed, but the bottom line is I'm getting into campaign-level testing at last. The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely approaching!

So I have another screenshot from a recent playthrough. Nothing exciting, but it's part of the dialog the PC has with Tancred as the two investigate an especially grisly scene. Enjoy!

Taking Stock of the Situation

2009-07-05T22:16:00.004-05:00

It's been about a while since my last update on TMGS. Unfortunately, my progress has been somewhat slow, but as it has been a month, there's still quite a bit to talk about.

Up front, there've been a couple tough decisions. The first is that I'm about 99% sure that my hope for original music is gone. I'm not going to go really in-depth on my rationale, but I will say that given the current economic outlook as well as my own shifting priorities, I just can't justify spending the kind of money on the software that it will take to get it done. I'm going to try to find some suitable music in the public domain instead. Frankly, I took a long time to come to this decision, and I'm not thrilled about it. Most of the major themes for TMGS are running around in my head even as I write this, so it's not a matter of not being able to come up with them. Disappointing, but life goes on. Maybe one day...

Second, I've not looked incredibly hard, but I have looked a bit and I followed up what leads were suggested to me in various forums. However, I've not found a 2D artist that's willing to contribute around 15 drawings for free, so the intro and final movies are in jeopardy. I've been looking through online images to see if I can get enough to cobble together a movie that looks to have a unified drawing style. I'm close, but there are a few gaps. Amazingly, the gaps are actually what I would think are the easier drawings. For example, I'd like to find a silhouette of a man and woman walking into the sunset holding hands. There are several that I've found online, but all of them have people wearing what is obviously modern clothing, and that won't work. It makes it kind of hard to have a movie that depicts the PC and companion "living happily ever after," and without that slide, the ending movie would be really lame. So, if anyone reading this is willing to try their hand at about 4-5 pictures (and can draw), I'd appreciate it if you piped up.

So what have I done? I finished the play-through I talked about last time and took down 163 notes, 162 of which I have now corrected. The last one is a big one that will take some time. Just yesterday I finished the 162nd note, which concerned a nagging doubt I had in regards to the final dungeon of Act II: namely that it was too short. Initially, it was just a series of three rooms, each of which had an important encounter, but that seemed a little too rushed. After playing it a couple times, I finally gave in and redesigned the whole dungeon, including adding a couple more encounters, a new puzzle (of sorts), and some hopefully interesting things to investigate. To give you an idea, I've included the overhead map of the renovated dungeon. In the top left, if you look hard, you'll see three rooms surrounded by a red box. Those were the original dungeon, and all the rest, including area design, dialogs, scripting, etc. has been the task of the last week or so. I am much happier now with the final product.

The final note from my last play-through is in regards to a crucial point where the PC finally uncovers the identity of the opposing deity. It's done via a complicated dialog that's supposed to be full of pyrotechnics and very dramatic... only I have to admit that it falls completely flat. The idea in my head absolutely does not translate at all into the NWN2 medium, so I'm going to have to do a lot of rework. It might even require a whole new rewrite of the scene. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's necessary.

Other than that, I'd say Act II is now in a pretty high state of polish and fairly bug-free. Of course, I'll probably never be happy with the polish, even after release, but it has to be done some time...

MoW Activation Limit Removed

2009-06-16T14:13:00.002-05:00

The title says it all. As recently announced on both the Ossian website and the BioBoards, the much-maligned activation limit on MoW has been officially removed. Contrary to what many believe, it seems Atari does actually listen sometimes.

Thinking of Another Snappy Title...

2009-06-08T21:44:00.006-05:00

TMGS General
Since my last post, I've done a ton of work. As a quick run-down:

I've spot-tested all of the sidequest locations in the outlying areas and now have them as polished as the core town.
I've implemented and tested the last remaining sidequest. By way of explanation, there's been an idea I've had since the beginning for a puzzle-based sidequest in the mansion library that I've been struggling to figure out how to implement satisfactorily. I kept putting it off hoping that inspiration would just come to me, and it finally did. So the bottom line is it's finished and in the game.
I finalized the algorithm to determine the romance state with the companion. More on that later.
I implemented two ambient encounters in Navatranaasu I've had on my wish list for a while. Both are designed to further characterize the town. One will allow the PC to utilize another skill they may have, and the second will really bring home the fact that the PC is the only priest in the town. (Incidentally, there's no temple to go to for healing. You're the healer here!)
Finally, I'm about three hours into my next play-through with everything looking pretty good for now. I've switched to a male PC to verify that everything works as well with Verona as it did with Tancred. I've got a few extra polishing notes thus far, but nothing that could be classified as a true bug.

My plan is to finish this play-through, handle whatever notes come from it, implement the last two things on my "wish list," and then play through Act II one more time before moving on to Act I again. I'll need to make some minor corrections there to account for post-1.21 patch changes, and I'll want to verify that Act I transitions smoothly to Act II. Once that's finished, I'll need to finish up Act III, which is already in an advanced stage of completion. After that, it's just campaign-level testing and then release! The light at the end of the tunnel's getting bigger!

Romances
So what's this about romances? I've added tons of influence shifts. There are something like 90 throughout Acts I and II, some of which award or subtract more than one point. The full range of potential influence states is around +85 to -55. These shifts are not for things like what I've derisively refered to as "say you like my hair six times and I'm yours." Instead, they're for things you say or do which reflect similarities to the companion's background, thoughts, feelings, and values, and no, you won't know these up front. For example, there is a point where the companion will ask where you are from, and you get +1 influence if you're from the same area of the world and +2 if you're from the same city. Fair? No, but the truth is people are more likely to trust others if they share the same background. You also gain influence by asking for their opinions and advice. You can gain or lose influence by how you treat others in front of them, but don't assume that treating someone candy-sweet is the way to gain influence. You'll just have to read how they react to others and gauge accordingly.

In addition, there are what I call "flirt points" littered throughout the adventure. These are chances to fan the flame and show interest. Sometimes, they will initiate these encounters and sometimes you can.

Finally, there are shared experiences. In one sense, of course, the entire adventure is a shared experience, so this should mostly be covered automatically. However, there are a few things that aren't necessary to do but can be done ayway to build up the pool of "shared experience" points.

So after everything is said and done, the game will look at how much influence you have modified by the flirting and shared experience, and this will determine whether the romance will begin. Of course, it can also be shut down by the PC expressing a clear desire not to partake.

The Role of Religion in TMGS
Obviously, TMGS deals heavily with Faerunian religion. Of course, the PC is a Tyrran cleric, but the enemies are also followers of one of the evil deities, and there is a dastardly divine plan in the works centered on Navatranaasu.

One of the design choices I've made in Act II is to force the PC to pray every day at a chapel in order to have their spells and abilities restored. In Act I, the PC is assumed to pray when they rest, and Tyr obviously recognizes that the PC can not perform the normal rituals while on the road. But once an altar is available, the full treatment is required. Therefore, you can sleep in the bed in your suite to regain HPs, but you must then pray in the chapel to receive your spells. Oh, and while you can pray whenever you want, your spells only replenish once per day!

I realize that this might seem onerous at first, but as I've played, I've verified that it isn't. The design choice actually has several reasons and benefits.

First, I've always wanted this to be a uniquely cleric-based adventure, and one of the things most often glossed-over when playing clerics in D&D CRPGs is that their powers do come directly from their deity. So this is partly to enhance role-playing.
Second, it forces a strategic way of thinking for the player. Whatever choices you make in terms of your spells, you're stuck with for a day. Add to this that I've made a conscious effort to utilize many of the less common spells in unique situations throughout the adventure, and this creates an important element to the game. If you concentrate on only buffing spells for battles, you will miss large parts of the game and even slow your progress drastically.
Third, it adds another strategic element by forcing the player to use their spells judiciously. There are no huge dungeons in TMGS, but there are several smaller sidequest areas that contain 2-4 encounters. These have all been designed for one cleric and one ranger to be able to handle with one "batch" of daily powers.
Finally and most importantly, it is a game mechanism through which the PC can have visions from Tyr that allow me to drive the plot forward at certain points.

Screen Shot
With the above discussion in mind, I give you the next screen shot. Here the PC approaches the altar in the VanGhaunt mansion chapel for his morning devotional. This chapel is conveniently located next to your suite. The altar is also the scene of your first sidequest upon reaching Navatranaasu, but I won't spoil that for now!

Big News

2009-05-30T16:32:00.002-05:00

I literally just now finished handling the last of the 170 bugs/improvements I noted during my last play-through. (Yes, the list grew slightly from the 166 I mentioned last time.) This included a fair amount of targeted testing, so I'm now fairly confident of the core village of Navatranaasu as far as polish and bugs go.

That said, the side quest areas are improving but significantly behind the core, so I'm going to be working on them one at a time. I have confirmed that the proper areas all become available on the overland map at the right time, so it's just a matter of polishing what happens when the pc gets there.

I also still have one more core sidequest to implement that I've been busy reworking and am now much happier with, and I think I'm going to make a small change to the flow of the second act, but once all that's done, Act II is going to enter beta.

First Time Through Act II

2009-05-22T14:57:00.002-05:00

Quick update... I was off work today and so working on TMGS. I can report that I have just completed my first playthrough from start to finish of Act II. I had played parts before, but never the whole thing through. I found a couple show-stoppers, but slogged through by using the console. I made 166 notes of things to fix and tweak, and that will consume the next few days. There's still a lot of polishing, but it was a major milestone.

More to come.

Another TMGS Update

2009-05-10T21:19:00.004-05:00

My last playthrough of Act II netted 81 comments, bugs, and general improvements and ended in a critical path game-ending bug. After a few days, I was finally able to work through them all. Some were maddeningly difficult to get rid of, but they're finally gone.

In addition, I began to add a few more ambient characters to give the town a little more life. Again, no one in Navatranaasu is just a plain old commoner, but even with twenty-two fully-defined characters, things felt a bit sparse, especially because many of these have a daily schedule that removes them from the village for periods of time. My plan is to add six more and see how that goes. A couple of these have even turned into a brief sidequest, which will be completed today.

Last Sunday, I began my latest playthrough, and I've already found 21 more things I want to polish (no bugs, just polish). The work is never done...

So screenshot time. This is a bit atmospheric and pretty dark. By way of explanation, I've even given most of the inside maps a daily light cycle to imitate the sun entering through windows during the day and having much less light at night. I was really aiming for a way to make the large VanGhaunt mansion feel much more creepy at night, and I think I hit the mark.

So that's why the attached screenshot is so dark. Here, Sheridan, my PC, and Tancred have found the mansion's groundskeeper, Grayson, cooking his dinner after a long day in the gardens. He is giving details of an odd event that occured recently in the village. More later.

What's Important in a Game?

2009-05-01T12:41:00.003-05:00

I'm just curious today if a game like BG2 would be as popular today as it was in its time. Is a toolset necessary for a crpg to sell, or would people go for a game that did not have a toolset attached?

Essentially, game development only has so "zots" to spend. If a ton of those zots are spent making a new engine and an associated toolset, the campaign must get less time. I think that's a big reason why official campaigns have become much shorter recently. On the other hand, if someone were to purchase the rights to use an existing engine, more time could be devoted to the story or companion development. In other words, perhaps a sixty to eighty hour campaign with fifteen companions would be possible versus a forty hour campaign with only eight companions if the engine had to be built too. I don't know if the community would support that anymore, so consider this my way of unscientifically polling the community.

Oh, and this is just for my own information. Don't read too much into this.

Mysteries of Westgate Released!

2009-04-29T07:24:00.004-05:00

At long last, the sordid saga of Mysteries of Westgate's release has ended, and the sordid saga of the actual campaign can begin for thousands of fans. Over the next few weeks and months, I will comment much more on various aspects of MoW, but for now I implore everyone to go download and play it already! If you like crpgs, you won't be disappointed.

And I also want to draw attention to Ossian's brand new relaunched website. Check it out when you get a chance. It's quite spiffy.

Playing Through Act II

2009-04-26T22:14:00.006-05:00

Mysteries of Westgate
Well, I probably won't post again before Wednesday, so I'll just again remind everyone that Mysteries of Westgate, the most exciting NWN2 experience ever, is due for release this coming Wednesday, April 29th. I'll also tell everyone to check out Ossian's exciting newly-revamped site... but it launches tomorrow so wait a day. It won't be long until MoW news will be everywhere.

As an aside, Alazander had a magnificent post about the MoW and DRM "controversy" a few days ago. I suggest those who haven't have a read. It pretty much summarizes my thoughts on the subject.

The Maimed God's Saga
My Act II play-through, polishing, and bug-squashing crusade proceeds, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how much of it works. That may sound odd, but there's really no end of stupid things I can do (or forget to do) to break a mod, and I really didn't test anything prior to this past weekend. The worst part of the testing so far was that a number of the placeables that could be "talked to" weren't firing their conversations, mostly because the walk-mesh wouldn't allow the PC to get close enough, but that's all been worked through.

There was a question after my last post as to the length of TMGS. I've played through Act I a ton, and can say with certainty it is about 1.5 hours long. Act III is about 3.5 hours long. I've played through only a fraction of Act II, and I've already hit 3 hours of actual play-time. In all liklihood, Act II will come in at around 8-10 hours, making the total campaign around 13-15 hours.

To be honest, there is starting to be a slight doubt in my mind, though. I'm going to have to play through a little longer and get the core worked out a bit more before I decide to act, but I kind of think Act II might be a bit too linear for my taste. It's really supposed to be a wide-open investigation into the cause of the VanGhaunt curse, but it's not quite feeling that way yet. Maybe it's because I know too much about how it's put together and am just working my way through all the campaign events in a very methodical manner. As I said, I'll give it more time before I do any restructuring.

And now for an actual in-game screenshot, the first one from Act II and the first one period in several months (not including load screens). As regular readers may remember, TMGS started out as an aborted novel. What may not be known is that I had named the cleric protagonist in that novel Sheridan Steele. By the way, to tie this in with MoW, Sheridan is, in many ways, my inspiration for Charissa Maernos, but how that came to pass is another long story.

Anyway all my play-throughs are with a cleric with the name Sheridan. In this scene, Sheridan and her ranger guide (and future love interest) Tancred arrive at the VanGhaunt mansion for the first time and have a look around. More soon, but for now, Enjoy!

Act II Scripting Done!

2009-04-20T09:27:00.003-05:00

OK, so I've been silent for a while, but rest assured I have not been still. I've been sick for ten days or so, and I had a quick jaunt to Illinois for a funeral. But in between I've been making steady progress. But first a couple quick hits.

The Third Sign
Sorry, Hugie, I had it in my notes to plug this next time I updated, and then I got sidetracked by life, but better late than never.

As many are no doubt aware, Ossian-mate Hugie has been working on a NWN2 adaptation of the opening of a soon-to-be-published novel by Gregory Wilson entitled The Third Sign. It's already been on the Vault for about a month, but it looks to need a few more votes. Two votes for 411 downloads (as of this writing) is a bit of a travesty.

Just a few of the things The Third Sign offers:

New Music Tracks
Voice Acting for Major Characters
Pregenerated Protagonist

And, of course, you can get a jump on the upcoming novel.

Mysteries of Westgate
Yeah, it's supposed to be out on April 29th. Realistically, that's probably true, or very near to it, but... well, we'll see. I'll leave it at that.

The Maimed God's Saga
OK, the big news here is that the scripting for Act II is finally done, and I officially started play-testing yesterday. Keep in mind that this scripting included expanding Act II by two more sidequests and adding a few extra goodies including another couple companion interactions. A major step has been cleared.

As always, I got a major thrill the first time I walked through the streets of a world I created. The world was alive at last, even if there was quite a bit of funkiness to it. But the most thrilling thing of all is that I now know I got the feel of Navatranaasu pretty much dead on. I meant to make a town under a heavy pall with decay and despair evident at every turn... and I can giddily say I got it. Dark hues, dim lighting, cobwebs and debris everywhere, and a cast of depressing and depressed people! Sweet!

It won't be long until the screenshots start coming, but I don't think anything I post will quite be the same as playing. Hopefully, people will turn the lights off when they play and feel the hairs on their neck start to stand up... BOO!

Sorry... I just always get psyched at this point in development. In the words of Hannibal from the A-Team, "I love it when a good plan comes together!" More later.

Celebrating 100 Posts, 33 Years, and 2 Seasons of Tudors

2009-03-11T06:47:00.007-05:00

My login screen for this blog says this will be my 100th post. Do I win anything? No?

As it so happens, this is also three days before my 33rd birthday, and I don't think I'll post again before then, so do I win anything? No?

Oh, well, then I guess I'll finally give my thoughts on the second season of the Tudors.

The story of Henry VIII and his first two wives is well-known with several television serials and movies depicting the events as far back as televisions and movies were around. Season 1 outlines the first half of these events while season 2 of the Tudors depicts the second half of these events, roughly the period between 1533 and 1536, which saw Anne Boleyn fall from her pinnacle to her ultimate demise. In a way, the two seasons mirror each other with each concerning itself with the downfall of one queen and the rise of another, and the series even draws attention to this by making the final scene of the season, in which Henry begins feasting on a large meal, an intentional duplicate of a scene in Season 1.

However, whereas the first season covered a far greater amount of time, the second season actually felt more unevenly paced. The most jarring example is episode three, which began with the announcement of Anne's pregnancy and ended with the birth of the future Elizabeth I. That's nine months in one episode while the full ten episodes covered three years. The final episode, on the other hand, covers only a couple days. It's a minor quibble, I suppose; the argument can always be made that Anne's last couple days were far more interesting than the nine months of her first pregnancy and so deserved more attention. But I can honestly say I noticed the difference in pacing, and it created a certain unevenness to the flow. Of course, I also watched all ten episodes in about two weeks, a rate at which the series was not originally intended to be viewed, so take the criticism with a grain of salt.

Several performances were noteworthy this season. The first is James Frain as Thomas Cromwell. Back in my season 1 review, I glossed over Cromwell, saying that this would be the season he came to the fore. Now that he is front-and-center, I am happy to see a calm, reasoned approach to the character while still maintaining an undercurrent of zealotry. Frain portrays a man who carefully guards his words and has tremendous control over his emotions. When Anne lambasts him for siphoning off too much of the money from the dissolution of the monasteries into the royal treasury, he simply bows and says nothing before being dismissed. When she outright threatens to have his head removed, he similarly keeps his composure. Yet underneath it all is a shrewd, calculating, and merciless intellect. He is among the first to determine that Anne's influence is collapsing. In earlier episodes, Anne has forced the removal of Queen Catherine from the royal court and played a major role in the executions of Bishop Fisher and Thomas More, but when Chapuys asks Cromwell whether he is afraid of Anne's threats, he simply snickers and replies, "not at all."

But, most deliciously, underneath this calm exterior, Cromwell is utterly ruthless. Mere days after imporing Thomas More to take the oath that would save his life, Cromwell engages Richard Rich to entrap him and provide false testimony against him before the tribunal. Later, Cromwell willingly engages in the torture of Mark Smeaton to gain the confession required to convict Anne. When asked by someone (Thomas Boleyn, I believe?) about his religious views, he replies with something akin to, "I seek nothing less than the total destruction of the Catholic Church." Indeed, he can in one minute smile to the face of a man like More, who will shortly be martyred for the Catholic Church, and implore him to save his own life, and in the next excoriate him before the tribunal for "papal worship and heretical idolatry." Finally, when Anne's last true ally, Thomas Cranmer, comes to him to determine what can be done to save her (and as he sees it, the Reformation in England), Cromwell simply counsels him that, "sometimes people need to be sacrificed to achieve the greater good."

All-in-all, Frain's performance is a thing of beauty and worthy of three paragraphs in this review. I simply can't wait to see where he goes in season three, which reportedly takes the history all the way to the rise of Catherine Howard. If this is true, then I'm betting the final scene will be the execution of Cromwell, and it will be interesting to see how Frain handles his fall from grace.

However, as good as Cromwell is, season two is really Anne Boleyn's, and Natalie Dormer also does a fantastic job, even upstaging Frain at most points. Anne is a reasonably complex and slightly controversial historical figure with nearly as many takes on her as there are books about her. Previously, Genevieve Bujold portrayed her as a raving bitch in Anne of the Thousand Days and Natalie Portman focused exclusively on the increasingly manic side of her character in The Other Boleyn Girl. And while I think both are valid portrayals and reasonably true as far as they go, the increased scope of an entire series over a film and a larger cast of included characters allows Dormer to give Boleyn a better historical context and further flesh out the character into a full three dimensions.

When the season begins, Anne is at the height of her power. She holds the king in the palm of her hand, and she is at the center of a broad, if loosely-aligned, anti-Wolsey coalition that had formed to bring about the downfall of the powerful chancellor. Slowly, however, the same scheming that brought about Wolsey's downfall begins to work against the new power behind the king, Anne herself. Realizing that the king is fickle in his affections, both for advisors and women alike, her one-time allies - Suffolk, Cromwell, and even her own father - begin to break away from her, causing her to become ever-more isolated and dependent only on the king's affections for her survival. While she probably never would be able to stop his womanizing, she'd guarantee her place at court forever if she would just give the king what he most desired, a son. After all, he would never risk delegitimizing a male heir by formally casting aside its mother. But with the birth of a single girl followed by two miscarriages, time began to run out for Anne, for once Jane Seymour had caught Henry's eye, it was all-too-easy to convince him that Anne should go.

Anne, of course, was not a stupid woman. She had to have realized - too late - that the position for which she had so long fought was, in actuality, a gilded prison from which she would never escape. Thus, it's the portrayal of this realization that always proves interesting, hence the multiple "valid" portrayals I referenced earlier. With a full ten hours to show the decline, however, Dormer captures them all. One moment, Anne's threatening Cromwell. In the next, she's paranoid of Suffolk's relationship with the king. In the next, she implores Henry to come back to her bed. There is immense relief when she finds herself pregnant again followed by extreme anguish when she miscarries. She attacks Henry when she finds him kissing Jane Seymour only to immediately remind him how much she loves him. The entire swirl of emotions released by Dormer show a woman in extreme emotional turmoil, uncertain of where to turn to avoid the yawning abyss in front of her.

Her finest moment comes in the final episodes when the end is clear. Confined to the Tower, she has finally resigned herself to her fate. Dormer elegantly shows a woman both relieved to finally be free of the drama while also being understandably frightened of what lies before her. The entire scene is well-acted and a fitting end to the season.

No one else stands out as worthy of especial attention, though no one was attrocious either. Rhys-Meyers as Henry VIII is even, though no further range of performance should be expected. He falls in and out of "love" with women and plays the tyrant quite well, and that's what we should expect more of from him in the future. Henry Cavill as Suffolk plays the loyal friend well enough, and at least his character showed a bit of maturation this past year. Maria Doyle Kennedy was one of the show-stealers last season but had significantly less to do this year. Nick Dunning as Thomas Boleyn was the scheming ass-hat who eventually abandoned even his son and daughter to their fate. It's accurate and the common interpretation, but it doesn't really call for terrific range from an actor. Honestly, I couldn't get into Jeremy Northam as Thomas More all that much, but I think that's because I'm tired of the sanctimonious portrayal of More. That said, I'm at a loss as to how I would do it better, and at least, there was a bit of texture in that More was shown to legitimately be conducting business that could be seen as detrimental to the king and therefore treasonous. Anita Briem as Jane Seymour was a bit milquetoast, but that's a common portrayal, and she's being replaced in season three, so I won't waste further space on her. The rest of the characters were too minor to matter.

Again, the other production values were excellent. The costuming and scenery were sumptuous and the music was suitably majestic when called for but mostly blended well into the background, which is a good thing. The pacing, as mentioned earlier, seemed a bit off at times, but other than that nitpick, I thought the directing and writing were quite good.

Other than one exception, which I'll get to in the next paragraph, I also thought the history was pretty good. Again, there's room for some interpretation of the events depicted, but the series followed - for the most part - the predominant line of thinking articulated most notably by Eric Ives, perhaps the preeminent current Anne Boleyn historian. Given that it's a drama intended for entertainment, only a nitwit would argue with that approach. In addition, I was pleased at some of the small details that the series showed that were absolutely true. For example, there's a nice scene where Chapuys visits the princess Mary that illustrates the close friendship the two would develop. In another scene, Chapuys tells Suffolk that Catherine's heart, examined after her death, was blackened, and he therefore suspected Anne had had her poisoned. (After this line, my wife turned to me and asked, "is that true?" Yes, it is.) In fact, Catherine's heart had turned black, and poison was therefore suspected. However, the modern belief is that the blackened part was actually a cancerous tumor that had caused Catherine's death. Another scene shows the start of the rumor that Anne had six fingers, or at least the beginnings of a growth of a sixth finger, and she was therefore a witch. This rumor did pass around for a number of years, and even now, I see the occasional article or book that still seems to accept it as true. Both Thomas More's and Anne's deaths were well-depicted right down to the last statements largely taken from the actual recorded last statements of both. Anne's execution being delayed a day was true, as was her quip to the Constable of the Tower that she had "heard say the executioner was very good, and I have a little neck."

However, I have to call the series to task for the portrayal of William Brereton. The series portrayed him as a zealot working for the Catholic Church and willing to be martyred to bring down the queen. He was the guy who tried to assassinate Anne during her coronation procession and then willingly confessed to an affair with her so that he could ensure her execution. This portrayal is so counter to history that I can't even correct it in short order except to say it's crap. Furthermore, I can't see any special reason for making such a change, seeing as how the actual story was juicy enough. I've gone on long enough that I won't bore you with the truth about Brereton, but you can find it at Wikipedia if you are interested.

So overall, the second season maintained the same high level of quality as the first. I eagerly await season three, though I do find myself wondering how it will be received by the public. We are now entering a period that, while turbulent, is not nearly as well-known. Whereas season two stayed almost entirely within England, I suspect season three will concentrate much more on foreign affairs to maintain an interesting narrative, notwithstanding the need to run through queens three and four and get to number five. So we'll have Jane's reign and death, further squabbling with the Acts of Succession, instability within the Holy Roman Empire, the debacle surrounding Anne of Cleves, the rise of the Howards, and the fall of Cromwell. Should be good.

Module Expansions

2009-03-09T08:13:00.004-05:00

It's been a bit hectic recently, and it doesn't look like this coming weekend will offer much of a respite. My birthday is coming up, and my wife has a surprise for me that will wipe out Saturday and then there are other assorted birthday-related activities.

However, TMGS just got a pre-release expansion pack. This past weekend, I was going over the module again, and I decided it needed a bit extra. The investigation in Navatranaasu is pretty open-ended (at least it's supposed to be), but there are a few set events that have to be passed to progress the story. These events occur after the PC has accomplished a certain number of tasks in the village. Note that this is not a certain group of tasks, rather a certain number of them. For example, one task is arranging the altar in the VanGhaunt mansion so that it is useable. Others include searching through the town archives, talking with certain people in town, and investigating the mansion grounds as well as other much more spoilerific tasks. No matter which order these are done, each of which reveals certain clues about the enemy, after a set number are completed, new events are triggered.

So I was studying the layout of the module again, and I didn't like the number of possible tasks as compared to the number needed for the triggering of events. In essence, there were too few tasks, meaning that nearly all of them would need to be completed, although the order could be switched around. So I decided to add some new ones. Essentially, this means a new side quest got inserted, and I may add another one I've already devised. For the one already added, all required dialogs have been written and scripted, the blueprints have all been made, and the maps are well under way, though not completed. I hope to have the new quest entirely implemented by this weekend. Then I can return to the work in progress, assuming I don't add yet another minor quest... or two.

So yes, this means we have a bit of feature creep, but I think the adventure will be stronger because of it.

Weekly Update

2009-02-24T08:06:00.004-05:00

No doubt it won't be long until I get to talk more in-depth about MoW here, but for now I'll have to confine my ramblings to TMGS. Speaking of which...

The most recent loadscreen is another one previously seen here, but it's one I like quite a bit. Moving into Act III, the action switches to more urban lands. This loadscreen is of Dock Street in Waterdeep with the massive cathedral of Tyr dominating the harbor skyline in the early morning.

So on to the progress. What did I get done this week? Hmmm...

XP placement - Check
Loot placement - Check
Journal scripting - Check

In addition, remember that list I spoke about last week that had three items left on it? Well it ballooned this week to ten items, although I whittled it back down to the same three from before. The last three will require a bit of creativity on my part, so I need time to sit down where I have no distractions and can just figure it out. Hopefully, I'll have a night this week because a small family emergency is going to wipe out the weekend.

All-in-all, I have to report what I've been saying for a while. The end of scripting is near. The parts are nearly all glued together. Then comes play-testing, and as I've not tested a single thing in Act II yet, I imagine the first play-through will be wretched to say the least.

Moving On...

2009-02-15T22:42:00.010-05:00

I've just finished the second season of the Tudors, which I'll review after a few days of collecting my thoughts. However, my opinion of it is very positive. Until later...

Load Screen Sunday... Yeah, Whatever
I'm going to go ahead and throw out the last three new load screens for Act II. I think versions of all of these have been released before, but these might be new angles. The first is of a nice serene little hut in the forest. Ah, so peaceful... until you realize what sick evil lies within.

Second, is a little mountain village with a serene little river running through it. It's the simple tribal life... until you realize the horrific secret it hides.

Finally, a fort... Ah, who am I kidding? It looks a bit too military to try to convince you it's benign. Yeah, evil guys aplenty here.

So What Progress, You Ask?
I am essentially done with the scripting of the various dialogs, and I am done with the OnEnter scripts for all the areas. I managed to uncover about eight major issues I needed to address during my scripting work thus far, and I took time this weekend to whittle that list down to three. These include things like writing additional dialogs or writing major additions or amendments to existing ones.

When these are done, I have the following general tasks to complete: scripting the journal entries (updating, etc.), finalizing a few extraneous quest scripts (death scripts, inventory disturb scripts, and the like), loot placement, and XP placement. With any luck, that will finish the Act II scripting, and I'll proceed to testing.

Act II testing should take a short while, and I need to finish my tweaking of Act III (whenever patch 1.22 is released to fix the OnEnter area triggers), and then there's the testing of the full three acts stuck together to ensure global variables are stored correctly... Lots to do, but I'm getting there.

Mysteries of Westgate At Last!

2009-02-11T08:04:00.004-05:00

Yes, the wait now seems to be very nearly over! We've been hearing internal rumblings within Ossian for a couple weeks, but I didn't want to say anything for fear of yet again being disappointed. However, I have just received an official e-mail from the Powers That Be that we are now sure enough about an impending release that we can officially announce it.

We do have a projected release date, but not one that is sure enough yet to announce. Depending on certain developments, it may slip by a few days. Given the bad feelings about the previous seemingly-interminable delays, they don't want us to mention the date until it is 100% rock-solid. But, it seems the day it is announced will also be the day you will be able to buy. So there won't be any further anticipation once we hear.

In addition to the official Bioware and Atari boards, keep an eye out on the Ossian web site in the coming days and weeks. I understand that there will be some significant updates that will include a message board specifically about Mysteries of Westgate which will almost certainly contain useful information, especially once it is actually released!

And suffice it to say, I think that will be much sooner than most will at this point believe!

Hail, Rome!

2009-02-03T07:42:00.007-05:00

I've recently concluded the first season of the joint HBO/BBC dramatic series Rome, which takes the viewer from the closing years of the First Triumvirate (around 54 BC) to the assassination of Julius Caesar (44 BC). Overall, I would recommend the series to those who are interested in the period, but I must say it was a bit of a mixed bag.

The events depicted are reasonably well-known, at least in their barest form, but the nuances are the subject of much debate. The primary reason for this is, of course, that there are so few surviving accounts. However, it is also a story that in many ways is more applicable to today than even the intervening medieval period, making it more difficult for people to not project current events into the backdrop of history. Relatively few powerful monarchies still exist today, and certainly not in the Western world, but Rome is the story of the transformation of a republic into an empire. Before modern times, Rome was the last republic, and its death became a cautionary tale that led political theorists to espouse the futility of such governments for centuries.

At the most cynical, Rome - and Athens before it - show that in times of great turmoil, the masses will willingly vote away their freedoms to any demagogue who can spout enough empty rhetoric about "bread and circuses" to satisfy them. The most obvious example, Alcibiades, is actually from Athens, but one could argue that Caesar, Mark Antony, Pompey, and so forth would also fit. In fact, the series itself articulates such a position, mostly from the senators who quickly conspire to kill Caesar in a bid to save the Republic, but also from the more cynical patricians who seek to use this theory to consolidate their own power.

But on to the actual series. Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first. The amount of money reportedly spent on the production was immense - large enough to actually be the reason for season 3's cancellation - and it shows. One of the DVD extras shows the massive sets that were constructed for the series. They claimed the set for the Roman forum was something like half the size of the actual forum, and this was just a single set! Hundreds of extras were on hand for the various parade scenes, and the costumes, of which there were literally tens of thousands, are both lavish and colorful. As can be seen in the first picture, the series certainly could bring on the spectacle when called for.

However, as I concluded the series, I couldn't help but think something was a little off. It took me a while, but I think I've finally figured out what. Rome tries to tell two stories. First, it depicts the great political events of the age. Second, it attempts to show life in ancient Rome at the street level. In the first, we have the expected cast of characters: Caesar, Brutus, Octavian, Pompey, etc. The second is mostly told through the eyes of two legionaries, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, and their families. While either is a legitimate approach individually, trying to mesh both into one series leads to an uneven narrative.

The writers seek to get around this by using an especially galling method that, sadly, is not unique to this series. Specifically, the two legionaries are constantly woven into the first story as well as their own, thereby unifying the two lines. What this results in is a totally implausible series of events in which two normal joes essentially have the most fantastic life imaginable, always seeming to be at the center of the great events of the day. The most ludicrous example is the time when both men are shipwrecked en route to Greece, only to wash up on shore at the exact point where the retreating Magnus Pompey is camping for the night. The two legionaries share a meal with him over the campfire, where he tells them of his defeat at the hands of Caesar. This is right before Pompey meets his maker in Egypt. Of course, the two arrive there shortly thereafter as well, at which point Julius Caesar naturally chooses them to go on a daring raid to rescue Cleopatra. Got all that? Well, that was what they did in only two of the twelve episodes. They did much more in the other ten. Vorenus even gets appointed to the Roman Senate. No joke. This was funny in Forest Gump, as that movie made a big joke of it all, but it's outright annoying here.

Otherwise, I thought the series was quite good. The acting was generally top-notch. Polly Walker goes over the top as Atia of the Julii, playing an absolute raving bitch that somehow is likeable. Perhaps it's the absolute delight she takes in getting into the mud, perhaps it's that she says things that I'd like to say, or maybe it's just that she's hot. Some of her one-liners are literally roll-on-the-floor funny, such as when she sends a gift of a particularly well-endowed slave to a rival. Her daughter asks her why the rival would even want such a gift, to which she casually replies, "well, who wouldn't want another large penis?" In another scene, she forces her son, Octavian, to eat goat testicles, giving him the simple rationale that "it will put oak in your penis." Yes, there's a lot of penis jokes I guess...

Who else? Lindsay Duncan puts in a nuanced performance as Servilia. Starting out as elegant and regal, she slowly becomes cold and calculating as others around her continually force her hand. I must say my wife pointed out far before I recognized it that Servilia had become quite the bitch on her own, and it wasn't because she had guessed the plot. She pointed out certain looks and actions that gave it away... "No, you're imagining things," I told her. It turned out I was wrong, so I'm guessing it might be the type of performance that women "get" and dudes are surprised by. Or maybe I'm horrible at noticing this stuff...

Ciarán Hinds should also get a nod, as he is wonderfully understated as Julius Caesar. For once, the military hero is portrayed first as a statesman and only second as a general, making it an unusual portrayal. One can almost see how people would be suckered in by him: in public, he is the image of peace and reconcilliation, extending the hand of friendship to former enemies such as Brutus and Pompey. On the other hand, he coldly and calmly orders the assassination of his critics and allows trusted (and innocent) allies to go to gruesome execution merely to uphold his public image.

I should also mention that, while I'm not particularly enamored of the performance, James Purefoy's Mark Antony is interesting in that he is shown as his own man rather than simply the henchman of Julius Caesar. He has his own plots brewing, seeks always to acquire his own men loyal first to him, and even flirts with betraying Caesar when it might benefit him. It's a different take on an old character.

However, the most interesting performance of the entire show is given by perhaps its youngest regular: Max Pirkis as Octavian. In other shows, such as the wretched Empire miniseries from a few years back, Octavian is always shown as a weakling that somehow turns into a great leader through some unknown epiphany (magic?). It is well-established that Octavian was not the military man his uncle was, but I've never been satisfied with the ubiquitous depicition of him as a pansy-ass up until he became great. Thankfully, Max Pirkis chose to play him as a philospher-poet on the one hand, but with a keen eye for politics and an understated-but-very-real brutal streak on the other. It is often he that first determines the true nature of the political game, many times warning those around him of the impending pitfulls (though he's mostly ignored by the "grown-ups'). When Titus Pullo, who has been hired to teach him the art of fighting (I said these two goons got around, didn't I?), suspects Vorenus' wife of having a baby by another man, he goes to Octavian for advice. Octavian wisely counsels public discretion but to gather more information behind-the-scenes. His method for doing this? Kidnap the other man, take him to the sewers, and torture him until he confesses to fathering the child. When he has elicited the confession, he calmly orders Titus to kill him and throw him into the filth so that the body is never found. This then, is the makings of a man who will one day rule an empire!

OK, so I've probably written enough. In light of my last blog post, potential viewers should know that there is sex in the series, and it's of a more graphic nature than The Tudors, though most of it is done in the first two episodes. I guess HBO had to cynically suck people in before they started telling the actual story, so be cautious with the kiddies. Second, there are some historical inaccuracies. Actually, some of them are major and unexplainable, such as the subplot of incest between Octavian and his sister. The typical timeline expansion and contraction is back again, and of course, almost anything that happens with the Vorenus and Pullo is fake. But the general outline of the big events seems solid enough.

So overall I'd recommend the series. It's good enough entertainment and educational to boot. As soon as I have Tudors season 2 out of the way, I'll have to move on the second season of this one.