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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.