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[Clyordes]

Attention you grizzled old 1st Edition AD&D fans!  (and everyone else for that matter)

Its only taken best part of a year, but I've just about completed a NWN2 version of this classic old Module by Douglas Niles.  Given the toolset & my (very limited) skill with it, I can only get so close to the orginal, but I'm right chuffed with the way its turning out :-)

I was hoping to release before Christmas, but there were still a few wrinkles & pesky scripts to sort out.  Still are a couple of things I'm not happy with, but after I finally got a really important item to work successfully this morning, there's really not that much left to do - which is nice - so current schedule is to upload to the vault next week, maybe the week after if anything goes wrong.

As in the original adventure, its for a 1st level party, or slightly higher level solo, and any class should have a fun time for an evening or three - depending on how thorough, or lucky, they are.

I've still got an awful lot to learn about building - its like being back at university - the more you learn, the more you realise you don't know! - and I'd quite like to implement conversation skills, especially in a mod like this where there's a lot of talking.  But at the same time I want to take a wee rest & then get started on my next remake project.

So, subscribe to this thread & I'll keep updates coming until its available on the vault.


Cly.


ps. Next stop - Oasis of the White Palm...

[Banshe]

Cool! I'm looking forward to this. Subscribed!

[M. Rieder]

Excellent. Perhaps you could post a little teaser for the plot to enlighten those of us not familiar with the original?

[Arkalezth]

Good to see more modules coming! I second M. Rieder's request.

BTW, now that you mention the subscribe function, how does it work exactly? AFAIK, the thread gets stored, but is there any way to get a notification when it get new replies or something?

Modifié par Arkalezth, 14 janvier 2011 - 12:49 .

[Clyordes]

Cor, people interested! I'm coming over all warm & glowy!

Arkalezth - there's a setting in Profile\\Forum settings that looks like it sends an alert by email when things happen in subscribed posts

[Clyordes]

Hmm - a teaser eh?

How about this - from the cover of the old P&P module:

"Terror by night! The village of Orlane is dying. Once a small and thriving community, Orlane has become a maze of locked doors and frightened faces. Strangers are shunned, trade has withered. Rumors flourish, growing wilder with each retelling. Terrified peasants flee their homes, abandoning their farms with no explanation. Others simply disappear...

No one seems to know the cause of the decay - why are there no clues? Who skulks through the twisted shadows of the night? Who or what is behind the doom that has overtaken the village? It will take a brave and skillful band of adventurers to solve the dark riddle of Orlane!" (Copyright TSR, WOC, etc etc.)



& here's a link to the Wiki page on the original (Possible Spoiler alert)  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Cult_of_the_Reptile_God

See if that gets you warmed up

Modifié par Clyordes, 14 janvier 2011 - 02:01 .

[nicethugbert]

NEAT!

[Dorateen]

Excellent! This is going back to me old Pen & Paper stomping grounds. When we started up our Greyhawk campaign, after the success of this adventure, our characters were able to set up base in Orlane.

I've got a ton of PnP stories from this module alone. Like when our party's barbarian drank a potion of gaseous form. And then the effect wore off, just as he was floating above some skeletons. Picture this huge numbskull come crashing down on a pile of bones, and actually saved the rest of us from that encounter.

I've seen you mention this project before. I'm really looking forward to this one.

Harumph!

[M. Rieder]

Hell yeah! Sounds great. I'm dusting off my staff and spellbook as we speak.

Modifié par M. Rieder, 14 janvier 2011 - 05:46 .

[MorbidGorilla]

WOW this takes me back!



Cant wait to giv it a spin. Thanks for bringing back a classic!

[Eguintir Eligard]

Whats the play time?

[Clyordes]

Cor - right good to hear all the interest - hope you enjoy your time in the old Gran March when its all done & available. If you fancy a warm up - I hope you've tried Goldenspire (below) - its another PNP conversion, but if you didn't read White Dwarf in the early 80's, you may never have played that adventure - made a big impression on me though, as one of the first adventures I DM'd - all those years ago.



Eguintir - I still haven't had chance for a complete run through myself yet with a beginning level character. So far, all I've played with is a high level monk/sorceror I use for testing, and have stopped every so often when I've filled a page of my notebook with things I wanted to change - so very hard to say for certain how long it takes to complete.



Also, there are a lot of possible encounters in Orlane - and by no means all of them are neccessary to complete the adventure - so it may depend on how thorough you are.



To give you a very rough idea of how long the adventure is, my brother's kindly beta testing & told me the other day that he'd spent a fair chunk of his sunday playing it & was just about at the end of the Orlane encounters, which is round about half way - but being a physics graduate - he's very thorough, eh bro? :-)



I've just remembered - there's another thing I need to do before I upload - I need to test for balance. The original P&P Ramne was level 7 & a tad too powerful for the 2nd-3rd level PCs in Neverwinter, especially if the AI is set so he casts his spells a little 'extravagantly' - there might no be much left for anyone by the time he's finished with them!, So I've nerfed him to 5th level. Also, I think I still need to implement Whiskers - which is a little remiss of me I'm sure for all you folk who remember the original in (too much!) detail :-)



Ah, Dorateen, You're not alone in having a load of good memories from these old adventures. One of my all time favourites was playing the Temple of Elemental Evil & encountering a group of giant hunting spiders in the wilds - our PC's decided rather than stand & fight, they'd run - several miles back to Hommlet - so the DM quickly thought up a system of D12 rolls modified by Dex, Str & Encumberance to be made every turn by us & the spiders to see if they gained or lagged behind us.



After a lot of sweaty dice rolls, we JUST made it back ahead of the spiders & took refuge in St Cuthbert's!



And then there was Tomb of Horrors, The Desert of Desolation series, Tharizdun, Against the Giants, Tsojcanth (another to be remade when I get chance), Barrier Peaks (that too if anyone ever does the modern placeables needed), Dungeonland, Isle of Dread, Borderlands, Slavelords, and all the stuff I made up myself.



Ah, those were the days.



Anyone remember another very old adventure from White Dwarf - "The Lichway"? I was thinking of doing a 'quick' conversion as its pretty short & was another one of the very first adventures that I ever ran, but I'm not sure whether to just jump straight onto Oasis.

[NWN DM]

Are you doing this in Greyhawk? And if so, are you implementing deities and races particular to the setting?

Excellent to hear about this project either way.

[Clyordes]

Greyhawk? Only in terms of the names of the locations & one of the deities - Merikka. To be honest I was never that fussed about campaign locations although I'm much more familiar with locations in greyhawk from all the old TSR mods I used to play back in the mid 80s.

[Clyordes]

Hi P&P fans!

Quick update - the schedule's been thrown a bit by a failed fortitude save in the family, but all's back up & running again & we're into final playtesting.

One thing I've been thinking about is the XP scheme. I never liked the idea of having to kill stuff to gain XP - so I've reduced the XP scale to 1 (not sure what proportion of XP that gives you for killing monsters - 10%?) & set up a series of triggers that award XP for reaching different parts of the adventure.



Tested it yesterday & it seemed to work really well, although the XP gained was around 2/3 of what I'd set in the script - could this have been influenced by the XP scale, or the Character's level (25 I think)?



Testing threw up a bunch of things I wanted to tweak a little, and I think I prefer the NWN1 style convo's that I converted all conversations to - which is nice.



Sooo - release date? As soon as I get it finished :-)



Maybe next week, more likely a little later.

[PJ156]

Good luck ont he last push. I like the xp triggers idea.

PJ

[Arkalezth]

You can also give a specific amount of XP for completing quests, reaching some points, etc, without taking into account how many monsters you have killed.

So...no SoZ conversation then (companions being able to talk and all that), right?

Modifié par Arkalezth, 27 janvier 2011 - 06:38 .

[kamal_]

I'm doing the same no xp for kills for my next work and I'm still getting 7xp for killing CR 0 creatures. Not sure if you want to fully eliminate xp for killing you have to redo the default death script or set something somewhere else.

[Quixal]

I am looking forward to seeing your take on a classic. Sorry to hear about the illness and such.



Path of Evil had area triggered XP in out of the way locations to reward the thorough explorers. It worked well in terms of adding a sense of accomplishment.

[Arkalezth]

Also, another thing I liked about PoE's XP system is that sometimes extra XP was awarded for ideal solutions to quests.

[Clyordes]

I like that there's so many different ways we can set this game up - great creativity vibe!



Anyhow - No SOZ convo system - partly I haven't a clue how to implement it (not that I've looked) and partly because I'm pretty happy with how they've turned out as they are - but I'll look out for feedback when its finally uploaded.

[Clyordes]

Hi folks,

Very quick update for anyone holding their breath:

Still in bug testing phase at the moment, and all's looking pretty good - just the odd bit of polish being applied here & there as I come across things now.

Started a full run through last night and in 3 hours managed to get through most of the encounters in the starting town, a linking wilderness area with a sub-quest & all of the buildings in the first half of the picturesque & generally lovely village of Orlane.

Everything works well, although I've noticed that a couple of minor conversation based scripts don't fire if you're controlling a companion rather than your main PC when you hit the trigger - probably my dodgy scripting, but I'm sort of assuming that for the majority of players, they'll be controlling their own characters most of the time, so won't notice.

On the good side, all of the combat encounters were definitely not easy, and the XP scheme I'm trying is working well.

On holiday next week, but hopefully will get to run through the rest soon after I get back & who knows, maybe upload within a fortnight.

[Clyordes]

Well - whaddaya know?  I submitted the files to BeyondThePale at 11pm last night & by the time I checked in on the vault at 7am this morning, I'd already got 9 downloads!
Who says the community's dying?!
Anyhow - the adventure's now available.  I feel like I've tested it to death, but I'm sure there are going to be things I've missed somewhere, just from the shear size of the thing & all the nooks & crannies you can investigate.

So, put on your best adventuring trousers & away you go!  (and don't forget to vote - please, or at least leave any comments you want to make).

Also, I'm just waiting for some knowledgeable person to tell me I didn't need to use the RWS AllInOne 2da.HAK.  When I first saw it I just saw the .hak extension & thought I'd have to associate that hak file alongside the main AllInOne.hak.  I never tested it without the 2da.hak associated with the mod, so don't know what effect it would have.  Please shout up if you know I don't need it - it won't take long to update & resubmit & it'll be one less download for people to have to get if so.

Phew - time for a lie down now

Cly.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Congrats!