Note: I've only read a few pages of Tchos' journal, but I think it's fantastic; good information on every page (some of it I am copying for later) and really neat to read about his progress over the past 9+ months.
Campaign Goals
To create a huge, "sweeping epic" that I want to play
Some backstory: I am a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series. I'm sure a lot of people here are as well. I don't know how many times I played those games (and Icewind Dale series) from beginning to end. A lot.
I did have one problem with the first Baldur's Gate game, however: I found it to be essentially a map-clearing exercise. I didn't like that very much. I didn't like feeling that, at least for the majority of the game, it wasn't the story pushing me forward through the maps so much as it was the desire to clear the Fog of War. Because, by God, there was probably a monster or quest to be had underneath all that black stuff cluttering the map. I won't be using any Fog of War mechanic at all. The maps shouldn't drive you in my campaign.
That said, Baldur's Gate I was great, no doubt - especially for it's time. The locations were memorable, the NPC's were the best, and it was a fun ride.
Baldur's Gate II exceeded my expectations. I have played it more than any other game. It was epic. I didn't care for the main story (I found Irenicus boring and annoying), but I absolutely loved so much of the rest of it; it was a game filled with nearly everything cool about Faerun: vampires, the Underdark, beholders, Illithids, Dragons and Liches.. Wow.
The Dragon battles and Kangaxx especially were memorable encounters for me. Those were just epic fights and they taught me a lot about the usefulness of certain spells in the AD&D world. I remember those battles and the feeling you would get when your party would eak out the victory... Awesome.
My desire is to create something in the Baldur's Gate II vein; something I consider a "sweeping epic"; something with a story that is worth getting caught up in, and battles that leave you breathless and pumped full of adreneline; something with NPC characters that are interesting to have in your party and color the game world a bit.
The story I've had sitting in my head for a while is big and fits very nicely into a standard 3-Act Campaign. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about things that are important to me and the story I want to tell. A list of goals goes something like this:
1) Single Player Campaign with recruitable NPC's: This was a difficult decision to reach, because I like both styles of play (I love creating my own full party). But I wanted a chance to create some interesting NPC's for the player, and like Baldur's Gate II, I want each one to have a fairly interesting side-quest attached. You don't have to do these quests or take the NPC's along in your party, but they should add some of the flavor I'm shooting for. I really liked how Baldur's Gate II did it with the NPC's they created, and I wanted to try my hand at it as well.
There will, however, be one mandatory NPC companion (courtesy of the story - this NPC is kinda necessary) - but this NPC will not count against your party limit, sort of like how Shandra was a free extra companion in the OC. The difference here is that I hope this NPC will actually be cool. I'[m really excited to tell this NPC's story in fact... because this NPC's story weaves very nicely into the overall story of the campaign. And the story, along with the NPC interaction, should make for some of the more memorable moments in the game (I hope).
2) Tactical Combat: I like being challenged, but I don't like impossible fights. I like it when my entire spell book can be useful and give me a tactical edge in combat. I was disappointed with the OC because most battles were reduced to nothing more than charging in with your best offensive spells and laying waste. As such, a lot of neat spells sat dusty and unused in my spellbook through the OC. And that bothered me.
I want combat to be tactical and strategic (speaking mostly of mid-to-high level here); I want players who memorize AoE spells, True Sight, Sanctuary, Etherial Jaunt, Breach, Spell Mantle, Glove of Invulnerability, Assay Resistance, Dispel and Dismissal to be rewarded by keeping those things ready in their books. I want enemy spellcasters to be tricky and powerful, as they're supposed to be, instead of the weak, squishy bugs they are most of the time (basically, I want enemy spellcasters to scare me again, like they did in BGII -remember the dudes in the sewer?.
And I want terrain to matter.
Spells like Evard's Black Tentacles should be the kind of spell you'd want to keep memorized just for an occasion when the terrain is your ally, and you can impede a group of enemies (or reinforcements) with a well-placed AoE spell. Sadly, those opportunities rarely presented themselves in the OC for NWN2. I want encounters in this campaign to be different. Challenging: Yes. Impossible: No.
3) Be Able To Prepare for Epic Battles: Something that drove me nuts about the OC was when I knew I'd be facing enemy spellcasters who are going to try and dispell all my buffs (I mostly play an EK BTW) and in preparation for this madness I have Spell Mantles and Globes of Invulnerability ready. I can cast those spells to protect myself, but the duration on those spells is short. And therein lies the problem with the OC - before every major battle there's a 20-minute conversation with the enemy. By the time the conversation is over and you get to the "Attack!" part, all my short-term anti-magic buffs are gone. That is annoying (it also makes me think of "The Incredibles" a bit too much, "Whoa, you almost caught me monologuing!")
This pehnomena the nasty side-effect of causing me, the player, to either want to rush through dialog (dumb) or use the pause button while I read the text (dumber) to slow down the decay on my buffs.
I want to do a few things to remedy this situation. I'm not exactly sure how I plan to pull this off yet, but I do intend to keep the long drawn-out conversations prior to big battles at a minimum. I want players to be able to see danger coming and have a few seconds to throw on those last, crucial buffs before charging into battle. Of couse, Etherial Jaunt and Sanctuary are good spells for that sort of thing, but they're single-target caster and really leave the others in the party in a bind when you go missing like that; I want to minimize that if necessary.
One idea I've had is to make use of the Clairaudience/Clairvoyance spell in conjuction with Spot/Listen/Lore. People in general have a sixth-sense about them; folks in real life have moments when they can sense danger and know something is coming, but they don't exactly know what it is.
I want to combine some of the Skills with C/C spell to give players an edge as to what's coming at certain moments. Like if a Ranger in your party has a high Spot/Listen skill and you're in a forest where that Ranger has traveled before, it would be kind of nice if the Ranger could speak up briefly before a particularly threatening encounter and say, "Hey, I know this area - we may see X creature, and they tend to do Y,a nd they're kind of vulnerable to Z." Likewise, I'd love for players to be able to cast C/C in a situation and combine it with their Lore check to determine, to a rough degree, what kind of enemy spellcasters await around the corner and what kind of spells they are likely to throw at your party. I don't know if this will work or if I can pull it off, but I want to give it a shot and see how it plays.
4) Speaking of Epic Battles - Have Them: I want epic battles. The Dragons in BGII and Kangaxx come to mind. I want to pit the party against some truly epic encounters.
You see, I'm an old school Everquest and EQII player. I particuarly loved EQII as they limited (and tuned) raids to 6, 12, 18 or 24 players. As a raid leader - and as a guy who loved to figure out the tactics on epic mobs and how to beat them - I loved how EQII handled epic fights. I loved raiding in that game.
The AD&D combat system doesn't lend itself as easily to that sort of battle as some other systems (mostly because it lacks any sort of crowd control - even Dragon Age got that right) but I think the chance is there to do something entertaining and fun with it. At least something more entertaining than what the OC did with it. I figure with some terrain adjustments and some enemy AI scripting, there has to be an opportunity to make big "boss" style encounters a bit more complex and entertaining than they were in the NWN2 OC.
I'd really like players to walk away from this campaign and say that the battles were fun. Not too hard - just fun and epic. That they were big and complex and sometimes their enemies did unexpected things. That would be cool.
5) Deviate as Little As Possible from the NWN2 Default Engine: I've already seen some really cool modules and scripts other players have put out there. But in the end, I just want to tell a story and spend the majority of my time designing cool areas, conversations and battles. Changing the mechanics of the engine isn't part of my overall goal. I would like to use Tchos' script to make door transitions one-click, but I think that sort of modification to the main engine is going to be few and far between for me. I really don't intend to stray far from the main OC engine. Players will be able to rest whenever, there will be a World Map (as opposed to the SoZ overland map), death will be the same as the OC, etc. I figure the less time I spend adjusting the game engine, the more time I can spend creating the actual content to tell this story.
6) The Main Story Will Fit Into Faerun Lore: I was pleasantly surprised to learn of some Forgotten Realms lore that will provided me with the perfect sandbox to play in. So this doesn't have to be something I make up entirely on my own. I hope that players who are tuned into this particular lore enjoy the story and don't mark me down too harsly for some of the liberties I will certainly take.
7) Work Consistenly: More than anything, I just want to plug away every day, consistently, on an area, a conversation, an NPC or an encounter. The Toolset has been easy to learn and the community here has been WONDERFUL. You all rock.
I have no idea how long this will take to design or if anyone will be left when I finish it, but this has been something I've wanted to do for a while. If no one else plays this campaign but me, I'd still be happy.
And back to setting placeables...
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