Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

Atop a hill in Eternity's End stands the Temple of Kelemvor, a place where the records of the dead are kept. Those who have played Mask of the Betrayer may remember this temple because it is one of the few places in the Fugue Plane that are featured in this game. The design of the area was certainly adequate, but it could have been better, in my opinion. As is my usual practice, I ripped this area from MotB and attempted to improve on it. Taking a cue from Anduraga (a.k.a. Josh), who did a marvelous job of giving the Basilica of Lost Hope a face lift, I laid out the area using the RWS Pocket Cathedrals hakpak from Robinson Workshop. I changed a few placeables and visual effects here and there and applied the same lighting that Anduraga used in the Basilica of Lost Hope. The result is a hauntingly beautiful piece of work, if I may say so myself.

My Halloween module is almost done, but there seem to be a million and one details to take care of before I can declare it completed. There are bugs to be squashed, placeables to be retextured, sound effects to be added, and who knows what else. I've playtested the module repeatedly, and each time, I find something new to add to my list of tasks. Considering that I've been working on the Halloween module for about a month, I find it somewhat appalling that I can play it from start to finish in a matter of minutes. At the start of my Halloween module, player characters will meet my alter ego, Elysius. This NPC resembles my avatar at the official Neverwinter Nights boards. I'm seriously considering recording a full set of voice overs for the conversations with Elysius. The advantage of this NPC's costume is that his helmet hides his mouth, which means I won't have to worry about synchronizing his lip movements with the voice overs. Nevertheless, voice work takes a lot...

This is my third post on the Halloween module that I'm making for the Bouncy Rock campaign. Yes, it's the third successive week that I haven't been working on Faithless, but it looks like I will be able to finish the Halloween module by the end of this week. After that, I'll be plugging away at Faithless once more. Although I've made several rooms for this module, I'm showing only a couple of in-game shots in this post. I'd like to keep the rest of my areas under wraps if only to retain some element of surprise for players. The picture on the right is a view of the kitchen, one of the most important rooms in this game. Anyone who hopes to complete this module must know their way around a kitchen. Those who can't tell a potholder from a panhandler need not worry. There will be recipes scattered around the house, all of which will be simple to follow. The design of this module is similar to those of adventure games such as The Longest Journey and Syberia ...

My upcoming module, Faithless, is still taking a backseat to another module I'm making for Bouncy Rock's Halloween campaign. I have less than three weeks to complete my little mod of horror, but I'm hoping to wrap it up by next week at the latest. I'm not going to say much about what my module is about. I'd rather have players find out for themselves when Bouncy Rock releases the entire campaign. To compensate for my reticence, I present the following pictures, each of which is worth a thousand words.

In my last post, I presented the Basilica of Lost Hope, an area that I recycled from one of the modules of Mask of the Betrayer . Well, I'm junking this area in favor of a brand new one, courtesy of Josh (a.k.a. Anduraga). Josh has done a couple of beautiful area prefabs (namely, Surague Escarpment and Tropical Shore ) and is currently designing areas for "Misery Stone," a highly anticipated NWN2 horror module. Seeing that I had ripped the basilica right out of MotB, Josh decided to make a better one. The resulting area kicks serious ash and is even more terrifying than the one I made. In terms of floor area, the original basilica and the one that Josh made are the same size. The latter looks far more spacious, however, because of its higher ceiling. The stained glass windows are more realistic and are an integral part of the walls. Josh created this area using the RWS Pocket Cathedrals hakpak by Robinson Workshop. He also set up the lighting of the area and added the v...

Since my very first post at this blog, I had not created any area set in the Fugue Plane. Considering that the whole point of my module is for players to try to destroy the Wall of the Faithless, readers may very well wonder if I haven't lost focus somehow. Wonder no more. I present one of the sites of the City of Judgment -- the Basilica of Lost Hope. All right, this area is something of a cop out. Like the first area that I created for Faithless, the Basilica of Lost Hope is lifted from Mask of the Betrayer . The designers at Obsidian Entertainment did a decent job of creating this area. The layout of the building is similar to that of real basilicas, although the ceiling of the former is rather low. What I like about OEI's design is that the sounds are appropriately creepy, and the misty haze that permeates the area gives it a ghostly ambience. What I didn't like about it, however, is that the lighting is as bland as Kelemvor, the incumbent god of death. To make matters ...

It is with a sigh of relief that I now declare the area design of the "Very Bad Place" to be complete. All that remains for this area is for me to add encounters, puzzles, NPC dialog, and whatever else is necessary to bring this place to life. That will have to be postponed for another time, though. My current plan of action is to create all the areas of my module before proceeding to other tasks. As with all areas that I have "completed," I may go back and modify a few parts here and there, but I expect this to be minor tweaking at most. All told, I have worked a total of four weeks on this area alone (five if I count the first week when I temporarily abandoned the module because I couldn't stand the color combination of the crypt tileset). By the gods of Faerun, never have I spent so much time designing an area for Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2. Technically, this Very Bad Place is actually composed of two areas, the ground floor and the second floor. Regardless, e...

Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of sixteen paintings, displayed as NWN2 placeables for the first time. Each is a collectors' item in its own way - not necessarily because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, and suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare. With these words, which I shamelessly stole from Rod Serling, I introduced my latest submission at the Neverwinter Vault, a hakpak that I call the Fright Gallery . This is my first time to create custom placeables, although the ones that I made are basically reskinned versions of the paintings that come with the game. Despite its simplicity, this submission has earned me the right to call myself a custom content developer. Yay. I created this hakpak because I needed some paintings to hang at the gallery of the Very Bad Place. Although there are many paintings available in the toolset and at the Vault, none of them are edgy enough to decorate a psychopath's castl...

This week, I created the upper level of the very bad place that I wrote about in my previous post. Although the area that I am making is supposed to be a fortress, I continued to use the crypt tileset with excellent results. This tileset is wonderfully versatile, allowing modders to create sewers, castles, and, of course, crypts. With the right placeables, lighting, and visual effects, I was able to set the kind of mood that should get players' internal alarm systems ringing like mad. This place is dangerous, no doubt about it. Despite having poured a lot of my time in developing this area, I haven't finished it yet. There are still a few more rooms that I have to furnish and illuminate. I'm seriously thinking of creating custom paintings to hang on the walls. The ones that are in the toolset or at the Vault are too pretty to decorate a psychopath's castle. Originally, I envisioned this area to be laden with combat encounters. It's supposed to be a fortress after al...

Between updating my Battle of the Builds module and creating a new utility program for NWN2 players called Peek-a-BIC , my progress in the Faithless module has been slow. A few days ago, I managed to get my groove back when I resumed work on an interior area that had temporarily taken a backseat. When I started working on it, this particular area disgusted me. I mean that quite literally. There was something about how the area looked that almost induced in me a gag reflex. Perhaps it had something to do with the greenish brown muck on the floor that, when coupled with the darkness of the place, made me think of sewers. That wouldn't have been so bad if I had been designing a sewer area, but it's actually supposed to be some bad guy's fortress. The fact that I was using the crypt tileset explains why the place looked filthy. The area would have looked more like a fortress if I had used the castle tileset instead, but I liked the chains hanging from the rafters that only the...

Bloodstone Manor is the home of Gareth Dragonsbane, king of Damara. A paladin and cleric of Ilmater, Gareth donates no less than half his earnings to his church. Despite that, Gareth is a rich man, thanks mainly to the bloodstone mining operations that are the lifeblood of Damara. For "Faithless," I had to create a couple of rooms from Bloodstone Manor using the TSR module Bloodstone Pass as my reference. The map in that module dates from nearly twenty game years prior to the start of "Faithless," so there's plenty of leeway for artistic license if I needed to draw upon it. I figured that because of the twelve-year war that troubled Bloodstone Village, the king's manor would be made of sturdy stone for proper defense. The furnishings and decor would have to be elegant but not ostentatious, as befitting a rich paladin and king. I imagine that with the winds blowing off the Great Glacier from the north, Damara would still be cold even in early spring. To keep...