Faithless: The Making of an NWN2 Module

Meet Mister Grin, one of the potential companions that player characters may take up in Shattered Dreams. The picture shown here is how I envision this character to appear. I’ll make a 3D model of this NPC later. For now, I’d like to say a few words about him to give a preview of what he is like: Although Mister Grin is dressed in the height of fashion, people tend to be taken aback by his appearance for three reasons. Firstly, almost every part of his body is covered with some article of clothing. Mister Grin explains that his heavy clothing helps him resist the ague, to which his frail constitution is highly susceptible. Secondly, while Mister Grin is obviously a man of breeding, it is not entirely certain what breed he is of. An occasional peek at his pointy ears suggests that he may be of elven stock, although he is taller and bulkier than the typical elf. Also, even with Mister Grin’s hat, scarf, and dark glasses on, it is easy to tell that he is completely devoid of hair. Mister ...

This is the third part of my series on story writing. To put this blog post into context, readers may want to refer to my two previous posts. Having created the plot and decided on the setting of our module, we writers started pitching ideas for the main NPCs. By this time, we all had an idea of what types of non-player characters we needed; e.g., town mayor, companion #1, villainous mastermind, etc. All we needed was to provide specifics on personality, background, and character classes. At the bouncyRock website, the members of our team have a private forum for discussing all matters related to our project. We created a thread in this forum for anyone to post their character write-ups. Although we stated that more than one writer may post different write-ups for the same character, in actual practice, hardly anyone provided alternatives for characters that had already been suggested. If we had more than one candidate for each role, we could have chosen the one we liked best or maybe ...

Over the past several days, I took a break from area design to try my hand at 3D modeling, something that I've never done before. The closest that I have come to creating 3D models was to retexture several NWN2 placeables. Emboldened with my success in this endeavor, I figured that the logical next step is to try to create a new character head. Stands to reason, right? Right. My objective was to create a pretty half-elven head for one of my NPCs. Anyone who has tried making a female half elf character in NWN2 will understand why I need a new head model. The ones that come with the game are all pretty... pretty ugly. There are a number of heads that are available at the Vault, but none of them are appropriate for my NPC. With no prior experience and no patience to read tutorials, I jumped right in and fiddled with my 3D software. I decided that the best way for me to learn how to create character heads is to examine and tweak the ones that come with the game. This strategy opened up...

To help me understand my characters better, I find it fun and useful to write back stories for the more important NPCs in my module. Character backgrounds are often excellent inspiration for side quests. For this post, I've decided to spotlight Queen Christine of Damara, wife of King Gareth Dragonsbane. A submissive woman this lady is not. Even though she only has a small role to play in "Faithless," her strong character warrants a separate writeup on her. Despite appearances, nothing that I write or show in this blog is a spoiler. Most of the information presented below may be read in the four TSR modules regarding the Bloodstone War; namely, Bloodstone Pass , The Mines of Bloodstone , The Bloodstone Wars , and The Throne of Bloodstone . A small part of this writeup is actually my conjecture on why some of the characters behaved the way they did. I believe that readers may discern the actual realms lore from my conjecture based on how I phrase some of the information. Th...

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...