Looking for reviews on "Fox's Den" (WIP)

kevaar

Campaign Name: Fox's Den (NWS-DTKJ8JDOK)
Quests: Fox's Den, Chapter 1 (NW-DNV7PAHLI) ; Fox's Den, Chapter 2 (NW-DOMXTVLB2); Fox's Den, Chapter 3 (NW-DOGWT49G2)

Fox's Den is an original story and work in progress, set in Forgotten Realms lore. The campaign teaser is as follows:

"Your adventure starts out innocuously enough, saving a clan of elves from some mysterious bounty hunters. But the more you learn, the more you realize things are not as they seem..."

Please let me know if you find any typos. I'm also particularly interested in how the story comes across--how coherent and realistic it feels. Thanks in advance for the reviews!

epharmd

I really enjoyed both quests. The second definitely shows a great deal more polish. I really enjoyed the amount of interactions and activity on the street map. Even though it is a widely used map it really felt fresh, vibrant and non-linear with the variety of things to do (I’m easily distracted so I tried everything I could find). As for the story, it was believable and is well-rooted in Forgotten Realms lore.

As for typos I noticed more in the first quest than the second, and I apologize but I didn’t actually take notes as to where they were. Considering the amount of dialogue however there aren’t as many as I would expect. One of the things that I have been discovering with my own foundry experiences is that it is really hard to proofread the dialogue without actually playing through it (the dialogue editor is not terrible but also not very user friendly when it comes to long conversations or large amounts of dialogue). But once again, the second chapter feels much more polished and I only noticed a couple typos.

Some of the map transitions felt a little awkward and I would either make the “sparkle” object larger or raise it … nearby objects felt as though they were in the way sometimes. Most of them were also labeled with the generic “next map” title and it helps to change that to something more interesting/personal.

Overall, it was an enjoyable and interesting start! I look forward to seeing the next chapters!

kevaar

Thank you!! I noticed one of the ingame reviews said the map transition by the horse was hard to click on, so I went in and moved that. I also played around with a fade-to-black screen effect and am pondering replacing the tower district map transition with that.

I've gotten Chapter 3 published as of today, but it has not been given a very thorough run-through for bugs yet. (Fair warning if you decide to play it right now!) I'm also not satisfied with the cave map--all of those lights are not properly Underdark-ish! I'm looking for a way I can blot them out with a shadow or something (for I am way too lazy to create my own cave map)...asking in another thread for that, but if you know anything, would be glad to hear.

Thanks for the review! ^.^

EDIT--bugs have been stampified and it should be ready for a normal review. I still haven't figured out how to make shadows, so I just dumped rocks on top of the lighted areas...better than it was, but still not as good as I pictured it originally. Ah well.

melinden

Fox’s Den Chapter 1

I played with my level 60 DC. I think this is a good start. You’ll probably want to smooth out the narrative since at the moment it seems to jump around quite a bit. Adding details to the first map especially will help as well. Sound is also a good addition.

Play through notes:

-you probably want to add a lot more details to your first map. Trees, shrubs, flowers, etc. As a rule of thumb the more cluttered an area is, the more “lived in” and real it appears. You might also consider changing the sky and weather away from the default setting. Adding music or ambient noise would also be a big help.

-usually I am thrilled to have NPC help but whoa, these three are just killing everything for me! It might make sense if maybe just one of them came with me? Maybe that could be a choice?

-the clicky that is the transition back to the Neverwinter map says Press F to go to Next Map. It is usually preferred if you change that default text to something that fits your story.

-it seems odd that I’m prying into Foxdale’s past without a specific reason?

-when talking to Thistledown am I referring to Foxdale as Foxglade in an attempt to catch him in a lie or is that an error?

-you can do a blackout effect by making a walled in space appear around the player during the dialogue prompts, if you wanted to try that at the end of the second map

kevaar

melinden wrote: »

-you probably want to add a lot more details to your first map. Trees, shrubs, flowers, etc. As a rule of thumb the more cluttered an area is, the more “lived in” and real it appears. You might also consider changing the sky and weather away from the default setting. Adding music or ambient noise would also be a big help.

-the clicky that is the transition back to the Neverwinter map says Press F to go to Next Map. It is usually preferred if you change that default text to something that fits your story.

Both noted. This was my first Foundry quest, so most of my effort went into the basic mechanics. Now that I know how things work, I can go back and polish it a bit.

-usually I am thrilled to have NPC help but whoa, these three are just killing everything for me! It might make sense if maybe just one of them came with me? Maybe that could be a choice?

I'm not entirely sure how to make it a choice, though I suppose I could also solve this by making the encounters harder.

-it seems odd that I’m prying into Foxdale’s past without a specific reason?

Hm. Good point. The reason would be that the lot of them are acting fairly suspicious for claiming to be a bunch of innocent elven refugees. I suppose I should make that clearer in the dialogue/quest text.

-when talking to Thistledown am I referring to Foxdale as Foxglade in an attempt to catch him in a lie or is that an error?

Would be an error. Thanks for pointing it out!

-you can do a blackout effect by making a walled in space appear around the player during the dialogue prompts, if you wanted to try that at the end of the second map

Would that be using invisible walls and a depthfade effect? Or some other object?

kevaar

Squashed some bugs and did some small changes to all three quests:

Chapter 1
Made encounters in the first map more difficult.
Edited map transitions.
Fixed the Foxglade typo.

Chapter 2
Added stairs to the last map's pool for you goobers who kept falling in it.

Chapter 3
Edited map transitions.
Added a lot more detail to the Underdark map. Now if only I could figure out how to keep things from sparkling so much. x.o

Next on list:
Add more detail to Chapter 1's maps and adjust the investigation part of the plot.
Start on Chapter 4!