The Foundry - A guide to creating better then average UGC

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

THE FOUNDRY

Creating content players might want to play

Added two brand new chapters HERE (reply #18)

***An always updated and downloadable version can always be found HERE. This includes all additions and changes that don't make it into the first page of this posting.***

This article is to help new content creators establish good practices to making unique and fun Foundry content. It is also designed to help authors overcome creative blocks by helping them think through creative or writers blocks rather then tell them how to proceed. It will give authors entry points, where they can then use their own imagination to build a deeper story.
From now on out, I will often substitute the terms User generated content, user content, user quests, player made quest, player made content, blah blah you get the idea with UGC. (User Generated Content).

I. I Had a Dream
So you have a brilliant idea for a quest in Neverwinter. You have bits and pieces of the story in your head, some ideas for the scenes, but you are not sure where to start. Well, this is the tricky part. Everyone has their own way of starting with an idea and then reaching their goal. I will attempt to help you out with some tips, some strategies, and some ways to storyboard and script your UGC. This article however is not a guide on how to work the Foundry itself.
(Author note, yes the game is not out yet, so you can ignore the following pragraph) The first step you should do, before you do anything, is get in the Foundry and play around. Learn what you can and cannot do, so you don't plan your entire quest around a mechanic that the Foundry will not even let you make. On the contrary the last thing you should do is just start throwing a quest together on a whim, unless you do not intend to publish it. Your name is important, there will be a lot of quality UGC, and players will have to decide what to play and what to ignore. Therefore, your first published quest will want to be something that gets your name out there, and not something that puts your name a someones 'Do no play' list. Experimentation is good, but keep it to yourself. Learn the Foundry by making practice quests and only playing them locally.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to sully your name! Do not use others as lab assistants to test out your ideas by releasing half-produced content. It's all about first impressions. If you read a really bad book, you think you will go back and get another book by that author?

II. You're Not in Kansas
Having a fantastic story to tell is not enough to have a playable Neverwinter quest. A common mistake I tended to see with UGC is that authors' stories, while in and of itself are great, are far to removed from what's going on in the world around it. You have to remember that a lot of the players that will be delving into your story, have already been playing the game for a bit and are learning what is happening in the game world. If you then take them into a story, that completely ignores what the players have been experiencing for the last twenty levels, it will alienate them. So, you have a story about a band of bandits that kidnap some guys love interest. You have plot twists, you have betrayal, you have action, you have everything you need...so you think. You're missing one important thing. Regardless of what the story involves, it is still taking place in the lands in and around Neverwinter. So, while you might have this story in your head from before you even heard of Neverwinter, you should now go through it and somehow tie it into current events. Not saying anything major either. Here are a few tips and things to think of, that will lead to a better story:

Location: Yes, you can make up your own location, but try and place it smartly in the overall map. The best way to create a new location, is to make it feel that it was there all along, just waiting to be discovered, or it could be a location that was always known about, just not often talked about. Explore ways to introduce this location in a believable way.
Motivations: Regardless of what your characters are experiencing in your story, remember, they still LIVE in the game. They have experienced at some level the catastrophes that have lead to the current state of Neverwinter. While they may not be apparent, try to determine how your characters might have reacted or changed to what happened in the past. As you think of these things, you will begin to develop new ideas for your story that will help plant it firmly in the game world. In a nutshell, A giant volcano erupted and destroyed half of Neverwinter, this tends to affect people in some way.
Tie-ins: Even if you plan to have your quest far removed from current events, which is perfectly acceptable, throwing some minor tie-ins are important. Just something that the player can see or hear and mentally link with what they have experienced outside of your quest. It could be off-handed chatter between NPC's, an item the player can examine, a bit of lore found on a bookshelf, or something a bit more major, like a main quest NPC speaking of certain events in the game and how they impacted them.

The biggest thing to remember is to find some way that will make the story feel APART of the world, and not some extra-dimensional event that disconnects the players from the game they have been playing for some time. This will help to make the story more believable.

It's not about taking events or elements in the game and creating a story around them. Rather it's about taking YOUR story, and then putting into the game world in a believable way, while being mindful of those events happening in the game. You can tell your story however you want, but remember that the story you tell is by it's nature a part of the game world for the players playing it. Choosing to ignore that fact creates a disconnect between players and your content. Embrace the setting of the game.

III. Knowledge is Power
If you're like me, then your knowledge of everything Forgotten Realms is limited. While I have read many of Salvatores books, I never made it to the books that talk about the Spellplague or the eruption of Mount Hotenow, and I never played the Pen and Paper game. Therefore, I had some catching up to do. The campaign I am planning for the game is actually a re-imagining of a book I am writing. The world that the book takes place in is of my own imagining. Yet I was always interested in telling the story in a more interactive way. Neverwinter allows me to do just that. However, it means reworking many of the elements to fit into the game world. When planning and story boarding the campaign, I did some reading on various things related to current events. During the process of writing dialogue or designing maps and such, I would make an effort to look for a more D&D way to do something. While the basic story remains the same, I have found many ways to plant the story into Neverwinter in a way that you would never realize the original story is as far from D&D as you can get.
Some may say I am watering down my vision. But to me, it's a way to use my imagination in a new way. Having the vast amounts of lore and locations developed over the decades is a huge bonus. Now, whether your story is an original concept, or one that from the beginning was always planned to take place in the world of Neverwinter, you can benefit greatly from what is already there. In my cases, I have changed names of locations to their closest counterpart around Neverwinter, certain ideologies have been modified to fit the lore, and I even added some completely new story elements that plant the game into current events. While I have done a lot of these things to help make my campaign more Forgotten Realms, the story is still my own. And more importantly, how I write the dialogue and story elements still conforms to my own vision.
In any case, for you, there are many ways in which you can use already established lore to help you, both build your story, as well as further immerse the player. This ranges from physical locations to place your quest, historical events that can be the catalyst for your story, Gods and Deities that can be the influence behind your characters motivations, creatures to fight, organizations, cults, groups that can be tied into your quest as the bad or good guys. Even when making your own unique elements of the game, you can use established reference to make it more believable. Instead of just creating an arbitrary band of maniacal mages and leaving it at that, figure out what their motivations are, use past example in D&D lore, or attach to them a Deity that can be influencing them. Do something that makes them feel apart of the world in a tangible way. Same for a new town or village. I am creating a wholly new village for part of my campaign. However, I am implementing story elements that establish it in the world, explaining why it has not really been heard of by most, a quick (yet optional backstory) on the town, the residents, and their motivations. I could have just said, you're in a town of <insert name> and left it at that, but there will be plenty of these ad nauseam towns throughout the Foundry.

Do your research. At the very least, read up in the internet about the events most relevant to the game, such as the Spellplague and it's effects, the eruption of Mount Hotenow, and then go a little deeper on more specific subject matter related to your quest. Google has it all, and you never need to really open up an actual D&D campaign book.

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

IV. The Meat and Potatoes
So you have your idea in head, you worked out some motivations, and you just want to start fleshing it out. Well, you could just jump into the foundry and start at it. But this can leave you with large holes, both in gameplay and in story. The best thing to do from here is storyboard your quest. There are many ways to do this, from simply getting a pencil and some paper and drawing a rough outline, to more complex methods such as I use. As the game is far from release, I have began work on my campaign using various methods to speed up development once the Foundry is live. I will now share with you some of my techniques.
First, the best thing you can do is start your draft or storyboard on a cloud based service, such as Google Drive, so that you can develop anywhere. If an idea pops into your head, you have access to your documents as long as you have access to the internet. I use my tablet at work because its compact, and allows me to access most of google drive. For some stuff I need a real computer, but I can create new word documents, type up my ideas, and when I get home it's all there on my computer.
My development is broken into about five parts. I utilize several Google Drive add-ons to achieve this. Below is a breakdown of what I use, how I use them and some screenshot examples.. The tools I use are:

Draw.io Diagram: Allows you to create flowcharts that statically mimic the dialoge trees in the Foundry.
Floorplanner: A tool that allows you to build up maps and scenes. It is really a house layout tool, but is easily adapted. It's free for one building, but you can have many many “designs” for each floor in a building. Each design is independent of others. You can build outdoor maps as well as indoor maps. You can get a 3d view of the interior of a building to help with size. While the Foundry uses pre-designed elements to make an interior map, you have a lot of input how it will turn out. And you can decorate the interior as you see fit. This tool helps me to determine flow of an area to better write out the dialoge and objectives.
Documents: The standard document creator in Drive. Essentially an online version of Word.
Spreadsheet: It's Googles version of Excel. I use this to database elements that I will need to reference when I make the game. Mainly it's where I have all my lore I want to reference. On the map I will just tag a location as being a lore item, then I can look in the spreadsheet to find the actual lore text I will put into the game.

The Outline and Drafts: This is the living document of all the ideas pertaining to my story. In this I will type up rough drafts of dialogues, lore ideas, overall flow of the quest, and anything else of relevance. This is also what I add-to when on my tablet, as it's easy and fast to update. It uses the default document creator.

Overview: This is the overall flow of the quest. It uses the Draw.io addon to create a flowchart that I can use to work up what and when stuff will happen both in terms of moving to another scene, opening up dialogue, adding objectives to the quest log, etc. Screenshot of Overview

Dialogue Creator: This uses the same Draw.io addon as the overview, but is where I make a dialogue tree of each dialogue in the quest. I break it down to where on the far left is where you will see DM style text describing non-visual elements. Screenshot of Dialogue Tree

Scene Creator: I use the floor planner add-on for this. I use the term Scene instead of map, as its more then just a visual representation of the map, but also includes all elements of the flow, including pathing (as seen in blue line), item locations, keys to certain dialogue etc. Screenshot of Scene designer Also here is a 3D view of the scene, which helps you with getting an idea of overall scope. Everything in the Floor Planner addon is to scale with each other, this allows you to get a good idea of everything in relation to a standard sized person.

Lore Database: I use the spreadsheet to keep a database of lore items I want to put into the game. Generally when I make a scene, I will fit in some appropriate lore items or NPC's and tag them with a key. I will then put into the database what I actually want the lore text to be when you interact with the subject. I have hidden columns that include quest and map names I have already decided upon for the campaign so they show up in the drop down lists. This allows everything to be entered easily, and prevents inaccuracy. Screenshot of an example Lore Datebase.

Character Datebase: It's also good to keep a database or document on all the characters in your story. This serves two purposes, one, it allows you to avoid the mistake of forgetting a characters name, two it allows you to save for later use characters you might want to put into other quests. In your record of characters, its good to include some key points of who they are, what they previously did, as well as a few tags on their major locations in your quests.

You can see I get pretty organized and detailed. However, you can do as little or as much pre-planning as you want. The important thing to remember is that you work out the overall flow of the story before you get knee deep and realize you have major continuity issues or elements that contradict what previously happened.

V. Where Do I Go From Here?
Here are some more helpful tips on getting started.

If you can't decide where to place your quest, and for an advanced but rewarding approach then the game is your friend. Find a particularly interesting area you quested through, and pull from that a quest you feel was left open ended. Now try and write a quest that progresses from the official quest. The challenge is to do it in a way that feels natural to the player, does not contradict already established events, and is fun. If you're going to do this, signify in your quest introduction, what the players see before they accept the quest, that it should be done after official quest blah blah. While this is dangerous, as it can turn a lot of players off, if you already established yourself as a good quest creator, then you have little to fear.
For a simpler approach, and for new content authors, simply picking the setting of a zone in the game and jumping from there works well as well. The big advantage is that players can view quests that take place only in the zone they are in, making them easily accessible for players wanted a next without having to leave the zone to start it. If you choose to create a quest for a specific questing zone, try to keep tangents to a minimum. For example, take the Orc area in Neverwinter. While it has it's own quest chain involving the Orcs, there is lots of room for side quests that involve the same theme. A mistake would be however, having a quest start in the Orc zone, that has nothing to do with the theme of the area, that then takes you across Neverwinter to do a completely random objective. Since the zone is overrun with Orcs, I highly doubt little miss Susie is going to be living in one of the houses surrounded by a hundred Orcs looking for her necklace on the other side of the city.
Use other inspirations outside of D&D and modify. Take something from mythology or real world historical events, and see if you can't bend and twist it to make a believable Forgotten Realms tale. Do not rip it off completely, but use it as a starting point. Once you do that, and then start to do the other tips I have mentioned, such as character motivations, Forgotten Realms histories and locations, then you will start to create a completely unique story.

Some pitfalls to avoid include:

Overused cliches: While they will always be there in any story, the better you cover them up the better you quest will be.
To much "Time travel": Temporal events(i.e flashbacks, time travel, etc) are a powerful tool to tell a story outside of current events in the game. They will allow you to write a completely unique story that does not need to conform to what is happening in the now of Neverwinter. However, it can be overused. You may think you have a great idea and you're being a better author by moving your quest outside the current time frame, as opposed to just having a quest that makes no sense being in current times, but it's better to rework your quest to fit with the present. Save that time travel event for when you really need it! It's a tool you can only use rarely to be effective, don't use it on a run of the mill quest.
Contradictions: This is a huge issue if you just 'wing it". If you don't take the time to draft out your story first, then you run the very real risk of being halfway through your quest development, and realizing (if you're lucky) that you just contradicted some major plot point earlier on.
Generic Quests: While the lure of just plopping out some generic go kill x number of rats, or find my lucky ring, quest is a strong one, ignore it. There are plenty of these in the game already, and plenty more will be flooding the Foundry. If you must have that sort of quest, then introduce some effective story elements into it. If you wan't to create a hack-em up adventure that is light on story, then you must have some really interesting level and fight mechanics to hold players interest. A few puzzles also helps.

There are two brand new chapters HERE (reply #18) or see the first post for the link to the entire article on Google Drive.

chili1179 · February 2013

Very nice guideline that I hope people who are jumping into the foundry will read and take note of.

firesnakearies · February 2013

Nice post! This has some great advice, thanks for taking the time to write this up. I'm sure it will help a lot of future Foundry authors!

xeiken1 · February 2013

Just downloaded all the stuff, will definitely look into it, although using different tools probably.

Thanks hercooles130uscg!

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

Your all welcome. It was fun actually, I tend to get these random urges to do stuff like this.

xeiken1 wrote: »

Just downloaded all the stuff, will definitely look into it, although using different tools probably.

Thanks hercooles130uscg!

I am sure there are others out there. In fact, I had even mulled around the idea of using the NWN 2 toolset, but that toolset, while very powerful, is so convoluted compared to what you use in the Foundry. I liked the idea of using Google drive for all the great add-ons people have created, as as for it being a cloud based system. Would be a nice idea for guilds to have open collaboration for campaign creation in Google drive, before having one person put it all together in the foundry.

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

And just to show creating of outdoor maps, here are some more screenshots.
Outdoor 2D
A simple map of the High Road, showing the spawn location, an encounter, trees, you get the idea.
Outdoor 3D
using the 3D view to get a grasp on the clearing for the encounter with the bad guys.

While you can easily use the Foundry to flesh out maps and get a better view of scale, NPC placement, etc, doing a quick pre-draw allows you to spend less time moving things around as you already have a good idea of where to place everything. It also helps you to come up with new ideas for story, lore and mechanics.

cychotical · February 2013

This should probably be stickied

skallgrimson · February 2013

cychotical wrote: »

This should probably be stickied

Aye sticky the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> outa this...

Great stuff man!

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

That would be fun.

I would also appreciate anyone else views or ideas on this matter. This is about making sure we have as much quality UGC available through the games life.

ryger5 · February 2013

That would be "You're Not in Kansas".

Sorry for the pedantic quibble, but since this fine article is about writing well, I thought you might want to correct it.

Still digesting much of this, but I love what I read so far. Kudos!

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

ryger5 wrote: »

That would be "You're Not in Kansas".

Sorry for the pedantic quibble, but since this fine article is about writing well, I thought you might want to correct it.

Still digesting much of this, but I love what I read so far. Kudos!

Haha, too true. Sadly, while I like to think I can tell a good story, my grammar and spelling skills are...lacking. If not for spell checkers and kindly forum posters keeping me in check, every article I write would actually be creating a new language.

ryger5 · February 2013

hercooles130uscg wrote: »

Haha, too true. Sadly, while I like to think I can tell a good story, my grammar and spelling skills are...lacking. If not for spell checkers and kindly forum posters keeping me in check, every article I write would actually be creating a new language.

Yeah sorry to call you out that like, on reflection I realize, I could have PM'd you about it. Apologies.

This is a superb article and like many others, I thank you for taking the time to craft it!

turokhammerstone · February 2013

I am really looking forward to the Foundry. Thanks for the post. Story telling is the key. Telling that story within the mechanics of the Foundry is the challenge. You have to strike a balance of presenting the story in as few words as possible and explaining or at least expressing the lore and background that would fill a 700 page novel. Make the dialog too wordy and the player will skip through them, not long enough then its just another hack and slash mission with little substance.

When creating your quest or campaign, remember that ever item tells a story. The setting, the lighting, sounds, flow of combat or just the path you use to help guide the PC all play a role in that story. You have the obvious interaction with the NPC/Quest Giver. You can also use NPCs that are just moving around to help paint that story through floating chat. Tomes and statues help tell the lore without burdening the NPC with long winded NPC chat. Item drops with text help tie a story together that might not have been fully covered.

I love the prefabbed areas that the devs have created for the foundry. I don't have an artistic bone in my body. I tried in the NWN toolset and posted a few things but I just don't have the eye. I can't wait to see the foundry and get to play in it. Then spend three weeks going over it again and again and again only to get a 2.8 star review...LOL

I look hopefully to the future of unique and innovative ways to tell my story through game mechanics.

zaphtastic · February 2013

One thing to keep in mind that all players have different tastes, and - in fact - most of them will probably not be looking for story-focused UGC either. Getting people to find and try out your new-and-unrated mission from a pool of several hundred thousand is going to be the hardest part (I've ranted plenty about this on these forums, and am preparing a megathread for when the Foundry forums open). FWIW, here is the rating system many reviewers used to rate City of Heroes Mission Architect story arcs in the form of questions to be answered -- some positive, some negative.

Story: How the story itself holds up. Does it fit into FR canon? Is the story engaging, does it hold the player's interest? Are the twists and turns too difficult to follow or is the plot so completely obvious that it is not interesting? Are there inconsistencies, plot holes? How about lazy writing?

Design: How well the dungeon/quest makes use of Foundry features. Are Foundry mechanics used appropriately? Are there creative solutions that circumvent some weakness / missing feature of the Foundry? Is there an overuse of certain elements? Do the enemies look interesting and do they do what you'd expect them to do? Is the dialogue system used in a fun way, or is it just click click click done? Is text properly formatted, and is it free of really painful grammar / spelling errors?

Gameplay: How well the gameplay itself holds up. Is it too easy/hard/frustrating? Are the encounters fun? Is there a lot of needless running around and backtracking? Are the objectives varied enough? Does the quest/dungeon support multiple playstyles, or does it force the player to follow a strict path? Are there optional objectives that add to the experience? Is there a good balance of combat / noncombat content?

Detail: Attention to detail without bogging down the player. Does every custom enemy have a description that makes sense? Are descriptions so long / so wordy it takes forever to read them? If there are enemies that talk, do they actually say relevant and interesting things? If there are aspects of the story / characters / world that weren't necessarily clear during the progression of the plot, are they explained somewhere later? Does the player drown in a deluge of unescapable exposition at one point? Is it still possible to enjoy the quest/dungeon if someone doesn't want to spend hours reading everything?

Overall: An experience can be much more (or less) than the sum its parts. Was there something that I really liked or hated? Something I think others would appreciate more (or less) than I did? Is the creator a hoopy frood?

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

zaphtastic wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind that all players have different tastes, and - in fact - most of them will probably not be looking for story-focused UGC either. Getting people to find and try out your new-and-unrated mission from a pool of several hundred thousand is going to be the hardest part (I've ranted plenty about this on these forums, and am preparing a megathread for when the Foundry forums open). FWIW, here is the rating system many reviewers used to rate City of Heroes Mission Architect story arcs in the form of questions to be answered -- some positive, some negative.

Story: How the story itself holds up. Does it fit into FR canon? Is the story engaging, does it hold the player's interest? Are the twists and turns too difficult to follow or is the plot so completely obvious that it is not interesting? Are there inconsistencies, plot holes? How about lazy writing?

Design: How well the dungeon/quest makes use of Foundry features. Are Foundry mechanics used appropriately? Are there creative solutions that circumvent some weakness / missing feature of the Foundry? Is there an overuse of certain elements? Do the enemies look interesting and do they do what you'd expect them to do? Is the dialogue system used in a fun way, or is it just click click click done? Is text properly formatted, and is it free of really painful grammar / spelling errors?

Gameplay: How well the gameplay itself holds up. Is it too easy/hard/frustrating? Are the encounters fun? Is there a lot of needless running around and backtracking? Are the objectives varied enough? Does the quest/dungeon support multiple playstyles, or does it force the player to follow a strict path? Are there optional objectives that add to the experience? Is there a good balance of combat / noncombat content?

Detail: Attention to detail without bogging down the player. Does every custom enemy have a description that makes sense? Are descriptions so long / so wordy it takes forever to read them? If there are enemies that talk, do they actually say relevant and interesting things? If there are aspects of the story / characters / world that weren't necessarily clear during the progression of the plot, are they explained somewhere later? Does the player drown in a deluge of unescapable exposition at one point? Is it still possible to enjoy the quest/dungeon if someone doesn't want to spend hours reading everything?

Overall: An experience can be much more (or less) than the sum its parts. Was there something that I really liked or hated? Something I think others would appreciate more (or less) than I did? Is the creator a hoopy frood?

All very valid points. Some of which I obviously missed in my write up. I got so focused on presenting a story driven experience that I did neglect those wanting to cater to the players that prefer a little less story. The key if your worried about pushing away those players is to follow rokhammerstones reply. Use everything around the player to tell the story statically and combined it with a concise required dialogue. But have plenty of optional dialogue options or interactive items that further build upon the story, but does not force anyone to do it.

But of course, as I have said, there will be far more authors that can make a ton of quality, short story light quests. I am aiming for those that are wanting to build true campaigns and stories as opposed to a short dungeon run.

It would be nice to have a more detailed rating and review system in NWO built in, that includes the ability to review each element of a campaign or quest such as you described for CoH. An optional form that includes all these categories. Right now, all you can do is write a paragraph or so, and there is no standard format for detailed reviews. mega review threads will help, as will dedicated websites, but there needs to be in game options.

In anycase, any author should use those catagories to self review their own content. If ask those same questions that reviewers will be answering, then they can smooth out some of the rough edges early on.

Keep the ideas coming!

ryger5 · February 2013

Solid points, boy this is a great thread.

For what it is worth, in my experience, UGC is usually too hard, rather than too easy. I think designers too often want to make sure the adventure is challenging, and they over-compensate. This is especially true in the first door/room. Nothing worse than opening up the first door and getting ganked by two uber-bosses right off the bat.

Slow, gradual difficulty increase is good and don't clobber them. Look at the actual game content for guidance. They've play-tested this stuff, they know what scales well and what is both fun, but challenging in a mission.

Also, there will be exploit quests, UCG that's specifically set up to minimize (or sometimes eliminate) all risk and maximize reward. Don't fall into the trap of making more like them! The more we focus on making actual quality (rather than fast, easy XP), the better the game will be overall!

hercooles130uscg · February 2013

Added two new chapters to the original document (and rearranged them). You can view the article in it's entirety here

IV. It’s a Micro Micro World
Within the overall world of The Forgotten Realms, lies what I call the Micro-World. This miniaturized world is the place of your own creation. It inhabits the the grand larger world around it, and is heavily influenced by it. But at the same time, it has a story and persona all it’s own. Fleshing out and building this micro-world that your campaign will take place in will help you create not only a better story, but give you endless opportunity to expand into other campaigns or quests. Even if you intend the players of your quest or campaign to only see a very small portion of this world, just having that unseen backdrop of realized ideologies, back story and characters will make what the players do see, feel more realistic, because you built everything they are seeing and playing based on a larger canvas of thought.

Imagine you had this thought of “Wow, I have an idea for an awesome looking front quarter panel for a car." So you set out to draw just that panel, as well as what it is directly connected to, so you also have a wheel, and part of a bumper and hood. Something completely new. But again all you want people to see is quarter panel, the rest of the car will never ever be seen, to you it just does not exist. For this reason, you never accounted for what the rest of the car even looked like at all, so now you run the risk of the drawing looking incomplete. The lines might be too short, a portion might look too thick, the scale just looks off. You see, the viewers, even if subconsciously, are trying to fit this smaller drawing into the larger picture. But since you drew what they see without any thought of how it flows with the rest of the car, it does not fit well. However, if you first painted the entire car, in order to get the scale right, and then crop out the portion you want players to see, then begin adding more detail, the viewers will see a far more realistic interpretation, something that looks real, like it could exist. I know it’s not the best analogy, but you get the idea I hope. Here are some ways to start building this micro-world.

For this, your best friend will be either a physical notepad, or a cloud based word processor. You can use Notepad or Word as well, but this limits your ability to edit away from the computer your file is saved. Using whatever method you prefer, keep a running draft of anything that comes into mind relating to both the actual quest you're making, as well as supporting information. Some great information to add to this draft:

Put in your thoughts on character motivations. Even though the player may never see this in dialogue, it will help you write quest dialogue that is accurate and sounds realistic. As you begin to flesh out a character, more and more information will swell in your head, and you will take what was a flat 2D character and create a living breathing person. A positive side effect of this is that as you develop this character's backstory, you will uncover new ideas and thoughts about the world around this character, that you can either add to your current quest, or use to draw upon for later content.
In the case of smaller organizations, such as a company of mercenaries, a guild, a band of thieves, anyting of the like, draw up in your notebook a few characters that might be a part of the outfit. You may never actually focus on a single entity from this organization at all, but by determining the motivations of a few individuals, you start to develop an overall theme of the organization. Why they are here, who they are, how did they come to be. Doing this will give you incredible power when adding portions of dialogue or floating text to NPC’s. It will also build a backstory for this organization that you can use later on in other campaigns. By developing this now, and then showing a little of that in the quest, if you do later decide to expand on that group of people, then not only do you have a lot to draw from, but returning players that already experienced your previous quest will feel more connected, as what they are experiencing in this new campaign feels like it was a natural extension of earlier content. You can generally tell when you watch a movie that was made as a sequel to another movie that never intended for a sequel to attached to it. You can see where the creators had to do some awkward stuff to make the new movie fit what happened in the previous movie.
If you’re creating a whole new town, again, pick a few occupants to expand upon. Think of some possible events that might have happened to your town. Most importantly, determine how your town might have suffered and reacted to the major events that happened around Neverwinter. Then use this new information to put in small bits of dialogue to the various NPC’s around the town to add more life to the town. And again, you can use what you develop to create new content that expands on different townsfolk. Imagine having a fully fleshed out town, with individuals with their motivations and stories, that you can go back to for new quests. Players will begin to feel a connection to this imaginary town as they explore it’s histories throughout your campaigns.
When you’re writing dialogue for your quest, don’t just write down [you ask “Why are you here” NPC replies “Because I need some help with a task”] It’s OK to go off on a tangent and start to build this NPC. Who is he, where did he come from, he is asking you for help, of course he will tell you what he needs you to do as part of the quest, but explore in your notepad something the player might never see. You will quickly find that you can make this character feel more real without having to elaborate with too much text. Instead, based on a quick backstory of him, you now know how he talks, how he might react to certain questions you might decide to let the character ask. Later, when you finish your Foundry quest, and you realize it feels to shallow and needs more depth, instead of making stuff up on the spot, days or weeks after you decided what this NPC would say, you already have a developed backstory that you can use to add some optional dialogue between you and the NPC. More importantly, since you already developed this backstory during the overall development of your entire quest, you’re less likely to have conflicting dialogue between what he says and what players might read later on.

From my point of view, even if your quest is light on dialogue and story, you should easily have three times the content in the form of backstory, side events, personas and motivations written in your notebook. While the player only see a third of your micro-world, they can tell it belongs to a much bigger world. This will not only make them feel it’s more alive, but make them want to come back and experience more of it.

VI. Polish To A Nice Shine
Your content is complete, you have your dialogue in place, your maps are built, your triggers are set. You're almost ready to publish, but don’t hit that publish button just yet! Now is the time for a nice coating of polish to make everything shine bright like an astral diamond. (Enjoy getting that song out of your head now).
I am taking a cue from one of the forum posters on the Neverwinter Online forums. Zaphtastic had some great input on how reviewers format their reviews of another game with user made content. While of course this article is not about the reviewing process, it is always good to know what the reviewers are thinking.
First some information for those unaware. After you create then publish your content, and before it is made available to the general public, it goes through a pre-review phase. Now, the people who review this content are just normal players who opt in to play through brand new, untested content. They are the ones you have to please. While everyone can rate and review your quest throughout it’s life, it’s these initial players that will set the bar on how well your content will do fresh out of the gate. These players tend to be a rougher lot. They opted in to play potentially horrible content before everyone else could warn them to stay away. They will have no qualms about giving a poor review. They also tend to spend more time playing content, to find something to break or something they really liked. You can also find that some of these players will write in-depth reviews and post them on forums.
So how does this affect you? If you can know how many reviewers think, and how they decide on what kind of score to give, you can use these same metrics they use to make a better quest. The key is to think subjectively. It’s a hard thing to see something you made and try to find something wrong. But if you do this step, everything you fix will far outweigh your broken pride.
Here is a direct quote from Zaphtastic on some metrics reviewers use.

“Story: How the story itself holds up. Does it fit into FR canon? Is the story engaging, does it hold the player's interest? Are the twists and turns too difficult to follow or is the plot so completely obvious that it is not interesting? Are there inconsistencies, plot holes? How about lazy writing?
Design: How well the dungeon/quest makes use of Foundry features. Are Foundry mechanics used appropriately? Are there creative solutions that circumvent some weakness / missing feature of the Foundry? Is there an overuse of certain elements? Do the enemies look interesting and do they do what you'd expect them to do? Is the dialogue system used in a fun way, or is it just click click click done? Is text properly formatted, and is it free of really painful grammar / spelling errors?
Gameplay: How well the gameplay itself holds up. Is it too easy/hard/frustrating? Are the encounters fun? Is there a lot of needless running around and backtracking? Are the objectives varied enough? Does the quest/dungeon support multiple playstyles, or does it force the player to follow a strict path? Are there optional objectives that add to the experience? Is there a good balance of combat / noncombat content?
Detail: Attention to detail without bogging down the player. Does every custom enemy have a description that makes sense? Are descriptions so long / so wordy it takes forever to read them? If there are enemies that talk, do they actually say relevant and interesting things? If there are aspects of the story / characters / world that weren't necessarily clear during the progression of the plot, are they explained somewhere later? Does the player drown in a deluge of inescapable exposition at one point? Is it still possible to enjoy the quest/dungeon if someone doesn't want to spend hours reading everything?”

I left the quote intact as it does a good job of portraying the mind of a reviewer. Your job is to simply do a playthrough of your own quest, and use these metrics to analyze the quest. If you are able to take yourself out of the role of author, and into the role of random player, you can pinpoint areas that while they originally sounded great on paper, don’t work so well in the game.

Another really important key to remember, LEARN TO TAKE CRITICISM! Yes, people will bash your content, some might even do so in a very negative way, but they might still have a hidden and valid point of concern. Especially with the more constructive feedback, don’t get upset when reviewers or players don’t see things how you see them through the jaded glasses of authorism. Instead, take their input and try to subjectively apply it to your content, and see if a small change really would have been a better choice. Then, when you hit the foundry again, learn from this feedback.

cychotical · March 2013

I still think this needs to be stickied

hercooles130uscg · March 2013

cychotical wrote: »

I still think this needs to be stickied

It would be nice, but I would rather just have an entire Foundry category in the forums. I know the game is not out yet, but it would allow a lot of constructive conversation going BEFORE the Foundry comes out and we see 1000 POS quests in the first week...

Maybe we can lower that to 600 POS quests instead.

m0radin · March 2013

Great stuff!! Can't wait to see if the learnin' curve on the foundry tool set is too complicated for an old dwarf like me. lol

Two cents for any builder... Build a low level area first. In my humble opinion, put that uber zone on the back burner to simmer while you get comfortable with the tool set, game flow, group dynamics, and Faerun itself. Faerun is an extremely well documented world to say the least. It makes it very easy to flesh things out in setting and theme correct detail if you just do a little research. Create a fun, quality, low level area and what you learn will improve that uber zone tenfold. In my experience this holds true regardless of the application.
Thanks for all the great info!!!!

thrynsyst · March 2013

A well-written, and thought provoking guide, herc. A lot (and I'm *not* exaggerating the case) of cogent points you've made here to get budding UGC creators to put together something worthwhile as content. I've bookmarked this thread as an essential reminder of what I should be doing, when comes the day I actually get my hands on the Foundry for use...

chili1179 · March 2013

I think it would also be helpful if in the quest description you clearly outline the type of quest it will be, whether it be dungeon crawl, hack and slash, story driven, heavy dialog, heavy role play, puzzles etc... it will help the player decide if this is what he/she is looking for to play and avoid getting into the adventure, not enjoying themselves because it was not what they were looking for, and either abandoning the quest or feeling like they have to drudge through to the end.

Make it clear to the player what to expect.

zaphtastic · March 2013

chili1179 wrote: »

I think it would also be helpful if in the quest description you clearly outline the type of quest it will be, whether it be dungeon crawl, hack and slash, story driven, heavy dialog, heavy role play, puzzles etc... it will help the player decide if this is what he/she is looking for to play and avoid getting into the adventure, not enjoying themselves because it was not what they were looking for, and either abandoning the quest or feeling like they have to drudge through to the end.

Make it clear to the player what to expect.

This would ideally be handled on a browse/search level via tags -- e.g. player X searches for all missions that have vampires in them (vampire tag), player Y searches for story-heavy missions that are intended for solo play (solo + story tags), player Z searches for challenging story-light combat missions (challenging tag, no story tag). Everyone is happy, nobody is getting downrated!

I have several pages written on this subject... after we get a foundry forum.

chili1179 · March 2013

zaphtastic wrote: »

This would ideally be handled on a browse/search level via tags -- e.g. player X searches for all missions that have vampires in them (vampire tag), player Y searches for story-heavy missions that are intended for solo play (solo + story tags), player Z searches for challenging story-light combat missions (challenging tag, no story tag). Everyone is happy, nobody is getting downrated!

I have several pages written on this subject... after we get a foundry forum.

Awesome! Can't wait till that time.

hercooles130uscg · March 2013

Thanks again everyone for all the feedback.

And in case you didn't see the Sticky
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?64551-Foundry-Authors-Beta-test-signups!

Sign up to help make the Foundry the best possible. Get in there, abuse the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of the Foundry, break it so they can fix it I say, as well as make some great content that the Weekend beta testers can play, to inspire them to come back at release.

meatbutter · March 2013

great post +1 from me, im looking forward to using the foundry myself. Ive even been reading 4e lore for other cities to maybe even have events that happen over flow to the Neverwinter.

hercooles130uscg · March 2013

To everyone asking for a sticky of this, PM a moderator or something, not sure how it goes.

immortus3000 · March 2013

Thanks for getting this started OP. Anyone know whether or not the Foundry will be usable in the upcoming beta weekend? Really looking forward to looking at the features and getting my head around the possibilities

shaudius · March 2013

immortus3000 wrote: »

Thanks for getting this started OP. Anyone know whether or not the Foundry will be usable in the upcoming beta weekend? Really looking forward to looking at the features and getting my head around the possibilities

From the Extended FAQ: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?18401-Neverwinter-Extended-FAQ&p=297581&viewfull=1#post297581

"Is The Foundry available in Beta?
Foundry content will continue to be playable during the Beta Weekends, but content creation using the Foundry will not."

As noted above, there is a separate foundry beta coming soon, but signups for that have closed.

angrysprite · March 2013

Nice primer, though I doubt most Foundry authors will follow-through. Partly because OP is pro-overkill. I've been creating Foundry "episodes" in STO since the Foundry existed (year-and-a-half now, maybe longer?) - I use StoryMill for my story management.

Though I do concur: no matter how "pew-pew" your quest is designed to be, plausible story (no matter how simple) is paramount. I for one will be looking for the best story-tellers in the Foundry. Though pew-pew is fun, it's just plain over-used (even in Cryptic quests and events, etc.) Of course it's easy to create a pew-pew dungeon-dive, it's hard work to create a really good story.

The Foundry will become a mess - there will be hordes of also-ran quests that aren't worth your time. I'm waiting for the Neverwinter equivalent of "Starbase UGC" - which has turned out to be the defacto go-to fan site to find the quality Foundry missions for STO (and Foundry tutorials and academy and all that).

All *I* ask of Foundry authors: please do your best at the story-side of your creations.

The Foundry - A guide to creating better then average UGC

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