Seeking Reviews: Fox's Den Campaign

kevaar

I am seeking reviews! Tell me what you love, tell me what you hate. Reviews that nitpick ALL THE THINGS are welcomed, though realize this is a story module before it is a combat or exploration module, so a coherent narrative takes precedence.

Campaign Name: Fox's Den
Short Code: NWS-DTKJ8JDOK
Author: @kevaar
Chapters 1-5 contain a finished storyline, though other chapters are in the works.

Summary: Your adventure started off innocuously enough as you sally forth to save a clan of elves from Netheril bounty hunters. But the more you learn, the more you realize not everything is as it seems... Lore-friendly, story-focus, built to be single player.

Notes and Known Issues:
--Most maps do not have custom sounds. I almost never play with speakers, so this will be a WIP to get this fixed up.

arkanarge

working my way through your quests

melinden

Fox’s Den Chapter 1

General: I played with my 12K level DC. I think I may have played and reviewed this when you first published it, but that review may be buried on the forums forever by now.

-I would recommend adding sound and/or music to all your maps. Currently they are completely silent.

Mountain Pass

-I did not get an objective when I picked up the quest. I could see the title displayed but nothing below it. I am not sure if you don’t have one or it was not displaying correctly. The quest trail did correctly send me to the overworld map. If you don’t have anything I would recommend something like “Travel to the mountain pass.”

-In your text you seem to use “Nethril” as the adjective form and noun meaning a person from Nethril. I believe it would be more correct to say “Netherese” according to the FR lore.

-Nice use of the cloud cards on this map, I’ve never found a good way to use them before!

-I was going to write this long comment about how goblins and kobolds don’t fit and you should add something…but you already had something in a later dialogue that did that!

-I noticed a couple of objects by the first camp that are floating slightly off the ground. Minor fixes should take care of that.

-at the camp wounded Foxdale says refugees are “further” ahead, this should be “farther” but I am probably one of three people who would notice or care about this.

-when speaking to Stybalt the way he is positioned in the tent means the zoom in just gets the edge of the tent and hides him. You may want to position him a little more out of the tent so the zoom works properly.

-small typo in the second round of dialogue with Stybalt , you have “aniously” instead of “anxiously”

-the tent Stybalt is hiding in is floating off the ground

Outskirts of Neverwinter

-after the reveal with Stybalt and being hit by the spell I wonder if you could experiment with having very dark effects appear around the player to give the feeling of being knocked out?

Market Day

-you may want to use one of the NPCs in the Neverwinter Guard uniform but I suppose if you wanted to have her look less obviously like a guard that could also make sense.

-you may want to add some bread on the table with the merchant calling out “Hot Cross Buns!”

melinden

Fox’s Den Chapter 2

-as before, please add sound to your maps

-I believe all of the maps in both quests so far have always used the default sky and lighting. It would be a nice change if you varied these

Fox’s Den

-You may want to spend some more time on this room. I think you may have been working quickly?

-the fireplace is pushed too far into the wall so the back is behind the brick. You will want to add a chimney to the top.

-the entry door is floating away from the wall and probably should be centered between the wooden beams

-adding some windows would be nice. Also hangings or other décor on the walls.

-in several dialogues you mention that the drow are disguised as elves. Drow are elves so I think you mean Sun elves? Or certainly surface elves.

-Jared says he is from the “Silvery Marches” do you mean Silver Marches (the region) or Silverymoon (the city in the Silver Marches)?

-I like the detailed conversation options with Jared

Mulberry Street

-I like the riddle!

-I would recommend speeding up the interact time on the doors, there are a lot of them

-Madam Rose’s business should be spelled “menagerie” because English is weird.

-I think the objective chart might have some errors here. So I found out the address from the boy. Once I did that all the interacts at the doorways vanished (along with the house numbers). Since I knew the number I tried to turn in to Jared. I couldn’t do that so I managed to get the address again from the pseudodragon. I saw the prompt to go check out the house, but again, since the numbers were gone I couldn’t find it. I finally found the door just by checking ALL of them. That wasn’t very fun.

-it might be easier if Jared just met us at the door. Since he was pathing there he kept on getting stuck on my large companion.

Lord Foxdale’s Manor

-I would recommend customizing the tower map to make it seem unique
-I like the way the story is told through the ghosts

-the portal interact text reads “Press F to Go to Next Map” you probably want to customize this

-I recommend adding some more subtle gestures during your dialogues.

kevaar

Thanks so much! This is exactly what I mean by nitpicking all the things, very helpful. And it's quite possible you've reviewed the first three already, as I'm just now getting back around to finishing this thing, a few years after the fact now that Foundry is more or less usable again.

In other news: banged out Chapter 5 tonight and it is up, but in Alpha until I get a chance to playtest it fully on live. Expect even more bugs than usual if you make a run through it.

melinden

You are welcome, it's my "thing" on these forums. To slightly alter a phrase I use with my students when editing work: Every error a reviewer can find means it is one less a player will find.

iandarksword

Some advice that strikes me at the beginning is to utilize the [OOC] and [/OOC] command when dealing with descriptive (out of character) text. You might also think about breaking dialog up so you can use more emotes.

When you set a spawn point for a map, think about how the player may have arrived there, (portal, door, tunnel?) you can choose to add an abort exit using this method. It adds a bit of immersion to the quest as well.

If you look at the game in general, dialog advancement usually involves using the orange text. Following this method keeps players familiar with dialog progression. I do recommended having several dialog resolutions use 2 instead of 1. Players will often hit 1 multiple times to avoid reading and this keeps them on their toes. If the choice is irrelevant to dialog progression, you can always set both to the orange text.

melinden

Chapter 3

General: As I’ve said before this would be great with sound! So far this is my favorite chapter, the story is well developed and you present it very well.

Fox’s den guest chamber:

-the entry door is floating from the wall. There should also be some door frame details to help make it look more like it is supposed to be there.

-the couch is pushed into the wall. If you used a smaller fireplace there might be more space in the room for the details. Since there isn’t any fighting you can use the dynamic light campfire in the smaller fireplace, I find those fit best.

-it seems like a guest room should have a bed?

-in the text with Foxdale’s conversation is the line about seeing him as a drow before. Aside from the ghosts I can’t recall I saw a drow model for him. I may be misremembering but isn’t he a sun elf in the last conversation from chapter 2?

-I’ve noticed my response options are always very sarcastic. I try to provide a selection of responses since we all perceive our character’s personalities differently. Now the trick is that even if you provide different responses they can all go back to the same NPC speech in response if you want, so it is a bit of a slight of hand. Still, it gives the player more choice and feeling that they can tailor the quest themselves.

-in the same vein, many players play drow. Wouldn’t they have very different responses to a story of a drow escaping to the surface (since they are on the surface too)? Maybe you could cover this if you offered generic sympathetic responses.

-I like Foxdale’s story but why not use canon drow houses? The lore hounds like me appreciate details like that. You have a ton of minor houses to choose from: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_drow_houses

- I’d like to know why Foxdale isn’t a follower of Lloth? It is unusual for someone raised in a religion to lose their faith without some reason. I’d think a faithful person would be proud his daughter was going to become a priestess. It seems like there is a step missing in the story here.

The Underdark

-I like your storytelling device here

-at the spilled cart the interact text is odd. It reads “Press F to Any valuables in this cart were taking by scavengers long ago”. I think that should be your interact fail text instead of the text on the cart. Maybe “Press F to inspect cart”?

-the same sort of thing happens at the forge.

-I like the dialogue with Jasa

- the dialogue at the disc of Selune the word Shadowfell needs another L.

-as with the spilled cart, some of the interact text in the campsite is odd.

The Border of Anauroch

-the “Heat” enemies are very clever

-this map is excellent, the storytelling is very good

The guest chamber

-in the second dialogue screen with Foxdale he says “There os more, yes”, just a typo there

-you should probably have the player leave through the door?

kevaar

@melinden
I've combed through most of the bugs you posted in Chapters 1 and 2 and corrected them, but I have a few questions--

What dark effects do you mean? I attempted it before with stuff out of the light effects menu, but could never get them to activate. Are there also default light settings or fog you can use?

Also, where do you find the option to change music and sound? Is it only available on some maps? Is there an easy way to preview the music? I almost never play with music on ingame.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out why the doors in Chapter 2 disappear on you. The interacts are set never to disappear, since there's more than one way to find out the address.

@iandarksword
I considered the OOC brackets, but I feel they take away from the narrative. Might play around with that some more though.

The orange text seems to default to the "goodbye" options. Most of the dialogue isn't supposed to lead you right to the answer, though I'll consider it for the longer conversations.

How does an abort exit work? If you click on it, it fails the quest or something?

iandarksword

An abort exit will take the player to whatever location they came from and exit the quest. I believe there can only be one per map.

melinden

You can find sounds on the Special menu in the editor. Some sounds take up a whole map, some only smaller radius. You can see if it is a smaller sound on the 2D map since you will see a circle showing you the range of that sound.

As far as the "black out" effect, if you split the dialogue up you can use Appear When for black depth fades to surround the player. The large inky cloud is very good to have appear right on top of the player to finish out the look for being drugged and passing out.

arkanarge

not a fan of abort exits. you can leave the map already with the door icon under the minimap. an abort exit only serves to confuse players into thinking its the next area to go to + once you leave accidentally and come back, the entire map resets. Which is useful if you accidentally glitch out the quest but you might as well use the minimap door icon.

kevaar

A long-in-coming bump and update!

Chapters 4 and 5 have been reasonably bug-tested and published to live! I'm excited to say this concludes the primary story arc of the Fox's Den, though I believe I will at some point publish a follow-up campaign to deal with the player's actions in the present. After all, there are secrets to be revealed like what Bregan D'aerthe wants Sarahk to do inside Neverwinter, and whatever happened to his daughter... Oh, and Thistledown's past. That, too.

Plot, plot, plot! By the way, bashful question, but is it possible to submit a campaign to Cryptic for featuring, or is it only single quests?

iandarksword

Features haven't happened in a long time. That would be a good question for @nitocris83. It would be great if they became a possibility, because my Harper Chronicles: Blacklake quest is also ready, I just haven't chosen to submit because of the uncertainty around Featuring.

myrkolith

Yeah I submitted the first Quest of my Campaign like 2 years ago, and nothing ever came of it. In fact I haven't heard or seen of any new Featured quests in years...