Arcane Conflict Series

silverquick

You know I am looking at what could be a really good series of modules. Its actually about the Shadowfell. The story setup is actually very good. Though overly fast paced at times.

The maker of this is actually very good at area design, and the story behind it is excellent. But he has no idea how to lay out encounters so it becomes a move a little ways, fight one unchallenging mob, move a little ways fight one unchallenging monster in middle of hallway. etc,

This guy even got the Demonweb right, well ok as close as you can with the toolset. He missed the walls of fog around the pathways, and the sounds of the maelstrom in the background but I don't know how versatile the toolset is in that regard. Also he didn't realize the doors in the module are just doors in the walls of fog going to extra dimensional spaces or he'd probably have been able to find suitable "quarters" for his various encounters. And he's got customized monsters that look correct.

But there's a lot of that.

Sometimes he lays out his encounters like they're just objects on a map rather than actual monsters who are involved in doing something else, or in their own living space. So it plays more like one of those boring farming modules encounter wise.

But I can tell this guy actually knows his stuff, and is excellent at area design. SO what would be a very excellent or possibly excellent series kind of goes by the wayside.

orangefiree

Hi. I am the author of "The Arcane Conflict". Thanks for playing the campaign.

For the Demonweb, yes, there really isn't a way to get it any better then I did.

Your major complain seems to be the monster layouts, I will look at making them a little for active. Though they are not supposed to be acting normal really, in the first one, you may have noticed they are raiding/burning various caravans they have attacked, destroyed, and captured at first.

By the time you get inside, I assume one of them heard you and made it inside to warn the others, so they are waiting for you to come, though some threatening animations and guardian nodes might be something I could add for this point.

The Demonweb first section is spiders, there really isn't much I can make spiders do in the foundry, so they are pretty much stuck just standing there, especially with the layout of the area, if I set them to wander or something, they would probably walk off of the rock platforms or just run into height increases in the rock. For the drow, Lolth is pretty much just teleporting them in from the Underdark, though I could probably add some worshiping animations since they are in their goddess's home plane.

Thanks again for playing my campaign, though I'm not sure how you found it. I will look at adding some enemy ambiance in my next update. The next one, I will look at adding some as well (I had them using training dummies for a while in that one, but they would always glitch out when I walked up to them, so I decided to just take that out and put them all on guard duty. Let me know what you think of the next parts. I will look at improving the enemies and their idle animations when I get some time, something that should be happening in about a week.