"Bane of Shadows" 2 Part dungeon adventure campaign.

vandignesca

Hello there,

I've made two foundries for myself that I'd thought I'd share with the community. They are basically dungeon adventures with a very simple narrative that is mostly advanced through environmental progress. I made them mostly just to have fun with various combat scenarios that I had in my head. I made them so that I would find them challenging, but I can't speak for others.

If anyone would like to try them, they're currently in the "for review" section.

"Tracing Shadows"-Part One-Shortcode: NW-DGQ3A9KWE <I took 27minutes to complete this one.
"Tomb of Shadows"-Part Two-Shortcode: NW-DORD2KOZR <I took 30minutes to complete this one.

If another author would like me to review their work, feel free to pm me on the forums

melinden

Tracing Shadows:

I played this with my level 60 DC. I was a little hesitant since you said you had trouble soloing this, but I wanted to at least review the portions I could get to. I managed to finish but it took me much longer than your experience.

Your technical work is very good: you have detailed maps, you use music, and you have good effects. In general, I would recommend adding a little more guidance to the player, look into difficulty settings, and spend a little bit of time tying the story to the Forgotten Realms. You don’t have to do a lot of work here, mostly the FR wikia will have what you need. Just providing specific place names would be nice.

Detailed Notes:

Ruined Road:
-really nice details and atmosphere on this map
-At the bodies the wounds are described as “not normal”. It would be nice to have a little more description. Are they tears? Burns? Bruises?
-it might be more interesting if some of the encounters were Wandering or Patrolling. Wandering might be better with all the details on the ground.
-At the survivor: I know you are looking to create challenging fights but stacking (meaning to set to appear at the same time) 8 encounters on top of each other will frustrate a lot of player. You can help this by chaining them: this way when certain encounters die, others spawn. This can space out the encounters for players. You can also look into putting in a difficulty setting.
-the Wandering Undead in this area are good

Ancient Barrows:
-the spacing of the encounters is much better here, it allows kiting and selective pulling.
-I appreciate that there are steps to getting the quest solved but a hint would be helpful. It would be nice to get an idea where to look for the crystal: do I need to kill something specific on the map or might this be something I need to loot from a grave?
-adding some shrubs and grass around the standing stones and graves will give them a little more “lifelike” appearance. That will also give you more variety than just the types already on the map.
-I got pretty frustrated on this map with no guidance. First I searched the entire map, found the note that told me what the attunement brazier told me. Then I thought I had missed something, so I went back and searched every detail I knew wasn’t a default on that map. THEN I went around and made sure I had killed each and every mob. That took a lot of time, both the searching and the killing. I have to admit I was getting pretty tired of the Ogre/Eye of Gruumsh combo.


I'll give the second part a try in the next couple of days and post my notes then.

vandignesca

Yeah, I've come to enjoy minimalist narratives, which certainly aren't for everyone. I played The Secret World for a while, which didn't tell the player much most of the time with puzzles, and relied on them noticing certain things to advance. While I didn't care for the setting, I did enjoy that style of questing. I understand it's very frustrating, and I don't plan to make every story/adventure I ever make like this, but for this particular adventure I wanted it to be bare-bones. That was the intent, I'm sorry if it frustrated you The frustration wasn't my intent, but the sense of being lost and needing to totally figure out my environment was.

As I said, this was more of a combat scenario I made for myself. As time goes on, I may embellish things or make tweaks, but I wanted to create an adventure tailored to myself that I could replay to my heart's content. I limited the dialogue and direction in part so I could change direction and focus in the future. Instead of the shadar-kai, I could make it about orcs, or barbarians, or dragons etc. My hope is that if the foundry ever gets more updates, this will serve as my own personal storybook dungeon adventure if you will, that I can tweak and play around with. Yes, I do love that Ogre/Eye of Gruumsh combo. I haven't played fully with all of the encounters in the foundry yet, but I do like that one :P

As far as difficulty, this is kind of the difficulty I most enjoy. I may add a hard mode for myself later, but I doubt I'll make it easier. It's just my vision of what I want an adventure to be, and I recognize it certainly won't be for everyone. I just made it more for myself and for fun than anything else.

One small note on that encounter by the survivor-What I did there was have everything spawn in at staggered points, but slowly patrol towards the player. The intent was that if the player didn't deal with the waves quickly or efficiently, they would get overwhelmed. Unfortunately, there's no real way for me to reset their patrols if the player fails and dies or anything so you might get a big ball of doom. I could have them patrol to the survivor, and then have them sent off elsewhere so that if the player dies they move on and spread out. The problem with this is that I then have the player hunting down their various patrol points. I will think on the problem.

Some of the details in the narrative I left vague so I or others could use their imagination. I understand that not everyone is like that, however. I can say "not normal" and immediately think of various possibilities while you ask, "what is not normal?". It's an approach to let the player help draw the narrative, but it certainly doesn't work with everyone.

Neverwinter is my first introduction to Forgotten Realms lore. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons, or any tabletop game, or read any fantasy novel with the setting. I understand that there are probably people who can tell me an encyclopedia's worth of lore and information about this game's setting. I don't have that background, and to be honest, I'm not sure I want to delve into that. I enjoy the game's narrative and read that lore, but I want to be surprised by what the future holds for this game. If someone from lore appears in the game, I want to meet them for the first time and experience that naturally instead of some memory or expectation from a book. What I usually do is a brief check of the wikia, but then I stop worrying about the minute details, and create a story that I want to tell, either just to myself and see it realized, or for others. But I probably won't ever do a story with strict adherence and reference to lore. I like keeping myself unrestricted as to my story's potential. I'll do a brief check of the setting and some basic information, and then just let my imagination go.

Thanks for your feedback, it was very kind of you to provide any. I wasn't really expecting all this.

Happy travels,

@vandignesca