Technical Aspects

[Carlo the DM]

This is intended to share something of what is “under the hood” of the campaign. There are no real spoilers, but you may not want to look too closely at some of the resources if you have no interest in building or scripting, since they give away something of the “secrets” of how things work.

This topic can also be used for players’ bug reporting and comments about particular technical features.

Haks required:
CEP: https://neverwintervault.org/cep
Lord of Worms’ Fantasy Interiors tileset

Community resources used:

DMFI Wands and Widgets 1.09
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/dmfi-wands-widgets-109

The last version of the original DMFI (DM-Friendly Initiative) DM and player set of in-game enhancements. Most often used by players for skill/ability checks.

City of Westgate prefab
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/prefab/area/city-westgate

There are some minor spoilers in terms of the city features if you look at it, but I do want to give full credit to Anachrodragon and Londerwost for their work in building the city. I of course am making a number of modifications, but I would never have had the time to run the Westgate Campaign if I had to build the city from scratch.

BESIE Random Encounter System
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/besie-random-encounter-system-v181

This allows for a variety of truly random encounters and is the engine for managing the city random NPC populations.

HABD bleeding/death system
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/hemophiliacs-always-bleed-death-habd-003-beta

The module uses a customized version of these community-standard bleeding and death scripts.

NPC Activities
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/npc-activities-61

Probably the best “out-of-the-box” NPC system you can find, certainly the best supported. Not employed extensively in a DM’d campaign such as this, but there are periodic uses for it.

Simple Balance System
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/simple-balance-system-basically-hcr-lite

I borrowed the module’s resting script (8 hour limit between rest periods) from SBS. Very simple, very effective.

On death (at -10 hp), your corpse is shown along with an “Items on corpse” bag which has all your (droppable) belongings in it. A “corpse” item will also be in the bag. If the corpse item is picked up then dropped from inventory, a corpse will appear on the ground; the corpse can be picked up and put down repeatedly if you like. However, the original corpse graphic will remain at the death location.

The dead player will be manually “resurrected” by the DM and transported to the campaign chamber once the other PCs have exited the area. (I debated scripting this, but feel that it would be too abrupt and would also leave little flexibility in case of a technical problem.) What happens to the PC then depends on what the other players can do with the corpse. Resurrections don’t come cheap, if available at all, and must be DM-run. Also, if the party has to run away and can’t bear the burden of the corpse, it may be destroyed or dragged away.

* * *

Added to the death system is now a Fugue Plane area. Upon death, a PC will be DM-healed and jumped to this area, as before leaving their corpse behind for their friends (hopefully) to drag away.

If you find yourself in the Fugue Plane, be sure to stop by Morte’s bar, which serves some truly exotic drinks.

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Overland Travel and Random Encounter System (OTRES) 2.8
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/script/overland-travel-and-random-encounter-system-28-otres

With some custom modifications, this is the engine now driving travel outside of Westgate. Essentially, it provides a Baldur’s Gate-style travel system. You are told the available destinations when you enter the area transition and how long in hours it will take to reach them. Areas are typically “chained” together at around 8-12 hours of traveling distance, so you may see an intermediate area listed along with your final destination.

The system checks for random encounters after a certain amount of (virtual) time has passed and if one occurs, drops the party into a random map, facing the direction of travel. To exit the random map, simply exit off any map edge. You can have multiple random encounters during a trip, or none at all.

Important point: the party has to be together (“You must assemble your party before venturing forth”, heh) to travel. In practical terms, this means that everyone has to be within 10 meters of the person initiating the travel conversation. So, you can’t have individual party members flee off of a random encounter map, although everyone as a group could run for it.

I’m very happy with the system, which is easily extensible and contributes to the Baldur’s Gate-style feel I like.

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1. Armor: all armor will be sized as follows:
— Large: half-orc
— Medium: human, half-elf, elf
— Stout: dwarf, gnome
— Small: halfling

So, if you have “Medium Chain” armor, it is sized for humans and elves, but is too big for dwarves, gnomes, and halflings, and too small for half-orcs. Armor will be available for all in stores, so it’s not a handicap in normal circumstances, although there will be more styles available for certain sizes depending on the store. It does play more realistically when a halfling can’t swap armor with a half-orc whenever they feel like it, or a human can’t just pick up and wear goblin armor found on the battlefield.

2. Magic items: custom descriptions will be used for magic items.

All magic items will be named in some fashion, either a unique name for items with a history or a generic name for more common items. Essentially, all the “longsword +1” descriptions will vanish, although of course bonuses will still be visible in item properties. In the above case, you would see “magic longsword” for example. This is done to increase the immersion factor.

3. Healing kits: all healing kits will be +1 only and will be named “healing kits.”

4. Bandages: these are custom items which are automatically given to players at start and which can stabilize bleeding at DC15 heal check.

• This topic was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by Carlo the DM.

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