This is going to be a relatively short module with minimal fiddling with the rules and toolset. The main aim is to complete it quickly! That's still likely to be several months, but possibly quicker if I can make significant progress before Dark Souls III comes out.
I've got to the point in the module where I'm going to start asking questions (and probably needing help!), so I'll keep this thread updated as I go along.As with the Raventhal, it's a single player module with recruitable NPCs. There will be a bit of exploration and reward for this, but the game area is going to be quite small. I'd like to get some decent choice and consequence in there as well, but limited to a small number of key decision points.
This is the map of the game area:
- WorldMappaper.png (1.14 MiB) Viewed 8471 times
Which looks pretty big; but this is deceptive! For example, Blackwinter isn't an explorable map - its a series of choices from a conversation menu (eg, go to the weapon shop, go to the temple etc) which lead to further conversation text rather than maps. It basically works in a similar way to the towns in Curse of the Azure Bonds if you ever played that. It would be great to build another Athkatla, but yeah that's not realistically going to happen. "Blackwinter" is a working title for the module, I'll probably change it down the line given that little of the module will actually be spent there. Basically, with a couple of notable exceptions, the areas marked on the map outside of Blackwinter are the main "sub-maps".
The "ingame" map doesn't have the headings, and as you can see from the tiles its not so big:
- mapexample.png (469.46 KiB) Viewed 8471 times
This version is still a bit rough, but you can see how it basically just links the different explorable areas, with a key pinch point at the bridge. My plan is for the roads to be "safe" travelling routes on the whole, but with offroad exploration being a bit more dangerous with different types of creatures that might attack on the plains / hills etc.
I'm aiming for about 4-5 hours play time (ie, slightly bigger than the Raventhal but still not massive). I've produced a fair wadge of text already though, so a lot will depend on your reading speed.
And finally, my first question...
How do you change the PC icon so that it is represents the characters on the submaps, but (for example) a horse on these big overland maps? I know this has come up somewhere before but I can't find it... Thanks.
