Pescua [title work in progress!]

[slowdive]

Not as much progress this week as I'd have liked.

Well, our motto around here is any progress is progress
We like to move at our own pace I don't want it to start feeling like another job, I already have one of those (and it isn't fun, but it pays the bills )

[Pongo]

True enough! It's more that it's a sign I've spent too much time in bill-paying work this week and not enough time having fun.

[Pongo]

Quite a bit of mapping and planning this week. I'd been keeping a map of the mod on a piece of A4, but I'd changed it so many times that it had become a total mess of scribbled corrections. So I spent a fair bit of this week copying my notes across to an excel spreadsheet. I think I'm going to stick with excel this time round, which seems to do everything I need, but has anyone tried using any of the mapping software like Grid Cartographer? It looks pretty nice for mapping games, but would it add anything useful here?

I then completed the first part of an optional thief class quest. I really enjoyed putting it together! Its basically a short heist quest that involves trying to steal from a powerful mage without combat. Its a change of pace from the rest of the mod, and the tone is quite playful so the convos were fun to write. If the player both finds this quest and then completes it it will open a path to a slightly different interaction with a thieves' guild later on.

I also upgraded it to v199, which adds a few nice features I need to take advantage of! I'm particularly looking forward to getting the Blood Mage set up with vampiric spells. I think a few small bugs may have been introduced - I'll see whether I can resolve them in the toolkit, but if not I'll flag them in the bugs section. Nothing major though.

[Dorateen]

Sounds good. I think the thief is a valuable part of the classic D&D party combination, so it's always appreciated when content is made to play to their strengths.

[slowdive]

Sounds like some great progress Pongo. I don't have any suggestions on mapping software for planning out a module. I have only used drawing on paper or using sketchpad on the tablet. I do use Excel for any data/text type stuff.

Let me know what bugs you find and I'll get them out in the next version, v200.

[youngneil1]

Good to read about your progress (and also about "not progreessing" -> just look at me ). I like to map stuff pen&paper (also I often make notes ideas on the samsung note phone via stylus and my scribbly handwriting).

[Pongo]

Thanks everyone!

I've converted a load of the lovely DungeonCrawlSoup item graphics for use in the module. They look ace. Its great that those guys have made all of their assets freely available - I'm going to definitely be thanking them and sending them a link to the module when its ready. Here are just some of the graphics in context.

equip.png (285.18 KiB) Viewed 23528 times

fighter equip.png (547.97 KiB) Viewed 23528 times

Aside from that, I've finished the thief's quest, added a paladin quest, and added several new flavour convos, such as for shops and temples - including a tattoo shop where you can pay to have protective wards tattooed onto your body that alert you to the presence of ghosts or demons (which are otherwise hidden convos).

I'm currently working on "populating" the town of Horngrim and trying to move the main quest forward a bit.

[cartons]

Nice, those item graphics match well with the default character tokens. This next generation of IB modules is going to look great!

Fun idea with the tattoos. I wonder what sort of secrets your deaders might reveal.

[Dorateen]

That studded leather armor looks sweet!

[slowdive]

I like the idea of the tattoo wards. The item graphics fit really well and make everything look well polished and cohesive. I also, if I haven't mentioned it before, really like the backdrop image, it looks really cool.