Against the Cult of the Reptile God - The Crystalmist Campaign chapter 1

AGAINST THE CULT OF THE REPTILE GOD. Terror by night! The village of Orlane is dying. Once a small and thriving community, Orlane has become a maze of locked doors and frightened faces. Strangers are shunned, trade has withered. Rumours flourish, growing wilder with each retelling. Terrified peasants flee their homes, abandoning their farms with no explanation. Others simply disappear... No-one seems to know the cause of the decay - why are there no clues? Who skulks through the twisted shadows of the night? Who or what is behind the doom that has overtaken the village? It will take a brave and skillful band of adventurers to solve the dark riddle of Orlane! This module is a remake of the classic 1982 TSR Dungeons & Dragons module by Douglas Niles, for a party of 4-7 characters level 1-3, ideally new first level adventurers. The odd bit here & there is different due to the limitations of the toolset (& the builder), but on the whole I\'ve tried to keep the feel of the original. WHO\'S IT FOR? The adventure is designed for Single or Multi-players, and help is available in the starting town if any is needed to add skills, power and support to the party. Depending on your level, experience & play style, you may need more or less of them to help you on your way. If you\'re struggling, either add more characters using hte Party Editor in the Purple Sloop, add more henchman hanging around in the same place, or use a higher level character. Maximum party size is 4 player made characters + all 4 henchman + another companion from the original P&P adventure you can recruit along the way. This makes a total of 8-9 characters, so no encounter should be too tricky, although you may need to use the pause button every now & then to issue commands. Please be aware though, Brother Gareth gets a little excited sometimes & forgets to equip his maul in his enthusiasm to get smiting. I\'ve talked to him many times about this, but he\'s just too \'enthusiastic\' for his own good sometimes. So if you notice in any given encounter that he\'s waded in bare handed, just give him a nudge & equip his weapon for him - thanks ;-) STARTING THE ADVENTURE: This adventure is set up as a Campaign rather than a single Module. This enables use of the Party Editor (as seen in Storm of Zehir) which allows you to create your own party (ask at the local taverns where your friends are if you can\'t find it). Start the adventure by choosing New & then New Campaign. IMPORTANT - CUSTOM CONTENT REQUIRED: Because the content that comes with the original game, even with the expansion packs, is still a little limited for what I wanted to do here, I\'ve also used various custom content HAKs, combined into a single file to download - see the links in the \'FILES\' section. These include extra creatures, scenery, objects and scripts that allow cool things to happen. CAMPAIGN FOLDER: As well as the .mod file that needs to be unzipped into your My Docs/ NWN2/ Modules folder, there\'s also a Campaign folder that needs to be pasted into your My Docs/ NWN2/ Campaigns folder. DEATH: Penalties seem a little harsh for low level characters, so here it doesn\'t incur any penalty other than a long walk back to wherever you got into trouble, but at least you won\'t be stuck where you died & you\'ll have a chance to stock up with new equipment before you head back into the fray. Your companions don\'t suffer that fate if they\'re overcome in combat - they\'ll merely be out cold for a few rounds, then get up & wander round a bit dazed. STARTING EQUIPMENT: Speaking of equipment, as this is aimed at beginning, or low level characters, you\'ll be given a reasonable amount of gold as you enter the adventure to kit yourself out with (maybe represeants your life savings) - spend wisely! CRAFTING: I\'ve had a bash at implementing crafting. One of the shops in the starting town specialises in crafting materials & there\'s a crafting hall to get busy in. Unfortunately its a fair trek back to town if you pick up new materials along the way, so there are workbenches in different areas which should help most crafters. MAPPING: I\'ve implemented a slightly edited version of Lance Botelle\'s fog of war HAK & you have a choice: Use the minimap & you\'ll see the usual things - namely everything regardless of whether its behind a bush or a castle wall. Use the regular map & you\'ll only see what\'s in your line of sight or have already explored. The choice is yours which you use, although the minimap obviously only has a small radius. If you use the big map, you\'ll also notice its hard to map when you\'re in combat! NOT AN MMO: I\'m sure most players already know, but P&P style NWN2 is not an MMO, and a different approach is often useful for encounters. Running into an unknown area & hoping for the best may be fairly safe in most MMOs, but here its often a good way to get killed. If n