Here's my writeup of today's session from my character's perspective.
And here are things from the perspective of the DM:
After seven hours of trying to patch together the module I'd been working on over the previous week, it was time to go, ready or not. And after the third time putting up the server for various restarts, we finally managed to get things working properly and people in game. I had my notes ready and a list of names in windows notepad ready to alt-tab back and forth as needed.
Apparently, you see...the NWN DM interface is slightly inconsistent about what it thinks is a "player" and what it thinks is a "character." Which makes a lot of sense in
real life. Yes, your friend Susie you know from band camp is not the same as Joepshine the Barbarian Queen that she plays in the game. But in a gaming interface, it's a little bit awkward to receive messages from Susie then have to click on Joesephine in order to reply. Especially when in some cases people's server login name doesn't match their bay12 forum account name...leaving them with three names instead of two...times 7 playes for potentially 21 different names to keep track of.
But that little bit of confusion aside, there we were in the zone-in portal room, with somebody staring at my avatar's boobs. Maybe he was just adjusting to the fact that I wasn't wearing the traditional
bearded midget DM persona.
Cian was the first to go. His character was to start in the prison, and I had a neat little quest and dialogue sequence with some custom characters from his character background ready for him. With a whisk, away he went into the prison room. I waited a moment to confirm that he was able to trigger the sequence to get out, then delivered Hati the druid to her starting position at the southern gate of the city. Next were Alagoth and Semli, each arriving on separate boats. Sadly the background journals I'd intended to set up for everyone to explain their immediate arrival and give clues as to what to do next didn't quite make it into the "completed" pile. So they basically got dumped onto a pier. Fortunately the Harbormaster script was working and he was able to direct them to the Inn. The Inn, where the rest of the party was placed into private rooms, as their stories had also not quite been developed either.
With all players in the game, I then jumped back to Cian, who by that time was walking towards the exit of the prison. I wondered briefly how he'd managed to get to it so quickly and suspected he might have just run past some of the characters and events I'd spend hours coding together for him. But with him on his way to the Inn, I was able to...oh. He's now sending me whispers asking where the Inn is. I guess he skipped that dialogue too. I whispered him back and resumed checking on the other players. For reasons unclear, while the characters in totally different zones and on the opposite side of the map in some cases were nearly to the Inn, the characters who STARTED in the Inn somehow hadn't yet managed to find their way down the stairs. Huh. Ok.
That's about when the scripts started breaking. It became clear that the Innkeeper script was only putting up some dialogue, enough to tell people that they were welcome in the city and by the way here are some Recall Stones. Except that he wasn't actually giving out Recall Stones. So I spawned half a dozen of them at his feet and moved on. Half the party had assembled on the bottom floor of the Inn by now, and while I was sort of wondering where the others were, the players in attendance were asking the Innkeeper questions. So I possessed him and started answering questions.
Deciding to keep it simple, I made up something on the spot about him not receiving visitors anymore, and mentioned that maybe Captain Reece would be a good person to talk to next. And then was deluged with questions about the barmaid, the Duke...and some other things that didn't seem very relevant. I think I answered about half the questions posed, all while watching players apparently chasing the barmaid and systematically talking to each and every one of the generically named "tavern patrons." Well, at least they're entertained.
Eventually all but one player left the Inn, and with only one left in the room still trying to roleplay with the Innkeeper, I decided I'd better check on the rest of the party and left a curt farewell.
I jumped outside the Inn just in time to one of my quest npcs, Fineous, thanking a player for completing his quest. A quest that I'd spent probably 3-4 hours making, and that required an item that I thought that I'd have to manually generate. Huh. Ok, so much for that. Still missing some players, though. Where is everyone? Hmm. Looks like people are...pretty much everywhere. What? Somebody's in the sewers already? Ok, jump to the person in the sewers. He's fighting bats. No wait, he's killed all the bats and is running to where the secret Thieves Guild hideout is. Yeah, kind of wasn't ready to do that sequence yet, and certainly not with only a single player. Oh, good. He made a left turn instead of a right. I spawned some dire rate at the intersection for him to deal with on his way back.
And...now it seems that players re just outside the southern gate of the city, presumably headed towards the previously mentioned Captain Reece. Oh, goodie! Something working as planned! So I jumped over to Reece and waited for the players to arrive.
Which they did. A few anyway. They run right up to him...and...stood there and did nothing. Come on players...talk to the quest giver. You can do it. No, really. Click on the quest giver. *waits*
Ok, I guess not. So I possessed the good Captain and started up a conversation myself. Travellers. Corpses. Reward. All the stuff I'd put into his script except that I was typing it myself while occasionally glancing through the locations of party members. No, I don't know how much the reward is. And unfortunately the DM interface doesn't have spawn gold option so if I just make up a number I can't actually give it to you. Why didn't you click on him when you had the chance?
(Psst. Hey players...click on me.)
"Oh, ok Mr DM!"
*player attacks the quest giver who one-shots him.*
Oops. I guess "left click" and "right click, select attack from the radial menu, left click" are easy to get mixed up.
Oh, look. Somebody just logged on and is stuck in the zone-in portal. Hmm. Ok, guess I can warp them to where I am. Half the party is still spread out across three different zones though and I've been talking to these few for quite a while. Better wrap this up and go check on the others.
Ok, we have one person still role playing with the Innkeeper. We have several people standing outside the Inn, and all the defender npcs who were previously
inside the Inn are now standing
outside the Inn. Best guess...somebody tried to pickpocket the barmaid and failed, and they rushed to her defense, and the player tried to run outside, and they followed. Mostly others are just standing around watching the guard patrols.
Hmm. I to occurs to me that if the players outside of town actually go looking for the troglodytes who are attacking travelers...that zone is mostly empty except for the final encounter because I'd
planned for the entire party to be together by that time with me spawning monsters as needed. I didn't, after all, know exactly how strong they'd be, and didn't want to make the encounters too easy or too difficult. So, a few lone troglodytes here or there, and add more as needed. Standard stuff. I'd better go check on them. They've already managed to sidestep most everything else, and that dungeon was the intended main event. If they zerg through it while I'm not watching to spawn monsters for them to fight, there won't be much left to do tonight.
And jumped to south side of town just in time to see Leonon soloing the Captain and both of his attendants. Well, this should go quickly, they outnumber him something like 12 levels to 1. Wait, why is he winning? Well, that's one dead soldier. Two. And...down goes the Captain. Ok, wonder what happened there? Let's check on the player.
...oh. He's level 10 now and is equipped with a bunch of magic items that I'm quite certain he should not have been able to get. In fact, I'm pretty sure no instances of that weapon exist anywhere in the module. *sigh* Ok, time to make a personal appearance as sexy DM-girl.
*starts typing
"Hey, player..."
*sees response from player to somebody else*
...what's the deal?"
*presses enter*
*Waits*
*Waits*
*Waits some more*
*sigh*
Ok, guess we'll transport the apparently cheating player back to the zone-in portal. I should be able to simply respawn the captain. Though...wait a second. I might have added his dialogue to the placed npc rather than directly to his template. So if I manually spawn him back, I'm not sure that his dialogue will be available. Hmm. Well, its' not like they were talking to him anyway. Guess I'll go check on the rest of the players.
They're outside the Inn standing around talking about other bugs. Oh, look. More people are logging on. Oh, look, somebody just did something that upset a guard and got killed. Oh, look. Somebody just tried to punch the DM. *kills him*
Can I spawn Reece? Sure. And...sure enough, no dialogue. Oh, we now have two players who are level 10? Ahh...multiple characters in the vault left over from last week's test who happen to have the same name? I see.
Yeah, think it's time to call it a night.
Author
Topic: Ongoing Neverwinter Nights Campaign, Monday nights 7-10pm PST (Read 11677 times)