Away from Ursula Turns out I couldn't resist: I started making the mod for the story using the neverwinter nights toolset. As expected I do have a lot to learn. I wrote this many pages of brainstorming though, I'm sure I have the commitment to learn. So far I made almost the whole story up to this point. With a few minor bugs. I did make one minor change.

For one thing the player now gets from the sewer to inside Ursula's house via a portal. Which reminds: I actually want to warp to Ursula's basement, don't I? Minor detail. In any case I'm as far as testing the various doors, making sure each room and area goes to the right next one. Took me a while to figure out the portal thing, but I set up a "trigger" as a move-to-waypoint feature and it works pretty well.

I also went through several iterations of hinchamn's creation. Basically I wanted to have spawn and run up to the player, starting a conversation when the player tries to open the door to Ursula's hose. First I created an event that spawned hinchman as a new object that didn't exist until then. Then I realized there really isn't a way to have him create a converstation that way (since then I realized there probably is a way).

Eventually I created a non-accessible room for hinchman and at the appropriate time moved him from that room to the spot near the player. I'm still fair certain there is a more elegant or effective to do this though. I have also thought of making him simply invisible until he's needed. Only problem is I still have his shadow and I can still talk to him invisible.

But lets get on with the story here. Alright we talked to the rat guy in Ursula's basement and now the player is supposed to go and report back to Mactell. (Is it "Mactel" or
'Mactell"? Doesn't matter I guess.)

So the player leaves the basement to head back to Mactell. Alright lets just go back to Mactell. And I guess the player has a choice: tell Mactell all the rats have been killed (as if there was more than one and all were killed) or report about the rat guy. That should come bac around and have an effect on something at some point. I'll have to get to that later. In any event talk to mactell, killing the rats is now a finished quest.

Now that we've settled that lets say Mactell impressed that this player has followed his orders so quickly and accurately and without question. This will have to very slightly depending what the player tells Mactell. Mactell will just doubt the truthfullness of the story if the player tries to tell him about the conversation with rat.

For the next task Mactell will have the player speak to another NPC. I have no idea who this will be and what the name of this new NPC should be. But this new character will assign a new quest: to find a list of items and return them to this quest giver.

Now then, this will have to be a turning point in the whole story. As each item is found the player will get a new clue as to what's going on. By the time the last item is found the plot to invoke the ritual by the council memebers will be fully revealed. And by that time enough people will know something about it the population will try to stop it. Thus the civil war.

I'm sorry I can think of no more depth then this, I'm not much of a story writer. Of course, there can be lots of side-quests and revelations along the way. NWN mods are usually based around combat anyway, I don't want the lead up to the war to take more than a third of the story.

Alright so lets make it slightly more complicated. Actually I think I have already written down some ideas. Like some hidden antagonist is causing several sources of conflict which will lead to a further acceptance of a ritual that will end things like civil wars. Alright then we need a different reason for the war.

Ok how about this: lets say the secretive antagonist has manipulated the council into performing a ritual to do something else, like combine a bunch of cities and villages into one big country or otherwise fundamentally alter the existance of the population. When the population finds out the civil war starts. Of course the seperate cities and villages want to remain indiependant, status queoe, blah-blah-blah. So there's a civil war. Intended by the as of yet unnamed antagonist.

So the war drags on and on. Everyone starts to despair and wonder if it will ever end. Finally some negotiators from both sides come together to negotiate a compromise. This would be a good way to manipulate the player into introduciing the idea of a "ritual of peace". But the ritual comes at an undisclosed price. All sides are so eager to end the war all agree the risk of the an undisclosed price is worth peace. After the ritual it is revealed: although a seeming nirvanna will be maintained perpetually one child must be sacraficed per generation to maintain it. The price of a single child for perpetual nirvana and no suffering.

Eventually the culture would arrive at such a point the children of the city would only have this detail revealed to them at the age of 13 or so. Also that the ritual isn't all totalitarian: if so desired anyone may leave the city to live elsewhere. At the point of the ritual of peace I guess the module would end. I would have to put in some kind of cinematic to explain the new existance of the city.

And just for the fun it lets say since everybody in the civil war was alive at the time of the ritual everybody is now immortal except some certain circumstances. This will come back in the second module, should it ever be made.

I think I've come, once again, quite far for the over-all story arc but I don't know on a more specific scale where I go from Mactell.

  ¶ 7:51 PM