This is a conversion of a Cliffhangers Adventure posted by Jesse Decker on Wizards of the Coast D&D Website. The adventure takes place around the village of Travensburg. The village has had a rough winter, and although the promise of spring seems just around the corner, the village has had to purchase food from a nearby town. The area feels peaceful, but the winter has driven a few small bands of humanoids to search for food outside their normal territory. To protect the valuable shipment of supplies, four guards were sent to escort the wagon. Now the shipment of food is overdue. I'm hoping this is enjoyable, short but sweet. The scripting is a real pain for me, I'm not finding enough time to really understand things fully. But I'll keep working at it. I've liberated some scripts from other mods, so if you see something that's yours, pat yourself on the back. Please leave a comment, and a vote, good or bad. All feedback is a plus.
Posted by Mirgalen at 2010-06-10 17:30:55 Voted 8.50 on 06/10/10
Excellent conversion.
The original material is available at the DnD web site: "Cliffhangers Adventures
Unearthing the Past - Episode One: The Search
by Jesse Decker"
They are four parts in total.
8: A very good module that is well polished and fun to play.
Posted by Trokonen at 2006-05-05 18:48:10 Voted 9.00 on 05/05/06
Excellent module, well done. Simple and concise, my heart was racing during some of the battles. Came in with two level 1 fighters... my companion got killed by the spider but I miraculously finished the adventure as a level 2 fighter without ever dying. I really enjoyed your module. My advice for future reference: 1- All the orcs wielding great weapons that deal out death with one blow is too extreme at any level; my guy definitely fluked out, only low dice rolls by the elites saved me. 2- The secret door truly is an anti-climatic waste of time. The riddle is a little lame. Too hard just to find an empty room with a lead in to another mod. Advertising is good but it spoiled the mood. This mod had a great classic D&D feel to it. I gave it a 9.
Posted by Mr Gringo at 2005-10-11 01:49:00 Voted 9.00 on 10/11/05
Great story idea and setting, and excellent use of visuals! A couple of large empty spaces which I usually hate, but your use of them added to the atmosphere nicely. Hope to see future mods from you!
Posted by monele at 2004-07-12 10:43:20 Voted 7.00 on 07/12/04
Nice short module, good to get a level. Nice arrangement of placeables and I love how you can pick up *everything* on corpses and even from the scenery.
Only wrong point are the useless empty areas which were a pain to travel when I was poisoned and slowed down on the way back.
Posted by Burnfire at 2004-03-08 15:13:23 Voted 9.00 on 03/08/04
Posted by Volund at 2004-02-28 20:47:10 Voted 10.00 on 02/28/04
Posted by Burnfire at 2004-02-24 16:26:00 Voted 9.00 on 03/08/04
Posted by Anonymous ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2004-02-01 17:04:00
I thank you for the detailed comments, Chris. The time it takes you to make a post like this is encouraging to me, to say the least. I must put forth more efforts in completing the next parts, for I will admit, I have been lax as of late. But let me address your commentary for now, and shed some light on some of what is going on in my mod.
I come up with some good gaming ideas, but to put those thoughts into script form takes me a great deal of time. I was aware that Lord Traven could be stopped in the tavern, but I just did not want to take time away from developing the rest of the mod to write a script to correct it. I figured it was at the beginning of the mod, so if anyone screwed him up, they could just restart. Or not, like you said, it doesn't break the mod.
As far as the size of my areas go, I don't consider them large, with the exception of the village area. I had planned to do much more with the village, but my slow game development skills and real-life time constraints combined to leave the village area under-developed. As for more encounters, I have a wolf encounter as you come back through the one area from the ruins, and a goblin encounter in the 1st area north of the village. The goblin encounter only spawns at night, so you might have missed it. I was hoping these 2 encounters would suffice as you traveled back to the village from the ruins.
I was trying for some touches of realism with the shops closing at night, and the restricted resting. You could rest in the bear cave, and on the second lvl of the ruins, in the spider's lair. And on the 3rd lvl, in the great hall, after you do the bad guys in. I thought the bear and the spider lairs would have been fairly obvious spots, but perhaps I was wrong. Any of my new mod efforts will use the random encounters in HOTU, I think.
I agree about the difficulty with x3 criticals. I would suggest you put your game setting to Normal, avoiding the monster criticals on PCs. I've played through it with a 1st lvl Druid, and Sorc, solo. With the exception of the final fight, I made it through without dying. But as the builder, I know what is coming. The spellcasters, with their ability to summon creatures to be their front line of defense, actually have an easier time with this mod than the fighter classes. Two of my friends played it with a Barbarian and a Sorcerer, on Normal setting, starting new characters, and the Barb died once. They had no previous experience with the mod, so I figured it was a pretty good judgement of the multiplay. I would think the biggest factor here is the game setting. For all those who will try this in the future, Normal setting is enough of a challenge.
Thank you for the pat on the back, and letting me know what bothered you, as well. It helps a builder greatly, even if I can't accomodate everyone, to know where players have trouble. You've given me inspiration to take some time tonight to work on The Halls..... :) Farewell.
Hi! I just played this module multiplayer with my girlfriend, and thought I'd post some
feedback.
The first thing that struck me about the module was its attention to detail. The barred door
was a nice touch, as was the final riddle. You make excellent use of placeables and sound -
keying some lines of dialogue to identical voice snippets is a particularly nice touch. In
addition, the story is simple but tight, and the NPC dialogue is well written. I found only
one bug, and that's a very minor one. If you talk to Travern after he's briefed you but
before he reaches the tower, he will never continue to his destination, but just stands
around where you stopped him. Perhaps a quick OnHeartbeat script to check if he's where he's
supposed to be would sort this out, but it's hardly game-wrecking in any case.
There was too much empty space, though - large areas with little content, and areas that
could be removed entirely. I understand the desire to convey the idea of travel to the
players, but running through empty areas is no fun, especially when you have to run back and
forwards through several of them to rest and recover. Some addiitonal encounters (perhaps
non-combat ones) might help justify some of these areas, but even then they should be
downsized and you might want to consider removing some.
Unfortunately, the module is too difficult for first level (and even second level)
characters. There are a few things that contribute to this:-
1) Character fragility. I'm inclined to think NWN is inherently broken for 1st-level
characters. They're likely to go down from a single hit, which makes their experiences a
chancy and frustrating one at best. Orcs, strange as it may sound, are really too tough for
first-level characters. An orc is basically a first level fighter, and no other class is
likely to have much chance against them. In low-level scenarios axes in the hands of monsters
can be a bad idea, too. Triple damage on a critical will drop any 1st- or 2nd-level
character, regardles of build. As it is, the module is much better scaled to a single
well-built 3rd level fighter character than a number of 1st- or 2nd-level characters. Using
placed NPCs rather than encounters heightens this. Both our characters used up their single
extra lives on the first combat encounter! Even after using the console to bump us up to 2nd
level, we still had to reload several times and couldn't beat the final villain.
2) Orc elites! These will mash low level characters. They have extra attacks from their
double axes, 16 hit points and 18 stength. They can take a lot of punishment and dish plenty
out, and will go through low-level parties like a XP-hungry adventurer through kobolds. Plus
they have spellcaster backup. Yikes!
3) No rest. The resting restrictions cripple low level characters. First and second level
adventurers will use up almost all of their resources (spells, hit points, limited use
abilities) on any one of the encounters, requiring they trek back across sizeable maps to
recover. This leads to a lot of time spent running back and forwards. Spellcasters will have
a very rough time of it. Perhaps more resting areas in the dungeon would help.
I've had identical problems balancing a low-level module for a single 3rd-level adventurer
and a group of 1st-levellers. It took ridiculous amounts of playtesting, the creation of
multiple versions of monsters, and I *still* don't think it worked!
Lastly, while the accurate day/night cycle is an impressive piece of scripting, it doesn't
add anything to the module. It only means that sometimes, when you just want to visit the
shop to get enough kit to get back on with the adventure, you first have to go to the hostel
and use the sundial. Unless the day/night cycle has a significant effect on play, it only
acts as a slightly annoying limitation.
I've spent more time discussing the negatives than the positives just because I thought
specific information might be helpful for you. Overall, I was very impressed with Unearthing
the Past, it's a solid, compact little module to wile away a couple of hours with. I look
forwards keenly to Halls of the Beast-Tamers (I remember that old classic from my original
old grey-box FR set! And by the way - neat bit of plotting to link the two modules together,
especially since they were written, what, a decade apart and for different editions of D&D!)
You have a flair for visual design, an eye for detail, and skill with dialogue, and I can't
wait to see what you make next.
Chris Gardiner, Member of the Module Review Guild
Posted by Skather ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-12-01 06:12:00
Thanks for the vote, Don. Glad you enjoyed it. The secret door is one of the things I cleaned up with the update. I got rid of the "inscription" and put the riddle on the door itself. When you say the correct response out loud now, a pop-up text tells you the door unlocks. I was trying to be different, with the way I had it the first go round, but most people thought it was sloppy. I had to agree. So if anyone happens to "see" an invisible guy in that chamber, ignore him, he's just there to listen.
Posted by Don ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-30 15:21:00
A small mod, but fun. Area layout was nice. A little action, but not too much. I don't like hack and slash myself and tend to use overpowered characters so I can dispense with it quickly. Plot was good. I gave you an 8.
One problem though, I could not get the secret door to open, even after I edited the mod and found the answer. The problem is, I could not get the door or inscription, or what ever, to start a conversation or respond to anything I said.
Posted by Skather ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-30 11:14:00
Okay, I'm doing a minor update to clean up a few things that people had suggested could be improved. I decided not to add any wandering villagers, I just don't think they will make the adventure any better. It took me long enough just to get around to doing these few adjustments. Main changes are the look of the Tower interior, added a couple more dialog choices in Lord Traven's coversation, and changed the secret door a bit. Thanks to everyone that has played, commented, and/or voted. I'm going to throw myself an objective vote now, as this will be on the top rated list soon. I hope voting for my own mod doesn't upset anyone.
Posted by Matthew Miller ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-28 17:30:00
Opening locked doors isn't evil -- it's merely non-lawful. My complaint isn't that the town isn't full of rogue options, just that doors which are openable yet lead to broken nothingness are an example of detail overlooked.
Anyway, sure, I'll take another look at it once you've found the time to work on it a bit.
Posted by Volund ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-27 16:25:00
Very slick mod. Was the first mod i've played here that actually kept the flavor of the original game, leading off with enough to keep me interested in actually finishing it..short but sweet, not a moment of boring dungeons or towns. Keep it up mate!
Posted by Skather ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-27 13:53:00
Hi, Matthew. Sorry to hear you got off to a bad start. The module is designed for a group of 1st lvl PC's. If you want to solo it, play with a 3rd lvl character. In my mod description before you begin play, I explained this, and that the encounters don't scale. The town lacks detail because I don't have the time available to create it. I designed this for good or neutral alignments, so I will not appologize that there are no homes for you to break into and loot. I'll add a script to tell you that there's nothing of interest inside when you rattle the locks, when I get around to an update. I hope you'll give it another try, maybe take some friends along multiplayer.
Posted by Matthew Miller ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-11-27 08:40:00
Played for a few minutes. First impressions: low attention to detail -- extremely terse and utilitarian dialog, a town full of locked doors which lead nowhere when picked. I'm holding off on voting since I haven't really seen the whole thing -- but there's my other complaint.
(Minor spoiler for beginning.) I followed the instructions of the first guy I met, headed north and, after going through a completely empty area, got my first-level bard smashed by three axe-wielding orcs. Great. There's basically no getting past that at all. I suppose I could try one of the other directions out of the village, but there's no given reason I should go those ways. Basically, the module doesn't scale down to starting characters, and shouldn't be listed as such.
Posted by Skather ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-10-29 06:37:00
Thanks, Beast of Malar. I know what you mean about no time to play the 15 - 20 hour epics. I'm going to try doing a few short ones, then sink my teeth into a series.
It's ironic, me commenting on your The Hallowed Hills mod and you commenting on mine the same day. Made me chuckle when I checked them this morning. Small world, after all.
Posted by Beast of Malar ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-10-28 03:36:00
I really enjoyed playing your mod. The scripting was cool - especially the one with the bear. My only problem with this mod was the riddle at the end - I only solved it when looking into the script, a little hint about the "technical" way to solve the riddle would be really helpful. For me personally it was an exciting RPG-experience - I really like those short stories for having no time for bigger things.Now I´m off to vote for it and then return to my studies.
Tom
Posted by Skather ( ..xxx.xxx ) at 2003-10-16 06:50:00
Good to hear from you, Lokless. I thank you for your efforts in trying this multiplayer. I now know it is free of any game-stopping bugs, whether played solo or with friends. The riddle is not crucial to finishing the game, so I will not give away the answer here, or in the game. What's beyond the secret door is a lead-in to my next adventure. I'm taking a little time here and there to update this mod, then hopefully next weekend I can start cranking out the second. That's all for now, I'm off to my day job.
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at 2010-06-10 17:30:55
