You are a novice adventurer looking for work in the bustling city of Calimport. A chance meeting in a tavern may provide more than you bargained for, leading to a dangerous journey through desert and dungeon.
The beginning (hopefully) of an epic series, this module should also be playable on its own. Features innovative systems for resting, respawning, pickpocketing and other game elements. Combines challenging combat with many opportunities for roleplaying and character interaction.
Version History (see readme for fuller details on changes made):
12/9/08: v. 1.02 released. Combat made slightly easier among other tweaks.
6/8/09: v. 1.03 released. Corrections to a few minor errors.
2/16/10: v. 1.04 released. Minor corrections.
Truly excellent work! I just finished playing and thought it was tremendous. Very clever use of the toolset, and excellent design. Onward to Chapter 2!
Posted by rogueknight333 at 2012-07-2102:42:28
Thanks for the votes and praise, Kamiryn and Lactruss.
Posted by Kamiryn at on07/20/12
Great module. Started as rogue(1) and ended as rogue(3)/cleric(2). Challenging but not too difficult - traps und turn undead really helped. Looking forward playing part II.
Posted by Lactruss at on06/15/12
This module is prefect for me. You start as a novice andventurer and shape your journey. No destiny stuff for a player. Great roleplay and good riddles. I played as a sorcerer and it was a bit difficult but still amazing.
Posted by ericdoman at 11:27:28 Voted9.25
After playing through CH 2 with the rg/ftr (COT) from part one, tried again with a cleric. Bottled it a little and went down as a lvl 3 cleric and again found it tough. Finished as a 5tl lvl cleric. Previous character started as a 1/1 rg/ftr and finished as a 3/2 rg/ftr. Not much of a difference with xp totals as well. Other favourite classes are bard/ftr/AA and monks so we shall see in the future. Anyways off to play CH2 gaian with the cleric. Who will most likely become a COT in the future. Cheers
Posted by rogueknight333 at 2012-04-2315:02:32
@neltymind Sorry you do not seem to like my module. I did my best to provide an immersive role-playing experience but obviously my ability to do so will sometimes founder both on people's differing tastes and the limitations of my own competence. I am not certain what you are talking about when you say that enemies "always spawn directly in front of you," since outside of a few special cases they do not do anything of the sort. The best guess I can make is that this is your (rather confusing) way of describing combats that are triggered at the end of conversations. It is indeed harder to employ stealth in those particular fights (most of which are optional). One must be prepared to adapt one's tactics to a variety of different types of challenges. In any case, in most encounters it is perfectly possible to employ stealth-based tactics, if desired (though of course one might get unlucky and be spotted sometimes - that is how DD rules work. One must also watch for enemies who employ stealth themselves, as a few do, and thus might appear to come from nowhere). A number of people took issue with some of the alignment shifts when this module was initially released, and there is some discussion of the reasoning behind them that those interested can find by scrolling back to some of the earlier comments. I shall provide a few explanations here as well, since I suspect you are not the only player who will have some concerns on that score. The short answers to those who dislike the way alignment shifts are handled are: 1) If alignment is going to be a part of play at all, there has to be some sort of ethical standard imposed, and it would be impossible to find any standard that everyone would completely agree with. If you do not agree with the standard chosen, remember that this is a game, not a philosophical treatise that is trying to be the last word on disputed ethical questions, and treat it with the seriousness it deserves. 2) Again, this is a game, so the systems for dealing with alignment are necessarily going to be somewhat simplistic, and unable to deal with every nuance of circumstance and motivation, any more than, analogously, "hit points" are going to be a perfectly realistic way of reflecting the effects of injury. For the sake of simplicity, if the apparent motive and practical result of taking things from people who never did one any harm is to enrich the character, it will be assumed that the character is motivated by avarice (i.e., behavior most consistent with a neutral evil motivation) and alignment shifts will be given accordingly. A final word about "Robin Hood" type characters who rob from the rich and give to the poor (or something like that), since people trying to play that type of character seem those most likely to dislike the ethical system: I myself do not find that concept terribly realistic, since in the real world when rich people lose money they will generally recover the loss by raising prices on their customers, lowering wages on their employees, reducing their philanthropic donations, and the like (i.e., when the rich are robbed, it is not only, or even primarily, the rich who suffer as a result), and since this is my module it somewhat reflects my attitudes on that question (see above about the impossibility of choosing a standard everyone agrees with). That said, since this is fantasy, in Chapter Two I have made it a bit easier to play that type of character if desired. In the second chapter you will still get shifted to evil for stealing (in most cases), but will also be able to find a Temple of Ilmater at which you can make charitable donations that (if large enough) shift one's alignment back towards good, for the benefit of those stealing from what are arguably justifiable motives. You will have to donate quite a lot of gold to make up for the alignment consequences of regular thievery, but if one is as much of a noble "Robin Hood" as claimed, that should not be a problem. I agree with you that using standard tilesets to represent a somewhat exotic city like Calimport is not ideal (though keep in mind that it is a large and old city, and no doubt different sections of it can be expected to show off widely differing architectural styles), but in this module the exterior of the city is represented only in a single small area. It did not seem economical to me to require players to download a large hak-pak just for the sake of that one small part of the module.
Posted by neltymind at 2012-04-2203:47:30
It is too early to rate this module, because I only played half an hour or so. But some things already annoyed me. First thing is the way enemies spawn. They always spawn directly in front of you, without any warning. That is not only totally unrealistic, it is also a big problem for a rogue relying highly on stealth (like my character). Most enemies can spot my character when he stands directly in front of them, because his hiding skill is only 4 at level 1. Would they spawn earlier, I could see them and sneak attack or even avoid them completely. So playing rogue seems no good idea. Next thing are the very common alignment shifts. Many of them are just nonsense! My character is chaotic good, follower of Tymora and an anarchistic rogue type of guy. Why is his alignment shifted to evil, if he steels a couple of coins from a rich man? To me this seems more of a reason to shift towards chaotic. Same thing with denying to do a quest because the reward is only 75 gold. Just because someone wants to be paid accordingly for hard and dangerous work does not make him evil. I am not going to start a discussion if stealing can be justified, but I am pretty sure most people will understand if I say guys like Robin Hood are unlawful, but not evil. They would never kill without a good reason for example. Or steal something the owner really need to survive. So they follow an ethic code and they do not take what they want. They care. So the shifting system is a good idea to enforce role-play, but the implementation is poor. The third is something different. I guess you cannot blame the author for this, but it goes against my sense of style. Calimport/Calimshan is a setting influenced strongly by Arabic middle age. The buildings in the module look like buildings on the sword coast or in the western heartlands. The reason is, that there is no fitting tile-set, I guess. But it something I just not like, especially if you are going to have a heavy role-play module.
Posted by rogueknight333 at 2012-04-1712:50:44
Thanks for the vote, shuurai. Combat that can be handled with some preparation and strategy, but that would be rough otherwise, was pretty much the level of difficulty I was aiming for. I was also trying to break people of the habit of relying on rest to as much as they are likely to have become accustomed to in other modules, but it is not impossible the restrictions are just a bit too extreme. You are no doubt correct that it would have added to the module to make some of the standard commoner types a bit less generic. Alas, even I have a few limits to the time I can put in to work on these, so while I try to address them all some details still get a bit more attention than others.
Posted by shuurai at on04/16/12
Solid module with a cool story, and I liked the little twist at the end. Nice area design, and some clever puzzles that actually fit the plot - which is a nice change. There is a ton of attention to detail, with a lot of class-specific things to do. Combat has some rough moments, but nothing that can't be handled with some preparation and strategy. One gripe in the area of combat is that safe rest opportunities are a bit sparse for such a low-level adventure. The random encounters when you try to rest in unsafe areas can be a bit overwhelming. Couple of nit-picky things... in a lot of cases there are groups of NPCs that look and dress exactly alike, and say exactly the same things. It stood out more than usual in this module because the author put so much detail into other things. A little bit of variety would really add to the immersion in my opinion. Overall, this is a great little mod. Definitely worth a play - and probably a couple of replays - and so far the sequel is looking to be even better.
Posted by rogueknight333 at 2012-04-1117:05:23
Swordflight Chapter Two is now available. Check the list of "New NWN Modules" for it.
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