In the dead of night, you arrive at the constabulary of Feldon. Though dispatched by the Duke to defuse a crisis in the province, you have your own reasons for coming. The Sheriff of Feldon, Hollis Pynchon, is an old friend, and he's in over his head. A murder has strained relations between townsfolk and Asheyan refugees to the breaking point. If a suspect cannot be made to confess, there will be more blood on the streets. With time running out, you must decide what's more important - the confession, or the truth.
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A short, dialogue-only module created as a writing submission. Should be playable within around 30 minutes. First time messing about with the toolset, so feedback would be appreciated.
Version 1.2: Replaced wonky onclick trigger with a much more efficacious placeable, and fixed a minor dialogue bug.
Version 1.3: As it was an easy tweak, added some black-out VFX to visions as per recommendations. I haven't exactly tested them super-thoroughly, let me know if they do anything strange.
Posted by Builder__Anthony at 2010-03-18 18:50:10 Voted 9.00 on 03/18/10
Very spooky story and entertaining.The scripting is enjoyable in the situation as well.
Posted by Grymlorde at 2009-11-28 14:41:02 Voted 7.00 on 11/28/09
I liked it! Original story and good dialogue. I voted a 7.00 because the dialogue could use some polishing, some additional options (as other have commented), some cutscenes, more placeable sounds, change is music as the plot advanced, etc. In other words, a 10.00 is true professional job equal to or greater than Bioware. 7.00 is pretty good for an amateur (like myself). Great way to get started. I'm hoping you'll be inspired by the feedback and do more extensive module development.
Bottom Line: Everyone should play this short adventure. It's that good!
Posted by Dawnseeker at 2009-11-03 22:50:18 Voted 8.75 on 11/03/09
Possible minor spoilers in my post below.
(I tried putting minor spoiler alerts in those pointy brackets() but those somehow got omitted). Sorry! _________________________ Regards,
DS
_____________________
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
-- Winston Churchill
Posted by Dawnseeker at 2009-11-03 22:43:12 Voted 8.75 on 11/03/09
This is a great example of how immersive a dialogue-only module can be. The author creates a tangible atmosphere of suspense with the increasingly nervous Hollis (NPC) which develops incrementally towards a truly crazed and tragic ending. I didn't encounter any bugs myself on my first play-through. I'd like to try this mod again with another (or a couple) PC(s) of mine. I agree with Eva Galana about possibly blacking out the sequence with Vera's spirit for dramatic effect. I think it would be a big improvement on an already impressive module. Many thanks to the author for sharing this fine piece of work with the community. Huzzah! _________________________ Regards,
DS
_____________________
Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you.
-- Winston Churchill
Posted by Eva Galana at 2009-10-28 16:37:00 Voted 8.25 on 10/28/09
Firstly, let me say that the writing for this is great. I like how Hollis and my PC interact with each other - they obvious know each other, have a great deal of respect for each other, but there's tension. During the conversations, I'm guessing they knew each other from past military experience.
SPOILERS:
I felt that the conversations with Vera and the subsequent visions should have been either in a different area or perhaps "blacked out", to give the PC a feeing of being somewhere other than the room she's questioning Vera in. This would have added a lot more atmosphere to the mod.
Another thing: the alchemist (Kinski) "broke" very easily - way too easily. Perhaps having more dialogue options to get to that point would have been better and more believable.
I like the ending convo options for my player - to play it lawfully (I played a LG Rogue/Paladin) or chaotically. Nice.
I also think that the dialogue options, once explored and discussed, should have been changed. After speaking with Vera, I went back to Hollis, but it only repeated the conversation from the last go-round with him.
Overall, very nice. Hope to see more from you, on a larger scale. _________________________ Well...who would have thought THAT would happen?
Like Olivier Leroux, I find it difficult to determine a vote (but if you really like, I'll think of something). I thought it was very well written. I also liked it that it was very clear that there was some thought out background, but I think I would have found it a bit easier if I had known slightly more in advance (I should have made notes, so I could give some examples).
And yes, naturally I agree with the others that different areas with different atmospheres, music and all that for the visions would have been very nice, as would some more details (like the constable in fact pacing back and forth, and I could give many more suggestions) - but I realise that that is not what this mod was meant to be / do. And naturally, if you get a job as a writer, someone else will probably do all the building and the scripting (and if not, I suggest you team up with a builder and / or scripter and provide us with a lovely mod). Another minor technical point, that I think you could do something about, is that where you insert skill checks, you show the [Bluff] or [Intimidate] in the same color as the rest of the test; it is customary, and personally I like that custom, to highlight those (in red, usually).
By the way, assuming the on-click trigger mentioned by others was what now is Vera's corpse, it worked without any problems for me.
/** S P O I L E R S **\
And just a minor thing, towards the end there was a possibility to confront Hollis with the fact that he approached Vera with his dagger already drawn. I chose to give another answer first, and afterwards I didn't get the option to confront him with it any more (whereas some others were repeated, if I recall correctly).
I also half expected Hollis at the end to turn into a werewolf and attack me, probably because that would have been such a standard result in most modules ;-). But of course, with an unprepared level 1 character, that would most likely have been my death, and removed my influence on the outcome.
On another sidenote, at the end I was somewhat disappointed that my PC couldn't remain in the city to try to create more understanding between the townsfolk and the [sort of historical Jews with a difficult name which I can't remember]. I suppose that is a good sign :-).
"creating the backstory for a game that doesn't even exist, which is something I'd read you're supposed to avoid in these types of submissions [...] but I tried to keep it nonessential, such that this could really just be a sidequest in any game. But in the end I think I ended up needing a little too much backstory to get through the plot. I'll have to watch out for that in future submissions."
IMO the breach of the rules is one of the strongest points of your mod. I was glad that it felt unique and not like a random side quest usable in any other mod. Of course, if your main interest is to comply with the rules of old Bioware contests, you might want to avoid that in future submissions. Personally I'd rather you did not and kept your mods individual and interesting, incompatible with run-of-the-mill settings. ;)
"I will be less optimistic about players magically dismissing weird bits like that in the future."
Well, you asked for feedback on your writing, structure and such, so I paid attention to that. I've become accustomed to play mods as a playtester, so I might be a little more critical and alert than most other players are. :D
Cool, great feedback so far! I appreciate all the suggestions as far as improving the atmosphere and keeping the player engaged with other stuff to do. I could have at least had some items to examine, some journal entries, something other than conversations going on. I think the main issue is that the module was a little too long for having nothing but dialogue, which definitely stemmed from my inexperience. I thought I'd be able to get through the plot with about 7000 words but I ended up needing twice that. I'll know better next time, and I'll set aside more time for working on the technical/variety aspects.
Oliver, you hit on some stuff I was hoping someone would recognize, and also some things that I hoped would go unnoticed... I did feel that it was important for players to come into the story feeling like their character had some kind of stake in the situation, so I tried to offer a lot of motivations to choose from. But that involved creating the backstory for a game that doesn't even exist, which is something I'd read you're supposed to avoid in these types of submissions. So I tried to walk a fine line. There is some homespun backstory that informs the plot, but I tried to keep it nonessential, such that this could really just be a sidequest in any game. But in the end I think I ended up needing a little too much backstory to get through the plot. I'll have to watch out for that in future submissions.
*******************************SPOILERS****************************
And the thing with Kinski is totally my bad. I knew that it was weird but I let it slide anyway. It stemmed from a bug that I caught just before I uploaded the module, but I was kind of lazy about fixing it and just hoped that no one would notice. It makes more sense if you go in and confront him before you speak to Vera - he denies it like you would expect he would. Really I should have come up with some more dialogue for that, but I was tired by that point and just wanted to get it out the door. Thanks for bringing that up. I will be less optimistic about players magically dismissing weird bits like that in the future.
I'm not quite sure how to vote, since the mod is mostly dialogue and everything beyond it is rather unimportant. So giving it a high vote might be misleading people who are looking for more than dialogue in a good mod.
I second Berra's observation about the music and atmosphere and coreyh2's comment on the onclick trigger which always took three to four tries until it worked.
That being said, as far as I can tell as a non-native speaker, the writing was excellent. Actually the story was so interesting that I didn't need anything else to keep up my concentration. I liked that it was morally complex and ambiguos, somber, mysterious and a little eerie, and I liked that it seemed a very believable, realistic setting (in fact if you look past the supernatural elements and the fictive names it's like it was taken directly from human history, sadly).
Another aspect I appreciate, although some people won't like that at all, is that you're playing a character with a history unknown to the players, deeply rooted in a world unfamiliar to the players. Which made the dialogues even more intrigueing for me since they allowed to find out not only about the murder mystery at hand but also about the PC, his relation to the NPCs and the background of the world, all that without the dialogue turning into a lecture. Well done!
*BIG SPOILER*
The only thing I didn't find very convincing is the way Silvius suddenly breaks and offers his confession freely, just because Pynchon told me something about him and the girl granted me a vision of what Pynchon did - both of which I hadn't even mentioned to Silvius before he came out with the truth.
He was not in the same room with me, when I interrogated Silvius OR the girl, so how does he know what I know, from where I gathered that knowledge and why doesn't he make the least effort to deny it? I understand that it's easier to handle that way, pretend Silvius already knows what the PC got to know, instead of repeating it. But it doesn't make a lot of sense if you think of the characters as real persons, not devices of an author to get the story across.
Well, I hope that was the kind of feedback you were looking for and that it's also helpful to you. :)
Posted by Elrin Vomorks at 2009-10-16 09:35:51 Voted 8.50 on 10/16/09
Very good module, I give the extra 0.50 over the others since I believe most of the features were intentional.
Most of my concerns were already said by the others so I won't go over them again.
Good job! _________________________ "Life is one long and beautiful song, that is played by Love"
Posted by Berra at 2009-10-15 03:47:32 Voted 8.00 on 10/15/09
I think, first and foremost, that your writing skill is pretty good and you managed to create an interesting murder-mystery.
I do think however that you could've made some more areas since it felt pretty boring simply running around the place and talking to people. Also I think you should've used more fitting music than the generic "house-song". It gets pretty boring after awhile. Like, for example:
***SPOILERS***
*For Vera's visions. You could've made a new area for each scene and made the conversation in that area instead and used fitting music depending on the scene. That would've made an even greater impact on the player.
*You could've made one area for the suspects cell and placed a more creepy music-piece there.
*One for Vera's chamber as well and perhaps used a scary or sad music-piece for that room.
***SPOILERS END***
But again, I do think you've managed to tie these events together in a pretty good way and everything seemed well thought-out.
So I'll give your module an 8.00, despite the limitations. I tried focusing on the writing for the score since that's what this mod intended to provide.
Thanks for the suggestions, and Iladylad you enjoyed it, despite the limitations! Both those issues are sort of a result of my meager scripting abilities I'm afraid. I'm a little worried about the onclick trigger... Was it easy enough to work around? I noticed it was a bit finicky but couldn't think of anything to do about it. Hopefully people don't get to that part and just give up because of the wonky trigger. If other people have problems with it I might go back in and see if I can fix it somehow.
I'd originally planned for Hollis to take part in the interrogation, and for Kinki's dialogue to be different if he was present, but it was kind of outside if the scope of this module. The focus was pretty much meant to be on the writing, plus I'd never done any scripting before so I didn't want to spend more time on it than necessary. It did make Hollis kind of passive, but I thought it kind of made sense as well, as the PC is essentially taking over the investigation.
Thanks for the feedback!
Posted by coreyh2 at 2009-10-12 17:45:04 Voted 8.00 on 10/12/09
It was an interesting story. The onclick trigger didn't work that well for whatever reason. You could have a conversation with the invisible object in the script you use to kill vera. It might work better.
This is just a random suggestion but wouldn't it be more interesting to have Hollis in the room while you talk to vera and silvis? He was very passive considering the situation.
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