This is a spin off idea inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (mostly from "The Magician's Nephew"). The story takes place in Charn just before the end of all living by use of the Deplorable Word. This plays more like a short story than a RPG. It was designed to be more of a background story to future modules. It was meant to be played as a male, human, fighter type (fighter, ranger, paladin, etc.). Your character's age is 21 and you should be of good alignment. I know, too many restrictions. But, like I said, it's more of a short story than a RPG.
Also, now available "The Exile" (see my signature below in comments section for link).
Watch this before playing (not required, but recommended)
sorry for the Aslan reference, but this was originally for NWN1. NWN2 has no lion, so He is now Elos the Great Bear ;)
Music by Dead Can Dance
Like the author says, it's more like a short story than a campaign.
Also, there are tons of typos...more than any other module I've downloaded. I counted five before my character even got his true assignment (e.g., "instructions" is misspelled everywhere it comes up, "where" and "there" are misused, etc.). There may be as many as 10 typos/misspellings, and the module is only about 30 minutes long.
Posted by Spidercat at 2009-11-29 06:20:36 Voted 8.00 on 11/29/09
What a nice little surprise this is. And having a cat as companion is a very nice touch, too bad there isn't any combat animation for him but heh, can't blame it on you either. Happily moving on with the exile now! Thanks for sharing! =)
Posted by wes471 at 2009-09-23 13:04:11 Voted 9.00 on 09/23/09
@Slowdivefan: I am a NWVault Reviewer and am planning on reviewer your newest module but I wanted to get the background first by playing this and exile. I also experienced the crash that Leslie experienced and I thought you should know I am running the beta of the 1.23 patch and the issues is still not fixed so you may want to go ahead and fix the error yourself rather than waiting for obsidian because it appears as though they will not be fixing it in their 1.23 patch.
Sweet little story. Excellent area design, obviously. Conversations are good, especially when considering that there aren't many of them. They are very well written - both understandable and believable. Nice interesting chars (nice touch having Snowball say nothing but "meow" the first time you see him - fooled me ;))
Seems like an interesting world (I like Narnia a lot, but this still seems quite different to me), so I'll definitely move on to The Exile and Lanterna.
The two things that bothered me: Too short :( But there's the exile and Lanterna (which has four chapters - goodie :D), so I'll get to continue adventuring in this interesting world. And the other thing - it seems like a waste to build a character if you're gonna develop him only to lvl 3... I think I'll play the exile with the same char.
Overall - SWEET. I give it a 7 - It's short, but draws you to play the next two, which can only be of better quality, so I think it's the realistic grade.
Well done & All the best,
I _________________________ Burn It Down!
Thanks Leslie for the kind review. Sorry about the ending not triggering properly. I didn't try and fix this because Obsidian was going to fix the problem in their 1.22 patch (it was the 1.21 that broke this for a lot of builders). I'll probably fix this at some point if Obsidian doesn't fix the problem in the 1.23 patch. The ending does have some little tid bits that tie this and the next module together. It also has some lore that ties this module with "The Magician's Nephew" and other Narnia lore. Thanks for playing and the wonderful comments/feedback. _________________________ Chronicles of Charnia - Escape from Charn (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - The Exile (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna
Posted by LeslieMS at 2009-06-25 16:41:46 Voted 9.00 on 06/25/09
What I did play of it was great, It definately hints at the greater story.
I wasn't however able to finish it. It would crash as soon as I steped into the Ancient Room.
From what I have read, this is a game issue, not a creator issue, as it sounds like the 'way' the scripts were handled changed between patches. I would love to see the end of it however if that is possible in the future =)
There was only one other glitch, which due to the size of the module, wasn't too big of a problem.
If you talk to Snowball first and he joins befor Melia does, you do not get the key. Since I forgot to save, I started over, which was no big deal.
Bugs are bugs, and they happen, so that doesn't count against my vote since they can always be fixed or worked through.
It does have the potential to be fleshed out a bit, but is still fine the way it is. An excellent introduction into the Charnia Series.
Even more excellent if I could see the ending =)
All in all it was good for its length and scope =)
Since they are loosely related I am going to move on to the second part. my curiousity is definately going =) _________________________ Stupidity kills people.
Nothing Good comes from ignorance.
Knowledge is power that is useless with out the wisdom to use it properly.
The whole "OnEnter" script use has been unreliable since the beginning of NWN2. I noticed that depending on which companion was selected, sometimes the conversation would fail. I couldn't figure out why back then. I used "OnEnter" because of my NWN1 experience (I don't think there is an "OnClientEnter" for NWN1). I have since learned that Obsidian was using "OnClintEnter" for their cutscenes and it always seems to work no matter who is selected. "OnClientEnter" scripts only fire after eveything is loaded and all PCs are in the area. I moved all my scripts from "OnEnter" to "OnClientEnter" for "Lanterna" and it fixed everything. I need to do the same for "Exile" and "Escape". _________________________ Chronicles of Charnia - Escape from Charn (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - The Exile (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna
Posted by BlackPhi at 2009-02-14 08:25:22 Voted 7.50 on 02/12/09
The error seems to arise from NPC_Tag being set to 'Snowball' on the final conversation trigger. This seems to give the same crash as when you go into a trigger with another member of the party selected, not the player's main character. I did a bit of playing about in the Toolset: the conversation doesn't trigger at all if NPC_Tag is set to 'Elos' (who isn't there at that point), but the ending does seem to work if you simply remove the NPC_Tag variable from that trigger.
I am very surprised that a bug which crashes the game has been left in the 1.22 beta, although I guess that might be why it has taken them so long to release 1.22 proper.
@BlackPhi & Clay:
Thanks for playing and sorry about the ending not working. I thought 1.22 would have fixed the start conversations upon entering areas, but I guess it didn't. That is unfortunate. I can fix the issue myself by moving all of the needed scripts to the OnClientEnter instead of the OnEnter fields. I think I will fix all the OnEnter scripts for "Escape" and "Exile" instead of waiting for Obsidian to fix things (which was supposed to be fixed with 1.22, but sounds like it may not have fixed the issues). _________________________ Chronicles of Charnia - Escape from Charn (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - The Exile (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna
Posted by BlackPhi at 2009-02-12 05:43:19 Voted 7.50 on 02/12/09
A nice quick module which has been very attractively designed. As the description says, it's a short story really so it is very linear. It's also short.
The ending didn't trigger for me on either 1.21 or 1.22 beta, so I ran through the module again on a PC with an earlier patch. This was no hardship, and the ending ran nicely. I'm looking forward to trying The Exile next.
Posted by Clay at 2009-02-11 14:05:41 Voted 9.25 on 02/11/09
Very nicely done.. I get an error at the cave too. I'm pretty sure it's a 1.21 patch thing.. I've played it before and all was well.. Thank you.. _________________________ I Luv my DFI's.... I do play a lot of mods. I really must apologize. That I don't vote more.
EE,
sorry about the ending not working. I'm not sure if that is a 1.21 patch error or not. The last time I played this, it worked. If you are really curious, I think you can download a bik player and watch the ending. It just explains some of the events that occur after the ending of "Escape from Charn" and is accompanied by a Dead Can Dance song. Kind of leads into the next module, "The Exile". Thanks again for playing and commenting. _________________________ Chronicles of Charnia - Escape from Charn (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - The Exile (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna
Posted by Eguintir Eligard at 2009-01-22 16:44:38 Voted 6.75 on 01/22/09
Very well done but very small and my final movie wouldnt run. I am very curious what I missed. (1.21 version crash)
Posted by ActorOfVeil at 2008-12-15 09:24:23 Voted 6.25 on 12/14/08
Actually I have an older patch so I saw the final cutscene, it was very well done (especially music was great). In this context "more intensive climax" means "currently it's way too easy to retrieve those eyeballs".
The timeline is written in My Journal as follows:
MINOR SPOILERS (?) START FROM HERE
Your father and mother (Adwen and Lidnee) where once King and Queen of Charn (1950 yr). That was 2035 years ago.
- Elos called them to be stars (2000 yr). Since then, they have returned to the Valley of Stars to regenerate twice, this being their second time.
- They had four children from there first time in the Valley (3000 yr). The children left the valley after Adwen and Lidnee returned to the heavens. The children inhabited the forest north of what is now Port Town.
- Port Town established in 3984 by 4 young couples (Wendur, Taldor, Drinson, and Willows families).
- Derik, son of Dalon Wendur, found his way to the Valley of Stars by accident through the secret passage in the caves. No one believed him and the passage didn't always work. He was 12 years old at the time.
- He also discovers the ruins of Adwen's children and the secret entrance to the Cave of Knowledge. This entrance, also, doesn't always work.
- Derik, at 14 years old, meets Adwen and Lidnee in the Valley upon their second arrival. (4000 yr)
- They become good friends over the years.
- Adwen has been told by Elos, that Derik will play an important role someday.
- Derik marries and has four daughters. - The visits to the Valley end shortly before his marriage.
- Adwen allows his sons to visit Port Town as Derik's guest for the Festival of Foundation. This was 8 years ago.
MINOR SPOILERS (?) END HERE _________________________ A good module author is PAG: Patient, Ambitious and Gutsy.
Actor of Veil,
"only thing I missed was a more intensive climax."
Are you at Patch 1.21? If so you may have missed the final cutscene and trigger for final movie as well.
"You mentioned in the description that this was mainly inspired by The Magician's Nephew. Are The Exile and Lanterna based in some specific novels of Chronicles of Narnia as well or are they just based on the world?"
No, I used Charn from "The Magicians Nephew" as a starting point for my setting. The next modules and campaigns take place in Lanterna which is a unique setting, but based on similar ideas as Narnia (i.e. talking animals, people as stars, Aslan (Known as Elos in Lanterna- and the form of a bear - no lions in the toolset), etc.)
"This is purely for curiosity: I tried to figure out which year it was in Escape from Charn from the juornal. The text in the juornal was quite mixed so I couldn't descide was the current year 3985 or 4018. Which one is it or did I miscalculate both of them?"
I don't remember exactly, but it was probably around 4035 that "Escape from Charn" begins (I think I made the whole year thing up...I don't recall any timeline for Charn mentioned in the books).
Posted by ActorOfVeil at 2008-12-14 13:57:23 Voted 6.25 on 12/14/08
Serves excellently for what it was meant to be, the prologue for an epic saga. From this point of view short lenght and easy fights didn't bother, only thing I missed was a more intensive climax.
I will prosceed to the sequels once I've played couple of other modules. I'd also like to ask two questions.
You mentioned in the description that this was mainly inspired by The Magician's Nephew. Are The Exile and Lanterna based in some specific novels of Chronicles of Narnia as well or are they just based on the world?
This is purely for curiosity: I tried to figure out which year it was in Escape from Charn from the juornal. The text in the juornal was quite mixed so I couldn't descide was the current year 3985 or 4018. Which one is it or did I miscalculate both of them? _________________________ A good module author is PAG: Patient, Ambitious and Gutsy.
thanks Luinel,
Yeah there isn't much roleplay, conversation options, or combat in this one. As I mentioned in the mod description, it more of an introduction to the setting. The sets the stage for future modules. I hoped the story was described well enough through conversations and books, but maybe I should create a small history PDF with some more background (I created an extensive outline for this setting). _________________________ Chronicles of Charnia - Escape from Charn (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - The Exile (NWN2) Chronicles of Charnia - Lanterna
Posted by Luinel at 2008-07-11 03:20:41 Voted 5.00 on 07/11/08
There is very little gameplay in this mod. You can kill a couple of creatures, chat up a couple of people and talking animals, have one small combat side-event and that's about it.
The story is also pretty thin, although the beginning and ending cinematics are rather moving and the cut-scenes are well done.
However, there are are lots of lush areas. Fantastical water effects that necessitated the override certainly deliver - streams, waterfalls, mist, etc. There is a lot of beautiful wilderness landscape that one can wander through and admire. There are attractive caves. There is a good-looking and very organically-placed, believable village. Etc.
More or less this is a very impressive area-building demo. It sets the atmosphere, though.
Posted by Winwood at 2008-07-06 05:50:36 Voted 7.75 on 07/06/08
10 - A Masterpiece, Genuinely Groundbreaking 9 - Outstanding, a Must Have 8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation 5 - Fair, Solid yet Unremarkable 4 - Some Merit, Requires Improvements 3 - Poor Execution, Potential Unrealized 2 - Very Little Appeal 1 - Not Recommended to Anyone
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