Candid thoughts on pixels, polyhedrons, and paper.
I’m gonna come right out and say this, I have some pretty low expectations for the next installation of the Neverwinter PC game series. However it’s not because it’s hard to live up to or come close to standards set by the Bioware/Black Isle folks when it comes to PC RPG’s. Any company can come out of nearly nowhere and blow us all away with an outstanding title, video games a bit less often though because of costs involved in making one. Nevertheless I’d really love to root for the underdog here and hope that Cryptic pulls off a winner, but so far that’s looking to be a dismal prospect.
Cryptic’s past titles have been mediocre at best, and this is where my suspicion lies. It’s also worth mentioning they probably should get their lore right, before they go attempting to win over hardcore FR fans. While I may have started playing D&D when I was 13, I’ve been playing video games since I was 5 – which means I can honestly say “20+ years of experience” when it comes to this subject matter. When the announcement for “Neverwinter” was made, like many of us I was pretty excited at first glance. I’ve always beeg a huge fan of the series and the Forgotten Realms world, but a lot about this title (so far) seems iffy.
Given a projected quarter for it’s launch date, already having determined it’s 5 classes (via the front page graphic), the creation tools being announced and more, yet they still don’t know what the hell the games core genre will be other than an RPG?
Hammerfast isn’t your everyday adventure module, in fact it’s not really an adventure at all if you wanna’ get technical. Think of Hammerfast not as a blank canvas for your campaign world, but one that’s been penciled in lightly for you to alter as much as you want. It’s a great backdrop for setting up an entire campaign or at least a major city. The contents state it is optimized for taking players ideally through levels 1-10, however I think a little ingenuity could push it a bit further than that.
Without giving away the back story from the book verbatim I’ll just say that the city itself has a lot of history, to say the least. Ghosts walk the streets alongside the living and no one thinks anything of it, some of them even hold places in society – acting as teachers instructing those in a craft they excelled in during life like blacksmithing perhaps. There are some tensions between those devoted to Moradin and Gruumsh who basically hold dominion over the cities and it’s ghostly inhabitants. There is a lot of room for tension and treachery in a city like this, which is great for your campaign world and creating player intrigue.
