Since Kasul and I hit max level and got geared up, our weekly group nights are no longer about quests and dungeons and stuff. It’s all about the Foundry, running the boundless stories players create. Sometimes they have well-designed locales and the writing is spot-on funny and clever. Usually… not.
Last night’s adventures included one of the _strangest_ stories we’ve ever played — “The Frosty Proctologist”. This titular doctor has more fingers than is comfortable (er, “confortable” according to a lesser adventure we played). He’s set up shop in an inn that contains, along with the usual assortment of characters, an infestation of orcs, sex-crazed halflings, and a demonic episode of Iron Chef: Faerun.
I wasn’t a fan, at first, of the rampant fourth-wall breaking, but the rampant silliness of the whole adventure just had me smiling all the way through, and I ended up giving it four stars (out of five).
I’ve a real weakness for foundry adventures that copy well-known locations from other MMOs. We very much enjoyed the two missions set in World of Warcraft’s Scarlet Monastery; we were excited to try the two EverQuest adventures put into the game.
The first, Solusek’s Eye, was a parody of the old low level zone in Lavastorm, home to goblins, gnomes and horrible, horrible trains. Narrated by an insane version of Sony Online Entertainment’s John Smedley, it brings you through some of the more notable camp spots in old Sol A, but never quite reaches the level of full-on parody, and the author eventually departs from his premise (and Smed) and muddies the story with an evil adventuring party.
I’d have liked it better if it had more fidelity to the original zone — and if every. single. named. had been camped. It was a good start, and could be excellent with some more work.
The second was advertised as a totally accurate version of the fortress of Drunder, AKA the Plane of Tactics, the original gating encounter to the elemental planes. The fights against Vallon Zek, Tallon Zek, and their dad, Rallos Zek the Warlord, are iconic and well-known among EQ1 raiders of a certain age. As one of those, I couldn’t help feeling an opportunity had been missed.
The dungeon layout is vaguely similar to the original, with two wings filled with encounters leading to the boss mobs at the top, and a third wing to the Pit and RZtW’s chambers. (Except, no Pit).
The Tallon and Vallon fights were nothing like the original fights — the brothers were normal-sized and weaker than many of the trash mobs we fought along the way. Vallon Zek didn’t clone himself and summon adds; Tallon Zek didn’t teleport around the room firing death arrows.
Although nobody had to charm giant boars from the Pit to kill RZtW for us, the God of War’s model at least looked appropriately sized and dressed. He even summoned a second version of himself in an approximation of the real encounter, though Kasul thought perhaps it was an unintentional bug.
I’ve got to keep a better list of the foundries we try… the occasional diamond in the rough makes it all worthwhile.
