Weekly foundries!
First, a thanks to Cryptic for adding their rollable 20 sided die for in-game currency. Kasul and I were rolling for stealth and perception checks all night 🙂 It was a small thing, but making something purely for fun, and cheap enough so everyone can have it, is just a really nice gesture in a free-to-pay game like Neverwinter.
Only 70,000 AD in the Wondrous Bazaar. A heck of a lot of fun.
This ad has been brought to you by…. nah, I just really liked it.
Farmyard Holiday by @lupusj
It’s like a dude ranch for adventurers. Take a break from killing multi-headed dragons to just slow down a little and enjoy the simple life down on the farm. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, for one thing, all the animals seem to be a little… demonic… and it rapidly becomes clear that maybe not everyone returns from their farmyard holiday with all the limbs they had going in. Turns out that maybe something weirder is going on.
This is a single-map adventure, and like any good short story, picks out one idea and runs with it to its (il-)logical conclusion. There’s nothing really special about the map design or the encounters (except one encounter that had Kasul and I trading Don Henley jokes for the next five minutes), but the writing is hilarious.
Take a break and play this light quest. Unfortunately, it really didn’t rise up to four star territory — it was just too short, and the map could have a little more attention to make the setting more convincing. Three stars from the both of us.
Pros: It was absurd, ridiculous, fun.
Cons: Could be vastly improved with a better map and more attention paid to presenting the encounters.
Coeden by @josephskyrim
Kasul and I really enjoyed @josephskyrim’s“Arroway Manor” from the Cult of the Dragon foundry contest. Its innovative use of stealth to get through maps without combat was a welcome change from maps using a bunch of static encounters as content.
Sadly, Coeden is just that — with one saving grace.
A giant tree has appeared in the forest, panicking the local residents. Those local residents are a group of elves, whose nearby home has been engulfed by the tree, and a colony of dwarves whose underground homes are being destroyed by the writhing roots of the growing tree. The elves want to preserve the tree and build in it a new home. The dwarves want to blowed it up real good. Which should prevail?
You don’t get to decide until you run around a lot. Kasul and I were able to avoid lots of static encounters simply by running around them on our horses, but an army of kobolds required us to kill at least some of them to progress. Once finally into the tree itself, we were asked to choose with whom to ally (the elves were being snooty, so we decided to go with the dwarfs), which gave us four (I think) static encounters of various sorts before the quest just ended.
The possibility of multiple endings was nice, but the quest didn’t really have a satisfying climax nor any repercussions for choosing one faction or another — just which variety the last couple static encounters would be.
Two stars from both of us.
Pros: Multiple endings.
Cons: Map seemed to be a standard forest map with a giant tree plopped into it. Lots of weak static encounters.
The Spider Dens by @dimension000
Last week, we set out to search for Guard Frinko’s son. Now he wants us to look for his daughter! Worst. Dad. Ever. But… it gets better. He believes his daughter may have strayed into the local markets, which are about fifteen seconds away at walking speed. His daughter is lost, and he won’t walk fifteen seconds to see if she’s still in the market.
This is Rolf-level epic bad parenting.
Why do we pick on Frinko so much? Stuff like this.
Anyway, we trace her to a sewer grate, because she apparently wondered what would be on the other side. You and I would have a pretty good idea what to find in a sewer, but this is Neverwinter, where the riches of the world could be just on the other side of a stenchy hole. I’m thinking lava tubes feeding Mount Hotenow must be running all under the city, which actually makes a weird kinda sense, especially since the first thing WE see when we climb into the sewer is a flaming skeleton who just wants to help.
Apparently, Frinko’s daughter Ellise (opportunity missed: no Für Elise jokes) (mention of which caused Kasul to start talking about Too Many Cooks, and that was it, that was all that was going to be talked about the rest of the night). … Frinko’s daughter, Ellise, somehow managed to get through several doors locked with puzzles and get attacked by a spider queen.
We had to light four torches and kill a lot of weak encounters until we finally got to the spider, who wasn’t even elite. Saved Ellise and then the quest ended.
We rated it two stars each. It wasn’t bad, and we could tell the author had put a fair amount of effort into it, just… needed more of a flow. More excitement. A little more motivation than “rescue the lost princess”. Like Coeden, it’s the start of a quest, but would have a fair way to go to become the kind of quest we would recommend.
Pros: Scully could be a great character.
Cons: Not really any plot. Map design was uninspired. The set-up is minimal.
A Mere Expedition! by @deiterate
The set-up is simple enough: brave explorers needed, provide own equipment, pay negotiable. Well, if it was good enough for Bilbo…
So, we zone into the grounds of House Davinbon and we just stare. We understand that we have not seen a quest like this for a very long time. I think it was Sharandar’s Revenge that was the last time we were thunderstruck by map making. We get the part where the quest is explained to us out of the way — follow some lost adventurers, see what happened to them, save them if possible, very standard — and then just run around the rest of the map that ISN’T EVEN USED IN THE QUEST but is full of nooks and crannies and we want to live there.
Eventually we move on to the adventure at hand and befriend a cowardly lizardman and help him fight the Blackscales and Yuan-ti (a masterful job of creating a non-standard race with the foundry tools) that have invaded his home. And that is as swampy a home as you could like. Into the caverns where we learn the final fates of the expedition. And it’s also a place with its own character and complications. Back up to the surface, and inside the manor we’d only seen before from the outside. And this is a beautiful place and we want to live there.
Clearly the author intends to use these maps as the basis for further adventures in their “Trail of the Imaskarcana” campaign. As far as I can tell, this is their first foundry. MY first foundry is an embarrassment I’m going to have to rewrite at some point. Even now, I am not able to make anything that looks so good.
Five stars from both of us, a real highlight. This is why we play foundries 🙂
Pros: Masterpiece maps, fun characters, lots of moving parts and drenched in detail.
Cons: Lizardman doesn’t help us save his home. Why is that?
Until next week!
