BJ Back From the Beyond

Narrative Design: Minimal Setting Design: Minimal Encounter Design: Minimal Technical Design: Includes game-breaking bug! Summation: I don't want to hate this scenario. And I don't. Really. It clearly was a first effort by a designer not used to the role, which makes me want to give it some leeway. It's short. It's very simple. It's quirky in some places, for good or for ill. But there just isn't much here to play, and what is here is only superficially amusing. Rating: Poor

Oh, very cool. Unfortunately, it looks like all the links to BoA graphics are gone except for the portraits by Dahak (at least I have a credit for those now). All of them just loop around to the same page.

Hmm. I smells me a side project... 😏

(Wow. I mean, just wow. It has been a really, really long time since I posted anything on this forum. Good grief.) Hey guys, long time no see. I've been taking a look back at my old BoA stuff. You know, recapturing the excitement of what was never released, and cringing at the thought of what was released. 😛 It's all gotten me thinking about starting a new scenario project. Before I get too far though, I figured I'd ask around to see if anyone can answer some questions I have. First of all, I remember a 3D editor was in the works last I was here. I see I have the Eccentric Eyebeast release of that, but I'm wondering if more development has been done and if a new release has come out during my years of absence. Second, I see many of the links to user-made BoA sites no longer work. That makes me very sad, and it makes me wonder if any of the custom graphics hosted on those sites have survived (I see Louvre is still around though. That makes me happy). I'm also remembering seeing a black sand terrain set somewhere that I would love to work with, but I can't seem to find it. If anyone has info on where those graphics can be found, I'd love to hear it. These works of art should not be lost.

Short answer: yes. A few years ago there was a tabletop game run out of this forum set in Avernum during the events of the second game. The name of it was The Abyss, and the tread for it is probably still around here somewhere. That game used a set of homebrew rules, nothing nearly as complicated as DnD, so it's probably not what you're looking for. I'm not sure where you could find those rules, if you're interested. I don't think they made it to the AIMhack wiki, but Lilith might still have a copy. I've been playing 5e myself recently. If you just mean combining the 5e rules and the Avernum setting, well how difficult it would be would depend on just how many of the rules you want to change. For instance, it would be pretty easy to make additions for the nephil and slith races (possibly a few others too, if you're feeling ambitions), but if you wanted to go so far as to address the discrepancies in the two magic systems, well then you've got your work cut out for you. My (free) advice would be to keep it simple and just focus on getting the flavor of the setting without messing with the rules too much. Now, if you're talking about actually making a whole new set of rules based on the Avernum games, well it could probably be done. Just take it from someone who has tried something similar: it's a whole lot more work than you think it will be.

I would be willing to join up with you all over IM. As for finding a GM, I've done it before and have been planning to do it again sometime. I've been seriously working on a Zombies 3 campaign for a while now. The thing is, if I do run it (and that 'if' is more like a 'when') I'll want to use the "AIMhack variant" that I've been developing alongside it (how much can you change the rules before it stops being an AIMhack variant?), and I'd really like to use MapTool. I don't know how you feel about those. I'm not sure about voice chat. I've never tried it before, but it really doesn't sound appealing to me.

Whoa, yeah, I forgot about the advance. Bump my spellcasting to d12.

I think Option 1 is slightly better. If there's a chance for us to rejoin the rest of the party, you can believe we'll take it.

As far as I know, April 1st is fine. Hope you feel better soon.

Oh, man, I forgot about this. Um, my advance... *goes to check character sheet* Yeah, I'll take +1 Vigor, putting my at d8.

Count me as interested for future games.

I'll take Power Points, putting me at 25 total.

Yeeeeah, I'm really sorry about that. I'd had a long day before and was apparently much more tired than I thought I was. Here's hoping that doesn't happen again. Advance coming soon.

I tried reproducing the error using the code you posted, but the creature was always able to use mage spells. As far as I can tell, there shouldn't be any reason why yours can't. Just changing the level doesn't affect the creature's mage spell skill. The Good Witch creature you imported has its default strategy set to 1, so it should try to use ranged abilities like mage spells whenever possible. The mage spell skill being high or low compared to the level of the creature should be irrelevant. I can't fathom why cr_level should be causing this problem. You could try removing it from the data script and instead putting in a set_level call in the INIT_STATE of the creature script. It should look something like below. beginstate INIT_STATE; set_level(ME,30); break; Hopefully that will work.

That still requires the party to travel to a set location to activate the move_to_new_town special. I can't be sure exactly what Excalibur wanted, but I don't think that was it. Yes, you could do things that way. It's still not something I would recommend.