A question

[rantalot]

 

Has anyone ever considered making a prelude to the valley of dying things? Like what really happened and why did the school have to be abandoned.

 

 

I cant really make scenarios, but if some one was to make it for the contest….and you’ll be able to import a lot of the maps. The person would probably need to play the exile version first since it has a lot more info on what happened.

 

[Niemand]

As far as I know no one has considered doing this; it seems that most designers would prefer to write their own plots and not associate them too directly with the game canon/Mr. Vogel's work. As I player, I think I prefer this state of affairs anyway.

[Enraged Slith]

What better reason than to learn?

[Xaiya]

Messing with Jeff's plots using BoA scenarios is not nice. (Which is why scenarios like Undead Valley are so bad.)

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: rantalot

I cant really make scenarios

I strongly doubt that. I bet you just haven't tried. There's a pretty strong community of designers at the moment, and we're more than willing to help people learn how to design, and more importantly, how to design well.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

You probably won't find much of a market though, because despite the excellence that is VoDT, most people in the community think it's mediocre, from what I've gathered. Za-Khazi Run gets an even worse undeserved reputation, and I loved that one. It has an atrocious (I've heard) fan-made "sequel" for BoE too.

[Randomizer]

There is also the problem of coming up with a plot for the party to advance through since you're talking about a time when the place is being shut down and mages being killed that don't agree with what was ordered. Not a place for adventurers unless they want to die.

 

The place was being closed because the Empire wanted to restrict the practice of magic to keep it under control. There are tantalizing hints with one of the mage offices belonging to Erika (maybe the Redmark before she was Exiled). The healer is of the Hamer clan and had a relative Exiled and you meet one in A1/E1.

[Ishad Nha]

Die or run away, whichever comes first. You could build a scenario around running away before the Empire can catch and kill you.

[rantalot]

You could have two choices for an adventure. Help Palathius (did I get this right???) Mage set things up to save the valley. Or you could Help Vennia assassinate the mages and close the school. As for the entrance into it, you can be the one that brings the message from the emperor that the school needs to be shut down. I totally fell in love with VoDT back when I played it in blades of exile. It is one of the best if not the best in my eyes. It is a shame no one wants to make a prelude, but not messing with Jeff’s stories does make sense.

 

 

 

VoDT and Zakazi-Run were probably replayed by me more times then any other scenario. The only thing I kinda hated about zakazi was the fact that I couldn’t go back. . .but that’s part why I replayed it so freaken much.

 

[Ishad Nha]

First message in town 6 says "Palhatis". You could imitate A Small Rebellion and have the player forced to take sides.

[Slawbug]

I have never really understood why VoDT is insulted so much in the Blades community. I liked it too -- and it is obviously the Urgeneforge as well.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I concur. I liked Valley of the Dying things. A Small Rebellion, on the other hand... that one I don't like so much. I haven't even played the Za-Khazi Run yet... I should do that...

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

I have never really understood why VoDT is insulted so much in the Blades community.

Insulted isn't the best term for it. It doesn't receive the awe-inspiring derision that Z-KR gets; it's just that most Blades designers consider it mediocre. I agree that it's a fun romp, but it's not something I want to play on an even semi-regular basis. Give me APF or WH instead. They're shorter, the former is considerably better, and both will level you up several times.

Most people like ASR. I count myself amongst them, but not to the level of its greatest fans (or even its better fans, for that matter). I think Z-KR is fun, but that there's way too much room for improvement there. And I think DwtD has been on the short end of the stick.

[Drakefyre]

ZKR is better in BoA. VoDT and ASR are better in BoE.

[Enraged Slith]

Jeff's scenarios stopped being as fun when BoA's magic ran dry for me. I've played through VoTD more times than I can remember and the others have grown stale as well.

 

ZKR doesn't deserve some of the criticism it gets. Individually, some of those dungeons are the best I've ever played through.

[Kelandon]

I don't think that VoDT is really panned all that much by the community. It's a solid scenario. The secrets, once revealed, are a little weak, and there are some plot holes — if there was a cleaning mechanism all set up, why didn't anyone use it? — but it's fun.

 

VoDT gets some grief every now and then for being the only scenario that unregistered users can play, which may or may not have been a particularly good marketing decision (I find myself skeptical of it), but only tangentially because of its quality.

 

I think that VoDT made the transition to BoA well. ASR didn't.

[Enraged Slith]

Actually, I think the biggest problem people had with VoTD for BoA is that it's the same old VoTD and not some exciting new adventure. We're all kind of pissed that he released the same old scenarios as the default group. It's probably the reason BoA didn't sell well.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Insulted isn't the best term for it. It doesn't receive the awe-inspiring derision that Z-KR gets; it's just that most Blades designers consider it mediocre. I agree that it's a fun romp, but it's not something I want to play on an even semi-regular basis. Give me APF or WH instead. They're shorter, the former is considerably better, and both will level you up several times.

Most people like ASR. I count myself amongst them, but not to the level of its greatest fans (or even its better fans, for that matter). I think Z-KR is fun, but that there's way too much room for improvement there. And I think DwtD has been on the short end of the stick.

Could you perhaps not abbreviate quite so much? I don't know what APF or WH is. (I just suddenly realized what DwtD was – Diplomacy with the Dead.)

[Enraged Slith]

APF = A Perfect Forest

WH = Witch Hunt

[Slawbug]

In retrospect, it does seem like creating new scenarios might have made BoA sell better. Of course, it also would have extended the time it took to develop BoA, which already was the highest of any game he's made, IIRC. DWTD was released with BoA, though, wasn't it? That was new, though admittedly I didn't like it very much, either.

[Kelandon]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Could you perhaps not abbreviate quite so much?

If you're going to talk about BoA, you're going to have to get used to the abbreviations.

Originally Posted By: Slarty

DWTD was released with BoA, though, wasn't it? That was new, though admittedly I didn't like it very much, either.

Yeah, I'm starting to think that this might've been a previously unappreciated reason why BoA didn't work out very well. DWtD was short and not stellar, and the other scenarios were not significantly different from their BoE versions.

Of course, the biggest problem was that the scripting system was considerably harder to learn than BoE's noding.

[aka Ravenwing]

I personally think it would have made more sense to feature DWtD, since of the four default scenarios, it was the new one. Making it the playable one in the demo might have made more sense, since many people would have played VoDT in BoE.

 

I'm not one of those, and I found VoDT to be a lot of fun as a first scenario. And it worked well enough for me to want to keep playing and buy the full version.

[rantalot]

It is somewhat of a disappointment if you played it on BoE, not just because it is the same story, but also because the BoE version was slightly better. If I remember correctly there are more things that tell you about what happened in the school in the BoE version. You spend over 75% of the game inside the school, it is kind of important to constantly get clues as to what happened inside.

 

This is part of the reason I want some one to work on making a scenario about it. I really feel some loose ends of the story line need to be tied up. Why didn’t anyone just flip the damn switch and dispose of the poisons? Why would some leave a huge live dragon in the cell instead of just killing it? Why was the school closed to begin with? I mean it is the biggest magic school in any of the avernums I played seems strange to just close it up.

 

[Enraged Slith]

Looks like you have a reason to start learning how to script. Believe me, it's daunting but not anywhere near as hard as it looks.

 

As for VoDT, I enjoyed it along with the other scenarios because I never bought BoE. I also loved DWtD. I still like them, it's just that their old charm has run dry.

[Kelandon]

Originally Posted By: rantalot

This is part of the reason I want some one to work on making a scenario about it. I really feel some loose ends of the story line need to be tied up. Why didn’t anyone just flip the damn switch and dispose of the poisons? Why would some leave a huge live dragon in the cell instead of just killing it? Why was the school closed to begin with? I mean it is the biggest magic school in any of the avernums I played seems strange to just close it up.

Uh, yes, the aforementioned plot holes.

[Randomizer]

The school was closed by Imperial decree and based on the timing it appeared to be before the major mages were sent into Exile. The government was controlling magic by centralizing it and eliminating schools that it couldn't easily control.

 

Most of the mistakes seem to be an idiot running the place that wanted it done on time to curry favor with the higher ups and some who thought that the place would soon reopen. Jeff has that in Geneforge too where experiments were left to run because the experimenters planned to return even if they had to sneak back to Sucia Island to continue.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I'm pretty sure it was established in the scenario that

Click to reveal..

the school was closed in a rush and they didn't have time to make everything all neat and clean. As has been said previously in this thread and as was established in the scenario and in the previous Exile/Avernum trilogy, the Emperor was afraid of the proliferation of magic as it was a threat to his power, so magical training became concentrated under the Empire's direction, and magic users were forced to either prove their loyalty or be killed/exiled. The school administration knew all about the switch and the dragon and whatnot. The Empire, behaving in its typical way, did not know, nor did it care to know. The administration could have cleaned everything up, but they were too busy fighting to keep the school operational and getting killed by the Empire for being insubordinate in the process.

 

I see no plot holes as far as that's concerned. I still say it's a great scenario with a great main dungeon.

 

 

EDIT: Uh, yeah. Missed the second page...

[Kelandon]

See, the "too busy" line makes some sense, except that it's a SWITCH. How much freakin' time does it take to throw a switch?

[Enraged Slith]

Some people forget to turn the faucet off before going on vacation.

 

Maybe the task was delegated to someone else who had too much on his plate and forgot or gave it to someone else and so on and so forth.

[Randomizer]

After all they forgot to get the key back that you need for the lower levels and several other "important" things.

[Student of Trinity]

We should rethink trusting these people with summoning demons for us.

[Who flung poo]

Sorry for reviving this and what I'm about to say is somewhat off-topic but....I've always kinda wanted to see a scenario where you play as the elite soldiers that were part of the First Expedition to Avernum, I know they all get killed, but it has always fascinated me

[Ishad Nha]

A scenario based upon Thralni's First Expedition would be interesting. At least designing the outdoors won't be hard, you can use the outdoors from Avernum 1.

 

I have just finished the outdoors part of a revision of Xoid's Avernum 2 Template. Now that I have a custom spreadsheet to do the necessary porting work, it only takes a minute per section.

[Ishad Nha]

A scenario from the time of the First Expedition would be fascinating, there would be no Avernum. No Avernum, no Nephilim, no Abyss, no human towns, no bridges. No cavewood and no moss to light up the ceilings. Grah-hoth would still be at large. The entire place would be a wilderness.

[Kelandon]

We know there'd be Motrax, and there might be some weirdness left over from whatever was in the strange cave in A1 that had pre-First Expedition stuff.

 

According to Bahs/Ex continuity, there'd be some interesting things going on with the sliths (although most of the best stuff would've already happened).

 

I often thought of making a First Expedition scenario, too, but it seems as though it'd be pretty dark. The expedition goes wronger and wronger as time goes on. Demonslayer broken, the expedition divided and dying... bad news all around.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Kelandon

I often thought of making a First Expedition scenario, too, but it seems as though it'd be pretty dark. The expedition goes wronger and wronger as time goes on. Demonslayer broken, the expedition divided and dying... bad news all around.

Yeah, making a scenario for a failed expedition would be kind of... depressing?

[Micawber]

I dunno. Apollo 13 was about a failed expedition, not too depressing. You'd have to focus on the, hitherto unknown, support team who made it out alive against all the odds. But whom no one has ever heard of because the main explorers were lost. Use a little dramatic licence...

[Sudanna]

Nalyd's pretty sure that they wouldn't say that everyone died if someone made it out alive. Hey, Frostbite was good and everyone died.

[Nioca]

Not true. If a tiny group of explorers either escaped or found refuge in Avernum, and the Empire never found out, they would simply assume that everyone on the First Expedition was dead.

 

As for Frostbite...

Click to reveal..

The mission wasn't a total failure. True, everyone died, but the mission was still a success, albeit a costly one.

[Micawber]

Tales get simplified and exaggerated in the telling, too. "All the major heroes were lost, only some insignificant bag carriers survived" becomes "Everyone died!".

[Celtic Minstrel]

If I recall, in the First Expedition there were exactly two survivors.

 

Edit: Why don't I see this topic on the list in the BoA forum? I can only access it from the main index when it contains the most recent post.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Because the board is horribly broken and posting in threads doesn't bump them anymore. I found it down the list, among some threads that haven't been posted to since June.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Posting in threads bumps them most of the time...

[Who flung poo]

If a scenario about the First Expedition was made, I would prefer it be made by Kelandon or Lazarus because I fell like they can really capture the moment when something terrible happens. Such as losing Thralni's Sphere or the destruction of the Demonslayer, but that's just my personal opinion

[Nioca]

ADoS - The thing that sorts the threads by descending chronological order by default seems to be off. You can manually rectify this by clicking on the Posted button twice, but it has to be done every time you load that particular forum.

 

Now I'm glad I view the forums primarily through the Active Topics feature.