Updates

02/09/04

Finally - A Site Update

Yes, I know it's been forever since we last updated the web site, but that's because all the work has been going on elsewhere.

The Troimoira's Fane NWN campaign has been running for 10 months, and experience has shown that the Message Boards have been the best place to conduct business.

However, the condition of the web site has been irritating me, so I've finally given it a quick edit. I have removed any inaccurate information, and just given the text a general brush-up.

 

Work in Progress

As we have worked on the project it has become obvious that it is a much bigger undertaking than we originally thought, and we’ve had to modify some of our plans. This has had no impact on the planned scale of the campaign, but it does mean that it will not be ready as quickly as we forecast. Our original plan was to build as the story grew, starting from quite a small base of created areas and moving outwards as the PCs explored. However, it’s now obvious that some area types (cities being most guilty) take too long for this plan to work - we’d have to break the campaign off for a few weeks while we created the next city.

 

So now we are working on the assumption that we must have a number of the major locations ready before the campaign begins, so that we only have to build in the elements necessary for the current scenario on a weekly basis. This means that the campaign will start later than expected, but once it is underway, we’ll be able to keep up regular gaming sessions.

If you would like to help out by creating any items or locations, please drop me a line to find out what we really need help with. Generic interiors (homes, inns and taverns) are in particular demand at the moment, but do check with us before lavishing hours on your creations - we don’t want you to spend ages on something that we cannot use.

02/10/02

Exebridge is starting to look like a living city. The exterior is complete, and most of the interiors are in place. The vast majority of the necessary NPCs have been created, and we are currently in the process of placing them and tweaking the scripts.

Some figures; the exterior of the city covers 9 16x16 tiles.
There are around 60 interior locations.
200 NPCs (though some of these are generic).
When finished there will be five churches, five inns, six taverns and seven shops of various sorts. There are also a slew of other interesting locations; the castle, a few brothels, market traders, the graveyard etc.

Yes, this place is vast. You can see the overhead maps at http://www2.gamma.uk.com/nwn/exebridge2.jpg

The village of Erling’s Oak is nearly complete, with exteriors, interiors and most NPCs in place. There are a few more scripts to place, and the surrounding countryside needs to be added, but the village itself is nearly finished.

The city of Luddsgate exists only as an exterior shell at the moment. It was started as my first try at a cityscape, but since it will not be needed until later in the campaign, it has been put aside for now.

Besides these actual locations, in their various states of completeness, there are also all the items and generic NPCs that are already in place. These include armour or robes for all the churches of the setting, holy symbols, clergy, guardsmen and their equipment, peasants, farmers, and a number of new item types, including healing herbs and infusions (taken from the Masters of the Wild supplement for D&D).

All of this sits on top of some major scripts which move NWN closer to standard D&D rules; death at -10, no instant respawn, use of Raise Dead (on moveable bodies), and limited rest periods. We will be wanting to test the implementation of some of these features soon, so look out for details on trial sessions if you want to have your say on exactly which elements of the hardcore rules that we use.

That’s about it for this week. I hope to be able to post updates on our progress about once a week, so keep an eye on this page.

30/05/02

New Look Site

We've finally finished the site update. This is mostly cosmetic, but we've tidied up some of the content as well.

 

04/12/01

New Message Boards

I finally got around to updating our message boards software to something a little less stone age. The bad news is that this one forces you to register and remember a pasword. The bold fields are required, all others are totally optional (such as your real name & address). If anyone has any problems or queries with this new system, please contact me.

Yandros

 

01/11/01

Player Applications

Well, we knew this day would come, and it's a bittersweet moment. We have gathered a great bunch of potential players, but have reached the point where to take in any more would be unfair to both the other players and our poor overworked DM.

To our existing players: keep in touch with us - the campaign creation process really is a collaborative effort. The ideas we've had so far for character backgrounds have been outstanding and are helping to shape the world you'll inhabit. If you find yourself unable to participate for any reason though, please let us know so we can offer your place to someone on our waiting list.

To applications AFTER 1st November 2001: If you are interested in playing, please take the time to fill in the application form, and you will be placed on a waiting list. We will contact you to acknowledge receipt of your application, and give you an idea of where you are on the list. When vacancies occur in the game, they will be filled in waiting list order.

If the list gets too long, we may be forced to close the applications process entirely, but we're fortunately not at that stage yet.

 

16/07/01

Site Update

New sections have been added to the Appendix area: on Paladin Orders, and the Guild of Arcane Arts.

20/03/01

New sections have been added to the Appendix area, covering names, bard perform skills and the social structure of the Fane.

19/03/01

After the sudden demise of our message board provider, we've had to look for an alternative solution. To avoid the same fiasco happening again, we're now hosting the board ourselves. It may not be quite as pretty, but it's 100% reliable and free of adverts.

27/01/01

We've started a new Appendix section, for material that doesn't fit nicely into the other world background categories. At the moment it has a single entry - details of the church of Troimora.

20/01/01

The PC we intend to use as the primary Neverwinter server is now up and running. This is a 1.1Ghz Athlon with 256Mb RAM. We intend to upgrade our second server to the same specifications or better later this year. The other glad tidings involve our internet connection. It appears that ADSL is now available in our area, so all being well we will be able to upgrade to a 256K/512K connection nearer the NWN launch date.

04/11/00

The site has been expanded to include new background information and some specific D&D material. The sections covering Races and Gods have been expanded, and a new section detailing how the D&D character classes fit into the Fane setting has been added.

The new version of the Troimoira's Fane Handbook is now available on the downloads page. It includes all the new site material, as well as full D&D statistics for the PC races of the Fane, and some extra information, exclusive to the Handbook.

 

21/10/00

News from Bioware on skills, point based character creation etc

Well, there has been some controversial news from Bioware today. We'll have about 20 skills and 40 feats to play with. Character stats created using the point based system, and death occurs at zero, rather than at -10hps.

Since we're opting for a locally stored character vault, and a closely DMed world, we're pretty relaxed about all of these issues.

Skills - We're planning to include a list of skills in the script attached to each player, which will allow us to implement a whole range of non-combat DM supported skills. If that isn't possible, we'll find another way of doing it. Will will be supporting, via a live DM, all the skills that we possibly can. The only ones which will probably remain unimplemented are things like riding. If a player really wants, we may even be able to include swimming, jumping and climbing, by moving a character manually. We will have knowledge type skills in this world even if Morgana has to roll the dice by hand!

Point systems - We've always intended to use the point system for character creation, using around 30 points, but we'll be listening to the wishes of our players before making a final decision.

Death - If we can't set our servers for death at -10, we'll script it instead (which Bioware have told us is possible), it's as simple as that.

20/10/00

Despite the shameful lack of updates for the last 2 months, things are actually progressing nicely.

The PnP game

Firstly, following the release of the Players Handbook and DMG, we've been able to start the Troimoira's Fane paper and pencil game. This is set many years before the NWN campaign, and allows us to start fleshing out both the history and geography of the region.

Post 3rd edition launch amendments

Now that the core rules are available, we can start getting a lot more specific about character creation details etc. Morgana is working on a revision to both the site, and the Adobe Acrobat download.

Site Graphics Overhaul

We've tidied the look of a few pages, but the work is still in progress. Apologies to people using older versions of Netscape - yes I know it is a complete mess...I'm working on it :-(

4/8/00

The Troimoira's Fane Handbook has been added to to downloads section

15/7/00

Our links page has been updated.

8/7/00

The first version of the Troimoira's Fane FAQ is now available.

14/6/00

The Troimoira's Fane Timeline has been added to the history section.

1/6/00

A player survey has been added to the downloads section.

30/5/00

It has just been brought to my attention that the Region 1 map needs to be refreshed in your browser for the Angleston map link to appear.

27/5/00

The city map of Angleston is finished and partially annotated. We're using a street plan that should be possible with the tileset, although I'm sure not all of the building types will be possible. Angleston will require 4 permanent areas of pretty much maximum size, making the city around 600m square. There will of course be a many features NOT shown on the map, but you're just going to wait and see for those :-)

28/4/00

The message board is now up and running. I've also fixed a broken link on the RPG links page.

25/4/00

The Worlds of Legends site finally goes live, along with the Troimoira's Fane campaign world. Hopefully we'll have a message board available shortly. Future plans include a further map zoom to show city street plans (once our poor overworked GM has time to dust off her copy of City Designer) and some zipped downloads.