A look back ... | 06.21.11

First day of summer! I thought it would be a nice way to look back at the design of Almraiven and Shadewood for those who wonder what it took and how it is I organize the flow of work that brought life to both adventures. Much of the design I do while building is attached to the notes I make for the story arc, side-quests and ideas that happen to pop into my head. My favorite notebooks while building is the Cambridge Limited Business Notebooks because of its wirebound binding, legal ruler and the ability to tear the pages out of the notebook neatly if required because of the perforated pages. Here are some pictures of my personal notes while building Almraiven and Shadewood. Captions are included in case you can't read my chicken scratch! A full page dedicated to distributing the music for particular areas in Almraiven as to avoid duplicate tracks being played in different areas. Take a look at the bottom right of the picture and you'll notice 1CINN (One Copper Inn - Volothamp) for tracks HAUNT1 through HAUNT4. Shadewood was already part of Almraiven at this time but as the module grew, the areas were removed and a second module was created. This one is interesting because of what is not scribbled out. The highlight is to catch my eye when updating a module and in this particular instance, this update never made it into Almraiven. It is an extension to The Cuttback Kat Murders, where the player begins to find blood and wooden stakes in the streets of Almraiven and nothing more. Azuv was also the fourth companion in Almraiven the player could have picked up for their journey to Shadewood but the last leg of the quest and Azuv, as a companion, was cut. The highlighted line mentions being able to take the wooden stakes and ask Flaux or Luanu about them and learn they originated from Woods and Goods. Finding all three wooden stakes would have had Azuv approach you on Rosetyl Street where a vampire lair could be found in an old abandoned building. The vampire lair is operated by Zoetia, the mother of the Nightshade who you can come across in Shadewood. The line that is not highlighted captures the idea of hearing from Flaux about your break-in, either on the Blood Runner or Spectral's Call, which was a quest requirement to get the body of your laboratory assistant. Instead, it was moved to the Town Crier on Caravan Run. Shadewood notes and quite a lot going on with this page. Some of what is mentioned was implemented to the adventure while others were not. Even looking back at this, I'm not sure the direction I was going with a few of the comments that remain, such as: Body snatchers - in Bog's Wart Spider lair - return bones Madmoon Mardigan - killed kid's parents Return bones to spirit killed by Spider Queen Slyete - cleanse out the dead from keep More scribbles dot the page with potion brewing and their ingredients. Finally, the above shows a detailed quest idea before it was added to the module. These notes are for the Marching Mountains region in Shadewood and what I came up with during the initial quest of what I thought the player should have to do. At one point, I thought of having the player make their own wooden pan pipes, but as you can see, I scribbled out the idea. The Marching Mountains was the last incomplete area in Shadewood and I left it to the very end; I just didn't have the feel for it yet. A few other ideas never made it either, as the Treants never do teach the player any new songs but the Elves do instead. Also, rather than having them turned to stone, they were dead or alive depending on the day/night cycle after the Treants attempted to fix the Mythal. And that Ettin was added to the cave! So why do I keep these books? They're history of course and help me think back to the early days of building and learning how to use the toolset, script and put it all together. Plus, perhaps I'll get that itch again to add a few more things down the road, one never knows, so having the notes and highlighted ideas will make finding them a lot easier too.