(a campaign for neverwinter nights by stefan gagne, copyright 2002)
SINGLE PLAYER QUICKSTART GUIDE FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE READING DOCUMENTATION: YOU MUST BE RUNNING AT LEAST VERSION 1.30 OF NEVERWINTER NIGHTS TO PLAY PENUTLIMA. |
Visit Penultima on the Interpla-- err, Internet, at http://pixelscapes.com/penultima for world maps, module downloads, character art galleries, news updates and more.
Campaign modules are free to distribute, provided that the contents of the .ZIP archive are not altered in any way.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Forsooth, young adventurer, and welcome back. It has been several weeks since the events which transpired at Malevolent Peak, events which forever changed the destiny of the tiny valley kingdom known as Penultima. After a long hiatus of vague purpose, you return to Penultima City, to find that much has changed, and much has remained the same... and that which has remained the same but so far stayed hidden from view is preparing to leap out and grab you by the jugular.
But this is, as they say in ancient times, "par for course." You've come to expect things both wonderful and mundane from the bizarre place known as Penultima, and thus it has never failed to disappoint. The days ahead hold more secrets from the past, more allies, more enemies, more betrayal and more danger than you probably care to endure... or is that exactly what you are seeking?
But such matters of import are neither here nor there, except when they are. And thus our story begins. More or less. Just go with it, it'll be less painful in the end if you do.
It's very, very, very, very, very, very, very much recommended that you play through the first Penultima campaign (the original Penultima City, Pest Control, Dewey's Decimal, Hazard Pay, Clucking Hostile and Home Sweet Home) before entering Penultima ReRolled. The story for this campaign branches straight out of the finale of the previous one, including many returning characters and locales. But, if you like living dangerously, here's the scoop courtesy of your local Magical Plot Fairy...
Penultima is a tiny backwater kingdom where adventurers drink in licensed coffee bars and work as independent contractors associated with a Guild of Middlemen. Whatever bold spirit of epic fantasy may happen to grip the rest of the world, it's gone a bit slack here. Paperwork and other curses of 'modern living' have tossed most of the heroic melodrama folks like you typically experience out the window.
Nevertheless, after taking a series of odd jobs (including cleaning out goblins from an Open Source Mining Experiment and fetching a magic book from a very dangerous library) you came to realize there was Trouble Afoot. Apparently, one month previous, the peasants revolted and killed an 'evil wizard', Darklord Viscera Malevolent, who had set up a retirement castle atop Malevolent Peak. His adoptive daughter Sally Malevolent wasn't happy about this, and was plotting to resurrect an ancient god so she could get some good old-school revenge on the population.
Working with Sally's longtime friend (and the only reliable courier in all of Penultima) Dawn Ioza and her companion Vigil Elshire of the Elshire Elf Clan, you worked to stop Sally from doing this. At least, until you found out that the 'dark god' was really a chaotic god who actually helped breathe life and excitement into Penultima before being sealed -- and that Vigil's true goal was to use a spell that would crush the spirits of everybody in the valley just so he could seal the thing away again.
In the end, you were caught between Sally's vengeance and Vigil's zealots, lots of blood was spilled, Vigil died at the end of your sword / mace / staff / kama / fist, and you finally confronted Sally about what she was doing. Using a spell developed by Viscera Malevolent, the Kaos entity was evolved into the form of a young boy, who suddenly found himself in possession of a sense of ethics for the first time. Needless to say, he stopped being 'evil' as it were, as did Sally. Both went off with Dawn Ioza to learn more about the world and make up for past mistakes. And they lived happily ever after!
Well, until now.
Penultima is here to entertain you.
That's the first and foremost goal. Through storytelling, witty character dialogue, bizarre situations, and some convincing drama placed alongside offbeat humor I'll do my best to give you a fun game to play. Fantasy-comedy is a terrific genre, and translates very well to computer games; Penultima's nothing new in that regard, just another in a fine line of good stuff. If you're hoping for a completely serious traditional fantasy epic, you're looking in the wrong place, but there are some other amazing modules for Neverwinter Nights that you can download instead that deserve Mad Props in that genre.
The difficulty level / gaming challenge, I should note, takes a backseat to entertainment as well. I've done my best to provide a good hard fight and some fun puzzles to overcome, but game balance is not my strong suit, and I can't guarantee a professionally designed RPG (emphasis mine) experience. I'll do what I can to satisfy on every level a game should satisfy, but nobody's perfect!
ReRolled runs a tighter ship than the first campaign, and has some consistent features from module to module. You'll find out about them in game, but here's an overview:
For the most part, final versions of ReRolled modules are bug free. However, there are some issues at the Bioware level that I just can't fix which you may run into.
Penultima ReRolled was not a one man effort. It could not be possible without the help of...
Since Penultima uses a hakpak, it might be a wee bit different than other NWN modules you've played. The short of it is...
When you're ready to begin the campaign, load up NWN, and take a new or previously existing character to PR0. You can play using a character you used for the previous Penultima campaign; it should seamlessly blend in, and any plot tokens you carried from the last campaign will work in this one.
If you're playing a new character, you're going to want to visit the House of Payne. There, you can get bumped up to level 9 (the minimum for ReRolled) after completing a short quest. You'll also be given money with which you can go shopping.
A "HakPak" is a way to import custom content into NWN. Things like new NPC portraits, new sound effects, new objects, and other great stuff can be stuck in a hakpak and then used inside an NWN module. More and more NWN modules each day are using hakpaks, so this would be a great time to get used to using them -- some adventures come with a hakpak (like this one), some instruct you to download them from another location, and so on. It's a little more complex, but it means a richer game experience in the end. And we all want that, yes?
(Some hakpaks for other games can weigh in VERY high on the file size scale. That's because custom tilesets eat up megabytes like Pac-Man eats dots. Penultima ReRolled uses no custom tilesets, so the hak's fairly small, but your mileage may vary with other haks.)
Of course, playing a game that needs a hakpak has one very important restriction...
In order to play Penultima ReRolled online, ALL PLAYERS must have the HakPak installed.
There's no way around this -- if the game wants the NPC portrait for Dawn Ioza, and it's in the hakpak on your computer but your buddy has no hakpak, what's he going to see? In order to keep things consistent, your buddy's going to have to download the hakpak too before you can play together, even if you're the one serving the game.
Fortunately, all he has to do is download the same file you did (this one, which comes with the hak, PR0, PR1, and all the documentation). Once he does that and installs it as detailed above, everything's hunky dory.
For this reason, it's not suggested that you run ReRolled on one of the 'open' GameSpy servers. Joe Q. Random Internet Player is probably not going to have the hakpak for ReRolled installed, after all, and he'll get turned away at the door. Gaming sessions between friends or organized through a service like the excellent Neverwinter Connections are a better bet; that way you can tell all the players beforehand to go download the file.
It's also suggested you read the Tips For Better Play section, which has other multiplayer suggestions.
Since the music for Penultima City itself is a relatively large file (over
a meg) I'm providing it as a separate download. You can get it at:
http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/sounds/data/1032215891700.shtml
Unpack, and copy the .BMU files into the 'music' directory. That's all you have to do. (This is a legal music download; I composed these songs myself.)
Failing that, use the Karoke Machine behind the sign to change over to normal Neverwinter Nights music, so you don't have to wander around in silence.
In the previous campaign, you went to the Guild of Middlemen in town and applied for work. It's a bit different now. Instead, visit the Royal Castle and talk to Sally Malevolent. She'll let you launch any module in the campaign -- although you can only launch PR2-PR5 after you complete PR1.
At the end of each module (or at a few 'bail-out' points in some modules, so you can beat a retreat), you'll see a little green fairy. This is the Magical Plot Fairy! Yay! Her job is to take you back to the city. Talk to her and ask her to take you home, and off you go.
You CANNOT return to a 'quest in progress' after going back to the city... you'll have to restart the module you were on if you do this before you're really done with your quests.
This is a bug I'm still tracking down, but I think it relates to firing your henchman via the radial menu. Instead, if you want to fire your henchman, talk to them and tell them to leave through conversation.
If you still get the error -- don't worry about it. It won't hurt your game any to have these blank journal entries, and they can be safely ignored.
Penultima ReRolled was designed to run without a DM. So, all conversations are written, scripts are all over the place to keep the plot moving forward, and so on. Intervening and possessing NPCs can bypass important conversations; you should only do this when you need to 'nudge' the players along, or give extra information. Likewise, handing out plot items before players get them via scripts is probably a bad idea.
If you're looking for modules which are more suited for heavy-duty DM'ing, I suggest the Penultima Unlimited series. They're one-shots I work on in my spare time, and are packed with NPC possession, DM plot event triggering, and other things to give you a more flexible gaming experience. They take more work to run, but the results are worth it. You can obtain them at the Penultima homepage. (As of this writing, I don't have them polished and ready to go yet, but give it a shot; could be up by now.) I highly recommend Neverwinter Connections for scheduling a DMed game.
However, you're not doomed to being a fifth wheel. There's plenty of content you can fiddle with while DMing. All custom monsters are available in the palette; player-race monsters are usually under the NPC folder, and sometimes oddball critters can be found under Custom. (Custom 2 contains all the variations on henchmen; spawning these could cause problems.) You can adjust game balance on the fly by dropping in more monsters or taking some out. Likewise, treasure balance can be handled by giving players more rewards, or equipment more suited to their classes. If you want to be generous in Penultima City, you can spawn some of Azul's custom gear and offer it at a discount price or for free.
Another good role for a DM to play in ReRolled is that of the 'Studio Audience'. If a player does something particularly amusing to you, they deserve a reward! Give 'em a little XP or Gold for clever thinking or a good joke. Since they can technically plow through the whole game using nothing but the scripted conversation trees, anybody roleplaying with the other players in multiplayer and doing terrific things deserves props.
copyright 2003 stefan gagne