Ernie Noa's RPG Blog

I had a chance to check out Berliad's Character Creator last night. Following are my comments from NWVault. If you are not familiar with Berliad check out his blog . He has a great deal of interesting things to say about NWN1 and NWN2. I check his blog almost every day. Without further ado here are my comments: ...I really liked what I got to see last night. Created a character for The Subtlety of Thay after finishing Tragedy at Tragidor. I was thrilled to see my old travelling companion from Tragidor as well as a few other familiar faces, such as Sal from the original campaign. I usually find it difficult to build a well balanced character in a character creator. Money is too easy to get and so is gear, but yours was very well balanced. I definitely plan on using it again. I'll try it again, and talk to more NPCs before rating, but I really like it!

I finished Tragedy in Tragidor . I was going to give it an 8 or 8.25 but really enjoyed the end and wound up at an 8.75. Good module. Well done! I enjoyed the beginning, particularly the way the town and people in it changed after I turned in for the night. The middle was good, but I found myself falling into a pattern with the battles. Lure a few out, run, sometimes flee to an adjacent map and rest then back. I got through it but they were a bit on the tough side. I was playing a warlock so perhaps that had something to do with it. There were a few visual defects, pillars missing 1 side/corner, object floating, but no bugs to speak of. The end... ok, the end really sold me on the whole thing. The battle in the town was good. The recap of who lived was rewarding. Working in the NPC stories at the end was nicely done. After the final battle the recap in the inn was terrific and very well told. I used to study music, and had a professor who told me if you have a good beginning...

So... the answer to the 1 million dollar question. Moona Flex is Mozilla Firefox. My young son who is learning to read just missed a bit on the words, but now when I still call it Moona Flex (I think that's very funny) he gets upset and tells me it's Mooozilla Firefox.

My middle son was asking me to run Moona Flex on my computer for DAYS. He was upset, sad, mad and everything in between. Any guesses regarding what Moona Flex is? He's five and he's just starting to read. He plays a handful of games on the computer and a few internet games, Dora, Thomas the Tank Engine, etc... ... I will post the answer in a few days.

We'll it's official. Starcraft II is in production. The first one was a classic that ate up more of my time than NWN1 and NWN2 combined. I played every Saturday morning for hours with four friends scattered about the US. My son plays and loves it. I wrote countless 4 player co-op levels vs the computer. Great stuff. It will be a while before it's out but I'm already looking forward to it.

Looks like Keep has been uploaded to other sites beyond NWVault. I am thrilled, but I wonder how this happens, I only submit it to NWVault. Here are links if you are curious. GameSpot Softpedia A second mention on Berliad's Blog (thanks Berliad) It's also on fileplanet . I think it's kind cool, but I'd love to track my download count. It looks like 460 or so downloads from file planet... Thanks to anyone who's checked it out. I'm tempted to write more, but I keep calling my best friend who's agreed to talk me out of it every time I consider it. :-) Ernie

This is awesome. It's from what may be my new favorite web site. It's a t-shirt of smiting +20 . I really need one. Maybe I need a bag of holding .

Ok... so this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with anything I write about on this blog, but it's weird and funny. These are 30 second versions of movies with cartoon bunnies. http://www.angryalien.com/ Weird but somewhat entertaining.

I played The Birthday in a just a few hours. Although short it was unique and outstanding. I absolutely loved it. The story was interesting and quite moving at the end. I gave it a 9.25 GREAT JOB! ** Good gravy this tempts me to write another mod. This was so darn good it was inspiring **

I just finished Stormchaser . I gave it a 9.0 Excellent! The module looked good, the NPCs were believable. The scripting was great. Battles were tough and I had to think my way through a few of them. The module was solid, no problems at all. Most important, a really good story, the kind of tale I like to tell, read and play. Well done! ENoa4

I got an 8.25 rating from Lariam on NWN vault. Lariam posted/corresponded with me a bit before the release of his module and I was looking forward to his feedback. I was not disappointed. Here is his post from NWVault. Finished! It took quite a while, in the end... Thanks for the many hours of fun, ENoa4. :) I don't know the original, but I must say it's a pretty funny story. Or should I say a simple one. ;) Of course, it's all about hack & slash and dungeon crawling - I knew what to expect and wasn't disappointed. What did I like? Well, the module looked pretty good. The Keep was very nice, and so were the caves. Also, the location relevant to the elves was somehow touching. The fights were a lot of fun, mostly. (With regard to both these issues, however, I did find the module slightly monotonous, at times. I know that's due to the original.) I know that many have said they would've wished to see more developed companions - more dialogue, etc. Now, of co...

I hit a bug in Dark Waters a while back and haven't wanted to reply the module, as I was a few hours into it. I started Stormchaser last night and I am greatly enjoying myself. I started as a warlock then quickly started over as a fighter, it just felt 'right' playing that particular class. I'm a few hours into it, no bugs and it's entertaining. I'll rate it when I'm done, but it's quite good so far.

Oh how I am tempted to write again. I won't, at least not now. I know I can build better than Keep on the Borderlands. Keep was supposed to be a warm up to my real modules for NWN2, but the build time is a killer. I've read the comments and posting on the Keep forum eagerly and think they are all fair and reasonable. The fall into several broad categories. 1) Details, typos, floating objects, little things clearly wrong that aren't huge to tweak. They'd exist in anything I write. 2) Issues related to personal preference. Some folks just don't like A or B and that plays into comments I receive. 3) Design or Depth issues. Good gravy, I'd like to have deep henchmen, endless dialog that morphs as the story advances, a robust death system, a robust bleeding system, a resting system, etc... and more complex and open ended story with interesting NPCs. I think good companions are key to a successful module. This is the category that bugs me the most, not the com...

A few odds and ends to post about. I'm very pleased with the number of downloads and kind ratings for Keep on the Borderlands. It's a pretty simple module, so I am thrilled it has been so well received. Next a big congratz to Maerduin who released "Birthday" a NWN2 mod that appears to be doing very well. I stopped playing NWN2 after hitting a dark waters showstopper but I will definitely give Maerduin's mod a try. Check out his mod here .