Ernie Noa's RPG Blog

B2 Keep on the Borderlands was reviewed on NWVault by Dormammu . Dormammu is a long time reviewer who was kind enough to review my first module for NWN1 Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan . The full review can be found here: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Reviews.Detail&id=6 I really enjoyed Dormammu's review . The comments were very fair and in my opinion quite positive. More important I got to enjoy a narrative of his experience while playing the mod. I get such a kick out of hearing the story from the players point of view. I always used to DM games and I suppose it's the same type of satisfaction and enjoyment for me. Here is one of my favorite bits that illustrates what I am talking about: Nothing surprised me more than taking my group of four (level 2 at that point) into an “easy” cave of goblins, only to have one of the goblins start yelling “HELP! GET THE BIG ONE!”, and an Ogre comes running out at us. Zounds! I went from feeling invincible to as vulnerabl...

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...

Well, I'm stunned at the number of votes and downloads after less than 48 hours. It took months for my NWN1 mods to get that kind of traffic. I suppose folks are hungry for NWN2 modules. I noted before I almost re-did my NWN1 conversion of Tomoachan, but was missing too many placeables and creatures. B2 seemed easier as a learning project. Ironically this may be it for me. The toolset for NWN2 is amazing, but with the power comes more development time and I'm lucky enough to have 3 very terrific sons and a great wife that I'd like to give my time. Although this is the least favorite module I have done to date, and the rating scale is better defined, but the 6.0 ratings are tough to take. oh well. Given the scale and how the other mods are fairing I suppose a rating between 7.5 and 8.0 is ok. My goal was to get an average no lower than 7.0 and my hope was for an 8.0. I will do a debug pass again soon. I've got many tweaks that I can make that have been passed al...

I'm sitting at about 5 votes and 350 downloads and the mod hasn't been up 24 hours yet. It appears stable and I think folks are enjoying it. The ratings are fair and the comments are constructive. I'll keep my fingers crossed for more of the same.

I received my first vote, a 7.75, from DasHenne. Thank you DasHenne! Based on the new voting standards the overall voting seems lower for NWN2 mods than NWN1. This is fine by me, not a complain, just an observation. Bearing that in mind, I have been hoping for an average rating of 7.0 or above on this module, so I am pretty happy to get that rating out of the gate. I am very pleased that a few people have made it all the way through the module. This is a relief. So far the issues seem to be lighting, facial hair, and other details. * starting to breath again *