Curse of the Wailing Death Prelude

Welcome to Neverwinter Nights: Curse of the Wailing Death, a module paying tribute to the original conception of the Neverwinter Nights Official Campaign in the Iceblink 2 engine. The genesis of this project is really twofold,

1) I read this old NWN design document (http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/nwn-oc-plot-was-cut-possibly-due-to-publisher-meddling.74097/) and I was struck by the potential there that was obviously not realized by the NWN OC.

2) I’m optimistic that the Iceblink project will allow for user creation of RPG modules on the scale of Neverwinter Nights but with full-party control, essentially a modern-day Unlimited Adventures.

To these ends, I’m slowly creating a sort-of alternative NWN OC using the plot from that leaked outline but making up the details as I go along. This demo is the prelude, equivalent to the academy section of the NWN OC. I’m releasing it as a demo to get feedback on what people think of the race/class concepts and encounter design but I’m also hoping to interest others in building using IB2 and I’m hoping that the content I’m creating for CotWD can be a template for other builders.

Setting:

The setting is roughly like that of Forgotten Realms but I’ve made some slight alterations to clean things up a bit. Most of what you remember about Forgotten Realms is accurate but importantly for this campaign, the gods of Toril, if they exit, do not communicate with their followers. Priests and Templars draw magical power from the movement of the stars, but it has nothing to do with the gods per se, as evidenced by witches who use the same magic without the religious component (i.e. the fact that a man casts spells while holding the holy symbol of a generally good god does not mean that he’s a good person or even that he is sincere in his worship of that god). Similarly, there are no “Know Alignment” or “Read Mind” spells so people still have to decide how to trust the old-fashioned way.

The Ruleset:

The rules are not exactly any particular edition of Dungeons and Dragons but rather like Shadowrun: Returns, it sort of suggests a blend of 2^nd edition and 3.5. There are eight races and eight classes, detailed below and in general they work the way you would expect. However all classes have some form of spell-casting. You create up to six characters when you start the game but there are also six NPCs available to make up your party should you so desire.

Known Bugs:

I’ve tested the prelude with IB2 beta 21 and the only obvious bug is that spells like Bless or Song of Courage which are intended only to affect allies within a certain area affect enemies as well. There are also no immunities implemented in this version so zombies are still vulnerable to fear. Both of these issues were resolved in later unreleased versions of IB2 but an issue with spell effects on-hit was introduced. Sometimes containers display "Equip Selected" instead of "Take All" but it's purely cosmetic. Hopefully a new release will clean all this up soon.

Installation Instructions:

Unzip the archive into your IB2 modules folder, create up to six characters and do your part to end the plague in Neverwinter.