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The Bard's Tale

Submitted by: 
Submitted by Migrate Wizard on 2014-07-11 10:49.
Last modified: 
2014-08-22 05:06
Author: 
Jesse Beach
Version: 
1.7
Old Vault Category: 
modules
Old Vault ID: 
5809
Game: 
NwN1
Category: 
Module
Requirements: 
OC
Xp1
Xp2
Language: 
English
Tags: 
Single Player, multiplayer
Get some information and warm up by the fire, inside the Adventurer's Guild in Skara Brae.
The town is locked in an endless winter as you stand outside the Adventurer's Guild.
If you need weapons or armor, be sure to stop by Garthe's Equipment Shoppe.
Free the homes of Skara Brae from evil baddies, but take time to rest now and then.
The trail to the evil Mangar leads through the foul sewers.
Explore the strange crypts beneath the Temple of the Mad God.
Remember, the crypts are guarded by the undead followers of the Mad one!

Tales of the Unknown: The Bard’s Tale

A Complete Remake

· 23 Years of daydreaming
· 18 Months and 1000 hours of development
· Hundreds of hours of playtesting
· 6 Dungeons
· 1 Town
· At least 45 hours of game play
· A dozen henchmen and one to four players - that's you!



In 1985, Tales of the Unknown: The Bard’s Tale was released for 8-bit computer systems like the Apple 2 and the Commodore 64. But for two decades, the streets of Skara Brae have fallen silent. Now, thanks to the Aurora Toolset, Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights and eighteen months of development, you can finally hear the rest of The Bard’s Tale.

Ever wondered what Roscoe’s last name is? How did Garth come to own his equipment shoppe? Why is Kyleran sitting alone in his tower, apparently besieged by monsters, while the town wastes? And most of all – why is Mangar waging war against the town of Skara Brae?

Finally, the answers to all these questions and many more have been found.

Come relive the mystery and the adventure of The Bard’s Tale, as you’ve never seen it before. And don’t forget to pick up a Flame Horn if you can find one!

Please look over the PlayerReadMe and for those of you interested in writing Neverwinter Nights modules, have a look at the MODerReadMe.

There is no hak pak for this module. You will need NWN, SoU and HOTU to play or the Platinum edition. You will also need patch level 1.68 or later.

Files:
· ReadMe.zip – contains all of the readme files (Player and MODer)
· Tales of the Unknown – The Bard’s Tale.zip – the module in ZIP format
· Tales of the Unknown – The Bard’s Tale.rar – the module in RAR format

If you find problems, please don’t hesitate to let me know about them, either here in the vault, or at agmorion@comcast.net.

NOTE: You do NOT have to be a Bard to play, you can play ANY class you like.

NOTE: I have added a FAQ and Buglist to the available files. I will update these as often as possible as new information becomes available.

NOTE: Please bear in mind this is a remake of a very old game and therefore leans heavily toward “hack n’ slash”. Role-playing and character/NPC development is all new material to the game.

Thanks, and have fun.

Files: 
AttachmentSize
File tales_of_the_unknown_the_bards_tale_v1_7.rar (1043)1.81 MB
Package icon readme.zip (1366)183.74 KB
Package icon bt_overrides.zip (804)7.94 KB
Microsoft Office document icon faqs_and_bugs.doc46 KB
Permissions & licensing: 
Open - Free & open only if project also open
Fri, 2014-07-11 11:04
Carcerian
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Love this one (and the original Commde/Amega vers the most!)

*Randomly assaults post with classic artwork*

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Fri, 2014-07-11 11:42
(Reply to #1)
blatob
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Thank you. I never got to playing it, unfortunatly. Also, thanks for the help since I have just tumbnails.

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Fri, 2014-07-11 12:07
Carcerian
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I still have my copy of Interplay's "The Ultimate RPG Archive" featuring the OG bards Tale 1-2-3 and bard's tale construction kit, that came bundeled as a package, on a CD ages ago, with other Interplay classics like Stonegate, Mad-Dog-Fargos Pre Fallout Wasteland, Ultima Underwolrd I and II, Dragons Quest (also bards tale 123 engine), Might And Magic World of Xeen (Lands of Xeen + Darkside of Xeen + Post Endgame Bonus Dungeon) and of Course Wizardry Gold :)

Definalty a classic gaming bargian bundle assuming you u can still grab a copy on ebay for under 20$..

(and if you know how to set up DOSBox, of course)

GoG also still sells it's bard tale package for $9.99 too: http://www.gog.com/news/release_the_bards_tale

Bards tale was the first CRPG to have an assassin class, and boy were those crits deadly...

(even more so than the 1ed AD&D or rolemaster assassins, if thats possible)

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Fri, 2014-07-11 12:14
jovonhaln
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Thanks for uploading this old gem!
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Fri, 2014-07-11 12:40
KICK BONG
KICK BONG's picture
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the original C64 version must be somewhere in the dungeons 15 feet below me! Huh

there is a very good game compilation to buy, best to play on your dad's old notebook :-)

 

 

 

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Fri, 2014-09-05 12:26
Werelynx
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QA:
- typos: "insentive"-Thermin; "mecenaries"-Grag Amuu;
- mundane adventure with stock NPCs, critters, overly large areas, repetitive combats, containers on the streets
- hakless
- attacked kidnapper gnome (Perom) via conversation option and enitre town turned on me
- number of kidnappers was insane

I had high hopes for this one but alas I stopped playing after couple hours. Initial area was nice but then I hit the neverending city with 15 points of interest of which the same looking inns would make up half. Then there was the houses overrun by critters - except that evrryone looked the same. 97% of fights were with stock critters.
Voted 5/10
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Sat, 2015-12-12 14:01
Trixter
How do you rate this content?: 
10
Average: 10 (1 vote)

loved

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Sun, 2018-12-23 06:18
xorbaxian
How do you rate this content?: 
8
Average: 8 (1 vote)
TL;DR - overall i found it an enjoyable -- if monty-haul -- whirlwind action-driven adventure taking you from 1st to epic in 4.9s -- if you can forgive the 'dated' patina and a few bugs and design oversights.  8.25/10.
 
this was a fun module. it's true, as other posters have mentioned, pretty much everything was 'stock', but, as a matter of personal taste, that doesn't bother me. otoh, the approach was also 'stock' in the way there were so many money-filled chests and crates just lying about in the open, as in the o.c.
 
as far as that goes, there's a LOT of gold to be had. although that's somewhat balanced by the high prices at the shops in later levels, i had a net gain of almost 3m by the end, even after consistently equipping myself and my homies w/the very best that money could buy.
 
i enjoyed the story, which was interesting and progressed well. i would've preferred that the action unroll more through the story and events rather than simply plot-locking and programmatically inhibiting/enabling accesses to various areas. but also not a major issue.
 
the writing wasn't bad. the builder obviously knows how to formulate a sentence, and the dialogs and descriptions were interesting and well-developed. however, i surmise the builder's prose suffered from many late nights at the toolkit as there were frequent errors of negligence.
 
as for programming, there were very few bugs. like. smiley
 
combats were pretty well balanced. although i chose to play a 'combat-weak' character, most combats weren't too difficult for me and my 2 henchmen, and boss fights ended more than once w/my character being killed if i didn't play carefully. i can imagine combats being just about right for a solo melee character. as far as being killed goes, i would've preferred a story-backed respawn w/a penalty of some sort for the pc [there is none] and the need to use scrolls to resurrect npc's, who res automatically at the end of combat.
 
there are a lot of henchmen available to play around with and you can run w/several at once. i stuck w/the first two i ran into [a paladin and a cleric], which in the end turned out to be a good thing for my character, a multi-classed thief/sorcerer. although henchmen mechanics were pretty good, i found myself wishing for more management options, and certainly more personality, on the part of the henchmen, but alas here, too, much was nostalgic of the style found in the o.c.  [i had to smirk at the paladin not doing anything at all as i led him through pilfer after pilfer...]
 
i would've preferred slower leveling. i finished at 22nd level [after a 10,000xp completion bonus] and sometimes leveled twice in an hour.
 
CAVEATS
- unless you love reloading, you may want to consider setting your difficulty slider down a few notches once you hit mangar's fortress, given the number of petrification attacks at that point [and complete lack of remedies for them available in-game]. this is a shame as combats then become very easy.
 
- SAVE AFTER THE FINAL BATTLE !  a very disappointing design oversight is that the game simply ENDS after a conversation option, leaving all the loose ends loose and your character not exported. >:(
 
BUGS
- door bug on 'sphinx' ruins the encounter. if you close the door from outside the room once you've opened it, it plot-locks and you can't get in.
- soulsucker keeps sucking souls even after it's dead
- soulsucker can attack through walls/doors, not using LOS correctly
- mad god's portal stone doesn't seem to do ANYTHING...?
- putting the 3 shapes in the receptacles did nothing.
- no opportunity to wrap up and save character
 
 
PS- i don't know if there were enough dragons. i think they could manage to squeeze in even more dragons if they added a few more closets they could all jump out of.
PPS-  1653 !  \o/
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Sat, 2019-07-06 09:38
sigofmugmort
How do you rate this content?: 
8
Average: 8 (1 vote)

Brought back a few memories

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