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Black Thorn
The dying words of a fallen knight are all you have to go on as you step out of the driving rain and into the Black Thorn Inn. Strangers eye you from the corners of a dimly lit room... weary travellers, local woodsmen, a strumming bard, a noblewoman. One of them is not what they seem... and you only have until midnight to discover which one. The fate of the Kingdom of Cormyr is in your hands.
Black Thorn is a mystery adventure set in the Forgotten Realms and designed to test your powers of deduction. You must uncover a powerful being concealed in a group of innocents without revealing what you're up to and without resorting to violence. You also are racing against the clock -- unless you find him, the evil being will escape at midnight! This module is designed to make you think creatively, spot important clues amid distractions, and piece them together to form a solution.
UPDATE!: This new version of Black Thorn has 3 new solutions (a total of eight possible mysteries to solve); an improved intro that allows you to manually or randomly select which mystery you'll try to tackle; and assorted other improvements and extra touches.
README: I very strongly recommend reading the ReadMe file!!
TIME: This is a timed module! One minute of real time equals one minute of game time and you only have about 3 hours. Use the PAUSE feature when reading dialogue or thinking up your next move! Detailed descriptions of the time rules are in the ReadMe.
MULTIPLE ENDINGS: There are multiple possible solutions built into the module. If you enjoyed the module and want to play it again, you can start over and select a different mystery!
CHEAT SHEET: The Cheat Sheet contains explanations of all the solutions in a format where you can quickly scroll to a specific one. CONTAINS SPOILERS! Be careful not to read solutions for any scenarios you haven't played yet!!
REQUEST: I would be very grateful if, when posting comments to this module's site, you avoided spoilers that give a solution away. Other spoilers are fine (but please mark them). Feel free to e-mail me through my Vault profile or send a message to my Bioware account (same name) if you have a question for which you must discuss a solution. Thanks!
USE OF THIS MOD - Since it has been some months since any problems beyond a typo have been reported, I am no longer going to support this module. I hereby grant permission to any builder who wishes to modify this module and use it or any part of it for his own submission, provided they credit me for my work. Also, should this mod become "broken" because of future patches and someone wishes to fix and repost it, they have my permission, again provided they credit me as the original author.
Special thanks to HerrJeff for what has been near-professional level proof-reading support!
Good luck and I hope you have fun! Please give my other mod -- Mountain of Mirrors -- a shot!
Also, come take a look at my latest CRPG writing project with Planewalker Games -- Link
SCORE OUT OF 10 (@ the old NWVault, 2014-07-10):
9.73
75 votes
Category: Roleplay
Expansions: HotU-1.66
Setting: Forgotten Realms - Cormyr
Gameplay Length: About 3 hours depending on how fast (or if) you solve the mystery.
Number Players: 1
Language: English
Level Range: 23-27 depending on class and play style (have a +5 or better weapon)
Races: Any
Tricks & Traps: Light
Roleplay: Heavy
Hack & Slash: Light
Classes: Any
Scope: Small
DMNeeded: No DM Required
Single or Multiplayer: Single Player
Max Character Level: 27
Max # Players: 01
Min # Players: 01
Min Character Level: 23
Content Rating: Teen
Alignments: Good preferred, but other alignments can logically participate.
Gameplay Hours: 03
REVIEW: http://web.archive.org/web/20140622034442/http://nwvault.ign.com/View.ph...
Black Thorn
Created by El Dano
Reviewed by Berliad
Review Posted on 2006-01-17
Quick Pros:
Novel concept; superb writing; colorful characters; challenging puzzle.
Quick Cons:
Minimal combat; lots of reading and thinking required.
RATINGS
Gameplay : 9.5
RP/Storytelling : 8
Action : 5
Visuals : 8
Sound : 7.5
Replayability : 8.5
Polish : 8
Solo : 8.5
Multiplayer : NA
Fun : 9
FINAL SCORE : 8
Summary (No Spoilers)
Number of Players: 1
Hours of Game Play: 3
Character: Lawful Good Human Sorcerer
Start Level: 26
End Level: 27
Hak Size: none
Death: Respawn without penalty
Resting: not permitted
Requires: SOU, HotU v.1.66
Module Version Played: Version released 12 Dec '05
Black Thorn is among the most innovative modules to be released in the past year. A decidedly out-of-the-box module, it is a classic mystery story wrapped up in a high fantasy adventure. Success is by no means guaranteed, as you'll have to navigate your way through a mountain of clues and red herrings if you are to figure out the right answer. Attention to detail and careful reading, rather than skill with a sword, will ultimately be required for your success. This module is truly a testament to the flexibility of the Aurora toolset and the innovative potential of its amateur users.
Author Description:
The dying words of a fallen knight are all you have to go on as you step out of the driving rain and into the Black Thorn Inn. Strangers eye you from the corners of a dimly lit room... weary travellers, local woodsmen, a strumming bard, a noblewoman. One of them is not what they seem... and you only have until midnight to discover which one. The fate of the Kingdom of Cormyr is in your hands.
Black Thorn is a mystery adventure set in the Forgotten Realms and designed to test your powers of deduction. You must uncover a powerful being concealed in a group of innocents without revealing what you're up to and without resorting to violence. You also are racing against the clock -- unless you find him, the evil being will escape at midnight! This module is designed to make you think creatively, spot important clues amid distractions, and piece them together to form a solution.
Review (Minor Spoilers)
El Dano's latest module opens with your character walking through the forest at night. You hear a moan and quickly run to investigate. There, clearly having fallen at wrong end of a terrible fight, you find a dying Purple Dragon knight, Sir Rothgar. He explains his situation: a master of disguise, the evil devil Gorson, has been spying on the government of Cormyr and has uncovered a great secret that is crucial to the future of the nation. After thwarting the devil's initial escape to the planes of hell, the knight tracked the devil to this forest and confronted him, but lost in the ensuing battle.
But there is hope! The devil could not have gotten far. In order for his escape spell to work, the devil must find an enclosed space, like a building or cave. The only nearby place like this is the local inn, the Black Thorn. Unfortunately, the devil will undoubtedly have taken on a new disguise at the inn. It will be up to you to uncover his identity without revealing your true intentions, which would cause the devil to flee before you can bind him. It won't be easy...especially given the odd and colorful collection of 13 NPCs who you meet in that inn. Is it the swarthy dwarf? Or the pompous scholar? Or perhaps the gruff little old cook? You'll have to decide; the fate of Cormyr hangs in balance.
What follows is a very different module from the standard fare on the vault. It's very free form. You can talk to anyone you wish, in any order you wish, and choose from a huge variety of dialog options. There are also several rooms to explore, and many books, notes, and other items to examine or with which you can interact. There are essentially only four areas to explore for much of the game, but each is packed with things to do and see. The first time I played this module, I ended up with two full pages of notes as I tried to keep up with all the current events, clues, and ultimately sift through the misleading pieces of evidence to finally uncover the truth.
All the while you explore, the clock is ticking. A major gameplay feature that hangs over your head is that your character only has three hours to solve the mystery. The game progresses in real-time: 1 minute in real life = 1 minute in game time. The author, however, correctly realized that players would pause during each phase of the conversation, thus reducing the time required for conversations to proceed from several minutes to only a few seconds. Operating under the assumption that all players would pause during dialog, El Dano combated this problem by inserting small time advances at dialog node. The result is that each "long" opening conversation with an NPC lasts around 5-7 minutes of game time. Similarly, leafing through books that you find takes upwards of 5 minutes of time, and interacting with objects like the well outside or the fire in the kitchen can take a minute or two. Most players have indicated that the time limit isn't terribly restrictive (I had about an hour left), but it gives the story a strong sense of urgency.
Dialog is very well written. Each conversation begins with a delightful but concise description of the NPC, and then branches into a series of questions. Most of the questions will be similar for each PC – you can ask a character about her or his background, their impressions of other patrons of the inn, current events, etc. Furthermore, in a fairly recent update, the author has also included a good number of follow-up questions. For example, if one NPC provides some news about a town that another NPC may be familiar with, you can now ask the other NPC to confirm that news. There will undoubtedly be some questions that you'll want to ask but are not able to, but the author has done a great job of anticipating many of the follow up questions I would think to ask, as well as several I never would have come up with on my own!
This module is also highly replayable. In order to reduce the impact of spoilers, the author created five different solutions to the mystery, each of which has two possible outcomes (success and failure). At the beginning of the module, the solution for that game is randomly chosen. Each solution has the same general themes and the same general cast of characters, but each variant is also quite different. The devil will have taken on a different disguise in each version, resulting in changes to that character and how he or she interacts with the other characters. The clues you'll use to solve the mystery will also be very different on each play through. But on top of that, other characters often change within each solution in terms of their backgrounds and motivations. This makes the second play through almost as challenging as the first. It will (usually) not be the case that you can pick up on the first thing that is different and use that to identify Gorson.
Overall, the polish in this module is excellent. I noticed two typos related to some of the more recent additions to the dialogs, which I am reporting to the author. No other bugs were noticed. Furthermore, the author has actively supported this module since release, and has quickly squashed bugs that have come up. Therefore, I predict that these minor issues will be corrected shortly.
Edit: In fact, these typos are already fixed!
Visuals : 8
No custom content is used. Nevertheless, the author does a great job of packing his areas full of interesting objects, many of which are interactive. I was particularly impressed by all the footprints in front of the inn (see screenshot). It must have taken at least a half hour to put all those down, if not more! Cutscenes are effectively used at the beginning and end of the module, and the eventual battle with Gorson is visually appealing.
Sound : 7.5
Sounds are used effectively to convey the mood. Outdoors in the rainstorm, the wind howls and thunder booms. Inside the inn, everything is pretty quiet, with only a bit of tavern music in the background. You hear a minor bit of chatter from some of the patrons, and the fireplaces roar with warmth. The peace of the setting is a bit unnerving given the gravity of the situation you're in...which I'm sure is intentional.
Gameplay : 9.5
Extremely innovative and extremely fun gameplay. Well written dialog, colorful and mysterious characters, tons of detail, and an excellent mystery to boot! This module is a great example of what can be done when an author dedicates her/himself to investing a large amount of effort in a small number of areas with a solid, manageable story.
Replayability : 8.5
Highly replayable, with five different solutions (chosen at random), each of which has two possible outcomes. More things change within each solution than simply who is in disguise, making for a very different experience your second time through. I played through twice, and could probably play through a third time and still have a hard time figuring out the new solution.
Documentation : 8
Excellent documentation. The initial readme file clearly explains the house rules, and provides a number of hints to help you in your quest (though none rise to the level of true spoilers). In a separate download, there is a cheat sheet. This spoilerific document contains a synopsis of what happened in each solution, a sampling of the clues you can use to arrive at that conclusion (though I often noticed a few more than he mentions), and also a list of the various alibis and red herrings you're likely to encounter. Obviously, you'll want to avoid that document until you're completely done playing Black Thorn, but it makes for some great reading...especially if you haven't already seen all the different outcomes.
Journal entries are initially very helpful, but after the initial entries are made, they are not updated until after you identify (or fail to identify) the demon. This is intentional and appropriate – if the author updated your journal each time an NPC or other clue provided some relevant information, he'd make the module too easy to solve. The module requires you to take your own notes, and it wouldn't work well any other way.
Roleplaying quality : 8
Because you the player are required to do most of the thinking, I found this module to be incredibly immersive. The whole process of reasoning through all of the information you receive and ultimately deciding on an answer was a great roleplaying experience. More classic roleplaying options come up as you determine how to approach each character. It's best to approach some characters politely, while the same approach to other characters will result in a negative reaction. There are also times when social skills like Persuade or Bluff play an important role in dialogs.
One really nice touch was that you often don't know if these skills succeeded or not (you're not told "[Success]"). For example, say you Bluff and make up the name of a fictional friend who supposedly lives in a NPC's town. If the NPC responds that he doesn't know him, it's hard to know whether your bluff succeeded and the NPC really just doesn't know the person, or whether your bluff failed and the devil is astutely responding in the negative so as to not arouse suspicion.
Action quality : 5
I was tempted to leave this section blank, as there are, at most, two fights that you'll encounter in any one play through. But combat is not entirely absent, so it's appropriate to evaluate it. By all accounts, combat in epic level modules is maddeningly difficult to balance. In my two times through the module, the combat ranged from moderate to easy (the latter time, some physical resistance resulted in my character being completely untouchable during the fight). Admittedly, however, my sorcerer is a very powerful character at level 26, with massive resistances provided by both his spells and his equipment. Other players have indicated the combat is not unbalanced, so it is probably fine.
Fun Factor : 9
I had a ton of fun playing this module. It's easily among my favorite modules to come out over the past year. It's innovative, challenging, different, and very well polished.
Solo : 8.5
Black Thorn is a very entertaining, creative, and challenging module. The only individuals who are unlikely to enjoy it are individuals who a) do not like to have to think when playing a module, or b) want to spend most of their time hacking and slashing. And, after reading some of the vault user comments on this mod, even some of those folks have enjoyed it!
Multiplayer : N/A
Black Thorn is designed for solo play.
My Score : 9
In only his second release, El Dano has created an extremely creative and innovative product that pushes the boundaries of what can be done with the NWN toolset. I think it is with this sort of module – the unconventional, innovative, short modules – that the greatness of the Aurora toolset is most apparent. It allows users to create small games of extremely high quality that would probably (and unfortunately) never be published as a commercial product.
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The content of uploaded file:
Black_Thorn_HotU.7z - the module, 2 readme (txt, doc) and 2 Cheat sheet (txt, doc) files
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 black_thorn_hotu.7z (2147) | 550.59 KB |
pls insert zoom of the screenshots
first of all i want to thank werelynx for pointing out this module which i wouldn't have tried otherwise
so this module is different and probably interesting for all who love riddles (i actually mostly hate riddles :p ) say you play a detective similar to the court quest in the NWN2 campaign or the one in the NWN1 campaign where you had to save the halforc's head in the temple (remember torches up and down) or L.A.Noire
the time factor and that i didn't know what i would face woke up a lot of senses in me (thanks for that, those were asleep for a long time) - now the option i played and after i was through all (?) of the investigating, everybody was suspicious- and at the same time nobody, since in theory everything is possible after all. So in the end i had no clue who "it" really was, and was quite surprised, when i found out finally by try and error with a save (well, i should habe known Murphy's law by now, so the the less suspicious was the suspect in the end)
it looks a little late for feedback, i guess, so i found quite a lot of things that look illogical to me and sometimes i was not sure if it was a bug or not; since i played a druid, i also missed the druid/ranger typical possibilities with the right skill; if i had to categorize it, i would say this is quite a bard module (although the class doesn't really matter after all
This is the type of stuff that keeps bringing me back to this antique game engine, to get to play this kind of scenario in a CRPG, you will not see that very often.
Well... It's short, but nice. Even if to discover the culprit i simply guessed the most obvious... And he was even amazed i had been able to expose him... Still, nice.
i really enjoyed this one. unlike the previous poster, i had to do some heavy searching about for clues in order to find the culprit, due to the scenario selected for me [there are 8 of them, you're given one randomly at the beginning].
level hints in the module description seem accurate ; i played w/my 26th-level rogue / arcane archer, whose gear was perhaps a bit overpowered in comparison to the npc opponent's, but not so much that the combat wasn't fun.
highly recommended if you like puzzles or 'whodunits'. i'll definitely play again w/another character.
A gem of a module. Hands down my favorite. The obvious thought and care put into this mod make this short experience into one of the most memorable NWN experiences I have had. If investigation in a DnD world sounds good to you, waste no more time! Download Black Thorn now!
Well done El Dano! Despite being short this was a ton of fun. I completed it in about 2 hours with 1.69 with no bugs our issues.
Despite having a very small setting and very little combat, I still can't imagine how much time, planning and creativity went into designing and building this module. It is truly a wonderful module.
There are 8 different scenarios in this "who done it" and I let it select randomly and it gave me number 8. I ended up getting the baddie correct on the first try based off only 1 clue. After playing, I went back and read the cheat sheet and realized I totally missed some very obvious clues. I am anxious now to try again with a different character and a little more attention to detail! :-)
I highly reccomend this module! I am voting 10!
Thanks for the comments and votes, all. I wrote this mod well over a decade ago and am glad to see people are still enjoying it! The Aurora toolset really was a great innovation. I never had the time or ambition to write a really long epic mod like some of the great ones in the vault, but I'm glad my short subjects were so well received.:) This mod was actually one of five mentioned in a PC Gamer article about amateur NWN mods.
Just out of interest is that article online? If so do you have a link? If so it would be worth adding that link to your description.
TR
I reviewed and played this module many years ago on the old vault as Jfoxtail.
As I constantly return to the best game I ever purchased i will briefly update a few thoughts for newer EE players and so profile this mod to them.
ElDano was one of the most innovate mod creators in the first lifecycle of NWN.
Blackthorn is another immersive mod - a murder mystery - that presents a role player a new thinking challenge and a sense of urgency. Your choices for investigation are unlimited but your time is not. If you ever played PnP D and D this was very much the type of adventure that was always in the toolkit of a 'good DM'. It was an adventure that did not take massive preplanning - maps - and obsticles. It was a short sesssion challenge to good players to find the truth and consequnces would fall out of that in future sessions.
ElDano was obviously a 'good DM' or at the minimum a great PnP player.
If you are here for point - click - hack - slash this may not be your cup of tea.
If you are here to think - roleplay - immerse yourself - you will be deeply rewarded playing this mod.
This is a fascinating module, unlike any "CRPG" you might play. It's marred by the pointlessly high-level combat, however.
The absolute necessity of playing it with an epic character with epic gear should be put in giant letters right at the start of the module description.
What we actually do get is a single line somewhere, saying "combat is designed for lvl 22 characters, but it's not unavoidable." This has not been my experience (I have played one variant so far, details spoilered below) and I'm not just talking about the final confrontation, but about the unravelling process itself, one element of which was impossible to survive for the toughest character with the best gear that I have in my NWN.
The over-the-top tedium of the final fight (for which, in the end, I had to just toggle immortality and go cook my dinner) greatly took away from my enjoyment of an otherwise really interesting game. In fact, the finale itself isn't handled at all well - a boring area, a pointless gift of a weapon (could have used that before the fight, thank you - and since you can't fight suspects anyway, why couldn't the dying knight have an epic weapon for us to use?) and a dialogue saying "export your character, that's it!" Doesn't even give you a Game Over screen.
Actually, for those players who - like me - thought they could play this for the story, I'd advise to simply exit the game when the spy is successfully unmasked. You'll be saving yourself the ridiculous fight and all you're not missing out on anything.
Aside from that, The Black Thorn is a unique experience, and one I still heartily recommend. It does a great job making the player think, think about everything and anything they have seen and heard, all the more because there's no feedback from the game itself, no journal entries drawing your attention to specific statements etc. There were some things I couldn't follow up on - person A said a thing was X, person B said it was Y, and I couldn't go back to person A and ask again - which was a problem because I couldn't tell if it was an oversight or a meta-signal (so to speak) indicating that the path lay elsewhere (and this thing was, perhaps, a piece of a different variant). In the end I narrowed it down to two people, but it felt like I was missing something, so I gave up and checked the solution. As it turned out, I did actually miss an important clue which made perfect sense, so kudos to the author. However, the method given in the solution to eliminate the other suspect did not work as described, which seems rather bad. Had I not missed the important clue, I guess I might not have needed to do that at all, but still, a solution ought to match the actual game events, and it didn't.
All in all, I find The Black Thorn an incredibly interesting module, an effective mental exercise and an impressive piece of game design that everyone should try at least once. I will definitely be playing other variants... and exiting the game right after the unmasking cutscene.
For anyone who wants full details:
! FULL SPOILER FOR VARIANT 5 BELOW !
In variant 5, you pretty much narrow things down to three people who have visited the basement, where there's an occult circle drawn on the floor. The basement visitors were the gnome, the elf and the dwarf. It looks like the gnome has spent his time in the basement eating pies instead of drawing occult circles (though a powerful devil could probably draw with one hand and eat with the other, since even I can do that...) so that leaves the elf and the dwarf. Like I said above, I missed quite an important clue relating to the elf (I won't give it here, it's in the official cheat sheet) and there were reasons why I was leaning more towards the dwarf (I won't give them here, they're long-winded even by my standards). The solution said that, to eliminate the dwarf, you have to take a sketch from his room, then leave the inn and find a bandit in the forest. If you have the sketch, the dialogue will say that the bandit matches the sketch, and so it did. The solution goes on to say, "The bandit corroborates Grottleker’s story about getting robbed earlier, which means that he could not be Gorson." This did not happen - the conversation with the bandit was just two lines, "gimme your money - no" and inevitably ended with a fight in which he dealt about 50 damage per blow, bypassing greater stoneskin, and thus killed my PC two rounds. This is a direct contradiction of the walkthrough, and most importantly, it's completely unnecessary, not adding anything to the game experience at all.
Excellently made module with clever range of outcomes, good writing and scenario.
Got the right answer first time on played variant- but going to walkthrough my reasoning was far from what it should have been! This is probably my insufficiency but getting all the clues will be work on your behalf, and I'm probably not the best at it. However, I am sure I will return to mess it up again with my next epic character because its a great module- probably the best at what its aiming to be.
There is only one combat, it is appropriate for an epic character as is the reward.
W23/R3=>W24/R4