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Graves and Goblins
Submitted by:
Submitted by hartunga on 2024-08-15 11:42.
Last modified:
2024-08-16 15:37
In a world brimming with magic, ordinary humans - the one race in the land born without a trace of magic - are considered the bottom rung of society. Subject to racism and prejudice, humans are restricted to ghettos. To scrape by an existence, they are forced to take all the lowly jobs that elves, dwarves, and all the other races don't want to do - who at the same time hate humans for doing it.
One of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs is hunting goblins. (Think of it as a fantasy version of a rat-catcher.) You have just joined the Goblin Hunters Guild and are about to learn first hand that goblins are far more than a simple pest.
You will need to start a new PC, 1st level, human, Ranger class with a Favored Enemy of Goblinoids.
"Now talk we of graves and goblins!" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Files:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 graves_and_goblins.zip (132) | 635.36 KB |
Yay, a new release from one of my favorite authors!!! :D
The story premise sounds MIGHTY INTERESTING! And I look forward to playing a ranger, which is a class I don't often play as. :)
I'll get back to ya once I've finished it ;)
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Birger's NWN 1 Hall of Fame Awarded DARK FANTASY Stories:
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Well met.
Neat plot outline, and screen image. Downloaded.
More.
—
Phyte: My heart has been locked for longer than I can remember.
Sharwyn: Done, and done.
—
Hey, I ran into a bug right after the first bounty where the board says " Bounties are for guild members only!"
Level 1 ranger and I have the guild medallion equiped.
You need to finish the first bounty by talking to the receptionist and giving her the medallion of the dead Goblin Hunter.
That's what I did. This hapened right after turning in the first bounty. I checked the board and got the first bounty. Went to the body, talked to tha lady, retreved the badge, cleared out the basement in the burned building mentioned in the conversation, returned to the guild, handed in the badge, got my reward and now the bounty board just sayes " Bounty board is for guild members only'' . Even with my badge equiped.
One thing - after you completed your first bounty you should be bumped up to second level. The new bounties wont be available until you've completed the level up process.
I redownloaded the module and started a new character and it's working for me now. My guess is that my copy got corrupted the first time around. Sorry for any confusion,
I'm glad it worked for you. Sometimes this old system just has hiccups.
Well that was a fun three hours! Brie (@the guild) called me by my player name and not my character's name and Blackthorn Woods & Nightshade Forest need mapnotes for their exits.
Fixed. I'm glad you liked it.
Goblin Slayer but in NWN? Might try this later.
Actually this module sprang from two very old ideas. One goes way back to when I first started playing D&D in the late 70's. And the other is from when Neverwinter Nights first came out in 2002.
There is one influence I did take from the "Goblin Slayer" anime. In my original concept there was a Guild Master who ran everything. I realized that was too much activity for one character. So I split his role up between the receptionist and the Bounty Board - kind of like how the set up was in the anime.
So, like regular DnD?
(kidding
) Thanks for posting, will take a look.
Loved every bit of it! Huntoon has proved yet again that he is one of the master mod-makers for NWN! :P
I like how you even played around with the Dungeons & Dragons name! Graves (Dungeons) & Goblins (Dragons) ;)
Well written dialog and plot, well designed areas and atmosphere per usual. Especially liked the story angle of humans being looked down upon. It made me feel like an underdog. And I sure love underdog stories. :)
Also loved how you gave the PC unique goblins slayer items too, it made the character feel very unique. :)
This one goes straight into Birger's Favorites, no question about it! :P
10/10, would play again! ;)
And now, to my usual question: what are you working on next? :)
Have a good one,
/ Birger
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Birger's NWN 1 Hall of Fame Awarded DARK FANTASY Stories:
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Thanks. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. And I always appreciate the responses.
This module has been rattling around in the back of my head for some time. It had a few rather old inspirations.
The first goes way back to when I first learned D&D as a teen during the 70's. When I read the rulebooks and learned about this rich fantasy land where there was magic everywhere - it made no sense to me that humans (the ones with zero inherent magic) would be the prominent race. Rather, given the context, it was much more likely they would be looked down upon and treated as second class citizens.
Another dates to when NWN first came out. Back then there was very little content to work with. So every other module involved fighting a tribe of goblins. I thought if goblins are such a common problem the usual trope of waiting for some random band of adventurers who just happend to wander by wouldn't work. Rather it would make sense that there would be guilds established where people could come and hire a specialist to eradicate the goblins. As I said in the description, I conceived it as sort of a fantasy version of a rat-catcher.
The other problem with those early goblin fighting modules was that they were so bland and boring. The builder would lay down some basic forest or a series of caves and then just pepper in a dozen of the standard melee goblins and then mix in a dozen more standard archer goblins. And then at the end put a treasure chest with an Amulet of +1 Armor. There was very little imagination or effort put into them.
The great thing about the NWN engine is it makes it easy to customize everything. I made a challenge to myself to try and create a module where the only enemy was goblns - but still make it varied and interesting.
As to what I'm working on next - there are a couple of different modules I'm sort of splitting my time on. I'm not sure which one I will get done first. But I'll give you their titles: "Forgotten Lore" and "The Sum of All Evils."
Thanks for telling us about your inspirations! :D I really recognize that about older modules overusing Goblins and not using them in a creative way. You really managed to make them creative in this module! :)
Ooooh, "Forgotten Lore" and "The Sum of All Evils" are very interesting names! :P I'll be looking forward to playing them once they're done! ^_^
Nice, I sort of did the first quest before getting it tho ;)
Woot!
There’s something so pleasant about leaving a city and stepping out into the countryside.
Building the plot around bounties yields a coherent, straightforward structure. The module has a nice rhythm. Take jobs, get paid for jobs, repeat. The variety of goblins is well thought out, and sprinkling in other humanoids was smart. Little touches like the worg tamers bearing whips and the guards demanding passports at the gates contribute a lot to the worldbuilding.
Your sense of humor clicks with me. The conversations were tight and amusing. Hobbit references, always a plus. You effectively satirize themes of prejudice, bureaucracy, and poverty. The npcs are so mean. It’s great! And I can’t express how much I loved the skeletons playing dice in the crypt.
Observing some untapped potential, I’d say there’s missed opportunity regarding the city citizens. There’s a marvelous diversity in the characters wandering around. I was bummed that I couldn't interact with them, considering you’re clearly capable of writing banger one-liners. I’d encourage you to juice up the randos with a handful of snippets! I wanted to be condescended by one of the kobold wizards wandering around.
This is a personal peeve but I get distracted by borderless maps. The OG forest tileset in particular yields an uncanny empty wilderness surrounding the playable area. This is less of a diversion in the facelifted forest, which creates a nice ring of trees. I had fun wandering but found few treats in the corners. Hiding some chicken tendies off the beaten path to reward exploring would bring your fantastic world up a notch. Consider these suggestions if you circle back for another pass on this, or for your next project.
Nitpicks aside, I was pleased with the variety of environments. Sewers, crypts, caverns, warehouses. And I like my dungeons dark. Makes carrying a torch or other light source feel important, so kudos. There were enough traps to keep me in detect mode, which is a plus. The inclusion of animals wandering the wilderness dovetails nicely with Animal Empathy.
By the time the curtain fell I had left some unresolved threads on the table, which provides motivation for a second playthrough. I’m genuinely curious about the Celestial Statues and the Goblin Mystery iPad. And I never made it past the bouncer (but I tried).
Well done! I’ll be checking out more of your work.
--Mark
Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. And I really appreciate the detailed feedback.
To respond to your points:
Giving each of the wandering, miscellaneous NPC's their own dialogue would be a lot of work with very little reward. I tend to think of these NPC's like the extras in movies. They are there simply to fill out the background - and nothing else.
I actually agree with you about not liking a borderless map. But the solution is to eiher set every Forest tileset area in a box canyon or not use the tileset at all. One of the things as a builder is you have to accept the limitations of the NWN toolset and move on.
I originally did have a few more surpise treats scattered around the various areas. I like to reward players who fully explore. But the thing is I prefer to have rather tightly focused areas. And when I playtested it, finding all these bits and pieces constantly just felt like too much. So I removed some of them.
There's really nothing special about the Celestial Statues. The idea is similar to statues of angels you might find in a crypt.
Thanks again.
Hey Chris,
Just got done and I'm replaying it now to fiddle around with some of the set pieces and strategy but great job! :) I liked the concept and tilesets the most. The variety of goblins was helpful in giving it more flavor as well as making me have to make decisions in the fight. As always, I really enjoy your tileset and placement of items in it's minimalistic way. It doesn't feel barren and instead feels easily traveled. I'm going to throw this one up on review on my channel. Encountered no bugs! Always good when that happens. It will take a few days to edit the videos and write a script, but should be going up soon. Thanks for all you do and the way you keep grinding these adventures out! Truly :)
Later,
Jason(aka Turnsup)
Thanks for the feedback. It is always appreciated. Glad you liked it. Please let me know when your review is up. I'd be interested in seeing it. Thanks again.
Hey man! So, I wrapped up the video essay and it's up! Again, thanks for putting in this time and effort. Look forward to future work of yours! Have a good day! :)
https://youtu.be/1SjRQROMCGI?si=9iypzZIcX7GFlISk
Thanks for the video review! Looks great!
So gave this adventure a try as a random poke and hope.
So the module suggests a Ranger (which I made and played) but, other then for thematic purposes, there wasn't really a solid reason for it. Any warrior-like class would have worked in my opinion. Kale's Rangers module lean into being the Ranger class the best in my opinion. Don't take this as a negative to the module however.
Over all - a really solid 8.5/10 adventure. I had fun time exploring and battling my way towards the end. Give it a try.
Thank you for the detailed review. Good that you had fun with the module.
Regarding the bug with the NPC spawning - I never ran into that in any of my play tests. And no one else has reported the same issue. So it sounds like it might have just been a system hiccup.