The High Forest
The High Forest is a Neverwinter Nights project
that is under development and is set in the Forgotten Realms in and around
the High Forest of Faerûn. The central starting area is the city
of Everlund, a large merchant hub in the southern Silver Marches
region.
The idea is to build from the established material presented in the
Silver Marches source book and other materials and expand
from there to make a a tightly integrated setting with plenty of
hooks for DM's and players alike.
Status
Work is well underway. The City of Everlund has been built and most
common merchants are in place. Low level quests are being implemented
currently. Once quests have been implemented for up to mid-level, beta
testing will begin.
Olostin's Hold is under construction.
Design Goals
The module is still under heavy development, however many ideas are
already underway in the module:
A fun module to play regardless of playing as a DM or as a player.
A concept of quality before quantity. Detail is being given a top priority in the experience a player will receive from the surroundings. A feeling of immersion is paramount. This includes ensuring that scripted, pre-built content has a sense of verisimilitude by not being the same quest that has been around for a while.
Areas are built with the concept of location to civilized areas. A variety of adventure settings that are suitable for low level characters are close to the main starting location, adventures for mid-level further out, and high-level the farthest away from civilization.
A concept of good, evil, neutrality, and choices that must be made in order to advance storylines. Players have an impact on the world around them.
An overall storyline is highlighted throughout the module and is exposed through a combination of DM run events and through some pre-designed content.
Roleplaying of characters appropriate for the setting ensures that both players and DM's alike can enjoy the game. Players will be required to submit a background for the character in order to be granted permission to play. This ensures that a DM is involved with the creation of the character and so that the character can be integrated into the setting. This ensures a greater experience in the game.
Measures are being taken to ensure the module is playable in the traditional manner of Dungeons and Dragons modules with a DM and a group of characters that work together to achieve victory in their pursuits. These measures include:
Creatures have been tuned to closely match source materials. Too many of the creatures included in the Neverwinter Nights Toolset are designed to be fought in a single player game with one henchman, so many creatures lost qualities that they had in the source material. All creatures are being looked at and adjusted when necessary in order to facilitate group play and present new challenges to a group of players.
Equipment costs are being recalculated to reflect source material. In some cases, equipment costs were too high, in others, they were too low.
The module is not being designed to be playable solo unless under the supervision of a DM with a solo style quest due to encounter balancing and treasure dispersement balancing. If solo play is what you seek, please consider a single player downloadable module from
Neverwinter Vault instead.
Technical Features Included
Religious system. All of the major, minor, drow, dwarven, elven, halfling, and gnomish deities have been built into the module via scripting to recognize clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers. Clerics will have to choose the appropriate domains prior to character creation. Since religion is such a central theme of the Forgotten Realms Setting, the need for proper roleplay of these particular classes is important. Should violation of any tenets of a faith by an individual of these classes occur, there are consequences to face.
Subrace system. A subrace system is included that allows players to play some of the exotic subraces. ECL races of +0 are available to all starting characters.
Downloads
Great care has been taken to ensure that those responsible for extra
material used in the creation of this module is not duplicated on hard
disks. I am therefore linking to the material on the Neverwinter Vault. I am also offering
the material presented in these links as
an alternate download for those that may not have access to the Windows
platform since some files (notably, DC Tiles) come in a Windows Executable
file only, or prefer a smaller download.
These files are compressed in the 7-zip software available for Windows.
You can also use the p7zip available for POSIX systems such as Linux and MacOS X. This format was chosen due to decreased download sizes.
Each downloaded file has one or more files with .hak at the end inside
it. These .hak files need to go in your Neverwinter Nights hak
directory. The last download also contains the file thf.tlk. It needs to go
into the Neverwinter Nights tlk directory.