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*Yes, I know it’s in the wrong place. I thought it would be funny.

Progress has temporarily stalled, as I have been quite busy being busy and also quite busy playing modules. As I keep saying, it’s very important to me to keep playing other people’s work, or you can get over-invested in your own project and forget that being a consumers is just as vital as being a creator.

I revisited Baldecaran’s work over the weekend, specifically the Prophet series. I remember enjoying The Cave of Songs and Honour Among Thieves so it goes without saying that it’s pretty bloody good. It’s very story-heavy with limited roleplaying opportunities beyond whether you want to make your prophet a bit rude to people on occasions, but that’s okay because it’s not the focus of the thing. I’m about halfway through the first chapter, and enjoying myself, although I’ve actually got a bit demoralized because I made my way to the very bottom of a mine (about three levels plus dark temple at the bottom) to complete a quest and now I have to hike all the way back again.

I don’t know if it’s just that modern games have made me lazy but I really do hate this sort of back and forthing. Nothing blunts the pleasure of exploring quite like the knowledge you’re going to have run the whole way back again once you’re done. I was talking to a friend about this earlier and he said that, for him, it really does shatter the suspension of disbelief if there’s an expedient way out you just happened to miss on the way in. It’s an interesting question, really, how much the suspension of disbelief is tangled up with frustration – there is little quite as realistic has being annoyed, after all. But still, I think my personal suspension of disbelief is elastic enough to encompass a little well-earned convenience.

I think it probably also depends on how you do it. I mean, yes, if there just so happens to be a backdoor leading directly from the main dungeon boss to the surface it feels a little bit TOO convenient, although if you were the main boss of a dungeon it would make sense that you wouldn’t always want to sit in an appropriately threatening room at the bottom of a mine. I mean, what if you needed the toilet or something? Regardless, I reckon you could introduce a bamf mechanic that felt reasonably plausible – I think my favourite is the handy NPC who is all like “Shall we go back, Player Character?” and you can be “Yes” or “I need to loot this joint first” but if you pick the first you get teleported to the entrance, but with the implication that you walked back with the NPC. So you get all the plausibility of a tedious backtrack without the frustration of having to do it yourself.

I also played Fallen House Celofraie, a Drow module. I wasn’t massively impressed with it, but I nevertheless played all the way to the end so I must have enjoyed it more than I was willing to admit at the time. It did have a relatively interesting story and the area design was suitably atmospheric. I supposed I also liked the fact you get to do underdarky things like battle Beholders and interact with hot Drow matrons in the mood (okay, not that). I do find the whole Drow thing absurd – I mean come on, a whole society of scantily clad, whip-wielding, promiscuous dominatrices. Is that not the most pathetic 14 year old male fantasy in the history of pathetic 14 year old male fantasies? It’s also, of course, horribly sexist but it’s also ridiculous enough to be funny. Perhaps. Anyway, I didn’t spend the majority of the module going “yes, Mistress” and the whole thing unfolded relatively maturely considering the setting. You’ve lost your memory (convenient!) at the start of play and discovering what the hell is going on, and who the hell you were, is what keeps things interesting so I won’t spoil it. There are a couple of fairly entertaining companions, as well – there’s a drow Bard who is really pretty embarrassed to be a bard and keeps insisting he’s mainly a warrior like everyone else, and a Duergar druid who made me chuckle (he can turn into an “epic badger”). Oh, and your “sister” who, on account of being a chick, has purple Final Fantasy bunches and no personality whatsoever. Blah.

The thing that really lets it down, however, is the writing. The conversation trees are pretty clunkily implemented and I guess I’d describe the style as “enthusiastic.” It’s not so much that the writing is terrible – it’s even moderately interesting on occasion – it’s just the awkward system and the poor grammar really let it down. Commas, for example, are generally accounted good but they are thin on the ground in the Underdark. And there is some serious apostrophe abuse going on in there. Someone should call the Royal Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Punctuation. I can’t decide how much I’ve overplayed the irritation factor of poor writing and poor grammar but I did feel like I wanted to playing with a red pen in my hand. And this isn’t just typo stuff – I’m the Prince of Typos, after all – it’s consistently bad.

Apostrophes were abused near this kitten