The End of the Beginning (ADV)

Yesterday's 20th gaming session marked the end of Soul Shaker for my group of players after nearly 40 hours of play, possibly longer if allowing for WAN traffic lag. I believe it went well, apart from one really annoying last minute bug that prevented the heroes from being able to use the portal that led them to the final area. It was easily fixed with me at the helm as DM, but it frustrated me and concerned me that other players may have encountered the same bug, and I wanted to make sure I had the fix up as soon as possible. To this end, patch v1.10 is already up along with the v1.10 module. I also updated the module version number in the module to read correctly, as I had not updated the number through versions 1.06-1.09, even though the module was updated correctly. Finally, I also ensured all players in a MP game would enter cutscene in the final encounter.
The end of Soul Shaker will also mark the end of me writing synopses in this way, as they are quite time consuming, and I am not sure if their use warrants the time spent on them. In future, and when we actually get back to playing, I will probably reserve my time to writing much briefer synopses (with far less detail) that will be no more than a single paragraph or two that is written directly on the blog rather than be directed to my web pages.
With Soul Shaker finished, there is little reason left for me to keep NWN1 installed on my computer now, except that I will leave it there so I can continue bug-fixing it if anybody should still find a bug I have missed. That is probably the only reason I will leave it installed though, unless a new module does grab my attention and I find I want to play it. This is unlikely though, as writing for the new module will take priority now, and if I was going to look at a new module, it would more than likely be one written for NWN2.

I thought now might be a good time to announce the working title of my next module (written in NWN2) for the new era of the Althéa Campaign: "Better The Demon You Know". As readers of this blog will know, I have been writing material for the new era since around Summer 2007, and that while it has been a slow start, I may be able to concentrate more on the new module now that Soul Shaker is officially completed for our group.

This afternoon (4.00 p.m. B.S.T.), I have an interview with the podcast crew, and so I hope to be able to give a link to that in the near future. For now though, here is the snippet and link to the last synopsis for quite some time ....

SYNOPSIS SNIPPET: (REALM LEVEL: 9th) REALM TIME: 37 Hours Approx.

"Slowly, the heroes approached the seated figures, the screams from the soul prison getting louder as they approached. Yet, the humanoids did not move. Were they dead? Karasten approached one of them even closer and tried to speak with it. Immediately, as if disturbed from its own wretched nightmare, the emaciated being rose and attacked the Influencer."  

Download the full synopsis here.