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NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

Popiel

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, I wasn't going to abandon this series, it's entertaining enough for me to stick with it (for now). I was just wondering where's this marvel of a plot and miracle of a story that a lot of people are on about. It's nowhere to be seen as of now, and if things will go down as I think they will, then it'll be servicable at best. Philosophical dilemma presented by the setting is very shallow, at least now, perhaps it'll twist around later. Story overall is mediocre, encounters the same, why are these modules hyped up so much I wonder? Yet, I'm still not over Chapter 1, so perhaps it's too soon for me to whine.

Besides, perhaps I'm forgetting that it's just a fan made module, for a fan made module it's good stuff I guess.
 

Immortal

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Prophet is meant to be a Group Module.. It's really pretty bad. The worst module by that author.
It doesn't get better, it gets worse IMO.

Bail out now and play his other stuff.
(Honor Among Thieves is one of the best modules ever made.. compared to Prophet..?)
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Once you get to the elf city it really starts going downhill. It's a cool demonstration about what can be done in the toolset, though.
 

Immortal

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Once you get to the elf city it really starts going downhill. It's a cool demonstration about what can be done in the toolset, though.

IMO ..Not really.. it's pretty vanilla.
Sinfar is a cool example about what you can do with the toolset. (Even though it's totally cancerous community wise)


Elf city is where I quit.. It's so repetitive at that point and you just know your gonna be shuffled from generic city to generic city with zero purpose or gripping story.. it's actually worse than the Original Campaign I think.
 

Immortal

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Honor Among Thieves is one of the best modules ever made.. compared to Prophet..?
A Dance with Rogues is a lot better thief module for me. Sex aside.

How? It's poorly balanced and the stealth isn't great. The story is also semi ripped from other fictions.

Honor Among Thieves is objectively better mechanically (Full NPC routines and Overhauled AI all centered around stealth)
ADWR is really all about the fanfic erotica.
 

Popiel

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I would argue if the Prophet (as far as I went through it anyway, that is Prologue + most of Chapter 1) is worse than vanilla NWN campaign - the latter is the shit, and I mean it in the bad way... The Prophet is at least semi-engaging when it comes to setting and themes, companions are also much better than NWN vanilla henchmen (which were an insult, I don't think I need to convince anyone of that). Yeah, I know that technically Prophet is supposedly good in multi, but solo campaign is very much viable, companions are developed enough, indeed they appear quite essential to the plot, so nothing is taken out of the experience I think. Problem is said experience, it's not as good as it was supposed to be basing on the opinions here and there. If after the elven city all that awaits is decline (which is possible, all the best areas and encounters happened before meeting with the elven sage in the city), then it's indeed a shame. Time will tell I guess, I mean to finish at the very least Chapter 1.
 

Jason Liang

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I've seen a lot of praise for the Prophet module series around here, and basing my decision on that decent premise I decided to give it a try. I played through the Prologue already and I'm... kind of finishing Chapter 1 I guess from what I see? I started as 5 level Wizard, right now I'm a 9 level Wizard, playing on Hardocre ruleset as per author's design.

I think I did everything I could up until the point that I'm right now in the story, that is right before
The Tower That Touches The Sky, or however it's called - that's the mountain citadel built by prophet-king
. I
cleared the drow temple, killed the hive mother and the dragon, did all the possible sidequests that there are, I think I did, because I'm not using a walkthrough
. My question is.

Do this get better?

Yes. You are just about to hit the part where the module starts getting awesome. Congrats and keep going.

If you look back over this thread, you'll see that the people who bitch about The Prophet basically quit where you are at.

Obviously this vexes me. I'm not sure why this part of the module screams "bail out!" to some players.

It's also hard for me to believe that anyone who has played through all three parts would claim that parts 2 and 3 are worse than part 1.
 
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Popiel

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Okay, I finished Chapter 1 and honestly I sort of get why people are praising this module - not that I necessarily agree with them, still I get what they mean. Now that I'm done with this part of the module I can safely say that parts between
the elven city and mountain citadel of the prophet-king
are the weakest parts of the first chapter, they are a slog and I understand why a lot of players bail out around here. Up from
the entrance to the Tower That Touches the Sky
it's a really steady incline, for a fan made module it is really neatly executed and nicely written. Modmaker certainly knew what he was doing from the very beginning and it profits here.
Honestly, call me stupid, but I didn't see my character being the doom incarnate coming, perhaps I wasn't looking at the right direction.
Yet, it needs to be said, when it comes to encounters and so on this module is not very good, I would call it mediocre overall. Right now I'm somewhat excited to see what happens next.
 
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Jason Liang

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Great, and thanks for putting everything in Spoiler tags!

The clue that something greater is at work is the dream from the Prologue, but it's probably too subtle and inscrutable to effectively carry the mystery to the end parts of Chapter 1.

Despite being in the camp that puts The Prophet as the best NWN module series ever, I can be critical about it. It could have used a slightly stronger concept to hook the player to start.

Encounter design isn't anything special, but that isn't Baldecaran's strength as a mod writer, and let's be fair if you are looking for amazing combat NWN isn't really where you should be looking in the first place. That being said, if you want to start trouble and mayhem in Chapter 2, you are given several opportunities to do so. Let's just say that my preferred playstyle is to murder everyone, and I was pretty satisfied with how I resolved Chapter 2.

Combat isn't the attraction here, but it isn't an afterthought either. At least you're taking a PC from level 5 to level 20ish with suitable combat difficulty progression. I'm pretty happy with moduled that do that.
 
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rogueknight333

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I liked all of Baldecaran's modules but there are definitely some parts of the Prophet series that are better implemented than others. Both Cave of Songs and Honor among Thieves are more consistently good. Even the combat is noticeably better, which is a bit ironic given that combat is a much less important part of both those modules, compared to Prophet. Though that might actually be why it is better. Perhaps with most combat encounters in those modules being optional (in most cases combat could be avoided by the use of stealth or other devices) the author felt more free to make some that were actually challenging.
 

eXalted

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What amazes me in Honor Among Thieves is the AI of the NPCs. They hear doors, react to your actions, etc. (Explored the module in the Toolset while I was playing it)
 

Jason Liang

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For me, Baldecaran's itemization is amazing, and The Prophet is no exception. So I doubt combat was even supposed to be challenging, considering the ridiculous kit you find throughout the series. That's not even including the ridiculous "you know what" which is handily a club so that even a halfling mage can wield it.

That being said, if you desire a more tactical experience, iirc there's nothing stopping you from playing the module under-leveled. I know that I played through with a level 1 character starting from Cave of Songs -> The Prophet, the start to Cave of Songs is pretty brutal at level 1, and I think my char was level 4 starting The Prophet and I didn't find combat a snooze.
 
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Popiel

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Okay, I just finished Chapter 2 of the Prophet module.

Damn, it was very, very good. It was just, damn, really decent, well designed experience. Kudos to the modmaker for making this, for a fan made module it is really something else.

Not that I have no problems with it, quite the contrary. I still believe that some encounters could have been really easily improved if some more thought would have been put into them. Overall design is heavily focused on the narrative, plot and worldbuilding (in that order), not on mechanics, which is truly a shame, because some setup were really great. As before I did everything I could in the module, or at least I think so - I don't count branching storylines obviously - and I went from level 10 to level 12. I have a growing problem with itemization in this series, but on the other hand player almost always has something to spend this mountains of gold on. Also, I'm not sure if I agree that the combat was not even supposed to be important. There is way too much pure trash for that to be the case (less here than in Chapter 1, yet still point remains).

As for the plot itself:
Yeah, okay, frankly I saw almost everything coming - and that's because last module taught me to always look for such patterns. Modmaker exploited the same narrative tricks as the last time, and in my opinion only once did it worked as well as in Chapter 1 - that is in the end, when your future self betrays your past/present self. I sort of saw that coming, but I wasn't sure that will happen. I definitely saw my character causing poisoning the wellspring coming, it was damn obvious that rebel leader will do what he did. As far as I know, from the walkthrough that I've read after finishing this Chapter, no matter what side player will choose someone will use these words to poison the water, which is, well, nice, but I have my doubts as for the execution. Choosing the rebel side and experiencing the plot from this point of view was very rewarding and coherent. Damn I'll miss Hissar, he was a good man. And I will also miss Larian (yeah, well, I’m not able to think about this guy in any other way, sorry Swen), although I think he’ll be back soon enough, because I’m right now starting Chapter 3. There are also some other things that seem to not really make sense on the large scale. How did Herezars even designed their plan in the world where everything is ordained and they stil thaught that they are doing what, rebelling? Their rebellion should by any logical means also be predetermined, and also its outcome - player character even [Insights] this in conversation with the future self, that it all is by design after all so what are everyone talking about? I think if that will not get explained in a straight way in Chapter 3 it will prove to be a massive design flaw. By the way, Chapter 2 felt way longer than Chapter 1, even though I read on the vault that it’s supposedly around 5 hours shorter – and by no means was it dragging, it wasn’t.

Also, I was not particularly fond of my character spilling the beans for Uther Palandras, I much more liked him when I thought he designed all of this by himself - yet still is works narratively and helps to deliver the point. As for said delivery. I think the module goes just a little bit too out of its way to present the themes and hammer them home. Just a little bit.

There are some aspects of the module that could have been expanded upon, really. For example the old ass ancient elf, Moldomir I think was his name, he had a shop in Hierathanum. Why couldn’t I look into his memories? Was there anything more I could have gotten out of him? He said he’ll tell something about him if I present something of value to him, is there anything I can give to him? I still have this damn dragon egg, and to my disappointment I couldn’t sell it to anyone nor did it served any purpose. The same with the optional dungeon with the ancient lich king. That was cool, really, design was nice and whole affair was thematically fitting – what’s a truly fucking shame was that I could have not lost anything during this whole thing. I could have regrown my lost body parts in the temple (for 1000 gold – in this module that’s like a penny), and the lich king was a hard motherfucker, but certainly beatable (at least for my party), so… There are also other things just like that. The city is nice but feels empty, just a few side quests would help in this department really, really much.

Overall a better experience than Chapter 1, no part of the module felt like a slog. An incline. Not massive, not yet, but I so dig the way in which this Chapter ended and in which Chapter 3 starts (I’m chasing this dog right now).

And I think that I know how this whole affair will end, an idea I had during Chapter 1 was made way more probable by the events that transpired in Chapter 2. But we'll see.

And by the way. I have philosophical education (sort of) and I've found many moments of this mod pretty silly, but it must be said that for a module for fucking NWN some themes are presented and delivered really decently - not overly pretentious, not in an overly simplified way. Subjects that this mod touches upon are also some of the most profound subjects in history of philosophy, so how they were presented deserves some praise.
 
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Jason Liang

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i refrain from discussing The Prophet''s plot at all, even using spoiler tags, since any spoiler could easily spoil the experience. Usually I don't like this type of plot that's based on a conceit (a la M. Night Shamaylan, Sixth Sense), but here it works precisely for the reason you stated, which is the quality of the presentation of the conceit. That's what is admirable here, not the conceit itself.

The Lich dungeon is easily the best dungeon design I've seen implemented in NWN. I think about this side quest, and the ways it toys with the PC, a lot. IIRC the only thing you end up getting out of it can only be used by undead, so you need to have the UMD skill. That's why I recommend playing the module as a class that has UMD. I was pretty relieved that the priest could cure the malus, but it was a nice little adventure! IIRC a malus like that can't carry between modules, so it would disappear after exporting.

Yeah previous players have expressed that they felt it lacking they couldn't do more with the dreamwalking. So sure, it's true that this module is better if Baldecaran spent 1000 hours more implementing that and fleshing out the city more. The man's here to tell a story, let him tell it. It's not meant to be Athlaka.

I'm surprised you weren't bloodthirsty enough to fight the rebels. If you attack them head on, that's a nice fight you missed. I ended up betraying both sides, so I infilitrated the palace as well. There's several solutions you could take here, which is nice.

iirc you're supposed to give the old elf the necromantic pages you found in chapter 1. There might be more pages in Chapter 2. I don't remember what I did with the Dragon Egg.

Ok I wont say anymore.
 
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Popiel

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I finished the Prophet series right now.

Well. That was certainly an experience.

I liked Chapter 3 really much. It was certainly different than previous ones, modmaker used different narrative tricks and whole plot was built around other things than Chapter 1 or 2.

In the end however I need to say one thing – it was unfortunately somewhat underwhelming. Last sequence, where you gather essences from different planes, was a repetition of what you did in Chapter 2, and that was a bummer. I like how ending proper connected whole series, all important characters found their way into it. Some things I predicted (when I first read last batch of Evenorn’s letters, him saying YO DAWG YOU NEED TO DO THIS AND THIS, AND THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY I knew instantly that he is bullshitting me and that it’s precisely what I’m not supposed to do to get the best ending – and I was right), some I didn’t (Isandra betraying me and whole Vigil thing being set up by Aleksar, that was nice), but in the end it went about almost exactly as I thought it will. And only person to blame for that is the modmaker. He made previous two Chapter in such a way that it was almost obvious what will happen narratively speaking.

I was quite certain about what I was doing in the end. I let this world die so that countless others can be born without shackles of fate. However. I still don’t think that the modmaker made sufficient explanation of the setting – how exactly can fate be denied? It is in the very nature of this preordained world to go as it’s supposed to, there is only one way this feather can fall as Fate herself had put it. Why then was there a choice? Was it really free? I think these are questions that were deliberately left without a possible answer, and that’s for this modules credit. Also, I think that both ending choices were viable, although gameplay construction suggests that the choice I made was the “better” one, because I had to do some extra work to discover its full meaning and potential.

Overall I would really recommend this series to anyone who would be interested in something more amusing than HACKING UP MOBS. In the end Chapter 2 was IMHO the best out of three, followed by Chapter 1 and closely by Chapter 3.

Still, one important question remains - what do I play now? I already finished Aielund Saga and the Swordflight series. Am I done?
 
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Jason Liang

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Yeah I was also a little bummed by the repitition at the end. I think Baldecaran tried to put creativity into each realm but by that point your PC is basically godkiller level.

Everything the Herezar did was a scheme to give you, the destined PC, one instant of free will. You have the free choice to either perpetuate the loop and terminate all of creation, denying the scheme of the Gods, or not. Every "you" before you chose to lie to their past self. Or something like that. I don't think that your choice "births" worlds free from the chains of destiny- it just ends everything, "murdering" the future as it were- but in doing so, you rewrite history as freed from destiny. What you restore is the past, not the future.

Frankly I'm a selfish bastard so I chose the ending that would let me keep the +8? weapon.

The only monocled epic module left is A Dance with Rogues. Also, Cave of Songs -> Honor Among Thieves by Baldecaran if you haven't done that yet. You seem to have high expectations for modules so you probably would be disappointed by a deep dive through the NWN Hall of Fame. Festerpot's Shadewood and Almraiven are amazing short modules. Crimson Tides of Tethyr is a bit dated and cliched but fun. There's one or two others that get recommended all the time, but I can't speak for them.
 
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Popiel

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Nah, my expectations are very limited truth be said - there are just some modules that are praised as if they were a gift from the God Almighty unto unworthy casualkind, best pieces of cRPG gaming ever made, and so on and so forth. The Prophet series and Swordflight series especially tend to get this neat treatment. Naturally then my expectations were pretty high when it came to these two - in the end both proved to sort of live up to the hype (Swordflight more so than The Prophet, but I think only because the hype for to former is more reasonable). Modules in The Prophet series by Baldecaran (I wish he was here, I would thank him for providing me with 30/35 hours of high quality gaming) were really exquisite when you consider that these are fan made modules made for free for a game that's not best known for grapping story or developed plot and themes. In this context The Prophet shines even brighter - I think if developed into a fully-fledged game it could very, very easily join Planescape: Torment and Mask of the Betrayer as another cult classic.

Thanks for the further titles, I will look into them, and also into Tortured Hearts and Shadowlords series and its sequels, I’ve heard some good things about them.

True, how the planes were represented was pretty cool - but that sadly does not change the fact that its basically the same thing once again.
 

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I couldn't get into Tortured Hearts, even though it supposedly has everything I like in RPGs (i.e. non-linear investigative structure and lots of puzzles) because of the awkward writing and the story that takes forever to start. Underrail has a similar problem with its deeply uninspired opening stages, but TH writing is even worse.
 

Jason Liang

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Also I was curious how you found playing through The Prophet with a Wizard. As you can probably tell by all the Heavy Armor you find, the itemization seems to favor sturdier heroes. There is a very nice wizard item in Cave of Songs but you skipped that.
 

Popiel

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Yep, I finished the module with 14th level pure Wizard. Game was indeed at times somewhat challenging because of that - there are some areas which are very inhospitable for Wizards, and in general spellcasters.
By that I mean especially underwater locations, and some places where you could not rest and module kept spamming and spamming enemies - snowy mountains in Chapter 3, overrun by orcs and frost giants, come to mind.
In general amount of trash is not a good thing from a perspective of a spellcaster, yet still module in the end seemed very easy. By the end of Chapter 1 my character was very, very strong, I was able to basically cakewalk through Chapter 2 and most of Chapter 3. You are indeed correct in that itemization is not at all suited for a pure Wizard, not a one single unique or interesting item I can recall that I’ve found. There are some staffs, robes and magic rings suited for Wizards, and some magic tomes, but these are all pretty vanilla. Overall module lets you rest when and where you can, and that’s a bummer, because it makes playing a pure Wizard a pretty easy job, you can always reload these Isaac’s missile storms and your fireballs (two/three most powerful spells in this module, almost no enemy had any counters to those). I already decided that for my next playthrough (which will come sooner or later) I’m going something melee. I think that from my point of view the hardest of fight was in Chapter 2,
when I decided that I'm going to kil the lich king no matter what. He was a pretty tough egg to crack for my Wizard.
Also in Chapter 2
Life Elemental gave me some trouble, he was healing himself much quicker than I could cast spells at him, I made like 4/5 approaches and finally managed to be quicker with my fireballs than he was with his regeneration.
In Chapter 3
Ancient Ice Dragon was interesting to combat, but perhaps I was lucky, in the end I managed to slay him on first try thanks to mighty Sceptre of Lor and good usage of Icons of Life and tanking with Larian.
In the end lack of nice items made looting somewhat boring - it was just more and more of gold. At least I can honestly say that some usable items or some uniclass items were nice.

Besides, as for the plot - I get that the whole Herezar scheme was constructed as to make possible for a one chance to happen. One chance to change destiny, to deny Fate its due. It was also logical that if we managed to make history not go as planned once then it would prove to be a false premise in all other instances. Yet still I think that this could have been elaborated upon more. It does not seem possible for me that this chain of events had possibility of occuring. Its the world where everything really is preordained, its a fact and we know this - how it is then possible to stage a rebellion against fate which will not be a part of the plan...? I know what vision of Kurathan said - that this chance would defy logic as we know it, yet still, if it would I prefer to know how and so on. Also there is a whole different subject if making a world truly free of destiny is at all possible, but that's another thing. IMHO it's not.
 
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Jason Liang

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It's hokey but, given how powerful the Herezar became, I guess we just have to assume they devised a way. Obviously the gods can't stop them, just like they know what you'll do but they can't stop you either. From a philosophical perspective, perhaps it is inevitable (destined) that a supreme intelligence will question its free will- and conclude that fee will doesn't exist in a purely mechanical universe. Therefore you're right, the Herezar plan itself is fated; which is why the Herezar failed to achieve free will. But they allowed you to.

It's been too long, but iirc the other gods are cross at Lor. Lor loved the creation he made, but he himself couldn't give creation free will. So maybe he made the universe with a flaw that would allow free will to come into being. But obviously he himself couldn't determine it would come into being- creation itself (or a part of creation, you) must choose to finally be free. I don't know if I made that up or it's somewhere in the text [at the end of chapter 2 perhaps]). It's a paradox right? A completely perfect universe is flawed since it lacks free will.

This is reminding me of Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers run, where Dr. Doom has to find a way to defeat the Beyonders that created the multiverse and are all powerful. It's possible isnce even the Beyonders have a flaw.

I think, from a design perspective, why this works is that, at the end of chapter 2, you aren't given a choice. If you want to continue the module, you must ******, even if you know that ****** is a terrible idea (and Larian is screaming at you that it's a terrible idea) and you're 100% sure that @@@@@@@ is lying to you. Obviously as a player, you (outside of the module) can choose to quit and export your PC out of there, but within the module you're railroaded. So at the end of chapter 3, by the module giving you the choice you were denied in chapter 2, it symbollically gives you free choice. This is only affecting since you were railroaded previously- in fact the whole series until that point, especially chapter 3, is on rails- even if you take a different path you end up at the same destination- until the moment where you are actually given free choice. You must play the entire module accepting that the module itself is directing you where it wants you to go, until the very end you finally get to choose the ending as a reward for the work.

The witty part is the Lich dungeon. Since, despite XXXXXX, you YYYYYY anyway. In part it's because XXXXXX makes YYYYYY irresistable, but also because, as you point out, the module has taught you to play it in a certain way so that even though YYYYYYY is optional, you're happy letting the module direct you there. RPGs NEVER teach you to get off the bus. But not YYYYYY would be like exporting your character before you ******, even though ****** is the same type of bad idea.

But it all works out in the end since ****** and YYYYYYY are what we want from the game in the first place.
 

Popiel

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Yep, you pointed out something important, something that I perhaps should have mentioned but I didn't - The Prophet series really perfectly blends its plot and its mechanics, it’s an extremely good example of gameplay and story integration. Player character is indeed railroaded through almost all series, and when you think about it it’s not like many cRPGs do not railroad you in the same or at least similar way. In Chapter 1 modmaker even goes meta on this, showing that your choices does not really matter because they could not have been different – your character chooses corridor on the left or on the right and the other one never existed, and player who plays a character also made this choice and it could not have been different. Video games are just video games, programmers can only implement as much, and in fact that’s not a bad thing that cRPGs tend to railroad PCs - best stories can be told in this way, because in this way plot and narrative can be carefully planned and panned out. In The Prophet this design becomes part of the plot and part of the central theme, and yes you are correct, when in the end you are given a choice it is a truly important choice, not because of the story presented (it obviously is in the context of the setting), but because of how the module was structured and story was told up until this point. Ending of Chapter 2 is made so very much stronger thanks to the ending of Chapter 3, and vice versa. Curiously, one of the very, very few games which also used the structure of the game as a game itself as a plot point on meta level is E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy.

As for Lor and other gods - perhaps I’m missing something, but this aspect of the whole series seemed mostly untouched upon, and deliberately so. At one point you actually meet Lor, kind of, he is the pale giant who shapes the giant sculpture and who, perhaps, designed a halfling village dream for PC to live in for a year in the beginning of Chapter 3. But why he did that? Why did he made fated world? What other gods think of this? Are gods also subjects to fate? Some in-world characters think so, but we do not know, at least I don’t think we do - there was something about this, but it went over my head I think.

As for the Herezars - yes, that’s exactly my problem. How I see this: Lor did not create a world and gave it over to Fate as its ruler and tyrant, not literally. Destiny and all things being preordained is a natural consequence of laws that govern all. Fate is another name of simple, logical causation. Fate, when personified, makes example of a feather. Feather falls in only one way - it theoretically could fall in other way, but in the end it only does in one. There is only one world in practice. But feather does not fall in way A and not in way B because omnipotent Fate decided that - it does that because there are myriad of things which affect its fall and which started at one point. All things naturally flow from this first movement. If one is omnipotent and knows everything about every mechanism that rules the world one can make 100% accurate predictions about everything (basically Laplace's demon, but let us not delve into real world philosophy). It’s essentially this argument that the module presents - world ruled by causation is not a free world because from the point of view of something that knows everything everything is already decided, because things must happen they way they will. That’s why there is no past, no present and no future, all is right now and all is preordained. Prophets in the game world, like Uther Palandras, thanks to some supernatural powers have ability to look at the time as a whole, not just look into the future, Kurathan explains this in Chapter 2. Looking into the future can be achieved by the means of arcane school of divination, this is mentioned by the Red Scribes I think in Chapter 2. Prophecy is something else. It’s like Dr Manhattan said in Watchmen - there are strings and he is the one who sees the strings. So, if Lor made the world ruled by mechanisms (call them however you want, in the module I think it’s mostly interplay between basic elements that rule the creation, but one can call them laws of physics and so on), then it was the world by design destined to go one and only one way, because things flow naturally from the first movement. It may seem absurd to think that guy A will kill guy B in city Z because million years ago guy X killed guy Y, but so it is. That which is destined cannot be denied, as the module itself says and says. Now, it's obviously another thing to ponder upon: what does matter if the world is this way? Do out decisions matter? Can we be guilty of anything, proud of anything? What are we anyway in such a world? Is there really no free will, or is it just that the will is free, but choices are obvious and ordained from the perspective of the omniscient being, who knows all the whys and wheres that stand behind a free decision? Does anything really matter? IMHO it does, but that's not the point.

So why the hell was Herezar plan even possible? It must have been fated as well. In the beginning of the world there should have been this exact moment already predicted because it was a natural occurrence, not some divine intervention (if these are even a thing). Yes, there is a time loop in play here as well, but that’s IMHO irrelevant. The choice of PC should have never been free - in the game narrative it obviously was, but that’s not the point. So what is? The point is either that, yes, choices are illusions and whatever PC did was ordained (and we are all fools as characters in game constantly tell us if we stick with the BUT THERE IS MUH HOPE STILL), rebellion or not, or the point is that Herezars somehow made it possible to escape causation in this only single moment.

Sorry for this rant :P . It only shows however how high quality is this module series.
 

Jason Liang

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There's two ways of looking at this.

One way is in-game explanation. In this case that thing you ****** is what shackles creation to fate. By *******, you change the nature of the universe and are allowed free choice. However, on some level this is happening at a level of abstraction rather than reality. Or perhaps it is at a quantum level that can't be explained or understood in real terms. So it's like how in Rogue One the Death Star engineer chose to design the Death Star with a flaw, Lor chose to design creation with a weakness that if removed would unshackle creation. He could have chosen to create the universe differently, in which case creation could never be unshackled from fate. He also chose that he himself does not determine if @@@@@@ gives you the &&&&&&, which can ******, or not. That choice is not in his hands- it's in yours.

The other way is out of the game explanation. Of all the characters in the module, only the PC is controlled by something outside of the module itself- you. So the PC is even more special than the gods (except perhaps Lor, if Lor is a stand-in for Baldecaran). But even though the PC is controlled by you, the PC does not have a free choice until the choice is written into the module. I know that ends up not making sense, but it's interesting to think about. Obviously you make a lot of choices when playing the game, but they are not free choices since they all lead to the same destination, same results. Only the choice at the end is a free choice, a true choice, since that choice leads to different results. Everything up to the point where @@@@@@ forges the &&&&&& is determined. The choice is if @@@@@@ gives the &&&&&& to you or not. You already know what will happen if @@@@@@ gives you the &&&&&&&, so that too is determined. But even Bladecaran/ Lor can't foresee how @@@@@@ will choose. You the player makes that choice.

This has been a good discussion, I feel like I understand Baldecaran's point even more clearly now. Perhaps his point is that free will isn't something that one thing can bestow on another thing- at that point it is no longer free will. The only thing that can be given is the potential for free will. Free will can only be achieved by something choosing to free itself and working to create it for itself- only then does free will truly exist.

This is why Westworld reminded me so much of The Prophet.
 
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Popiel

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
After playing all these great modules, Swordflight and The Prophet especially, I've found in myself enough inspiration to try my luck in modding. A long road before me, but I'm quite determined. I will probably use Project Q as a basis, I find it quite a shame that this excellent package is so neglected.
 

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