Dungeons & Dragons has always been a game for creative people. The

crude black-and-white illustrations in the original books left about 90%

of the game to the imagination. But even as the books got more colorful

and slick and descriptive, the core element of gameplay has always been

creating new worlds of adventure and magic. Cryptic Studios recognizes

this, and has followed in the footsteps of previous namesake titles to

ship Neverwinter

with a set of content-creation tools: the Foundry.

Toolsets in Previous Games

Way back in 2002, the first Neverwinter Nights shipped with the Aurora

toolset, which allowed users to build entire game worlds

quickly and easily, and share them with the world through Gamespy. While

it was never a true MMO (a server could only hold 96 players at a time,

plus DMs, so populations were never "massive"), a number of creators took

cues from Ultima Online, EverQuest and other early-generation MMOs to

create persistent world servers, which behaved like MMOs.

But it wasn't just MMO wannabes getting cranked out of the Aurora

toolset. With the right haks (custom content modules created by the

modding community) and a bit of scripting know-how, it was possible to

create just about anything. And with Gamespy, it was super-easy to find

exactly the kind of game you wanted to play: the tweaked-out uber-gear PvP

arenas where you could test your build theories; the adults-only servers

that used, erm... "specialized" hak packs; the strict RP servers where it

could take weeks to earn a single level and where your charcters could die

permanently. Whatever you wanted, you could find it somewhere. And if not,

you could build it yourself.

The updated Aurora toolset that shipped with Neverwinter Nights 2 was

even more powerful. It was no longer tile-based, terrain could be deformed

into hills and valleys with push-and-pull brushes and buildings and other

objects could be placed anywhere, facing in any direction. Of course, the

increased power of the toolset made the whole system more complicated. The

new maps used walkmeshes which had to be downloaded for each server, in

addition to any special custom haks. And the walkmeshes could be huge in

size, so it wasn't really possible to casually skip from server to server

to try them out and get a feel for them like it was with the original

game.

Star Trek Online's Foundry

The Foundry in Cryptic's Neverwinter is something of a "spiritual

successor" to these older toolsets, but it will be a tool of a different

sort. It will more likely closely resemble the Foundry currently employed

by Star Trek Online,

another Cryptic game that features user-generated content. Instead of

D&D-themed Lego, it will be D&D-themed Tinkertoys.

Star Trek Online's Foundry toolset isn't really capable of creating

persistent worlds. It comes with a limited selection of pre-made interior

and exterior maps, most of which are used elsewhere in the game and are

recycled for use in the toolset. These maps can be manipulated in clever

ways to make them seem new and unique and different, but not in the same

way that maps could be manipulated in the Aurora toolset. In the Star Trek

Online Foundry, terrain cannot be deformed with push-pull brushes.

Customization is achieved by the placement of objects, effects and

monsters/NPCs around the map.

The Foundry in STO is very good at creating story modules, and that will

likely be the strongest part of the Neverwinter version as well. Story

events (including custom maps and scripted dialogues) are placed like

links in a chain, sometimes branching out depending on the choices made by

the player. This process was somewhat more complicated in the Aurora

toolset, often requiring meticulous dialogue editing and confusing

scripting. Planning out a story in the Foundry is a relatively simple

matter of dragging and dropping events from the library on the right to

the assembly area in the middle, and then editing the details afterward to

make them fit together properly.

The chief difference will be that it is highly unlikely that the

Neverwinter Foundry will allow users to create space missions.

Current User-Generated Content

During the past two beta weekends, players were able to experience

Foundry-built user-generated content by picking up quests at the bulletin

boards throughout the city. So far, everything that's been available has

been of the "adventure module" variety - short, self-contained adventures

with lots of combat or exploration.

These one-shot adventures can be strung together to form campaigns.

Campaigns are daisy-chained adventures following a common story arc, and

each adventure serves as an "act" in the overall story. There were a few

campaigns available during the first beta weekend, and a couple of them

were very well done. The second weekend's focus was on other things,

though, and the only stuff available on the Foundry was one-shot

adventures.

In terms of quality, user-generated content will be all over the map.

Foundry missions in Star Trek Online range from sublimely-crafted stories

that play out like an episode of one series or another, to ridiculously

bad insta-fails created by people with zero command of the written

language and/or no idea how the Foundry actually works. Most efforts will

fall somewhere between these two extremes.

In the beta weekends, I was able to run through a number of pre-made

Foundry adventures - likely crafted by Cryptic alpha testers making sure

the tech worked. The first weekend, I ran a 3-part campaign involving drow

and intrigue, which was really well done. I investigated an abandoned

temple finding clues, and eventually tracked the villains to a nasty

dungeon. Thought and care went into the design, and it was reasonably well

executed.

For the second weekend, I ran a rather silly one-shot adventure involving

a Deck of Many Things and a poker game gone horribly, horribly wrong. It

was fun, the fights were challenging, but not particularly cerebral. This

one is probably a good gauge against which to measure other Foundry

modules, a solid 3-star experience.

Making a High-Rated Adventure

While the Neverwinter Foundry is not yet available to the public, there

are some things you can do to prepare for it so you can hit the ground

running when it does launch.

alt="Neverwinter Foundry - really bad reviews" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/248969">

Try not to do what this guy did.

LRN2ENGLISH - Internet and gamer slang makes for

quick and effective communication, but sloppy grammar and bad spelling

gets noticed and earns negative comments and votes. The Foundry won't

likely come with a spell-checker, so if spelling is an issue, compose

your dialogue in another program first and copy/paste it once it has

been checked and edited. Learn the STO Foundry - It's likely to be close to

what the Neverwinter Foundry will be, so get some practice. You will

need to earn 10,000 Refined Dilithium on one character to unlock it, but

that can be earned fairly quickly by running Fleet Actions and such, or

you can buy it with Zen. Plan Ahead - Know what kind of story

you want to tell, and plan it out in small steps. That's how the Foundry

works anyway (at least in STO), so knowing what you need to do to move

from one story point to the next helps a lot. Tell the kind of story you

would want to experience, and other people will respond positively. Play Other People's Stuff - This will give you an

idea of what is possible with the toolset, what kind of things you enjoy

playing and, occasionally, a rough idea of how to make it happen. One

creator might have really cleverly-designed dungeon spaces, one guy

might have done something creative with dialogue trees, etc. Be Concise - You might be proud of the six pages of

dialogue you just wrote, and it might be the most awesome thing ever,

containing subtle clues leading the reader on a breadcrumb trail to the

next objective. But a lot of hasty jackasses will just skim through it

to get to the next fight, and get angry when they can't find it easily.

Make sure our players have clearly-defined goals and know exactly how to

reach them.

User-generated content can be an amazing thing. It keeps the game fresh

without placing content demands on the developers, allowing them to focus

more attention on bug fixes and improving game systems rather than

cranking out new dungeons. With the Foundry, that will be our job.

Are there any old published adventure modules you're looking forward to

seeing in Neverwinter? Let us know in our comments!