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In something like 99.6% of scenarios, the outdoors is a required but boring part of the scenario, green fields, forests, mountains. Blades of Exile — and soon to be Blades of Avernum — users know that when creating the outdoors for a scenario, there are two options for the basic terrain; cave floor or grass. Er... talk about limitations! Most scenarios I have played take place on the surface, but almost invariably, the region — be it valley, island, or continent — looks pretty much the same. Grass, sprinkled with flowers and pebbles, with little clumps of trees, mountains, maybe some rivers. Then there are the scenarios set in Exile. Dreary cavern after cavern, with dark blue rivers, twisted trees. The outdoor area in one of these scenarios could be pulled out and loaded into another of these scenarios. And nobody would be any the wiser. Also, the surface areas are almost always valleys or islands. Probably because it’s easy to wall off your outdoors with water or mountains; but c’mon, you can be a little more creative than that, can’t you? How about trees which get subtly denser and denser to the edge of your outdoor area, ending in a solid wall of blocking trees? What about high walls, or make a terrain type (like grass) which calls a special telling the party they have come to the border of the region they were sent to explore, and do they want to leave? Then rim your outdoors with it. Think about it — is the entire world created like this? All valleys and islands? Are there no countries created in the peaks of mountains, no desert kingdoms, no deep, dark wildernesses of trees? Are there no jungles, no arctic fields of snow complete with icy palaces? No cores of molten lava? And what about alternate universes and kingdoms in the sky? Sandy beaches? Flowering forests? Swamps? Where is the exotic adventure going to take place if not in an exotic locale? The truth is, BoEers tend to take without question the terrain designing style of Jeff Vogel and use it in their own scenarios. While his worlds were fine, duplicated Valorims and Exiles get seriously boring after the first hundred scenarios. What especially irks me is when someone creates a storyline which is completely unrelated to the Exile/Empire world fans have dubbed Ermarian, and yet make their region — let’s call it Tedia Vale — with the same grass-sprinkled-with-flowers-and-clumps-of-trees-and-mountains-and-rivers recipe. I could name a dozen custom graphics sites which have as yet untapped brilliant terrain sets — deserts, snow sets, new trees, cities and doodads on hill terrain for making an all mountainous scenario, etc. Not to mention the graphics one could make oneself to create any of the regions mentioned above — and more. This may sound like a gimmick, and I would be the last person to suggest that the graphics make the scenario. Yet it certainly adds a new dimension — pardon the pun — if your outdoors is not that of Tedia Vale. Outdoors are often boring. New graphics and interesting formations will spice it up. Something to remember if you do create an alternate setting for your scenario is that everything has to go along with it. The monsters in the wilderness would be bears, wild wolves, nephilim and strange tribes of forest-dwelling primitives, not sliths. The inhabitants of the desert wouldn’t make their living from the forestry industry. The arctic is not densely populated. There are fairies in the flowering forest. Just use common sense. And your plot should be related to your setting as well. Perhaps there is a lack of water in the desert, and the oases are disappearing. Or perhaps you are part of an exploration team in the far north, and your job is to report back on the magical phenomena that have been occurring there. Consider Pyramids, by Juliet Rowley. Admittedly, this wasn’t the greatest scenario ever, but the designer made an enormous effort to relate her plot to her setting. If you want examples of where new outdoor terrain is used very effectively, you have no further to look than the scenarios of Brett Bixler — particularly Masks and Quintessence. I mean, wandering around inside a crystal soul is a far cry more interesting than in a generic Valorim-clone. The Lost Expedition is an interesting example of how the outdoors is made unique with out using custom graphics. It and An Apology both use all towns — but some ‘towns’ are drawn like outdoor sections, with battles, etcetera, so the player still feels as though they are traveling between settlements. One complaint I would have about Brett Bixler’s outdoors is that there is a lack of special encounters, and the ones that are there are white dots in plain sight. Just because you have a nice-looking outdoors doesn’t mean it should be encounter-free. The swamps should have hidden areas, complex battles, and so on. Skip Tedia Vale. Try something new, and set your masterpiece somewhere interesting. |
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