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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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!