manikus’ Dungeon Craft

Here are 6 more pictures of individuals to use as Non Player Characters in your adventures. This time there is one human warrior that I forgot to post earlier and five new images of elves. They are all of the fairer sex, but don’t fear, the males are coming soon. They are available on the NPC page. As before, if you would like to use them for Player Characters, by all means feel free to do so. And as always, these small pictures can be converted to the 640×480 resolution by opening them in your favorite graphics program and reducing them to 50% of their current size.

I’ve done several portraits of an ancient Egyptian noble woman. You can find them on the NPC page. She was for my “Old Empires” design module which is now on the back burner, so the proverbial gods only know if it will ever get worked on again. I thought I would release the art for others to use.

This character is based loosely on the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. She was a very interesting character and is easily the most recognizable figure from Ancient Egyptian history. For a quick overview, see the Wikipedia article on Nefertiti. For an in-depth look at Nefertiti, I recommend Jimmy Dunn’s article, “Queen Nefertiti”.

Here are 8 more pictures of individuals to use as Non Player Characters in your adventures. They are available on the NPC page. Of course, if you would like to use them for Player Characters, by all means feel free to do so. There is no difference in the file between the two types, only in the naming convention used - PC portraits are named in such a way that the Dungeon Craft engine automatically loads them into the pool of pictures available for use with PCs. All other small pictures and portraits may be added manually to the pool if you wish to use them for that purpose. This time round, I am introducing you to some warriors and the famed ‘Sage of Erraxy’, who I am planning on using in “The City” collaboration project, about which I’ll write more at a later date.

There are some new folks moving into these pages. I happened to get a couple of images of the newest Non Player Characters for use in Dungeon Craft. For now, there are only humans and elves (and a centaur comes back to visit) as new NPCs, but in the near future expect to see some of the other races represented as well. And, of course there will be more humans and elves.

Following up from the last post, I have uploaded three new goblinoids and tweaked one. The new icons are of a flind and two kobold icons, and the tweaked icon is the gnoll I’ve always pictured there being a relationship between kobolds and gnolls and flinds. I know that kobolds are often depicted as being reptilian and gnolls and flinds as jackal-like, but I’ve always imaged gnolls and flinds as a kind of ‘greater’ kobold. The icon size does not provide enough detail to see the differences, but they do allow one to imagine those differences, while at the same time I have used similar skin-tones to show a subtle relation between the creatures.

The icons may be found on the Goblins and Goblinoids page.

I’ve added plenty of portraits and Small Pictures for PCs, NPCs, and large exotic monsters, I figured it was time to start working on some of the “bad guys” the players will face on a more regular basis. This particular fellow is an orc. Orcs are generally human-sized and range in color from green to brown to orange-red. They breed like rats, which means that there are always more to fight. They are almost as prolific as goblins.

This latest image can be found in the Bestiary section.

 Prohovost is a very diverse town about a week North of Yartar in the Lurkwood forest. It’s been a gathering spot of artisans and craftspersons of all sorts for many years. As such, it was a natural fit for a Merchant’s Guild to open up and for the Merchant’s Guild to join the Merchant’s League. What would otherwise be a tiny forest outpost is a very cosmopolitan and thriving small town. While not officially a part of the Lady’s Alliance, which some call the nation of Luruar, it can be thought of as a protectorate. In times of need, the cities of the Silver Marches will come to it’s aid, and likewise, it will aid where it can.
There are some notable characters in Prohovost. One of the persons everyone is familiar with is the clerk for the Merchant’s Guild, a halfling named Bodo. He is known to every shop and business owner in town and to all visiting merchants. As you can imagine, he probably knows more about the goings-on in Prohovost than anyone else. Though, most suspect that the head of the Merchant’s Guild, Guildmaster Giles, knows everything that Bodo knows and a bit more from his other sources.

Say hello to the small town of Prohovost. Lying deep in the Lurkwood and close enough to the Spine of the World Mountain range to know what winter really is, Prohovost is a thriving community of foresters and artisans.

The town has a Merchant’s Guild which belongs to the Merchant’s League allowing the goods made in Prohovost to be shipped all over Faerun. Because of this membership, Prohovost also has goods that you would not expect in a town this small.

Not officially part of the Lords’ Alliance, Prohovost is on good terms with member cities and could be considered a member-in-training. As such, in times of great need, Prohovost could expect help from it’s neighbors, though none of them are close enough to aid in immediate danger. Prohovost has lent members of the city watch to help fill out the ranks of the Lords’ Alliance Coalition forces on several occassions.

As this design gets completed, I will post more about the city, including more screenshots.

Many, many years ago, long before World of Warcraft or Guild Wars or Dungeons and Dragons Online, internet service provider AOL, computer gaming company SSI and publisher TSR teamed up to create the online experience NeverWinter Nights. The year was 1991 and the three companies hoped to capitalize on the success of Goldbox gaming (the game line from SSI) and AOL’s growing popularity as the online place to be. The game ran for 6 years and enjoyed quite a bit of popularity. Utlitmately, it was cut in 1997 due to disagreements between the three partners. [Wikipedia article]

Fast-forward nearly a decade to the Forgotten Worlds project. They’ve taken the old AOL NWN game and started reworking the look and feel, using their own world as setting for the game. They’re using some improved graphics, most notably in the walls and in some of the backgrounds (most of which appears on the test server). Gameplay is almost identical to the original AOL NWN, with the player handling only a single PC (Player Character) instead of a group of PCs. There are NPCs to meet, PvP (Player versus Player) areas to battle with others who may be online and quests to fulfill. There are two main drawbacks, at least as I see it. The first is that the graphics are rather dated, but they are working on it. The second is that there are not very many people playing the game. Out of a dozen or so sessions playing FW, I’ve only been online the same time as someone else one time. I know that the staff is waiting to advertise until they reach a milestone, that they say they are close to, but remains a secret of the developers. But, there are some pros for this game that far outweigh the cons. First off, FW is free. The download is free and playing on their servers is free. Secondly, some of the names have been changed (such as PC Atrributes) but this is a Goldbox game, so for all of you fans of Goldbox gaming, this is worth a try. Thirdly, FW is lightweight. It uses very little system resources.

If you do decide to give it a shot, my in-game character is named manikus.

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (FRUA) is the precursor to Dungeon Craft. FRUA was release by Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) in 1993 as the final Goldbox Game. But, SSI had done more than just release the last in a series of great games, they had released the engine and editor used to create the games. SSI released 2 different patches for FRUA bringing it up to version 1.2 in 1994, but haven’t supported the game since.

In comes the AOL community, which eventually moved to the whole internet. Over the next seven years, many talented programmers who were also fans of FRUA created hacks to change just about every piece of art and every letter of text in the game as well as the databases that contained the spells and monsters. But, not much was ever done to change the core of the engine.

Flash forward another 7 years to the present day, and just when you think FRUA would be dead and dying with much of the community gone. But in the last year, a major world-hack was released for FRUA called, OAUA - Oriental Adventures Unlimited Adventures. Not only have all of the graphics been replaced, the class and race names have been changed, new items have been added, spells have been added and changed, special abilities have been added and changed, and even new events have been added. Special ability and event editing is a major jump forward for FRUA.

To learn about OAUA

Since the release of OAUA, the code guru, Brian O’Donnell has made available the new events, which now are at 5 as well as adding other usability to FRUA through adding extended usage of the ^ symbol to represent both PC names as well as pronouns applying to them through a gender filter. He has done all of this using a very small number of bytes.

To learn about Brian O’Donnel’s latest

There may be many other threads showcasing Mr. O’Donnell’s work as he is quite prolific with changes and improvements to FRUA

Just when you start to think that DC is closing the remaining gaps between what FRUA and DC can each do, someone goes and moves the bar again.