Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 2: Harpy's Bazaar

The Heroes emerged from the dwarven stronghold to find a city in the midst of war. Battles between Dwarves and Lord Geildarr's men waged in the local taverns and guard towers; occasionally spilling into the streets themselves. Geildarr's Lordsmen were also accompanied by a disturbing array of allies: Two-headed ettins, Zhentil warriors, and even driders. The driders were outcast evil elves, who had been cursed with the bodies of giant spiders. If Geildarr had forged an alliance with a drider colony, they would be a great danger to the North.

Lordsmen fight alongside dread driders.

Our heroes searched the city, joining the fray with any of the dwarves who seemed to be in trouble. Word had also spread among the enemy that the Heroes of Ascore had arrived, as they were immediately recognized by many of the evil guards. Hidden in one building, they came across wounded soldiers dressed in the black livery of the Zhentarim. A man was tending to them. This man appeared to be a doctor, and beseeched the party to leave the wounded alone. Augustar hesitated, but after a moment, he nodded his head, and agreed to leave them in peace. This proved to be a prudent decision, as the doctor revealed Geildarr's plans. His troops were tunneling into the dwarven stronghold from a tower in the southern part of the city, hoping to kill Milzorr and the dwarves as they slept.

It was decided that the party would look for any signs of forced entry in to the dwarf stronghold, then find this tunnel and put a stop to it. It did not take long to find the enemy. The party was searching the dwarf hold carefully, beginning in its cellars. The first dank store room they entered was dark, but appeared empty. Passing through a door, they soon found a motley crew trying to sneak quietly through the packed storeroom's dusty crates and barrels.

The giant ettins were hunched over to fit under the cellar ceiling, but still wielded their large clubs effectively. The driders had the words of arcane spells on their lips, that would surround them in a dangerous magical fire. Although the enemy was fierce, they proved little match for the Heroes of Ascore. Continuing on, they found the hole in the wall where the Lordsmen had broken into the dwarven stronghold. The party secured the area by defeating said men, and their trained griffons.

Before assaulting Lord Geildarr's keep itself, The Heroes took it upon themselves to explore the rest of Llork, hoping to smoke out any other troops, and thus attack the keep at its weakest. Avrilenne recognized an unmarked building from their previous visit to Llorkh. It was a temple to the evil god of tyranny, Bane. Stepping inside, the party made short work of the temple's priests, who attacked them from beneath a huge statue of their dread god.

Also, within what appeared at first to be an empty residence, there was the most beautiful singing coming from a room within. A woman's voice sang with a tone like that of smooth cream topped with a twinkling of cinnamon. Avrilenne simply had to see who could sing so full and with such feeling. Everyone else, from previous experience, suspected harpies. Everyone else, was right.

I saw the harpies coming from a mile a away.

The harpies marked the last threatening inhabitants of the city itself, the only task left was to assault the keep and find Geildarr himself. The courtyard of the keep was still packed with troops. Despite the thinning of their numbers, the Lord still paid the closest attention to his own safety. The Heroes were again victorious.

These little hints are ubiquitous.

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Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Chapter 1: No Rest for the Valiant

I return you now to the North of Faerun, to the land known as The Savage Frontier. Our party was now known as the "Heroes of Ascore," after their triumph in the city of the same name. It had been a short time since that great battle, only two tendays, as time is measured in the Realms.

Steve Nash, one of the party's clerical warriors, had decided to retire. He felt the calling of the priesthood, and decided to travel to the great city of Waterdeep. There, he planned to enter the priesthood of his patron Tymora, and find a quieter life as a temple healer.

The Heroes had taken to patrols around the wilds of the city of Yartar, where they now resided, they were typically rather boring; encountering at most a wild boar or a few goblins. On one of these days, they were approached by a physically imposing man, with long curly locks, and a scruffy beard. He was shirtless, holding a farm implement as if he had just been tilling his fields. "Hail, I am Marcus, Marcus Heartshield. My lady, Chauntea The Great Mother, has spoken to me in a vision. It is time my sword returned to the world, I am to help you."

It didn't take too many re-rolls to get these wild stats! I needed high Str, Int, and Wis as I plan to dual him to a cleric later.

"Well...," said Augustar, "We could use a replacement for Steve."

Marcus invited them into his humble farmstead for a meal. A goat was slaughtered in their honer, right in front of them, which took Aria a bit by surprise. The meat was cooked and seasoned to perfection, however. They talked with Marcus into the evening, and in the end, Augustar gave him a hearty handshake, and welcomed him to the team.

They barely had time to acclimate Marcus before there was a shake-up. It was the next day, the Heroes were making their rounds, and had decided to take a well deserved break in the shade of a tree on the hillside above Yartar.

Their thoughts were not quiet for long, though. The green hillside melted before their eyes into cold stone walls. The fair blue sky was soon covered by a dark ceiling of stone. The tree itself had morphed into a peculiar looking man, one that Augustar soon recognized. "Amanitas!" he exclaimed, "By the Gods, what has happened?"

He hasn't changed in the intervening weeks.

Before answering, Amelior embraced them each in turn. He paused for a moment at Marcus, adjusting his spectacles, "Hmm, I don't remember you. Oh well, my memory isn't what it used to be," he said.

Marcus's eyes went wide as Amelior hugged him tight. "My dear friends," he continued, "I am very sorry to have to pull you away from your well deserved rest. However, I have summoned you here as I believe these lands are again facing a great threat; one that can perhaps only be culled by the famed Heroes of Ascore."

He went on to explain that they were in the city of Llork, where the oppressed dwarves were now rebelling against the Zhentarim Lord, Geildarr. After the Heroes' victory, the orcs returned to their mountain kingdoms, the trolls faded back in to the moors, and the Zhentarim soldiers began the long trip south along the edge of the Great Desert. They came in droves, refugees, to the one city the Zhents still controlled, Llorkh, bringing the tale of their defeat by a horde of monsters.

"Heil...", no that can't be right.

Word quickly spread of the Zhentarim defeat amongst the dwarves, and they decided it was their time to strike. Both sides had taken heavy losses. The dwarves sent word to Amelior for help. He immediately thought of the Heroes, and summoned them there. After thanking them for agreeing to help, although he had not asked, he told them to see him at Secomber when their work here was done, then disappeared in a puff of sparkling, blue smoke.

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FRUA: Neverwinter Nights and Forgotten World: Rankings

The box cover of oNWN. Like many of today's games, you had the choice to buy a physical copy, or to download it painfully slowly on your dial-up. Source.

FRUA: Neverwinter Nights
2012 based on a 1991 game
Forgotten World
1998 based on a 1991 game

I'm not sure exactly when Forgotten World first went live, but its development is listed as starting in 1998, which was the year after AOL cancelled Neverwinter Nights.

I was pretty determined to make it through F:NWN, I really was, but after putting in about 100 hours on the two games combined, I'm not seeing enough that it is worth continuing. The original game itself was probably pretty cool in its day, I'll give it that. Forgotten World suffers from not having an active community anymore. As far as the other, the mechanics of the original didn't transfer too well to FRUA, and the port also suffers from numerous bugs. In the interest of wrapping them up and moving on down my list, here are their rankings.

The credits for oNWN. It is credited to Stormfront Studios, and has the same core design team as Gateway to the Savage Frontier. The FRUA port was done by the appropriately named GoldBoxFan. Source.

The startup screen for FW. We can see it was developed by Electronic Concepts; beyond that the designers don't seem to care to toot their horns too much.

Both games, as you probably already know, are meant to be resurrections of the first MMORPG, AOL's Neverwinter Nights. It was a wildly popular online game using the AD&D rules and SSI's Gold Box engine. The game launched in 1991, and lasted until 1997. It's reasons for being cancelled still seem to be a bit of a mystery, as the game was very popular, perhaps the busiest it had ever been, at the time of it's cancellation. This sudden end set a community adrift who wanted something to fill the void left behind.

The Forgotten World website was created as a place for this community to stay connected, and plans seemingly started immediately to recreate the game. The updated game, utilizing name changes to avoid lawsuits, launched in the early to mid 2000's. My understanding is that it was also very popular! Unfortunately, with so many more online-game opportunities available these days, the hype had died down to almost non-existent when I discovered Forgotten World in 2014. After playing for 40 or more hours, I had only encountered other players online twice.

Forgotten World: All are welcome!

The difficulty of the encounters seems to assume that most of the time you will have traveling companions to help you out. Enter FRUA; what seems like a perfect answer to the lack of players. The FRUA port allows the player to create a full party of six characters and experience the same encounters the online game had to offer! It turned out to be an imperfect solution however, as an important dynamic in the original is that if you wander into an area that is too difficult, when you are defeated, you awaken closer to the safe-haven of Neverwinter. In FRUA, you can get stuck in an area that is too tough to get out of (Like I did... where beholders were guarding an exit, and I didn't have a chance against them.)

Toast... toast...

In addition, the port, because of the design constraints of FRUA, also leaves out the element of random treasure, which was probably why I constantly seemed short of magic items and coins. Lastly, it's swimming with bugs. This isn't uncommon for fan made modules. In this case, it's pretty frustrating though, as most of the things I encountered would have been obvious on a SINGLE playthrough. All the author had to do was check their work, and most of these things would have been fixed. If you're going to put in hours and hours to port this massive game, why not put in the time to make sure it works?

I'm not talking about this type of bug.

These games by their nature don't stand to do too well in my rankings. I'm sure the original online NWN was a hoot, and if FW ever get's it's player base back, it will probably be a great experience as well. For now, they are not so much. 

That being said, while the straight port to FRUA didn't work, I feel it does have the potential for a good re-make. If it was overhauled with the single player experience in mind, as opposed to directly recreating the online one, I think it could be pretty cool.

Mechanics - Although at its heart it is the same engine that Gateway had, it's implementation is not quite as great here. I won't get into the minutiae; the interface isn't as smooth is all. FRUA is a bit of struggle-bus trying to recreate certain elements of the online game.

4. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

5. Final Fantasy 13-2

6. Final Fantasy 13

7. Forgotten World

8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

This moment is still satisfying in any of these games.

Storyline - Since quests needed to be repeatable, and have an open world, by nature there isn't an overarching storyline. Well, I guess the invasion of the Luskans is sort of a story, but not like you'd get in a single player game. There are little individual stories for quests that can be charming. FW ranks higher because content was added to the original.

4. Final Fantasy 10-2

5. Final Fantasy 13

6. Final Fantasy 13-2

7. Forgotten World

8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

Atmosphere - There were some decent attempts at atmosphere with phrases like "You feel the presence of old magic," and, "You smell fire in the distance." Luskan had even been built up so much that I was nervous as I entered and saw it's strange skies; almost like there was a volcano in the distance or something. I was soon let down by yet another hack-n-slash dungeon slog though.

4. Final Fantasy 13-2

5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

6. Final Fantasy 10-2

7. Forgotten World

8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

They had me for a second.

End Game - Not applicable here, as I both didn't finish the games, and they probably don't have an end game!

Difficulty - Now here's a category these two can sink their teeth into. These games are hard, no bones about it. Forgotten World is a little easier because of the aforementioned mechanic of transporting your hero closer to safety upon their death.

1. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

2. Forgotten World

3. Final Fantasy 13

4. Final Fantasy 10-2

5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Balance - These two are the anti-champions in the balance category. One second you're fighting wild boars, and then next square it's dracoliches. I really don't know what they were going for with how the encounters were set up. Surprise? Horror? Killing the will to live? Forgotten World has the distinction of being at the bottom because of its addition of randomized enemy hit points.

4. Final Fantasy 10-2

5. Final Fantasy 13-2

6. Final Fantasy 13

7. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

8. Forgotten World

At my level? Not a chance!

Music - Like most Gold Box games NWN has only one piece of music, and since FW has none, it's between NWN and Gateway. Gateway's tune has a mysterious quality I like, but Neverwinter's overtakes it with sheer epicness. Yes, I take this very seriously.

3. Final Fantasy 10-2

4. Final Fantasy 10

5. Lightning Returns: FF13

6. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

7. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Art - Both games have functional artwork. Forgotten World's has been retouched in higher resolution and with more colors.

3. Final Fantasy 10

4. Final Fantasy 13-2

5. Gateway to the Savage Frontier

6. Final Fantasy 10-2

7. Forgotten World

8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

Best Villain - I had yet to encounter many, if any, characters that could qualify as villains, so I'm reaching here. In F:NWN I encountered an evil wizard who had captured Willow Clovyr, the North's most skilled metal worker. I think I liked him just because he looked a little ridiculous. It's a unique look, he stands out.

This is all it takes to get best villain here at This Bard's Tales. Is that a turtleneck?

I really hadn't encountered any true villains in FW, so I'm going with a classic, the kobold! Kobolds are my favorite D&D monster. The only thing better than beating up on kobolds is when they surprise you with their cunning (ala Pool of Radiance). Kobolds are awesome; I'll try not to be biased here.

4. Gilgamesh (FF13-2)
5. Shuyin (FF10-2)
6. Broadhand (GttSF)
7. Evil Necromancer (F:NWN)
8. Kobold (FW)

Oh Kobold, you stole my heart... and my cat.

Worst Villain - In Forgotten World, there was some added content that was not in the original game. There was what, to me, appeared to be a Thieve's Guild you could enter with the right password. A man starts to say it, "Dra...", then is cut off by a dagger to the throat. I tried about thirty different words starting with dra, including doing them backwards because it was written on a mirror. No success; bummer.

In Luskan, I ran into this awesome curmudgeon of a pirate who just goes on a rant about how it aint like the ol' days anymore. I loved it.

4. Vaalgamon (GttSF)
5. Jihl Nabaat (FF13)
6. Caius Ballad (LR:FF13)
7. Angry Old Pirate (F:NWN)
8. Thieve's Guild Guard (FW)

"You kids don't understand what it's like to make a good, honest, living; killing and robbin' others!"

Best Ally - This one is easy for Forgotten World. The centaur who joins you in a fight is very majestic looking, and helps you out with tips as well. He's not so majestic in F:NWN. The sailor who was slowly being turned to stone, and perished dramatically, made an impression on me in that game.

4. Rikku (FF10-2)
5. Krevish (GttSF)
6. The Angel of Valhalla (LR:FF13)
7. Centaur (FW)
8. Stoned Guy (F:NWN)

Centaur: A Side by Side Comparison, FRUA: Neverwinter Nights.

Centaur: A Side by Side Comparison, Forgotten World.

Worst Ally - The worst ally winners are the men who you are likely to meet first in each game, the City's respective leaders; Lord Nasher and Father Bartholomew. Supposedly they offer quests, of which I didn't receive any. The rewards they offer of a few hundred coins or a couple gems are a pittance compared to the dangers you will have faced to recover such items as the're looking for.

4. Chocolina (FF13-2)
5. "Hope Estheim" (LR:FF13)
6. Jagaerda (GttSF)
7. Father Bartholomew (FW)
8. Lord Nasher (F:NWN)

Bart is ranked higher, because he actually gets a portrait in-game.

Best Enemy - There is a sheep shearing shop in both games. Upon entering, you are attacked by a wolf! I sort of fell in love with this guy. To keep things interesting, I'm going with the crocodiles in F: NWN. They were scary one-on-one, but funny with a party.

4. Angra Mainyu (FF10-2)
5. Jihl Nabaat (FF13-2)
6. Wolf in Sheep's Shop (FW)
7. Zhentil Fighter (GttSF)
8. Crocodile (F:NWN)

Worst Enemy - In F:NWN I dreaded fighting mammoths of all things. In the other Gold Box games I've encountered them, they weren't that threatening (Secret of the Silver Blades), but man did they beat the crap out of me in this one. If it was one, I would be okay, but they kept on coming! In larger numbers!

In Forgotten World, I'm giving the nod to the tree man. The're not all that threatening; more so annoying. They have a load of attacks from their branches and can grab on to you. They were so annoying because I fought a particular random battle with trees and thieves probably a hundred times or more.

4. Meonekton (LR:FF13)
5. Mammoth (F:NWN)
6. Guado (FF10)
7. Claret Dragon (FF10-2)
8. Tree Man (FW)

Just seeing a picture of this battle gets me on edge.

I really don't think I saw enough of these games to place them in the categories of mini-games and side quests, so I'm leaving those N/A for now.

Overall - Neither of these games is a hot prospect right now. Forgotten World just needs players, so it rates higher. F:NWN needs a complete bug check, and maybe more.

4. Final Fantasy 10-2
5. Final Fantasy 13-2
6. FInal Fantasy 13
7. Forgotten World
8. FRUA: Neverwinter Nights

I felt like I'd been hit by a feeblemind more than once while playing these games.

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