This is the official announcement of the Spring 2014 Adventure Building Challenge.
In the Adventure Building Challenge, members of the NWN community are challenged to produce a playable module in a limited period of time, and in accordance with some previously chosen theme or adventure seed, while also observing various restrictions on what Custom Content may be used. See this thread for more information, or this one for more recent discussion.
In this challenge, participants will have two months to make a module. To successfully meet the challenge, a playable module must be released and available for download no later than June 1, 2014. When completed, a module submission for this challenge should be released as an entry on the new vault (duplicate entries on the old vault may of course also be made, if desired), and should include the following tags: Adventure Building Challenge, ABC, Spring 2014 ABC. In the interest of producing high quality, polished submissions, participants are encouraged to produce at least a working "rough draft" of their module in the first month (i.e., by May 1, 2014) so as to spend the second testing and revising it, and are also encouraged to post progress reports indicating whether or not they are likely to meet this goal, but neither is a requirement. Participants will also be encouraged, but not required, to engage in a review and discussion of each other's submissions once they are released.
THEMES:
The themes for this cycle are as follows (2 each picked from two separate lists):
1A) Make a module for a warrior PC (i.e. a member of a class with full BAB progression such as a Fighter, Barbarian, Weapon Master, Dwarven Defender, etc.).
1B) Make a module using no more than one hak
2A) A Plague on You - The PC is tasked with the seemingly simple task of eliminating a plague of vermin, but in the process stumbles on a much greater plot.
2B) Blast from the Past - Pick a theme chosen for a previous ABC cycle to be used again. In this case that would mean picking one of the six themes chosen for either the March or April 2013 ABCs:
Treasure Map - the PC has come into possession of a map said to lead to treasure.
Into the Abyss - the PC finds himself on a journey through fiend-infested planes.
The Real Anti-Hero - the PC takes on the role of the goblins PCs routinely slaughter (or something along this general theme where the PC is the champion of the "Bad guys").
Pieces of Eight/All at Sea - a watery adventure set amidst an archipelago of small islands, possibly but not necessarily involving pirates.
Perilous Lodgings - the PC takes refuge in an inn, house, etc. that proves to be much less safe than anticipated.
Summoned - Inspired by the Summon Spell. Instead of a dire animal, elemental or planar beastie, some powerful magic wielder ends ups summoning the PC, intentionally or otherwise, to aid him.
Participants are encouraged to combine as many different themes for the cycle as possible, ideally using at least one from the first list (1A or 1B) and one from the second list (2A or 2B).
CUSTOM CONTENT RESTRICTIONS:
Module-specific custom content is restricted to no more than one of any given file type (hak, movie, character file, etc.), and the combined size of any such module-specifc content may not exceed 10 Megabytes in size. Participants are also encouraged to include a readme file indicating any sponsored haks used, level or other expected characteristics of PCs, or anything else it would be desirable for players to know before playing your module, and such a readme will not be counted against the size limit.
Sponsored Custom Content is not restricted. One may make use of as much of the CC found on our list of sponsors as desired. One may also freely use any hak released as part of the Custom Content Challenge, even if it is not listed there.
The module must be playable in vanilla NWN, meaning that third party add-ons (NWNX, NWShader, etc.) are not required to play it.
The module may be set up to take advantage of optional content outside the above limits (e.g. music files) provided that it can still be played without such content.
POINT SYSTEM:
Participants will be awarded points based on how well they complete the challenge while observing the various rules. This allows us to enforce the rules rather loosely (since it is hopefully all in fun) while also not ignoring them completely (since some structure is needed). Points will be kept track of and can accumulate over multiple cycles. Awards and penalties are as follows:
+100 points for releasing a module as part of the challenge
+10 points for using one of the proposed themes
+15 points for using at least one theme from each list
+5 points for using 3 or more themes (note this is +5 total for any number of additional themes used, not 5 per theme)
+25 for releasing on time
+25 for respecting CC restrictions
+25 for a submission free of game-breaking bugs
+15 for releasing a submission at least 3 days early
-20 for releasing a submission that is seriously buggy
-1 per day for submitting late
-1 per mebabyte used in excess of the CC limit.
The cycle organizer (me) reserves the right to award further bonuses and penalties beyond those listed here as additional reasons for them occur to him, as well as to generally revise the system in response to feedback from the community.
EDIT: Note that details of this point system have been altered from what was originally posted.
FINAL COMMENT:
Have at it and have fun!
