Player Housing Requests

[Wids]

*sees Tails peeking in again*

What's going on, Tails and everyone else? 

So I just spent most of the night with my Toolset, working on a new place for Marrelina...or rather, a new priory for the Disciples of the White Rod: The House of the Amber Hell. Marrelina will be both serving and governing the priory as its prioress (or, formally, its Mother-Tormentor).

I'm thinking of setting it in Luskan, since Luskan doesn't get a whole lot of love, and the people there might be fairly receptive to a new Loviatan presence (though there might be a bit of social chafing between the generally Lawful Evil Loviatans and the Chaotic Evil-ish pirates, smugglers, Umberlants and Aurilites).  I already have the building picked out; now I just have to dig out the screenshot and upload it.

Monasteries tend to craft, create or otherwise give something back to their communities, so given Marrelina's preference for wine (strictly for the taste and the sensation going down, seeing as she's no longer susceptible to drunkenness), I decided to go the vintner route with the monastery: Marrelina -- as well as any novices studying and training under her to become new monks and nuns of the White Rod -- will devote some of their time and discipline to the pigeage, fermentation, blending, casking and bottling of Melancholy Sour, a dry and sour white wine fermented from the juices of honeydew melons, grapes and lemons (the latter two of which give the wine its characteristic sourness, mitigated by the sweetness of...oh, it's all in the wine's Description!).

So given the nature of the priory and its keeper(s), my task is to combine prioress living quarters, living quarters for everyone from transient visitors to novices to adepts, a winery, a training hall, an oratory, a torture/detention/disciplinary area, a refectory with a kitchen and probably a latrine with showers as well (since Marrelina, like most ranking monastics, is a big stickler for cleanliness).  So it looks like I'll have to push the 5x5 limit with this one.  I'm just adding furniture and other items now; thanks to the [CEP] Dungeon tileset and a lot of clicking, I got the main hall just the way I wanted: Spacious, with a warm, fiery half to the hall's right and a cool, icy half to the left.

So, the big question: If I'm using the [CEP] Dungeon tileset, how much would a 5x5 interior area cost?   

[Wids]

(Clickie.)

So before I go too much further, I was hoping that this building in North Luskan could become Marrelina's place.  Would this be peachy-keen?

[Wids]

Another question (if someone would be kind enough to answer...):

You know how some items and some item appearances aren't on the palette, so you have to customize them?  Like, for example, how there aren't any green flame objects on the palette, so you have to take a regular orange flame or a red flame, place it somewhere, then change its appearance to that of a green flame?

Once you do that, is it better to use the Save to Palette option (ie. to save that Green Flame to the Palette itself), or is it acceptable if you don't do that, so long as the green flame's there when you Save the .erf?

[Neutral_Zone]

We can do this. When you're finished with the house, email me the mod or erf.

As for adding stuff to the palette, it's generally not necessary unless you intend on using said template across the whole module. As palette entries consume resources, it's generally better to avoid adding too much stuff.

That said, when adding things from an erf, I can select whch templates to import. Neglecting to import a placeable won't stop it from being in the areas, but if it's called by a script or some other, it needs to have a blueprint in the palette.

Oh yeah, a 5x5 area will cost 25 x 5000 gp given existing standards iirc. There's a forum topic around somewhere...

[Wids]

So it's only 125,000 Gold for a 5x5 interior with the [CEP] Dungeon tileset?  Wow, that's cheaper than I was expecting!  Thank you! 

And thanks for clarifying the impact which saving new or altered placeables to the Palette can have.  I have several altered objects in the priory thus far (ie. gibbets converted to hanging cages, a water pump and two commodes with their NWN2 appearances, grates which aren't found in the Palette added to the shower room floor, and so on), so I had to ask.  I won't be adding them to the Palette, then.  I haven't created any new scripts for the area, so scripts won't be an issue neither.

(It was tempting to create a disgruntled and sarcastically bitter Beholder NPC with a conversation script, I admit; given how many beholders Marrelina has beaten up in the Underdark excavation site, I could see her smacking a captive beholder around until it agreed to serve as her major domo and oversee the cloister in her absence.  But that would violate the "No NPCs" rule, alas.)

I should have the erf ready and uploaded soon.  Thanks again! 

[Wids]

I'm still working on the priory, no small part of which is coming up with Descriptions for absolutely everything, because one of my driving goals when it comes to building NWN locations is to have absolutely no placeables with "There is nothing special about this object" for their Descriptions.   

This gets a bit more involved with the signs found here and there around the monastery.  As one purpose of a typical monastery is to train students and teach them discipline (something which Marrelina herself would be delighted to do), a number of those signs, posters and notices are designed to help educate, advise and/or correct any novices whom the Prior or Prioress might take under his or her wing, and in light of the order's matron goddess, that includes various implements and techniques for inflicting pain and suffering.



See?  Loviatans are fun and educational!   

(Yes, the picquet is a real thing.  Let it never be said that we human beings lack ingenuity when it comes to turning each other's lives into living hells, eh?)




And for Ao's sake, clean your nasty feet before you step into the pigeage vat!  You wouldn't want to anger Mama, would you?   

What, you didn't know that "pigeage" is a real word?  You do now!   

[Neutral_Zone]

NPCs are allowed in public player housing as long as they provide a service. That said, sadly a beholder isn't quite appropriate.

Anyway, prices for player housing depend on the region. Given Luskan isn't so posh, it's cheaper. But it might also depend on the tileset you use... For the temple look I'd say 10,000 per tile. Like I said, there's a forum somewhere if you want to dig it up.

And yeah, there's a reason they call them picket fences. Ironic, that they are now staples of the typical innocent suburbia. That said, picketing does leave telltale marks and damage (bruising, scoliosis, etc.); just not super obvious stuff. Do be careful how detailed you get with that stuff though, we do like to keep the server PG.

Also, keep those feet dirty. Evidence suggests that's how wine was serendipitously made in the first place - from the yeast between someone's toes! Talk about a dose of toe jam...

[Wids]

NPCs are allowed in public player housing as long as they provide a service. That said, sadly a beholder isn't quite appropriate.

There's another useful clarification.  What about an NPC who stands by the casks just selling bottles of wine (and perhaps buying potions and drinks, but nothing else)?  Like a novice Disciple of the White Rod, perhaps?

Anyway, prices for player housing depend on the region. Given Luskan isn't so posh, it's cheaper. But it might also depend on the tileset you use... For the temple look I'd say 10,000 per tile. Like I said, there's a forum somewhere if you want to dig it up.

Oh, I thought that this would be the forum for that.  I'll see what I can find.

And yeah, there's a reason they call them picket fences. Ironic, that they are now staples of the typical innocent suburbia. That said, picketing does leave telltale marks and damage (bruising, scoliosis, etc.); just not super obvious stuff. Do be careful how detailed you get with that stuff though, we do like to keep the server PG.

Yeah, I figured that I should stick to the more superficial tortures and leave the breast rippers, pears of anguish and other invasive and just plain icky tortures out of this.  And the Judas cradle's just too nasty for anyone.   

(Speaking of which, I'm also steering away from the torture implements which aren't so much "torture" as they are "slow, painful means of execution," just for roleplay concerns; if you kill them, you can't keep hurting them, and that simply won't help with the whole "Loviatar can take all this pain away, so shape up and toe the line already, you wimp!" brainwashing idea.)

Also, keep those feet dirty. Evidence suggests that's how wine was serendipitously made in the first place - from the yeast between someone's toes! Talk about a dose of toe jam...

Egh.   

Be that as it may, Marrelina's not going to cut anyone any slack.  Think of all the feet-washing, hair-combing, towel-folding, floor-mopping chores and similar nitpicky stuff as Marrelina's version of "Wax on, wax off," except that Mister Miyagi didn't immediately reach for the whips and paddles every time Daniel-san messed up.   

[Wids]

So in light of this recent post, I took another stroll through Luskan yesterday and realized that it might be pretty hard for these White Rod monks and nuns to help Luskan's authorities tidy up the Prisoners' Carnival and all its instruments of public humiliation, torture, misery and death if our Luskan doesn't even have a Prisoners' Carnival (yet).  So I thought that I might take care of that.

And if the DMs want to run an event or three involving Marrelina convincing the Five High Captains and the Luskan watch that she and any novices that she might scare up would be the right people for taking care of the Carnival and keeping all of its gates, bars and doodads cleaned, oiled, sharpened and otherwise serviceable, then I'm perfectly down with that too.  Just let me know. 

(The building which I originally picked for Marrelina's monastery is just a thin little wisp of a building anyway, barely a facade concealing an alley to the Red Dragon Trading Post.  So it's not so suitable after all.)

So according to the Wikia article on Luskan, the Prisoners' Carnival is part of the Market, which is in the Southern Banks part of the city.  Right now, Luskan's Market isn't very big; it's actually pretty tiny for what's supposed to be the most popular area of the city.  So I thought to expand the Market too.  Expand the Market, add the Prisoners' Carnival, maybe toss in another housing area or two, then add the monastery on top of that.

So here's what I have so far:

If I'm reading this picture from the Wikia right, the Market's right on the River Mirar delta, next to the bridge which leads to an island in the delta, which in turn has a bridge leading to the Mirabar District and the Red Dragon Trading Post.  If my island with the Residential/Slums area and the lighthouse represents that little island between the Market and the Mirabar District, then I might have to find a way to lengthen the bridge(s) between my Marketplace/Market and that little island, because it's not much of a bridge at the moment.

(That picture may not be the most accurate in some details, I suppose.  Is Luskan on the Trackless Sea?  I'm pretty sure that the Trackless Sea is further south, and Luskan's actually on the Sea of Swords.  But I digress.)

Or maybe the Market-to-island-to-Mirabar-District island is actually the island with Marrelina's monastery, and my Residential/Slums/Lighthouse island is actually that picture's island which is bridged between the Southern Bank and the island with the Host Tower of the Arcane.  Presently our Luskan doesn't have any island between the Host Tower's island and the Southern Bank; there's a direct transition between the two.  Think we should add that island in somewhere?

I'll also need to add some more water and a bridge leading northward off of the island with the Carnival and the monastery.  How else could I adapt this area into what we know about the canonical version of Luskan?