Overview
This is a MonkeyLungs review of a Sword Coast Legends player made module. “A Hero’s Humble Beginning’s” by module author: FrankelotDisclaimer: Module review series is currently taking a time out. The limitations of the tool set have worn me down and, for now, I won’t be devoting as much energy into SCL. I will keep playing and am looking forward to RoD and I will probably grab the console version for some co-op but for now my epic quest is taking a breather.
Sword Coast Legends Module Review
Module Title:
A Hero’s Humble Beginning’s
Author: Frankelot
DM Required: No
Editable: Yes
Recommended Level:1
(I gained 3 levels in the process of this module finishing up at level 4)
Thumbs up? Thumbs down?
Thumbs Up for:
Sword Coast Legends fans that want to play a fun, creative, single player module. An enthusiastic thumbs up! Give it a try.
Thumbs down for:
Players that find the flaws inherent in Sword Coast Legends too severe to look past them. If you are not a fan of Sword Coast Legends this module will not change your mind.
Review
A Hero’s Humble Beginning’s is an origin tale of a young would be adventurer, who despite being about to embark on the dangerous and unknown road of quest completion and monster slaying, still has time to fetch her or his mom some water and help the neighbors. This tale is the first part of a three part series, all of which are available for download through the in-game module browser. Starting off simple enough, the journey eventually leads to the discovery of something more sinister lurking in the outskirts of Neverwinter.
The module consists of several overland and city areas and 3 “dungeons”. Some of the areas are small, some are mid sized, featuring adequate to very good decorations, and none of the areas overstay their welcome. I would like to point out that the module doesn’t suffer from rampant overuse of special or environmental effects and as such doesn’t stress your PC, so for those of us on lower end machines you can expect significantly better performance than the Official Campaign.
If you read the author’s summary of the module it mentions that much of it can be completed solo. I would say maybe the first 20% of the module should be attempted solo. Once you head below ground for the first time make sure to bring a full party because many of the combat challenges can be quite tough. With a full party they are fun and well designed but if you go in like I did my first attempt and try to solo this with a brand new level one character, you’re going to french fry when you should have pizza’d.
The highlight for me in this module is the author’s refusal to allow the limited dialog tools to stop them from having multi part conversations. Using the ‘Quest’ system to assign quests to individual stages of conversation, thereby allowing continued conversational arcs to appear after completion of each ‘Quest’ helped make getting new quests and having conversation feel just a little bit less limited. The real fault in the quest design is a product of the software itself and this module author really went the extra mile to circumvent this weakness. I appreciated the effort very much.
I spent about 5 hours with this module, playing through from start to finish. Some players will get through it faster. I recommend using a brand new character with no hand-me-down gear for this as the encounters, while challenging, were definitely designed around coming in with a level one character.
A nit to pick can be found in the premise of the story and the focus on your ‘origin’. The level to which this bothers you will have a lot to do with your ability to suspend disbelief and just ‘roll with it’. Specifically, the module starts you out as a young person about to leave home for the first time and you are expected to provide some ‘head cannon’ to accommodate for this. Some players might not like being given such a defined back story including ‘parents’ and in some ways this was also a bit jarring for me. The game does not support this level of intricacy very well. For example I played a Halfling but my parents were humans. I just role played as an adoptee but there is a minor disconnect found in this aspect of the story. A better designed module tool would allow the author to check <Player_Race> and swap out the human parents for halfling ones or even just have a branching dialogue tree that allowed the author to write in dialogue pertaining to the main characters adoption.
Likewise the game starts you off on a solo adventure leaving home for the first time to set out on the road but soon you will find yourself in need of companions. Unless you want to die repeatedly of course. There is no real in-game or in-story explanation for how, all of sudden, you become leader of an adventuring group. This is more of a byproduct of the games module creation tools though so it’s hard to really hold this against the author.
If you like Sword Coast legends and want to try out some user made content and can look past the inherent flaws in the dialog editor I say give this module a try. Thanks for reading and thanks to Frankelot for pushing this story out of the safety of home and into the wilds. Safe travels.
Review Disclaimer
Currently the dialogue editor for Sword Coast legends is woefully deficient. Dialogue response choices for players are limted to two choices: 1. We accept! and 2. Not right now.
This is something that weighs heavily on any module and is not the fault of the module author. As such, I am not factoring this into the review even though the lack of any real dialogue options is a detrimental factor to the overall experience. Hopefully this is something the developers eventually rectify. However all of the most enthusiastic module creators, the early adopters, the die hard supporters of this game will have already been dealt the short end of the stick.