Doh!

The little secrets of blogger... well, after hearing from two people that they would've left a comment if they just could I looked at the blog preferences again and.. meh. Okay PP, you can leave a comment now. :D

Yesterday I was playing in Nexus again - normally I just sit on the bench for an hour waiting for someone to show up, if noone does, I leave again. The curse of having played on a server for too long. However, yesterday Chakra showed up and we went to an area called "San Simone" - an island with a vampire tower, and the interior of the tower is a huge maze with a lot of fun encounters. I think it's still one of my favourite, if not the favourite area in Nexus and reminded me that some day I'll have to come up with some fun adventuring areas myself.
I'm not very experienced with building adventuring areas actually, but as a player I want a high standard. San Simone is one of those areas I'd already be proud of if I could make something similar.
Of course, there are things I'd do different. In my mod I'd probably make a castle interior and set a different mood, I'd also try to add a little more variation to the encounters, but as for balancing, rewards and keeping the whole thing fun for the player, it's a great example. Not to forget it's maybe the only area in Nexus where death really means something - Chakra's and my PC were reminded of that in the end.
The feeling that death means something is what I want for every area in my mod, even though maybe not with such drastic consequences for your character's appearance. Although, there's Vuldrick's nifty little Vampire PC script... could be a fun addition.

Anyway, there are a few areas in Nexus that, even though maybe aimed at a more H&S-orientated player, were extremely fun and were very well balanced. My favourite might be San Simone, other examples incude a lot of kensail's work, such as Hope Island. All those wouldn't fit into my module, but set an example for the balancing and fun ratio (although, honestly, Hope Island by kensail was mostly fun because the xp rewards were pretty high. ;) ).

Am I starting to ramble again? Oh well.. okay, I'm hiring building slaves now. You'll have absolutely no artistic freedom, need to make things look exactly how I want them, and the skill to make encounters exactly how I love them. Sounds like a fun job? Great!

*looks around*

Oh well.