The Story of my Module, Small Village Woes

Neverwinter Nights 1 Custom Content
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Hello! After all these years from it’s original release date, and since last year’s NW Vault 20th Anniversary relaunch, I wanted to share parts of the story behind my Hall of Fame and Reviewer Award-winning Module, Small Village Woes.

It’s 2002 in Seattle, late June. I’m 22 years-old. I moved from the East coast in 2001, having left NYC’s East Village about six months before 9/11. I had just quit my job in Seattle. I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself, but I always enjoyed using art projects to keep me focused. So, I decided to make a game and inspire myself. Neverwinter Nights was the perfect tool for this project.

Starting development in 2002 at the game’s launch, I spent the better part of the next many months building an eventual Hall of Fame and Reviewer Award-winning module, Small Village Woes, which were both titles that I wouldn’t know the module had earned until years later.

Small Village Woes was originally released in 2003; I didn’t so much as think of the module again until 2007. In 2014, after having been broken from years of neglect, I found my way back to fixing the module, giving it a layer of polish, and even scripting some new content. In 2022, I started work on an Enhanced Edition update that would add even more polish, and a few new surprises. In late 2022, I released the 20th Anniversary Edition of Small Village Woes.

And in all of that time, 20+ years, not a single player of my module—of which there have been many thousands of folks—has ever solved the Easter egg puzzle in the game. At least, I have never seen anyone write about finding it. I have been waiting over 20 years for someone to track down this special and silly secret in the Small Village.

In the next several weeks, I will be recording a narrated playthrough of Small Village Woes in a Director’s Cut / Final Edition of the module with a bit more polish, to be released at that time. I’m excited to talk through the journey of building this experience, starting way back with its post-9/11 impressionist ideas. I look forward to posting more about that here.

But what I’m really curious about, is if someone will find the unfound 20+ year-old Easter egg before I reveal it in my playthrough? If you give the module a try—happy hunting! :sparkles::egg::sparkles:

Download Link:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/small-village-woes

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:slight_smile: Well, I’ll try to find it. Just give me 5 Minutes :smiley:

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Well, to be serious I found nothing which looks like an easter egg. So it’s well hidden. Care to give a pointer?

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No pointers for now, but the upcoming update adds a bit of polish across the entire module, with a part of the polish being about how this little secret gets communicated to the player. :slight_smile:

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Has it something to do with a character “Z*” ?

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That’s correct! But I would say that trying to find in-game secrets by using the Toolset is maaaaybe cheating. :slight_smile:

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Well, it is cheating. But it isn’t that obvious that I find it at once. I like riddles like this and created some of them by myself … :slight_smile:

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