Finishing Mystery at Willowbow

Yesterday we finished Saorsa's Mystery at Willowbow which was a enjoyable if somewhat short module. I liked the swamp area setting and the huge amounts of undead creatures that haunted the village of Cobbelich. The figths were sometimes a bit too easy and the story thin as horse hair but still a jolly good side quest for our little XP-hungry team. After this one we started to play BM productions' Tomb of Horrors Revisited FINAL. So far it plays out well but look butt-ugly. Yes I mean it. The area design really sucks which really affects me. I can take a thin plot and a smaller amounts of quirks but ugly things is sooo disturbing :) The module has got some good comments on the Vault though so I try to keep my mouth shut while playing and see if I get into it.
This isn't pretty area design:


Here's two shots from Mystery at Willowbow. See how brave my friends are helping my figther when he gets attacked by two wraiths... Below is a action shot of our team teaching those top-modell looking monsters a lesson.


On the module building front there is not so much new to tell. By an coincidence I found two mean bugs that took me about six hours to straighten out. I should write myself a reminder: "Next time I should make an spread sheet of all variables I use and why I use them!" I'm now into the phase were testing of all things that can go wrong in the game is tested. You know, all the ways the player can get him/herself killed, trapped or destroy important items (and repair them again). I've also started to implement all speaktriggers which will pop up the original room descriptions when the player first enters an important room or area and enables the map note. That's lots and lots of work :) And yes, the player can chose if he want to have those or not.

A little toolset screenshot of one of the first areas the player will visit.

Thanks for reading
/A