I’m pleased to share a newly created page featuring video clips from my Sanctum of the Archmage game modules.
The Sanctum modules are highly story-based games that emphasize plot, world building, dialogue, and character interaction. In addition to being teasers for the saga, these scenes are intended to showcase my skills as a writer, storyteller, and role-playing game designer.
Here’s an update on recent and upcoming projects in the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga!
Sanctum of the Archmage: The Sight and The Quest, EE Version was published on June 6th! This v5.0 release includes a number of new features, including major custom content updates and re-writes to the XP and crafting systems. The beginning in the forests of southern Carlissa has also been re-built using the excellent Wild Woods tileset, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. This release will only work in Beamdog’s Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, although I’m planning an update that should work in NWN 1.69 as well.
A Steam release of the EE Version is also planned for later this year. When that happens will depend on how long it takes me to work out how to re-package the modules for it, and/or to get permission to re-post the required custom content projects on Steam. Some folks at the Neverwinter Vault are developing a one-click install solution that would draw directly from its archives, and if I can make that work from Steam that would be the best and easiest solution. I’ll post updates as I learn more. I’ve had information that players are increasingly checking only the Steam workshop for new EE modules, though, so it’s looking increasingly important for me to get Sanctum on it as well.
After that, I’m planning to resume development of Sanctum of the Archmage 3: The Miracle Worker. How much time I’ll be able to devote to it, though, will depend on the level of interest in the re-release of Sanctum 1 & 2. If they do well and there’s a growth in the player base for NWN:EE, then I’ll definitely try to put more of my (sadly limited) time into that effort. If not, then I may need to switch more of my focus back to resuming work on my novel writing projects. And speaking of that …
This is a painful lesson that I learned from last year’s launch of my first novel, Dawn of Chaos. Without the right promotional work, you can write and publish a book, but next to no one will notice (let alone buy) it. It’s also easy to fall into the many pitfalls of modern indie publishing, such as the curse of the polluted also-boughts (which, of course, I did).
I’ve been devoting a lot of my spare time in recent months to correcting those oversights by reading and listening to dozens of books, articles, and podcasts on indie book marketing and publishing. A review of my first novel has also helped me recognize some opportunities I have to improve them. So I’ve decided to make a thorough edit of Dawn of Chaos my next writing project before getting back to finishing my next novel, Wrath of the Peregrine King.
Sadly, thanks to the changes made by Facebook to its algorithms this year, the ability of Facebook pages like mine to reach fans has been steadily (and notably) diminishing. Since a shift to Facebook Groups rather than pages seems to be the becoming the advised way to stay in touch with fans, I’ve gone ahead and created a Sanctum of the Archmage – Facebook Group. If you’re on Facebook, please feel free to visit and join!
That’s all for now. Thanks again for your interest and attention, and stay tuned for upcoming announcements!Sincerely,
I’ve just posted this over on the Beamdog Forums and on the Neverwinter Vault, and wanted to share it on my blog as well. There are screenshots on the Beamdog thread for those who may be interested.
Sanctum of the Archmage: Enhanced Edition
I’ve been working in recent weeks on developing an EE compatible edition of the Sanctum of the Archmage modules. That work’s mostly done now. I should be able to release SotA:EE Edition v1.0 after another playtesting run, probably in a few weeks at most.
I took advantage of the opportunity to add a couple of new features that I had cut for the remake that I released in September. Aside from minor typo fixes and the like, I also did a complete re-write to both the XP and the crafting systems. Players should now be able to advance to level 11 by the end of Chapter 2, and the penalties for using companions and summons have been flattened. Players should also be able to craft many more (and better) items from both mundane and magical materials alike.
I’m not planning to do much more to revise Chapter 1 and 2 for EE, though. The reason is that I’ve decided that any new modding efforts on my part are probably better devoted to resuming development of Chapter 3, which I suspended several years ago to begin writing my Sanctum of the Archmage novels. I’ve opened up the third module again in the EE editor, cleaned it up, and finally finished the extensive scripting needed for the elaborate “flying system” that it will feature. That will likely take a while, given my other commitments (writing, work and life in general). But all of it will be done in and for EE. And I’ll be looking to take advantage of every opportunity I can to include new content and features made possible by the extended edition.
I was inspired this evening to load my unfinished module, Sanctum of the Archmage 3: Mission to Rayche, in the beta version of the upcoming Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Here’s a shot of the “Midland Inn” area at night, courtesy of Six’s marvelous Wild Woods tileset.
I’m pleased to announce that the long-awaited v4.2 remake of the Sanctum of the Archmage game modules is finally available! Testing is complete, the documentation has been updated, and the files were packaged and uploaded on September 30th.
Version v4.2 represents a significant update to the Sanctum of the Archmage modules. It combines a number of new features in The Sight with a major remake of the previous (v3.4) version of The Quest. Formerly released as “The Miracle Worker: Act I,” The Quest has been unavailable in any form since the loss of the IGN Vault in 2014. Version 4.2 is the first release of Chapter 2 that is compatible with version 4 or later of The Sight.
With the v4.2 update, Sanctum 1 and 2 now use the same custom content architecture and can be played as a unified campaign. As a result, I am releasing them together on my current page for the saga on the Neverwinter Vault. Chapter 2 has been re-written to add new areas, quests, and dialogs, and lore from the Sanctum of the Archmage novels.
I hope you all enjoy the new version, and thank you very much for your interest!
Tony Donadio (Andarian)
Author, Sanctum of the Archmage
I’m pleased to announce that the long-awaited v4.2 remake of the Sanctum of the Archmage game modules is nearly ready for release! Testing is complete and the only remaining tasks are to update the documentation and to package and upload the files. It should be available on the Neverwinter Vault sometime during this weekend (the last of September).
Version v4.2 represents a significant update to the Sanctum of the Archmage modules. It combines a number of new features in The Sight with a major remake of the previous (v3.4) version of The Quest. Formerly released as “The Miracle Worker: Act I,” The Quest has been unavailable in any form since the loss of the IGN Vault in 2014. Version 4.2 is the first release of Chapter 2 that is compatible with version 4 or later of The Sight.
With the v4.2 update, Sanctum 1 and 2 now use the same custom content architecture and can be played as a unified campaign. As a result, I am releasing them together on my current page for the saga on the Neverwinter Vault. Chapter 2 has been re-written to add new areas, quests, and dialogs, and lore from the Sanctum of the Archmage novels.
I will follow up with another announcement — hopefully in another day or two at most — once I’ve finished releasing theupdate. I hope you’ll enjoy the new version, and thank you very much for your interest!
Tony Donadio (Andarian)
Author, Sanctum of the Archmage
I’ve now finished a full playthrough of the soon-to-be-released remake of the Neverwinter Nights module series, Sanctum of the Archmage: The Sight and The Quest. I found a handful of bugs and issues that I still need to resolve, which I’ll need to plan time for over the next few weeks. After one more playthrough to ensure they’re worked out, I should be able to release the remake sometime this summer.
The Sanctum v4.2 update will include a number of new and updated features to The Sight. More importantly, though, it will include a complete remake of the second module in the series, now titled The Quest. Originally released in 2007 as “The Miracle Worker, Act I,” it has never been published in a form compatible with the v4.x remake of The Sight. And it has been unavailable in any form since IGN’s Neverwinter Vault died in 2014.
The second module in the Sanctum series was very well received by the NWN player community of the time, receiving the Bronze Award for Module of the Year and the Golden Dragon Award for Best RPG in 2007. I’m very happy to finally be making the soon to be released (and I think, greatly improved!) version of it available to the Neverwinter Nights player community.
I’m pleased to announce that after a three year break to focus on my career and on writing my novels, I am returning to work on completing the remake of my NWN adventure module, Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Quest.
Formerly released under the name Sanctum of the Archmage 2: The Miracle Worker, Act I, the second chapter of my adventure module series has been unavailable for the last two years since IGN’s Neverwinter Nights Vault went off-line in the spring of 2014. The most recent version, v3.4, was also incompatible with the v4 remake of Chapter 1 that I released in 2013. I had wanted to release a remake of Chapter 2 as well, but was forced to put that work on the shelf to focus on re-booting my career, and on writing the saga’s novels.
I have worked sporadically on the remake over the last three years, though. And there is still some additional re-work that I want to do, particularly in re-making the “flying areas” at the end using the wonderful “Sanctum Flying Skyscape Tileset” that Estelindis built for the series. But I’ve decided that can wait for a future update. And without those changes, I think that another month or so worth of work would bring it close to a releasable (or at least beta-testable) state. So I’ve decided to move forward with that as a plan.
With that said, my work on the series over the next months should be as follows. In June I expect to be finishing work on The Quest, and completing my full edit of Dawn of Chaos. In July and August I hope to get the novel out for a professional edit and to finish production, and to set up a beta test for the module remake. In September I’m hoping to be able to release both to the public.
After that, I’ll work on remaking the flying areas for The Quest, and getting started on my next projects: producing an audiobook version of Prologue to Chaos, and starting work on my second novel: Wrath of the Peregrine King.
I’m thinking that should keep me busy for a while. 🙂
It’s been a while since my last post about the status of my writing projects, so I thought it was time to offer a quick update.
As of this morning the word count on Dawn of Chaos, the first full-length novel in the Sanctum of the Archmage Saga, stands at eighty-eight thousand, six hundred and seventy one (88,671) words. After some chapter and scene restructuring that I realized was needed to not rush the climax, that puts me in the middle of Chapter 17 out of 24, with fifteen out of a planned total of sixty-one scenes left to write. Since the chapters and scenes tend to shorten as the story moves into the climax, I’m estimating that this will probably involve another twenty to twenty five thousand words, with the final manuscript ending up somewhere in the range of a hundred and twelve thousand.
Another item of good news is that some of the unfortunate work-related distractions that were taking my focus away from writing are continuing on a path toward… well, not doing that quite so much anymore. I finally managed to complete a career change this summer into a position working in Data Science. As I settle in to that, I expect to be able to devote more of my spare time once again to my writing projects.
As for when Dawn of Chaos should be ready for publication: I think it’s likely now to be sometime early next year. On the one hand I’ve gotten much better at writing quickly and well, and can probably turn out at least a scene a week going forward. On the other I’m recognizing a need as the story evolves not to rush the climax, and I still have to figure out how to provide for a final editing of the book. I’ve gotten very good at being my own editor, but I’m not certain I should trust myself to do the full job on my own.
As for my modding work: I’m still planning to finish the v4 remake of The Quest (formerly The Miracle Worker, part I) after Dawn of Chaos is complete. Sadly, though, I think that will have to be my last foray into modding the story, at least for some time.
Dale just asked (on my 2011 post of the opening scene) whether there was any news on Sanctum 3. Since my comments on the status of the game modules is probably somewhat scattered throughout my blog over the last couple of years, I thought I should probably clarify the situation here. I added the following about this last year on the main modules page:
*As of summer 2013, further work on the game modules has been suspended until further notice, in order to work on completing and releasing the initial Sanctum of the Archmage novels. This includes the unfinished v4.2 update of Chapter 1 and remake of Chapter 2, as well as completion of Chapter 3 and work on Chapters 4-7.
Since there’s not a great deal of work left to do on the Sanctum 2 v4.2 remake, I do expect to be able to release it early next year. That will probably be just after I publish the first of the Sanctum novels, Dawn of Chaos.
At this point, however, I’m afraid I have to admit that it’s not clear to me when or even if I’ll be able to complete Sanctum 3 (much less the rest of the series), in module form. I very much want to do it, and if it were my only project I’m confident that I would be able to. Unfortunately, though, it’s not. As I wrote in the post when I announced that I was resuming work on the novels,
I’ve also had to take a hard look at my somewhat ambitious plans for the module series, given a realistic assessment of my other goals and the amount of time I actually have to work on it. My “real life” career as a computer scientist demands most of my time and attention, and I have plans for developing it further that will require additional focus on learning certain new technologies. Both writing and modding are things that I can only afford to do in my (unfortunately, not especially plentiful) spare time — which I need to be more hard-nosed about rationing. Some reflection has consequently forced me to the conclusion that while I’m not quite ready to give up on Sanctum as a modding project just yet, that I need to make more time in my schedule for other efforts as well.
I haven’t yet cancelled work on the modules. They remain in my mind as projects that I want to find time to get back to, when and if I can. At this point in my life, however, I simply have no choice but to put other priorities ahead of them. And at the present time, those have to be the demands of my career (and of striving to remain employable in today’s dysfunctional economy), and publishing Sanctum of the Archmage as a series of novels.