Well, this was a surprise! I was wondering how you pull off a kids' friendly module with Hallowe'en that's able to keep their interest but I think this will manage it. It is a very atmospheric module with all sorts of spooky characters, witty dialogue that adults might appreciate as well, with only the odd moment where I thought "Ouch! Is that okay for kids?" However, it has been pretty expertly built and the author has put a lot of work and thought into it as can be seen from the sheer amount of scripts in the toolset.
To begin at the very beginning as someone famous once said: the atmosphere is here in spades. Well constructed with plenty of fire, light and dark at appropriate times. It has a cast of pretty shady characters but you never feel threatened by them as there is no combat at all. And there are quests . . . . oh boy are there loads of quests! Not gonna lie. I didn't finish even half of them but they were varied and quite well thought out. Enough to keep you and your young'un occupied for quite some time but likewise you can dip in and out.
So when you arrive you meet Master Snog ( yes, I know! It goes on in that vein). He allows us to play as a skeleton, vampire, mummy etc. so after going for vampire I'm sent off. I confess the first scene didn't really grab me - much too busy for my liking. However, when you reappear in Skullington Falls you get serious spooky atmosphere. You meet Vlad Sharp Tooth who tells you it's trick or treat time and encourages you to go knocking on the doors for trick or treat. This involves visiting a fair amount of houses. You can't go into any of them but at each door you receive a sweetie in your inventory.
In fact, a warning here. Don't try to enter the houses. I did and was stuck in a couple resulting in a restart - the sort of issue where you go in, the house half disappears and the door won't open to let you out again. While we're on the topic of doors, aficionados of doors in NWN ( and you know who you are!) will have a whale of a time with door spotting in this module.
Most of the quests are fairly easy to finish. There are match the colour with the correct barrel, collect 10 things for me and fetch and deliver quests available. However, I was disappointed that the most interesting to me was the one I couldn't get to work. A swamp tree-like figure asked me to collect swamp gas to restore him to his former self but what really got me going was that he told me I'd need to use a grapple hook across water to achieve this.
By a coincidence, I have been looking at rope climbing scripts/packages in NWN for another project and this motivated me to get one of the the weird sisters her ( much needed!) hair appointment in order to get her grapple rope. Not sure what she was doing with one in the first place. Anyway, the excitement fizzled out as I couldn't get it to work. I found the place on the river bank where it should be used but immediately the module glitched and I was teleported back and forward until I left the scene.
Before summing up, one feature I did like was the large map available, already filled in with the map pins I'd need. Because the quests were to some extent reliant on each other and involved a fair amount of running here and there, it was good that I didn't have the additional worry of running about trying to discover where everything was.
Positive - I thoroughly recommend you dig this out at Hallowe'en and give it a whirl. I enjoyed it immensely. It gets you in the mood early and maintains it through quirky Hallowe'en related characters, quests and rewards. I don't know if it has a satisfactory ending as I didn't make it to the end - far too many quests for that - but I'm not sure that matters. The building is consistently good and the dialogue at times brought a smile to my face, as did the skeleton's name " Mommy Dearest" which older readers will understand. I can see most kids really enjoying this. It may be a bit too spooky at times for the very young but you'll know that soon enough if it is and most will take it in their stride. Well done to the author for a module that captures Hallowe'en for kids well.
Less so - If I leave out my big disappointment regarding me sailing across the river thanks to my grapple hook, there weren't many things to dislike. I had the odd twitch, age wise, at the sight of a skeleton swinging from a tree but then we casually buy skeleton outfits etc. for Hallowe'en so I'm maybe in danger of getting a bit precious here. I definitely did feel queasy about leaving the little boy I'd been charged with delivering to the temple in the somewhat unreliable hands of Lucifer. In fact, the latter actually really gave me pause, especially when I reported completion back to the nursery and received the reply that the poor little chap needed more discipline than they could manage! However, if you're not gonna have any combat maybe the odd dark comment is acceptable? As always, you decide.
Yes, it is definitely a little buggy. Buildings, the rope and even getting the quests out of order all caused me to spend more time on them than I'd have liked but as a package, and especially at Hallowe'en, this definitely works.
It was last updated in 2015 and can be found on the Vault here. Note that it does need CEP to work which, if you don't have it, is quite a big download.
This module is a little different from the ones I've looked at so far. The module, as the name suggests, consists of the PC learning the tricks of the trade at Ninja school rather than having a plot. It ends as you graduate.
Don't be put off by the fact that there is little storyline, however. I found this to be a delightful little module which has no extra assets such as haks and didn't take too much time to play but had been designed to make you feel you were learning skills such as combat, patience and judgement in battle. This I felt it did well.
You begin by talking to Master Ugway who tells you that you are about to begin your training to be a ninja. You have been stripped of any previous equipment your premade character might have had and are given only what you need to complete the tasks.
The first of these is to attack a set of dummies which offer no resistance. I'm proud to say that this caused me no bother at all! However, you then progress to dummies who hit back or move and later to other creatures who make life a little more difficult.
Once the physical aspect of training has been successfully completed you move onto the more intellectually demanding ones through a series of puzzles. I thought these were quite unusual and beautifully designed. I won't give any spoilers other than to say the one with the chess board had me stumped for a while. Helpfully, the author has provided a hint board for this and the other mental challenges which might prove difficult for the youngster playing the module. It gradually gives you more comprehensive advice on how to tackle the puzzles which I thought was a good touch.
After the chess board you come to another puzzle, quite a simple one but again beautifully designed with what you have in the toolset. It maybe wouldn't tax an adult but I could imagine a young person quite enjoying working this one out. Throughout the whole training there is no actual violence unless you count the training dummies and if you are defeated you merely reappear where you started that test.
The module ends as you might expect, with you graduating from ninja school and being sent on your way to your first job. This was done through a short but atmospheric cutscene which was a nice way to end an enjoyable module.
Positives - The first thing to say here is that I loved the fact there were no extra downloads, unless you want to have a look at the rough walkthrough. Don't get me wrong. I love looking at t all the new content created by the community but every now and then it's good to see what can be done just through the original materials and ingenuity. You just jump straight in and the whole module shouldn't take more than an hour to complete, even for a youngster. It was fairly basic in look but well thought out behind the scenes, especially the way the later puzzles were thought out in the toolset. A case of something difficulty to design made to look simple. There were no major bugs in the game and I enjoyed playing it more than I thought I would as I like a decent narrative and character building in my modules.
Less so - Really just the comment above. If you enjoy storylines and interesting characters this is maybe not for you. It does exactly what it sets out to do and no more but kids might well enjoy it and if you are used to working with the toolset you will also appreciate what was going on behind the scenes. I did wonder if the authors could have continued it a little and ended it after you complete your first real world task as a ninja but can't argue with the idea of just a training college. Final small issue is that I had a fatal crash coming out of the game but I play on a Mac so maybe it was something machine specific. If you're looking for a way to entertain your youngster for an just an hour or so this might fit the bill.
It was last updated in 2014 and you can find it here on the Vault.
This is a module aimed at very young children - the author says it was created for a five year old girl. As such, in order to be kid friendly at that age it concerns itself very much with a colourful world full of interesting things to pick up. The author states on his Project page that there is no combat in it which makes it a hard play for adults and maybe older kids but there is still plenty to admire. This is no quick module. The creator seems to have put a lot of work into it, resulting in around 20 or so areas ( many interiors of course) and a quick look in the toolset confirms that.
The main character is called Fiona although you can play any character you like. Full instructions can be found on the Vault project page from the author about the different options and versions of the PC available to you for customisation. Interestingly, the author also provides an RTF file with detailed instructions on how to change the module in the toolset to accommodate whatever your own child is called. A nice touch !
After collecting all the colourful baubles and some dresses from Fiona's cupboards ( not all of which suited my male barbarian Orc PC as you can see from the screenshots !) you visit some rooms in her house adding to your collection of pretty things. This area, as indeed the first few areas, was beautifully thought out and filled with colourful items which would appeal especially to kids around 5-7 I think. The area outside Fiona's house is well decorated with gardens and you can see that this was a labour of love for the author and to great effect. The array of colours is impressive and just what a young child might like to look at.
The final surprise for me on Fiona's farm was the availability of horse riding! I'm always a sucker for riding a horse in RPGs although it seldom seems to make sense after a while. It is handled cleverly in this module without having to use the radial menu by allowing you to mount through a conversation while also employing a dismount token to step down from the horse. You can also buy a new horse at the stables in the village. This worked nicely. Anyway, nothing much else seemed to happen in this area so I headed off to the next ; the village.
The village is filled with quite a few buildings, most of them shops of various kinds where Fiona can pick up some more interesting baubles. None of the stores offer magical items or armour because it isn't needed with no combat so I found myself buying rather than selling. Here you can pick up a quest, which is probably the main one, to search for a lost son which I did but after exploring every corner of the area I became baffled as to where the young lad I was looking for could be.
For a first quest aimed at a five year old, which would usually be very simple, it made me feel totally incompetent. Having finally found the young lad concerned MUCH later I can see that I was wrong to assume the first quest would be simply solved ("he's hiding behind the barn" sort of thing ) to give me some confidence. It might have been better to let the youngster see that the idea of quests is that they can solve them, before gradually making them more challenging.
On my first play, frustrated by not being able to find the young lad in the village area I decided to go back to the garden and investigate the other exit.
And that is pretty much that. A confession at this point. I went into this module trying to think as a 5 yr old and reckoned it was too hard for such a youngster. Having replayed it I can now see the answers and, as usual, they are obvious once you know them.
On my first play, having really enjoyed getting the feel of this module and the care with which it was built, once I had left the village my enthusiasm waned a little as I visited another four or five areas, none of which were built as fully, while picking up another three or four quests none of which I could solve. A good example was the unicorn who came running up to me saying he could hear sounds of somebody crying in the dragons' den. Having, I thought, thoroughly investigated the aforementioned den, I heard nothing and could find nobody in distress. So, about three areas later I gave up, not realising that my clue which I had missed was only about three inches tall! Again, possibly my haste to get on was at fault here. . .
Eventually all the stories come together quite nicely with a lot of having to find something for A, take it to B who wants something else etc. resulting in a lot of running around. I found myself thinking that maybe quick waypoints or something else might have been an idea.
Having eventually solved everything, I suffered the ultimate indignity on my return home. It had taken me so long to figure everything out it was the middle of the night, my house was locked up and I couldn't get in!
Positives - The first ten minutes of this module were without doubt among the most interesting I have seen in any module. Beautifully built areas with some small assets I hadn't seen before made a very good impression. I liked the attempt by the author to explain in the separate file how anyone could customise it to suit the names of their children and I'm sure youngsters would like that. Colours have been used very well. I also loved the horse system, stopping off in the village to buy myself a new black horse.
Once you appreciate that this is a bigger module than you thought and that it will spread over several areas you relax into the normal module thinking and don't expect to solve quests quickly. That was my error. After that the quests link neatly over a variety of landscapes.
Incidentally, the tea room in the village is a must see. Lovely arrangement with paintings on the walls and a curtained door I spent a while in there looking at the detail. This might also be all that a 5 year old girl needs in a module. After all, it wasn't intended for me. . .
Less so - About 20 minutes into my first play I began to wonder where the story was and why I didn't feel I was any further towards solving any of the quests. So, eventually I was left moving to area after area really pretty aimlessly. It wasn't until my second play through that I realised I was in this for the long haul and that something in one area might have an answer three areas hence.
Once I realised that it all made sense and came together well. I was left wondering, however, if a five year old, who would have the adult with them controlling the mouse and movement (I'm assuming) would have the patience to wait while the adult figured it out. With my own granddaughter playing my own module I took the controls the first few times while she was content with making decisions. That was different as I had a little combat ( she was 8 going on 9) but if I'd had her beside me on my first play through this I'd have had to bring a better A game than I did this time or I'd have felt her wrath!
Not that my opinion matters but would I recommend this module? Yes, if only for the beautiful layout of the house interiors, garden and, of course, the tea room. However, as with all kids' modules I feel it would be a good idea for the author to give a heads up to the adult in the room who might be busy and doesn't want to run about aimlessly with a youngster beside them. A PDF for busy adults (rough walkthrough), so to speak, which they could ignore or use to keep the kid from any frustration or prepare them for an upcoming tussle.
However, do 5 yr olds who presumably won't be doing the pointing and clicking themselves need anything more than a well-built new world to look at and explore anyway? Probably not. I suspect that it wouldn't satisfy my 9yr old granddaughter who likes to solve the quests without help but still isn't great with the mouse and clicking - but she would love the gathering of shiny objects at the start, then maybe she'd be better at resolving the quests than I am!
This module was last updated in 2016 and is available on the Vault here.
This is a module that, for the most part, follows the traditional fairy tale which is good in that the youngsters know what is coming next. A quick look in the toolset will tell you that the creator of this module knows his/her stuff as it is script heavy and pretty well structured with some good conversations. There are, however, one or two additions to the old tale.
The module opens in Jack's house and a quick word about Jack. Although the PC will be changed to look like Jack he will retain the name of the PC you chose from the premade list as there isn't a PC contained in the package. This might seem a small thing but I chose a wizard, thinking to give myself haste and a couple of other spells ( being a cheat at heart and scared of giants !) however, I received my comeuppance in no short measure when it came to cutting down the beanstalk ( not a spoiler I hope) and I was unable to equip the weapon to carry out that task ! I'd recommend a fighter.
At this point I'd make a general comment. I don't know how you go about your modules but I tend to wander here and there looting everything and following the quests. In this module you may come to grief ( I did) if you don't listen carefully to Jack's mum and try to grab things in the right order. Because I looted the whole castle on my first visit the giant disappeared and I had to restart to get him back. I think keeping the player honest would have been helped had the author used the journal but mine was blank only throwing up an error. If mum's words had been turned into quests I'd have found it easier to stay on task.
So our first task was to sell the cow which I duly did but only for magic beans which didn't particularly please mum but on the way to selling it I had a wonderful spell fishing which I hadn't expected. Cleverly thought out and implemented this was an unexpected game within a game and a welcome addition. There was also a good conversation with the stranger about the magic beans if you prove reluctant so the module was off to a good start.
After an unpleasant discussion with mum and being sent to my room (which was a lovely little cameo cutscene with Jack throwing himself onto his rug in despair )! I woke the next morning to a giant beanstalk at the back of the house which was the start of the real adventure and which I won't cover in huge detail to avoid spoiling bits. There is a good icy area at the top of the beanstalk and an evil castle belonging to the giant ( why don't we have some lovely ice castles for areas such as this? ). I met the giant's wife / girlfriend /partner? , had to hide and pilfered goods on each occasion and returned to mum.
And there my knowledge of the module ends as explained before. It was a game breaker as just as the giant was climbing down I was unable to chop down the beanstalk so the whole thing ground to a halt.
Positive - Lots of good things about this. Not least the fact that the creator, Dave Crowell, after building it in 2015 came back last year to update it. good to see someone care enough to do that. I'm not sure what changes were made but there is definitely at least one more modern section of the module which looked good although I'm not sure it sits well with the rest of it. I was sure that the cow would become my henchman to make him follow me bu this and a whole lot else was done by scripting which looked pretty good. I liked the little cutscenes which were also done in a way unfamiliar to me as I use the John Bye Gestalt system. Finally, it's nice to see a traditional story pretty faithfully executed.
Less so - I think much of my troubles in completing the module are easy things to solve. In fact many of them could be laid straight at my door ! You need to choose a PC capable of wielding a weapon, you need to listen closely to mum and stick to the path provided by the author. I think it would have been easier to do so had there been even a short readme to adults possibly about to attempt the module with youngsters to help them guide them in the right way. Using the journal would certainly have helped in this. Mine was blank and threw up errors. It is also possible to create conversation errors by not adopting a linear approach.
However, the story itself is well told and I would play this with my grandchildren. It was last updated in 2021 and the module can be found on the Vault here.
This is a tale of a princess summoned by a fairy, Ciqui, ( Tinkerbell?) to the Plane of Fairytales where the fairy wants her to compete with Little Red Riding Hood to become Princess of the Plane. She is given tasks to complete to decide if she wins it. As you can tell from this, it draws on more than one fairy tale and puts them together into one module.
My first impression of this was a good one. I'm assuming the movie didn't work (shouldn't be an issue if you change it's file format to WBM) so we went straight to a cutscene but straight away I got the impression that this was created by someone who knew what he/she was doing. The intro of Ciqui ( the fairy who takes her to the Fairy Court) was good and dialogue entertaining enough, although I found myself unable to guess what the correct answer was and went round in circles a little until I stumbled across the correct response.
Anyway, after some conversation I was sent to the fairy plane via a portal which looked good. After some conversation between the fairies, where there was obviously some tension regarding who should end up as Princess, I was tasked with curing the problems of Hamelin without resorting to violence, a nice touch in a kids' module. Before setting off I went to Mini's shop but didn't have enough to buy anything. That was a touch disappointing as I'm not sure why there was a shop at this early stage if none of the goods were affordable.
As expected it turned out to be the story of the Pied Piper and I'm ashamed to say, again I found the correct responses hard to come by and ended up with them dragging the Pied Piper outside and stringing him up on the gallows ! This was where I parted company with the module I think. I even found the sudden demise of then Piper shocking - no you don't see him dangling just his dead body beside the gallows but I'm not sure that was necessary or how that might affect youngsters. anyway. At that point I returned to the Fairy court disappointed and expecting to be booted out of the Fairy Plane. However, at that point the story took an unexpected and interesting twist...
Summary :
Positive - I liked the approach in this module. Well enough built, pretty good idea for a story and Ciqui (Tinkerbell) looked good. I liked the cutscene at the start and I'm sure the movie would have been decent. I found myself wanting to see how the challenge with LRRH would have developed and how my father would have reacted at the end to my failure to turn up to the important dinner. As the princess at the start I was encouraged to be a bit of a rebel and the kids might like that. I particularly liked the twist in the story as it went on but enough about that.
Less so - Up until the Piper's demise I thought I might play this with my granddaughter but now I'm not so sure. That might be the only death in the module but it was the sudden nature of it that shook me, especially as there was also mention of torture! If I were a youngster and saw someone dragged off and executed because I'd made the wrong choice I'm not sure how I'd feel. I'd probably have preferred it to have stopped at the order to take him away - or maybe back to the cells. However, if I'd been more on the ball with my responses maybe that whole scene could have been avoided. Or maybe I'm being unnecessarily picky.
For a children's story I did find it hard to tell even as an adult what the correct response might be. I tried to steer a reasonable compromise between the Piper and the Mayor and still ended with the Piper strung up although I understood why later! After my return to the Fairy Court the module did become more interesting but I'll leave you to find out in what way... It did still have the problem with conversation going round and round though, at least for me.
Link - to the project page with module on the vault is here. Last updated in 2015.
As a retired teacher who has taken an interest in the toolset over the last few years and used it with a class of Games Design pupils, it occurred to me that there are very few modules aimed at younger children on the Vault. There is an older project page created by @OlivierLeroux which outlines most of the existing kids' modules but I thought it might be nice to give them a bit more exposure and try to encourage builders to think about catering for a younger age group.
As a grandfather myself, I know that my granddaughter is interested in good stories and playing games on the computer and I am currently trying to interest her in building simple things using the toolset. I'm sure many of us on the Vault are of a similar age and hope they might be interested in catering for a younger audience occasionally. I'd like to thank Olivier for his work in curating these and this updated page comes with his encouragement.
Before continuing, in the interests of full disclosure, one of the modules on Olivier's page is one that I created for my granddaughter (aged 9) called "Ruby and the Last Unicorn". It will be included here, just as a link with a screenshot but without a review by me as that would be bizarre (!). However, at least you are aware of my connection to it. It is aimed at a slightly higher age group ( 9-11?).There are a number of haks etc. required for it as it was built after EE came out and specifically with using recent assets in mind so I'd strongly recommend using NIT to download the module as @Surazal has kindly written a rule for his program which fetches the correct assets.
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The first question that springs to mind is probably what exactly constitutes a kids' module? Well, while reluctant to set down any ground rules, to me it would be one with a good but simple storyline, fun characters, a colourful look and not too long but I'm probably more sure about what it shouldn't have - heavy graphic violence, adult themes, bad language or gruesome deaths! This doesn't mean that there shouldn't be combat - I think that's age dependant. Kids about 4-6 probably don't need combat to enjoy it, and certainly don't need deaths, while those slightly older can probably cope with these although I've tried to indicate in the reviews where each module stands with this for any concerned parents.
It should also be fun with probably a happy ending to avoid sending young ones away with nightmares... I personally would start by setting the game's violence level by choosing Options on the main menu then game options then Game/General/Advanced and set violence to Low. Not entirely sure of all that this does but it does remove blood from the equation and it's a start. I've shied away from giving suitable age levels as that's problematic but you may well get an indication from the individual project page of the author's thoughts on the matter.
Another issue is that of spoilers. I don't intend to give any endings away but I'm assuming that anyone reading this is probably going to be playing it along with a younger person so I'm aiming this at pointing out any issues there could be with what you do or do not want youngsters to see in a module. You may have your own views on this and that's fine. In the end this is just a guide - you are the adult in the room - scary though that might be 
Finally, I'm sure that these are not all the modules suitable for kids that exist on the Vault so if you know of another please feel free to contact me with a review of it, preferably using roughly the same format as I have for consistency. I'm happy just to receive a link or even just the text of the review which I will turn into a review. Please note that any comments on modules here are weighted to the positive as it's not my intention to upset anyone or discourage anyone from having a go at this genre. I played them on EE so can't vouch for anything else. You also may well have to change the format of any movies included in the modules as some of them are quite old.
A link to a module's project page on the Vault is also given at the bottom of each review.
(Jimdad55)