The White Troll (1.1.0) - 1.16 Campaign

[zepko]

Dear all,
this is to present a new single player campaign, realized as a collaboration among users of the Wesnoth Italian Forum. The campaign is called "The White Troll" and it tells the story of a white troll whelp with strange magic powers, who is raised in an elvish village. It consists of 8 scenarios, completely playable, of intermediate difficulty.

We would like you to report any bug or error you might find, or to tell us if you have any suggestion to improve the overall work. Thank you for your cooperation.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Yes, I'm one of the co-authors of the campaign. Really, a lot of people contributed to it over time: Gadenz, mich, Uesmae, dibs... You'll find the full list of credits at the start.
Two peculiarities of this campaign are that the two main units level up with an AMLA system and can summon other units.
We decided to not open a topic in the Add-ons Feedback forum, in order to concentrate our efforts in a single discussion, but if you want feel free to answer us using the same feedback forums' list of questions:

• What difficulty level and Wesnoth version have you played the campaign on?
• How difficult did you find the campaign? (1-10)
• How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
• How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenarios?
• What were your major challenges in completing the scenarios?
• How fun do you think the campaign is? (1-10)
• What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

[Adamant14]

It would be nice if you add your campaign here: Guide to UMC Campaigns
Thank you.

[Telchin]

I've downloaded this campaign mostly because it's just 8 scenarios, so it's easier to finish and review. I comend you that you didn't tried to make it needlessly long. I've noticed that no one has given you any feedback so far, so I'll try to review it. There are some nice ideas and some not so nice, but I'll get to it.

What difficulty level and Wesnoth version have you played the campaign on?

1.10, easiest difficulty, lots of save/loading

How difficult did you find the campaign? (1-10)

It depended on the scenario, generally those with Lord Galagor were harder. I'll say overall 7, but I'm a bad player who uses save/loading even in my own campaign

How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Once again it depended on the scenario, I'll reiview them below.

How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenarios?

The idea of a troll raised by elves is interesting, but I found the titular troll to be less a character and more of a living object that the other charecters want to protect or capture. I guess no one of this campaign's makers is a native speaker of English, as I found several typos and some sentences seem to be awkward. I can't really help you with this as I'm not a native speaker either (I might look into the .cfg files for typos if I'll have time).

What were your major challenges in completing the scenarios?

Nothing that save/loading couln't solve . That said I didn't like the scenarios where you control two players as it both makes save/loading harder and often my units from team 1 stood in the way of my units from team 2.

How fun do you think the campaign is? (1-10)

Not sure what to say here. I commend that you tried to have variety in the campaign, with the summoning, two player scenarios or scenario objectives changing during the scenario. On the other hand I didn't like some of them (see below).

What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

Maybe it's because I played on the easiest difficulty, but I encountered only one enemy with poison in the entire campaign, which makes Melime's curing useless. She should be able to lear heal+8 (unless she can and I didn't notice). I advanced the characters this way: Eruannon: +1 movement, forest defense, fire damage, fire hits, melee hits. Melime: heal+4, cure, magic damage. Also for the summoning I used the Wose Saplings and Animated Rocks more often than the alternative (there could be possibly more options). Also I've noticed that the characters refer to Eloh from UtBS, whom I thought to be worshipped only after the fall of Wesnoth.

Now for individual scenarios:

• The White Whelp - I suppose that the fact that the nemy can recruit right from the start, but your keep is not connected to a castle, so you must move to a proper keep is a feature. It was annoying though. The story here felt a bit forced (sure Hunthor doesn't like trolls, but isn't a civil war an overeaction?).
• Spies - this one was cool, though I had to restart it as the enemy leader got to the city. The problem is that your fatest unit (Elvish Scout) is vulnerable to pierce and the enemy has multiple spearman to protect his leader. That said I assume that this is a feature (using the terrain advantage and slowing attacks to overcome this weakness), so thumbs up. That said it's sad that you won't see your units from the campaign's beggining until the last scenario (but I understand it's for storyline reasons)
• Back home - I was confused that this scenrio's objective seemed to easy, then I realized that the objective was going to change multiple times. That said even without ability to recruit I was able to win easily and I enjoyed this scenario.
• Mystic pond - I like how you made summoning units an objective, so the player familiarizes himself with this feature. I foolishly summoned too many Wose Sapling thinking that they are clearly better than the Giant Ants, only for them to get stuck on the mountain pass where the ants can pass more easily. My bad. Fortunately the enemies were rather easy to kill even with heroes alone. There is an event where some ramnger appears from a hut, tell you that he likes those animals yopu fight and then he disappears. I expected him to show up later as a boss but he didn't.
• The Outpost - Well, I hated this scenario. Mind you I like the design that for the first half of the scenario the enemy has time of the day advantage and when the sun sets he gets strong reinforcements (well, his stereotypically evil boss appears). I just found it too hard (but that's probably just my lack of skill and aversion to survive X turns scenarios)
• Lost - Here my biggest problem was when to summon, as your summoned creatures aren't of much use in water, so I rather defeated the ogres with my loyal trolls and only started summoning on the central island when enemy trolls appeared. I actually managed to kill the troll leader with Urgh. I think that Eruannon/Rok's backstory could be a bit more expaned or foreshadowed in some previous scenario (now it's like "This is your father. He wants to eat you!"), though I understand that the trolls aren't exactly eloquent.
• Clash in the forest - I've mentioned that I didn't like the playing two sides concurrently. Especially weird is that lord Galagor can keep units from this scenario for the next, but can't recall units from the Outpost. So most of time his level one units tried to stay out of the battle while Brandir's army of Trolls and summones creatures fights its way to the enemy leaders. I was bit confused at the objectives as the "hunting party" appeared in the fog and I had to find after I've already killed both starting enemy leaders. I undeerstand it's a feature though.
• The final battle - I like that both your leaders keep their units from the previous scenario and that you get back your units from "Spies". The part with the soldier recruiting worms because his boss is a prick was funny. Other than that ther was the problem that my strategy in the previous scenario resulted in Galagor having mostly level one units to recall, so once again his troops mostly tried to stay alive while Brandir's army did most of the work. That said, I actually managed to level up some Galarog's units and kill lord Denvan with them (after Bardir's forces killed Hunthor and Denvan's army). The bit with Hunthor's units joining you after his death was also nice, though at that time only one his soldier was alive.

This is all for now (it's a midnight where I write it, take it as a sign of either my insanity or your campaign's addictivity). I hope it helps.

[zepko]

First of all, thanks for the complete and precise review.

The idea of a troll raised by elves is interesting, but I found the titular troll to be less a character and more of a living object that the other charecters want to protect or capture. I guess no one of this campaign's makers is a native speaker of English, as I found several typos and some sentences seem to be awkward. I can't really help you with this as I'm not a native speaker either (I might look into the .cfg files for typos if I'll have time).

The white troll should be the object of desire of Lord Denvan, and be the main link between the different episodes of the story. But he should also be an "excuse" to start the internal war in the elvish village, with Hunthor willing to seize power among the elves. All these points should be clarified in the final scenario. About typos and strange sentences, if you refer to the troll speech, they are intentional, to show the difficulty of trolls in using the elvish language. On the other hand, if you found errors in the elves or human speech, they are real errors.

Not sure what to say here. I commend that you tried to have variety in the campaign, with the summoning, two player scenarios or scenario objectives changing during the scenario. On the other hand I didn't like some of them (see below).

One of our main aims in writing the campaign has been to keep it rather short and to avoid a sequence of kill-every-enemy-leader scenarios, so you can find different kind of objectives. Also summoning and special AMLAs should contribute to these variations.

Maybe it's because I played on the easiest difficulty, but I encountered only one enemy with poison in the entire campaign, which makes Melime's curing useless. She should be able to lear heal+8 (unless she can and I didn't notice). I advanced the characters this way: Eruannon: +1 movement, forest defense, fire damage, fire hits, melee hits. Melime: heal+4, cure, magic damage. Also for the summoning I used the Wose Saplings and Animated Rocks more often than the alternative (there could be possibly more options). Also I've noticed that the characters refer to Eloh from UtBS, whom I thought to be worshipped only after the fall of Wesnoth.

Yes, Melime's cure ability is not so useful even on harder levels. The heal+8 is available but you have to choose heal+4 and increase hp AMLAs before. Maybe it could be a good idea to rearrange them. About summoning, I find that mudcrawlers are very useful in some scenarios, but these are points of view. About Eloh, who knows when they started to worship her?? It's just a reference to some known elements of the elvish culture.

Now for individual scenarios:

• The White Whelp - It's just a way to move the battle a bit closer to Brandir's keep, I think it doesn't change things too much. About the civil war, more explanations are in the last scenario.
• Mystic pond - I think it's better to summon some Woses at the start, then to some ants later, but as you noticed you could win with your heroes (at least on easy). The ranger, and some other dialogue events, are only to introduce some variations in the scenario.
• The Outpost - This is intentionally hard, but it should let you level up some elves, useful in the next scenarios. In scenario 7 you can recall the units that you managed to save, i.e. those you moved to the tent before Galagor, as explained in the objectives.
• Lost - The strategy you suggest is the same I had in mind while writing the scenario. The point in Eruannon's story is that the elves don't know anything until they meet Urgh, and the other point is that trolls are basically afraid of what they don't know, like a white magic whelp.
• Clash in the forest - We thought that playing 2 sides could be an interesting addition, as well as good for the storyline coherence. As I told before, Galagor can recall units if you saved them. I think that the hunting party is clearly hinted in the dialogues.
• The final battle - With some veterans on Galagor's side you could surely do better.

This is all for now (it's a midnight where I write it, take it as a sign of either my insanity or your campaign's addictivity). I hope it helps.

Hope you could sleep well despite playing our campaign

It would be nice if you add your campaign here: Guide to UMC Campaigns
Thank you.

I have added the campaign to that page, thanks.

[Telchin]

About typos and strange sentences, if you refer to the troll speech, they are intentional, to show the difficulty of trolls in using the elvish language. On the other hand, if you found errors in the elves or human speech, they are real errors.

Yes, I understood that the Trolls speak with broken grammar on purpose (I actually also use this in my UMC), but I remember seeing some actual typos as well. I would have to look into the .cfg files to remember when exactly they happen.

One of our main aims in writing the campaign has been to keep it rather short and to avoid a sequence of kill-every-enemy-leader scenarios, so you can find different kind of objectives. Also summoning and special AMLAs should contribute to these variations.

That's why I wrote that I commend that you tried to have some variety and didn't make it needlessly long. I'm not sure how experienced you or the rest of this campaign's makers are, but when I made my first (and so far only) campaign it had originally only six scenarios for the reasons you mentioned and also because it's better to start small with possibility to add more later (Inky's Quest has 11 scenarios now) than to envision some "epic" campaign and get bored halfways. (I'm sorry if it looks like I'm boasting about my campaign in your thread.)

The Outpost - This is intentionally hard, but it should let you level up some elves, useful in the next scenarios. In scenario 7 you can recall the units that you managed to save, i.e. those you moved to the tent before Galagor, as explained in the objectives.

That explains where was the problem on my side (I just rushed with Galagor there).

I think that the hunting party is clearly hinted in the dialogues.

Yes, it was mentioned in the story (and I understand that the hunting party is hidden in the fog on purpose), I just found it bit annoying as I had to move my army to one place (the starting outlaws) and then to the opposite side of the map.

Hope you could sleep well despite playing our campaign

Well, I wanted to finish the campaign in just one day (as I figured 8 scenarios isn't that much) and I've managed it... at around 11 PM. I wanted to review it when my memory was still fresh, hence the midnight posting. (by the way, it's after 11 PM here in the Czech Republic when I'm writing this response, so I should probably work on my day-night cycle )

[WanderingHero]

Story could be better(I agree with the cristicism of the titular troll), maps 1 and 2 were ingenious, map 3 was kind of luck based (maybe add more fungus spots in the cave?) and map 4 kind of dragged

[zepko]

Story could be better(I agree with the cristicism of the titular troll), maps 1 and 2 were ingenious, map 3 was kind of luck based (maybe add more fungus spots in the cave?) and map 4 kind of dragged

Could you please be a bit more specific? What things did you find luck based? On what difficulty level?
Do you have any suggestion to improve the aspects you didn't like?

Yes, I understood that the Trolls speak with broken grammar on purpose (I actually also use this in my UMC), but I remember seeing some actual typos as well. I would have to look into the .cfg files to remember when exactly they happen.

I will give another look to the dialogues to see if I find something wrong...

[Telchin]

I've looked into the .cfg files. You have put all the dialogues into a single file and marked them as macros, so it's easier for me to refer to them as such. Note that by "line" I refer to a [message] tag, not a sentence.
Dialogues:

• 01_Dialogue1 - Melime's 3rd line - "valuable allied" should be "valuable ally"
• 01_Dialogue1 - Hunthor's 2nd line - "just feediong it grass" should be "just by feeding it grass"
• 01_Dialogue2 - Melime 1st line - "He has no guilts" should be "He has no guilt" or "He is not guilty of anything"
• 01_Dialogue3 -Hunthor's 3rd line - "risks to condemn us all" should be "risks condemning us all" or "risks our condemnation"
• 01_Dialogue_End - Brandir's 1st line "too much blood has been poured" could be "too much blood has been spilled"
• 03_Dialogue_End - Melime's 1st line - "a new allied" should be "a new ally"
• 03_Dialogue_End - Delson's 1st line - "mushrooms I collected" should be "mushrooms I have collected"
• 03_Dialogue_End - Delson's 1st line - "follow me West" should be "follow me to the west"
• 04_Dialogue2 - Delson's 1st line - "ant I made" should be "ant I've made"
• 05_Dialogue_Denvan_No_Glowan - Denvan's 1st line - "demote as a potato peeler" should be "demote to a potato peeler"
• 08_Dialogue1 - Denvan's 1st line - "too coward" should be "too cowardly"
• 08_Dialogue2 - Denvan's 5th line - "stole it to a dwarvish blacksmith" should be "stole it from a dwarvish blacksmith"

Story text:

• 03_Story - part 1 - "guard upon them" should be "guard them"
• 04_Story - part 1 - "Cleaned the caves" should be "Having cleaned the caves" or "After cleaning the caves"
• 05_Story - part 3 - "take the elves uprepared attacking them" should be "catch the elves unprepared by attacking them"

Please note that I'm not a native English speaker, so while I speak English well, it's possible that I missed some other mistakes or marked some correct sentences as wrong.

[WanderingHero]

Story could be better(I agree with the cristicism of the titular troll), maps 1 and 2 were ingenious, map 3 was kind of luck based (maybe add more fungus spots in the cave?) and map 4 kind of dragged

Could you please be a bit more specific? What things did you find luck based? On what difficulty level?
Do you have any suggestion to improve the aspects you didn't like?

Storywise:
Give the troll some kind of persoanlity, even a basic one. Have him show more emotion, even simple ones like curiosity, enthusiasm or fear. Something else doesn't feel right about the dialogue but I can't quite put my finger on it (oh and a few typos).

For scenario 3: the elf captain has to fight a bunch of enemies on his own, and when he enters the cave its quite easy to bite off my enemies than you can chew because you can't see, or have a spearman hit with a lot of his attacks, or have the druid get overwhelmed.

For scenario 4, the scenario dragons on and and the map is too big, especially for a slow crawl scenario (and I don't think too many people enjoy slow crawl scenarios. Easiest way to fix it would be to make the map smaller

[zepko]

Please note that I'm not a native English speaker, so while I speak English well, it's possible that I missed some other mistakes or marked some correct sentences as wrong.

The same goes for me and for other authors, anyway thanks for your notes, I will look more carefully into them.

Storywise:
Give the troll some kind of persoanlity, even a basic one. Have him show more emotion, even simple ones like curiosity, enthusiasm or fear.

This is a good point, probably we should work on the troll's dialogues.

For scenario 3: the elf captain has to fight a bunch of enemies on his own, and when he enters the cave its quite easy to bite off my enemies than you can chew because you can't see, or have a spearman hit with a lot of his attacks, or have the druid get overwhelmed.

You have the two magical units, I don't see a big problem in fighting only with them. On the other hand, the possible death of the druid before you can enter the fight was a concern of ours, we were thinking about possibilities to avoid the problem.

For scenario 4, the scenario dragons on and and the map is too big, especially for a slow crawl scenario (and I don't think too many people enjoy slow crawl scenarios. Easiest way to fix it would be to make the map smaller

Personally, I quite liked the map and the scenario dynamics, but it's just my opinion. Let's see what other people think about it.

[NoQ]

Gah, those italians make really nice stories. Excellent campaign, somehow liked this one much more than most UMC stuff.
Surely a white troll is the last thing that comes up when you think about all those ugly duckling type stories clap clap clap.
At the last level now, i guess ... not sure. Need to complete.

[Elvish_Hunter]

WanderingHero wrote:
For scenario 3: the elf captain has to fight a bunch of enemies on his own, and when he enters the cave its quite easy to bite off my enemies than you can chew because you can't see, or have a spearman hit with a lot of his attacks, or have the druid get overwhelmed.

You have the two magical units, I don't see a big problem in fighting only with them. On the other hand, the possible death of the druid before you can enter the fight was a concern of ours, we were thinking about possibilities to avoid the problem.

One proposal that I made was the following:
Delson (the druid) is closed into a cage and doesn't take part in combat. The player must kill all Goblins nearby to have the last one dropping the key. Then, upon being freed, the druid summons some units. When Brandir (the captain) asks why he couldn't use his magic to free himself, Delson states something among the lines of "this was a copper cage, and copper disrupts my evocation magic". Why copper? Because in mainline iron disrupts Elvish magic, so we have to choose another one for the druid; also, because Faraday.

Gah, those italians make really nice stories. Excellent campaign, somehow liked this one much more than most UMC stuff.
Surely a white troll is the last thing that comes up when you think about all those ugly duckling type stories clap clap clap.

Ha! As you may have noticed, I liked some element of this campaign so much that I integrated them into TSoG and ARL (the campaign was partially made a lot of time ago, but we finished it only recently). Who could have guessed that, some time later, I'd take part in completing it...

[mithc]

I've just downloaded your campaign today and started playing it, I will post a more thorough feedback later after I've played through more of it. The premise of your campaign seems really interesting and I am really looking forward to playing it! I would however, like to point out what I believe are text errors in the text presented before the first scenario.

It says "Our story is set in the North, near the edge of impassable peaks and the borders of the kingdom on Knalga and the Great River..."
I believe it's supposed to say "the borders of the Kingdom of Knalga and the Great River"

It goes on to say "an idyllic place where, shadowed by high mountains, stood a small forest, peacefully inhabited by a medium elvish community, with a human village a few miles away..."
The word "medium" alone used to describe a community sounds a little awkward, I think it would sound more appropriate if it said "medium-sized elvish community"

The next line says "In their small town, the elves used to spend peacefully their semi-eternal lives honoring the trees and walking long promenades under high branches."
When it says "honoring the trees and walking long promenades under high branches." The word promenade means long leisurely walk or a public place for walking. So it would sound better if it was more like "honoring the trees and taking long promenades underneath the high branches of the forest they called home." or "honoring the trees and taking long walks on promenades underneath the high branches of the forest they called home."

In the next set of text it says "Where the forest slowly left ground to the mountain, we could have noticed a small cottage, built from the trunk of a big tree..."
It would sound better if it said "Where the forest slowly led into the mountain, there was a small cottage, built from the trunk of a big tree..."

The next lines of text have "a small troll whelp, completely white, was gracelessly lying blocked under a boulder, frantically screaming in his guttural language."
The word "blocked" is awkward for the way your using it, "pinned" would be a better word in this sentence.

That's all I noticed before the first scenario, sorry if it seems like I pointed out a lot. I am a native English speaker however, and everything I pointed out either sounded awkward or looked like it could use some improving with the sentence structure. The story really intrigues me though and I know I am really going to enjoy the campaign!

[mithc]

Wesnoth Version: 1.10.6

Difficulty: Normal

I found all of the scenario objectives very clear throughout the campaign.

I found some text errors as my post above points out, but besides that I thought that the story and the flow of dialogue was great!

My hardest challenges were in the Scenarios Outpost and Lost.

I played Outpost on Normal and with the amount of gold given it seemed nearly impossible for me to hold out that long against the enemy. I had to restart the scenario at least 5 times as I tried different tactics and sometimes I just had bad enough luck where they would wipe out half my forces in a single turn. Eventually I had to kite them around the map as they slowly whittled away my army and even then it was sheer luck sometimes when they managed to cut off Lord Galagor.

Lost also seemed very hard to me because as far as I could tell the only way to the signpost was to fight through the ogre island in the middle of the map and then all the way around the top and through the troll encampment as well. I had to restart the scenario quite a few times as the Ogres and Trolls would just focus target Brandir, Melime, or the White Troll. In the end I had to let the trolls and ogres fight it out while I used mass mudcrawlers as fodder and steal finishing blows to level up my units so that I might even stand a chance against the trolls. In the end I walked away with a L3 Troll Warrior and quite a few L2 Trolls as well as having the White Troll almost finished with the AMLA choices.

The campaign was 9/10 in being fun, the only reason it wasn't a 10 for me was due to the two scenarios I talked about and how ridiculously hard they seemed to be.
The only changes I would make would be to the Scenarios Outpost and Lost. For Outpost you could give the player some more gold so that way they would at least have a chance against holding out. For Lost, unless I missed another path that I could have taken, you could make an alternate route to the signpost that doesn't take you through both the ogre and the troll bases.

Other than that I had a great time playing your campaign. Thanks for all your hard work!