Is it me, or are most modules basically dungeon crawls? I've played Buried Secrets, Vormantown, Time, and Tomb of Guldur. Buried Secrets and Time are pure dungeon crawls (as far as I can tell thus far), Tomb of Guldur seems to have a small story to support the dungeon crawl and puzzle solving (which is pretty innovative by the way) and Vormantown seems to have the most story, but is mainly a dungeon crawl. Is the new French mod more RP than combat? Are there any others that put an emphasis on dialogue and/or plot twists?
You're not the only one who's noticed the wealth of dungeon-crawls. Since they are considerably easier to construct than, say, a murder mystery, that's what everyone tends to gravitate to. And I'm just as guilty as the next.
If you want to mod something with multiple paths, diverse quests, eloquent dialogue, colorful NPCs and full pacifist support, expect to spend 95% of the time writing dialogue. That's time most people don't have or don't want to spend.
Did the French do it with their latest mod? (I can't tell because I can't read French!) And I think 95% may be a *little* skewed. Constructing the environments can take some time to get it right. And the weeding is a real pain. But now that I've been through the learning curve, I think the next mod won't take so much to build the environment. Of course if I take a little less time on the environment, I can spend more time on all of the good stuff DarkElf mentioned. And a murder mystery sounds cool. If only we had trains, we could do Murder on the Orient Express - Arcanum Style! I know in a different thread someone suggested we build a long corridor and dress it like the inside of a train to simulate being on the train...