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In the course of scenario design, any designer inevitably comes up with more good ideas than he or she can use. Alas, I have not been able to escape this fate, either. While there are others that I have been able to implement in my latest scenario, the following are those that did not make the cut, and one that was underutilized, and perhaps not obvious enough, in The Brotherhood Of The Hand. Defeat Magic Map One of the most common questions I’ve seen asked of Jeff Vogel in the Spiderweb Scenario Workshop is “Can I make a level where the Magic Map spell is disabled?” His answer is always a definite NO. But this is not quite true. Utilizing the Transform Terrain property and special, you can create a level where only the places a party has been will appear on the map. Every piece of terrain in the level must have a corresponding Transform To terrain that is totally black, and the initial state of the level should be these black squares. In other words, the default state of this town looks completely black and empty. This trick works because Magic Map will only reveal this black empty terrain. Then, as the party enters different areas, a Transform Rectangle Terrain should be called on these new areas, so that the black terrain becomes the appropriate town terrain. As the party enters more of the level, more of the level is revealed. When the party finds a secret door, for example, and steps into it, only then will the rest of the secret part be Transformed from the black terrain. A Magic Map spell will now only reveal the areas already visited by the party, or those the designer doesn’t care to hide. This trick will take some work and Stuff Done Flags. Since terrain is reset to default every time a party enters a level, the designer needs to flip a SDF every time a new area is revealed, then call a special chain on town entry that checks all of the appropriate SDFs for that level, and calls a Transform Rectangle Terrain for any areas that have already been visited. Also, since any monsters will appear floating on a black background of nothingness, One Time Place Town Encounters should be used for all monsters. This will limit the effectiveness of the Detect Life spell, too. This method doesn’t have to be used on an entire level, either, although a small black empty spot in the corner of a level gives away as much as its actual contents. Instead of using black squares, why not use cave wall? A seemingly empty mass of rock can hide a secret area that Magic Map will never detect. This trick does have some limitations. It’s probably best suited for levels that don’t use cave or mountain walls for the passages the party will walk through, or else you’ll have to manually format the walls yourself. A town with reasonably square areas that have limited access points will be the easiest to implement. A designer should try to make the Transform areas as large as possible, just so that specials aren’t being called every few steps, because you’ll quickly run out of room. Finally, make sure you test this! A black area looks like just that. Totally black, and it’s difficult to tell if you have the right terrain on every square, or mistakenly switched a wall with the floor at one point. Testing is key! Scenario Special Node to Town Special Node call One technical capability of the Editor I’ve noticed is that it’s possible to call a Town Special node from a Scenario Special chain. The reverse is already well documented, there is a Call Scenario Special node in the General Use Specials section, and the use of this is clear. But, if in a Scenario Special node chain, a (Town Special Node) Call General Timer is called, the timer will call the special node of whatever town you happen to be in. The important distinction here is that there are two Call General Timer specials, one in the General Use Specials section, and one in the Town Special Node section. The General Specials Timer will always call a Scenario Special node at its end, but the Town Specials Timer calls a town special. For example, a good way to use this would be with Special Items. The designer could create a staff of Summoning, but wanted the monsters to appear in different places in every town, or perhaps not appear at all, or have multiple places in each town, depending on where the party is. Upon use of the staff, the Scenario Special node would call a (Town Special Node) Call General Timer of 2 moves, and a jump to node 50 at the end. Then, at node 50 of every town, the designer can customize this item to his or her heart’s content, or have nothing happen at all. The key for this function is planning. In the above example, node 50 of every node must be kept free, or strange things will happen. Also, for small or simple node chains, this probably isn’t necessary, as the If-Then special Town Number? can be used to customize the effect for different towns only using Scenario Special nodes. See Brett Bixler’s The Lost Expedition for a good example of using Town Number? specials. But, in the example above, if the Town Number? special was used, the Scenario Special nodes would be used up very quickly, and it would be much more economical to use town Specials. Transform Terrain using Different Terrain Blockage Values A fun little trick I tried in The Brotherhood Of The Hand, but didn’t use well at all, was changing the Blockage Value of terrain, as in whether you can see through a particular terrain or not. I used it in the secret tunnels of the fort, so when you entered them, you could see through the crossed swords wall, as if there was a spy hole through them. Outside of the tunnels, though, this terrain was opaque. This was done by calling a Transform Rectangle Terrain on the entire level when the secret tunnels were entered, and again when the party left the tunnels. The Transform To property for both terrains were set to each other. So, whenever the party entered the tunnels, the blocked and opaque Wall w. Crossed Swords became the clear and blocked Crossed Sword w. Spy Hole, and back again when they left. It was a neat effect, but never put to good use. The party never actually used the spy holes or secret tunnels for anything important, so this change might not even been noticed. But I think it’s good and could be done well in another scenario. One warning: in his Still More Things That Don’t Work article, Lew Titterton reported that changing the visibility values of terrain often doesn’t work. I had no problems with this, but make sure you test carefully. |
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