Magic Spells... Magic spells are both a category of things in their own right and something which can be hooked to Magic Items, Portals (doors), and Obstacles and Spaces. Altogether there are 15 different base spells available. Each magic spell can be made to display a short three-line text message when it is invoked (providing the opportunity to explain to the player/character what is happening) and may be made to disappear after its first use. Here are the 15 base spells and what each does. 1. Kill all But an Owner of .... (you pick the things from your Master Thing List). Don't be casual about how you employ such a spell in your adventures. It does just what it says, and no one wants to adventure in a world where death is too frequent and too often arbitrary and unexpected. 2. Summon/Banish Creature .... (you specify the creature, picking it from your Master Creature List). This can be used to banish all creatures present in a room where the spell is cast, or it can be used to summon to the room any creature on the Master Creature List. Banishment happens immediately. Summons will not be answered until the following turn. This spell may not be used on the world map. (Note: When you banish creatures, they take all their possession into oblivion with them. Don't banish the creature who stole the key you need to get into the next room.) 3. Increase Magic Defense But Not to Better Than .... (you pick from four possibilities). At its most powerful, a magic defense completely absorbs blows from normal weapons and reduces damage from magic weapons by half. 4. Decrease Magic Defense But Not to Better Than... (you pick from four possibilities). The opposite of the previous spell. 5. Increase the Victim's... (you pick Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, Speed, Wisdom, Dodge Skill, Parry Skill, Armor Skill, Melee Skill or Missile Skill.) Traits are increased by 1 point, skills by 5. The effect of the spell is permanent - until the next spell is encountered, that is. 6. Decrease the Victim's... (you pick Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, Speed, wisdom, Dodge Skill, Parry Skill, Armor Skill, Melee Skill, or Missile Skill). See previous spell. 7. Change Power of Victim by... (you specify a number between -63 to +63). Because an individual's Power automatically changes in the direction of his Wisdom each turn, it does not matter whether you choose for the effect to be temporary or permanent. All changes to Power are temporary, no matter what the setting. 8. Change Life Force by ... (you specify a number between -63 to +63). Like the previous spell, except Life Force does not decay when it is greater than Constitution. A permanent increase is Life Force can only be lost in battle or to another spell. 9. Give to Victim ... (you pick the thing from you Master Thing List). One use for this spell is to give a Magic Spell to a hero/player or a creature. 10. Display Long Message (up to 8 lines long, up to 32 characters per line). This spell is usually used with the spaces and obstacles in a means of telling the player/character about a special occurrence or object or to give a clue. 11. Play Music (you select from 30 different possibilities). Choices 1 through 12 are sound effects. Choices 13-30 are musical themes. The choices with "endless" in their titles (14 through 17) will continue to play until another music choice is activated. (See "Stacking Things on One Square" for an example of an effective use of endless themes.) 12. Rid Room of Every Uncarried... (you pick the thing from your Master Thing List). A particularly fiendish use of this spell would be to attach it to an invisible object (one with no picture) which you place directly in front of a visible treasure, naming the treasure as the thing to rid the room of. Alternately you could use it to rid the room of a covering placed over a valuable object hiding underneath. (See the section called "Let There Be Light". 13. Add to Room One (you pick the thing from your Master Thing List). Does just what it says. The effect is immediate. 14. Activate All Things at This Place. Especially useful for setting off a series of spells associated with items, spaces and/or obstacles stacked on a single square. See "Stacking Things on One Square". 15. Do nothing. Use this when you simply want to display a short message at the bottom of the screen but don't want to do anything else. Since spells can't be dropped, it might also be used to give creatures or player/characters a characteristic they could not rid themselves of-a curse perhaps, which prevents passage through certain doors. Some Special Things and Their Uses... The basic Fantasy, Spy/Mystery and Science Fiction construction sets all contain a few very useful special purpose things. Here's a listing of some of them, along with brief descriptions. For more information, see Things Reference Guide. 1. The Do-all Spaces and Obstacle The Do-All-Walk Space is activated whenever someone walks on it and the Do-All-Bump Obstacle when someone bumps into it, and each will then activate, in order from top to bottom, whatever spells lie below it. The Do-All-Carry Space (a Custom space, actually) works the same way, but is activated only by someone carry;ing a particular item (which you get to pick when you place one of these in a room.) 2. The Music and Message Custom Spaces When you place these in a room, you get to choose the particular text or music which will be produced when the space is activated - either by being walked on or by a Do-All spell above. it. 3. The Rid the Room Custom Space Place this one in a room and you get to tell ACS what to remove from the room when the space is activated. Its storytelling power lies in its association with the thing you name when you place it in the room. For a nice example of what can be done with a "Rid the room" spell, see the discussion of "Let There Be Light". (Note: If you check the basic sets, you'll find other custom spell spaces there as well - "Add to Room 1", "Increase Life Force", etc. Like the Rid the Room Custom space, these let you pick the spell modifier when you place them in a room. 4. The Flight Spell If you use "Edit Thing" to take a look at this spell, you may find it hard to imagine what it's good for. By itself, it does nothing. But if you set some terrain to be "Open Only to Owners of Flight Spell", it becomes powerful indeed. (The same principle can be used, of course, for rivers open only to owners of a swim spell, a trick employed to get "Rivers of Light" off to an interesting start.) 5. The Decoder Custom Space Available in the Spy/Mystery set, this variation on the message space described above will display text whenever a Coded Message is dropped on it. It's a good example of how a basic idea like a custom message space can be tailored with a picture and a different activation method to perform a very useful function in an adventure. The same trick was used to produce the Help spaces in "How to Play" in Aventuria. General Construction Tips and Techniques... 1. Do some browsing and planning before you start constructing. ACS will let you begin the construction process with as much or as little as you like (down to "nothing but graphics") on your adventure disk. The advantage to starting with a basic construction set is the time it saves you in the creation of Master Things and Creature Lists. Pick one of the sets and spend some time browsing through the Master Lists to see what's available. Think about where you might use this powerful, aggressive enemy creature or that magical crossbow. Draw diagrams of your regions on paper so you an think about where you want to place things. If you decide you need something not in the set or want to modify something that is there, you can use the "Edit Things", or "Edit Creatures" and "Edit Graphics" options to create new items or change existing ones. In time you will wind up with new versions of the basic sets which have been modified to fit your own style, taste and adventure construction ideas. 2. Pay attention to the pace of your adventure. Some actions take the computer longer to perform than others. Be thoughtful about how you place these in your adventure. When a door leads to another region for instance, the program must go to disk for new information. Use such doors sparingly so that adventurers do not tire of waiting for the new information to appear. Also pay attention to the order in which things occur. When a short text message is associated with a spell for instance, the message will be displayed before the spell itself if activated. Make sure your message makes sense if read before the spell takes effect. 3. Pay attention to the pacing of difficulty and frustration in your adventure. If you make things too hard at the outset, no one will keep playing long enough to discover all the neat stuff you planted. Make sure you've given the adventurers enough success and mystery to hook them before you ask them to deal with your more fiendishly clever tricks and traps. You might accomplish this by leaving a very powerful but breakable weapon in the first room adventurers will enter. Or you might orchestrate matters so that passing through an early door delivers a big temporary boost in Life Force or Power. Either of these actions will help adventurers make it through early perils without giving them too much of a permanent advantage. 4. Use the work you put into one adventure as a starting place for others. To use an existing adventure as a starting place, begin with a disk containing that adventure and use the "Erase Part of the Adventure" option to get rid of the parts you don't want. (To find the "Erase Part of the Adventure" option, select "Construct an Adventure" and then select "Do More Detailed Work" twice.) You can erase the maps of the world and the regions, or the Master Creature List, or everything but the graphics. You can also copy graphics from one adventure into another. Select "Copy Graphics From Another Adventure", then select the option you want and follow the instructions as they appear. You could use this option to copy a strange graphics set into an existing adventure. More to the point, though, you could use it to copy your own custom graphics set into each of a series of adventures. 5. Back up and date your work. Good adventures are not constructed in a day. As you work, make a backup copy at the end of each session and put the date you did the work in the name of the adventure (e.g., "Superdungeon Oct. 15"). Doing this keeps you from trusting all your hard work to a single disk and makes it easy for you to figure out which version is the latest should you get confused about the disks. Map Reference Guide... 1) Draw World Map The full map area is 40 squares by 40 squares. Only a 10-square by 15-square section can be on the screen at one time. The larger rectangle to the right of the map represents the whole map; the smaller grey rectangle inside of it represents the section visible on the screen. The square on the lower right contains a picture of the terrain type that can be added if you move the cursor up into the map area and press the button. Moving the cursor into the menu and to the left brings a new terrain picture into the square. The name of the terrain type appears at the end of the second line. Whether the terrain is passable or whether it evokes a spell when crossed appears on the third line. When you put a piece of terra on top of existing terrain, the new replaces the old. There are 16 different terrain types available. To select a new name, picture, or travel condition or spell for any of the 16, see "Change Definition of Map Terrain" below. To learn how to put doors on the World Map, see "Adding Doors" below. 2) Change Map Name Selecting this option lets you type in a new name (up to 15 characters long) for a map. 3) Change Definition of Map Terrain Repeatedly select "Terrain #" to move the selecting highlight among the 16 possibilities. To select "Change Picture" to change the picture for the highlighted terrain type. (Both these options can be activated by moving the joystick either right or left to go forward or backward through the available choices.) Select "Name" to type in a new name, and select the fourth option to determine whether and under what conditions the terrain may be passed over by players and creatures. If necessary, ACS will bring up the Master Thing List so you can pick an object or spell from it to complete your editing of the terrain type. Terrain pictures are shown in groups of 4 so you can see what multiple-square patches of the terrain will look like when you're considering new pictures. If you want to modify one of the pictures or draw a new one, see Graphics Reference Guide. Important! Terrain types 13-16 are portals (doors). See "Adding Doors" below for information about using them. 4) Movement Off Edge of Map Is/Is Not Permitted Select this option to determine whether or not the map "wraps". If you permit movement off the edge of the map, the top edge and bottom one are treated as though there were joined to each other, and so are the right and left edges. Topologically, the three-dimensional shape a wrapping map corresponds to is a torus. (A doughnut is also a torus. Think about it.) 5) Move Entrance to the Adventure Use this option to select the spot where all new adventures will start regardless of when they are added to the game. Adding Portals (Doors) - ACS considers terrain types 13-16 to be one-way doors regardless of their pictures or names. When you add a door to the world map, follow the instructions as they appear to say where you want the door to come out. You may have up to 32 one-way doors on the World Map. Those same doors may also be used to mark the exit points of one-way doors which lead from inside rooms back to the World Map. Using the same place to mark an entrance and an exit destination helps players make conceptual sense of the map. A door might represent the entrance to a city whose streets and shops are defined by the rooms in the region the door leads to. Making a one-way door lead form inside the region back to the same spot helps underline the notion that the region represents an extension of the world map. You may also use 31 additional locations on the map as places where one-way doors come out. You can even have doors on the world map lead to other places on the world map (see the Boat in Aventuria, for instance). Generally, you will not want to add doors to the world map until you have build the regions you want them to lead to. Moreover, because ACS will let you put down whatever you want, including impassable terrain, on top of places where one-way doors come out, you will not want to do a lot of map revision after you have designated a number of map locations as one-way door exits. You won't usually want to have players emerge from a region only to find themselves surrounded by mountains unable to move. For information about "Editing Map Creatures", see "Putting Random Creatures in an Adventure" in the Creature Reference Guide. Room and Region Reference Guide... Each Adventure can contain up to 15 regions and each region can contain up to 16 rooms. Select "Add Region" to build a new region, and select "Edit Region" to modify or add to an existing region. Either choice leads to a menu which contains the options "Add Room", "Delete Room" and "Edit Room", (If you select "Edit Region", you will be asked to select the one you want to edit before these choices appear.) 1. Add Room When you select "Add a Room", the room first appears as a small flashing square which you may move about on the screen with your joystick. Once you press the button, the joystick will make the square grow in size instead of moving it. You may use it to make a room up to 15 spaces wide by 10 spaces high. New rooms may be placed anywhere you like so long as they don't overlap with existing rooms (but rooms may share a common wall). 2. Delete Room This option lets you place the cursor in a room you want to get rid of and press the button to get rid of it. Note: If you accidentally delete the destination for a one-way door, ACS will banish creatures who pass through the door and will place all player/characters who pass through it on the world map at the adventure's starting point. 3. Edit Room Select this option and use the cursor to identify the room you want to edit, then select a choice from the new menu which will appear. The choices allow you to change the room's name and to add, subtract and edit creatures and things in the room. 4. Change Room Name Selecting this option lets you type in a new name for the room. 5. Edit Room's Contents Selecting this option brings a picture of the room to the screen along with a new menu of options. The options on the right let you pick things and creatures from your Master Things and Master Creature Lists, and they let you add those things to the room at the places you designate with the cursor. Use "Add Many Things" when you want to put down several copies of the same thing before selecting something else. The top option on the left - "Delete Thing" - may be used to remove either things or resident creatures from the room. The selecting cursor will appear so you can pick the thing or creature you want to delete. Selecting "Examine Room" lets you move the selecting cursor around, pressing the button when you want a description of the thing or creature at a particular spot. (Note: The Examine option will tell you if a spell at a location produces music or a sound effect, but it will not play the sound for you.) "Select Wall Picture" lets you choose a new picture for the wall of the room. This is especially useful when you want the room to "play the role" of something else - a field, for instance, or a forest, or a mountain valley. 6. Adding Doors When you use the "Add Thing" option to add a two-way door to a room, the program will let you place the door on a wall shared by an adjacent room. When you use it to add a one-way door, follow the instructions as they appear to determine where the door comes out. Doors may lead to other places within the same region (or even in the same room), or to other regions, or to the world map. 7. Stacking Things on Top of Each Other Unlike editing on the world map where new terrain replaces whatever old terrain it is placed on top of, you may stack many things in the same space in rooms. For more information, see "Stacks of Things". To learn more about the "Edit Resident Creature" and "Edit Random Creature" options study the Creature Notes section below. Creature Reference Guide... You can have up to 128 creatures in a Master Creature List. Each can have its own unique combination of name, picture, traits, skills, battle equipment, behavior patterns and possessions. Further, you can customize each of these characteristics for individual creatures after you have placed them in a room or instructed them to appear in a room or on the World Map. Thus, you might design a single leprechaun for your Master Creature List, yet have many leprechauns in the game, each with a different list of weapons and possessions. 1. Creating and Editing Creatures To add creatures to your Master Creature List and modify ones already there, select "Construct an Adventure, and then select "Do More Detailed Work" twice, and finally select "Edit Master List of Creatures". 2. Grouping Creatures in Catagories ACS lets you divide your Master Creature List into 8 smaller lists to make it easier to think about the kinds of creatures you have. The Fantasy builder set, for instance, has four lists containing persons (one for friends, one for enemies, one for thieves, and one for neutrals), two lists containing beasts (one for hostile beasts, the other for neutral ones), one for evil beings (banshes, demons and the like), and one left open for a category of your own choosing. To change the name of a creature category, select "Change Creature Class Name", then select the name you want to change and type in a new one. You pick the class a creature belongs to when you use the "Add Creature" and "Edit Creature" options. To learn how to make a creature behave like a friend, enemy, etc., see Setting Creature Strategy below. 3. Changing a Creature's Profile Begin by selecting "Edit a Creature" and then the name of the creature you want or by selecting "Add a Creature". To change any item in a list of creature characteristics, move the highlight to that item with the joystick, then simultaneously hold down the button while moving the stick. If the item needs typed input from you, ACS will ask for it. If the item is one where you can choose among 2 or more preset possibilities, repeatedly select the item to browse through the possibilities until you reach the one you want. If the item needs something from the Master Things List, it will bring up the list so you may select from it. Use the last item in the profile list to determine how many copies of the creature ACS may put into an adventure when you use the "Let ACS Finish the Adventure" option. When picking resident creatures, ACS looks first for creatures which are limited in number. When assigning randomly appearing creatures, ACS looks for creatures which may appear many times. 4. Creature Traits, Skills and Possessions You can set any of the trait and skill numbers anywhere between 0 and their maximum (see Traits section earlier). To calculate how much a creature or character's strength will let it carry, subtract Life Force from Constitution and divide by 2, then subtract your answer from Strength and multiply and result by 100. Individuals carrying more than half their maximum capacity will be slowed down. Before you can ready a weapon or a piece of armor, you must add it to the creature's inventory with the "Change or Examine Possessions" option. Choosing the "Mimics" option causes the creature to exactly mirror the opponents it encounters. (Note: If you set Speed to 0, the creature's name will not be displayed when it is its turn to move.) Selecting "Change or Examine Possessions" lets you page through all the treasures, magic items, weapons and armor on your Master Thing List. Pressing the button highlights the item indicated by the pointer on the left side of the screen, and adds that item to the creature's inventory. If the item is already highlighted (i.e., already belongs to the creature), another will be added if an individual is allowed to own more than it already has. Otherwise, the item will be removed from the creature's inventory. Moving the pointer to the top or bottom of the list brings a new segment of the list to the screen. There are 4 segments in all. Deciding what to give to creatures and how powerful, durable and skillful to make them is an art, not a science. Finally there is no shortcut for experience when it comes to shaping creatures to fit your adventure. In general, the higher the number in any category and the more potent the weapons and magic in the creature's possession, the more powerful and resourceful the creature. But player/characters can themselves become more powerful and better equipped as they play. Thus, the effect on the game of a creature's power possessions and goals depends upon where in the adventure it is encountered. A mean duel with maximum power and the magic sword to end all magic swords is not someone you want to run into just outside the main entrance, nor is a complete wimp worthy to face a powerful experienced hero. The three construction sets each contain a range of creature strengths and weaknesses in each category. Learn you way to good adventure constructing by experimenting with them. Place them in rooms or on the map, then play to see whether they have the effect you wanted for your adventure. If they don't, return to construction and edit them, then try them out again in play. 5. Setting Creature Strategy Thing of creatures as having personalities which shape their decisions. When it comes time for them to move, they look at the alternative possibilities, then choose a path or action that matches their personality. Use the three items on the strategy line to set a creature's basic personality. Each item has two possible settings. Think of the last item - Friend/Enemy/Thief/Neutral - as determining four basic types, and think of the first two as a pair shaping that type's behavior. A creature which is Aggressive and either Brave or unwounded (Life Force equal to or exceeds Constitution) will behave as a fighter. A creature which is Peaceful or which is both Cautious and wounded (Life Force less than Constitution) will behave as a slinker. No slinker will attack or cast a spell. When a creature's turn comes, each possible type will look for an pursue its targets in the order they are listed below. A) A fighter enemy loves to attach player/characters and friends, and may attack neutrals and thieves it encounters on the way to its goal. It won't attack a fellow enemy. It will seek a player/character, an aggressive friend, a peaceful friend, an exit, an aggressive neutral or thief, a peaceful neutral or thief, or gold. B) A slinker enemy will seek a peaceful enemy, an aggressive enemy, an exit or gold. C) A fighter friend will seek an aggressive enemy, an aggressive neutral, a peaceful enemy, an aggressive thief, a player/character, or an exit. It loves to attack the first four categories, is willing to attack a peaceful neutral or thief, but won't attack a player/character or another friend. D) A slinker friend will seek a player/character, or an exit. E) A fighter neutral will seek an aggressive friend or enemy, an aggressive thief, a peaceful friend or enemy, a peaceful thief or aggressive neutral, a peaceful neutral, gold or an exit. It is not averse to attacking anybody but prefers to attack player/characters, aggressive friends, peaceful thieves, and aggressive enemies. F) A slinker neutral will seek an exit. G) A fighter thief will seek treasure or gold, or an exit. It is willing to attack anybody in the way but will go around a peaceful enemy, friend or neutral, if possible. (No allegiance is shown to other thieves, however.) H) A slinker thief will seek treasures of gold or an exit. Note: A creature who is damaged in combat with a player/character will: 1) turn into a neutral if currently a friend; 2) turn aggressive if currently peaceful; or 3) turn into an enemy if currently a smart (see next paragraph), aggressive neutral. For more information about creature movement, see the next two sections. 6. Creatures and Spells Creatures are smart if their Wisdom is greater than 14 and dumb if it is less than 6. Creatures between those limits will act smart some of the time, and the higher their Wisdom rating, the greater the chance that they will do so. Only smart creatures will cast spells or use magic items when they possess them, and even smart creatures will only cast spells when their Power is greater than or equal to their Wisdom. Creatures will cast damaging spells only on their foes and beneficial spells only on their friends. If a creature casts a "Banish" spell, it will banish all creatures from the room except for itself. Creatures cannot cast the following: Do nothing, Rid room of all, Add to room one, Activate all things, Display message and Play music. 7. Additional Movement and Behavior Rules A) Creatures who reside in a room do not get a turn until a player/character enters the room. The player/character gets his or her turn first, but the creature then gets its turn even if the player/character leaves the room. In that case the creature may move toward an exit permitted to it (see next rule). Creatures may, therefore, "follow" player/characters into a new room. B) No creature will move onto any space or obstacle, including custom ones. Creatures will move onto doors only if the doors have no do-all, rid room or add to room spells associated with them, and lead to someplace in the same region. C) Creatures will not pick up magic items, weapons or armor. All creatures, except friends and slinker neutrals, will pick up gold. Only thieves will pick up treasure. D) Most creatures will go toward a less favorite goal if it is closer than a more desirable one. E) A slinking, wounded creature will see an exit. F) Smart, powerful (Power greater than or equal to Wisdom) creatures will cast a spell on their selected goal if it is an individual and they have an appropriate spell. If they have more than one appropriate spell, they will use the one with the lowest item number. Smart, half-powerful creatures will use magic items in a similiar fashion provided the objects are activated when used. G) An overburdened creature will drop a magic item, a treasure or gold. H) A creature will ready an appropriate weapon. If it is "safe" (not next to a foe) it will ready a missile weapon if it has one. Otherwise it will ready a melee weapon if it has one. If it has more than one appropriate weapon, it will ready the one with the lowest item number. I) A fighter who is "safe" and has a readied missile weapon will fire if its selected goal is a foe. Note: fired missiles may hit anyone in the line of fire. J) A friend who selected a player/character as a goal and who is next to the player/character will drop a magic item if it has one. 8. Putting Random Creatures in an Adventure By selecting "Edit Map Creature" or "Edit Room's Random Creature" you may instruct a creature to show up some items but not others in a particular type of terrain or in a particular room. This is particularly useful for creating events like the occasional appearance of a river god or of a ghost who sometimes haunts a corridor. It's also a way of keeping the adventure fresh by giving players a chance to experience different challenges on different visits to the same room. When a random creature appears on the map, the hero/player is drawn into a special area for the encounter. The borders of the are will match the map territory in which the player/character was traveling. You can have one random creature list for the world map and one for each region in an adventure. Each random creature list can contain up to 8 creatures chosen from the Master Creature List (and customized i.e., give different trait settings, possessions, etc.). Each creature on the random creature list for the world map can be assigned to appear in a particular terrain type by repeatedly selecting the "Appearing in" option. The percentage of the time that the creature will appear can be set for all random creatures. The appearance percentage range for random map creatures is 0 to 60%. For room random creatures it is 0 to 75%. (The range can be set higher for rooms because adventurers typically spend less time in particular rooms than they do in particular terrain types on the world map. Also, the opportunity to add a creature exists before every move on the map, but it exists only upon entering a room in a region. Once you've added a random creature to a random creature list, you cannot remove it. But you can set its appearance percentage to 0 or edit it into a completely different creature. Random creatures will only be added to a spot in the room which doesn't have a thing on it. No more than 16 creatures can occupy a region at once. Once 16 are present, no new random creatures will appear and no creatures will answer a "summon creature" spell until someone leaves. Random creatures which have been added to rooms no longer occupied by a player/character are periodically removed. Thing Reference Guide... A thing in ACS can be just about anything - a weapon or magic item a hero/player might pick up and use, a door leading from one place to another, a space fixed so that walking on it causes music to play, etc. And things can be made to masquerade as other things (even as terrain and individuals) to keep adventurers on their toes. You can have up to 128 things on an adventure's Master Thing List. 1. Creating and Editing Things To add things to your Master Things List and modify ones already there, select "Construct an Adventure", then select "Do More Detailed Work" twice, and finally select "Edit Things". The profile of one thing in your Master Thing List will appear. The options in thing profiles work just as they do elsewhere in ACS. Some must be repeatedly selected to bring up their various possibilities, while others will ask you to type in text or numbers. To add a new thing, select "Add Thing" and follow the instructions as they appear. To work with a different thing already on the list, select "Edit Another Thing". A new menu will appear along with a list of the things in one of the 13 different thing catagories. Moving the joystick up and down moves the highlight from item to item in the list. Moving the joystick right selects the highlighted item. Moving it left brings a new category to the screen. Once you add a thing to your list, you cannot remove it, nor can you change the decision (which you made when adding it) about how many of it an individual may own. You can, however, edit it into a completely different thing within the same category. the categories are Treasures, Magic Item, Missile Weapon, Melee Weapon, Armor, Magic Spell, Portal, Space, Custom Space, Obstacle, Custom Obstacle, Store, Room Floor. The options which you may set for each thing depend upon the category the thing is in. 2. Treasures Treasures are perhaps the simplest of the things you can include in an adventure. You may select their weight (which determines how easy they will be to carry), their value (important for determining how much a store will sell them for and how much it will offer to buy them back), and whether they will disappear if dropped. But even within this simplicity, ingenious tricks are possible. If you look, for instance, at the Magic Bag in the Fantasy builder set, you'll notice that its weight is set to a negative amount. ACs adds the weight of all items in an individual's possession when determining whether the individual is strong enough to carry everything without slowing down. Having something with negative weight means being able t carry much more than before without slowing down. Whoever finds that magic bag will be grateful indeed. (The same negative weight trick is also used for horse in the Fantasy set.) There's one Treasure you'll always find on a brand new list. It's called Gold, and it has some special properties. Individuals are allowed to own as many of these as they can carry (25,000 pieces is the maximum, more than anyone could possibly carry unless you set the weight to 0). And you may not change the value from the preset value of 1. Change the picture and name when you want to replace the gold standard with something different for a particular adventure. (Dollars, for instance, are used in the Spy/Mystery builder set, and crystite is used in the Science Fiction one.) Whatever the standard, by carefully setting the weight in tune with the strength you give to characters and creatures and the value you give to desirable objects, you build a basic economy for your world. For example, consider a world in which gold weighs 1 unit per piece, individuals begin with strength of 12, and the magic sword to end all swords costs 1500. In such a world, a hero would need to be the beneficiary of some strength-increasing spells or the lucky finder of a magic bag of some light, valuable objects (like jewels) before he or she could afford that sword. 3. Magic Items Magic items are treasures with magic spells attached to them. The spell can be set to be invoked when the item is picked up and /or used and/or dropped. For a discussion of all the possible spells, see "Magic Spells" earlier in these instructions. 4. Missile Weapons, Melee Weapons and Armor Missile weapons are those which can operate at a distance (bows, rifles, grenades, etc.), Melee weapons are effective up close (daggers, claws, clubs, etc.). Armor absorbs some of the force of blows against its wearer (chain mail, thick hide, shield, etc.) Power (set between 0 and 31) is a measure of the damage a weapon will do or, in the case of armor, of the damage it will prevent. Attack adjustment (set between -35% and +40% for weapons and -65% and +10% for armor) combines with a player/character's weapon or armor skill to determine how likely it is that blows or missiles will hit their mark. The higher the positive attack adjustment, the more likely success will be. Note: The attack adjustment for armor does not affect anything about blows struck against the armor. Instead it affects the success of its wearer with the weapons he is using. Think of it as a representing how awkward and cumbersome the armor is. And think of armor skill as the ability to overcome the cumbersomeness of the protection so you can fight well while wearing it. You might also use armor as a "cloak of skill" by setting it's power to 0, so it doesn't ward off blows, while setting the attack adjustment to +10%, so it will improve its owners skill with weapons. Such a piece of armor might be called a "priest's protection spell" and could be set to disappear after the first use or to break easily (see next item). Chance of Breaking (set between o and 15%) determines how likely it is that the weapon or armor will break when it is used. (Individuals automatically try to parry melee blows if they have a melee weapon of their own readied.) If you are using a weapon to represent some natural quality that it doesn't make sense that the owner would lose, be sure to set the Chance of Breaking to 0. Magic/Not Magic determines how successful the weapon will be against magic defenses. Select Usable Only by Owner for items like claws, teeth, fists, etc. If this option is set to Can be Used By Anyone After Owner Dies, the weapon will appear when the body of the departed owner disappears. A player/character will not be permitted to drop an item that is usable only by its owner. Range determines the number of spaces (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) that missiles will travel before their force is spent. (Note: missiles will not pass through Obstacles, but they can pass between two items which are diagonally adjacent to each other, if the shot is accurate.) Thinking About Weapon and Armor Design - Like creature constructing, the design and placement of weapons in an adventure is an art, not a science. As a starting place, study the weapons and armor in the basic construction sets. Notice that the more powerful ones tend to have negative attack adjustments - that is, they decrease the likelihood of a successful blow and therefore require higher skill ratings if they are to be used effectively. One good rule, then, is that the more powerful the weapon or armor, the greater the degree of skill which ought to be needed to wield or wear it. Another good rule is to avoid making super weapons (+40% Attack Adjustment, Power in the 10's or 20's) unless you want to guarantee a huge edge to anyone who finds them. Try placing and modifying different weapons in different ways, then notice their effect on the game when you play. In time, you will develop a feel for the kinds of weapon characteristics that best suit the kinds of adventures you want to design and play. 5. Magic Spells Magic Spells are both a category of things in their own right and something which can be hooked to things (Magic Items), portals, and obstacles and spaces (including custom obstacles and spaces). Altogether there are 15 different base spells available. They are described earlier in these instructions. When a spell belongs to the Magic Spell category, it can only belong to a creature or a player/character, and it is invoked only when the owner casts it - and only then if he, she or it has enough power and/or luck to do so. (You may set the amount of power required to any number between 0 and 127). Each Magic Spell can be made to display a short three-line text message when it is invoked (providing the opportunity to explain to the player/character what is happening) and may be made to disappear after its first use. When spells are invoked by a space or obstacle or by dropping an object on a space, they take effect at that space or obstacle. When they are cast or invoked by the use of a Magic Item, the her/player chooses the target of the spell. (An exception: if a spell invoked by a dropped object applies only to an individual and it's dropped on a square next to the dropper unless it's dropped on a creature.) Magic Items which invoke spells upon being picked up take effect where they were, unless they apply to individuals. If they do apply to individuals, they act on the one who picked them up. 6. Portals Portals (i.e., doors, passageways, tunnels, time windows, etc.) may invoke a spell (which you pick) whenever they are passed through. Alternately, they may simply allow passage from one room to another (or even to another region or to the world map). And if they are not set to invoke a spell, they may be set to allow passage only to those who own or don't own a thing you pick from the Master Thing List. Portals may be designated as normal two-way doors or as one-way, no return passages. Two-way doors can only be used to provide passage between rooms which share a common wall. One-way, no-return passages can be made to lead anywhere within the region they start in, or anywhere on the map, or anywhere in another region. When you install them, the program will prompt you through the process of setting where they come out. Whenever you make passages lead from one region to another, or to and from regions and the map, ACS must go to the disk for new information. Use such jumps by all means, but to keep the pace of your adventure brisk (and because jumps from one region to another can be very disorienting), use such passages sparingly. If a Portal is set to bar passage to all carrying or not carrying something, it may also be set to display a 3-line message explaining why passage is blocked. You may type in any message you want. You may also set the blocked passage so it will destroy the object named when you pass through it - a nice little way to set a chasm so it can only be crossed by a rope which breaks after delivering you to the other side. Don't forget that you can have any picture for a door that you like. For a delightfully puzzling use of that fact, see the room where the whole wall seems made of doors and the adjacent one where there seems to be no door at all in the Land of Aventuria mini-adventure called "Deep Dank Dungeon". 7. Spaces and Custom Spaces These things offer a way to put spells and barriers within a room without using a door. Like doors, Spaces and Custom Spaces can be made to invoke any spell, or they can be set to bar passage - and say why - to any player/character carrying or not carrying anything you pick from the Master Thing List. In addition, a Custom Space can be made to invoke a spell if a thing you specify is dropped on it. A Custom Space is like a wild card. It lets you choose which characteristics you want in common for every copy you put down, and which ones you want to vary each time you put a copy down. The Help spaces (marked with a big H) used in the "Land of Aventuria" adventures on your ACS disk offer a good illustration of the usefulness of Custom Spaces. By creating the Help space as a Custom Space, the tutorial designers were able to give you a symbol you could depend on for helpful information and still give you different information each time they used the symbol. A Custom Space can also be used as a "vending machine", a place where an individual can drop one thing and get back another. To create this effect, set line 5 to "Invoke Spell When Thing Dropped Here" and pick the thing you want to use as quarters ("Gold" perhaps). Then set line 7 to "Add To Room One" and pick the thing you want the machine to dispense (anything from candy bar to a magic sword). Since this is a Custom Space, you must pick either the thing to be dropped or the thing produced when you put this trick into the room. There is one limit on Custom Spaces. While they can be associated with both a spell and a thing (if they contain a spell evoked by dropping a particular item, for instance), you cannot wait until placing them in a room to pick both the spell and the thing. One or the other must be specified during construction of the Custom Space. (Note: ACS will not use any Custom Spaces when you use the "Let ACS Finish the Adventure" option.) Spaces and Custom Spaces are wonderfully versatile props. Turned into beds and chairs with the appropriate spell attached (Increase Life force), they can be made to heal all who "rest" upon them (i.e., move onto them). As "costumes" they can masquerade as anything or terrain type, creating puzzles for the adventurer where things are not what they seem. You might, for instance, make a space called "invisible cover" which is the same color as the floor. By placing this item on top of other things in a room, you could then hide those things from view. You might then make a Magic Item which invokes the spell "Rids the Room of All Uncarried Invisible covers" when it is picked up. Picking up the item would then have the effect of making visible any item covered by an invisible cover. For more uses of Spaces and Custom Spaces, see "Stacking Things on One Space" below. 8. Obstacles and Custom Obstacles To make a place in a room or on a map impassable to everyone under all circumstances, put an Obstacle there (like a table or mountain). If you want the obstacle to be temporary, set it to disappear after the first time it's bumped into. You may also associate a spell with an obstacle so it will be invoked whenever a player/character bumps into the obstacle. If you want to be able to chose a different spell modifier each time you put a copy in a room - a different text message, perhaps, or a larger or smaller increase in Life Force - use a Custom Obstacle. The treasure chest used in the "In a Nazi Castle" mini-adventure is an example of the usefulness of Custom Obstacles. The designers were able to leave immediately recognizable treasure chests throughout the adventure, yet put a different treasure (with the "Add to Room One" spell) in each one. Like Spaces, Obstacles are remarkably flexible props. Obstacles with not associated spell are useful for decorative detail, for making mazes with walls within rooms (see the "Land of Aventuria" mini-adventure called "Deep Dark Dungeon") and for making red herrings - items which look like they might be worth investigating but which adventurers discover to be simply obstacles if they spend the moves necessary to check them out. 9. Stores and Room Floors Stores and Room Floors are not very editable, but they are especially useful. You may pick the picture for each, and you may have only one of each per Master Thing List. The picture you assign to Room Floor will be used for the floor of every new room you create. ACS will not add any Stores to the adventure it creates when you use the "Let ACS Finish Adventure" option. When you place a store in a room (you may add up to 1 per region while editing a room's contents), your things list will appear so that you can select the store's inventory. You may pick from among the treasures, magic items, weapons and armor in your list. How many you can have in inventory for each item depends on what you chose for the "No one may own more than X of these" option. Just keep pressing the joystick button over an item to discover whether you can have only 1 or up to 3 of it in stock. Stores know the value you have assigned to things in the adventure, and they compute all transactions accordingly. Stores will also buy back items at a reduced rate. The smarter a player/hero is (i.e., the higher his or her Wisdom rating ) the better the deal. 10. Stacking Things on One Space You may have more than 500 different things in each region in an adventure, and if you wished, you could stack them all on a single square in one room. And though you are not likely to go to that extreme, you will find stacking things on top of each other very useful for creating various special effects. When you create a stack of things, it's important to remember that the thing on top (the last one you put down) will be executed first. Also, if a "Rid the Room of All Uncarried" spell names an item in a stack, that item will also be removed when the spell is cast. And finally, an "activate all things" spell activates only spells in the stack. Here are some special effects you can create with stacks of things. Each stack is listed from top to bottom. A) Disease - This stack is both simple and deadly: 1) "Activate All Things" Space, 2) "Increase Life Force by 10 Temporarily" Space, 3) "Decrease Life Force by 10 Permanently" Space. The adventurers leave the square the stack was on with the same amount of Life Force that they entered with, but now 10 units of that Life Force will tick away at the rate of 1 unit every few turns - about twice as fast as Life Force regenerates when less than Constitution. Four such disease would be enough to kill an adventurer. The rate of decay would be too great for rest to overcome. B) Using Endless Music Themes - Whenever you use the "Let ACS Finish the Adventure" option, it always places the goal of the adventure on top of a stack designed to give you musical accompaniment while you read the congratulatory message for successful completing the adventure. This "success stack" contains 1) the treasure/goal; 2) an "Activate All Things" space; 3) a "Play Music" space set to play the endless theme which matches the music mood for the adventure; 4) a "Display Message" space set to display a congratulatory page of text; 5) a "Play Music" space set to play the short fanfare. After the player/character picks up the object, and then moves onto the space, the Do-All spell puts everything in motion. The music starts to play. The message appears as the music continues. When you press the button again, the short fanfare plays, ending the "endless theme" in the process. C) Let There Be Light - Here's how to create the effect of shining a light into a dark room. Place objects in the room and cover them with "Invisible Covers". Then put the following stack at the room's entrance: 1) an "Activate All Things" Space; ) an "Open only to owners of a lantern/Rids the room of all uncarried covers" Custom Space set to display the message, "Your light shines into every nook and cranny"; 3) an "Open only to those who don't own a lantern" space set with a do nothing spell which displays the message " You can walk forward, but it's quite dark here". The Do-All Space lets both passage conditions shine through but continues only with the spell that was actually invoked. Player/characters not carrying a lantern receive the message that it's dark. Those carrying a lantern are told that light is shining into the room and they see items appear. The messages play a crucial role in this trick, by the way. By persuading adventurers that they need a light, it sets their expectations so they'll accept what they later see as the result of light being shined into darkness. In good adventures, messages often work in this fashion. Your ability to create depends greatly on how clever you are in using messages to plant ideas you can play on later. Graphics Reference Guide... You can have 3 "pages" (screens) of pictures with up to 16 pictures on the first page, up to 48 on the second an up to 46 on the third - a total of 110 pictures in all. The third page in the set is reserved for pictures of creatures - that is, you may choose pictures from it only when selecting pictures for creatures. The pictures from the first two pages can be used for anything - terrain, things or creatures. Unless you make a change with the "Change Definition of Map Terrain" option (in the "Edit World Map" group), the 16 pictures on page 1 are used by ACS as the world map terrain pictures. Selecting a Picture to Edit - Moving the cursor back and forth along the "Edit Another Picture" line at the bottom moves the selecting bars among the pictures on the page. The picture being selected by the bars is displayed just above the menus. If you want to draw a brand new picture, select a blank space on the page. To choose a different page, select "Edit Another Group of Pictures" Drawing - Move the cursor up into the magnified version of the selected picture. Hold the button to put down a block of the color currently outlined by the selecting box. If you draw on top of colors different from the one you're using, the new color will replace the old. If you draw on top of the same color, the color will be replaced by the currently selected background color (the top left one of the four currently available color choices). Selecting a Different Color - Selecting "Draw another Color" moves a selecting rectangle among the four currently available color choices. Selecting "Change Paint Color" changes the color in the selecting rectangle. Changing the paint color in the top left choice changes the background color. Any change in paint color will affect all pictures using that color. Erasing a Picture - To erase a picture, select the background color (top left of the four possibilities), then draw over everything with that color. Note: To draw pictures which won't blur into adjacent pictures when you use them use only the background color for the the bottom and right edges of the picture. APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY "Rivers of Light" Bach, Marcus, Major Religions of the World, New York: Abingdon Press, 1959 Champdor, Albert, Babylon Ancient Cities and Temples, New York: London Elek Books, G.P. Putnam's Sons, Ryerson Press, 1958 David, A. Rosalie, The Ancient Egyptians: Religious Beliefs and Practices, London: Routledge & Kegan paul, 1982 Faulkner, R.O.D. Lit., F.S.A., The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Warminster, England: Aris & Philips Ltd., Vol. I, 1973, Vol. II, 1977, Vol. III, 1978 Ferm, Vergilius, Ph.D., editor, Ancient Religions, New York: Citadel Press, 1965 Gastor, Theodor H., The Oldest Stories in the World, New York: The Viking Press, 1952 Kramer, Samuel Noah, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History, Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981 Leeming, David, Mythology, New York: Newsweek Books 1976. Mailer, Norman, Ancient Evenings, Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown & Company, 1983. Parrinder, Geofrey, African Traditional Religions, London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1954