Blades of Avernum Center

dgoodrich compiled a detailed list of the effects of the various character traits, in the Traits & Skills Summation document which you can download in the articles section.

We have a new article to present you, by Dahak:

Making Communities and Towns, A Concept

"Chances are that your scenario contains towns. Chances are that these
towns are related. Chances are you carefully thought out the what's,
why's, and how's of your community. Am I right? If I'm wrong,
then you need to do so."

Check it out in the articles section, or download directly from here.

I've uploaded some more excellent Drakefyre's articles. I hope you enjoy reading them and that it will help designing your scenarios.

A General Item Overview - Creating Balanced and Interesting Items.

Choices and Linearity - Providing Choices and Exploring Linearity.

Designing a Quality Town - "(...) I aim to help you cut down on the number of towns in your scenarios and refine the ones that are left. The easiest way to do this is with a series of questions that should be answered for every town, along with some helpful tips that I've picked up along the way."

The Responsive World - "Something that a lot of designers of neglect to consider is the fact that the world, or at least the area of the scenario, will change in response to what the party does. This can and should be different depending on the scale and type of scenario that you're writing, but it should happen in all of them, unless you make it a point of the scenario that the party has no effect on anything (which would be very weird and very interesting)."

You can read them here.

It's been in my links section for a while, but I decided to announce it here. It's really useful and a must read for those who are beggining to learn editing and scripting (and even for more experienced ones). Just get it in his site. You can read it online or download the Word or PDF version.

 

Erik's BoA Editor Cookbook:

• Read it online
• Download Word version
• Download PDF version

 

 

Today we have a new article, by Terror's Martyr:

Playing Scenarios Critically : Whether you're a designer, beta-tester or particularly critical player, it helps to know how to be the best debugger, critic and overall beneficiary to the scenario's development as possible. I have designed arguably my fair share of scenarios, and I have also tested many- some well, some poorly. Thus, I have a few suggestions on how to best get under the scenario's skin- your players and/or designers will, if they're any good, love you for it. (...)

 

 

I've updated Kelandon's Basic Scripting For Complete Beginners. Check out this latest version.

 

 

Added another article:

Tips for Creating Challenging Monsters (by Drakefyre) : At some point, you'll get tired of the general types of monsters and want to create something more interesting, more challenging, and more innovative. These are some general tips to make your monsters more difficult without making them boring or repetitive.

 

Added the following articles:

 

Don't Draw Focus! (by The Creator) : Got a killer idea for a scenario? One of those ones that sets the imagination churning? One that makes people unable to wait to play it? Great! Now, don't mess it up. (...)

why? (by Drakefyre) : For every prospective scenario designer, the most important question that they can ask themselves is 'Why?' At every step in the scenario design process, the author needs to question his/her work, the plot, and everything in-between. Answering the questions will lead to a cohesive scenario that makes sense and is fun to play. (...)

 

Read carefully and learn. :)