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Article - Tips for Creating Challenging Monsters

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. Depending on the degree to which they're used, they can make any level scenario more challenging and interesting.

1) The basic thing you can do is increase a monster's level, which will greatly increase a monster's damage, health, spell points, and general effectiveness. However, it doesn't do a lot to make them new and interesting.

2) Experiment with melee attacks. Increase the melee stat and strength of a monster and decrease the monster's HP or even the number of sides on the dice for innate melee attacks. A 20d5 attack is much better than a 5d20 attack, and a 20d5 attack is more likely to pierce armor and do damage at higher levels.

3) Increase the effectiveness of spellcaster AI by adjusting spell levels. Using the call 'change_spell_level' you can adjust spell levels to 0, 1, or 3 (two is the default). Setting the spell level to '0' will mean that the monster will never cast that spell, meaning that you can effectively choose which spells a mage or priest will cast, reducing (or eliminating) the amount of castings of woefully ineffective spells.

4) Use disabling special abilities. Disabling special abilities are ones that limit the mobility and effectiveness of the party, like slowing, cursing, webs, paralysis, confusion, et cetera. Paralysis should only be used sparingly, since it will doom a singleton (one-PC party), which many people play with. Still, webs, sleep, and slowing will allow your monster to get extra attacks in, while slowing down the movement of the party, forcing the player to use different tactics.

5) Target a certain type of PC. Using the dumbfounding ray special ability will remove spellcasters from the battle, making the party use melee to beat you. Using an antimagic field will also do it, as will adjusting immunities. Likewise, giving a monster high armor and low immunities will necessitate using spells to attack it.

6) Play around with monster behavior scripts. Stareye wrote a behavior script called 'magekiller', which will make the monster attack the PC with the highest amount of mage or priest skill. Other behavior scripts involve regenerating, hasting, blessing, and other things that monsters shouldn't be able to do but can. Be careful with some of them, though - making a behavior script too powerful will seriously annoy the player.

7) Use the ray special abilities. Rays only take one AP to fire, and they're a good way to put medium-level parties on the defensive.

8) Don't ignore the eight item slots you have! One of the most powerful tools that designers have is the capability to equip our monsters with weapons, armor, potions, scrolls, and more. Giant Chiefs in Avernum 3 quaffed an invulnerability potion before every battle. Giving an invulnerability elixir to a warrior-priest will allow him to cast defense priest spells without having to worry about dying for a few turns. Giving a goblin a scroll with Lightning Spray will shock a low-level party. Tweaking items and testing various combinations will ensure that you've got the right balance for your scenario.

Still, all of these are only useful if they're used in the right setting. Having an outdoor combat full of heat ray-firing ruby skeletons in a beginner scenario will make anyone but the best players give up in frustration. A more appropriate combat would be a few ghouls (disablers) along with a ruby skeleton or two - slowing the party so that they can't respond to the barrage of fire unless they quickly cast Repel Spirit. As a player, I'd rather face a few interesting monsters used in combination than slogging through tons of the same monster.

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Article - Why?

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.

The aspects of the scenario that are most important to question are its general premise, town and dungeon design, and the environment in which the scenario takes place. All of this can be done before you even touch the editor, during the paper and pencil stage of design. The questions will help you refine your ideas and root out the bad ones. A scenario with good answers to all of the following questions will be a solid one, at least with regards to plot.

Why is the party in this scenario?

One of the most overused and least fulfilling answers is that they're adventurers or soldiers that heard of a mission or were dispatched to a faraway province to deal with a problem. It's always important to let the party know who they are when they enter the scenario, or somewhere in the readme or first town.

The best scenarios will also take the party's identity into account when they decide how much impact on the world the party will have. A small group of soldiers will not win a war, but they can take down small fortresses, steal important items, et cetera. It's certainly possible that the party's side will still lose, despite the efforts of the party to prevent it.

Why is this event, etc., taking place in this location?

The actual answer to this question is not very important, as long as it's addressed. Why were the monsters attacking Valorim in Avernum 3? If they could secure a continent, they'd have a base from which they could launch subsequent attacks against the Empire. If you can justify the events taking place in the scenario without resorting to overused clich�s, then you're doing a good job. A similar question is .

Why is/are the baddie(s) doing whatever it is they're doing? What's their motive?

Why is the evil wizard attacking the nearby town? What can he get out of it? If the answer is simply 'because he's evil', it's back to the drawing board for you. Using a hackneyed plot and motive will almost guarantee a lot of negative feedback from players. Among the other overused justifications is 'he was possessed by demons' (but why do the demons want to attack the town? Just because they're demons?).

When you're creating a justification, keep it realistic and make sure that you take into account the party's importance. Would a group of novice adventurers be able to take on the Impenetrable Lair of Lord Evilmancy? Try to create a baddie with the same power, or a little more, than the party, especially if it's out in some remote location.

Why does your scenario have wandering monsters?

Most areas of the Empire have eliminated all nonhumans completely, and the Empire will not tolerate banditry. Valleys are some of the most dangerous places to be in Blades of Exile, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Why does the party win?

What does the party have or do to overcome the baddies and win the scenario? All of this should be planned out beforehand, and it should all make sense. If a powerful wizard helps you break into the Impenetrable Lair of Lord Evilmancy, why are you needed in the first place? Couldn't he just take on Lord Evilmancy himself? If Lord Evilmancy knows the mark of his magic, why would the wizard hire you? Surely there are better and more experienced adventurers out there.

You need to come up with an idea of progression through the scenario so that each step along the road to victory holds water.

Why is this particular town/dungeon here?

What does every town and every dungeon add to the plot or atmosphere of the scenario? If your scenario takes place in a remote mining town, there should be mines, ore storage rooms, miner barracks, ledgers and records, and so on. How does each town make money and survive? Also, is the town included in the scenario for a reason, or does it just exist to hold people and make the world bigger?

Dungeons should be subject to the same scrutiny. Why is there a lair of ogres in the middle of Province XYZ? Does it make sense? Does it add to the plot? Why are there goblins and sliths in the same dungeon? If you can refine your town and dungeon ideas before you start writing your scenario, you'll have a much better chance of finishing, especially with BoA's town and outdoors editor.
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As a player, if every scenario answered these questions well, I'd be extremely happy. As a designer, I've tried to think through my scenario ideas with an extremely critical player or beta-tester in mind. The closer everything is scrutinized, the better off the final product will be. Just diving in with a loose idea of a plot is something that may be good for getting experience with the editor, but when you finish (if you finish), it's very unlikely that you'll come out with something good.

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Article - Choices and Linearity

When planning out your scenario, you will have to make some decisions regarding the progression of the plot. There's the question of how much impact the player's actions will have on the scenario, and what will always happen regardless. You have to decide if the player is ever able to make choices that will have far-reaching (or simpler) consequences, or whether the party is swept along in the story.

The first point of discussion here is the amount of choice the player will have. There are many scenarios where the party is able to choose a side to join - some of it is done outright ("Which side will you join?"), and some is done more subtly, even so discreetly that they might not even realize that they're picking a side. Then again, most scenarios don't use choices of this scope at all.

An overt choice, such as in Tatterdemalion, can be used well, but it generally separates a scenario into two (or three) smaller scenarios that much each be played to get a full feel for the scenario. A Small Rebellion also uses a choice like this to expand the scenario and give it another dimension - the ability to play for a sympathetic group of rebels. Ideally, the choice will come somewhere between the time it does in the above two scenarios. In Tatterdemalion, you choose at the beginning, and it feels too early. In ASR, you choose seemingly too far along to experience much of the rebel story.

A subtler choice, like in Of Good And Evil, will still have the party making a choice between two forces - in the case of OGAE, it's morals and orders, and the effects of the choices aren't known until the second play-through ends. This is very successful in OGAE, and it can be replicated easily in Blades of Avernum. Part of the challenge is presenting the sides so that it appears to be a dilemma to the player, and so that it strikes the right chords in the player's head. You don't want to ask them outright to switch sides or choose one, but their actions should influence the direction the story takes, and they should be able to realize it after a while.

The third possibility is to not let on to the party at all that their actions have influenced the game, but keep on changing the game based on them, and not let them find out until the end. OGAE and Falling Stars use a karmic system to determine their endings, how NPCs react to the party, etc. It's an invisible reputation counter, basically, and it has a lot of influence on how the game unfolds. Again, when this is utilized properly, it makes scenarios much more fun.

Still, you don't need to have choices like the three kinds described above to make a good scenario. You can present choices and options to the player, or you can force them to follow a linear plot and keep the story moving quickly. This opens up another discussion and the second point of the article - linear scenarios versus the open-ended scenarios.

Linear scenarios are usually plot-driven, and they have a quickly-paced story that should grab the player's interest and not let go until the scenario ends. An Apology does this, Redemption does this, Emulations does this, Revenge does this, and even Quintessence does. Those aren't all of the linear scenarios, but they are some of the most prominent, and some of the ones that use linearity well and to augment their scenario.

A linear scenario may have outdoor sections, but there should not be too many of them, or it will kill the urgent mood (if one exists) and become boring to the player. A linear scenario can still have sidequests, but they should never detract from the main plot, and it's even better if they add to it. The combat in a linear scenario should be interesting, fun, and important. It should never have the feeling of being repetitive (and this holds true for any scenario), and it doesn't have to exist at all.

The driving force behind most linear scenarios (and all of the good ones) is a gripping plot that involves the player and thrusts you into the action. It's primarily a story-based scenario, and if the story falters, the scenario will falter too. As a player, linear scenarios are my favorite by far.

There are two types of open-ended scenario - one with a set plot that can be deviated from, and one that attempts to be a world that immerses the player, usually without a definite ending point, except running out of missions to do. Most scenarios fall under the first description, but only the smaller ones succeed. Scenarios that try to emulate Avernum 3 or another giant game will inevitably fail or fall short. There are some notable exceptions (At the Gallows, Falling Stars), but generally, scenarios on a smaller scale will work better. The second type of open-ended scenario has not really been fully explored in Blades of Exile, but the Adventurers' Club scenarios and the Wreck of the Slug attempt it.

Open-ended scenarios that follow the first model are more likely to be well-received, based on the high favor that a plot curries in the community. Still, don't go overboard on the sidequests, sidedungeons, and sidetowns. Never forget that the main plot is the focus of the scenario, and everything else serves to flesh out the world and offer a break from the general plotline. Limiting the scenario's size also makes it more likely that you'll actually finish designing it, especially when you get into a more open-ended scenario that is slightly detached from the story. Linear scenarios can generally get away with being a little bigger than they need to be because the designer usually has a connection with the plot that keeps them going.

The second type of open-ended scenario is, in my opinion, not suited to the Blades of Exile/Blades of Avernum medium. It's far too hard to create a whole world in this system, and we generally like to focus our attention on small parts of worlds, backwards frontier settlements, isolated valleys, et cetera. It's a giant undertaking when you attempt a scenario of this sort, and it's generally not as fun to play. A scenario does not need to be as big as a commercial game because very few players want to spend that much time in a world that you create with a driving story keeping you there.

TWOTS and the ACs all suffer from that tendency, and you're generally better off focusing on one of the other types of scenarios. I personally favor a linear scenario, and large scenarios need to be extremely good to keep my interest throughout the entire scenario. Don't forget that a party is not obligated to stay in the scenario the entire time - you can't just make it interesting at the end, because nobody will see it. You have to start out strong and keep the pace for the entire scenario.

All of this is just meant to keep you open to the different mindsets of scenario designing, and some of the common pitfalls in each. You're certainly free to design whatever you want to design.

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Article - 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).

There are quite a few ways to go about making a fully responsive world. The easiest and most common is changing dialogue based on events that happen and things that the party does. A step up from that is changing dialogue and the perceptions of the towns by including some sort of a 'reputation' or 'karma' counter that can be used to lower/raise prices, get hired by more prestigious people, and so on. The last step is causing far-reaching effects as a result of what the party says, doing other events, et cetera.

Changing dialogue is the preferred way of getting these changes across to the player, and it's incredibly easy to do so in Blades of Avernum. Having dialogue depend on a condition, having strings removed and added, and dialogue actions like INTRO and DEP_ON_SDF all greatly improve the control that we have over dialogue. This makes it a cinch to change everyone in the town from being scared of the baddies to happy that you killed them.

This does not have to be contained to the threatened town - maybe all of the towns nearby have heard of what you did and now more options become open. That's getting into the second type of changing world, based on the deeds of the party and changing the perceptions of the characters with regards to it.

Another important thing to remember is that if the big den of monsters has been cleaned out, all outdoor encounters related to it should disappear, either with a message upon encountering them, or just purely destroying them. Outdoor encounters, unless used properly, do not add a lot to a scenario.

The second method of changing the world requires an SDF or two that would serve as a reputation or karma counter. As the player did more quests or said things that people liked, NPCs would become more friendly. This can also work the opposite way, and it's great to see either one. Knowing that your actions have an effect on how you can play the game makes the player think.

It's fairly easy to implement these changes too. Something easy to do is call a state when entering a town that uses an else-if ladder to determine a dialog box to show that describes how the town feels about you. It could be "They notice you and start talking excitedly. These are the adventurers who killed X, Y, and Z," or "The citizens of the town sneer at you as you walk by. You certainly don't feel welcomed here," or something in-between.

There are still dialogue changes, and everything from the first level should be included here as well. In addition to those before, using actions like SET_SDF upon giving a favorable/unfavorable response will allow you to let the party express their opinion through dialogue, and then you can concoct the appropriate responses. This is particularly effective in scenarios with multiple sides to join, as it can be used to determine how each side views you, � la Geneforge.

The third method is by no means the most intricate method available, but it's still more complicated than the two described above. This can't be used in all scenarios, but it can be extremely effective when it's used properly. It still builds on the first method, and it's possible that it would implement the second as well. The main idea with this method is 'consequences'.

Everything the party does will have consequences and repercussions in the world - some foreseeable, and others not. If the designer implements them, it makes for a much more challenging and fun game to play. Shutting off the power to an old factory that's spawning muck monsters may also shut down the waste-processing plant, which could dump sewage into the water supply, poisoning a town.

Variable Town Entry is generally fit for a purpose like that - if a town changes radically, especially its terrain, and if people die or have dramatically different dialogue responses, you'd be better off creating a whole new town and just replacing the old one. This generally fits in when a disaster occurs, towns are wiped out or attacked, or even when there have just been so many changes that it would be better to just have half happen in a completely new town.

Something you have to ensure when working with VTE is continuity. If someone gives you a quest in the old town and is still alive in the new town, they should still give you a reward, or at least acknowledge the deed. Maybe the economy has crashed between getting and finishing the quest, and he can't pay you in gold - only copper. This creates a little bit of an 'oh, man' factor, and it encourages the player to replay the scenario and see if they can complete the quest before the disaster occurs.

Imagining and implementing these consequences will allow for a fuller game that immerses the party and lets them know that for every action, there is a response, even if it may seem like there isn't. A very good way to mix it up a little is to have the original quest you were supposed to solve create a horrible and unforeseen problem that you now have to deal with, because you were the one that mucked it up in the first place.

As a player, you always want to play in a world that makes you feel like what you do is either important or has effects. Playing in a static world is no fun. Even though this may not apply to some scenarios (especially ones where you can't go backwards to places you've already been), it helps if every designer would consider them.

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Article - Designing a Quality Town

Towns. Every scenario has to have at least one of these. Most likely, almost everyone has an unfinished, 50-town 'masterpiece' somewhere on their hard-drive, begging to be cut down and simplified into a releasable scenario. Overestimating your ability to create towns and underestimating the amount of work they require are two mistakes commonly made by newer scenario designers. This is especially pertinent with the Blades of Avernum Editor's terrain system.

Towns take time. A lot of time. In Blades of Exile, it was possible to slap together a well-designed town in an hour or two, and spend another hour or two writing dialogue for it. Well, no more. In Blades of Avernum, it's not uncommon to spend around six hours just designing and tweaking a 48x48 town, and writing dialogue can add another three to four hours if you do it right. That's around ten hours spent on a single town. Fifty friendly towns, each full of personalities, will make anyone go crazy - it would take more than 20 days, non-stop, to write those towns.

That's why this article is here. 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.

Really, the first thing to do is decide whether a town you've planned is necessary. What is its purpose? Does it do anything to advance the plot or add atmosphere to the scenario, or is it to provide a break from dungeons and give shops? Towns with the latter purpose will only hinder the completion of your scenario. Think about the scenario with and without the town - if it would run pretty much the same way, definitely consider removing the town.

The first order of business when creating new towns is choosing a size. 32x32 will suffice for most forts, small towns, temples, smaller dungeons, and so on. A 48x48 town is generally large enough for anything you're trying to do. A 64x64 town in Blades of Avernum is a lot bigger than one from Blades of Exile. A town that size should only be used on something that is truly massive and you're sure that you can't fit in a 48x48 town.

When creating your town, you want to think about the region in which it's being set. What's the environment like? How far from the largest cities is it? How do people here make a living? How strong is the presence of authority? All of these things should be reflected in the making of the town. You won't have a mining town in the middle of a forest, but you may have a logging town. In the mountains, it would generally be a mining town. Have mines, miners, ore storage, people that sell mining supplies, and maybe even a miner's union. It will help you set the mood of the town and help you get a better idea of what goes on in the town.

If the town is far away from other cities and has few authority figures, is crime rampant? Or is it a peaceful backwater village that doesn't merit much attention? Do people feel resentful towards a faraway government that they never see? An easy way to get a handle on the sentiments of the people in a town is to place yourself in their shoes and see what kind of reactions you would have if you were a firebrand, a simple trader, a priest, et cetera.

The town should also have some connection to the plot - having towns for the sake of towns is just asking for trouble. Without a plot connection, it's hard to be motivated to complete a town. Maybe the town of Greenleaf is nearby an evil mage's lair and magical fringe effects have caused two-headed calves to be born. Do they know he's there? Or are they clueless? In real life, events like these caused the town to start branding people as witches. Does this happen in your town?

In any case, they would not stand idly by. The main plot usually has an effect on every town, and thusly on the characters that populate it. Any events that happen affect people, and they should talk about it in their dialogue. Everyone has an opinion on things, and most people aren't shy about sharing it. The more depth you add to a character's dialogue, the better the player will identify with them and the scenario as a whole.

On the subject of dialogue, it should be full and fleshed out. Almsot everyone should talk to the party - even if it's just a simple 'I'm busy right now' message. People are more than just shopkeepers or soldiers or priests. They're fathers, daughters, neighbors, et cetera. They have hobbies, relationships, sons away at war, and so on. Bringing that out in dialogue is a lot easier in smaller scenarios, but it should happen to some degree in all scenarios. People like the king have more to worry about than just the party and their mission.

Also, town design should be logical. There are generally paths in a town that lead through it, sections with houses for the town's inhabitants (it's unbelievable how many scenarios ignore/leave out these), and some easy-to-reach figure of authority. The mayor's office is not going to be in the back corner of a town behind forty houses with no sign and no paths. Generally, there is not a lot of empty space around town, and if there is, it's usually spread out by leaving more space between buildings.

That being said, towns should not be (and are not) designed in perfect symmetry. To add realism, most designers make towns a little messy. Not every building came up at the same time - there were some when the town was first formed, and the rest came up into open space at a later time. If you have that mindset when designing towns, your towns will generally seem a little more realistic than the 'planned community' that's extraordinarily neat, with a lot of buildings the same size and in neat little rows.

With Blades of Avernum, we're given more tools that should be taken advantage of. Not everything in a town is the same height or even on level ground. Using hills in some capacity makes a town look better, and so does adding signs around buildings (even if it's not the terrain and a custom state instead).

Towns should be built to engage the player and advance the plot, not merely be a break from dungeon crawling. A good town can do much more to advance the plot than a dungeon can. Character interactions will draw the player in, and making a town consistent with its surroundings will set a mood for the town and give it a natural environment. And above all, remember that towns take time.

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Article - A General Item Overview

When you first get ahold of the editor, a little jolt goes through your brain. Now it's you with the power, and you can make your own scenario for people to play. And with that scenario, you can include super-powerful weapons to combat the super-powerful monsters, and all in a low-level scenario.

But that's not what scenario design is about. What happens when the party leaves that scenario at level eight with weapons that would make a level 50 party drool? This article has two parts - balance/avoiding Monty Haul, and creating cool items. And while the first is not nearly as fun as the second, it's much more important.

What is Monty Haul? A Monty Haul scenario is one where the party is given the opportunity to acquire items that would be unbalancing if placed in another scenario of the same level. It's okay to make powerful items to give to the party, but there's a difference between powerful and unbalancing. In a low-level scenario, an iron greatsword is a powerful and awesome weapon, but it's not unbalancing.

Editing that same iron greatsword to give it 10 defense, resistance to all elements, and +2 AP, while keeping it at the same base damage, crosses the line from powerful to unbalancing. Even though the two swords will do the same amount of damage, one will wreck all of the combat in another scenario. If the combat in your scenario requires a sword of this sort, then maybe it should be toned down (or the sword should be taken away at the end of the scenario).

Of course, it's still possible to create cool items that are balanced for the scenario's level and the combat within it. The first thing to do when creating combat items is to assess the level of the scenario and the difficulty of the combat. Most likely, you'll want the combat to still be difficult and challenging, and the weapons and armor should not give the party an unfair advantage.

When creating a weapon, it's important to take several things into account. Should it be one-handed or two-handed? The most powerful items should be two-handed, since it's good to create a dilemma for the player regarding whether or not s/he should take the powerful greatsword or a smaller weapon and a shield. If you create a good shield, it makes the choice even tougher.

Another thing to take into consideration with all items is weight. The party has a maximum carrying capacity of 350 stones, and making better items heavy, you're creating another dilemma for the player. They have to make space to fit this new item. Still, weight should be realistic - swords shouldn't be over 60, armor shouldn't be over 100, etc.

Something else that Blades of Avernum lets us do is assign any skill to use for weapon strength. The default is melee weapon, but setting it to Mage Spells or Nature Lore could make for some interesting weapons for mages or rogues. Since any skill can be used, weapons can cater to more people than just fighters.

A very effective way to make an average weapon into a powerful artifact in your scenario alone, but that is not really special in another scenario, is to give the main boss a weakness that the weapon exploits. You can do this with a custom item state in the scenario script, or you can do the easier (and less interesting) thing and make the evil baddie either undead, demon, reptile, or Vahnatai, and use abilities that do extra damage to those species.

Alternatively, you could make an armor that blocks the main attack of monsters in the scenario but has a disadvantage that makes you vulnerable to the big boss but not his henchmen. The possibilities are endless.

In general, combining advantages and disadvantages to make an item level-appropriate will be enough to keep the party guessing, unless they come into your scenario with overpowered weapons. In that case, there's a lot that we can do as designers, including completely redesigning the item set to make it weaker (which is a lot more interesting than stronger) after we strip a party of all of its items.

Forcing a party to go through a scenario with only the weakest items provides a challenge and may be appropriate, based on the premise of the scenario (ie a shipwreck or something similar). It's in that case that making items weak can still make them appear strong, compared to the item that they got two towns ago that seemed strong then. As a player, I've always liked the added challenge that brought to a scenario.

If you don't want to be too mean, you can always return the party's items at the end of a scenario, but it's certainly not necessary.

Items offer a lot of possibilities, especially now that they can call states in the scenario script. Explore them.

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//Note: all fields are filled in with their default values
begindefinecreature (number);
	clear;
	cr_name = "";
	cr_default_script = "basicnpc";
	cr_level = 2;
	cr_hp_bonus = 0;
	cr_sp_bonus = 0;
	cr_special_abil = 0;
	cr_default_attitude = 2;
	cr_species = 0;
	cr_natural_armor = 0;
	cr_attack_1 = 0;
	cr_attack_2 = 0;
	cr_attack_3 = 0;
	cr_attack_1_type = 0;
	cr_attack_23_type = 0;
	cr_ap_bonus = 0;
	cr_default_strategy = 0;
	cr_default_aggression = 100;
	cr_default_courage = 100;
	cr_which_sheet = 1;
	cr_icon_adjust = 0;
	cr_small_or_large_template = 0;
	cr_which_sheet_upper = -1;
	cr_summon_class = -1;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 0 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 0 = 0;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 1 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 1 = 0;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 2 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 2 = 0;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 3 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 3 = 0;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 4 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 4 = 0;
	cr_what_stat_adjust 5 = 0;
	cr_amount_stat_adjust 5 = 0;
	cr_start_item 0 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 0 = 0;
	cr_start_item 1 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 1 = 0;
	cr_start_item 2 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 2 = 0;
	cr_start_item 3 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 3 = 0;
	cr_start_item 4 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 4 = 0;
	cr_start_item 5 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 5 = 0;
	cr_start_item 6 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 6 = 0;
	cr_start_item 7 = 0;
	cr_start_item_chance 7 = 0;
	cr_immunities 0 = 0;
	cr_immunities 1 = 0;
	cr_immunities 2 = 0;
	cr_immunities 3 = 0;
	cr_immunities 4 = 0;
	cr_immunities 5 = 0;

---

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//Note: all fields are filled in with their default values
begindefineitem (number);
	clear;
	it_name = "";
	it_full_name = "";
	it_variety = 0;
	it_damage_per_level = 0;
	it_bonus = 0;
	it_weapon_skill_used = 4;
	it_protection = 0;
	it_charges = 0;
	it_encumbrance = 0;
	it_ability_1 = -1;
	it_ability_str_1 = 0;
	it_ability_2 = -1;
	it_ability_str_2 = 0;
	it_ability_3 = -1;
	it_ability_str_3 = 0;
	it_ability_4 = -1;
	it_ability_str_4 = 0;
	it_special_class = 0;
	it_value = 0;
	it_weight = 0;
	it_identified = 0;
	it_magic = 0;
	it_cursed = 0;
	it_once_per_day = 0;
	it_junk_item = 0;
	it_floor_which_sheet = 0;
	it_floor_which_icon = 0;
	it_icon_adjust = 0;
	it_inventory_icon = 0;
	it_missile_anim_type = 0;

---

---

//Note: all fields are filled in with their default values
//Fields with no listed default are commented out and marked with an x

begindefinefloor NUMBER;
clear;
fl_name = "";
//fl_which_sheet = x;
//fl_which_icon = x;
//fl_icon_adjust = x;
//fl_ed_which_sheet = x;
//fl_ed_which_icon = x;
//fl_ed_icon_adjust = x;
fl_blocked = 0;
fl_step_sound = -1;
fl_light_radius = 0;
fl_floor_height_pixels = 0;
fl_special_property = 0;
fl_special_strength = 0;
fl_is_water = 0;
fl_is_floor = 0;
fl_is_ground = 0;
fl_is_rough = 0;
fl_fly_over = 0;
//fl_shortcut_key = x;
fl_anim_steps = 0;
fl_shimmers = 0;
fl_out_fight_town_used = 1000;

---

---

//Note: all fields are filled in with their default values
//Fields with no listed default are commented out and marked with an x

begindefineterrain NUMBER;
clear;
te_name = "";
te_default_script = "Unused";
//te_which_sheet = x;
//te_which_icon = x;
//te_icon_adjust = x;
//te_ed_which_sheet = x;
//te_ed_which_icon = x;
//te_ed_icon_adjust = x;
te_cutaway_which_sheet = -1;
//te_cutaway_which_icon = x;
//te_cutaway_icon_adjust = x;
te_icon_offset_x = 0;
te_icon_offset_y = 0;
te_second_icon = -1;
te_second_icon_offset_x = 0;
te_second_icon_offset_y = 0;
te_cutaway_second_icon = -1;
te_anim_steps = 0;
te_move_block_n = 0;
te_move_block_w = 0;
te_move_block_s = 0;
te_move_block_e = 0;
te_look_block_n = 0;
te_look_block_w = 0;
te_look_block_s = 0;
te_look_block_e = 0;
te_blocks_view_n = 0;
te_blocks_view_w = 0;
te_blocks_view_s = 0;
te_blocks_view_e = 0;
te_height_adj_pixels = 0;
te_suppress_floor = 0;
te_light_radius = 0;
te_step_sound = -1;
//te_shortcut_key = x;
te_crumble_type = 0;
te_terrain_to_crumble_to = 0;
te_beam_hit_type = 0;
te_hidden_town_terrain = -1;
te_swap_terrain = -1;
te_is_bridge = 0;
te_is_road = 0;
te_can_look_at = 0;
te_special_property = 0;
te_special_strength = 0;

---