There are a number of possibilities open to Frank as the dungeon master.

• Controlling NPC Chatting: In order to add atmosphere and help the players along, Dungeon Masters can put words into the mouths of the different non-player characters in their scenarios. In this case, that means the villagers, Sam, the mages and bandits.
• Changing Acts: It is possible to change acts at will. In Frank's case, he can choose to skip one of the acts if it's taking too long or replay an act if the villagers "don't believe" Sam and send him back for another run (this would require a little spontaneous roleplay on Frank's part).
• Manipulating Bandit Camps: It is possible to switch the mode of a bandit camp manually, making it easier or harder for the players to succeed.
• Incarnating NPCs: It is also possible to take control of Sam and to make him walk about by hand.
• Handing out rewards: A reward system will allow Dungeon Masters to hand out rewards to players. In the first version of R² they will only be able to distribute items or cash that they or other players have created or earned in the Ryzom mainland. It is likely that additional rewards will be created for Dungeon Masters to hand out later on. These will not tend to be powerful weapons or suchlike as it would be too easy for dungeon masters to 'exploit' the ring and use it to artificially beef up their friends’ characters.

The Bandit Camp that Frank is using is composed of a set of bandits who split their time between sitting round their camp fire and wandering about in their favourite patrol zone.

Bandit camps are added to the map from the Palette interface:

• A click in the 'components' tab of the palette to select the Bandit Camp and a translucent camp fire shape appears attached to the mouse cursor.
• A click in the scene to place the camp fire and a dialogue box appears, allowing one to select the number and type of bandits.
• A click on the OK button and Voila! The bandits appear in the map, standing round their camp fire in a zone traced out on the landscape.

It is of course possible to make adjustments later on, such as adding more bandits or to remove the surplus ones if there are too many. There are also a number of different ways of customising Bandit Camps. These include:

• Fine tuning of the look, name and stats of each of the individual bandits
• Moving the camp fire and wander zones to different places in the map
• Setting a regular time-based pattern for the bandits to follow, having them get up from their fire to go and patrol at certain times of day.
• Setting up links between different game events and bandit camps, allowing them to switch between 'sitting round camp fire' and 'patrolling' modes automatically. Game events can be selected from a standard list including: players entering certain zones, killing an NPC, talking to someone and so on.

When the adventure is live, Frank will be able to toggle his Bandit camp between 'sitting round camp fire' and 'patrolling' at will, allowing him to bring a personal touch to the scenario as it runs.

In order to limit the number of servers that are required to run Ryzom Ring scenarios, there is a limit to the number of characters that scenario-creators can place in their maps.

The R² editor does, however, provide the possibility for breaking scenarios up into modules called 'acts'. Only one act can be activated at a time, but each act has its own creature limit. This means that a scenario in 5 acts can have 5 times as many creatures in all as a scenario that isn't split up into acts.

For scenarios that have NPCs who accompany the players from act to act, such as escorts, one can setup a 'permanent content' set to encompass the key characters. Adding characters to the 'permanent content' set does, of course, reduce the number of characters usable for each of the scenario's acts.

Act changes can be provoked by logic within the scenario, but Dungeon Masters may wish to leave that control to themselves, allowing them to match the pace of their scenario to their audience.

It is also possible, but not compulsory, for each act to be linked to a different land map. In this case, the players are teleported en-mass whenever there is an act change.

As one adds content to the game in the editor tool, it is displayed in a window called the 'scenario window'. This window allows one to switch views between the content of the different acts. The 'permanent content' is always displayed.

To sum up, 'Bandits' is a simple scenario assembled from a set of 'components' and basic NPCs. The R² component system makes adventures of this type extremely quick and easy to create, without detracting from the richness of possibilities available to pioneer with a strong imagination.

The next two articles will look at two quite different scenarios and delve deeper into the possibilities for personalising and fine tuning their designs.

- Article by Daniel "Sadge" Miller, Nevrax

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Thank you Daniel. We look forward to more articles in the coming months.

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