Monday, January 9, 2012

Upcoming: Scrolls in ADOM II

While rebranding JADE as ADOM II I noticed that the ensuing major version number jump (to 0.3.0) also requires me to add at least a few scrolls (e.g. the famous and direly needed scroll of identify). This creates another small sidetrack now also recorded in the current DevState.

The basic infrastructure has been implemented this morning before breakfast and over the next couple of days I will add a minimum of interesting scrolls.

Actually ADOM II has a notion of 'Readables', scrolls just being one example (the upcoming spellbooks in the 0.4.x line being another one, etc.).

All readables have a text complexity which influences several things:

  • if the Literacy skill is required at all (which is true for any readable thing with a complexity of 1 or more which probably includes almost anything),
  • how one it takes to read something in any case (reading something with a Literacy skill of less than 15 takes a little bit more energy - still just one action but a longer action. So you can't be interrupted but enemies might be at an advantage),
  • if a skill check is required (which is the case if the literacy score is less than 75% of the text complexity) and
  • how long it takes to read the specific text (higher complexities need more time).
Since the basic infrastructure for reading now is there scrolls will quickly follow. Enjoy!


  1. Just typing out loud...
    Maybe magic item ID'ing could be a service provided by NPCs in various villages (for a fee) and/or could be done by the PC with some sort of toolkit and the appropriate skill (Arcanology... ?) Or perhaps by an already existing skill.

    It's just a thought to give World of ADOM II a more distinct flavour vs. a very common way of ID items.

  2. Just a truly random note:

    "[...] a service provided by NPCs in various villages"

    Dear Creator, if you do implement such NPCs, please name one of them "Ceckard Dain", please!

  3. I like the way you've set up the mechanics for literacy. Hopefully there will be a few things that you need a mid/high literacy for. Also hoping for a tonne of new scrolls!

  4. Well, I can imagine "trap scrolls" which use symbols that don't have to be READ to take effect, just SEEN, so there's a potential for readables with literacy level zero.

    Ceckard Dain? Too obvious. How about D. Abel?

  5. Well, "Ceckard Dain" wasn't really serious, and it doesn't sound good anyway. :-] Still, "D. Abel" looks fine!

  6. Some other possible readables:

    Signs (either on boards or on walls). Many possibilities here.
    Shop signs (they should use pictograms as well so even an illiterate character had some idea -- if a significant percentage of population is illiterate, the shops would cater to them). In high literacy areas, the signs would be more textual.
    Quest boards and wanted posters.
    Local ordinances (like telling you dates of public execution or ordering you to report any suspicious behaviour).

    Letters -- either letters someone sends to your character, or letters you somehow get, find on dead bodies, loot from houses, get paid to recover etc.

    Grave and tomb inscriptions

    Madman's writing on the walls of his room/jail cell (Could a high-level Wizard use his own blood to scrawl Teleport scroll on the wall and get out of jail?)

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  8. So what new scrolls could we have? I always thought scrolls have a fairly strong theme of summoning, and teleporting. Here's some ideas to inspire you - most of these should be fairly rare scrolls, as getting these too regularly would make them less interesting.

    - I'd like cursed teleport scrolls or very powerful teleport traps to instead of just teleporting you somewhere around the dungeon floor... I want them to teleport you halfway across the world. I read that teleport scroll and escaped from all those summoned spiders which was good... but now I'm on an island in the middle of nowhere!

    - Scroll of (powerful NPC name): I'd like to see powerful NPC characters travelling around the world, and I'd also like to see these scrolls, which are very rare. You could imagine these scrolls were made for friends to teleport to each other in an hour of need, but over the years, some got misplaced, stolen, etc. For example, Scroll of Khelavaster will summon Khelavaster to me. Depending on a variety of things, he might either talk to me, trade with me, give me the quest to get the Trident of the Red Rooster, attack me, join my party, or just stare at me angrily and then teleport away again. One quest to rescue a powerful NPC from a prison could involve finding their summon scroll and using it.

    - Scroll of (PC): Could be interesting. You could craft your own scroll of summon (yourself), and give it to an NPC. Could be interesting to be adventuring and then suddenly be teleported/summoned to help that NPC, or have an enemy steal that scroll and summon you into a trap. If YOU read, it, it just acts like a potion of insight.

    - Scroll of infernal contract: Summons a powerful demon who will make a contract with you (giving you permanent stat gains, or powerful magic items, in exchange for.... ?). Unless you have an incredibly high literacy, haggle, learning, willpower and other stats, expect this to go badly for you!

    - Scroll of court summons: Like the ring of weakness, you don't want to ever use this. It will either A) teleport you to a court, where you will be forced to pay back everything you have pickpocketed/stolen or suffer the penalty, or B) Teleport you to a court filled with the last intelligent creature you killed. So if you just killed a kobold, it will summon you to a kobold court, full of kobolds, where you will have to answer for your crimes against kobolds (depends on how many you have killed, including whether they were kings/chiefs!)

    - Scroll of sanctuary: Trapped by enemies, burdened, poisoned and starving? Sanctuary teleports you to a nice, comfortable cottage! There is food an water, a bed for you to sleep, you can organise to send excess loot that you're carrying somewhere else, and patiently wait for your sickness/poison/bleeding to heal. Time passes while you are in the sanctuary. Exiting the cottage will teleport you back to where you were, and hopefully the monsters you were fighting got bored and walked away in the meantime.

    - Scroll of town portal: teleports you to the nearest town.

    - Scroll of treasure map: might give you directions to buried treasure! If you can read it/decipher the code... Everyone loves a good treasure hunt!

  9. Not really related to scrolls, but could we have something like "runes", that by collecting them could assemble magical items, maybe similar to wands? With wrong sequences having possibly "adverse" effects.

  10. Scroll of creature summoning - good kitty!

    The creature's disposition is determined by the caster's ability to communicate with wild animals, arcane beast, demon lords, great heroes ... + a bit of luck.