Map Maker's Guide to Runes and Traps (by peterm@soda.berkeley.edu)

In this document, 'rune' and 'trap' are interchangeable terms.

A rune is a magical inscription on the dungeon floor. Traps are just like runes except they are not magical in nature, and generally have a physical attack.

Runes hit any monster or person who steps on them for dam damage in 'attacktype' attacktype. In addition, there is a generalized rune which can contain any spell at all, and will cast this spell when it detonates.

Many traps and runes are already defined in the archetypes.

Here's a guide the the fields in a Rune: (archetype)

level	level the rune will cast the spell it contains at, if applicable. A level 99 rune casts a very, very mean spell of whatever. (Warning: level 0 runes won't detonate at all!) Also effects how easily a trap may be found and disarmed
Cha	determines what fraction of the time the rune is visible: randomly visible 1/Cha of the time. Also effects how easily the trap may be found
sp	spell in the rune, if any (the index of the spell) still true? or using inventory?
slaying	name of the spell in the rune, if any. Optional, but if present, overrides sp. Recommended for use by mapmakers to ensure portability
other_arch	spell archetype of the spell in the rune, if any. Optional, but if present, overrides sp and slaying
hp	how many times the rune detonates before disappearing handle 0?
attacktype	if there isn't any spell, what attacktype to use when the rune detonates
face	face the rune has
msg	what the rune says to the victim when it detonates
dam	how much damage is done by the rune, if it does not cast a spell
anim face1 face2 mina	face1 is the default face of the rune. face2 is the face of a rune detonation. A detonating rune inserts a dummy object with face2 on the square
direction	direction to cast the spell the rune contains
maxhp	number of spells to cast

Predefined runes for your convenience: See the Runes pickmap on the editor

IMPORTANT: When making rune archetypes for spells, name the rune Object rune_[spell-name]. This convention makes it possible for someone who does 'cast magic rune <spell>' to create a rune that looks like your archetype. Examples:

• Object rune_large_fireball
• Object rune_invisibility
• Object rune_improved_invisibility

If they're not named this way, someone can write a rune of < > which looks nothing like the one in the archetypes, even though it does exactly the same thing.

All runes should be editable. For example you might want to call up a rune of fire, and set its slaying so that it casts large fireball instead of simply burning its victim.

Ideas: you could blanket a floor with 1pt dam runes of fire, but with many hp. Anyone walking across this blanket will be badly hurt if he's slow or sits on them for a long time, but could cross more or less unhurt if he's quick. You could encourage a player to do something rash this way.

You could place Runes of Healing behind altar-controlled doors in temples. Dump enough money on the altar, and you get access to the Rune of Healing. (Or restoration.)

Also, you could implement a magic bank with runes of transferrence in the same way. (Roscoe's energy emporium!)

A rune of Polymorph with the beam directed down a long passageway of monsters could REALLY cause chaos. Oohhhhh, fun, fun fun!! (except polymorph is disabled)

Runes of lightning oriented down long passageways could be lots of fun as well!