Event zones

Make the map act on its own: paint a zone and tell it what happens when someone steps on it — traps, doors that open, damage per turn, puzzles that must be solved to pass, and what gets imported from Foundry regions.

A zone is a piece of the map that reacts. You paint it over the floor and tell it what happens when someone steps on it: a trap goes off, a door opens, a puzzle appears, combat begins.

Each zone reads like a sentence:

When a player enters · if it's the first time · then it sounds and they lose 2d6.

This guide is for the GM. Players don't have to do anything, or even know zones exist.

Painting a zone

On the map rail, the Zone tool (the dotted square, next to Portal).

• Drag to make a rectangle. A single tap makes one cell.
• With a zone selected, drag its vertices to give it any shape you want, and tap the midpoint of a side to add a vertex. Once you move a vertex it stops being a rectangle and becomes a polygon.
• Drag it whole from inside to move it.
• Each zone has its own color and name, which are drawn on the map.

The zone never eats a click: outside its tool you can click through it like the floor, so you can move a miniature standing inside a trap without fighting it.

Zones live on their floor. If the map has floors, the basement trapdoor doesn't go off when someone steps on the same cell on the ground floor.

The sentence

Selecting a zone opens its panel. If the zone is empty, the top of the panel shows templates: pick one and it's set up; change whatever you like.

When

What has to happen for the zone to fire: someone enters or leaves, starts or ends their turn inside, a combat round starts or ends, another zone triggers it, or you trigger it.

Entering is going from outside to inside, not being inside: crossing a four-cell room fires the trap once, not four times. Leaving works the same way in reverse. Below that you choose who it applies to: anyone, players only, or NPCs only.

Triggers that don't work yet are marked "not firing yet" in the list, so you know they're coming and don't build something that won't happen.

If (optional)

Conditions: it's the first time, it's not the first time, it has fired fewer than N times, *whoever stepped on it is a player*… All the ones you set must be met.

If you need more, the "advanced" button on that line opens the full tree: nested groups of all / any / none, and comparisons (>, ≤, =). With it you can express things the sentence can't:

if is a player and (has the key or already solved the riddle)

It's the same data. You can switch between the two modes without losing anything. A zone built in advanced mode opens in advanced mode, because a sentence that didn't match the conditions would be worse than showing the tree. Advanced mode also shows who it hits and its probability for each action.

Then

The list of what it does, in order. Each action can wait a few seconds before running, which lets you pace things:

1. say something in the chat   "A dry click under your feet."
2. deal damage   2d10 piercing        wait 1 s before
3. close a door   [Door 2]      wait 2 s before

Available actions:

• Map: open and close doors · change floor · move, hide or show a token · turn a light on or off · change the darkness and the weather of the scene.
• Combat: damage · heal · apply a condition · request a roll · start combat.
• Table: visual effect · play a sound · change the music playlist · floating text · say something in the chat · pause the game · present a puzzle.
• Control: arm or disarm another zone · trigger another zone · wait a few seconds.

Darkness and weather belong to the whole scene, not to the area you painted. That isn't the same as a dark area (we don't have that), but it covers the usual case: you enter the cave and it gets dark; you go out onto the moor and it starts snowing.

Play a sound uses the table audio, so it plays for everyone, whether or not they're looking at the map, each at their own effects volume. Below the field, the effects from your soundboard (with their names) and this scene's ambient sounds are one tap away. You can also paste a URL.

Change the music playlist switches to another of the campaign's playlists: you enter the crypt and the mood changes. Note that it only picks it: it doesn't press play or stop what was already playing. A zone starting music on top of yours would startle you rather than help.

Show a scene shows the whole table an image or a video: paste its address (https://…; a video must end in .mp4, .webm, .mov…; a YouTube link won't work) or press Upload and pick the file (videos up to 50 MB). For a cutscene when a door opens: put the zone next to the door, when the door opens, then show a scene with the video, once and full screen. A once video plays with sound and closes when it ends; a looping one stays silent, like a backdrop.

Request a roll

This works for any roll, not only saving throws. Write what is rolled in your own words (Perception, Cool Head, Will) and, optionally, a DC. Each target gets a card in the chat with its button, and the result stays in the history.

If you also choose a D&D saving throw and the target has it on their token, the usual saving throw card appears with its exact bonus. If not (a skill, a field from a custom system), the card asks the player to enter their bonus. We'd rather ask than guess and override theirs.

Without a DC the card only records the number, without saying whether it passed. Use that when you want to see the roll and decide yourself.

Own darkness

A zone can be dark by itself: the cave, the basement, the dense forest. It is passive (the cave is dark even if nobody steps in) and it adds to the scene's darkness, only inside its shape.

Lights keep working inside: a lantern in the cave lights the cave, because this is real darkness and not a black layer on top.

Weather can't be confined to a zone, and that's on purpose: our weather is drawn in front of the camera, not attached to the map, so clipping it to part of the floor would make it a different effect. What you can do is change it on stepping: you enter the moor and it starts snowing.

Difficult terrain

A zone doesn't have to trigger anything: it can be just mud. In its settings, "Costs to cross":

The map ruler shows what it costs, not the distance, so the number you read is the number deducted (it won't say 3 cells and then take 6). If you fall short, the warning tells you the terrain was the reason.

Two things it does not do, on purpose:

• Two terrain zones on top of each other don't add up: the larger one wins. Mud inside fog is ×2, not ×4, so overlapping zones don't turn a careful map into an arithmetic puzzle.
• You pay on entering, not on leaving. Going and coming back costs the same.

On hex maps it doesn't apply: paths are counted on the square grid, and charging for the wrong route would be worse than not charging.

Pausing the game

It doesn't freeze anything (not the clock, the audio or the combat). It puts a big banner over the map that the whole table sees, which is what a pause usually means in a roleplaying game: everyone stop and look here. You remove it from the banner itself.

Testing, and the log

Two buttons you'll use a lot:

• Test fires the zone on the spot, without moving anyone, and tells you the result.
• The log shows what has fired, and what hasn't, with the reason: "didn't fire: it has already been used all its times", "not for whoever stepped on it", "it's disarmed".

If something doesn't happen, check the log for the reason.

Times, and for whom

• Times: how many times it can fire. 0 = always.
• Counted: for the whole table (the trap fires once in total) or for each one (fires once per person, which is usually what you want from a trap).
• Armed: the master switch. A disarmed zone doesn't fire, but it stays on the map so you can arm it later, from the panel or from another zone.

Who sees it

• Everyone sees it: it's drawn for the table. Useful for things visible in the fiction: a pool of lava, a magic circle.
• Only you: it's neither drawn nor sent. Its data doesn't leave your browser, so you can put a secret trap there and nobody can find it by inspecting the page.
• Appears when activated: it isn't drawn until it activates, but its data does travel, because it has to be there in order to appear. For a real secret, use only you.

Riddle doors

This connects zones with table apps. Presenting a puzzle is an action that waits:

1. present a puzzle  [ Rune lock ]
   ↑ what's below waits for them to solve it
2. open a door     [ Door 1 ]

They step on the plate, the minigame pops up, they solve it and the door opens. The puzzle comes from My apps (the App tab of "Show to the table"), and the answer you saved there travels to the server, not inside the code, so players can't read it by cheating.

While the zone waits, the panel says so and offers "mark it solved and continue", so a puzzle can't leave the game stuck: if the table gets stuck or someone has to leave, you open it and the scene goes on. If you remove the puzzle from the table, the zone continues on its own.

Bringing regions from Foundry

When you import a Foundry scene, its regions come in as zones with whatever can be translated: floating text, level change, effects, teleports (those come in as portals).

Anything with no equivalent is not lost: the zone comes in switched off, with the original definition saved, and the import report lists each behavior that was missing and why. Its macros can't be translated (they're JavaScript that talks to the Foundry engine), so they come in switched off with a warning.

Things worth knowing

• Your browser fires them. If the GM isn't connected, automatic zones don't fire. "Test" and "trigger it yourself" always work.
• It doesn't fire twice for standing on it. A zone you have just arrived through stays quiet until you leave its area.
• If two zones overlap, they fire in list order, not at random.
• A zone can trigger another, and chain. There's a depth cap so two zones that point at each other don't hang the game.
• Sound doesn't start until you have touched the window. That's the browser's policy, not a bug: if you just reloaded and haven't clicked anything, the first trap fires silently.
• What's not there yet: weather confined to an area (see above).

All Roliando guides