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(Originally posted by Marnix)

David Gaider, Designer:

City and Castle Tilesets: Good Castle and Evil Castle are a series of tiles in the City Tileset. There is a Castle Interior Tileset and a City Interior Tileset for the indoor stuff.

That's only as it stands currently, though. The Tilesets have changed since they were mentioned in the past and will likely change again... so we'd hesitate to say 'yea' or 'nay' to your list, there, simply so as not to set you up for disappointment (or have something better that you might have wanted otherwise to include).

I hope that makes sense. I have little doubt more tileset information will be released before we're done, as I'm sure you're not the only module designer who'd like some info like this.

Cavern Tileset: The Cavern Tileset has a generic 'tunnel' tile which has a set width (it's much less than a full tile, 10 meters, but wider than single-file marching).

Houses are different... most interiors have a set tile with walls and furniture grouped about. There are also 'generic' interior tiles if you wish to build your own interior rather than use the pre-set tiles... those will generally be larger than the pre-sets, tho.

There are no walls as placeable objects, for various reasons.

Decorations of walls: The current decorations on the walls do belong to the walls and are part of the tileset. I don't think there are any wall decorations amongst the placeable objects, but there's nothing to stop them from being made and placed against the wall (I think).

About objects and dialogues: No, you'd need a different animation to have a 'knocked over' barstool, if the original placeable has it standing upright. Placeables are only rotatable on the vertical axis.

Any placeable object can have a dialogue file associated with it. We use this for signs... you click on them and they show a pop-up box with whatever's written on them. You could also have fully scripted dialogue with responses... and use any skill checks or stuff during the course of the dialogue that you wanted.

Dialogue doesn't HAVE to represent people talking... that's the gist of it.

For the sign, you could script starting conditions that check the Intelligence of the person reading it... maybe low Int people or Barbarians can't read? I gave an example once before of attaching a dialogue file to a table... and allowing the option of 'searching' the table and being presented with special inventory on a success. You could do very much the same thing with your painting.

No, speech and other displayed text is not done differently. Both are done in pop-up text boxes that appear either over the creature or object (whichever is the 'owner' of the dialogue).

You can attach a portrait to any dialogue, as well... including (yes) pictures of doors, books, etc. So clicking on a sign might show a pop-up that has a picture of a sign and the text as to how the sign reads beside it. Same as speech, but the two are easily distinguishable.

We don't do it, but it would be very easy just to add quotes to all your spoken dialogue if you wanted to make it more distinguishable.

Chasm: No, there is no chasm tile in the City Tileset. The pit tile (if I recall correctly) exists only in the Forest Tileset and the Crypt Tileset. It may be possible to 'mix-and-match' by replacing a tile in the City Tileset with the pit... but I'm not sure, yet, how easy that would be to do or what it would look like.

Templates: As for templates, the creature editor does support templates as they are presented in the 3rd edition Monster Manual. You could load up a standard goblin and then use the button 'Apply Template' to select a template (such as vampire, half-dragon, lich, half-fiend, half-celestial, etc.) to automatically apply the appropriate abilities and bonuses. This doesn't change the standard appearance of the creature, tho... it'd be up to you to distinguish the creature from others of its type (most easily done with the standard races, actually).

Creature Colors: For creatures of the player races you can change not only their skin and hair color, but have six colors to change on their clothing as well (two for leather, two for cloth, two for metal). This applies to all creatures of these types, whether PC or NPC.

Monsters cannot have their colors changed without giving them a new skin. Some monsters have several variations supplied already, however (bugbear, orc, goblin and ogre spring to mind).

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager:

DM: The DM needs to be all powerful. I'm not sure why this is a point of discussion. If you do not like your DM you do not play with him or her. I have been in enough games where the DM was really, really bad and so I stopped playing. It is not conceivable to limit a DM's powers as he or she controls the entire game. If the DM wants to kill your character by spawning in a crowd of dragons or even a peasant with a dagger who happens to be invincible the DM can. The DM can also go an easier route and click your character and click 'kill' and your done. How about sending you to 'Limbo' which is also one of his abilities. Limbo is an inescapable space where a DM can put items, PCs, creatures or whatever from which there is no escape as it's a holding pen with nothing in it.

As a player, you put your trust into a DM to actually care about running a good game for everybody. A good DM wants to tell a story. If a DM wants to kill people he can and will...and then word gets out and nobody will sign up as a player.