Glossary
Glossary of anything related to Places.
Let's get on with it, yeah?
April Tool: A 1/20th, to scale, woodworking and masonry workshop! Cuts the cost of Masonry and Carpentry by 2% of the total stamina cost. Monthly Memento from April 2016.
Beds: furniture bought from Cadfael's. Beds give bonus stamina if you start a NewDay (by clock or by chronosphere) in them. Install one in a Sleep Slot so that it can be used. There are four types of Bed: Couch, Folding Bed, Single Bed, and Double Bed.
Blockhead: An implants that reduces building and decorating1)2) stamina cost by 30%.
Builder's Brew: buy one of these from the Hunter's Lodge (current cost: 250SP) to build faster and better! Cuts your Building-related stamina (Logging, Stonecutting, Masonry, Carpentry, Decorating, and outpost wall repair) cost to 10%, and gives you extra XP.
Build job: when you want to build a new Room, Page, or Door, or to rename or redecorate a Room, Page, or Place, you need to set a Build Job to do it. Go to Keyholder Settings, Job Creation, and select the type of job you want to do.
Building kit: see Kit, and/or Suzie's.
Cadfael's: a shop to buy Furniture, in Improbable Central. These add gameplay-bonus features to your Place, and cost cigs and req.
Cadfael's sells the following items: Couch, Folding Bed, Single Bed, Double Bed, Teleport Beacon.
He can also customise your couches and beds: bring them to the shop 3) to change the name and flavour text. Cost: 5 cigs plus 1 cig per 50 characters of the description.
Carpentry: the act, and/or the game skill of adding wood to a Place. Needs you to have a Carpentry Kit, and stamina above 60%. Also needs there to be Wood in your inventory or the Place's inventory, and a not-yet-completed construction Build Job set that needs Wood adding.
Carpentry kit: allows Logging (the gathering of Wood) and Carpentry (the adding of Wood to a Place's construction Build Jobs). Hire from Suzie's for 1 cig per gameday. Weight: 20kg.
Column: a vertical (up-and-down) strip in your Program Grid.
Construction:
1. The act of building, or doing building work on, a Place.
2. Referring to the build-kit- and wood/stone-requiring actions of building a place.
3. The game skills needed to perform Construction activities. These do not need to be taught, but need building kits to do them. As all game skills, you start at level 0, with a huge stamina cost; and with experience, can work up to level 100 for a much reduced cost. Skills: Logging, and Carpentry (with Carpentry kit), Stonecutting, and Masonry (with Masonry kit), and Decorating.
Contraption: a metal Programming gadget, which does things. Found in the Scrapyard. Weight: 1.2kg.
Example: the Show Page contraption displays the contents of a Page.
Contrivance: a wooden Programming gadget, which checks things. Found in the Scrapyard. Weight: 1.2kg.
Example: the Weather contrivance checks the current game weather.
Couch: the cheapest item of Furniture. Costs 10 cigs and 6,000 Req. Stamina bonus: 6%. Weight (for transporting from IC to your dwelling): 40kg. Flavour text on use: “You settle down on the couch. It beats the floor.”
Decorating:
The act, and/or the game skill of doing a Decoration Build Job to change a Description (Room, Page or Place text and/or name.) Requires you to have a Decoration Kit, stamina above 60%, and for you to be in a Place where there is a not-completed Decoration Build Job set.
Decorating kit: hire one from Suzie's (1 cig per gameday) to let you do the build jobs that change a Place's decoration. Weight: 20kg.
Description: the text that displays in a Room, or a Page, or on the exterior of a Place. (Also the names of the Rooms, Pages, and Places.)
The defaults are:
Exterior 1: “Empty Plot”: “You see a sign indicating that a plot of land has been reserved for charactername.”
Exterior 2: “Untitled Place”: “You see a generic, nondescript building of some sort.”
Room: “Undecorated Room”: “You are standing in a small, plain, undecorated room.”
Page: “Undecorated Area”: “You head over to an undecorated area of the room.”
These can be changed to whatever you can write and do the build-jobs of; changing a description costs stamina (proportional to the length, and how much it has changed 4) and requires a Decorating kit.
Door: build one of these to link two Rooms together. Cost: 10 Wood.
Double Bed: the most expensive kind of furniture. Cost: 50 cigs and 20,000 req. Stamina bonus: varies. Weight: 80kg. Sleeping here on your own gives you a stamina bonus of 12%; sleeping with another character gives you a varying amount depending on how often you have done it before, ranging from a -25% penalty to a +25% bonus. Flavour text: varies.
Dwelling: the original buildings game-module: the old version of Places.
Empty Plot: the pupal stage of a Place. The first sign that somebody wants to build in this location: get one by planting a Land Claim Stake from Suzie's; with love and care 5) it will grow into an “Untitled Place”.
Escape Hatch: the parts of a Program Grid behind the Flow Control Knobs. They are useful for doing “if A, then do B; if C, then do D” type statements.
Flow Control Knob: part of the Programming Grid, where you set how its Row will act.
The default is ANY PASS; with that setting, if any of the gadgets on that row pass (ie, all Contraptions will pass automatically, and the Contrivances will check the character's details and state of the game), then the whole Row will pass, and continue to the next row. If none of them pass, then the Escape Hatch (program slot beyond the Flow Control Knob) will activate, and the Program will stop.
Other settings: ALL PASS (requires all to pass), ANY FAIL and ALL FAIL.
Folding Bed: The second-cheapest item of Furniture. Cost: 20 cigs and 7,500 Req. Stamina bonus: 7.5%. Weight: 15kg. Default flavour text: “This flimsy camp bed isn't what you'd call luxurious, but it's long enough for you to stretch out on. You settle down for a good night's kip.”
Furniture: Beds, and Teleport beacons. Beds give bonus stamina if you start a NewDay (by clock or by chronosphere) in them; Teleport Beacons let your Place work as an Outpost for One-Shot-Teleporters to zoom you there. Furniture needs to be donated to a Place's Inventory, and from there, installed in a Sleep Slot. See Cadfael's, Couch, Double Bed, Folding Bed, Single Bed, and Teleport Beacon.
Kit / building kit: a thing that you hire for 1 cig per gameday, which lets you do Places-related stamina-eating actions. Types: Carpentry, Masonry, Decorating.
Land Claim Stake: buy one from Suzie's to get a Place started. Cost 100 cigs. Weight: 1 kg. Travel to a mapsquare with suitable terrain (anything but water or swamp), and without already being full (each square can hold up to 4 Places), and select 'Stake Your Claim'! This will give you an “Empty Plot belonging to charactername”.
Log: a piece of Wood, as seen in your inventory, your Place's inventory, or very rarely on the map.
Logging: the act, and/or the game skill of gathering Wood. Requires a Carpentry Kit, and for you to be standing on a mapsquare where the terrain is Jungle. Note: at under 60% stamina, you will become increasingly ineffective at gathering wood 6), and at under 20%, you risk sending yourself to the Failboat.
Masonry: the act, and/or the game skill of adding Stone to a Place. Requires a Masonry Kit, and for you to have stamina over 60%. Also requires there to be Stone in either your inventory or the Place's inventory, and for there to be a not-yet-finished Build Job that includes needing Stone added.
Masonry kit: allows Stonecutting (the gathering of Stone) and Masonry (the adding of Stone to a Place's construction Build Jobs). Hire from Suzie's for 1 cig per gameday. Weight: 25kg.
Memento: see Mementos. Programs can check, give, or take Mementos. Without some very clever fiddling around, only Mementos that you have made can be Programmed for in your Place.
Memory: a thing for making Programming even more awesome, reacting to not just you-right-now but what you have done before.
Memory chips can be bought in the Hunter's Lodge for Supporter Points.
Page: a subsection of a Room. Can be used to add or expand on details without TL;DR-ing the main room's description. And very useful for programming. Costs 20 Wood and 10 Stone.
Place: a player-owned part of the game, which lives on the map. Up to four Places can fit on each mapsquare, on any terrain except Water or Swamp. 7) Cost: minimum 100 Wood and 50 Stone to build.
Program: a way of making your Place more awesome! Programs can make the Place dynamic, reacting to and changing for the characters. Example: only let the kittymorphs climb a tree; only let clan members into a secret area; have a room's description change depending on which doorway you've come in from.
Programming: the process of making these awesome changes. Position your Contraptions and Contrivances in the Program Grid to make the Program do what you want.
Program Grid: the GUI 8) of a Program. Complete with logic flow, IF, NOT, THEN, AND etc statements. To fit in more checks and actions in a single Program, the Grid can be expanded with extra Columns (which make it wider, allowing more checks on each Row), and Rows (which make it taller, allowing a longer flow of logic, with another Row of statements). Each Room and each Page comes with one free 3×3+1 Program Grid; expansions and extra Grids cost Supporter Points.
Room: the basic structural/functional component of a Place. Add rooms to have different “areas” within your Place: each one can have descriptions, chatspaces, places to sleep and other features.
Row: a horizontal (side-to-side) section of a Program Grid.
Scrapyard: Located in Cyber City 404, the Scrapyard is where to find Contraptions and Contrivances. Pay 10 cigs to get in, and search until you're out of energy, hopefully having filled your backpack with useful items!
Scrapyard Market: part of the Scrapyard in CC404 (no entry fee). An Eboy-style exchange market for Contraptions and Contrivances. Sell your unwanted ones here for Scrapyard Market Points, and buy ones that you do want. Cost depends on supply and demand. You can buy extra Points for cigs.
Self-filling Thermos: Similar to a Builder's Brew, but far less potent. Still pretty nice! Monthly Memento from September 2015.
Slot/Sleep slot: build these to put Furniture (Beds or a Teleport Beacon) into a Room. Cost: 20 Wood and 5 Stone to Expand a Room.
Single Bed: the third-cheapest, second-most-expensive item of Furniture. Cost: 30 cigs and 10,000 Req. Stamina bonus: 10%. Weight: 80kg. Default flavour text: “The bed is small but wonderfully soft, the sheets clean; what more could you want from a bed?”
Stone: Construction material for building Places and their components. Gathered by Stonecutting from Mountain mapsquares, which costs stamina and needs a Masonry Kit. Weight: 20kg.
Stonecutting: the act, and/or the game skill of gathering Stone. Requires a Masonry Kit, and you to be standing on a mapsquare where the terrain is Mountain. Note: at under 60% stamina, you will become increasingly ineffective at gathering stone 9), and at under 20%, you risk sending yourself to the Failboat.
Suzie's: a shop in Improbable Central, where you can buy Land Claim stakes, and rent building kits.
Teleport Beacon: a type of Furniture, technically, since it is bought from Cadfael's. Cost: 50,000 req and 200 cigs. Weight: 200kg. When installed in a Slot, and Activated by adding cigs (cost to keep active: 4 cigs per gameday), anyone can use a One-Shot-Teleporter to zap themselves into your Place as if it was an outpost.
Untitled Place: the beginnings of a Place. Once you have planted a Land Claim Stake in your chosen spot, and built it up with Wood and Stone, it turns into an Untitled Place. From there, you can start expanding and customising it into your Place, with Rooms, Pages, Sleep Slots and Furniture, Descriptions, Programs, etc.
Wood: construction material for building Places and their components. Gathered by Logging from Jungle mapsquares, which costs stamina and needs a Carpentry. Weight: 15kg.