Permits - when and how to use them

## Permits and How to Use Them

Although being able to build a continuous strand of rooms is sufficient for creating a playable zone such as a village or a dungeon, Permits provide another layer of design that lets players create zones that are an order of magnitude more sophisticated. Where The Shovel Tool lets players add rooms, permits can be used to alter how those rooms are linked together. How those links are arranged and which types of links are used can dramatically alter how the zone is experienced.

## Permit Types

Types of permits include doors, marks, and exits. Exit permits are used alone, but doors and marks work as a set of at least 1 each. To be able to use a door permit requires the use of a mark permit.

## Using Exits

Exits always link to outside the zone, so using them is no great mystery. Whichever direction you point the exit, that is where an exit will be created. Importantly, exits are not the same as entries, so creating an exit does not make another point of entry for your zone.

## Using Doors

Its the use of doors and marks that typically gets builders confused. Its best to think of these permits as 2 parts of the same link. The door simply links to the mark.

Any number of door permits can be used to link back to the same mark. Marks are undetectable, even to the player that placed it. The only way to be absolutely certain where a mark exists is to place another one. The only way to move or remove your last mark is to place a new one. Its no harm at all if you end up having placed marks all over your build, because only the last mark ever remains and nobody can see them.

The 1st step is to place a mark at the destination room. Use a mark permit there. Marks do not point anywhere, so its just enough to use the mark permit at the correct location.

The 2nd step is to use a door permit in the origin room. To make a link between the origin room and the destination room, point the door in the direction you want the new passage to appear. Note that the origin room will be given a passage in that direction, and the destination room will be given a passage in the opposite direction. In this case, the link will function like an open passage.

## Door Directions

The door will link to the marked room, so any direction you choose is going to be valid. That can be problematic for keeping track of what you are building, but it also opens up possibilities to make your builds more complex. The destination needs not be in the same direction as you have placed the door. The rooms do not need to be near each other. Its quite flexible.

## 1-Way Doors

There is a special type of door permit called a 1-way door permit. They are used exactly like common door permits, but they define a different style of link between the origin and destination rooms. As the name suggests, the link will only be created in one direction. The origin room will link to the destination, the destination room will be seen as a passage from the origin room, but the destination room will show no sign that any such link exists.

## Altering Door Descriptions

These links are called doors, but they do not actually produce a swinging door. Door permits create open passages. By default, these passages are silent and appear to be just like links between any rooms. There is a trick to making links between rooms appear to be more convincing doors and windows, but that is a function of The Magic Marker Tool.

## Escape Routes

It is easy to conclude that the use of 1-way doors could allow builders to trap players inside a closed room. Fortunately, the method by which rooms are created does not allow for any room to exist without it being directly linked back to the room from which it was created. In other words, there is always a way out. Builders can do a lot to obscure which direction is the escape route, but it must exist.

## Examples of Using Doors

### Open Areas

Typical applications of common doors include open courtyards and town squares where travel between rooms is unobstructed in all directions. Each room of an open area is marked and then linked to neighboring rooms. The result is an area that appears to be open. Such areas can consume a lot of permits.

### Loops

Its also typical for long hallways to be linked to complete a continuous circuit. Using a common door lets builders make loops of rooms. A city might have looping streets instead of straight line branches extending from a central trunk.

### Guided Paths

1-way doors are typically used to be extra tricky. They might be used to force a player to step down a guided path of rooms, possibly to expose the player to a story included in the room descriptions. More frequently, however, 1-way doors are used to confuse a player into wandering lost in a maze of rooms. With some clever planning, it is possible to build a maze from just a handful of rooms and a great many 1-way doors.

### Way Gates

An especially clever use of 1-way doors involves placing them as sort of save points within a larger dungeon maze. Once the player steps through the 1-way door, their progress is limited to moving forward instead of blundering back the wrong way. This type of way gate is especially difficult to use, because any more than 1 such gate would not be possible. These require a lot of planning.

### Turnbacks

One truly heinous use of 1-way doors involves luring players to take a wrong turn in a maze. The door gives the appearance of being any other dungeon passage but ends up returning the player back to the start of the maze. Lacking any clues in room names or descriptions, the player is forced to learn the proper path by experience.