Doors you place on a map, and the locks that hold them — and your chests — shut.
Doors & Locks
A lock is authored once and worn by everything that should be shut the same way. "Simple house lock" can hold forty doors and a dozen chests, and re-tuning it re-tunes all of them.
A door is placed on a map with the ordinary event tool, exactly like an NPC or a chest. It blocks the way while it is shut, opens when somebody is allowed through, and can lead somewhere else.
Where to Author
The map editor — both of them. Place an event where the door goes and set its Type to Door; the lock is made right there in the door's own form. There is no separate Locks screen to visit first.
Setting One Up
1. Open the map, place an event where the door goes, and set its Type to Door. 2. In the Lock dropdown, choose + New lock…. The lock's fields open underneath. 3. Name it ("Simple house lock") and drag Difficulty to what picking it should cost. The label beside the slider says what the number means — 100 can only be opened by a maxed lockpicker, or with the key. 4. Pick a Key if one exists. Holding it opens the lock outright, with no roll. 5. Decide whether forcing this lock is a crime. Leave it on for anything somebody owns; turn it off for a ruin or a dungeon. 6. Press Create. The lock is saved and this door is already wearing it. 7. Set the faction that owns the door — that is whose law a break-in answers to. 8. Check Shuts by itself after — 5 seconds unless you change it. See Shutting Behind You below. 9. If the door leads somewhere, pick the map under Leads to and the tile the player arrives on. 10. Save the map.
The next door you place offers that lock in the same dropdown, so a town's forty houses are four clicks each after the first. The pencil beside the dropdown re-opens a lock to edit it — it tells you how many doors and chests wear it before you change anything.
The Fields
A lock
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 1–100, contested against the player's Lockpicking. 100 needs a maxed picker |
| Key | Holding this item opens the lock with no roll |
| Using the key spends it | For a one-use key. Off by default — a house key works every day |
| Lockpick item | Spent per attempt. Blank means picking costs nothing |
| A failed attempt breaks the pick | On by default |
| Forcing this lock is a crime | On by default. Off for a lock nobody owns |
| Re-locks | Never, when the door closes, or after a wait |
| Locks when / Stays unlocked when | The schedule — see below |
| Refusal / opening sound | Sound slots played on a locked door and on opening |
A door
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Facing | Which way the leaf swings, for the art |
| Shuts by itself after | Seconds an opened door waits before swinging shut. 5 by default; 0 leaves it open |
| Lock | The lock holding it shut. None = it simply opens |
| Its own key | Overrides the lock's key for this door alone. Blank = the lock's key |
| Its own difficulty | Overrides the lock's difficulty for this door alone. Blank = the lock's |
| Owned by | The faction a break-in is a crime against |
| Being on the other side is trespassing | Off by default: a shut door is not automatically a private room |
| Leads to | A map and a tile. Blank = the door only blocks the way |
| Opens for | Who walks through without picking it — see below |
One Lock, One Door's Own Key
Sharing a lock means "these are equally hard to pick and open with the same key" — not "these open together". Each door remembers its own open and shut state: unlocking the armourer's door leaves every other shop shut.
The one thing sharing really does share is the key. Ten shops on one "Shop lock" all open to one Shop Key. When that is wrong, override it on the door: Van Hammar's door wears "Shop lock" but names Van Hammar's Key, so it keeps the same difficulty and the same dusk schedule while a stolen shop key does nothing to it.
Leave both override boxes blank and the door simply follows its lock, which is what most doors want.
Shutting Behind You
This is a shared world, and a door is not a door if it only ever opens. Every door carries its own Shuts by itself after timer, and it starts the moment somebody opens it.
| Value | What players see |
|---|---|
| 5 (the default) | The door swings shut a few seconds behind whoever walked through |
| A bigger number | A slower door — a warehouse shutter, a gate somebody has to hurry through |
| 0 | It stays open until a player shuts it. Everyone who arrives later finds it open |
Three things worth knowing:
- Nobody is ever shut in. If a player is standing in the doorway when the timer is up, the door waits and tries again a moment later. It never closes on top of somebody.
- Closing is not re-locking. The timer belongs to the door; whether it is locked again belongs to the lock. A door on a lock set to Re-locks → when the door closes is locked again the instant it swings shut. A lock set to after a wait keeps its own wait, whether the door shut itself or a player shut it.
- It is not a stopwatch. Doors are resolved on a two-second heartbeat rather than every frame, so a 5-second door shuts somewhere between 5 and 7 seconds after it opened. That is deliberate: a world of doors costs nothing while they are all shut.
The Schedule
A lock's schedule asks about the world, never about a player: the hour, a switch, a variable, or the weather. "Shops lock at dusk" is Locks when → At these hours → dusk, night.
Where both conditions match, stays unlocked wins. That is what makes an exception an exception: locked at night, except while the festival switch is on does what it reads as.
The schedule is checked once per map per in-game hour, which is why it cannot ask about a particular player — at that moment there may be a hundred of them, or none.
Opens For
This is the per-player half, and it lives on the door because that is where a specific person can be asked about. Add as many as you like; any one of them is enough.
- Members of a faction — the city guard's own barracks door.
- Anyone standing well enough with a faction — a guild hall that opens once you are trusted.
- Anyone at a point in a quest — a cellar that only opens once the innkeeper has asked you to look.
- Anyone carrying an item — a token, a writ, a signet.
- Anyone at all — a door that is shut but not private.
Gotchas
- No "Opens for" rows means nobody gets a free pass. An empty list is not "everyone" — the door opens with its key, or by picking it, and nothing else.
- A door with no lock is still closed, and closed still blocks the way. It just opens for whoever tries — and, like every other door, it shuts itself again afterwards.
- A door that leads somewhere arrives on a walkable tile. If the tile you typed under Leads to has since been built over, players land on the nearest open tile beside it rather than inside the wall — but pick a tile you can actually stand on, because "nearest" is not always where you meant.
- A door with no art still blocks its own tile. A door that stopped nobody would not be a door; give it a map object so players can see what is stopping them.
- Doors are reconciled from the map. Drag one away and save, and its row goes with it.
- Unlocking one door does not unlock the others. A shared lock shares the rules, not the state.
- A shared lock does share its key. If each door should need its own, override the key on the door.
- Re-tuning a lock changes every door wearing it. The Locks list shows how many doors and chests each one holds, so you can see the blast radius before you move the slider.
- Deleting a lock does not delete the doors. They keep standing and simply open.
- Editing a lock changes every placement wearing it. The editor says how many before you touch a slider. To change one door only, use its override boxes instead.
- Changes reach a running server on publish. A lock or door edit needs a publish (or a save with the server up) like every other authored thing.
- The whole system sits behind the Crime & Law feature flag. Off = doors are not loaded at all.