The Magic Realm gamebox is at http://www.telusplanet.net/public/jesdavie/MagicRealm.zip Cyberboard is available at http://www.execpc.com/~d-larson/cyberboard.html If you like what you see in Cyberboard and can see using it for other games you might want to check out the cyberboard mailing list. Its name is CyberboardML and its located on Onelist ( http://www.onelist.com ). Onto the tutorial: This was largely adopted from Walt O'Hara's tutorial that is located at: http://pbem.brainiac.com/cb_tutorial.htm You may want to check it out as he discusses the actual playing of a game against opponents a little more than I do. How to SETUP TO PLAY a Magic Realm game using Cyberboard Terms: Gamebox (.GBX): An electronic file that contains all the piece and map images needed to play a game, including counter definitions, maps, and charts. Scenario (.GSN): An electronic file that contains the counter groupings, counter images, maps and charts for a given scenario in a paper game-- note the distinction. Game (.GAM): An electronic file that uses a scenario file to build a specific instance of playing a game between two or more individuals. Move (.GMV): An electronic file used to send the latest move file over email. Stored in Game files. 1. Download the MagicRealm.zip file. This contain both the gamebox and a scenario. 2. Unzip the files into a folder. I like using either the Cyberboard folder or an appropriately name sub-folder (MagicRealm in this case) 3. Open Cyberboard PLAYER Module (the one with the yellowish dot, named CBPlay). Select "new". Select "Game". You will be prompted with a scenario selection box, as shown in Figure One. Select your scenario. In this instance we select MagicRealm.gsn. 4. You will see the Game Project window come up, maybe some counter trays as well. Save your file with something memorable, like "MyMagicRealm". The suffix for Game files is GAM. 5. Double click on "Board Area" to view the large hex grid for the map. Or click once to highlight "Board Area" then click the View button at the button of the frame. 6. Select "View|Tray Palette A" from the menus. This should bring a window up in the upper left of the screen. This window is where you can view one of the pice trays that have been made for this scenario. You can also bring up a 2nd tray window by choosing View|Tray Palette B. This is handy for moving pieces between trays, like a chit from active to fatigued. 7. Click the drop down list at the top of one of the trays. Scroll down and select "Map Tiles". You should now be able to see part of a map hex. Resize the Tray window so you can see all of the hex. If you make the window width about twice that of a tile you will be able to see both the normal and enchanted sides. The window's height can also be increased to see more than one tile. Scroll down until you can see the Borderland tile. Click and drag the tile to the board area. Once its on the map, drag the tile to the location you want it in. 8. To rotate a tile (or any piece): left click the tile to select it (should be able to see little squares indicating the edge of the tile, there's a lot of transparent space around the tile), right click the tile, select "Rotate Piece - Absolute", then "Hex Faces (flat up)", then the amount to rotate. If you want to rotate 180 select "Square Faces" instead of "Hex Faces". 9. Drag some other tiles onto the board area and create a small map. 10. Select "Dwellings" from the Tray list. Drag a dwelling or two to your map. 11. Select "File|Send Recorded Moves to File" from the menu (or click the envelope&disk icon on the toolbar). This saves the move file. Enter a name like "MapSetup". Then a "Enter Move Description" window should pop up. Enter a turn title like "Map Setup" and a description like "Borderland, Awful Valley, Caves placed on map" You would send this file to your fellow players. 12. Decide on a character or two or more to experiment with. Select the character from the Tray list and drag their character marker to the map. Repeat for as many other characters as you'd like. 13. Repeat 11 except name the file "CharacterSetup" and enter an appropriate title and description. 14. Other pieces can also be dragged onto the map and moved around the map. 15. You can review your map creation by going to the project window. Click on "Map Setup" (or whatever you titled it in step 11) under "Game History". Notice the description you entered shows up in the right panel. Now click the Replay bottom near the bottom of the left frame. (Double clicking "Map Setup" achieves the same thing) This enables the play back buttons on the toolbar. Bring the board area window back up. Click the play button to progress through your map creation. Each click will show one piece movement. The >| button takes you to the end of the map setup turn. The >> button takes you to the start of the next turn. WARNING: There's a bug in V1.04 of cyberboard. If replaying a turn (ie. any of the playback buttons are enabled) then trying to replay another turn (double-clicking or clicking the Replay button) will crash Cyberboard. That's the end of the basics. I'll go into a couple cyberboard specific things and how I envisioned the other "Playing Boards" being used. Magic Realm gamebox I wasn't sure on what the best way to track active/inactive items and chit status would be. So I included both methods that I came up with. The first was to use the Item/Chit Status board. Its just big open spaces initially. Select "Log Sheets" from the Marker window drop down list ("View|Marker Palette" to get the window up). Scroll down to the bottom, hopefully you can see the start of the word Fatigued but you may only be able to see a line. You can make the window wider to ensure you have the right marker. Drag one or two of these large markers to the Chit/Item board. Each one would be a seperate players area. The marker group "Names" has character names if you want to label them. I thought every item and chit a player had would be put on the sheet and could be moved to the appropriate box for its status. The other idea was to just use the piece trays to keep track. You may have noticed in Tray window drop list that each character has four trays. The chits would always be in the trays and just moved to the appropriate one. When an item was gained it would be put in the character's inactive tray until it was activated. History log also presented a small problem in that it gets very large for even a moderate number of players and its very finicky since many markers would have to be placed. The history log works similiar to the first method of tracking chits. There are five large markers in the Log Sheets marker section. One of each marker would be dragged to the History Pad board for each player. There is a checkmark, at the top of the "Activity Markers" of the marker palette, for keeping track of discoveries. The "Activity Markers" also contain a marker for each type of activity, each tile, and all the digits. The idea being that the Activity log can be filled out by placing these markers on it. The "Numbers" marker section contains a couple of black markers for covering up victory conditions. The "Cards" markers have all the spells plus a treasure and spell image to help with secrecy. Piece Movement and other Cyberboard hints In plain Jane, normal Cyberboard each time a piece is moved, its a step in the turn file. If you replayed your map setup, you saw how each time a tile was moved it was a step in the turn file (required a click on the > button). Compound moves allow you to have a turn (or part of a turn) replay as a recording. IE. Click on >, a piece will move, pause, then the next piece will move and so on. So to enter a compound move use the menu "Actions|Begin a Compound Move", move the pieces, "Action|Accept Compound Move". The other type of move is a plotted move. During normal movement, when a piece is dragged all you see is the pieces starting and ending position and a line between the two. But what if you want to move from BL4 to AV5 with a couple of other clearing in between. It would be nice to have seen the path the pieces took. One option would be to use the compound move above. The other is to use a plotted move. When a plotted move is played back, you see where to piece started and ended, but the line that connects the two shows the actual path taken rather than a straight line. To enter a plotted move: click the piece to be moved, choose "Action|Begin Plotted Move", now we need to click each space the piece is going to go through on its way to its final destination, starting with the first space it would move to and ending with the destination, select "Actions|Accept Plotted Move" The ability to send messages in the turn is available through Actions|Enter Message or the hand with a pen button on the toolbar (left of the die). You can roll dice within the message.