A big part of what makes Alchemy unique is its ability to immerse players in the worlds they explore. A big part of this immersion is experienced through various scenes presented to players as they play. These screens are known as scenes.

Scenes show artwork to bring players into the environment. Additional motion effects and music can also be added to make scenes even more dynamic. For gamemasters, notes attached to the scene are presented to them in the Story Panel while playing the game allowing for a quick reference to information when needed. Additionally, gamemasters can set battlemaps and an additional music track to use when running a combat encounter.

Article Information

Category	Gameplay, Universe
Targeted Profiles	Gamemasters
Requires Alchemy Unlimited	No

What is a Scene

Scenes in Alchemy are vital to the gameplay experience and help bring the players directly into the present moment of a story. Whether a party finds themselves invited to a royal ball, in the dredges of a pirate town, or deep within the belly of a large monster, scenes immerse players in the story and provide helpful tools for resolving combat encounters.

Creating a Scene

Scenes are able to be created in two different ways: in-game or in-universe.

To create a scene through a universe, a player can navigate to one of their universes in the Content Universe tab. Once selected, players can navigate to the 'Scenes' tab and click the 'Create Scene' button that appears.

Alternatively, a gamemaster in a game can navigate to their Scenes Panel (in the bottom right of their screen) and select the 'Add Scene' button. This will bring up a modal that will show all of the premade scenes for any universes enabled in that particular game. In addition, they will see a 'Create Scene' button presented near the top of the modal to create a scene ad-hoc in the game.

Best Practice: Creating Scenes In-Game or In-Universe

Generally, it is recommended to create scenes within a game's enabled universe. This will allow gamemasters to reuse those scenes across all games where that universe is enabled.

Creating scenes in-game is great when the gamemaster needs to create an ad-hoc environment if their players go somewhere unexpected. The scene will only be accessible within that game and would need to be rebuilt in a universe should it be needed in additional games.

When a player creates a new scene, they will be presented with a creation modal containing three tabs.

Scene Tab

A scene consists of several key pieces of information that help all of the players immerse themselves into the story.

Field	Description
NAME	Input the name to reference for this new scene. This will be presented to all players in the game when that scene is active.
LOCATION	Input the location of the scene within the greater world of the story such as a city district, territory, or kingdom. This will be presented to all players in the game when that scene is active.
ENVIRONMENTAL VISUAL	Upload a background image for players to view while the scene is active.
MOTION EFFECT	Select an additional visual effect to add to the environmental visual in order to make the scene more dynamic. Default motion effects are available to be used; and additional effects can be purchased in the Alchemy Marketplace or uploaded as universe assets.
BACKGROUND MUSIC	Upload music to be played when the scene is active.
BACKGROUND SOUND	Upload ambient noise to play along with the background music (such as water dripping in a cave near the ocean).
ENCOUNTER MUSIC	Upload an alternative music track to be played when the scene is active and initiative is toggled from the gamemaster's NPCS Panel.
ENCOUNTER SOUND	Upload ambient noise to play along with the encounter music (such as crashing waves while fighting a kraken).
TAGS	Input keywords in the scene's metadata so this scene can be easily searched when viewing all scenes in a universe module. Tags can represent a chapter in the game's story or a location within the game's world.

Tactical Tab

Within the Tactical Tab, battlemaps for combat encounters can be uploaded to the scene. All players can enable Tactical Mode to view the battlemap the gamemaster has set. The gamemaster can adjust which map shown to the party out of all the maps uploaded through this tab.

Notes Tab

In the Notes Tab, a description of the scene can be added for the game master as a reference. This field accepts markdown formatting to allow for linking to relevant universe articles and altering text. All of the information recorded here can be referenced by the gamemaster in the Story Panel while they are playing a game.

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