Resources
This is by no means the only resource on the Internet that will help you with Blades of Avernum and scenario creation. Below are a few links that will tell you where to find custom scenarios, where to reach the community if you have questions, and other places to look when you need help designing a scenario. It's very much a partial list — there's a lot more out there. If you'd rather skip ahead to the next section, feel free.
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Spiderweb Software's Blades of Avernum homepage
This is probably where you downloaded the game from. This site hosts more than just the demo; it also hosts custom scenarios and the Scenario Workshop. The Workshop provides downloads for the original Editor, a list of known bugs, articles written by Jeff Vogel and other designers, and more.
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The Editor documentation and appendix.
These files are included with the original Editor, but they're important enough that I'm hosting a copy of them on my site. This is the official documentation for the Editor, and while you don't have to read it now, you should at some point in the future. Together, these two files discuss everything you need to know to build your own scenario, as well as some very useful tips. In particular, the appendix lists every single AvernumScript call. You can find this information on WikiBooks if you prefer, or on my own website.
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Spiderweb Software Forums
The official forums for the company. There are three forums of note: the Blades of Avernum forum (for discussion about the game and released custom scenarios), the Blades of Avernum Editor forum (the place to ask questions if you're designing a new scenario), and the Blades of Avernum Scenario Reviews forum (where you can find reviews for released scenarios). These forums are your primary way of reaching the rest of the community, and you should look there first when you need to ask questions and get feedback.
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The Blades Forge
The Forge is a great place to access scenarios, graphics, and scripts that other designers have uploaded for sharing. Strongly consider uploading your own work as well. Update: The Forge is currently down; no idea when or if it will be back.
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Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!
I'm deliberately not linking to the websites of individual designers, because then this list would be overwhelmingly large. However, I will make an exception for Kelandon. Aside from his scenarios, he's got some useful articles for aspiring designers. He's also hosting the Blades of Avernum Editor Cookbook, written by Erik Westra. The Cookbook tells you how to use AvernumScript to perform the most common tasks in a scenario. There's a few other resources you'll find on Kelandon's site, but I'll mention them later on in the tutorial.
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More Links
The above links are all that's needed to find alternate teaching resources and get in touch with the community. But there's much more out there, such as old discussion forums and scenario ratings, design utilities, and the websites of individual designers. If you want to find more, check out the huge link pages made by Kelandon, Jewels, and Niemand.
Now that you know where to go if you need resources and help, let's move on with the tutorial. The first step is...
