NOTE: This is a summary of all the technical terms used in Criteria, the scripting language of Multiverse Designer; it's written as support for the videos of our Criteria Course. Sometimes a word will have a different meaning or use within the context of Multiverse Designer as opposed to the general context of tabletop RPG. In those cases, we will explain both meanings separately (i.e. Actions (Criteria) vs Action (TTRPG).

ACTOR. Any character or non-playable character who can actively use Actions.

ACTIONS (Criteria): everything that a player or GM does in a game, and that is governed and automated by Criteria, is considered an action. Walking, attacking, casting a spell, lockpicking, etc. are all actions. In a game, players and GM choose actions by clicking on their action icon on the game screen. You can create actions in Criteria and assign them an icon (of which there are 5,000 available for you to choose from) for it to show up in the user interface. Actions have a sophisticated input system called Action Step where you can input Fields, roll dice, select spell area, select walk or fly movements… A complex input manager routes all the players’ different inputs to the Criteria server, where the rules will then be applied.

ACTIONS (TTRPG): anything that a player or non-playable character does in a game, and whose outcome is determined by the rules of the game.

BRANCH (Criteria). A Node (more specifically, an Expression) that creates a condition (positive or negative) for some outcome to happen. Basically, an “if”.

CHARACTER SHEET (TTRPG): a character sheet is the summary of all the information about a character or creature within the context of a specific game – all that a character is and can do in the game, particularly the numerical information that you need to use in interaction with the rules of the game. For example, a player character (PC) sheet in D&D includes information such as histheir name, race, class, alignment, size, initiative value, armor class value, skills names and values, resistances names and values, inventory, feats, and special characteristics. Technically, both player and non-player characters (NPC), on the one hand, and monsters and other creatures on the other, have character sheets – but usually NPCs and monsters have summarized versions, typically called “stat blocks”.

CHARACTER SHEET (Criteria): the summary of all the information (textual and numeric) of any creature (PC, NPC, monsters, etc.), item (weapons, armor. etc.) and other things such as spells, that interacts with the rules of the game. For example, the sheet of a weapon would include its name, size, type, requisites, damage, material, and special rules. A spell would include its name, range, time of casting, duration, components, effects, and damage (if applicable). A sheet is divided into pages.

COMBO (Criteria). A datatype/input field where the user selects an option from a list. In Criteria it is used to select anything that comes from a table or it’s in the inventory of a player, and then, in turn, using the values assigned to that item if applicable or necessary. For example, setting a Combo allows the player to select an armor, and then Criteria will change their Armor Class accordingly.

CONDITIONS: a character’s temporary state that has some rules associated with it. For instance, a character who is prone has +4 AC from ranged attacks and -4 to attack rolls.
Fields: each individual item in a section. For example, in the Abilities section, the fields would be STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA.

INFORMATION, INFOS: any function in Criteria that returns a number as a result and is meant to be reused anywhere and at any moment in a game, as opposed to one-off calculations. Infos are used to organize rules into separate objects. For instance, in D&D your abilities give you a bonus or malus depending on their number – STR 18 would give you a +4 in any check related to STR. You can manually input the bonus stat for each ability, but you wouldn’t have any case that isn’t explicitly included (what if you only introduced the typical values for PCs and suddenly you have a character with STR 26?) – or you can create an Info that calculates the bonus dynamically from your Ability stat, so it gives you the right bonus every time.

JOURNAL (Game). The section of the user interface that shows relevant information, mainly if an Actor has passed a test or not, numbers like the results of dice rolls, damage dealt or taken…

JOURNAL (Criteria). The in-game Journal isn’t automatically generated: you need to define in Criteria what (and how) is shown in the Journal and what isn’t. In Criteria, Journal is the feature that makes a specific piece of information show up in the game’s Journal. It can be implemented both in Actions and Infos. For example, you could just show if an Ability check is successful or not, or include also the Ability modifier, the dice roll, and the DC.

NODE. Generic name for all the functions, commands, actions, calculations, etc. that you can use in Criteria, such as Expressions (like Get Condition or Journal), Operators (like Add or Substract)...

PAGES: the different parts of a character sheet, which are then subdivided into sections. This division is just a way to present the information: the sections on a page don’t have to share any characteristics with each other. For instance, in D&D the first page typically contains background and basic info, abilities, skills, combat-related info, and resistances. But should you prefer it that way, it could include abilities and inventory. There is no limit to the number of pages a sheet can have.

RESOLUTION. The part of an Action that defines its outcome, mainly if the character or NPC has succeeded or failed in a task, and what happens in each case; but a Resolution can trigger before any results are calculated. Resolutions can produce results that affect the game and/or purely cosmetic (like showing an animation or the results of a roll above a character’s head). For example, you can define the Resolution of an attack to be “Show the attack animation for this weapon. If the result of an Attack check is higher than the opponent’s Armor Class, then deduct the weapon damage from the opponent’s Hitpoints”.

RULE (TTRPG): generally speaking, a rule is an objective way for players and game masters to determine the outcome of an Action or a given situation when playing a pen-and-paper role-playing game. For example, “in order to succeed at a skill check, you need to roll a dice, add its result to the relevant Skill value, and get a higher result than the Difficulty Class” is a rule, as much as “a longsword makes 1d8 damage” or “whoever has the higher initiative goes first”.

RULE (Criteria): rules are used to apply modifiers to Fields or Infos (both terms explained in their own paragraphs). For instance, if you have a ring that gives + 1 to AC, it would be written in Criteria as "add 1 to the Armor Class info". Rules allow also to create special spell effects, like the 1d6/level damage of a fireball or a monster special 1d8 poison attack. Rules can be reused – for example, if a potion or a ring creates the same result as a spell (very common in many RPGs), it would just use the same Rule.

SWITCH. A node that separates each option from a Combo box, thus facilitating programming. For example, if you want to create a rule in Criteria so the GM can decide if a roll is standard or with Advantage/Disadvantage, you can use a Switch node to decide if it rolls 2d20 or a single d20, and then another Switch node to use the Max Value (if it's an Advantage), the Min Value (for a Disadvantage), or the result of a single dice if it's a standard roll.

SECTION: the different parts of a page in a character sheet. For example, Abilities, Skills, and Resistances will be sections in a Criteria player character sheet.

TABLES: a way for Criteria to organize large amounts of data, import, and export large amounts of data. You can import spreadsheets in CSV format into Criteria (like, for example, a lot of weapons with their stats) with software like Google Sheets or Excel. You can also export them back, for example to add new data but keeping any changes made in Criteria. Tables are made of 2 parts; the key part which is the fields (usually only one), that will be used to access that table, and the data part which has the fields that are related to that key. For instance, a weapons table will have the weapon name as an index and several data fields indicating damage, the type of weapon (two-handed, ranged, or one-handed) and as many fields as wanted. Tables are supposed to be exactly equal to the tables used in an RPG game book, facilitating their implementation. Tables also have a powerful parser, capable of creating virtual fields from cryptic strings like "+1/+3 Ranged attack(damage 1d8 plus poison)".