well, i will be there tomorrow, and my warrior of the elder goddess is level 22, and my other character is a level 41 stone golem. but i can't go to thursday games and i will only be at saturday events until summer comes, and i'm positive thats the same for marcus. just a heads up. I agree with chris though, i'd rather wait and try to get some work accomplished without the carakwaith. but that means no more goblin killing, actual missions that matter is what we need to focus on

This is Adult League!

Hello all FanWar players. I have not had the time to bring this up until now, after my finals have been completed, but I have some high expectations of Adult League play and currently players are not up to the task. Many players who come to the Tuesday events still don't have a grasp of the basic concepts of the game, still don't know how to be monster and don't know most of the game rules. I have not had the energy to enforce the consequences of those problems... until now! This is Adult League and the reason it is free is because players don't need me to constantly be helping them. The amount of time that is wasted between players asking questions they should know the answer to by now, and players trying to figure out what a third level Ranger can do is getting ridiculous. Thus, now that the spring season is ending and summer season is coming I am instigating the following procedures for Adult League events.
Three Before Me: Only ask the GM a question if you have already asked three other players and they do not have the answer.
Look it Up: Direct players to the rule books if they have questions they can answer themselves. I should be printing the new rule books in the next few weeks and everyone should have access to the game rules to make it even better.
Veteran Authority: Many players are using abilities in ways they can't. Veterans have the authority to overrule any situation in which they even suspect a rule is not being followed or a skill misused. If it turns out that a rule is being misused, the player misusing the skill is to sit out and spend their time reading up on the skill. They can NOT continue playing and just say "Oh, I thought it worked this way." They MUST sit out and look up the skill and learn it for the rest of the encounter.
Move It or Loose It: For NPC's and Monsters if players cannot get suited up fast, they are demoted to Journeymen. The longer they take, the lower level they become, until they are level one with a short sword etc. In order to maintain game balance we can give them extra respawns, but they should not play something they cannot pick up and go with. If a player is playing something complex, sit out the first encounter and learn your skills, so you are ready in time for the second part of the encounter. Unless the player is a veteran do not give them roles that are BOTH ina class AND a Monster with abilities.
Goofing and Quibbling = Out for the Day: If players are not following the directions of the GM or Sub GM and suiting up, playing as requested or are playing in inappropriate ways, too violent, debating with the GM after the GM has made a ruling, that player is done for the day, and cannot play for the rest of the event. They must go home or sit out for the rest of the event.
Keep Me Honest: As Veteran plays I am asking you to not just help enforce these rules but to keep me enforcing them. I am likely to get so involved in an adventure that I would rather not do the limit setting part of this, but if I don't players are only going to get worse, and I don't feel like wasting my afternoons. Thus, I want all the Veteran players to help remind me of these rules and to enforce them with all authority whenever possible. If anyone is arguing with you, tell me and they will be asked to leave. Also, since we are all aware of these rules, if I set a limit, it will help if everyone backs me up, 100%, and reiterates the rule to the offending player, i.e. "Yep, you are playing too hard, you are out for the day like Chris said." etc. We have worked too long to have our game time piddled away. Thanks.

P.S. Just because you are Veterans does not mean you are above these rules yourselves. Please examine your game play for these problems and take steps to fix anything you see yourself doing that is inappropriate. I expect you not only to Police yourself but to Police each other as well and keep FanWar a game worth coming to. Thanks.

First of All; GO CHRIS!!!

Second; Has it been decided when characters come out of retirement?

As I understand it, Chris has decided to do coming out of retirement on a case by case basis; you can bring your character out of retirement whenever you want, and depending on how powerful it is, the gameworld will respond accordingly.

Making Characters:

I need to post a bit about the rules for making a character. This is information all players should have but particularly veterans who will be asked these questions. Here are the rules for making/playing a character.
(1) You may only have 4 characters in play at a time. All other must be retired.
(2) You must play ALL characters you roll up. You CANNOT roll up a character, and then never play that character. Once you decide to make a character, you must play that character to their natural end before making a new character. You may NOT make a character, decide you don't like it, and then just ditch it and make another one. Unless that character PD's or is removed from play, they take up one of your slots of play. The reason for this rule is simple. The game allows for some pretty cool rolls on the Backstory chart. But they come at the risk of some pretty sucky ones. If players can ditch the sucky rolls, the Backstory chart is meaningless. Furthermore, if you character is cursed, Morganti hacked or diseased, you could simply quit playing them instead of having to deal with the consequences of your actions and how that effects the storyline.
(3) A GM must be present for all rolls made on Backstory Charts, or coming out of Retirement. Once a character comes out of retirement, they become an active character and take up on of your slots until removed from play or retired again.

So, to summarize. You can only have 4 character able to play at a time. You must play every character you roll up to their logical end, and you must have a GM witness all rolls or the character is forfeit. This is to ensure fair play, good role playing, and uncluttered character management.

Christopher

The Honor System:

I thought this was still posted, but I found out I took it down so I am reposting if for those involved in Trials and such as well as those from Dsesnor for whom it is very important.

"Estorock Keep, like all the Dsesnorian and Sorikonian provinces uses an Honor System of Ranking that differs from the rest of Roekron. Each player has a Family Honor and Personal Honor (see AD&D Oriental Adventures for more info). This honor stays with the character through their life and has a major influence on their status in the province. Far more important than ones level is ones honor. To compute your honor, see below.

First, consult the Legacy section of the rule book. If you are one of the first three (Freeholder, Commoner, or Tennet) you have a base family honor of 1. If you have something higher, just add 1 per step up, ie a Man-at-Arms = 2, Craftsmen = 3 etc. Now add you characters starting lvl and you have your Family Honor.

To find you personal honor do the following. Use the same Legacy computation but multiply the Legacy number by 2. Thus a Craftsmen would have a personal honor of 6. Next add your current level. Then add any special + or - the GM indicates based on your backstory.

So, to sum up if I was a Gentry I would have a Family Honor of 8 (Gentry = 5, + starting lvl 3). I would have a personal honor of 13 or so (Gentry = 5(X2 for personal honor), + 3 for starting lvl).

You can get pluses to honor and minuses to honor in the following ways.
+1 honor for each 5 lvl's in an Art
+1 Honor for an incredibly heroic act
+1 honor for owning 100 gold.
+1 honor for exceptional displays of character
+1 honor for going up a lvl
minuses to honor
-1 honor for acting in a way not appropriate for one honor (i.e. if you have low honor you can get away with almost anything, if you have high honor and sneeze in the wrong direction you loose honor).
-1 honor for vile, backstabbing or taking unfair advantage
-1 honor for acting outside ones chosen alignment
-1 honor for incurring a debt
-1 honor for loosing a lvl
-1 honor for dieing badly
-1 honor per death you have OVER your lvl

Every time you gain 5 honor through one deed, your family honor goes up 1. Every time you loose 3 or more honor through one deed you Family honor goes down by 1.

Consequences of Honor: If you have high honor you will be treated like a high ranking guild officer, will be resurected for free, given magical gifts etc. If you have low honor people will treat you like the dirt that you are. If your personal honor ever drops below your Family honor you will be cast out by you family and disinherited as well as rejected by the society. You will loose ALL privilages and protection and will be shunned by the society.

Um hi (first time) - If its ok chris i was going to master rogue (with nobody, my theif) the vetrans jewel smith and make a master craft ring (this would be the time after he met up with Jeneanes group, the one that rescued muscle). I was also going to try to pay to turn my shield to silver, then master rogue the runic armor ability (vetran again) and make the shield runic. This is what im hoping to do.
Robert page

Hello Robert:

This kind of stuff is better sent as a PM. If you are going to post about it, do it in the Roleplay thread.

hey can someone give me some sort of update as to what happened at the campout? please and thank you

Chronicle Time:

Looks like it is time for someone to Chronicle the camout. There are a lot of exp in it for those who do. I will just say that, there is a new Lord Moleman the Fearless of Moletown, Knight of Redway, Lady Nonas now has a Legendary Lance called "Eminance" and that the Dark City has fallen. That should be enough to peak your curiosity.

Christopher

P.S. Werek has appealed for the thrown of Menonas as the rightful heir.

I'm working on a chronicle about part of that, the acquisition of Eminence. It should be up by this weekend.

I am also working on a post about that, should be up tommorow prolly- thou it will mostly be Out of Game from my characters Journal. However, it would mostly be from my Priestess of the Elder Goddess- Nyneave, and if Pebbles ( we met as our char's a few times, Pebbles sent her to Randwin for supplies ect) asks her, she'll tell her most of it in game, if you think your char would do that Austin

Important Rules Notes:

I have been reading through the rule book and editing and finding some things we haven't been enforcing and I am forgot we changed. I will begin list of them below so other players will remember them as well.

(1) "Mage Lore can be charged only by a Mage which usually asks to be compensated 10 gold per mana to be loaded which takes 10 min per mana put in as any Out of Combat ability. " This is important because we were noting that Mana was too easy to come by. We changed it when we changed all the costs of Mana potions. Note that this does not mean other characters cannot USE mage lore, it means they cannot load them. Important on long missions, boat missions, and other placed you can't charge up a staff. Furthermore, consider what this means in terms of charging an Alter of Power etc. I want to enforce this rule as I have seen a lot of abuse of Mana lately.

(2) "Passive Magic Items: True Magic Items MUST BE Passive, in that they do not require any mana to active them, they are always magic. Passive Magic Items can wound undead as stated in the Species Section. Passive or “True” Magic Items are more difficult to construct in that the item to be enchanted must be master-crafted (made especially for the Mage at twice the listed price by a qualified smith- one with Magic Armor/Weapon Smith). Once the item is made a Spirit of sufficient lvl must be summoned to inhabit the item, the Spirit must be Animated and trained to wield the magics required. Obviously this requires a great deal of mana and gold. The gold cost is roughly the lvl of the skill/spell being put in the item times itself (i.e. lvl squared) and the mana cost is equal to the lvl of the spell/skill. The mana must be put in all at the same time (no drinking potions in between) However, if you are putting several different abilities into an item you CAN put each one in over time, though the item is considered non-functional until ALL the abilities you intend to put in have been at which point it become locked and cannot have spells added to it."
Note that it states the cost "too the mage" is the lvl squared AND an expenditure of mana equal to the level of the item. Remember that mana costs roughly 10 gold a piece. Thus the cost of TO MAKE a magic item should look like this.
Double Item Cost (for Master Crafted Item)
+ lvl of skill squared
+ lvl of skill times 10

We have not been computing in the last part, and have been selling Magic Items for cheaper than they should be, as well as making them much more cheaply. Personally I am not that interested in the Mana cost, as much as the Days. Crafting Magic items says that it takes 5 days prep. That means that a Flame Mage who is doing nothing else, no income, no Elder Sorcery, nothing, can make 4 magic items a month (provided they have heaps of gold, tons of mana, and mastercrafted times). I have not seen this enforced either.
Now let us consider this further. The cost to the Guild when you ask for a Magic item is not only the above listed costs, but also 5 days of a qualified mages time. Assuming that the mage could work those five days, then we must pay the mage for 5 days work which is at least 8 gold (given his level) and that would be for very low level item. All this adds up to a very under represented cost for magic times. Furthermore, I do not think that PC are computing all of this correctly when considering how they are spending their days, income, mana, and pocket cash. Thus, we should either enforce this rule harshly, or simplify it. I am for the later. I think that if you compute in more days, you necessarily increase the cost. Who cares how much mana the thing costs to make if it takes days to make it. Any mage with 4 or 5 mana could load up some staves over the course of the week and get to at least 10 mana in a go. Since we don't play those days, they just recharge it all, no big deal. So I say, lets simplify this and take out the mana cost part and increase the days required. Something like 5 days per Tier of the Item. That should cut into other projects enough to make up everything else. The cost then would look like this.
Double Item Cost (Master Crafted)
+ level squared
+ level X Tier.
The first two sections are the cost to the Mage, the third is the added cost a Mage is like to charge for the service.

Maintenance Cost and Room and Board: When was the last time anyone paid for their stuff. Room and Board too. I have been stepping over happenings and events for some time to get to the quests, but have people been paying their dues? You have to pay 1/2 the cost of everything you own every month. Runic does not dodge this, as you must pay to upkeep the runes.

Hello all:

I will be out of town for a few days and when I get back (Sunday) I will be finishing the Rule Book and taking it to the printer on Monday. Thus, please use the remaining days to discuss any outstanding rules changes (i.e. Endure, Social Status titles, magic item days cost, etc) as I will be checking in on them on Sunday and Monday I will be taking it over. My goal is to have the new Rule Books for the Campout.

Christopher

Some other cool changes:

On my vacation I had a couple of neat ideas I wanted to run past you all.

#1 Peacekeeper and Resolve Conflict don't detect truth, they detect lies: While this may not seem like a change, it is. Currently if I use Peacekeeper on someone and my lvl in Peacekeeper is over your total level, I know if you are telling the truth. If you are higher level, I know I can't tell. This is clunky and leads to difficult conversions. If we invert the ability it will work much more smoothly. If it detects a lie if you are low enough level, then I don't know if what you are saying is true, I just know that you are not lieing. Furthermore, if you are higher level, I just know that you are not lieing. I can't tell if you are higher level then my Peacekeeper, it just seems like I cannot detect a lie. Thus, this makes court hearings, interegation, and conversations much more real and interesting.

#2 Mounts give standard skills: I have been working on a Mount section that outlines what each type of mount might give the rider, but mostly I have outlines what a horse gives its rider in general [speed, endurance, and increased carrying capacity]. The rules for horses and carrying are different as well, as they are Quadrepeds and thus can carry more that normal. Thus, most horse will be size 4, can run fullly loaded, and can carry things over their size (though they can't run if they are that overloaded- i.e. riding double). Running for a horse is also different. Since it has Speed- that is running. Just running in game is fine for a horse even over it's weight limit. Other horse will grant things like Attack Formation without the need for other Knights, be a Fortified Area, or even give Charge and Trample, depending on the breed. This is also true of other animals that can be ridden. Consider just how much more effective a trained Drake would be!

#3 Bows used OUT of combat: A very intriguing idea came to me on my break and I like it very much. I want everyone to think it threw carefully before dismissing it out of hand as I think it could bring something into FanWar that has been sorely missing in tactics. The use of the bow OUT of combat. Currently, bows suck! We keep trying to make them cool, and we have made them at least semi effective, but compared to what they really were like, they suck. I am not interested in creating real bows, I like the safety level we have. The idea I have is to allow bows to be used OUT of combat to attack targets before combat begins. The way they would work is that if you have a bow and spot enemy units before they are within combat range, you can ask the GM for Shot Missile Attacks. The GM may allow or disallow them (based on terrain, weather, or just time) but if the GM allows these attacks, both sides are allowed the change to pick off targets with their bows before they even come within striking distance.
How would this work, you ask? No dice rolling, no simulations, just simple math. Take your level and pit it against your targets Missile Defence. The MD is computed just like in Arduin (2X AV + 10 X Shield). Thus, a player with leather armor and a buckler has an MD of 11, while a player in Full plate with a tower shield has an MD of 38. If your level is higher than your targets MD, you score a hit, and deal your weapons damage. The amount of attacks you may deal this way is determined by (a) the type of bow used (short bow, long bow, yumi bow) and the distance between the parties. If the distance is short, only one attack would be allowed, as then the parties would close to combat. If the distance is very far, several of these attacks might be possible.
What is the cost of making these attacks: Be Stationary. You cannot attack with a bow unless you are still. So you necessarily loose effect in the melee, as well as cease being able to run away. Once the melee begins you may not continue to make these attacks, as that would just muddy the melee, you must close to within throwing distance and then attack that way.
Do you use up any arrows?: The first instinct is to say yes, and this could be an additional cost to using this skill is the loss of your arrows. However, I would lean towards saying that this skill should cost you no arrows. Why? Because in real combat you have tons of arrows. In FanWar you have maybe 10. I don't want players to have to carry around 50 arrows so they can make ranged attacks OUT of combat. I would rather say that the arrows they use in combat represent their In Combat arrows and they have many more that they can use and retrieve for OUT situations. If people feel that the archer should have to use up an arrow to do the ranged attack, that could be amenable, but I think it will only cause archers to horde arrows even more and force players to carry far more arrows then they ever really use.
Why use MD instead of level? I don't think it is fair to pit level against level. If you are a high level character with no shield, you are going to get hit, simple as that. Furthermore, keep in mind that just because you are hit does not mean you take the effect. If a Barbarian is hit, they will probably just laugh. If a veteran is hit, they will cap AV. If a Knight is hit, they will Cap it. If a Paladin, they may just Jumpstart Heal. In most situations, they damage these ranged attacks will do is negligible, except against soft targets. Suppose a mage is in the enemy party. Trying to pick off that mage before he gets close could be invaluable. Also, the deterent factor is huge. If you come across a group of Orks you don't want to fight, you could just pick off the one with no armor and see if they still want to fight you. Furthermore, enemies with bows will be able to pick off soft targets in the PC party as well and thus they must be careful of enemies with bows. Once again, do not take this ability as cut and dried. It is meant to be a GM moderated event, not a "I shot you!" ability. It is only used OUT of game, before things begin. Thus, you could elect to all encircle your mage so she is better protected while you approach. You could hand off a shield to the mage for the advance. The Mage could hide behind a tree while you wait for the baddies to come to you. There are a myriad of possibilities to make this ability workable. Furthermore, as it is a GM adjudicated ability, it may be ruled out completely at times. In a dense forest, during a storm, etc. it would be skipped, but in the plains, on boats, etc. this skill would be very useful. Also, it is an ability that could be used against mounted foes. Since horses have speed and endurance, they get to start cobat withing 30 feet and can be OUT once they are out of striking distance. Bows would allow players to pick of mounted players once they go OUT or pick them off while they are charging, just like in real combat.
Modifiers: I think that the Archer class should count its levels double for this skill. Thus a Ranger who is 6th in a class would have a MA of 11, meaning he can hit anything with a MD of 10 or less. But an Archer of the same level would have a MA of 16 (6 levels of archer doubled + 5 lvls of Journeymen). Guildmaster Archers would be very good at this skill getting to count their Journeymen levels twice as well since Guildmaster makes all levels count as your level in that class. Thus a Guildmaster Archer would have an MA of 30 (15 doubled). They still couldn't hit a fully armored player with a Tower Shield, but they could hit almost anything else.
Playability: I know this skill might sound strange, but consider the advantages. It would bring the advantage of the bow back into combat in a realistic way. Players might start combat wounded due to ranged attacks. Whole encounters might be averted or adjusted due to well placed archery fire.
Is it in the Rule Book?: I plan to include this rule as a Optional Rule in the new Rulebook. It will not be official, it will be something players can choose to play with or not (like Shock Damgae in Arduin for example). If GM's like it, they can use it. If not, they can skip it.

Please reply with your thoughtful, carefully considered and well argued points below.

Christopher


P.S. Yes, we can add MA and MD to the character sheet very easily, or simply put a slash in AV since your MA is just your level unless you are an archer.