Saving the world on a Sunday afternoon
This an archive of all the questions from the old Questions board and all of the answers submitted, roughly split by category and sorted by date order.
New Starter
Characters
System
Philosophy
Fun
Specialising and focusing on two or three spell/miracles chains at the most.
And if you genuinely mean “non-combat” as totally not fighting, then tons and tons of healing.
As i think what most people have said already is sensible, i’m going to agree but by providing a counter example.
Caled is really bad at his job.
In line with what Darren says, according to their description Wardens exist to buff the other defender branches. And seeing as earth mages should be all about the buffing (what with having no direct damage effects unless you learn multicast grip and earthquake).
So, learning from caled what not to do:
and it’s got to be said, those last two are things i’ve been telling myself caled would grow out of when he had more mana, but in reality, every time he’s got more mana, he’s also got higher level effects to spend it on.
so, in summary, no ego and lots of mana/standing
token Churlish answer:
A half-elf mage-priest who spends 100 ranks in the temple of balance then 100 ranks in the circle.
Fairly long payback time on that though
Coming from it from another angle, in terms of roleplay restrictions one would expect Wardens to make the best support casters along with Justice Priests.
What I think of as a support mage or priest can be split into 2 types, a buff caster and a controller caster.
Buff Caster – as many others have mentioned, will have a large pool of standing/mana and will power others up to make them more effective. Depending on exactly what is cast and what level they can help tie up monsters by giving additional armour/power armour/defenses to another player making sure they can tie up a couple of monsters or the big bad while only taking minimal damage or make a battle much easier by giving several fighters empowered weapons to do additional damage.
The side effect of all this buffing is that you don’t get to use the flashy castings or have a great deal of power to save yourself, which is why a cheap casting to get you out of trouble works wonders. Withdraw, earth merge, trip, blink are all good cheap ways of getting yourself out of sticky situations but the best defense is often keeping a good eye out for monsters and hiding behind someone else :)
As a high level example of this is Caroline playing Barel, Barel can completely ruin a monsters day (in a good way) by sticking a couple of Ice 7’s on the front line’s weapons in her party. If the monsters haven’t got access to power armour then almost everything will go splat quickly against that sort of damage. At low level sticking power 3 on a scouts weapons will mean they go from bruising a monster to doing 3 damage a hit ambidexterously and if something is immune to normal damage even power 1 can be effective.
Controller caster – these also need large amounts of power and often need more tricks to get them out of trouble as they will be closer to the fighting. Basically I see their job is to tie up monsters so effectively the party has the numbers advantage. You can do this by knockout effects like sleep (or Coma but thats a lot more dangerous to you), destroying weapons (becomes less effective at high level due to likelyhood of powerups on monsters), or immobilising effects like grip, entangle or weakness. For example if you fight a group of 6 monsters to 6 fighters in the party plus you, taking out 1 or 2 monsters makes a big difference in the fight and even more so when the party is outnumbered.
A high level example of this would be Onyxbalm, with ranged quad grips and lots of power a monster group has often found over half of its number stuck outside of fighting/spell range by mid way through the fight and is then individually killed later 1 monster versus entire party (been on the receiving end of that a few times).
Low level even a normal grip occupies a monster for 10 seconds unless they’re very nasty and a double grip will immobilise quite a lot of monsters, sleep 2 has been shown to be quite effective this year if you’re prepared to use it aggressively (like James W has done on a couple of occasions). If you watch for the monsters trying to flank your group and immobilise them then that’s something for the fighters to ignore and you to just keep an eye on.
I played Elrod a couple of years ago along these lines, an Earth circle mage with plenty of power, Destroy, Freeze, Coma and a Trip and Grip multicast which I think is just evil :) plus some extra bits to make me/others more survivable (Spell immunity 2, Endurance 6, a little iron skin)
There is a balance to be struck between directly offensive and support castings, and these are best worked out at the time. Mages tend to be better able to do a little bit of both, while priests get cheaper melee skills to compensate.
The important thing is to be useful, even in subtle ways. It is worth noting though that support casters do take a while to get going in a way that combatants dont; and can garner a reputation for being useless at rank 2-10 while rocking the mid-high level.
Almost all Paths and Schools can provide support castings of some sort.
I´d say that Justice Priests are the best support casters, due to their healing and access to the Order list. Even better than a Balance priest due to generally being more selfless in personality. A Justice priest’s main (only?) weakness is access to power damage against non-undead enemies.
However, the most important aspect for a support caster is – not to be a burden. This means not being part of the “soft underbelly”. Even better, you should be able to protect those around you thus freeing up more of the party to get in the front line.
What everyone else has said:
1. Pick your survival strategy and get good at it. Fast feet, combat awareness, enough weapons and armour to hold an attacker at bay or not attract aggressive attention (not the same as a combat caster tool up), Blink, Earthmerge, Withdraw and similar castings. Know your exit!
2. Pick how you’re going to boost the party then experiment with your tools until you’re good with them. Whether it’s seeing if an hour of Stormskin 3 is better than 4hrs of 2 or shots of 4, or if Destroying weapons on half your enemies or a quarter in an encounter is the needed amount. Try it out then confirm the results.
3. Develop secondary tools. Don’t rely on one trick, no matter how good. Have a best skill, be it Unholy Strike or Endurance, but find the little things that can tip a fight. Grip (t) can undo a Rank 100 opponent in the right circumstances, and Trip can slow a rush long enough for fighters to respond.
Finally, take pride in the success of others. Be smug at the ease with which the party carve up an enemy. Feel a glow that the healer has power spare for other things. And remember those who say thank you (IC), and buff them till they glow.
The right balance between a mix of useful castings and enough mana/standing to use them effectively.
And knowing when you should go and hide in a nearby bush.
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamenta- erm, I mean, a good range of castings, enough power to drive them, and knowing when to run.
A desire to help people, and to know that it will never be you that is regarded as the hero by the general populace, but only by your own party. To gain satisfaction in their universal acclaim as they wield your power on their blades, accept your strength when you heal them, and stand adamant against the enemy, your power making them invulverable to attack.
Knowing and accepting that your personal glory comes in a hundred small pieces, a hundred times a day, every time you make someone else better. Always there, always helping, sometimes hardly noticeable except by your absence, which leaves people gasping for your help. Like air.
Being able to look at a situation and knowing what is required by it, so you are ready with advice if required, your power if this is your strength, and an escape route if it isn’t.
Managing your power so you can always do something, even if it is only making sure that you are safe and costing no-one else anything.
Knowing your intelligent and considering nature grants you insight that others don’t have – you will see things, and hear things, that others don’t – and knowing what to do with that knowledge when you have it.
Not asssuming that others know nothing because they wear armour, carry weapons and kill things, and expecting the same trust and respect in return.
10,000 mana/standing and a few hundred castings don’t go amiss either.
A good selection of buffs, the knowledge of when and on whom to use them, and the ability to spot incomings and run like crazy when needed.
Having only been on the receiving end of buffs my personal opinion would be that it’s a mostly OOC skill in knowing when your buffs will simply be appreciated and putting fairly low level stuff down to conserve power, when their going to completely make or break an encounter and most importantly recognising when you’ve you’ve under-estimated it and fixing it.
Picking skills that buff is obviously helpful but out of all of the options I’d certainly be hard pushed to define a “best” path/principal for a support character. If I had to though my personal opinion would be balance as if you specialise in buffing chains then you’re going to be able to make a significant impact (although not as much as say a blade speicialised mage in some cases) to any encounter. And to me a true “support” character should be able to support in every situation.
The ability to spend power wisely, the judgement to know when casting can tip the balance of the fight, and the awareness to not be a drain on the parties time/resources.
That, and an excellent selection of power appropriate tricks and skills.
A widely useful/popular buff, combined with a few personal tricks for oddities.
First I’d ask if reading about the setting and the characters has given them any ideas. If someone has a burning desire to play a something specific then anything else is going to feel like a disappointment and is harder to get excited about. I would warn someone if the roleplay restrictions were difficult or complicated but I would generally fall on the side of letting them try something out and finding out for themselves. The only way to learn and improve is to give something a go.
I do think it’s good to have the option to start up a completely new character if you think a character isn’t working. And monstering a few high level games can give a good idea of what’s available.
I think there are two main ways to create a character. First you think a particular race/class/guild seems like it would be fun to play and then you try to work out what sort of personality that person would have. Or you have a personality in mind and then you need to work out what class and guild are the best fit for them.
If the person didn’t have a specific idea (or if they had too many ideas) I’d ask what they most wanted to get out of a game. If they wanted to be heavily involved in plot Freedom priests have an excuse to ask questions and write everything down. Research mages are also reliable members of Team Poke-it-with-a-stick. If the stress relief of hitting people with rubber swords was what appealed I’d recommend a warrior of some kind. If they wanted to boss people about they should join the Defenders. Healers should be Justice or Balance Wardens or priests.
It would very much depend on the new starter. TL has many different shapes and sizes of characters – there would be no need in my mind to suggest one fits all.
For a new starter familiar with roleplay, but not with LARP (or lightly acquainted with LARP): I would talk to them about the concept they had in mind, and the basis upon which it was built. We would talk over the real intentions of the player for their character, what they hoped for in the short and long terms, and how they wished to act IC.
This would start to narrow down the choices for us, and we would go over the what is available to them as a result, citing the mysteries and pitfalls of each character class as well as the benefits. Where there were epic roleplay restrictions, these would be strongly considered, and I would not be happy to continue the discussion until the new starter had demonstrated they understood what would lie in wait for them if they chose that class.
Once they had made an informed decision about how much roleplay bias they were willing to accept on their character, the available options would be further narrowed down, leaving us with, very likely, a very small number of preferred options. Then, it would be down to the stats. The stat benefits and penalties of the remaining choices would be matched, by the player under my guidance, to the concept they have in mind. Once again, it would be all about granting the player the knowledge to make an informed decision for themselves, and being sure they are aware of its implications before going away and spending their 20 points.
Essentially, while they would need to remain informed as to the implications of their choices, those choices would remain with them at every stage. When all was said and done, it wouldn’t be me spending the points, playing the character, or getting to have fun with the results. I would have no more right to tell them what to play than they would to tell me.
For a new starter very familiar with LARP: I would run over the rules of the game, and how they are different to the systems the starter has previously played (this would be easier if I were familiar with it, as I could then highlight parallels and differences). I would cover the IC structure of the Kingdom and its surrounding non-kingdom habitats, cite strongly the heavy roleplay requirements of the more esoteric classes, and spend time talking with them about the system’s slants and intentions with respect to its different character classes.
By that point, I would expect the player to already be having their own ideas about what they want to do, and loosely how they might fit into the setup. I would continue to make sure they were informed about the decisions they were making, once again citing the roleplay restrictions if they were leaning in krayzee directions, but the process would largely be led by them. I would answer questions on point spending in the low-mid to mid levels, and what might be expected of their character as they progressed through the campaign, to the mid level, to the high level.
If they were happy with their concept, the overview, and how the world fitted together, I would give them the rulebook and tell them to go and have fun, saying that if they had any questions whatsoever, I’d be over there with the brand newbies – please cut in at any time.
For a new starter unfamiliar with roleplay: I would explore what the player was looking to get out of LARP, and to what extent LARP could provide what they were looking for. I would talk about the inspirations they may be able to draw on from novels, music or other semi-linked sources, and what the system’s very basic requirements are. Once they were happy with the idea of creating a character and fitting them into the world, I would move on to basic roleplay concepts and archetypes, and see if any of those rang particularly true with them. I would help them link their preferred concepts with their sources of inspiration, and allow them to start to come to a decision about what they might like to play. From then on, I would proceed as a roleplayer new to LARP, as above.
TL:DR version is that I would not seek to tell someone what to play, or even to suggest what to play. I would seek to make sure the player was sufficiently well-informed to be able to understand the implications themselves, and let them make the decision.
STL:SDR version is, as long as they understand the consequences, I’d suggest they play whatever they want to.
If forced to give straight race/class/guild combinations, because otherwise I will bore the poor bastard to death:
In that order.
It depends on what sort of role you want to take- if you aren’t confident with combat, for example, there’s no point playing a warrior. But, that sort of answer is a bit too general and, well, obvious.
I would agree with Greg that a Pathfinder is a good choice, especially if you aren’t entirely sure what you want or aren’t strongly drawn to one particular thing. As somebody who’s had a scout as a first character, and who’s helped somebody else go down the same route, it offers the whole package in small manageable chunks that help make the TL system easier to get into.
A scout can fight, but doesn’t need to have the OC fighting skills that a warrior would need to be effective. A scout can learn spells, but there isn’t the immediate requirement to jump into the complicated casting rules and long spell lists that a mage would have. A scout can learn miracles, but isn’t as strongly bound to the requirements of a path as a priest. A scout can be any sort of character you want. They can evolve over time as you learn more rules, and want to try new things. There are no difficult roleplay requirements (as with, say, paladins or barbarians), but you can develop your character as you become more comfortable with playing them. Being in the Defenders gives you cheaper skills and access to training, as well as a reason to interact with other characters and go on missions. Race wise, I’d suggest either human or half elf- the skill costs pretty much even out over time, so there’s no huge difference.
If somebody had more specific character aims in mind, then other people have made good suggestions, but if you don’t have a specific character plan, a Pathfinder is a good way to go.
I can’t help thinking that it’s a real shame that druids in their current incarnations are almost universally “recommended against.” While I understand the reasons for this (if not agree with them), I think it’s sad for two reasons: 1) that the “Save the Trees!” religion is a very easy concept for a newbie to grasp, and 2) that it’s a character class a lot of people have a natural affinity for anyhow. My $0.02.
As for gladiator or barbarian, I agree with others – go Guard (or unaligned Warrior) instead.
For starting characters, Defenders are excellent in that you already have other characters to interact with, the guild restrictions are simple, and the roleplay is combat-heavy. I do also recommend scouts are a starting character – but only if physical exercise is part of a player’s motivation – a well played scout is physically exhausting and equally rewarding.
As for priests, someone’s best choice of caster will fit in with what they want to do in a party – Life/Justice/Freedom being the recommended. Thinking about it – Life and Order could work well enough, but only in the Wardens.
Mages are simpler. What spell list do you like the look of? Awesome.
There is no “one-size-fits-all” starting character. It is for each person to decide what they like the best.
There’s no general rule of what’s best for everyone and at the beginning of any year, recommended that all the new players play dex based human scouts won’t work.
Talk to the new person. Learn about what they are going to be comfortable playing. What books do they read / games they play. Have they done tabletop, warhammer etc?
Things to avoid at stage one.
Things I will encourage to be included a group of new larpers… Archtypes!
Other points.
Finally – it is worth pointing out that we do hold on to our first characters for a long time (Ryan, Alex T and Doug aren’t exceptions) – and those characters will always hold a special place in our notebooks.
oh. and those players that monstered before playing their first character – highly recommended – if not always practical.
I think for a complete newbie to larp, I’d tell them to monster a few games first, and look at what other people are playing and play a few monster roles – that way you get to try a load of different things before getting attached to a character
For stats:
I would never ever recommend someone tie their first character, to whom, if Lrp is successful, they will always have a great attachment, to scout stats of any kind.
For Realz:
Unless someone turns up and just says “Where do I hit things?” however, I’d talk to them about setting and what kind of role they want to play. I’d ask where their inspiration came from, what kind of character or personality they rooted for when they watched a movie or read a book, which character they felt was least understood.
I’d ask them what they wanted to get from Lrping, because roleplaying is a tool for personality change and immersive live roleplay can be used beneficially.
To an absolute LRP newbie I’d most likely, regardless of what type of character/class they wanted to play, advise them to play a Defender due to more or less everything being able to be incorporated into the guild. A decent number of other people are likely to be playing one so you are pretty guaranteed to have an instant group/cohesion to work with, roleplay around and there is almost always going to be something for you to do/get involved with no matter what you’re playing.
I wouldn’t tell them to avoid anything but I would point out that certain classes might be more difficult to get involved with things/people due to their outlook.
To a new starter whose done other LRP I’d probably tell them them same but it would be much more secondary to telling them to play whatever they thought they would actually enjoy due to having previous LRP experience.
At the start I’d recommend a dex-based scout Pathfinder, simply for the total freedom to roleplay any character alignment you like with the only restriction being following the past leader’s orders.
Kit requirements are simple, needing no armour and few weapons to borrow. You’re not a core member of the party stats-wise but get a chance to run around and have fun.
After a few games at most, your preferred character type will make itself known.
My first suggestion would be to try something you’ll feel comfortable playing – LARP can be ridiculously daunting to start with, and as I learned on my first two games, when you switch to a character that’s a bit closer to home it becomes a lot easier to get over the self-consciousness a lot of us have when we first start roleplaying. The challenging characterisation can come later in the year or with the next character, when you’re more comfortable and confident.
I agree with Ryan that a guild which can help you shape the personality of your character is useful – and make use of the campaign setting if you can too. When you’re unfamiliar with the world, those things help you fit in while you’re still learning the ropes. So pick a guild that plays to your own strengths and weaknesses – for example, my instinctive reaction when people are waving swords around is to cringe and hide, so the Defenders turned out to be a bad choice for me and a researcher from the Circle was much easier to get to grips with.
The guilds and classes and races with challenging roleplay restrictions (druids, barbarians, Amazons, Bladesingers, Gladiators, Paladins, etc.) are going to make it harder to integrate your character into the party at a stage when you’re still trying to get to know everyone and get used to the system.
From a more practical point of view, when we start larping we tend to be reliant on more experienced players for borrowing armour and weapons. So a mage can be a good choice if you’re not able to splash out on a lot of kit – and if you want to fight, but can’t afford lots of armour, earth mages have Ironskin. Playing a gladiator festooned with weapons and armoured to the nines is going to be tough logistically for a new player. Playing a mage with a cloak and a spellbook is a lot easier.
For the first question, Humans offer a great deal in flexibility and forgiveness for a new character, having the ability to do anything well and the Death Thresholds to survive a few early mistakes. Personally I remember dying twice in my first 3 or so games. A Human can recover from that sort of mistake whilst an elf would be looking at a quite reduced career.
On guilds I’d recommend the defenders for a combination of generous bonuses and flexibility in focus if a change is desired due to the various branches.
On areas to avoid: Any sort of item creation. It doesn’t work at low ranks and you will find yourself with very little to do on games. Similarly the Artificer’s guild has too many penalties to look at joining at the starting ranks.
If forced to only recommend one build for all newbies ever, I would mostly agree with Ryan’s suggestion – although I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend a Temple Priest of Might, as having played one, having to never call on the aid of another can make things difficult.
For a primary combatant: If kit is not an issue, I would recommend a Human or Half-Orc Full Warrior, depending largely on shield use and willingness to be painted green. Assuming you have the armour, as a human in the Guards (or as a half-orc, full stop) it is far from unreasonable to keep your armour high enough that you are Bruising every strike even without buffs, greatly reducing the mid-fight maths and thus the possibility of realising you died at the battleboard. At low ranks, if the kit budget provides, it’s also not a huge points investment to switch from clanking tin can to lightly kitted skirmisher, great weapon user to sword & board to dual wielding and back, although switching armour from light skirmisher to heavy fighter is potentially painful.
As for guild, I would go with either the Guards for simple numerical boosts that work against everything, or the Humacti for more interesting numerical boosts against undead and (most importantly) total, permanent immunity to nearly all forms of Fear, one of the most powerful battlefield control effects in the system, without restrictions that make a conflict of interests or a simple inability to take a buff likely. In both cases, the guild restrictions provide a helpful decision making framework for those new to roleplaying, while not actually making it likely that you will run into problems with many parties or situations.
For a primary combatant with a minimal kit budget, on balance I would recommend a half-elf Earth Mage in either the Tower or the Wardens. Iron Skin plus Endurance is,IME, the quickest way to be a survivable combatant without relying on kit; half-elves have fewer long-term issues than humans as magic users without being quite as easy to kill as elves; and both the Tower and the Wardens help with the costs of your primary spells. While the Tower helps with all your Earth spells, the Wardens let you take (more) spells from other schools, as well as reducing your weapon proficiency cost if you don’t want to wield a staff. Having free leather armour proficiency for when you’re out of mana helps too.
For a healer, I’d recommend a Human Full Priest of Justice, Temple or Warden, as you can then sort out all simple numerical damage, and the Path of Justice a) as Ryan says gives an easy “What would Justice do?” algorithm if you’re new to roleplaying, b) isn’t likely to cause conflict with most parties on most days. See also Ryan’s statement.
For a support caster who doesn’t want to heal things, I’d recommend an Elf Mage, in the Tower of Fire for preference. It is difficult to go wrong with Flame Blade, Fire Skin, and Radiate as abilities to grant the party, and having a short list of spells known means being unlikely to forget which one is useful for this situation; conversely, the Fire list has a lot of effects that will work against anything other than a fire elemental, if you want to expand your repertoire. As a Tower Mage, you are not under a Defender’s obligation to protect civilians or weaker party members, which is very helpful when your class prevents you from wearing strong armour without investing a prohibitively large number of points in the task.
On to the second half of the question:
I’d advise newbies to avoid the Artificers Guild. In terms of fun and roleplay, item creation takes too long to be something you can define yourself by within one year of play. In terms of mechanics… I could be here all day, but in short, I don’t think they are good at what they are on the surface meant to do.
I would recommend playing a human Might or Justice Priest in the Wardens or respective Temple.
This combination allows the player to be a support caster, a combat caster, a front line fighter with shield or great-weapon or a skirmisher whilst finding out what play style they most enjoy. It also provides a large range of costume choices and character styles – from robes to full plate with a shield and everything in between.
I also think Might and Justice are a quite nice introduction to role playing – as there is a rough “template” for personality choices, should the player need the help.
Edit: Missed the “avoid” part of the question.
I’d advise against playing a Temple Order or Life priest, Barbarian, Amazon or Druid due to the extreme, sometimes antagonistic, race/guild restrictions. I’d also avoid half-ogres and, to a lesser extent, half-orcs due to their typically lower “intellect”, which makes it harder to integrate into plot and party role play.
Examples include:
Classes capabilites are in part balanced by their restrictions, therefore the player is required to buy into the restrictions to play class/guild/etc. The more this is bent, the more the PC is deliberately unbalanced, which damages enjoyment for all and is often known as cheating.
Therefore the restrictions are hard wiring and can never be overcome.
I would suggest there’s as much enjoyment of roleplay to be had from struggling with your inherent nature and failing as there is in overcoming it. A Druid who struggles daily with the fact that he’s seen his half orc ally do so many great things, save so many trees, yet the Druid still flinches every time he touches a tree, still instinctively expects the axe and has a moment of anger and hatred every time he sees the half orc.
The counter point is no one likes punishing breaches of these behaviours and restrictions. The action is unpopular and just generates unhappiness – “I’m being told how to play my character!” – especially in the more undefined restrictions such as Alignment and Priests or non Priest divine casters. These things are so ill defined that even clearly equivalent examples are treated differently, sometimes from character to character with the same player. (The Freedom Priest with Earth Magic Mend and the Order Priest with Fire Magic Destroy is a prime example of equivalent effects to Divine tendencies which have been ruled in directly opposite fashion)
The responsibility is funnelled to one person, then that one person is made the target of the bad feelings so they can be shunted away. The completion of the cycle is for the Character Ref to then be replaced regularly, the individual taking those bad feelings with them. This is a destructive and negative format that is rightly defied, but in defying it tensions continue to build up because people continue to put their PCs “winning” above and against system balance and game enjoyability for all.
So, if you have a defined restriction, you have an obligation to play it to the hilt, to not put the onus on another to bring you into line with the balancing of the rules which has led to that restriction being put there.
And if you have an undefined restriction, such as divine casters, you have an obligation not to push the boundaries but to play the alignment in a clearly understandable form.
If you as a player breach a restriction, you should be proposing to the Character Ref how to resolve the matter, and relishing the roleplay of the consequences of the PCs actions.
In the end, by all means roleplay trying to break restrictions, but enjoy your PCs failures – we are so often more defined by failure as by success, and the standard format of games rarely allows for the larger party as a whole to fail, so failures must be personal.
And as a last comment, I freely concede I am guilty of doing or being party to several of the above points. I can only promise to attempt to do better.
rather than address the question, i’ll add an aside.
patrols actively encourage characters to overcome characeter / guild restrictions.
the mix of characters are thrown together into a difficult situation. sometimes only by acting together can they and their comrades survive. not only that, but moral dilemmas can break a character’s guild or temple restrictions very easily. a humact might have to let an undead survive so he can kill a necromancer. a pathfinder might have to leave one kingdom citizen behind to save others.
in fact, only the individual roleplay of these restrictions – both obeying and overstepping – is important, and the restrictions make the character classes different.
The longer answer is that I see two types of breaking roleplay restrictions: 1. The character breaking guild rules and 2. the player breaking TL rules (i.e cheating). I have no problem with the first as long as there are suitable penalties applied to the character e.g loss of gladiator points, expulsion from the guild, character point deductions. The second isn’t on and anyone who consistantly does this should be taken aside and have it explained that such behaviour is extremely childish and to grow up. Obviously it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two making it difficult to police
I think that players should expect to have IC consequences (demotion, expulsion from the guild, placed on probabtion etc.) automatically applied if they break the restrictions and that the GMs, Campaign and Character Refs should do this frequently.
I know this may be somewhat controversial, but I think it is currently pushed too far. The following comments apply equally to other classes and guilds, but barbarians are an easy example.
Given we have a remarkably well-rounded and diverse bunch of individuals, very few of us have actually experienced the blind prejudice that some of these roleplay concepts are meant to encapsulate. Barbarians don’t just hate and fear magic, they’ve spent their entire life, pretty much, being indoctrinated into these attitudes. It isn’t just what they think at the moment, every opinion and thought will have been coloured by these prejudices.
If you look at the folk tales and similar in our world, it’s fairly easy to extrapolate that in Barbarian tribes, things go wrong when the hero lets the mage or the non-human live. Almost every villain will be non-human, a mage or both and the hero will normally have to save the damsel/young prince from these terrible foes. In a barbarian mind, evil, magic and non-humans are almost impossible to separate. On top of this, respected elders will have taught you how half-orcs and half-ogres may seem friendly, but they’ll steal your valuables, ravish your women and eat you for lunch if you give them an inch.
Try to think of the sheer weight of learning and history that goes into those restrictions. I think that any relaxation in favour of one individual should be a massive, life-changing event that will almost destroy the character. Don’t do yourself out of all that roleplay, and don’t cheapen it by doing it even once every couple of years. If you find that it happens within your first year, you probably ought to be re-examining the way you play your character. I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong to reach the point that early, but if it happens early there’s a danger you’re not roleplaying the deep, entrenched feelings of the class.
Some of the best roleplay you’ll get will be the moment you’re severely wounded barbarian charges the enemy rather than goes near the elven party member, or the Amazon turns to defend the NPC woman from the male party member. Player-on-player killing should be a last resort and avoided if at all possible, but inter=party tension is part of what makes the game. Don’t lose it.
My opinion,unhelpful as it is, is that is largely depends on the character. Everyone is going to interpret the letter of the rules differently and act that interpretation differently and every character according to their beliefs and ideals will react differently still. If a GM feels like a character may have crossed certain boundaries then negative points or IC reprimands can be made.
From my personal experience Wildmane as a druid /should/ hate orcs and goblins, however when he came up against a group of life aligned Goblins, who overwhelming evidence showed to be living harmony with their forest, decided to offer them help and to support them. For this IC punishments were carried out and it was a fun RP experience for me and I felt the punishment was both fair and added interest to the event. For those who may have noticed Failhbe, this year and last, I’ve been trying to be unwavering in his hatred of magic as a force of evil, but have been much more lax in distrust of non-humans, mainly relating it to the races affinity for magic. I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong in this and as long as it is roleplayed well and sensibly then the roleplay requirements can be pushed.
I’d never go so far as to loose them entirely, no matter how long roleplay has been going on for, as they are there to balance a class. But I don’t see why characters, even one’s with a roleplay requirement, shouldn’t be able to mature and develop their opinions over time. In terms of forming a working relationship with characters of your roleplay restrictions type, it doesn’t have to be cordial, but something. I don’t see why that shouldn’t develop over the course of the campaign year, so 10-20 ranks. To be able to trust individuals is going to be much harder and involve much more intense and dedicated roleplay. I honestly wouldn’t put a timeframe on it, but I don’t see why such exceptions shouldn’t be possible. It’s clear to Failhbe after this year that the mages /themselves/ aren’t evil people, many of them have proved this beyond any doubt, but equally I don’t think he will ever see magic as something other than a force for evil and feel at best pity for characters that use it.
Advice to offer anyone going down this path, what works for me is try to be sure of the character, be them and let them respond. Don’t try to say “I would like this to happen” whether it’s sticking to RP restrictions or breaking them, but let the character develop naturally, if they see something worthy of praise or credit, let them offer it and vice versa. For example I was willing to let Failhbe be even more normal with Half-Orcs at the start of the year, having never met or heard of a half-orc mage until learning that Blayze was a mage. I know I’m not the best actor in the club, especially when it comes to displaying negative, insulting or confrontational emotions, but I’d like to think that there was a noticeable change in Failhbe’s reaction towards other half-orcs after that.
Those are just my ramblings on the topic anyway. I know we weren’t supposed to be using specific characters as examples but I thought using my own experiances illustrate my thoughts as they weren’t very clear might help.
The question of how far someone should be allowed to push is, unfortunately, inextricably linked to how impersonal such a ruling can become. The moment the transgressor’s identity, and the subsequent personal opinions of them, is remotely even mentioned, the method of deciding whether they should be allowed to get away with it or not becomes unfairly loaded.
Therefore, if we are dealing with how far someone is allowed to get away with breaking restrictions, we might need a few rules. Not too many, but a few.
I would view the restrictions on a character class as being splittable into two types: Roleplay (RP) and non-roleplay (nRP). RP restrictions are not called so because they influence roleplay, but because they may be negated in certain circumstances by sufficient roleplay. nRP restrictions are restrictions that will always be in place, regardless of how much roleplay a character does.
nRP Restrictions: For example, regardless of how much roleplay is performed, a Pathfinder will never be able to use metal armour, a Barbarian will never be able to allow a spell to be instant-cast on them, a Gladiator will never be able to take a combat enhancing spell or miracle, an Amazon will never be able to stop believing that females are superior to males. Contravening these stops a character from being that particular race, guild or class.
RP Restrictions: However, a Druid may get ref clearance to accept an elemental spell from a particular Mage if sufficient roleplay has been performed, and a Barbarian may be given the OK to treat one particular non-human normally, rather than with distrust. Guild restrictions are often classified as RP as a character is physically able to disobey them, but may face severe IC consequences for doing so.
Certain things should be noted about roleplay restrictions:
A RP restriction may be lifted for individuals after what the refs have judged to be a sufficient amount of roleplay between two characters. A RP restriction will never be lifted carte blanche – if that is desired, then changing class or guild to lose the restriction should be considered.
Ref clearance is required before the restriction may be lifted. It must be the ref team, not the player, that judges when the amount of roleplay that has taken place is sufficient.
Ref clearance is not given on whim, or on short notice. The ref team should be notified when roleplay designed to address a RP restriction is started, and will let the players know when they’ve done enough to consider the restriction removed. The time period involved will differ from case to case and is dependant on how defining that restriction is for the class, guild or race in question, but will normally be a minimum of months, sometimes as long as years.
The roleplay required to address a restriction is active, rather than passive. It requires one character seeking out the other, not just the both of them being present on missions or meals. If it is the restricted character seeking the other out, then the player should be prepared to justify his character’s actions to the ref team, and possibly face IC repercussions as a result.
Obviously, in terms of bonuses to balance restrictions, bonuses for nRP restrictions are more potent than bonuses for RP restrictions.
Example: Barbarian Warrior
nRP Requirements: A Barbarian Warrior must:
RP Requirements: A Barbarian Warrior must:
Broadly speaking, I believe the majority of roleplay restrictions present a balance for reduced skill costs and/or special abilities granted by a guild, group or race. Thus, if these restrictions are broken the result should be negative points and/or a penalty to special abilities.
From a purely OOC rules perspective, getting the benefits without paying the price is unbalancing (putting aside arguments on if the cost/benefit is perfectly balanced).
With devinely granted bonuses and restrictions this is quite easy to justify due to omniscient powers, e.g. Paladins, various Temple Priests, Druids.
Mortal enforced restrictions become harder to justify IC, e.g. a Pathfinder secretly wearing plate bracers, Gladiator refusing a challenge.
Whilst fundimental personality restrictions with no external enforcement cause the biggest problems, e.g. any “mistrust” restriction, Barbarians not accepting magic.
Playing a barbarian, I have found it increasingly hard to roleplay hating spell casters and understanding why I have to singlemindedly kill any mage casting a Trip at me. I stick to the rules, for the above reason of balance, but sometimes it starts to feel very forced and, contrary to the intention, poor roleplay.
On a day to day basis, assuming no extreme circumstances, I feel as long as you are playing it to the letter, and obviously trying to roleplay the stimuli building up to it, you should be fine. For the “mistrust X” restrictions on amazons and druids, I would accept becoming able to interact calmly with individual males/elementalists after 3-5 ranks spent with them on an individual basis, while not changing their base views and simply considering the man/mage an exception – provided their roleplay and yours indicates that they are in fact an exception. For example, a mage taking the druid’s views into serious consideration rather than laughing in his face, or a male repeatedly demonstrating competency on par with what the amazon would expect of a female while not trying to antagonise her.
(Of course, should a druid find themselves actually genuinely liking a mage, attempted conversion of that mage to the tenets of Nature is probably in order so that you don’t have to keep using a loophole in your own beliefs. For amazons this is less of a problem… they’re still just an exception.)
While it would be wrong to say I don’t have a problem with breaking restrictions, I feel that if the circumstances are dire enough, the roleplay strong enough, and the incidence rare enough (which is typically to say once in a character lifetime), such an event can be treated as the character defining moment it is rather than slapped down as a rules breach. For example, a barbarian accepting one refusable spell, once, from the witch doctor of her own tribe who she grew up with, who explained before casting what the spell would do and got her consent, knowing that there was no other way to save her own life, should IMO not be penalised for accepting that spell and then not killing the witch doctor – as much trust as a barbarian can have for a mage has been built up by then already, and “I won’t kill you for that this time” can be counted as payment for saving her life.
The other circumstance I can accept breaking a RP restriction is if it would force you to permanently harm an OOC newbie who might not have had long enough to understand the severity of some RP restrictions. In particular, a barbarian getting a spell cast upon them by a mage who’s never attended the system before that day. In that case, the first time only, I’d call it simple good sportsmanship for the barbarian player to let the offending PC live with a warning. After that, well, they knew the risk when they cast on you…
Give somes stats and use some examples, things like this help first timers build characters. Favourite idea taken? Then suggest something else. Feel free to add reasoning/statting philosophy and what these stats should be capable of.
Personally I aim to spend my starting points on weapon and armour profs, it’s not necessarily interesting but there’s no denying that it’s useful, with points left over I head for starting what I want the character to be able to do, so for a caster starting their “core” spell/miracle chains, for a warrior going after more armour or damage or defense depending on what I plan for them to focus on.
I’ll take 3 examples for now, not necessarily the ‘best’ characters, but one’s that I’ve already thought a lot about (because I’m lazy like that): 1 an elf earth-mage in the wardens, 2 a half-ogre temple might priest and 3 a half-orc gladiator. When I tend to have a goal in mind of what I think a character should be able to do and then stat towards that, the “design” goals for each of these three can be summarised as “support caster”, “/the/ front-line” and “maximum aggression”.
at rank 2 they look like:
1:
4 castable protection and 4 damage, which is comparable to other characters that don’t take a front line role, hence the choice of weapon prof, as a support mage I’m unlikely to go beyond prof with a weapon so I might as well save 8 points at character generation with the warden bonus. With the little bit of mana it should be possible to have the whole party in at least 4 protection on the first game,not something to be sniffed at IMO and fulfilling this characters design goal of being a strong support element in the party. With more mana and support castings this guy will only get better with time.
2:
This guy is a beast stat-wise right off the starting block, those half-ogre RP requirements will be difficult to work with is why it’s not usually recommended for starting characters. assuming plate on chain this is 8 protection (4 for chain, 6 for plate, -1 for not having combination) and 9 power (unholy) 1 damage (due to half-ogres free first level of strength). The armour and weapon costs are a no brainer on this character IMO, he’s going to be a big front line presence and needs to be able to dish out and soak up as much damage as possible. Standing is going to be my biggest issue at later ranks as unlike most other priests I have to pay 2 character points per point, so I’ve started early here. Unholy strike is going to be a staple for this character using it as a source of power damage throughout to help steam through any non-undead based combats. Strengthen makes an appearance here, not because it will be useful now, it isn’t, but because having the option to increase my normal damage (for undead, or for breaking through damage reduction) and armour will be very useful at later ranks.
3. I’m not very good at parrying with a two handed grip or stirking effecively and safely with a larger weapon in a one handed grip so I would choose a bastard(hand-and-a-half) weapon for preference. Gladiators get half cost hand weapon skills so they are all halved.
With 6 protection (4 from chain +3 from thick studded leather -1 for not having combination) and dealing out 7 damage this guy should be a valuable line fighter, chain isn’t too restrictive so he should be able to skirmish a fair bit, and if I need to be somewhere faster than I can be a throwing hammer chucking out 4 points of damage should distract, interrupt, harass the target until I can be there. Most of the extra weapon choices are due to the fact the Gladiators can’t accept any combat enhancing effects, this means your weapons will always be unprotected and (from what I’ve seen) liable to be destroyed, so back ups are important, I’d probably aim to carry a bastard axe, a hand axe, 2 daggers and at least 2 throwing hammers.
So that’s what these characters all look like at creation, at rank 5 they all get better at what they do best. I’d try not to branch out into something outside of that original design goal for a while usually, but there are always exceptions, if the party that year is very short on power damage for example then character 1 or 2 could move to focus on chains that provide this, something that 2 normally wouldn’t aim to do as it would use up what little standing he has very quickly, but if it can mean every front line fighter can have a couple of points of unholy damage on their weapons then it would be worth it for the good of the group. With that in mind if there were no pressures that made developing in a different very appealing this is what each character would look at by rank 5.
1:
So again a lot more tricks in the box, we now have the option to put myself or others in 6 armour or 4 for an hour saving mana; can provide 3 ablative protection to the front-line with endurance; can make people strike for 2 more damage as there won’t be many characters who have invested in strength this early and break out of some of the early binding effects that can really slow a party down (for this reason strength would probably be the first spell I buy after rank 2) and can start proving some basic protection from power damage to the front line which will start being much appreciated. This guy still won’t be a power house on his own, but being able to get to 6 damage and 6 protection should be capable of holding his own or acting as a rear-guard or guardian for any unarmed mages in the party and more importantly should quite effectively make everyone else shine like the diamonds in the rough they undoubtedly are. The next things to buy are whatever is needed, either more endurance, more fire skin, a bit of flame blade for some power damage, a bit more iron skin, any of these three choices are pretty solid in my eyes and it depends what the rest of the party has access to, a point of willpower would also be good.
2:
This guy hasn’t changed much outwardly since last time we saw him, another point of unholy damage on the weapon and another point of defense, however getting some more standing and prayer means that he will be able to perform the castings he will be getting soon, a point of toughness early on will be useful in resisting some effects as well and makes it far more valuable than the point of armour that it provides. The next things to buy will be more life, toughness the miracle, and the next rank of strength and strengthen.
3:
As it stands he has 7 defense and deals 10 damage. The next things to go for at this point is definitely more defense, I think strength is too useful to no get it ASAP though. So the list of next things to buy is studded spec and combination, then more life and some toughness or willpower I would imagine. At this point you also have access to a gladiator point which gives a few options for dealing out more damage, being able to take more damage or resisting some effects.
I think these are all fairly sensible ways to stat characters but this is coming from the guy who thought it would be fun to bring out a character at about rank 4 with little more than make metal armour, so I /might/ not be the best person to ask :P
My aim when creating a new character is to try and start with a reasonable accurate representation of what that character’s build is intended to be. This can be easier said than done.
Unfortunately, the only decent starting build for mages and priests (combat variants aside) includes Prayer/RecMiracle or Med/RecMagic/RWRunes – instantly zapping a third to a quarter of starting points. Many warrior types can sidestep this restriction with guild bonuses (a Guard never NEEDS to buy armour skills at start, for instance: he gets them for free). This problem largely rectifies itself by rank 5 (indeed it’s my opinion that the power curve is much steeper for casters than combatants in general. Could qualify that – but would be off topic.)
In practise, this works like so: A warrior would start with skills in his chosen armour and his chosen weopon combination. Subdue is wise. Likewise with scouts, with Rec Creature thrown in.
A Mage, Priest or Druid will want to start with one spell chain that needs to be effective, yet tied to what that character is about. At Rank 2, Destroy(R), Rust(R), Trip, Blink and Mend are disproportionally effective. For Priests, Destroy(R), Mend, Heal Life and Heal Wounds are disproportionately effective. A character is unlikely to have the power to use direct damage spells effectively to start.
A combat priest/mage will likely want to look at their armouring and enhancing spells early on; for instance Unholy Strike 1 is an excellent choice for a Might Priest.
It is a simple fact of life that different character builds gain in effectiveness at different speeds, especially for casters. Some builds are known to trade a slow start for high end power (Dart Mages being a good example.) Some are equally good from the word go (Guards and Half-Ogre anything especially). This is why I try to be representative from a role-play perspective at least – how can a character claim to be a Devout of Justice, for instance, without at least one miracle from each path?
(Disclaimer: exceptions exist.)
New characters typically earn around 200 – 250 character points in their first year – meaning their starting 20 points are less than 10%. Yet these 20 points often represent decades of a human character’s lifetime and possibly 100s of years of an elf’s life.
Due to this, I feel a character’s first 20 points are often the most important, defining many years of their life up until that point – even if, overall, 20 points isn’t a significant portion of your character’s long term power. As such, I like to spend those 20 points on skills I feel would take a long time to learn (even if their cost is low).
Read/write runes are a skill I like to have as a starting character (if it’s appropriate) and I don’t like taking new rune sets without a lengthy role played learning process. The same goes for most of the medical and subterfuge “knowledge” skills.
Ambidexterity is another skill that I favour for a starting character, due to my perception that it’s not realistic to learn it in the space of a week.
Skills, that you can improve incrementally, I’m happy learning and improving week to week – weapon, armour, physical and mental skills mostly.
For Priests and Mages I like to try and take spells/miracles from the character’s primary school/paths and where they want to focus (e.g. healing or darts). This helps me to define the character and the role I wish them to play right from the start.
As a warrior, you’re going to be expected to fight in melee combat. Regardless of what else you bring to bear, the courage and willingness to get stuck in and fight at close quarters has to be present within your characterisation.
Everything else? All bets are off.
To play a warrior well, with an individuality that the stats might not provide (certainly not at first), in my opinion, you have to show that you are more than just a forgettable weapon holder – there must be something beneath the armour, either forcing its way out, or drawing people in.
In addition to being a fighter, you have to be a person. If you forget this, the party will forget you.
So, make a person. Why do they fight? How do they find the will to get up every morning and put their kit on? What stops them from simply staying in bed, avoiding the carnage and hiding under the covers? Being a warrior is exhausting, painful, violent and dangerous. A dirty job – why do they do it?
Some people fight because they want to, others fight because they feel they have a duty to, others because someone else feels they have a duty to, others for money, because they are bored, seeking solace, revenge, or death. All of these reasons, and a host of others, are valid, and can help start to characterise you deeper than the thickness of your stats sheet.
If you’re struggling for a reason, start earlier. What did they grow up doing? What might have pushed them in the direction of the warrior from an early age? Or did it happen later than that? Were they something else, before a life-changing event made the decision for them?
How did they train? Did they excel, or did they have to graft? Did they have friends, or enemies, that motivated them, or did it all come from inside? Why did outside influences affect them? Why did they not? Did they focus on power, or skill? Offense or defence?
Get this straight, and you’ll show up with a person, who will react like a person, and will be remembered as a person. That person may be a hero, an arsehole, a heartthrob, a sad and lonely fool, a boring sod, mad bad and dangerous to know, a stuck up prick, a militaristic taskmaster, a living and breathing embodiment of a weapon down to their very soul, an uncaring libertine, or anything else, but they’ll definitely be a person, and that makes them a lot harder to forget than a list of stats.
What are some good ways to play warriors?
Warriors, particularly human warriors, are great. They’re almost the top powerhouses of the TL world in terms of stats and are the blank page in terms of roleplay. There’s little not to like and so many options you would struggle to play them all.
Personally, I’d say any “good” way of playing a warrior involves creating a character who will get stuck in to a fight in their own way. Maybe they’re defending the weaker party members, maybe they’re attacking – as long as they’re active and involved, they’re a “good” warrior.
One other thing to make a “good” warrior – playing a warrior is a physical skill, out of character. If you want to play a warrior, pick up a weapon and get stuck in, monstering, playing, whenever. When you have a character going, use their preferred weapon all the time. Pick out the people in the club who can beat you and fight them, again and again.
How do you make them individual?
Because they’re not limited like other classes, they can be individual in any way you can think of. Imagine any character in any book or movie (or whatever story medium you prefer). What made them individual? What did you like? What would you like to be? Warrior’s are the true avenue of wish fulfillment.
To keep your reactions and play consistent, it helps to think about why they are the way they are, to build a concept of background, however there’s plenty of characters that have started from a very simple premise and been left to develop naturally over time of play. The players of some of the best characters don’t know who their characters parents were or what happened to them.
One of my favourite examples for how powerful character choice and development is is the Jet Li film, The One – as a typical alternate realities collide, meet yourself Sci Fi, it worked, but the kicker is the way two identical people have learnt to fight and experience the world slightly differently, and have through only their experiences and choices, become completely different warriors.
What skills open new avenues?
Warriors, once they’ve got the basic skills for combat in place, can branch out in a variety of ways if they don’t want to specialise to an area of warrior skills – build yourself with non metal armour and picking up magic is easy enough. Human warriors in particular can be quite able in terms of miracles. There are fine examples of crafting skills defining a warrior more than all their combat skills.
Prominent warriors in the PC setup currently are Nab, who has pushed up Strength skills pretty much beyond what’s useful, and up Toughness and Willpower, to promote the image of the unstoppable attacking force. G’Mord has pushed up Life to levels where the concept of his falling suggests things have really, really got bad. Brend is the greatest swordsman who has ever lived, a Legendary Master of the One Handed Sword, with True Strikes with it.
One warrior is so skilled with their shield it will never break, another uses carefully placed Disarms to render his foes defenseless, yet another uses healing on himself and his comrades to overcome sudden shifts and threats in battle.
In terms of stats, read through everything and see if one thing jumps out at you as sounding cool and design a character that will go for that skill.
And lastly, as not so much an avenue of new play for a warrior as a way to improve any party – a warrior with two levels of Recognise Creature completely removes the need for scouts to ever exist in the party.
As has already been said warriors can be very valuable party members without spending very many points, shield users especially fall into this category, but the skills you end up taking at low-levels won’t necessary say much about your character, perhaps leading to them being a bit bland in some people’s eyes.
This simply isn’t the case, the stats don’t define the character, they mostly define what they can do in or around combat, this means you can create a really interesting, deep, well thought out character and back story that has nothing to do with skills that exist in game. Or, as your combat effectiveness skills are very cheap you can easily branch out into something a bit different to define your character (although spending more than half your skill points on manufacture skills is not advisable).
Basically while the stats are very generic take this as an invitation to create as much personality and character that lives outside of those stats as you possibly can, you’re no longer tied to the numbers to not be a drag to the party so feel free to expand into other skills or dabble in other arts to make a really interesting well rounded character.
I’m going to be controversial here.
The main strength of a warrior is that all you need to do is put on some armour, wade in, and hit things. Forget everything else, that is what a warrior is. A basic statline, a pile of clobber, and a bit of exercise and you can be effective with neither any requirement to roleplay to the hilt nor any IC benefit (eg. path alignment) of doing so.
This means that compared to priests/paladins/druids/barbarians, with their in-depth roleplay restrictions, or mages/priests with their complex stat requirements, warriors are very simple. This makes them excellent starting characters, as well as being ideal for more experienced role-players who just want a character where they don’t have to try too hard, or where they want a character to focus on martial rather than social skills.
One of the beauties of the system is different character builds play in different ways. For every player wanting to buy half the magics in the rulebook, there is another who just wants a bit of a scrap. For every player wanting a character with half a dozen personality quirks and intricacies, there is another who simply wants to sit back an enjoy the game.
And warriors sit in this ideal very well. A warrior can be very successful with no heavy RP requirements at all. Simple and effective.
When I first joined the club, warriors were one of the main party leader types (if we ignore a certain Justice priestess: :P). G’mord was a the oddity in not being human, as opposed to the rule. When your party is led by a warrior, they can lead the party into combat without the healer wincing, they can stay in the thick of things and stay standing, and you can actually do the inspirational speeches envisioned by one of the officer paths. If you want to be a lead-from-front kind of person, warrior is a great way to go. Look at Gerrard, for example.
While half-orcs and half-ogres have some of the best numbers, this is because they lose out in other areas. With our current party sizes, it’s easy to forget the utility of Heal Life 4 on a warrior, but if your healer is down, who is most likely to be in a position to pick them back up at the end of the fight? As happened in the Waygate year to an insane level, if all you have is an Order priest, a Justice warrior with Heal Life 4 can take the standing gift and turn it into Life healing. Very cheap for the Order priest, and not a massive investment for the warrior.
In truth, though, a warrior should have enough skill to wear his armour, prevent his shield from breaking if he has one and hit the most dexy thing he’s likely to encounter. Everything else is nice to have, but not necessary. Your main benefit as a warrior is that you have no set Path restrictions on what miracles you can take, you can take magical enhancements and everything sits on top of your large normal armour values, your decent life stat and your moderately good damage. You are a buff caster’s dream and consequently you should be on top of the curve no matter what you do.
The best things about being a warrior is that you get to have loads of armour, carry a big shield, beat on things all day long and take a beating all day long.
The worst things about being a warrior is that you get to have loads of armour, carry a big shield, beat on things all day long and take a beating all day long!
Playing a warrior requires acceptance that you’ll be uncomfortable and exhausted from wearing plate armour and chainmail, your left arm will be falling off from carrying a shield, your right arm numb from hitting monsters and parrying, you’ll be bruised from people hitting you and, just by probability, if there’s an unsafe hit, you’re probably the one on the receiving end!
You’ll be expected to be up front having to deal with the full range of diplomacy, from talking with villagers to taking the first Fire Dart spell and you’ll be expected to be the last one out of a losing battle.
If you can deal with all this then playing a warrior can be incredibly rewarding. You can always be at plot first and in the fights for the longest. Most importantly, often you’ll be the hero people remember, even if you only won because of the 10 other characters powering you up!
To me it’s very much two different questions, the first based on role play and the second based on stats. For the first it depends on who you are really, I’ve seen some characters that operate very well and are very well played while completely or largely separate from the party and it’s goals. An example of this in my head at the moment are Barbarians, they don’t get on with the party, but as long as you are comfortable RPing that isolation then go for it. It’s certainly not going to be what everyone enjoys and you will miss a lot of opportunities for RP by going down this route, but it can be a lot of fun too.
The second one is more stat based IMO, contributing to the party is pretty essential as if your character is just dead weight in what’s, lets face it, a combat heavy system, your not only making things difficult for yourself you’re making them difficult for everyone. This was constantly my biggest concern when playing Smithy in his first year and thankfully being a warrior made that possible. I’m not saying don’t play squishy characters, not in the slightest, but if you are make sure they can do something for the party, it is a /military/ patrol afterall.
At its most simple, there ought to be a reason your character patrols. If you’re dead weight, why is anyone paying you? Why have the military not refused point blank to have you with them? There’s leeway for mages or priests at very low ranks because mana/standing will always be low, but you should aim to be valued by at least some authority or you’re making the roleplay difficult for people who really ought to be insisting you stay at home.
Being part of the party isn’t necessary, so long as you contribute. You might spend the entire game at least twenty feet from everyone else, but if enemies are occasionally discovered lying headless on the floor, you are useful. Conversely, even if you killed every enemy yourself, if the party would use less resource without you than they do with you, while still accomplishing its aims, you’re probably doing something wrong.
It’s a matter of personal situation, though. If you struggle to land enough hits, concentrate on damage so that each hit counts. If you aren’t hot on parrying, boosting your armour is probably more important than doing one or two extra points of damage. If you’re worried about whether you are useful for the party (and most people will be at some point) use stats to plug the gap. That’s one of TLs strengths, after all. Equally, if you’ve got the party skills, make sure people know it. If you’re playing a character who wouldn’t say, err on the side of louder for your casting vocals so they’ll hear. Some characters are perceived as useless because no-one knows what they can do, or think they won’t be willing to help.
Perhaps most importantly, think about what you’re buying and the games you’re playing. Make sure that you have at least one clear use to your party. You may want Magic Divination, all the Read/Writes and Enchant Item, but as a general mage you should probably make sure you have at least some Spell Immunity and the mana to cast it. Decide what your contribution is, and use it.
I view this as being two different questions, so will answer as such:
1. How important is being part of the party?
In a nutshell, being part of the party or not is almost entirely indifferent. The only consideration that should be had about how integrated you are is how much pressure you you deem acceptable put on GMs.
A character that is consistently doing their own thing quite some distance from the party will be very difficult for a GM to accommodate all the time, and will often cause them a headache doing something especially for you but not letting their attention on the party split. Simply accepting that you might not always have something to do while you’re Over There is not enough – you’ll still be somewhere else on the site, which the GM was planning to have filled with monsters, or not have the party go this week, and has not been able to do because you’re now there. You have to consider what the GM needs from you as a player in order to make their game work as planned, and sometimes hobble the more extreme extroversions of your character – under no circumstances do you need to make it easy for the GM (they should appreciate the challenge), but neither is it acceptable to make their job impossible or overly stressful.
If you feel your character might not be someone who plays well with others, but are concerned about the implications for the GM and the game, talk to the GM about it beforehand. Discuss with them what will be acceptable and what will not. If you are unhappy with the restrictions the GM places on you for that game, the decision whether to play that character is then yours to make – do you hobble the character further than you accept, do you try to force the GM to accommodate the character in direct contravention of what they have said, or do you simply play someone else or monster for the week?
2. How important is contributing to the party?
Contributing to the party you are on is absolutely essential, but there are an almost infinite number of ways that a character can do this. It’s not always about the stats, it’s not even always about roleplay – perception, infra-action, and even inaction are also ways in which a character can contribute.
The idea that a character is not making a useful contribution is often bandied about too frequently and too soon. If they weren’t immediately effective – on the front line killing every bad guy, healing every injury that was found or having exactly the right combination of skills to solve the problem – it is often assumed that they didn’t do anything and are being carried by the party.
However, on looking a little deeper, what else did they do on the mission? Did their presence or actions influence others to act in a way that helped the party, which otherwise those others might not? Were they always looking in the direction nobody else was, because it was assumed nothing would come from there? Did they keep characters working together and attentive to what was going on by involving them in otherwise meaningless conversation or debate? Did their outlook on life allow them to get something interesting out of the NPC, that the more direct characters would overlook or have held back from them? Did they keep up spirits by wandering along with a lute or quipping at the otherwise desperate situation? Did they note down everything that happened, so when other characters forget down the line, they can whip out their notebook and give the party a play-by-play when it matters most?
If your character is not going to be someone who is overtly useful, and therefore has the potential to invite the question of whether they should be patrolling, work out what motivated them to turn up to patrol, and how they will make that motivation felt during the missions. How, when someone turns around and questions your character’s validity, will you demonstrate that you have considered that, addressed it, and that they weren’t looking hard enough?
If you can’t work it out, and have the counter-argument ready and waiting, then, and only then, it may be worth reconsidering the character concept, and trying to put in something that can be pointed to while affecting what you originally came up with as little as possible.
How important is being part of the party and contributing to the party?
I feel that being part of the party is, in almost all cases, essential. A player needs to stick with the party and work, roughly, towards the same goal. The LARP system we run doesn’t have a persistent, populated, live world to explore. If the plot is to investigate an ancient shrine and your character, alone, decides to walk in the opposite direction towards a nearby village for a pint, then go home, the GM has no obligation to provide monsters and resources for you.
Of course, a GM may set up a game to allow for party splitting and free roaming exploration. Plus, if you were to go to the village for a pint and gather essential information with the intention of rejoining the party later, I suspect most GMs would be accommodating – if only with a verbal description of the activity, rather than fully role played.
Contributing to the party is very subjective and situational. An especially moronic half-ogre warrior or introvert healer might contribute zero to a heavy role play LARP, with no fighting, yet be pivotal in the next high-combat LARP.
You would have to try very hard to create a totally non-contributing character – a mute, pacifist warrior perhaps. An antagonistic character is actually more likely and more dangerous – e.g. an especially prejudiced barbarian on a diplomatic mage mission.
As with most things, IC action can have IC consequences. Play a cowardly Defender and the Defenders might kick you out.
A final thing to consider, if you’re playing a character who can’t or won’t contribute, it’s worth telling the GM in advance. If they’re statting a LARP for a party of 10 rank 15 characters with 4 front line warriors, yet your Gladiator has recently taken a vow of non-violence, they will may have to do some rebalancing!
There’s arguably a spectrum of not being in the party – I could understand an argument that you were only part of the party if you were directly following the commander’s orders, I could also understand an argument that any PC who happens to be in the vicinity when things go south, or whose continued presence constitutes a net benefit to the party, is part of the party. I’d say it’s essential to go where the party goes, or where the party is planning to go, and to be on the party’s side rather than your own side when swords are drawn; anything more is helpful but optional.
If you aren’t at least willing and trying to contribute to the party’s goals, the character probably needs to go home and rethink his life. The rest is secondary. If you do not have the stats to contribute in the way you wish to contribute, it is possible to solve that problem in an objectively measurable fashion – and thus, a fashion that’s easy to overestimate. If your stats say you’re the best healer ever™ but you’re unwilling to actually give people your precious healing, you aren’t contributing enough; conversely, a sufficiently OOC skilled “warrior” can be buffed to make up for the mechanics gap and contribute to the party with no mechanical abilities whatsoever – and that’s before you get into situations that can’t be planned for quite so objectively, like tense negotiations or puzzles or investigations that the mechanics don’t support.
Yes.
It’s the GMs responsibility that the game and challenge are appropriate for the player party and the tone of the game.
It’s monster crews responsibility to not hit downed players, because that is how the club chooses to play.
It’s the NPCs responsibility to aid the party to survive only if they are briefed that that is there goal (directly or indirectly by for example the NPC being a Defender).
It’s the characters responsibility that they complete their mission generally (which normally requires party survival) and their specific responsibility based on personal RP or their guild requirements.
It’s the players responsibility to not deliberately sabotage the party so that the game remains fun for everyone.
I am going to answer both this and the previous question with the same opening paragraph.
First and foremost, this is a game. People don’t come along Sunday because there are undead to slay, or players to attack, or games to run. They come along because they enjoy the hobby, and wish to keep enjoying it. Lose that and lose people.
With that in mind, both player and monster conduct should be of a sort that will encourage all involved to enjoy the game. It would be insanely naïve to ever assume a complete split between IC and OOC behaviour, and this must be borne in mind at all times. The most obvious example is safe fighting rules, but it does go beyond that.
Last week’s question: This is a team game. IC competition is all well and good, but you should not tread on others’ enjoyment.
This week’s question: While party survival may technically be an entirely IC affair, noone likes a TPK, and thus survival and enjoyment go hand in hand. Everyone has their part to play in this.
Characters have their tools to aid survival, and it is the object of the game for the players to use those tools correctly to overcome the challenges presented.
This gives the GM and their monster crew the responsibility of ensuring the challenges are correctly pitched and well executed. It also gives them the task of maintaining Fun. Npcs are the primary tool to do so.
So, to quote Dom: Yes.
Might really fits the Dungeons & Dragons Lawful Evil outlook, I feel. Subjugation of the weak by the strong, need of the few over the many and maintaining law and order through harsh punishments – especially execution.
Might lacks pity and mercy however Might still has honour and rules.
Warriors of Might want to fight head on, face to face, in battle with challenging enemies and get little pleasure from killing the weak – they will still kill them however.
Leaders of Might command through fear and an unwavering set of laws. Their taxes will be harsh but, for those who work hard and obey, life can be content.
Might doesn’t always have to be about heavy armour and a big weapon though. The stereotypical power behind the throne, manipulating the weak from the shadows, could easily be a Might follower – demonstrating strength of mind and logic rather than brute force. Though they’ll care little if people die in the process.
Following Might as the combination of Death and Order is often very fitting for player characters working in a patrol. Although the Barony is aligned to Justice, patrols almost always require following instruction and commands (Order) and, in the process, killing many living creatures (Death). However, without the guiding presence of a Justice or Life follower, Might patrols can easily end up becoming excessively violent and out of control – following their own morals rather than the spirit of the mission.
In short:
A firm belief in unity and stability for yourself and “your people”, combined with total ruthlessness and unwavering dedication to your goals.
In long:
Being inextricable from Order, Might desires structure and stability, and for all people to know their place. Being inextricable from Death, Might is destructive and dangerous, showing no compromise to those who stand in its way. In its own right, Might requires that all strive eternally to be as good as possible at their chosen field, and that those best suited to rule should be obeyed without question or compromise. This is not typically strength of arms, and indeed, if your talents did not point that way your Might would be wasted in pursuing such a (for you) foolish career choice.
I see typical Might followers as being classic well-intentioned extremists, willing to do the most terrible things, kill, maim, and burn everything that stands in their way, in the pursuit of the greater good for themselves and those they care about. Stretching “those they care about” can be the difference between a hero and a villain, even following the exact same Path and having the exact same stats – one Might priest might genuinely want the best for the weaker beings he is sworn to take responsibility for, serve as an example to inspire them to greatness as well as a destroyer of their foes, and even spare opponents who have shown themselves so weak as to not be a threat to him; while another Might priest might hold all the world but himself in contempt, cynically manipulate the structures that trained him to grow in power and prestige, and show no mercy or succor to those with the misfortune to be beneath him. Similarly, the stats and miracles available to Might, largely being buffs and offensive effects, could create a brash and arrogant fighter, who spends his Standing raising himself beyond a purely physical type when it suits him; they could also create a dour second liner, preferring to spread his power around to increase the Might of his whole patrol so that the whole might triumph over what challenges it.
In quote:
“Just tell me where to go, and who to kill.” – Adeodatus
To give the perspective of my one Might Aligned character I can sum up Might in three words.
Might Makes Right
To follow this variety of philosophy gives a great degree of freedom in what a character can do. They can break laws, kill people, maim all as long as they are willing to accept the consequences, be they in patrols come to arrest them bad publicity or court cases, and overcome them. Herein lies the spirit of Challenge, possibly the quintessential Might Miracle.
To follow Might is to challenge oneself against things they view as unfair, unjust or simply wrong and prove the validity of their viewpoints through overcoming the challenge of those who would contest this viewpoint. This can be through physical strength, sly cunning, fast feet and a few nasty castings, a strong organised team or a silver tongue. The means is irrelevant, what matters is victory.
From these conflicts, chosen or not, grows a hierarchy, providing the Order the path lays homage to, built on victories and a willingness to give it all to prove oneself, leaning far more to Death than to Life.
What does Might mean in terms of character?
Strength, resilience, determination, decisiveness, power – all these are typical of the Mighty. A Mighty character displays as many of these as possible.
In terms of TL alignment, it is the combination of the principles of Order and Death. Order is about structure, resilience, resistance, strength and the opposition of demons. Death is about ending life, controlling the dead and inspiring fear.
In terms of specific miracles, it is Mighty Blow and Challenge.
When the character is “finished” or whole, I would expect them to be the character in the party able to deliver a horrendous amount of damage in a small space of time, who sought out confrontation with dangerous foes, whatever their motivation to do so.
So, where can we draw an interesting character from this?
An interesting Mighty character might have some traits of Might and be dedicated, but not all of them, and have to overcome what they lack.
Or they might have a structure to their lives that is not what would normally be expected.
Perhaps they are built off of weak stats (priest mage? albeit maybe with great potential – metal immunity, harden, blade sharp, unholy strike?) – they have the will but not the actual power, forcing them to be clever and capable.
Perhaps they are powerful but indecisive, unsure of their own abilities, constantly looking to identify a leader, then resolutely following their every action and instruction, constantly wandering how they made that decision, and when the decisions go wrong, always blaming themselves for not being ready to take command.
Perhaps the structure of their lives is such that one group (female Drow?) always hold sway? Perhaps they believe that Might as a path holds a subservient role to Justice (after all, it is a Justice aligned realm) – such a believer would inevitably believe that Might was absolutely pivotal to how things worked, but maybe in terms of ensuring Justice achieves victory?
The Temple puts a whole new spin on that – protect and command the weak, serve and follow the strong, never ask for help – this is a clear and simple structure which only asks the questions, is one of these more important than the others? And how far does it spread? All the weak, or just the Temple’s weak, or the weak Kingdom citizens?
Tiny slants in even the most defined structure creates character, guides choice.
What is Might? Self reliance, and the assumption of self-reliance in others (or the assumption that they are weak). It’s getting the job done without worrying overmuch about the feelings of others in the process. If there’s a single word (other than Might) that sums it up, it’s probably Pragmatism – if a death is necessary to bring things back from the brink of chaos, then it will happen. It’s also about self-confidence – not ignoring your weaknesses, but learning how to work with or around them or fix them, and never backing down unless forced to.
It’s about following the rules, and supporting your superiors so that you may learn from them and one day become their superiors. It’s having a code of honour that’s so ingrained you’d be surprised if anyone doubted it, and using that code like a battering ram when necessary.
And it’s no more Good or Evil than any other alignment (with the possible exception of Anarchy), although it’s easier to play as Evil from attitude.
Might is an expression of a constant search for superiority. You don’t want to be better, you don’t want to be adequate, you don’t even want to be the best you can be.
You want to be the best. Full damned stop.
Might is a state of mind. It is supreme confidence in what you know you can do, and sufficient resourcefulness to make that which you cannot irrelevant, or to learn how to do it so you can become the best at what you do. If you’re not becoming the best, why are you wasting your valuable time and effort doing it?
You have a ramrod straight moral code – it’s not something everyone else can relate to. It’s not even something everyone appreciates. Doesn’t matter. Your code does not require them to. They should follow it – their lives would be better if they did – but it’s not your fault they don’t have what it takes to be you. Quietly, you pity them.
When something defeats you, Might is about accepting your weaknesses, hating them, and resolving to do something about them. Then actually doing it – not whining about it, complaining you weren’t ready, or were taken by surprise, or that this, that or the other mitigated your failure. Your fault. Your failure. Your responsibility.
When someone weaker than you requires protection, Might is about realising that they need your strength to keep them safe. Not just the ones who complain, not just the ones who protest they don’t need it, but also those that blatantly do – those you don’t want to have to look after. The ones who you don’t gain anything from. A follower of Might should take responsibility for the weakest, most pathetic and scrawny child, and feel fierce pride in seeing them safe.
When someone breaks the law, Might is about reminding them that the law is what keeps us from madness, from societal nihilism. If they resist, it is about having the necessary tools to hand to be able to explain it to them in a way they cannot counteract or resist. The law is paramount. Without it, we are lost.
But even all of that is not enough. These, in and of themselves, are aspects of, but not entirely, Might.
What defines Might, more than anything else, is the supreme confidence that all of what you are doing is right. If something shakes that confidence, you better go and take a long, hard look in a mirror, and make certain you are happy you are doing the right thing before going back out into the world again. Your strength, your inner fire, your will, your courage, the lifeblood of your very soul flows from your confidence. It defines you more than anything else, and drives you to get out of bed each day and justify it within yourself. If you can’t, you are lost.
After all, without it, you’d be just a normal person.
As with all TL alignments, I do not think there is any one answer to this question.. Different characters follow in different ways.
It might be you work to be the best you can be, as previously described.
It might be you are committed to the defence of your kingdom – and the destruction of its enemies.
It might be that you are committed to a particular cult – and the destruction of its enemies.
It might be that you do not believe yourself mighty, but recognise and respect the glory of others.
It might be that you think that if you are stronger than others, that gives you the right to boss then around. This may or may not include a responsibility for their protection (Might Templar yes, might alligned bandit no.)
It might be that you simply follow the ideals of Order and Death, and Might is simply how they interact. You follow orders to kill people – simple as.
I have tried here to include a broad spectrum of characters, ideals, and NPCs. There is almost certainly something I’ve missed. There are as many ideas as people to play them, and no two will follow in the exact same way.
I see Might as more than just the intersection/combination of Order and Death alignments. It is an alignment in its own right. A Might follower may have more in common and get on better with a Death follower than a Life follower, for example, but it is more than the sum of its parts.
Might means the pursuit of strength (in whatever form is most appropriate for you) is an end in itself rather than something you are just doing to achieve another goal.
And if you do have other goals you will use this strength to achieve them, since that is obviously the best thing for the job.
In the case of Grunhilda, her secondary goal is to protect others, if they cannot defend themselves. (Someone is defenceless if they are a non-combatant, injured, praying/meditating, or ask for her protection.) She recognises that the destruction of any threats is necessary to ensure lasting protection, but her more immediate concern is not to leave anyone vulnerable and unprotected while this destruction takes place. Protect, then destroy.
She is also happy to follow orders that do not conflict with this mission statement. She would not attack anyone who did not pose a threat, and she is unhappy being ordered to not attack things she thinks are dangerous, but she is also aware that often other people on the mission are more qualified to make decisions about this than she is. And she is prepared to die to keep the rest of the party safe.My answer to this applies to a lot of roleplay – if what you’re doing is upsetting people OOC on a regular basis, you’ve gone too far. Upsetting other characters is a trickier line to follow, and probably boils down to “is this person more hassle than they’re worth?” – again though, I’d apply that to any combination of character traits, not just evilness.
Subtlety also helps. There are characters that we know OOC are really quite evil, but make up for it in IC subtlety; if your character is constantly doing the sort of things that would make any sane person send for the Marshals and makes sure people know it’s them, then you’ve probably gone too far.
On the whole though, if you’re going much past the geezer line, remembering that other people want to have fun really is the important bit.
What follows really is TL;DR – if you want to mess around, build a reason to be in the party and to get involved into the PC. The more dodgy and evil you plan to be, the stronger the benefit you need to give the party in exchange for putting up with you. If you’re upsetting people OOC, talk to them about it, but don’t automatically assume you have to change. Sometimes other people are wrong. Sometimes you are.
And if you present your concept to the Character Refs and they tell you no, then you have to accept it. Don’t play the concept anyway.
What is “Dodgy”? What is “Evil”?
You can’t ask this question until you’ve answered those.
Personally, I think Dodgy is about playing a PC who is not entirely working towards the parties goals, who is working towards their own goals.
Some examples:
A Seeker is on a mission where the goal is to ally with another state. The party learn that the other state keeps slaves. The Seeker wants to free the slaves, whether by convincing the state to changes its ways, or just by subterfuge. This could severely disrupt the parties chances of success.
A Pathfinder has spent 20 years looking for a lost loved one, taken by the man with the three pronged peg leg. Half way through a pursuit of an escaping convict, the patrol he’s leading comes to a clearing and he finds tracks of the three pronged man leading through on a totally unrelated trip. He may choose to have the party pursue the three pronged man, claim ignorance or a mistake. Or not.
The question is how much would your PC undermine the other PCs to gain their goals? Every PC in an Aura of Truth should answer “some”.
How far do you go?
As far as you should – this is called roleplay. If it upsets someone OOC, you check if you’ve breached any OOC rules, and if not, you carry on. A reality check with the GM or Character Refs would be appropriate. Chances are in the process, if you’re upsetting people OOC, you’ll be breaking IC rules and earning IC consequences. Don’t whine when they come back to haunt you and you lose your character – instead be glad you played true to character. Embrace the characters dreams.
I think Evil is about contravening group morality. If you want to argue the philosophical point that Evil isn’t subjective, I’m up for that, but probably not here. For now, you either have to stop reading or accept that Evil and morality are subjective.
In this case, the characters live in a realm where state sanctioned murder squads roam the land eliminating with lethal force anyone who they deem to be disrupting the state, often on the slightest whim and without even considering hesitating. Some sentient beings are eliminated solely because of their appearance without any hesitation that they may be different, despite numerous ways available to use divine and magical power to check if they share the same morality as the kill squad.
In this morality, you can raise the dead. It’s better to kill someone who you don’t need for the coming fight and Consecrate their corpse, to be Raised later, than allow them to be slain at your side and Animated as an undead.
Evil is defined by morality, which you’d hope would be defined by laws (though often this is not wholly the case in real life). Yet there are no properly defined game world laws. So Evil becomes hard to quantify and we end up pushing our own morality onto the setting instead of embracing the settings morality to expand our understanding of our own.
You say my character is Evil? I can give you (or find people who can give you, if I missed them) examples of when yours was no saint.
If you’re upsetting someone OOC… it may be that you need to change your play, however it may be that they need to think about it and understand why they’re upset. They may become a better person for doing so.
And in the end, if you’re truly playing Evil, sooner or later you will get caught. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Seize the moment and play the bad guy. Make the bad guy speech. Die or take exile with dignity, then come back as a plotline (run by a GM that is not you, or at least reality checked by someone).
“How dodgy is it reasonable to be? How close to out-and-out evil is it acceptable to play a character in a heroic system…”
Firstly, I would question if our system can really be called a heroic system! :-)
In TL, I would say that anything goes, as long as you accept the consequences. Any “dodgy” character should be considered disposable and the player should be very transparent with the Campaign or game GM and the Character Ref. It’s possible that being open with the other players could be sensible but that may ruin the fun.
“…and not force people to compromise their own roleplay in the name of OOC inclusivity?”
Player conflict often makes for some excellent roleplay but most people will restrain their character’s actions if they may adversely affect a game. I think this is separate to the question about dodgy/evil however.
Compromised roleplay in the name of OOC inclusivity is probably much more common between officially sanctioned characters, for example, Barbarians and Mages, Paladins and the majority of an average party or Blade Singers and non-elves. All such character conflict just needs to be appropriately managed by the players and GMs.
“Would any IC or OOC traits about such a character affect the decision?”
Definitely.
A character who plays an Anarchist by personality but doesn’t use miracles would get away with significant murder and mayhem. The world’s friendliest Demonologist, however, would be exiled in the blink of an eye. Basically, anything that explicitly breaks one of the few actual laws the TL world has will have a very short character-life expectancy.
In general, many “evil” characters fit in perfectly with an average party – frankly “good” characters will often struggle more on a LARP.
I’d recommend they focus on what interests them, as that’s what they will enjoy. Obviously, an understanding of the rules is needed, and will take no small amount of work, but there’s no point someone slaving over getting the stats just right, if the thing that brought them here is the chance for play fights with fake weapons, or to do immersive roleplay.
For your character, focus on what you want – there will be plenty of opportunities to pick up the rest through monstering.
I think the most important is likely to be characterisation.
Your first year is when you and the club get to know each other, non-optimal stats or low OOC skill might generate a certain amount of amusement, but poor characterisation can really get you off on the wrong foot. When old larpers get together to tell stories, spectacular fails are as frequent as big wins.
OOC skill will come with time to a greater or lesser degree, and there’s always people ready to help with stats. Failure to roleplay, however, will cast a shadow that will be harder to dispel. There’s no harm in ‘standard’ characterisations, such as the Humact chasing down the Undead, the Justice priest who tries to bring people together or the Guard who tries to ensure everyone follows orders. A couple of traits that appear several times over your first games should be sufficient.
Given it’s called Live Action RolePlay, I suppose the facetious answer is that the ideal mix is two parts roleplay to one part OOC skill/stats to match the acronym.
…it’s not a bad estimate, in my view.
Characterisation, be it good or bad, is what will get a new player remembered the most in the majority of cases. That said, if the new player can manage the basics of Guild/Path restrictions and sticking to a KoE-personality, there’s no harm in easing into the roleplay side gently and focussing on hitting things with a sword if that’s where their interest lies, so long as that’s what their character would be interested in.
Stats is probably the least important aspect except in a supporting way as there are enough oldbies who can help tweak if need be – and good roleplay or OOC skill can compensate for stats just as much as stats can compensate for OOC lack of skill.
I’d have to ask them why they were lrping – where they thought the fun was – then help them have enough of everything to get by whilst they do that. Some able stats, basic kit, a couple of characterisation points and a basic knowledge of the setting is enough to get started. Have fun and the rest comes in time.
After you’re started, character is key. Develop roleplay skills more than anything else – if nothing else it helps at interview! The real deep fun in Lrp are the little conversations, the fine detail, the NPC portrayed to give subtle plot hints instead of just plot dropping. At least that’s my view. ;)
As stats can be dealt with, without pressure, outside of games with the help of experienced LARPers, I prioritise this lowest.
OOC skill and characterisation, I feel, go hand in hand. To play a master swordsman you need to not only be able to carry off a believable personality but to back up your words with action – some fighting ability, awareness of your environment, stamina, strength, coordination etc. Even mages or other non-combat characters rely on certain OOC skills – the ability to remember spell casting vocals, all the spells you have learned, how the spells work, the ability to judge spell range etc.
In some ways though, all three aspects are linked.
If you struggle with LARP fighting you can enhance your OOC abilities with your character’s stats or, conversely, you could role play a character who doesn’t need to be good at fighting or even explicitly bad at fighting (e.g. a clumsy Gladiator or pacifist Life Priest)!
Similarly, if you are an excellent LARP fighter OOC you could spend fewer points on combat skills in order to enhance your characterisation via limited value role play orientated skills, such as the ability to read magical Runes or identify the value of an item with Evaluate.
For myself, I would avoid taking the name, simply so I never get confused when discussing both the original and the character I’m playing that’s a clear expy of them. I can’t really say I have a problem with people doing outright clones of other fictional characters though – largely because even if it’s 100% identical when it first marches out, which is very hard when you have to fit the abilities into the TL framework, it’s going to be exposed to a new situation and react accordingly, deviating from canon thereby.
If a character is lifted wholesale, so long as they still develop in response to their experiences it’s going to cause amusement but it’s up to you. If they never change and are just an excuse to dress up, what’s the point?
I freely admit my characters have influences – sometimes it’s a game to see what people spot – but personally I have trouble seeing the fun in copying more than that. I’d suggest changing the name at least just so the usual Google search takes longer…
There’s plenty of fun to be had with unoriginal characters.
Even if a charter is completely lifted from some source material, and their attitudes remain unchanging over time, games will still throw them into original situations and in many cases force them to ally with PCs that they would never encounter in their native environment. The player is going to have to work out the character reactions to in-game events and their attitudes to Kingdom-of-Exiles related matters.
I think you’d have to do something pretty crazy, like insist that game outcomes really followed your character’s pre-plotted destiny before I say that you’re lifting too much.
If two or more people turn up playing, e.g. Legolas, they must fight to the death, and the winner is declared the real one.
[Corollary: Lucian and oolong must never meet- they can’t hurt each other. :D]
Copy what you like. Where you receive inspiration from is up to you. It can be a greater challenge to roleplay to try and correctly portray someone else’s created character rather than one born from yourself.
The only counter point is that some effort should be made to try and integrate the character into the gameworld – an explanation for how they came to be who they are in the TL world. The problems come up when someone tries to play a character who has, for example, guns. There’s no such thing in TL, so the character breaks game world continuity and becomes ludicrous. Sometimes there’s ways around this, but be careful of it, as it will drive other players away from interacting with you.
For someone new to LARPing, or roleplaying in general, one of the easiest ways to help them choose a character is to ask them to think of a character they liked elsewhere. While they may need some assistance in choosing something appropriate to the setting, it helps them generate a believable, three-dimensional character without it being hard work. If it’s someone who likes the roleplay or the uptime game, forcing them to try and build from scratch is not going to be fun, and may push them away.
For a more established roleplayer, it depends. If it is sheer laziness, with no work done to integrate them into the system, than that should be challenged, as with any other avoidance of part of the system, but at the end of the day, unless it harms the club we’ll treat it like any other character concept that isn’t fun to engage with. If it’s because they’re stumped for ideas, why would it be bad to have a fully fleshed-out character from another source rather than a collection of stats?
In the way that is most fun for the priest’s player and the people he has to interact with.
It’s a really rubbish, unhelpful rule, but I cannot see any other blanket statement that can apply to all priests within even one of the Paths, let alone all priests within all of them, about how devout they must be and precisely how much leeway there can be within the Path.
As the rules presently stand, there is no codified definition of any of the paths except for the miracles they can access. There might be implications from the Temples, but this is really not the same thing – a Healer of Life must never cause death, while a Humact of Life must assassinate every necromancer he sees, as must a hypothetical Humact of Anarchy. The descriptions of Order and Chaos on the Path list aren’t descriptions, they’re sequences of words; the description of Life has two completely incompatible takes presented as 100% playable, while the description of Death provides either a crazed murderer or an iron-willed overachiever as examples without giving a coherent philosophy or guide.
I’d personally be in favour of a more coherent system – almost any more coherent system – but as the rules currently stand, it is unfair to say priests should be played in any specific way, because there are no useful guidelines to ensure that any two people are in the same library, let alone on the same page, when they think “X priest” – and as the discussion about How Does Might Work demonstrated, this is far from an idle concern.
All that being said – I would say all priests, and to a lesser extent all half-priests and Path followers, should be devout to the extent of not taking buffs from lists that are opposed to their own (such as a Might priest accepting a Bless on his weapon when he could just let the rest of the party deal with that zombie) unless it’s literally the only way to fulfil their obligations (such as a Freedom paladin currently suffering Double Weakness accepting Order Double Strength so that he might protect the weak from a necromancer). It’s about the only restriction I can think of that comes intuitively from how the Path rules work, and has the advantage of being objectively verifiable and thus enforceable.
A Priest should be an exemplar of their faith, people should be able to look to them to understand what actions define their Path – whether that be in verbal advice or how the Priest acts.
Definitions of the Paths are, unfortunately, limited but the Guilds can be used to determine a base line which can then be built upon. Additionally, the Miracle lists give some clear indicators of how a priest of the relevant Path should act. E.g. Life specialises in destroying undead and keeping people alive – a Priest of Life should probably reflect aspects of this.
Of course, as with everything, there’s flexibility and different levels of interpretation. However, ultimately, irrelevant of your self-made back-plot or opinion – the Character Ref team are the judge and jury when it comes to leeway, possibly together with Campaign Refs and, ultimately, Tony.
To me there is a big difference between the god your character follows and the paths they access.
The first and most important thing a priests player has to define is the god their character follows. The attitudes of that god, what they are the god of, what is part of their portfolio and where they draw worship from. Then the player can narrow down what paths they should have access to, what miracles they will be granted from within that path and what they will cast.The path a character has access to should not define the character, the god and the background defines the way those paths are used. If there is any question about which path a character should follow then discuss it with the campaign gm’s and the character refs.
Now if the character can follow the restrictions of a guild within the logic of their own background then they can join a guild like any other character. But there should not be any leeway in the guild restrictions as they help define the guild, if you think your god and background require some leeway then they should not be in that guild.
Playing a priest in TL, regardless of the path, is all about one central tenet.
The main thing is, to keep the main thing as the main thing.
The basic essential of a priest of any path is that everything they say, do or think should be an expression of their following of that path. On OOC demand, they must be able to present an OOC reasoned argument (even in the case of a chaos follower) as to why everything they have done during the course of the day is in keeping with the path they claim to follow. If you cannot do that, you need to do some serious thinking about whether or not you really are are a priest of that path.
However…
Within that bracket of “can be argued that it is [insert path here] because”, there are, as happens very often with TL, an almost infinite number of variations available upon a theme. Do you follow the path itself, or a god of that path? Are you proactive or reactive in your faith? Do you seek to change the world to match your ideals, either overtly or subtly, or are you content to live your life by them, said ideals not requiring that anyone else follow your example? Do you follow one aspect of the path, or even only one aspect of the god, or do you attempt to epitomise everything about that path or god? Does your god have aspects that encompass other paths, making you sympathetic to them while not following them yourself? What do you feel about other followers of your path? What do you feel about followers of opposing paths? Is your faith unshakable, or subject to change in the right circumstances? Are you an anarchist pretending to be something you’re not? Do you fight for your faith? Would you die for it? Would you live for it? Why? Whyever not?
A priest’s player should, at any time, be able to justify their PC’s behaviour in a fashion that the character refs cannot entirely disagree with. However, that behaviour can be so incredibly diverse, so polar in opposites within the same path, that what might seem a heavy restriction in fact wears lighter than a feather, provided you are willing to have put the effort in to make sure you are approaching it from the right standpoint in the first place.
If you find you are chafing under the restriction, I would put it to you that you really are playing the wrong path, class, or game.
In some ways much the same advice I’d give to someone coming up with a Kingdom citizen – why is their character taking part in Kingdom patrols? This is even more important for Barbarians, Amazons and Druids, given that a fair bit of what the Kingdom is about clashes with their own racial prejudices and restrictions – why is your character helping people who accept greenskins/use metal/use magic/are lead by a man etc.?
I’d also want to remind them that by being non-Kingdom not only are they technically more expendable (depending on the pragmatism of the patrol) but they’re also a lot more likely to get into trouble if they break Kingdom Law, and as with any character there’s going to be a point where having an IC attitude that makes the patrols not want to work with you will outweigh OOC politeness and desire for everyone to have fun.
The more relaxed a character can be in terms of outright prejudices (both their own and possible ones from other people), the easier integration will be – but it’s also potentially less interesting in terms of roleplay if you’re willing to roll with the consequences (which may be anything up to and including permadeath or exclusion). Don’t forget that consequences can also include things like permanently being picked on or got at or not being talked to depending on the prejudices of the rest of the patrol – this may make things rather less fun OOC, but is something that you have less control over.
Whilst in terms of back story your character might be non-Kingdom, if you are living and working within the Kingdom, especially within a Kingdom Guild, you are almost certainly a tax paying citizen and have the right to all the benefits any normal Kingdom character should have.
So, whilst you might not strictly be a Kingdom character the best way to integrate is to simply act like a Kingdom citizen – most people won’t question it either way unless you make a specific point about it.
If you aren’t part of a Kingdom guild but still living and working within the Kingdom, I would still be inclined to claim the benefits of citizenship. Any average peasant is considered to be a citizen but they don’t pay guild taxes or hold any official affiliation beyond the location of their hovel.
If you are truly non-Kingdom (perhaps the campaign is taking place outside of Kingdom borders or your character commutes to and from the non-Kingdom wilderness on a weekly basis) integration can be harder. In this case, you may simply need to accept that some missions (mainly Defender organised missions) simply aren’t appropriate for your character.
Ultimately though, if your character is friendly and useful any party will welcome you into the mission though you may end up marginalised when there’s, for example, secure information.
Playing a non-kingdom citizen is an avenue to a great deal of powerful roleplay, but only if you are willing to take the rough with the smooth.
The benefits are significant. You can, if you choose to, reliably get away with ignoring the orders of the patrol commander, so long as what you bring to the patrol is sufficiently useful. You are free to pursue your own motivations and interests, provided you can shoe-horn them into what the patrol is there to do. You get to keep all of your earnings, as no guild ties means no tax will be taken from your danger pay. You are free to express your cultural prejudices, so long as you are able to keep them sufficiently in check that it does not hamper the mission at hand (if it does, then you may need to ask yourself why your character is showing up to patrol, if what they patrol with, or what they do on said patrols, is so abhorrent to them).
The downsides, however, are dangerous. Rather than hitting the ground running, you start from a standstill, and have to take every step through your own roleplay. The only people who are obliged to help you if you get into trouble are those you have roleplayed into the trust of. No guild gives you access to its advanced teaching, and even training the most basic skills is no longer a trivial act, requiring further roleplay to obtain teachers. Your ways are not those of the Kingdom – they freely use magic, metal, men, in the course of business, and these butt up against your racial tendencies in a jarring and dissonant fashion; it can be confusing, and even offensive, to be around such foreign practices, and you have to roleplay your way into tolerance of that, or pack your bag and go home.
The benefits, I would say are not enough to outweigh those penalties, so I would recommend building into the characterisation a reason to keep you in the Kingdom, and putting up with the lumps, for time enough to carve yourself out a protective niche. Why, given the immense amount of hard work you should have to put in to simply establish parity with those molly-coddled Kingdom babies, do you not simply turn round and go home? Are you fleeing something? Chasing something? Has someone you trust sent you here for a purpose? What is that purpose? Is it part of your rites of passage, and thus an obligation for you to travel here? Do you seek money rather than honour? Do you seek an honour you can’t gain at home, so you can throw it in the face of your enemy when you return?
A motivator can be doubly useful, as it can also serve as a reason to curb your prejudice when there are few others. The motivator can constantly remind you why you are doing it, and how it is important that you accept and endure.
Without a powerful motivation to be in the Kingdom, following its laws, accepting its cultural and societal pressures and forcibly putting down your own tendencies where it is necessary, I would ask you why it wasn’t deemed preferable to simply stay at home.
Druids are an odd one – they are not explicitly non-kingdom – and if you ask around player druids you will certainly find some that are Kingdom citizens and some that aren’t. Not all immigrated from Arboria.
In fact, to this end, I will deal with them separately to barbarians and amazons.
Druids are a divine calling like any other. Just as the Life Humact may follow his calling to destroy undead, or a Might Priest may seek glory in the eyes of their divinity, so too can a Druid join a party in order to destroy greenskins, seek out corruptors of nature, save the forests from encroaching warbands, and so forth. While a Druid may not approve of all the Kingdom’s methods, they are a doubtless a powerful ally. A druid’s usefulness to a party depends on their build, the perpetual negative reputation surrounding the class remains something of a disappointment to me.
Barbarians and Amazons on the other hand are, by definition, foreign. As such, at their simplest they are quite simply mercenaries. Quite effective combatants both – they kill the bad guys and take their price. That is not to say a barbarian character may not have other motivations, but at their simplest this is what they are. It is of course true to say that if a barbarian ever did kill a Kingdom mage, they have broken kingdom law and potentially commited an act of war – there are no ways around that (in principle, at least. In practise is something else). Likewise with Amazons. However their brutal effectiveness is what gives them their role in a party – the Kingdom doesn’t recruit Barbarians and Amazons as counsellors, cooks and medics – they are killers pure and simple.
The key in both cases is effectiveness. If a character of ANY class is effective in their role within a party, they will be welcomed. A majority of party commanders these days use the rule-of-thumb “if they’re on the party, they’re under my protection, citizen or not.” As such, the “you don’t have to protect me” card, or indeed the flip-side “I don’t have to follow your rules” is a dangerous one to play, but one that adds a very interesting roleplay dynamic. It is up to the players/characters concerned how far they want to push this one.
In any case, the most deciding factor as to whether a non-kingdom character is accepted is usually their effectiveness at what they do.
I usually start with a small part of the character, maybe a phrase that sums up a part of themselves (like “blacksmith” or “eager cadet”) or an idea about a particular aspect of themselves such as “re-learning old talents” or “What is a witchdoctor?” and then I expand on that. The characters that I end up playing are the ones that evolve most easily into an exciting character from that simple start. For example what kind of person would this “blacksmith” be, what skills or talents did this person know that he’s now relearning?
These original sparks that start off a character come from all sorts of places: a book that I’ve read, a film that I’ve seen, Magic: the gathering cards, reading the TL rules, etc. Sometimes I’m not even sure what gave me the idea.
I guess that the advice that I’d give to new larpers who thing this method of character building might suit them is to be open to inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. Also, where possible try to incorporate aspects of yourself into the character, it will make the RP come much more naturally (if you’re new to RP in general) if your character has some similar traits to yourself that you can make larger than life and if your not constantly battling against parts of yourself to play the character, all of the characters (both for LARP and table top) that I think I’ve played ‘well’ have contained aspects of my own personality in them.
I have had a few different approaches to writing backplot for my TL characters. Gish had very little beyond “young priest just out of training hitting the real world”. I then filled everything else in on the fly during games and on the boards. My next characters Skyla and Asharu had detailed backplots which in the end where somewhat restricting leading one to change class and the other to be retired (among other reasons). My newest characters have very limited backplot Valyant’s backplot is pretty much “Paladin who does what he thinks is right in his heart”, Dorian’s is “Thief, gaining legitamacy by working for the artificers”. They’ve not got much past that yet since I’ve only played them twice.
In terms of inspiration for characters I’ve used real world history, fanatsy novels, other roleplay games, music (actually lots of music), computer games. Some of it sutble, others more blatant.
Overall I prefer to use very little backplot and fill it all in whilst playing, I think this approach allows maximum character development. I would generally advise new players to take this approach as they will be unfamiliar with the setting and it may take a while before they can come up with something that fits.
I don’t think it break immersion particularly to talk about there being “levels” or “ranks” of spells, although a better way I’ve seen people use is to just use an IC sounding word for example “spells of the third thaum” or “a spell of the fourth order”.
I method I use is to talk about things relative to known spells, for example “I think the weakest healing ability would fix that.” Or “that creature needs the second weakest holding ability to keep it down.” I have to admit that playing a general magic user and trying not to talk about levels of magic exactly as they appear in the rules was /really/ difficult.
Ideally, exactly as they are in the rules, with the possible exception of having a term other than “0th level” for zero-level effects. Cantrip, maybe.
It is an observable, repeatable fact in-universe that spells (and, when they work, miracles) require a measureable amount of expenditure of supernatural resoruces, and that within a specific form of spell, there is a direct corellation between cost and power. Trying to handwave and dissemble to avoid speaking game mechanical terms actually shakes my immersion, as the world becomes less consistent as a result and thus I am if anything more reminded that it’s an overlay on a game.
I have a human character with the base level of 2 Mana. As such the character knows, without a doubt, that he can cast his spells Ignite and Light two times – any more causes noticeable physical damage and any less leaves him with detectable levels of power.
Following on from this, it’s common knowledge that an average human can cast the lowest level of Miracle five times. It’s a simple experiment (via Miracle gift) to show that an average human can only cast two of the 2nd level (Level 1) of Miracles and only one of the 3rd to 5th level (Level 2 – 4) Miracles without harm and that casting a 6th level (Level 5) Miracle will always cause some harm a normal human.
It wouldn’t take much, then, to determine Spell and Miracle “levels” IC. The stretch for me is to call the 1st level of Miracles/Spells “Level zero” but that’s a small issue that can easily be ignored for consistency.
Following on from this – Life and Wounds (and, equally, Heal Life/Wounds, Harm and Drain Life) can be quantified though experimentation on a “base” human. Then through comparisons of each of the Miracle levels come to exactly the same description as you find in the OOC rules.
Thus, a character with Recognise Wounds could justifiably say, perfectly In Character:
“This person needs a Heal Life 14, as this is Level 2 it will cost me 3 points of Standing and cause me 2 points of damage to my Life.”
However, I personally avoid doing this if I can (despite frustration). I don’t have a really good explanation why, other than it just feels “wrong” to talk about such abstract concepts as standing with your god or mastery of the arcane powers in such quantified terms.
I suppse the real question is why would you particularly need to talk about them IC? Unless a character was a research caster who’s really interested in such things and being accurate, what’s wrong with using a unit of “some” or a description of “fair to middling”?
I generally try to avoid it because it sounds too computer-gamey-table-toppish and breaks my immersion – and because only Kavara would be interested in formally quantifying it. Anaesthesia heals on the units of “bloody hell”, “badly”, “middling”, “scratched up” and “wuss” – there’s enough scope for having IC descriptions that make sense.
That said, given that there are likely to be researchers in the Guilds who would have studied this, an agreed IC naming system would be no bad thing.
Magic and miracle have been around in the TLverse for an awfully long time, and there will have been academics that will have taken the time to quantify what does what at what level. However, I find ‘Level’ (and particularly ‘Zeroth Level’), for some reason, a jarring OOC halt to an IC conversation.
A very neat workaround to this could be to replace the concept of spell and mirale ‘Levels’ in IC conversation with those of a circle of mastery in the path/school required to cast them, replacing Level 0 with the ‘Base Circle’. This not only suggests that Level 0 does not count as mastery in a path (which I don’t think it does), but also allows for some smoothly IC responses to an IC mechanical question (which are not remotely unreasonable to ask, and I feel there should be a well-understood response to).
e.g.
“I can only call upon the base circle of the path of Life, so I can heal you one-handed, but it might take a while.”
“I have attained the forth circle of mastery in Earth, so I can grant you the strength of eight people for a short time”.
“I have the third circle of mastery in the path of Death – come, let us contact the spirit of this recently deceased lone poor fool in the forest and ask what killed them. They will answer true and at length a total of three times.”
“I can grant you the Hardening of Order to the full extent of my mastery of the fourth circle for fifteen minutes while we face these elementals – for that time, if I remember my training correctly, a Fire or Ice Dart of the second circle would simply bounce off you.”
“What healing can you manage, Marshal?”
“Second circle Life, Third circle Order, commander. I can also set a broken bone before fixing it.”
“I have attained the tenth and final circle of mastery in the directly cast magic of Fire – FEAR MY INCANDESCENT ELEMENTAL FORM!!!”
I definitely find long and convoluted ways of avoiding the standard spell names or stat descriptions to be more jarring than just referring to the names they’ve got in the rules. “Heal Wounds 14” isn’t amazingly IC, but it’s somehow better than “Healing of the body enough to repair two blows with a two-handed sword by someone who can just about use it properly against someone who is unarmoured and not used to the privations of combat”.
Alright, a bit of an exaggeration, but not that much…
The spells are well-known and well-studied effects. It’s not unreasonable that those who talk about them a lot (and mages, priests and patrollees surely fall into that group) would have developed a common verbal shorthand for doing so – so describing things as being “Level 0” or “Level 1” spells is fine, as is calling spells by standard names. There’s possibly an argument that the numeric components of spell names were concocted by a mad Chaos priest with all the consistency of a politician surrounded by people with large bags of money, but “Level 1 Life healing” or “Level 3 Fire Dart” is not an unreasonable way of phrasing things if you really object to “Heal Life 8” or “Fire Dart 6”.
I personally really dislike the use of game mechanics speak in character, including using the term level. In the ceremony scripts I wrote for the 36hr I used the term circle to describe the level, which I think I have stolen from Doug without realising it; though I have used the term “first circle” to mean level zero.
I dislike using spell levels IC a lot, personally feeling that there is no universe reason (for the most part) why they should exist.
In real terms, when I ride my bicycle, I do not think “that’s a 30’ turn coming up, I must use a 30’ turn to go round it.” I just know what I’m doing.
In IC terms, why can a Fire Mage not, theoretically, spend half a point of mana to cast Fire Dart 1? Or any other given fraction?
In this way, I consider the spell levels an OOC mechanic to describe a fluid universe; and their usage IC makes me very uncomfortable. “Some power”, “a lot of power”, etc works a lot better for me.
I’ve put in ceremony requests for the odd-numbered harms, and been refused, (I was willing to spend the whole point of standing to cast Harm 1). From this I infer that the rules mechanics points of standing (and standing-for-effect exchange rates) are built into the game universe, rather than being an OOC bookkeeping convention.
ALSO I would like to offer quantum/quanta as the unit of standing/mana, and of course, blame it all on Marshall Carlsburg’s theory of quantum theology.
The quantisation of power is too easily observable for someone not to have noticed it – there are two guilds of mages devoted to studying magic and a guild of priests devoted to studying EVERYTHING, and the description for rec magic/miracle say that when used on ones self they make you aware of the exact number of points of mana/standing you have left. So, yes i’d be astounded if the theoreticians and academics of the TL universe didn’t know exactly what spell levels are.
Just as discworld wizards define the thaum as the basic indivisable unit of magic required to produce 1 pigeon or 2 standard sized billiard balls, TL researchers must realise there is no smaller unit of magic than that needed to perform a light spell. Your power supply is inarguably more like a sack of bombs than a tank of petrol….
So yes, I can see the argument that to someone who has studied the theory, knowledge of spell levels is not world breaking. I can even concede that Level 0 spell are different enough from others that they are distinguishable (length of vocals don’t fit the pattern, only need one hand) and are held separate. not sure i like the term level 0 IC though, would prefer (and have used) cantrip. If you want an IC justification, the first person to describe levels based his research in complexity of vocals rather than study of the number of “quanta” of magic used. It’s not like real life scientific terminology doesn’t have some anacronistic naming conventions based on the miscinceptions of earlier researchers (“atom” comes from the greek for “un-splittable” yet i have a job based on the fact that they are made up of distinct bits that you can knock apart; and why does current flow in the opposite direction to electrons?)
I also have no qualms qith “order” or “circle” other than the confusion that could cause with the path or the guild (although there’s nothing wrong with a bit of IC confusion and the inference that the circle chose their name because it essentially means “hey we’re powerful” if you know anything about magical theory could wind up the towers wonderfully)
So that’s the academics, there are, of course, also the unsophisticated rustics, the hedge wizards, the village priests, the healers who are too busy stopping peoples guts falling out to pay attention to the proportions of their power being poured into each heal wounds casting. For these people, I would suppose their grasp of power levels to be in line with what rec magic/miracle tells you about someone else; there’s none, a little, some, a moderate amount and f**** loads.
Anesthesia’s method of quantifying amount of healing needed seems apt here too.
Actually, it’s using numbers associated with injury that breaks immersion for me. ie. the number of life/wounds damage taken, points of healing required and by extension the “number” of a dart or other spell – i think i would prefer to hear “second level wound healing” rather than “heal wounds 14” I also tend to use “life force healing” or “healing of life force” rather than straight up “life healing” just because life healing sounds like it should involve Feng-Shui, yoga, meditation and positive thinking exercises…..
wow, that ran longer than i thought it would and kinda zig-zagged the topic, hope it isn’t too rant like…
Good boots, waterproofs and layers are your friends.
Real life comes first.
Food and drink really are a necessity.
…what can I say, I’m practical :)
1) Have a bag, it makes carrying everything so much easier!
2) Have everything waterproof. Getting halfway through a larp and realising you are sodden and you’ve still got a way to go is disheartening to say the least.
3) Never be afraid to ask questions. Everyone was new once and we all know what it’s like to get confused!
1. IC bags are big and clever. They can hold a drink, lunch, evidence (both to be revealed or hidden), etc.
2. The rules don’t make total sense. Don’t try to read them all (really don’t) and understand them fully at first, just pick it up as you go along.
3. Have fun! While numbers and stats and kit are important we wouldn’t go out pretty much every weekend for them. Get into the character you play and find some top quality RP or really experience the thrill of combat!
1. If you’re not having fun, something is wrong.
2. We all look a bit silly, but the trick is not to mind.
3. Allow yourself to get immersed in the game, willingly suspend your disbelief.
1. It’s a game – it’s supposed to be fun for everyone.
2. Work out how you best enjoy the game and go for it.
7. Don’t take the piss.
1. Weather: We’re in England, be prepared
2. Fun: It’s a game, everyone’s meant to have fun playing it
3. Food: It’s yummie
1. The hardest step you will ever take is the first one, so bite the bullet take it at a jump. The rest will be a hundred times easier.
2. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re playing your character wrong. It’s your character, and you play them perfectly.
3. Be prepared for weather, hunger, thirst and fatigue, and use your self-awareness to plan accordingly.
We’re here to have fun; don’t be afraid to get it wrong.
This is your character; no one else will know or understand them like you. Therefore, they are missing vital information, and cannot make decisions for you.
Immersion will make it more fun, generally. Suspend disbelief, and you’ll be amazed what you discover.
Pick a consistent theme and make sure all the vocals fit that, and you can’t go very far wrong even if the exact words deviate. For example, one caster might give a technical description of the effect they are about to generate, another might refer to the contracts under which their gods are obliged to aid them, a third might berate and/or condemn the target of their castings.
You shouldn’t expect to be able to come up with the same set of words for each effect every single time. There are multiple reasons for this, but to me the most clear-cut is that you often can’t fit a completely flavourful set of vocals into the absolute minimum number of words allowed for the casting. With that in mind, having the ability to give a good paragraph-long prayer when in no particular danger should not compel you to recite the full paragraph when time is of the essence and you need that Heal Wounds 20 out in less than a second or someone is going to die. Flavour should not be punished.
My tuppence on this:
When being a mage – my view is that consistency is key. You go to the Tower or the Circle and “learn” how to cast spells. As such, you should have a set of vocals for each spell that you can learn, and tack onto for higher levels of the spell. That way, you need to get the spell out properly in the life or death situation rather than go “blah blah blah blah fire dart 4” because you’ve forgotten the words. You also have a spellbook to refer to should you forget.
When being a priest – it’s rather different. You are asking your god to do something. It would depend on the god as to whether the same words need to be used each time. I would image Order gods want the same words whereas Chaos gods may want different words each time.
Regardless, as long as you are consistent with what you do – either make it up on the spot, or have defined words, and stick to it, then it’s all good.
What I usually go with since I don’t usually tailor my casting vocals is something along the lines of:
By the power of (insert magic element/path/god) I [call upon (it’s/their) power to] cast (Spell name)
Which is at least 6 [or 12] vocals not counting the spell name so its generally good for all the level 0 to 2 [or 4] castings and its surprising how fast you can say that. If absolutely rushed my characters do cut it down to minimum required but not often.
Casting vocals are, like so much in LARP, highly dependant upon the character you’re playing.
If you’re playing a priest, you’re praying to whatever you hold dear in order to achieve what you want, so there is nothing forcing you to be the same every time. It’s a personal prayer – I find such things rarely stay the same given different situations or moods. However, the way you call upon your deity/path can vary wildly. Were you taught to do so a certain way by your mentor, or are you making it up on your own? Are you confident in the prayers you are making, or are you unsure of your deity’s patronage? Does your deity demand a certain type of supplication in return for their gifts, or are they more interested in the sentiment you put into your words? What motivation do you have to call upon their power? Are you a psychotic zealot or a gentle devotee? Have you been doing this for years, or did you cast your first miracle last week? Do you delight in your gift, or do you fear it? Do you call on it out of desire, or out of necessity? What language do you cast in?
If you are a mage, you have a different, but no less widely diverse, set of options available to you. More so than miracle casting, there is a feeling of academia in magery – one goes to a temple to worship, but to a school of magic to study. There can be an element of the scientific about it, meaning that if you don’t want to, you aren’t forced to be spontaneous, and can bring order and structure to what you cast if you so choose. However, it once again comes down to the way you interpret how your character draws on the power as to how the words come out. Do you view magic as a science, requiring a strict set of formulae being followed in order to produce a guaranteed result? Do you view it as an art, requiring expression of your inner self in order to achieve the forms you need? Do you use your words to focus your own attention, or to shape the magical power? Do you believe your magic comes from the aether, or from some known being or quantity? Are you a priest of a deity that grants you your power in the form of magic as opposed to miracles (in which case, see above as well)? How do the words interact with the power you cast? Do they at all? What language do you use? If you follow rules, what do you risk if you get them wrong? If you don’t follow rules, how do you guarantee the outcome of your casting?
In short, I can’t recommend a set of vocals, because I can’t possibly know what drives your character as well as you do, and I can’t say how important consistency is, because it depends on what value your character places on it. All I can suggest is that you do have an idea, however simple or complex, and run with it – don’t simply not bother to come up with something, and then claim it’s ‘freeform’. It will show.
1. Will you be able to move in this? If not, is it worth a year of not moving? Generally if I can’t run, jump, fall to my knees and bend at the waist I don’t bother making it kit, or I save it for ic meal gear.
2. Will you be warm enough in winter and cool enough in summer? The trick to this is to layer your kit up. Lots of layers mean you are snug in winter and then when you discard the outer layers in summer it’s like you’ve got all new kit as the under layers can be seen!
3. Is it appropriate to the larp you’re going to? Don’t wear a cyberman outfit to a high fantasy setting. Likewise, don’t wear your best medieval feasting gear to a futuristic larp.
Weather
We larp in the depths of winter and the heights of summer, in pouring rain and blazing sun. You need to have kit that can cope with all these situations. Basic questions for kit should include:
There are lots of ways to achieve this – waterproofs, layers, or just being immune to the elements – but you need to be confident your kit can adapt to all the British weather has to hold.
Comfort
You’ll be wearing the kit for five hours straight while running and scrambling over difficult terrain in awful weather. Make sure your kit doesn’t rub or chafe, is sturdy enough to cope with rocks and mud, and provides enough freedom of movement to, at the least, run away from things safely. Ensure bags don’t get in the way and can carry everything you need.
Character
Distinctive kit is one of the first ways we recognise a character, but more than that it can help you get into your role and improve your characterisation. Being physically different can help move your mind into the character’s, and also help you portray their body language and voice. Kit includes make-up, prosthetics, hair and weapons, as well as clothes and armour, and it can often be used to create or develop plot points, or provide subtle hints about their past or personality. A particular style, theme, colour or accessory can also create continuity between different versions of a character’s kit.
for me the top three are:
Cost: As a student I have no money, what stuff do I have/can pick up or borrow cheaply that I can use to maximum effect this year?
Character: What fits the the character, it no good being able to borrow chainmail if I want to play a druid as a good example
Stats: What do I want the character to do? from the last one it’s no good having leather and fur armour available if I want to play a paladin wearing plate on chain.
That’s how I look at it anyway.
In short:
1. What look do I want to put across IC?
2. What is my reasonable budget?
3. How do I make the intended look fit for purpose OOC?
1. Starting with your character, how do they look in your mind? Put yourself in a film with a hundred million dollar budget, your idea for a party as the main protagonists, and your character fulfilling exactly the role you intend for them. What are they wearing? Why is it good, or practical for them to wear what they do? What experiences have they had in the past that lead them to dress that way? Is there anything they are compelled to wear, or wear for sentimental value, or are they all business with respect to kit? Was it provided by someone else, or did they find it, make it, or take it for themselves?
2. Unless you’re a secret (or public) millionaire, you probably can’t arrange for exactly the look you envisaged in your movie. However, with some careful planning, you can often get a lot closer than you think IC, regardless of what your budget is. Work out what you can spend, then try to break the kit down into parts than can be achieved simply. That fabulously elaborate dress of a thousand colours will be difficult to achieve exactly, but what can be done with a few separates and a little patchwork? That suit of golden armour might be hard work to achieve, and will certainly cost a few hundred pounds at least, so can it be something the character works towards IC and has later? If your budget can’t stretch to cover it, ask yourself what a rookie patrollee (with probably no more money than you) doing with a suit of epic golden armour in the first place?
3. It’s a cold, wet, hot, exposed, humid, muddy, windy, slippery, stony, snowy, icy, thoroughly British world out there (sometimes all in the course of a single day), and the kit is going to have (and will have to enable you) to survive all of it. You will fall over, you will get rained on, and you will get beaten up – will the kit be hard-wearing enough not to disinegrate? The wind will do its best to freeze you to the core and the sun to melt you where you stand. How will you ensure your kit allows you to keep playing your character regardless of the weather? Are you susceptible to any particular form of weather that you need to pay particular attention to? If you’re normally cold, a thin short-sleeved shirt or a short skirt and bare legs are unlikely to be practical in the depths of January unless you make accommodations for it in the form of lower layers. If you feel the heat, clanking round in thirty kilos of metal armour and padding is going to have you dying on the floor come the summer heat, unless you find a means of dealing with it such as an ice vest or incorporated water pack.
I will add an unnofficial fourth point, in that there are an abundance of extremely capable kit-makers in the society, and an even greater number of experienced kit-buyers. If you have an idea, but aren’t sure how to achieve it, there are any number of people who will be happy to consult with you and help make your idea a reality.
Much like they do in the Discworld novels: organised with long traditions, and a tendency to harshly punish those who step on their territory without being in a guild, plus a healthy dose of interguild rivalry. The kingdom is large enough though that guilds in different territories have their own quirks. Generally quite secretive and very possessive of their propriety knowledge (with the obvious exception – but even the Temple of Freedom don’t teach non-members high level miracles).
More politically I see the guild/kingdom relationship much like the Catholic Church/Royalty of medieval Europe. Separate institutions but respected by the nobility, and enough power to be able to lean on the nobility to get their desired results. Also much like the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe it’s very hard to learn things without being a member/getting their direct approval.
Probably like the Medieval/Renaissance Guilds in the real world – agglomerations of people of a similar skillset protecting their own interests. Quite jealous of their Guild knowledge, inclined to punish people who step out of line, working with the other Guilds but backing their own agendas where they can. Probably Guilds of a similar type (the Temples, the Towers and Circle etc.) work together better just as a bloc vote.
Given there’s only been 100 years since the Exile they’re probably going to be quite young (even if the basis was there pre-Exile a large chunk of the membership will only have a few generations of family involved) so won’t have got quite into the depths of politicking yet, but still involved in shaping the political landscape – think frontier society at the point where it had a chance to bed down.
Membership probably always comes at a cost if there’s an apprenticeship of any kind involved, even if in-game it’s so nominal as to be considered free (or has conditions like the Humacti one etc.). The tradition of taking in Guild Orphans is probably well-established (as there’s going to be a fair number of orphans in the Kingdom) as a way of gaining members with utter loyalty.
There’s going to be an awful lot of ones that aren’t listed in the rules as their skills aren’t compatible with adventuring – the mundane guilds, as it were. Ironically they probably have more political clout overall than the player-base ones through sheer numbers and lack of perceived elitism…although there won’t be the equivalent of trade unions yet (give it another four centuries).
And there are probably epic dinners and Guild functions that we don’t know about, because whenever three or more are gathered together some form of ceremonial behaviour will spring up (and someone will get a funny hat).
Thoughts on how individual player-base Guilds work will have to wait for another question, or I’ll be here all morning.
I see the TL guilds as more than just an organisation, I see them as a parallel of University.
Whilst you join a Guild for education and development of your chosen profession, you also gain a home, a community of like-minded individuals and guidance through, possibly, your most important formative years.
Some guilds have other, perhaps better fitting, real-world equivalents (the military for an obvious example), whilst other guilds are less clear (e.g. the Gladiators, Blade-singers) but, in general, I think the university comparison is one that applies for most.
Reverence for nature to the point of feeling it holy duty to compromise the desires of sapient civilisation in order to permit coexistence. Elemental magic is frowned upon in no small part because it tampers directly with forces that are not fully understood, in ways that can have a detrimental effect to nature – over and above the elements simply being the rightful province of Nature. Similarly the blatant speciesism of the current druid mechanics stems at its initial roots from an observation that most of the sentient greenskins choose lifestyles that are exceptionally disruptive to nature – though the fact that Nature will not currently allow such beings to recant the ways of their cousins and follow it to the point of granting them miracles cannot help.
The claim of compromise being in any way a druidic tenet is not something supported by the text, but a result of observation of how they are played – while NPC druids are often an annoyance that you aren’t allowed to simply murder for diplomatic reasons, I have yet to see non-Dark druids portrayed as murderous eco-terrorists.
Speaking of Dark Druids – honestly, they don’t completely make sense to me at the moment. The rules text can’t seem to decide if they’re believers that death is a part of Nature and must be spread far and wide, or if they’re Captain Planet villains trying to defile Nature for the sake of defiling Nature. If strictly the former then not all “light” druids would be doctrinally hostile to them; if strictly the latter then the Kingdom of Exiles would be more open to putting them to use, potentially even to the point of allowing them as PCs (in the same way as Death/Chaos Priests).
Druidism means three different things in TL:
While these three are linked, a Druid, ley-Druid, Amazonian Druid or other character with Druidic heritage may associate with one, some, or all of the above separately although the rules do not makes disctinctions clear. From what I have been hearing, it is likely that the above may also change when Druids are reworked.
The Principle of Nature
Analogous to the other Principles, Nature both rewards those that do its work with miraculous powers and grants its followers powers that do its work. For example: the Principle of Life expects its followers to protect Life, and then grants Life healing to enable them to do so. Likewise, the Principle of Nature grants powers that both emulate Nature and enable a Druid to either protect it (in the form of some of the combat orientated buffs) or to aid it directly (Tree Heal, Befriend Animal, etc). The Principle works in the same way as any other, and Nature-alligned characters can vary as much as any other alignment. It is possible, for instance, for a ley-druid elemental mage to exist, or an Amazonian Druid to carry a metal weapon (it’s not against their restrictions to do so).
The Religious Sects
In current TL rules, all “priest” characters from the Path of Nature (except for Amazons) are members of a Sect as well as a follower of the Principle (this differs from other Paths, where a character may choose whether or not to join the relevant Temple). The TL Druids impose additional requirements such as a mistrust for greenskins and magic and a refusal to carry metal weapons. It is implied that despite their lack of organisation, they are the sole teachers of miracles from the Principle of Nature within the Kingdom. Some are organised into Groves, that may have taken it upon themselves to keep watch over the animals and plants of a specific forest (NPCs). Some choose to wander, and may then join the patrol network as PCs. Some (especially Animal druids) seem to become almost an avatar of their Path, while some (especially Weather) keep their distance from it.
The Druidic Race
The fact Druids are given their own chapter and skill table implies that they are an out-Kingdom race with their own society completely separate to everyone else. This has more recently been written is as Arboria, the Druidic nation to the South. On the other hand, the idea of being an Acolyte first implies that one must leave what they were doing to gain acceptance into the Druids, somewhat contradictory. The simple truth is that a Druid character may have Druidic heritage OR may have joined from elsewhere. While a Druidic society exists, and one can expect that if two Druid have a child that child will also be a Druid, it is not a requirement. A Druidic character (or NPC) may or may not also be a citizen of the Kingdom.
The interaction between the three statements above is poorly defined and very ambiguous. It is my hope that the next rules revision will clarify it, and I also hope that in future Arboria plot may be explored – at least to try and dispel some of the antipathy towards Druids. Certainly, statements along the lines of “Druids don’t..” is as broad sweeping as those regarding any other Path and fraught with exceptions – it is these that add colour to the world.
I have played Druids in other systems and I have found that TL druids make sense in some ways but are utterly senseless in others.
The restrictions on what races can be druids are absurd in my opinion. It has been established that half elves, half orcs and half ogres can breed true without the aid of magic, demons, rituals etc. This makes them a natural race and it should therefore be possible for the odd member of that race to hear the Call of Nature. In a system which allows half-orc and half-ogre paladins, mages and priests it seems daft to say that they can’t be druids. This argument can extend to any race that breeds true like orcs, goblins, trolls etc, since they often have to live in the wilds making use of the lands around them means they are more in tune with nature.
The argument that the greenskin races are destructive and therefore can’t be druids is also absurd. Nature is extremely destructive, forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami, lightning storms, poisonous plants, natural diseases, venomous bites, nature is red in tooth and claw! Worshipping these natural forces and channeling that power in miracles is what a druid does best so why are the greenskin races (who are known for cunning and as respecters of strength) not worship the strength and destruction of the natural world?
I see druids as those who worship and follow nature in all its forms, they who protect the wilds and those who travel within the wilds, they teach others to respect the wilds and encourage sustainable harvesting of the wilds (not butchery). Druids should be aggressive protectors of nature not tree hugging hippies who decide to have their grove on the main path through the area! Druids would oppose anything that is outside the natural order of the world, this includes undead, demons and possibly fae (as they don’t really die). I agree they should dislike and distrust elemental spellcasters since they are using the same elemental forces a druid worships without the worship.
I’m not sure there is such a thing as a Dark Druid, whilst there are areas of nature that are dark, destructive, poisonous and decaying these all inevitably lead to a greater regrowth in the following spring. So what is a now called a Dark Druid could reasonably be called an Autumn or Winter Druid who sows the seeds of rebirth for the following spring. Certainly different sects of druids can be more militant with their protection of nature to the point where they kill everything to feed the plants and let it all grow bigger and stronger, or they experiment with crossbreeding to produce stronger more aggressive animals and plants. They joy is that since nature is so all encompassing so can its worshippers and protectors be.
(the following is an idea I had whilst writing this) It could be that the different sects are re-structured on a seasonal basis like the Temples and characters decide if they wish join them or go their own way. And whilst certain sects may not allow certain races for their own reasons those races can still be independent druids.
Druidism is the natural state of any patrollee who has had to deal with %#**£# druids on a patrol.
…okay, sensible answer.
At its core, Druidism is an all-consuming love of Nature. Even Dark Druidism, really – decay and destruction are still an aspect of Nature, and love doesn’t have to be nice. Side-effects of this can include:
It’s perfectly possible to be Nature-ish or Nature-inclined without being a full-on Druid, the same as for any other TL path (or real-world religion).
That’s pretty much what Druidism is in its present form. What Druidism means is actually a really tricky question, other than to reiterate that it’s a deep love of Nature of some form or another, expressed in the way that seems most appropriate to the individual in question.
I have long considered that guilds in the TL world go beyond those listed in the rules. One might expect, for instance, a guild of butchers, of bakers, of candlestick-makers. Actors. Merchants. Tailors. Blacksmiths. Goldsmiths. Masons. ‘Reputable’ women.
None of these, of course, would have more than a passing effect on an adventure LARP (although an all-out war between the Guild of Bakers and the B.W.I. would be fantastic, as long as you can dodge the flying bagels). These guilds would likely have significant power in civilian day to day life – in a world where the peasantry is more likely to care about their next meal while leaving things like undead incursions to those better able to deal with them, for your average villager the local Baker is likely to command some respect in the community. Needless to say, for the adventuring minority, Pastry Expertise is something of a useless skill.
The one guild I would like to see emerge, however, would be the Navy as a fifth branch of the Defenders. This would, in my mind, better explain the various overseas expeditions without wondering where Pathfinders learnt to sail. Once again though I concede it may not be much of a PC guild.
As for as PC guilds, the only ones that may be useful would be crafting guilds, as crafting skills of weopons and armour are actually included in the rules, therefore it stands to reason that there may be a niche for people wishing to play their members.
The Tower of Shadow
For one, it would drive a great deal of conflict-based roleplay (working over time to resolve tensions between the party’s light and dark mages would be a worthy side-plot to any campaign, and carry on into the mid- and high-levels).
For another, it has the potential to through out heros, anti-heros, and diamonds in every state of polish. All kinds of motivations could lead you to become a dark mage, and it’s unlikely that it was a decision taken lightly (no pun intended).
For another, it would add an interesting and novel element to a party make-up. Consider a priest who makes extensive use of Control Undead – that skill’s been around for years, and it still turns heads IC when used during a game.
For another, the building’s already there, for crying out loud. Evict the wannabe drow wandering round with one hand nailed to their brow and the other writing bad poetry in silver ink on black parchment, and replace them with some actual mages.
_________
As a second idea, a loose affiliation (guild for mechanical purposes only) of professional adventurers. They aren’t part of any other guild, so come together for collective bargaining purposes: Members pay a double-tithe, the revenue from which allows the guild to purchase specialized training from the other guilds.
Not that this would not a be a carte blanche to get bonus skills without having to listen to the party commander – the guild’s fundamental rule is that a professional adventurer should add to the party dynamic, not take away from it. Refusing to follow the leader’s (military or otherwise) orders is disruptive, and would bring the guild into disrepute.
I’d like to see a guild of Blackguards or Anti-Paladins as I think they can make excellent villains. A Blackguard is the definition of evil and they are utterly dedicated to the ideal the same way a Paladin is dedicated to good. It would also add some balance to the game since most of the paths and guilds have opposites or those of opposite views, why not the Paladins?
The guild was created for Ryans evil games and my character Bane was a part of it, so the rules exist and they just need to be tested.
I wonder if there could be a slightly more self sufficient and nature-friendly guild similar to the Pathfinders, like woodsmen. I guess they could be a more formal version of ley-druid scouts with lower skills costs for skinning and crafting objects from wood or bone.
Perhaps they could be thought of as more druid-friendly woodcutters and carvers, with access to some druidic miracles?
All else being equal, I would like to see a non-Defender guild that grants Recognise Creature and Backstab past the publicly available levels, so that people wanting to play a backstab Scout have more choices than the military or GM pity. Just offhand, this could be done as a bounty hunters’ guild focused on bringing in fugitives dead or alive rather than killing whoever money demands, or as a guild of explorers or hunters with skills in tracking prey and slaughtering it before it sees them.
Technically, Lay-Druid Scouts already do that, but they’re not without problems. The issue is, to my mind, compounded by the two proscribed guilds geared towards Scouts. In summary – Lay-Druid Scouts need to hunt down non-metal weapon phys-reps and can’t currently be greenskins or half-ogres, any “explorers/hunters” guild would tread on lay-druid scouts’ toes, and a “bounty hunters” or out-and-out hunters guild would tread on the toes of the Darkblades, for good or ill.
Given that back in the Victorian age they were common place, I’d like to see some sort of ‘Philanthropists guild’ for rich young idiots who want to go out and ‘experience the world’. And ‘by experience the world’, I of course mean with a cadre of servants to carry and do practically everything for them.
Any kind of non-military scout’s guild. Maybe a guild of Adventurers or Private Investigators or just Really Nosy People.
Yes please, a non-military scouts guild. I like the idea of the woodsmen – skills in rec creature and so on, skinning, interesting roleplay opportunities…
Just to be different, I’m going to suggest not a new guild, but a new way of joining guilds that already exist.
The flavour text for the temples says it is common for non priests to join as lay members, but the requirements for membership all begin with "must be a full or multi-classed priest (not warrior-priest in the case of ToL). I realise there is nothing to stop anyone saying that their unguilded character (or even a member of a different guild) is an adherent to the tenets of any temple they choose, but in my mind, that’s equivalent to being one of the congregation; lay membership is a deeper commitment.
I would propose a lay membership level for each temple that doesn’t have the requirement to be a priest (temple of life might still say no warriors) and has slightly more lax requirements in exchange for not receiving full access to high level miracles (maybe cap to level 6?) and not receiving all of the bonuses that priests of the temple get (power armour, bonus standing, effective miracle level reductions or effect boosts).
These people are the non-ordained servitors of the temples who dedicate themselves to the cause and without whom the works would not go forward: The field agents, guides and explorers supporting the ToF; the reeves and bailiffs of the ToO and ToJ; the chirgons, nurses, herb gathererers and lay healers of the ToL; the squires and armourers of the ToM…..
With the added bonus that if/when the Druids essentially become the “Temple of Nature”, lay Druids are still catered for and could well fulfill the gap for a non military guild that gives access to scout-oriented training perks.
Also, give artificers reduced cost manufacture skills as well as enchant and consecrate…
I’d like The Church of the Creative Principle (incoroprating Pope Biscuit’s Transhuman Freakshow and Circus Skills and Finishing School for Young Ladies of Quality and Freaks and the Conclave of the Creative principle) to finally be given the recognition it deserves in the rules.
…
It’s possible that we are already given the recognition we deserve :)
EDIT: I’ve reminded myself that I have a half-written proposal for putting us in the player-created groups page. Well done me :)
I’d quite like an alternative scouting guild, ideally of the Identify All The Things variety, as being a Pathfinder and not being combat-orientated is a reet pain at times (i.e. any point where the only thing you can do by your oaths is die horribly).
An interesting more general alternative would be a Mercenaries Guild – kind of a mirror of the Defenders, but very much working to the rules of the Contract, and only killing another Mercenary if they break their Contract first without very good reason.
Assuming this is a query about the composition and interplay of a patrol rather than a general missions one (the answer to which would be “a successful one”)…
It is really, really contextual. What will work for one mission might not work for another, but I’d say that there are some bits that carry through, mostly down to having some specific archetypes (that may or may not be bundled into fewer people).
1. The decision maker – doesn’t have to be the leader, but it helps. The person who keeps things going and gets the job done. If there are more than one of these, ideally they need to be linked into a command structure so as to control different aspects of the patrol.
2. The communicator. Makes sure that everyone knows what the hell is going on, within reason.
3. The diplomat. Soothes ruffled feathers inside and outside the patrol, and stops NPCs going berserk.
4. The nosy bugger. Keeps an eye out for anything odd, does their best to Find Things Out, possibly theorises wildly as appropriate. Needs a healthy dose of paranoia as well.
5. The heart. Not quite the same as the diplomat – looks after people in general, to an extent OOC as well as IC.
On top of that, a good patrol has one key ability – putting aside any differences, pooling resources and getting the job done. It’s not always easy, and whoever ends up in the archetype roles above will in most cases have to put in a lot of work to achieve it, but there’s nothing sweeter than that moment where everyone pulls together (and turns a Pathfinder or Guard into an impossible-to-defeat killing machine for the day).
Being able to listen to each other helps too, but that possibly goes beyond ideal into extremely unlikely :)
I like to scare the party.
Not necessarily to simply hit them incredibly hard or be immune to everything they can throw out – anyone can do that with the right stats – I like playing a role that the party (or the individual in question) sees/hears/finally understands, and you can watch their face drop along with the penny of realisation.
Oh…shit…
The role can be anything – it can be a big bad that is immune to the previously hyper-effective schtick. It can be a young child who inadvertantly drops the final piece of the puzzle into place. It can be a smarmy git who sells the necessary information to save their oily skin. It can be the big bad that points out how temporarily wrong-footed the party have just been. It can be anything in the right circumstances – someone that makes the party realise something.
I also like to be on the receiving end of such an encounter – as playing it straight and following the ‘script’ provides an opportunity for an injection of pace and a frenetic part of the story. Endgame III provided a perfect example, with ‘Alessandra’ tied up and ‘Balance’ making grabs for people. Having stabbed up ‘Balance’, then been called over to ‘Alessandra’ only to find Balance’s wry smile looking back at me, provided a penny drop moment that must have made my face an absolute picture. Marvellous…
My favourite monster to play is the damsel in distress. Mostly because I love pretendning to be small and weak and scared and helpless. Also, I really do enjoy crying and screaming as a monster :)
My favourite monsters to encounter are the ones that can be swayed with sufficiently good roleplay, whether thats making a fight into a peaceful negotiation or rousing a peaceful scene into a fight. I just love changing things through interaction!
I think for me, I like to play a good mix of heavy roleplay roles and well stated fighters. The thing I love to play the most though is someone important in the final encounter. I like seeing the look on the party’s face as they face you, knowing that you’re that SOB (or one of them) they’ve been hunting for the whole day and now they can finally finish you off.
As for IC encounters, I’ll always have a soft spot for the IC villages that get set up/ roles where the individual monsters create their ‘character.’ It’s always interesting to see what they come up with and makes for some…interesting conversation depending on who you’re interacting with.
Favourite monster to play – one with a decent brief. Doesn’t matter if that’s the big bad or the three hit respawning goblin, helps with playing the role, making it a character in its own right and knowing why you’re interacting with the party and the other monsters.
To encounter – one with a decent brief for the reasons as above from an interacting pov with them as the party.
Big, dramatic, pendulous roles are all very nice, but most of the time? I just want to shout insults at people in a silly voice. Whether that’s from the usual goblins or something else entirely (dare I mention ‘Happy happy hug time’…), there’s a lot of fun to be had with the party, and although you’re going to get horribly squished without even being effective, that’s generally what you’re there for.
I don’t think there’s a particular type of monster I like to face, more an attitude. A monster who knows they’re there to give the party a good, enjoyable fight, and acts on it. One who knocks down half the party and then has a villainous gloat while the survivors heroically regroup, or goes in for the dramatic coup-de-grace that has everyone barrelling in for an equally dramatic block. Those sorts of encounters are the ones that get remembered, and it’s for a good reason.
I like to encounter monsters which make you look at your character and have no idea how to react, because these encounters are where you find out things about your character even you didn’t know. (see Happy Hug Time)
For what kind of monster I want to be is someone with more than just a kill instinct, be it mercenaries who would like to still be alive, or a butler who’s secretly a daemonologist.
My favourite to play would have to be something along the lines of Overly friendly sprites who enjoy playing games, or amusing characters to roleplay as without needing to fight too much.
As for encountering things, either anything that means I have to run around like a maniac for a few minutes trying to kill, or something my character finds incredibly irritating but I find wonderfully amusing OOC. It’s interesting trying to stop myself laughing because my character’s really pissed off with some annoying goblins.
I enjoy monster roles where I have a reason to be doing whatever it is I’m doing – even if it’s “you’re a zombie, go have fun”. I’m particularly fond of ones where I’m allowed to talk and ham it up, even if I’m not always that good at it. I also quite enjoy getting to do the occasional ‘x in distress’ role, or ones where I have an excuse to run around being an eejit for the fun of it, because they’re at odds with with the sort of person I am.
As for what I like to encounter – monsters that have a reason to exist that isn’t “because the party needs something to kill”, act ‘right’ for what they are and display an appropriate level of intelligence/interaction. I prefer things that can be talked to, but a well-played zombie or similar can be equally fun.
1. Wear wash and wear clothing. If you’re doing it right, you’re going to get wet, muddy, covered in leaf litter, twigs and other associated whatnot. Your kit will need to stand up to it without getting torn or ruined by it.
2. Put on all your kit and jump on the spot. If you jingle, clang, or make an otherwise unnatural noise, find the cause of said noise and attend to it.
3. Work on your fitness. Regardless of the type of scout you play, you’re going to need to be on the move, either when scouting, fighting or fleeing. Stand still and die.
1. Until about rank 20, expect that anything you can do can be done better by someone else in the party. (except rec creature or dodge, but don’t expect the rest of the party to appreciate either of those feats)After that, you might conceivably have specialised enough in something to be useful and parties tend to get smaller making jacks-of-all-trades more useful
2. Usefulness as a scout is only tangentially linked to the things you spend your points on. The exception being the Half-Orc scouts who are built as fighters with backstab. (but then that’s not about being a useful scout that’s about being a horribly efficient skirmish fighter)
3. Unless you’re one of the afore mentioned Half-Orcs or above rank 20, accept that the best thing you can do in a fight might well be stay out of it. The extra cost of healing you might be disproportionate to the support you provide the actual fighters.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as G’Mord with Jean-Claude Van Damme as ‘Him’
Absolutely no prizes for guessing who’d play Smyrna!
Edit
Not at all certain on it, but considering Allison Smith for Aniseed …
For film format, assuming the big action style that LARP is well suited to, the subtleties and slow gradual build up that a lot of the more recent campaigns have used wouldn’t work. You need definable lines and easily spottable good and bad camps, at least until the world/franchise is established. So, plots I reckon would work well:
Again, if you’re doing a film, you want a party of no larger than 6 characters so the viewers can differentiate between them easily. Won’t guess at which ones.
If we were turning it into a Game of Thrones style, so all characters will crop up at some point, erm….
The ones that spring into my head:
I can’t think of any others…
I can see a few plots for a LARP film, but they might work equally well for a TV series:
The Shifters campaign (shameless plug, I know, but the episodic nature would lend itself beautifully to a TV franchise).
The Shire campaign
The Gamesmaster plot (with a few things cut out)
There are also others, and With that in mind, there could be an awful lot of characters who might turn up, but keeping the party size small is a definite yes, so the audience can get to know and love/hate who it is they’re dealing with. Several other characters can show up as support, and the big bad has to be clear, well defined and obvious to everyone (including the party).
I will caveat the following very strongly by saying that in my opinion, the best person to play someone’s character is that character’s player, regardless of who that character is. If I were to assume the role of an unscrupulous casting director, however:
Gerrard: Gerard Butler (seriously, no pun intended).
Watcher: Garret Hedlund
Starke: Justin Whalen
Thyrian: Robert Downey Jr.
Nimbus: John Malkovich
Arctus: Derek Jacobi
Vaexarius: Michael Sheen
Jarreth: Rutger Hauer
Cassandra: Andrea Roth
Drake: Russel Crowe
Styx: Lena Headey
The Gamesmaster: Robert Carlyle
Harlequin: Jennifer Lawrence
Mistral: Kelly Hu
Caled: Joe Manganiello
Keale: Hugh Jackman
Katrin: Gina Carano
Rose: Amanda Seyfried
Eirlys: Natalie Dormer
Brend: Chris Hemsworth
Helyanwe: Idina Menzel
Nab: Brad Pitt
Smyrna: Sophia Myles
Glamoria: Emily Browning
Lamoriel: Milla Jovovich
Skulk: Johnny Depp
Prospera: Kate Beckinsale
Tempest: Helen Mirren
Sun Ju: Chow Yun Fat
Scar: Jason Statham
Chanilsa: Alyson Hannigan
Barel: Gemma Arterton
Archibald: Geoffrey Rush
Lilium: Kate Bosworth
Thalassa: Pauley Perrette
Aniseed: Cobie Smulders
Halamar: Alexander Skarsgård
Film? I prefer TV series in all contexts. To that end:
Trantis – Ian Somerhalder
(I just love the way he does evil. You can’t help but like him and hate him all at once.)
Silvanus – Will Patton
Gerrard – Bruce Willis
(Needs to be able to do that long suffering “you must be kidding me” look and pull off hard man.)
G’Mord – Ron Perlman
Sun Ju – Jackie Chan
(Must be able to combine leet gladiator skillz with the appearance of being totally inept. :P )
Hel – Kate Beckinsale
Zephyra – Zoe McLellan
as far as my characters go…
Keale not actually sure, going to stick with doug’s suggestion of hugh jackman
Caled having looked up Doug’s suggestion, he’s far too muscular – Caled’s only hardass through magical intervention, i still imagine him as a scrawny elf – something with a pre-matrix keanu reeves vibe
Tânlladwyr scrawny elf who was only in his 40s when he died – possibly a bill and ted era keanu reeves…
Trevellyan The padré from M*A*S*H as protrayed by James Nesbitt
Virgil Stephen Amell (although maybe i’ve just been watching Arrow too much recently)
