General Introduction

The information provided below is intended to provide some general information about the game. For more detailed information you will have to look further on in the documentation. What you will find here is many of the differences between common RPG's and this game. Some basic knowledge of RPG's is assumed in this document. This game ruleset will hope to address many of the issues that people see with most of the common RPG's available today. We hope it will prove to be a fun and enjoyable game.

Species: much like in the real world the game will be separated into different species. Many veteran RPG players may be confused by this terminology since species is usually referred to as race. I make this distinction for the following reasons...

• Each species is likely to have distinctive groups within that species... For example Elves can consist of grey elves, wood elves, high elves, etc.

• Saying that elves and humans are different races implies that they are of the same species which I think most of us will agree is not true.

• Adding a species/race gives more variety to the game and makes the player feel that the game has more depth.

Race: Again unfortunately much to the confusion of veteran players race may not be what you expect... this is in fact a subset of common species. For example there may be multiple races found within the species "halfling" some may be taller than others and some may be fatter etc... Each race can have its own history and benefits/handicaps.

Trade: Each character upon creation must choose a primary trade that they wish to pursue. These trades are similar to very general classes found in traditional RPG's. However choosing a primary class does not mean that you will necessarily not be able to work on other trades as well. It does mean however that you will never be able to be the best in any other trade and in some cases may not use other trades at all. Each trade breaks down into less general trades by the means of schools and from there even more specific a user may choose a specialization.

• Merchant (cook, clothing maker, smith, etc... )

• Fighter (fighter, paladin, warlord, etc... )

• High Order Magic (conjurer, evoker, illusionist, etc... )

• Low Order Magic (priest, witch doctor, druid,etc... )

Alignment: This can be either good, evil, or neutral. This is chosen by the user at charecter creation time and contributes to faction. Some Species/races may not have all choices available.

Karma: Is a measure of how you play the game. When you do certain things you get negative karma hits and for others you get a positive hit. One example may be killing a mob which is a much lower level then you... this would produce a negative karma hit. Your karma is visable to other players so it is a means for them to tell what kind of person you are. It is also used by the game as a luck roll. The logic behind this is that much like in life what you put out to the world often comes back at you.

Languages: There will be quite a few languages out there in the game and they will be quite a bit more important than they are in other games. They will be used in quests and when you go to a town the merchants and such will only speak their native tongue (unless its a mixed city then common is spoken), certain spells will also need languages to read much of the research. This makes languages vastly more important than other games have in the past. A player will also be limited in the number of languages they can learn so they may not simply learn all of them. This limit will be based on a players intelligence.

Game Time: Game time refers to the time that a character thinks it is. Game time is accelerated to be quite a bit faster than real time. Meaning that a number of game days will pass in any given real day. This is done so that users who are only able to play during certain times of the day (aka when you get out of work) get a more varied game.

Divine Intervention: Divine intervention is when the gods look down upon what is happening in the mortal world and decide to interact with the mortals. This can take many forms, for example a paladin with extremely good karma may have the goods look kindly on him after a battle and give him a complete resurrection. On the other extreme the gods may see a person of extremely bad faction and smote them on the spot. Some instances of divine intervention which are planned are.

• Periodic granting of special powers/items to the player with the best karma on the server.

• Periodic granting of evil abilities for the player with the worst karma on the server

• Roll for complete resurrection (only with extremely high karma and a low chance less then 1%) after battle

• Chance of being smote during battle by the gods (only with extremely low karma also with low chance)

There are many other examples in which divine intervention could be used however it must follow the same guidelines: it can only happen in extreme rare cases, and only under extreme circumstances (worst/best karma)