Heroes are made, not born!

In this game, you're going to take on the role of a bunch of peasants, pushed to the brink of their endurance by the dark, mysterious threats upending their peaceful and bucolic life. You will face horrors no man should have to see but, if any of your survive, maybe you'll have the opportunity to become more than peasants. Maybe you'll learn to unlock the powers of the cosmos; traffick with beings from beyond, and uncover riches beyond your wildest dreams.

And maybe you won't be happy that you did.

The game is going to start with running you through Sailors on the Starless Sea, and if people are still keen to keep going after the first adventure, I'll probably be relying heavily on published modules. If you've played them all before, this might not be the game for you.

What are the rules then?

1. I am always right.
2. Don't be a dick.

Posting etiquette

1. Make at least one post every 48 hours. If you know you're going to be unavailable for longer than this, let us know. In the event of a long absence, you'd be asked to delegate your character(s) to me or another player.
2. In IC threads, your post should describe your character's actions and dialogue. Do not describe how other characters not the world reacts. That's the job of me and the other players. Clear descriptions of what you're trying to do are more important than fancy prose. And don't include internal monologues or thoughts. If you want us to know what your character is thinking, show us through their actions. Or, just talk to the other characters and tell them.
3. Dice rolls and OOC comments should be in orange.

The actual game rules

If you know the rules of Dungeon Crawl Classics, then you're all set, but knowledge of the rules is not required to play. The sedate pace of Play by Post means that we'll have plenty of time to explain things as we go. If you've never played DCC before, nor read the rules, there's a couple of things you'd need to know up front.

The Central Mechanic

The basic mechanic of the game should be familiar to players of DnD and similar games. When you try to do something that may succeed or fail, you'll roll a dice and add an ability modifier. If you hit a target number, you succeed. If not, you fail.

If it's a task that your character is trained in; or something anyone could accomplish without training, the dice you roll is a d20. If it's a task you're not trained in, you roll a d10.

There is no list of skills to reference. I will decide whether you're trained based on your character and the action you're describing, and will tell you what to roll. Training should be something that happened in the game or something implied by your character's occupation.

If you disagree, and think there's a really good reason why a cobbler would be experienced in following tracks through a forest, explain why, and I will either accept or reject your explanation. The explanation must be one sentence in length, and my decision will be final. PbP games go slow enough as it is without a debate on the distribution of tasks in a fantasy medieval economy.

Luck

Luck is not just a matter of coincidences and random chance. Luck is a real thing, influenced by the gods, and by forces beyond human ken. Everyone is born with some luck, and some have more than others.

If you roll a dice, and the number does not look high enough to you, you can burn luck to increase it. You can burn up to as many points Luck points as you have. So, if you roll a 12 for a saving throw to avoid falling to your death, you can declare you're burning 4 luck points to make it a 16 instead. But now your luck score is 4 points lower.

But, be warned. For most characters, Luck does not come back without divine intervention. It's a lifetime resource - save it for the important rolls!

And that's about all that's needed to get started!
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:09, Sat 14 Aug 2021.