Sep 16, 2015 12:29 am
Background
Skyrealms of Jorune is set on an alien world populated by many sentient species: humans, mutants and aliens. In the setting, humans discovered the world, which was already populated with native sentients - the "shantha" - and colonized by several other alien sentient species. Humans negotiated as best they could with the shantha, and were granted space to set up their own colonies. The first colonists were scientists, studying the flora and fauna of Jorune, and preparing the way for the other colonists that followed. One problem was food: the native ecosystem did not contain all the nutrients that Earth life requires, and Earth life’s digestive enzymes did not break down Jorune edibles. So every creature from Earth needed to take enzyme and nutrient supplements to be able to digest food and get enough nutrition. Even the flora of Earth had difficulty growing in the alien soil, and scientists worked hard to hybridize and mutate bacteria, fungi, and plants that could thrive on Jorune. Some success with a native tuber called "durlig" (engineered to produce Earth-like nutrients and to promote Earth creatures’ production of digestive enzymes) encouraged brave settlers, and the Earth-native population began to grow with immigration and the frequent import of Earth grain and animal stock. But after a generation, all contact from Earth stopped, and the colonies on Jorune were left to fend for themselves. Desperate to feed themselves, the colonists violated the treaty boundaries, and the shantha retaliated in force, in what is known to a few historians as the human-shantha war. Most human technology and infrastructure was destroyed, along with 95% of the human population. Suddenly, the shantha stopped their attacks, just short of exterminating all human life on Jorune. The few survivors banded together around the few places like the Ardoth colony outpost that had escaped destruction. But as the technology slowly wore out and broke down, man regressed into barbarism, roving tribes of hunter-gatherers descended from the scientists and settlers.
All that happened more than 3500 years ago and is at best a rumor to the few really educated historians in the world. Civilization has struggled back to an early industrial level, aided by occasional finds of ancient human technology. Despite the benefits, few in the modern day care about ancient history; surviving and thriving in the present are of more concern. What is known is that the world is generally hostile to life, and there are few places where people are more safe. People (of the six playable PC races) must regularly eat the root vegetable "durlig" to survive. There are many other sentient species on the planet who do not, but many have their analogous dependencies (members of the ramian race need shirm-eh to avoid psychosis, for example).
The colony sites that were not destroyed by the shantha are the oldest human settlements. One of them is Ardoth: largest city and capitol of Burdoth, the most prosperous and powerful nation on Jorune. Burdoth rose to world prominence fifty years ago, after a cache of intact ancient colonial technology (called "Earth-tec") enabled its military to defeat an invading crugar army from Temauntro and then force opportunistic forces from Dobre to sign accords, over the course of a few years in what is now called the Energy Weapons War. Today, Ardoth is an unusually cosmopolitan city, with members of nearly all sentient races in residence. But Burdoth’s is a classed society: foreigners and residents are born "toth," peasantry with no voting rights. "Drenn" are full citizens, with many additional privileges, including voting, rights of protection and service, as well as some access to Earth-tec. "Kesht" are the nobility. Anyone who has not violated Burdothian law can seek to become Drenn; residency is not a requirement to start the process. This process of seeking to become Drenn is called "tothis;" toth in tothis are called "tauther." Every player character in my game will have his or her own reason for becoming tauther, and all of you are far along in tothis.
* Read more about becoming a Burdothian citizen
----------------
System overview:
Characters in Skyrealms of Jorune have attributes, which are determined randomly or are calculated with a point-buy system. Attributes are modified by which race the player chooses: human, boccord (large humanoids), muadra (small humanoids with the best ability at manipulating "isho"), crugar (big cat people), woffen (wolf people), and bronth (bear people). Each character has an occupation, which are templates (a bit like West End Games' Star Wars RPG) that give sets of skills that are then customized by the player.
Skills:
Most tasks that a character attempts in the game are based on skills. Each skill has a level (which is a descriptor) and a rank (which is a number).
The levels are:
- Unfamiliar (you may have heard of this skill, but you have no real ability in this area)
- Familiar (you will succeed at basic tasks using this skill)
- Experienced (You are better than most people at this task, and get better results when using this skill)
- Seasoned (You are an absolute expert at this skill. You amaze people with the quality of your work in this area)
Most tasks will not require a roll to succeed if you have the skill: given enough time, you will succeed, unless the task is unusually difficult or you have some sort of active opposition. If a roll is not required, the degree of success will be commensurate to your level in the skill. If a roll is required, you roll equal to or less than your skill rank on 1d20 to succeed. A rolled success will also be commensurate with your level. For example: Grake is skilled with the crossbow (5/Familiar). He goes to shoot an arrow with a cord tied to it at a tree across a gorge; he doesn't need to roll, and is able to hit the tree solidly enough that he can pull the cord taut. Moments later, three tarro appear, and begin scrambling down the cord toward the party, screeching. Grake tries to fire at these moving targets, and has to roll. He rolls an 8 and misses. His companion, Ban, is skilled with pistols (15/seasoned). His player rolls, gets a 14. Ban draws his blaster and fires in one smooth motion, vaporizing the third tarro's head with a shot that goes so close past the muzzles of the other two tarro that they think better of attacking and scamper back up the cord to safety.
* Read more about the skill mechanics
* Read about improving skills
Combat
Combat is pretty dangerous: successful hits reduce a target's stamina and impose a wound; enough wounds usually incapacitate a combatant, rather than running out of stamina. Healing is gradual, over weeks of recuperation. Some characters may be able to wield Earth-tec, while others have some ability to manipulate the crystal energy of Jorune itself ("isho") to magic- or psionic-like effects, such as healing, blasting, binding, teleporting...
* Read more about combat and healing
Details of a game on GP:
Character generation will require a lot of assistance from me, so that I don't have to recreate pages and pages of the rulebook. There are seven steps to character generation; the sub-forum on character generation with contain a separate thread for each step of character generation (for instruction and discussion), but each player will have a dedicated thread for creating his/her own character. That's because one thread would be quickly overwhelmed with noise from other players. This way, each player can subscribe to his/her own character's creation thread and get notifications just for his/her updates. But at the same time, players can read through the other threads, to get a sense of what each player is creating.
Note that, if you don't want to make your own character for whatever reason, let the GM (me) know in your character creation thread, and I can provide help and/or a pre-generated character for you to play.
* Step-by-step instructions for generating your character
Posting frequency
Once we get started with the game, I expect to post once a day. I may post more often only if all the players post within that same day. Rolls will be done with the forum post mechanism: write your post, then click "Advanced" to show the "Add Roll" option. Click "Add roll," put in the name of the check your character is performing (for example "Shoot the tarro"), and then enter 1d20 in the roll field. Click "post" when you're ready; the final post will contain your text and the results of the roll.
I will ask each player for default instructions/actions his/her character will take if they are unable to post on a given day. Inactive players' characters will be run as NPCs, unless there are other players agitating to join. If there are others waiting to join, I will give completely inactive players grace of at least a week of continuous inactivity before I might let someone else take their place.
Skyrealms of Jorune is set on an alien world populated by many sentient species: humans, mutants and aliens. In the setting, humans discovered the world, which was already populated with native sentients - the "shantha" - and colonized by several other alien sentient species. Humans negotiated as best they could with the shantha, and were granted space to set up their own colonies. The first colonists were scientists, studying the flora and fauna of Jorune, and preparing the way for the other colonists that followed. One problem was food: the native ecosystem did not contain all the nutrients that Earth life requires, and Earth life’s digestive enzymes did not break down Jorune edibles. So every creature from Earth needed to take enzyme and nutrient supplements to be able to digest food and get enough nutrition. Even the flora of Earth had difficulty growing in the alien soil, and scientists worked hard to hybridize and mutate bacteria, fungi, and plants that could thrive on Jorune. Some success with a native tuber called "durlig" (engineered to produce Earth-like nutrients and to promote Earth creatures’ production of digestive enzymes) encouraged brave settlers, and the Earth-native population began to grow with immigration and the frequent import of Earth grain and animal stock. But after a generation, all contact from Earth stopped, and the colonies on Jorune were left to fend for themselves. Desperate to feed themselves, the colonists violated the treaty boundaries, and the shantha retaliated in force, in what is known to a few historians as the human-shantha war. Most human technology and infrastructure was destroyed, along with 95% of the human population. Suddenly, the shantha stopped their attacks, just short of exterminating all human life on Jorune. The few survivors banded together around the few places like the Ardoth colony outpost that had escaped destruction. But as the technology slowly wore out and broke down, man regressed into barbarism, roving tribes of hunter-gatherers descended from the scientists and settlers.
All that happened more than 3500 years ago and is at best a rumor to the few really educated historians in the world. Civilization has struggled back to an early industrial level, aided by occasional finds of ancient human technology. Despite the benefits, few in the modern day care about ancient history; surviving and thriving in the present are of more concern. What is known is that the world is generally hostile to life, and there are few places where people are more safe. People (of the six playable PC races) must regularly eat the root vegetable "durlig" to survive. There are many other sentient species on the planet who do not, but many have their analogous dependencies (members of the ramian race need shirm-eh to avoid psychosis, for example).
The colony sites that were not destroyed by the shantha are the oldest human settlements. One of them is Ardoth: largest city and capitol of Burdoth, the most prosperous and powerful nation on Jorune. Burdoth rose to world prominence fifty years ago, after a cache of intact ancient colonial technology (called "Earth-tec") enabled its military to defeat an invading crugar army from Temauntro and then force opportunistic forces from Dobre to sign accords, over the course of a few years in what is now called the Energy Weapons War. Today, Ardoth is an unusually cosmopolitan city, with members of nearly all sentient races in residence. But Burdoth’s is a classed society: foreigners and residents are born "toth," peasantry with no voting rights. "Drenn" are full citizens, with many additional privileges, including voting, rights of protection and service, as well as some access to Earth-tec. "Kesht" are the nobility. Anyone who has not violated Burdothian law can seek to become Drenn; residency is not a requirement to start the process. This process of seeking to become Drenn is called "tothis;" toth in tothis are called "tauther." Every player character in my game will have his or her own reason for becoming tauther, and all of you are far along in tothis.
* Read more about becoming a Burdothian citizen
----------------
System overview:
Characters in Skyrealms of Jorune have attributes, which are determined randomly or are calculated with a point-buy system. Attributes are modified by which race the player chooses: human, boccord (large humanoids), muadra (small humanoids with the best ability at manipulating "isho"), crugar (big cat people), woffen (wolf people), and bronth (bear people). Each character has an occupation, which are templates (a bit like West End Games' Star Wars RPG) that give sets of skills that are then customized by the player.
Skills:
Most tasks that a character attempts in the game are based on skills. Each skill has a level (which is a descriptor) and a rank (which is a number).
The levels are:
- Unfamiliar (you may have heard of this skill, but you have no real ability in this area)
- Familiar (you will succeed at basic tasks using this skill)
- Experienced (You are better than most people at this task, and get better results when using this skill)
- Seasoned (You are an absolute expert at this skill. You amaze people with the quality of your work in this area)
Most tasks will not require a roll to succeed if you have the skill: given enough time, you will succeed, unless the task is unusually difficult or you have some sort of active opposition. If a roll is not required, the degree of success will be commensurate to your level in the skill. If a roll is required, you roll equal to or less than your skill rank on 1d20 to succeed. A rolled success will also be commensurate with your level. For example: Grake is skilled with the crossbow (5/Familiar). He goes to shoot an arrow with a cord tied to it at a tree across a gorge; he doesn't need to roll, and is able to hit the tree solidly enough that he can pull the cord taut. Moments later, three tarro appear, and begin scrambling down the cord toward the party, screeching. Grake tries to fire at these moving targets, and has to roll. He rolls an 8 and misses. His companion, Ban, is skilled with pistols (15/seasoned). His player rolls, gets a 14. Ban draws his blaster and fires in one smooth motion, vaporizing the third tarro's head with a shot that goes so close past the muzzles of the other two tarro that they think better of attacking and scamper back up the cord to safety.
* Read more about the skill mechanics
* Read about improving skills
Combat
Combat is pretty dangerous: successful hits reduce a target's stamina and impose a wound; enough wounds usually incapacitate a combatant, rather than running out of stamina. Healing is gradual, over weeks of recuperation. Some characters may be able to wield Earth-tec, while others have some ability to manipulate the crystal energy of Jorune itself ("isho") to magic- or psionic-like effects, such as healing, blasting, binding, teleporting...
* Read more about combat and healing
Details of a game on GP:
Character generation will require a lot of assistance from me, so that I don't have to recreate pages and pages of the rulebook. There are seven steps to character generation; the sub-forum on character generation with contain a separate thread for each step of character generation (for instruction and discussion), but each player will have a dedicated thread for creating his/her own character. That's because one thread would be quickly overwhelmed with noise from other players. This way, each player can subscribe to his/her own character's creation thread and get notifications just for his/her updates. But at the same time, players can read through the other threads, to get a sense of what each player is creating.
Note that, if you don't want to make your own character for whatever reason, let the GM (me) know in your character creation thread, and I can provide help and/or a pre-generated character for you to play.
* Step-by-step instructions for generating your character
Posting frequency
Once we get started with the game, I expect to post once a day. I may post more often only if all the players post within that same day. Rolls will be done with the forum post mechanism: write your post, then click "Advanced" to show the "Add Roll" option. Click "Add roll," put in the name of the check your character is performing (for example "Shoot the tarro"), and then enter 1d20 in the roll field. Click "post" when you're ready; the final post will contain your text and the results of the roll.
I will ask each player for default instructions/actions his/her character will take if they are unable to post on a given day. Inactive players' characters will be run as NPCs, unless there are other players agitating to join. If there are others waiting to join, I will give completely inactive players grace of at least a week of continuous inactivity before I might let someone else take their place.