An explanation by the Game Master (the person who organizes the story and facilitates the resolution of actions)…
In attempting to publish adventures for profit, its important to know that the adventures can work for all members of the gaming community. Females make up a large portion of that, and often reflect different perspectives in their priorities, the details they notice, and options they take in problem solving. I want to make sure I have provided an appropriate level of access to these in my adventures, so that there are options for everyone. The very natures of much of roleplaying is the confrontation and violent eradication of immediate threat – monsters, aliens, automata and the like – but the nuances in approaching these confrontations are varied. This is one way of trying to gain insight into them and accommodating them in play.
This is not the experience of a full time game group. This is a one time event, and not about the character creation process or tailored characters being built from scratch and going through the process of learning to trust each other. It’s about your thought process in guiding a group through perils, and what options you see in resolving conflict and whether or not the adventure can accommodate that.
This is a one time, 7 hour event of extended gaming. It is not a new game campaign/long standing group. Prior to the game day, you will be expected to spend an hour or two (depending on how fast you read) looking over and choosing characters and familiarizing yourself with the plot. You will be expected to provide some feedback outside the game day experience. A survey will be provided for you, to fill out within a week of the end of the game day. It may take up to an hour of your time to complete this survey. On game day, the expected game time experience is: Half hour introductions; 3 hours of gaming; a half hour break to get food and drink; and run another 3 hours or to completion of the story. All gaming supplies – character sheet, paper, pencil, and dice – will be provided to you. Coffee, tea, food and drink will be provided. You are not necessarily expected to complete the adventure, but it is designed so that it can be completed with an average amount of good problem solving, the right choices, and productive use of time.
DO NOT BE LATE. Be early if you want, but being late holds up everyone else who may have promised others they would be home at a specific time. Its a large time commitment in peoples busy lives, please respect that and honor it. If you are running late, please let the group know ahead of time so we can start without you. If you don’t think you are going to make it ahead of time, please let the Game Master know so we can find an alternate.
You will have access to 6 characters that are pre-made to choose from – you will not be expected to go through a detailed character creation process. Players will choose from them on a first come, first served basis. All details will be provided, including some behavior quirks that may affect how they see the world and roleplaying them. The characters will be tailored to solve the issues at hand – a written adventure that clearly states the plot as well as mission goals and objectives. The player’s characters will assume to have the full trust of each other due to a shared background. The only stipulation on play is to avoid character-on-character violence. Regardless of good, evil, selfish, principled, or what exact ethos you wish to adopt and have fun with, the player’s characters are bound together in trust and shared experience – it is them against the world. Collaboration, if only with each other, will help move the plot forward faster than competition, strife, and inter-group struggle for the sake of roleplaying.
The Game Master has made power and ability selections for the characters to minimize confusion and maximize game efficiency. I am sorry if it gives some players a more limited experience than they are used to, but the uptake of information and learning curve needs to be as fast and short as possible on all characters to accommodate those less knowledgeable.
GROUP CONCEPT: The characters have all come together as a mercenary band in a place called the Duchy of Dunstrand in an area of the world known as The Steel Realms. Their shared outlooks and experiences have brought them together, all women, in an attempt to enhance their survivability in a fantasy setting mostly male dominated and filled with perils of poverty, disease, war, and even horrific monsters in some places. Together, for hire, they support and protect each other while seeking glory, profit, and a way to retire. To quote 50 Cent – “get rich or die trying”.
In any group, there is some who revel in it as theater, and some who find it awkward and express little at all. Regardless, the main concern of a roleplaying game is using the characters – strengths and weaknesses alike – to have fun solving problems and accomplishing goals in some context other than the players everyday life. So have fun to the limits of what you are comfortable with. Some of the point of an all women group is to allow you more freedom to express yourself as you want without fear of no one understanding you. The players are there to help tell the story a Game Master has made in an interactive way. The Game Master is there to support the players in testing out ideas, expressing themselves, and helping you explore ways of thinking and acting that allow you to experiment in a ‘sandbox’ without truly hurting others. An experienced Game Master has probably seen and heard just about every crude, crass, and vulgar thing you can imagine – from male and female perspective alike. There are no judgments… this is a roleplaying game, not a morality test. Have fun!
You may have heard a lot about roleplaying, some true, some not so much, but most of it – especially the weird stuff – is probably true. There are some folk who use it to truly “fly their freak flag”. If you find you really enjoy it and want to press forward with some new experiences, the Game Master can recommend some communities to help you, but let’s also keep this session fairly tame and productive – it does have a business goal behind it.
What we will be using is a modified version of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition game, modified by a small subset of a larger “home brew” (where someone has chosen to modify a base rules set for use at home in a specific way) set of rules called the “Incarna Essential D20 System Rules”. There is less dice rolling; it emphasizes an average result by default. Incarna rules use a scaled outcome based on the quality of success instead of the randomness inherent in the Dungeons and Dragons experience. At the high end of this outcome is a level of success that is inherently slightly more lethal to targets of attack than the normal Dungeons and Dragons result. The difference can be expressed as follows: In Dungeons and Dragons, you may attack (accomplished by rolling a 20 sided dice and checking the result against the target’s Armor Class) a target with your long sword (which you would normally roll an 8 sided dice for, generating a result of 1-8 damage). Say the target is wearing armor and had a good dexterity, making them Armor Class 13. You roll 19 (greater than the Armor Class), making it a success. You roll a D8 (8 sided dice) and it comes up a 2. This is the amount of damage that is subtracted from the target’s Hit Points (how much damage they can take before dying). Under Incarna rules, a 19 is 5 or more than what you needed to hit (a 13), so it is called a ‘major’ success instead of a simple yes/no result. That means you do 8 damage – maximum damage instead of average (4 damage – half of a 1-8 range), no rolling dice. A critical result (a natural “20” on rolling a 20 sided die) in Dungeons and Dragons means you roll the damage dice twice. Using the Incarna rules, it does double the maximum amount. In this case, 16 damage automatically. All of these values (Hit Points, Armor Class, damage) will be noted on your character sheet. The basics will be gone over in the first few minutes.