A game where the rules are made up and the points don't matter
It is an era of darkness in the world of Mundus. Petty kings and queens rule great city-states. Sorcerers and Monstrous beings stalk the wilderness. YOU are a brave company of sellswords- mercenaries who work for coin and hold little allegiance to anyone who bounces a check. You take on the role of one of these skilled adventurers wandering with your companions through a somewhat generic fantasy world filled with tropes treasures and riches for the taking-if you don't die along the way. You will encounter kings who hold a grudge and may or may not resemble David Bowie in both mannerism and speech. Drunken clergy. Monsters that are totally not derivative of certain Intellectual Properties. Toll trolls. Screaming things. Extra-planar butlers. Dungeons that may or may not be sentient and clinically depressed. You will uncover ancient artifacts that do crazy shit but does not do game breaking crazy shit. It's all pretty open-ended at this point except for a few things I'll go ahead and add below right now because my lunch break has been extended by three hours.
Welcome to Mercenaries, the bastard spawn of this monstrosity I foolishly thought I could manage years ago. This game will be more spontaneous, a little sillier and hopefully more fun for all parties involved. I've nerfed all that number crunchy shit to focus on story and player interaction. It's all tongue-in-cheek and characters should reflect that. Pretend your a fantasy character that truly believes that what they are doing is incredibly important. Characters will probably die, and the whole point of the game is to build a slowly evolving lore together while wrecking havoc through the game world and having fun. Your characters will be limited only in that: They all must belong to the same company of mercenaries and they must be limited to the abilities on their character sheet. Yes, there are stats, but only four and I am only using a d6 to determine outcome. This is simply to avoid any in-game fuckery that might arise and make sure nobody goes god-tier power for no reason.
"Yes and..." Roleplay will primarily consist of adventuring through the game world searching for adventures-which I will provide as the GM. Players are encouraged to take an active part in the world as it develops in the spirit of improvisation. So your character knows about a wizard lurking in that forest? Let's go loot his shit. Your character suddenly remembers their cousin lives in this village and owes him a considerable amount of coin? Let's go loot his shit. As the game progresses, I will post seasonal or situational updates. Seasons are how time will progress in this game. (Summer,Spring,Autumn,Winter) with three months in-game time passing. In between seasons, we'll take stock of the companies accomplishments, treasure, coin, and advance the characters in power. Situational updates will be pre-adventure planning and explanations or whenever I think shit has gone horribly off track.
The World Mundus is a world described in one DMs notebook as "Not really worth the graph paper it is printed on-". Remarked one player: "It's a fucking kitchen sink man". This may be true, but for a few small corrections, and also screw you Alan, your favorite system is GURPS. Orcs are not real. Never were, except in folk tales invented to make naughty children shit their breeches, clean themselves up and go to bed without a luke-warm bowl of grool. Humans are pretty much the only creature left after some horrible deep-lore ancient war stuff going on. Elves have shiny towers in the distance but only if it suits the current narrative arc. Look, the Dwarves have all dug too deep and I never liked hobbits halflings all that much. So for this stories purpose, I'll only be accepting human characters. (for now) Also, they will probably die pretty quick so don't fuss about with it too much.
On Magic: Magic is derived from extra-planar beings that are usually so pissed off at being bothered that they want to kill, harm or in some other way cause serious mental or physical anguish to who ever dared to summon them. Now don't get me wrong, certain safe spells have been known to work without something truly horrible going wrong. Mage Hand is probably a safe bet. I wouldn't try a fireball in close-quarters though. Spellcasters may only have one spell ready at any given time, per level. A list of spells will be provided to spellcasters.
On Characters & Playing the Game as a Company of Mercenaries:
Whenever a player or non-player character action is not certain, a die or die rolls will determine the result which is then interpreted by me in game terms.
1 critical failure. Depending on the circumstance you lost a limb or exploded the entire plane of existence.
2 Failure. You fucked up.
3 Minor Success. Probably didn't work out how you planned.
4 Success. It worked out.
5 Major Success. Nothing bad happened at least.
6 Overshoot. It worked out with unseen consequences including but not limited too: losing a limb or exploding the entire plane of existence.
I'm using a very basic version of a d6 roleplay system. Each stat will add either a (+) or a (-) to any given roll. Which stat is applied is chosen by me, the GM. With one caveat, critical failures (1) and critical hits (6) only occur naturally. If a modifier would equal either a 1 or a 6, the roll will be considered a Failure or a Major Success. I will be using the guilds own dice thingy.
Chuck the Intern, Pacifier of Chickens wants to attempt to pacify a particularly Large Rooster to add to his growing army of attack chickens. The GM decides this Large Rooster ain't having that and calls for an opposed PHYSICAL check. Chuck is pretty strong with a +2 modifier to his roll. (1d6+2) die roll: (nat 6) critical success. Chuck is now the proud owner of a large rooster, and names him Commander Foghorn. Commander Foghorn is a bit of a despot with ambitions of power and will attempt a chicken coup in the near future. (See what I did there?)
On Building a Character: Hey Congrats for making it this far. I usually just skim all that shit above. I guess you're still interested in joining the game? If so, read on, fill out a character application and submit it in this thread to get in the game.
Name:Pick a name that reflects the fantasy flavor of the game please. Age:Does this really need an explanation? Class: See the subsection below. Stats: A brief explanation on each stat. An explanation on distributing points can be found below. PHYSICAL- Physical or endurance checks. (Swinging a sword, shooting a bow, not dying of frostbite or drowning) MENTAL- Intellectual, willful or psychological checks. (reading an ancient language. Resisting an extraplanar beings mind attack) ARCANE- All those tricky magical checks. (casting a spell. Understanding a sigil. Travelling through time?) LUCK- Any check that has a random element including treasure found, random player fixations like suddenly wanting to find a specific ingredient for some obscure spell used by the monster on page 43 of Fiend Folio II. Spells Known: Leave blank to start. Weapon: Your characters weapon of choice. Keep it simple to start. Inventory: Leave blank to start. Catchphrase: Doesn't have to be a catchphrase. Just something about your character to give us an idea of what they are like.
Starting classes (We might add more later, depending on how much of a shit show this is.) Fighter-Fights and defends stuff. Rogue-Sneaks and steals stuff. Ranger-Shoots and tracks stuff. Wizard-Destroys stuff. Priest-Heals stuff. Commoner-I would DEFINITELY put everything into the LUCK stat.
For starting characters, assign each stat a plus (+) or a minus (-). For each (+) another stat must be assigned a (-). For each plus(+) in a stat, that character will add a +1 to the roll. Each adventure a character survives will receive an addition +1 to a stat. Some in game events or effects might add permanent or temporary (-) to a stat. For clarity: To start, each stat will have one plus(+) or minus(-) assigned each stat.
Every company needs someone in charge. Here are a few notes on what that means for this game.
Commanders are running the show. They dispense company treasure, pay and make appointments. Need a master at arms to train some recruits? You better pick them. Need a chef? Up to you boss. Commanders also have the final say on where the company will head next and which adventures or bounties to chase. The GM is mostly off-hands with this aspect of the game.
Commanders can be ousted or overthrown. If a company decides they don't want to continue to follow a commander, they can get rid of him or her. How they do this is up to the other players characters, but also up to the other players. I'm not encouraging sedition by any means, but I think it well and proper to keep commanders in check.
Commanders need to be more committed to the game than other players. Regular PMing between players is encouraged. The Commander will be in close contact with the GM with ideas about gameplay, narrative and any other clever shit they can come up with.
The first player to submit an acceptable sheet with a hider at the bottom containing the answer to these questions will be the first company commander: 1. What is the name of the Company you have founded, currently? 2. What does your banner or crest look like? 3. Describe in three or less sentences what your last mission was and how it went. 4.What is the standing in these lands of your company? Choose One: Honourable, Dishourable, Outlaws 5. Where is your company physically located, currently? Choose One: Camped in some Woods, camped near the Sea, camped in an abandoned Fortress. 6. According to the game lore, Where does magic come from in this world?
@Dragonfly 9 Hola dragonfly! We'll be working out character personalities and backgrounds through exposition as we go, so a rough sketch outline of an archetype is perfect. Let's see if we get some more interest gathered.
Here she is. This CS is made under the assumption that PHYSICAL also includes dexteriy roguey things and also that Spain is included in European fantasy which it rarely is for some reason.
Name: Aya "O'kaya" Olvera Age:22 Class: Rogue Stats: PHYSICAL- +1 MENTAL- -1 ARCANE- -1 LUCK- +1 Spells Known: Leave blank to start. Weapon: Long dagger, throwing knives, charming good looks. Inventory: Leave blank to start. Catchphrase: "Okayokayokay..."
"Aya O'kaya, professional street sweeper, feet sweeper offer and swiper of loot, at your service! How may I be of service?"
"Magic! That ain't real magic. That's just wizard shit! Real magic is all about misdirection and sleight of hand. Watch, pick a card, any card...no, not that one. Any card but that one. Really just try to avoid any card that my thumb isn't touching and we're golden."
Looking good so far...Waiting on a response from that paladin guy. Pending that and SOMEONE CLAIMING THE GLORIOUS ROLE OF COMMANDER there will be an IC post forthcoming. Meanwhile, give that first post a good thorough read.
Name:Victor Talomyr Age:24 Class: Ranger Stats: A brief explanation on each stat. An explanation on distributing points can be found below. PHYSICAL: +1 MENTAL: +1 ARCANE: -1 LUCK: -1 Spells Known: Weapon: Shortbow with full quiver, dagger. Inventory: Catchphrase: "If they're close enough to take as swing at me, one of you lot ain't doing your job!"
@Polybius, as I said in PMs, my joining still depends on whether I am accepted to another RP I applied for or if an RP I am running picks up the pace...
@Letter Bee If you roll a character and post to this thread before the IC link is up you can start with us at the beginning, otherwise I'll put you on a list!
I will post an IC link tomorrow (Eastern Standard) afternoon with a few extra rules to read if you guys haven't figured out the instructions about how to apply as commander posted in the first post of this thread. Honestly I would have thought someone would have jumped on that shit immediately. Weird.
Anyone else that wants to hop in from this point will go on a waiting list. On that note, I would advise any mercenary group to find some decent magic users, Break the fourth wall and send a few PMs if need be. After all, mercenary companies need to fill the ranks every once in a while.
