I'm in the Iron DM competition and my round starts tomorrow (9 AM local time Tuesday through 9am local time Thursday). I'm also DMing a face-to-face game on Wednesday night. So. I'd hoped to get my stuff together for the first IC post tonight, but I have to turn in early this evening. Sorry for the delay folks. Wish me luck!
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Character Development
For all PCs (alternates too)
While I'm busy with things, I have some character development Challenges for you all to do. Completing a Challenge is like completing a Minor Quest. However, the more Challenges you complete, the more XP each is worth. If you do 1 Challenge it's worth 100 XP, if you do two Challenges you'll get 250, if you do all 3 Challenges, you'll get 450. Astute readers will note that's nearly half of your level in XP for doing some character development.
Cursory completion (just a sketchy paragraph or two) will get full XP, but exceptional work that shows effort and care will get bonus XP.
The Challenges
Each challenge is intended to give me insight into your character, but also to build a group of NPCs (friends and foes), places and plots your characters will interact with and are interested in.
If you're stumped, or work better with more concrete settings just shoot me a PM with a couple questions that would help you get started. I'm working on all sorts of different bits of the setting, so if you need me to focus on a particular area, just tell me
IN PMs. We're gonna try to keep mystery going for at least a little bit.
Write on the following (and PM to me):
Challenge I: A Friend
Challenge II: An Enemy
Challenge III: An Organization
Remember that the setting is Egyptian-like. There is a strong pharaoh who has dragons at his command (dragons as far as you all know are very dangerous, but not known to be intelligent, ornery and powerful, yes, powerbrokers, not so much). The Pharaoh is more General than Diplomat and leaves running the Kingdom to trusted officials. They are more or less competent and more or less corrupt.
To complete the Challenges, everyone (even folks new to the area) will need to create at least a couple people that you know or know of in Bakara. Bakara is a large, wealthy city, situated on the southern corner of the Great River's delta. Bakara was the capital before the Pharaoh, Long May He Reign, moved the seat of power to Yut Ka (apparently moving the capitol is some sort of Pharaonic compulsion). There is a lot of wealth in Bakara, new and old, a lot of business, a lot of culture, a lot of decline.
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Just so folks know, this is not a typical start to a PbP game, generally DMs are ready to go with adventures and settings and such, ask for characters, pick the players and go.
Since this was a 'hey, come play' because I wanted to give some new folks who weren't getting into games a chance to play and hadn't really planned a new campaign, it's a little off-the-cuff.
Thanks for your patience.