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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Someone" data-source="post: 1571726" data-attributes="member: 5656">I have to apologize in advance for my brutal beating of the english language. But as promised, here´s the brief introduction:This is a strange world under strange stars. In the cosmopolitan port of Tangrabah, caravans meet merchant ships from lands scattered all over the infinite sea; rogues, swordmen, misterious sorcerers, sagely wizards and weird dervishes look here their opportunity to challenge waves and unexplored lands looking for gold, wisdom and power. The infinite seaWhat in other settings are planes and demiplanes, here are islands, ranging from a mere rock raised several inches over the waves to full sized continents, without forgetting sunken realms, treacherous coral reefs and all the conventions of the genre. The only transitive plane that joins them is the infinite sea. It´s easy to enter the plane: one just have to sail (or fly, or swim, or whatnot) beyond sight of the land. And now, only an experienced sailor can bring you back.The sea is unlike any other. Turn 180º is not guaranteed to bring you where you were before, the orientation being a thing of more gut feeling and experience than charts and maths. Maps are limitedly useful, and most look like more a painting that something designed as a tool. Stars change every night. Of course, certain routes are easier than others, being that directly related to how often is sailed. Well travelled routes are more “stable” in lenght and tend to be less dangerous. Ships adventuring for new commercial routes more often that not do not arrive where they aimed, but almost always arrive at something if they survive the dangers of the sea; hunger and thirst, sea monsters, storms, and madness.This affects rules in several ways. Teleport and greater teleport can´t allow you to leave your island: you need Plane Shift (Island Shift) to do that (the focus being a handful of earth from the island you want to go, a handful of earth that you personally must have taken). Likewise, spells and powers that don´t extend over planes don´t leave the sea or work from island to island. The Astral, ethereal, inner, outer and shadow planes do not exist, though spells related to them still work (with the only exception of shadow walk) Teleportation spells simply make you dissapear and appear at other location, spells that make you ethereal change you into a different state without having to move you to other plane, summoning and creation spells simply create things on the spot and so on. Astral proyection works in a slightly different way; spell that manipulate weather and divine the path do not work while in the Sea.The islands are roughly divided in three: the lands of the men, savage islands and far realms. The lands of the men tend to be well connected, less dangerous, more civilized and follow the laws of nature fairly closely. The most famous land between them is Andalasiah, the continent where Tangrabah is located. Sailing to and from here is easier than any other port in the world, so many ships use its port as a stopover. The savage islands, while inhabited by monsters, tribes of wild humanoids and often sport an incredible variety of deadly hazards, are relatively “normal” and mundane. The far realms are a different thing: you can expect anything there, including legendary stuff like the magnetic mountain and the world´s edge. Roughly they are the adventuring equivalent to the outer planes. Rename Knowledge: the planes for Knowledge: Distant lands.TangrabahTangrabah is loosely inspired on Baghdad and Basra in the (almost) legendary times of Haroun Al Rashid (and my own city in the 17-18 century). The typical city where you can find anything, it´s a haphazard bundle of palaces, humble houses, caravasars, taverns, stores, towers and the most tangled maze of streets, alleys and backstreets in the world, the lack of planning being caused by the relative anarchy the city lived before the current ruling class unified both city and country and made caravan rutes into the continent safe. The heart of the city is the natural port, a sandy beach around a large bay. Just in the bay´s center lies the incredibly luxurious calyph´s palace, raised on a artificial island; many also live in boats and ships tied together. The rich live next to the port, and almost all of their houses have a tall and slim tower designed to spot the coming ships (since most of them are traders and merchants) Next come most of the stores and markets, where you can find anything, from needles to swords (and people to wield them), hemp and silk, sages and slaves, the strangest people buying them and of course a large body of thieves.The working class live next to that and surrounding the city´s main fortress/prison. In Tangrabah most of the houses tend to be small, painted in white, and people make their lives on the street. Since they are narrow, moving can be difficult sometimes.And surrounding that, out of the walls and next to the desert, the desperate, the criminals, those who don´t want to be found, or too poor to choose, survive.It´s very big city: population is about two hundred thousand, and about 25% of it is non native.Currency is dinar (gold coin) and dirhem (silver). 125 dirhem equals 1 dinar; in D&D terms:1 dinar: 5 D&D gold coins2,5 dirhem: 1 D&D silver coin.The local language is Andalasian. It works as lingua franca: many people can speak it, even abroad.Rules stuffReligion: Players with divine type characters would want to know about that. There are not gods in the normal D&D sense, but that doesn´t mean people don´t worship them (real or not) and a plethora of natural and supernatural beings, from giant apes to celestials and fiends (collectively called “genies”) The player can choose whatever belief he´s following and rename his class as he want, as long the mechanics remain the same. In the case of the cleric, that means he must write a brief (about 3-4 lines) with the basics of the cleric´s ethics and where do his powers come from: pacts with magical spirits, inner power, a pseudoscientific explanation or higher ideals.Other cosmetic changes are also allowed. Psions could want to be named dervishes or mystics, for example. Same for races: if you want to be a member of the tree people from X instead of an elf, that´s cool.In a concesion to the setting´s feeling, we´ll remove the rapier from the list of weapons and will make the scimitar finesseable (this already benefits Al-Khazad, iirc)Other than that, there are not other house rules worth mentioning, (except that, if I understood the “manifest from another power´s known” rules right, they are clearly abusive)The first post is ready, and I´ll post it this Wednesday at this same hour. You should have at least a working concept of your character, enough to roleplay it, but a complete character would be better since it´ll probably be needed soon; I´ll post it earlier if all characters are finished by then.In your first post make a brief description of your character as usual in pbps, then in the first two or three pages announce in the first line your character name and class, -or at least until we´re all familiar with them and don´t have to check this thread or our notes to see who´s who-. In your posts, make clear what´s speech, thought, actions and OOC comments; I´d prefer speech between quotes, thoughts in italics and quotes, and OOC comments between brackets; normal text is actions and general roleplaying. In combat, any help is welcomed: please post things like temporal modifiers to hit, damage and saving throws, resistances, damage reductions, contingent/permanent/active spells and any other thing I could forget. OOC comments, specially in combat, discussing things like strategy are definitely allowed.My own posts (specially combat posts) will be separated in two: the fluff and the crunch. The fluff is a novelized version of what happened in the post/round; it will only be inspired of what happened in it, and not a slightly adorned version of the round following iniatiative and combat rules, so don´t look here for rules details. The crunch will include the rules thing and probably a map with a (very) crude cenital drawing of your characters and foes, like the one you can see attached in this same post. If you want, post here a drawing of you to use in the maps. If the map scale don´t allow pictures, I´ll use colored spots instead.I´ll be lenient (with reduced DCs and giving minor bonuses and small xp rewards) adjudicating cool stunts and moves in action scenes, but don´t exaggerate. We´ll aim for what we could find in hollywood movies before the eighties, not anime or hong-kong action films; thus, jumping down the roof to attack someone is ok, charging by jumping on top of incoming flying arrows is not. Also, you can assume reasonable atrezzo in the place. In a tavern, you can grab a barrel and throw it at your foes, even if I did not say anything about available barrels. You can´t grab a adamantine greataxe, since they don´t lie unatended in normal taverns. That probably will force me to improvise on the spot, if you try unorthodox combat maneouvres, but I hope it´ll work if we don´t abuse of it; if neccesary, I´ll desing and post a specific rule about those.I think I don´t forget anything. I´m reviewing now the already posted characters, and will post again soon.Finally, I´d like to hear any suggestion you could have to make this game more fun and enjoyable.</blockquote>

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