Starting Guide

The World of Roshanri

Welcome to Roshanri, a fantasy roleplaying forum in which you and others create characters and write their stories together. Go on epic monster hunting adventures, or start up your own shop in town. Become a member of the city guard, or a traveling merchant bringing your wares from village to village. Find romance and have your character fall in love. Whatever you want to write about, there is likely a place for it here.

Intro to the Skill Systems

Each character on Roshanri has a set of skills. A skill defines what a character can and cannot do, and to what efficiency they can perform various actions. The Roshanri skill system is based on a simple core concept. The higher you rank in any individual skill the greater your ability to perform that skill. When you complete threads, you will be awarded thread points (TP), which can be used to increase your skill ranks, among other things.

Intro to the Wealth System

On Roshanri you can earn money, called gems, to purchase individual items, or to buy your way into a wealth bracket. The wealth bracket is a system that helps to determine what props, or mundane items, your character has available to them without having to systematically purchase each and every fork, sock, and shoe you own. If you are poor, the quality of your props are not very good, whereas a character who is in a rich wealth bracket has access to quite the nice assortment of things. The wealth bracket also determines your day to day meals, and your overall living expenses. Beyond that, you can earn additional gems to spend on weapons, magic items, and a large variety of items, which can be found on the price lists.

Intro to the Magic

Magic is a special talent useable by the humans of Anri to create special magical items called Magitech. Only humans have the ability to connect directly to the flow of the world and manipulate it, though they they cannot do so directly and must create special magic items to control it. While some magic items, known as closed circuit items, can be used by any race, the most powerful of them can only be wielded by the humans themselves. You can purchase ranks in the magical disciplines just like you can purchase skills, with a few differences. If you are interested in using magic, be sure to read over the Magic article.

Steps of Character Creation:

Below you will find the steps needed to create a playable character on Roshanri. Most people will likely do more, but this will show you the minimum steps required to make a functional character. You do not need to do these in any specific order.

Come up with a Concept

It is hard to create a character without a basic concept in mind. This idea can be well thought out, or just a few words, such as, “Stealthy, smart, likes cheese.” Your concept does not actually need to be placed in your final character sheet. It is simply something to give yourself an idea of what the character you wish to create will eventually be.

Choose a Race

There are many different races to choose from on Roshanri, from the various human clans to the monstrous Roshna. Each race has its own page in the wiki, detailing the races culture, history, and various special abilities the races have. Each race has a number of racial skills, skills that only that race has access to, except in some special circumstances. Note that some races may also have skills in their entry labeled as cultural skills. These are skills common in the races culture, but are not necessarily limited to just that race, such as the Shellcrafting skill of the Rotrekast. Racial skills are skills that generally cannot be performed by other races due to biological or magical reasons specific to that race.

Choose your Skills

Skills are an important part of character creation. Your skills determine what your character is good at. Not having points in a skill means you either cannot perform it at all, or at the very least, if you do attempt it you will do so very poorly. For a more detailed explanation of how skills work, visit the Skills page. Also see the Skill List page to view individual skills, and the Magic page for magical disciplines. Don’t forget to check your Race for any racial or cultural skills they might have available as well.

Each character begins the game with 100 skill points to spend on any skill they would like. As your character is new, and not incredibly experienced in the world, they are limited to Rank C as a maximum in any skill, and cannot take any specialty ranks. This limit exists only during character creation. Once you begin writing threads, you may earn more points and increase your ranks as high as you like. Check the Skills page for details on how exactly to purchase skills, but the basic concept is simple. You must purchase one rank at a time. If you want your character to be Rank C in a skill, you must first purchase rank E, and then Rank D. Down below you’ll find a diagram showing the cost of each rank, as well as the diagram on the skill page itself.

Furthermore, your character automatically starts at Rank E in their racial skills. You do not have to pay for these ranks, though to increase them beyond Rank E you must pay as normal, and are still limited to Rank C as the maximum during character creation. See your race’s page to find out what skills they get for free.

Choose your Languages

Each character starts the game with one free language of their choice. In addition, some races may start with an additional language. If so, this will be noted on the race’s page. You can also look at the Language list. Languages are an important aspect of play on Roshanri. There is no “common tongue” as one might find in other games. If your character cannot speak the same language as another character, or as an npc, then they will have difficulty speaking with them. Your character can learn new languages by spending their thread points on them.

Spend your Starting Gems:

When you create your character, you begin play with 5 Quartz Gems to spend on gear, housing, and your wealth bracket. It is recommended that you increase your wealth bracket at least to lower class. The destitute bracket may be free, but it is very limiting on what kinds of props you are allowed, and your characters lifestyle and overall health should reflect that. It may also be useful to purchase or rent housing as well, so that your character is not homeless. You can do both of these things and still have gems left over to purchase a decent amount of gear, though you are of course free to spend your gems in whatever way you please. Just note that if you do not raise your wealth bracket you must play your character as destitute. You can find a list of items to buy on the Price List.

Professional/Skill Kits

Based on a characters skill set and chosen profession they may begin with certain items which allow them to use their skills, or magic, at the start of play. A list of these kits can be found on the Profession and Skill Kits wiki page. As this list is constantly being updated, if you do not see something you need feel free to contact your local moderator.

Appearance

It is good to write down at least a general idea of what your character looks like. While this may change, as far as clothing, hairstyle, and things like that, it helps both yourself and those interacting with your character in better picturing who the character is.

Personality

Personality is another descriptor useful to write down. This may grow and evolve as you play the character and get a better feel for them, but having personality traits written down helps you to stay in character and have them do things that they would do, even if it isn’t necessarily something that you personally would do.

History

Finally it is a good idea to come up with a backstory for your character. Where are they from? What have they done with their life pre-creation? Remember that your character is new, and most of the time your backstory should detail their youth and what they have done up until the point that you start playing them. It is unlikely that your character has gone on countless adventures, and only come out with the skills they have at character creation. Beyond that, you can make your backstory as detailed or as vague as you would like.

Secret Knowledge

Secrets are pieces of knowledge of information that a player can be awarded by moderators through threading and quest lines. These pieces of knowledge are specific, and represent IC knowledge that the PC knows that is not considered common knowledge and is not directly linked to any skill. Examples of secrets that should be listed on a characters CS would be knowledge of an ancient recipe of cakes, or knowing the location of a hidden temple deep in the wilderness.

Terminology

Throughout this site you will come across various terms related to roleplaying in general, in addition to various terms relating specifically to this site. Below are some of the common terms you should be familiar with, and what they mean.

Thread

A thread is a group of posts that make up a story. Threads usually involve multiple people posting with their characters to make a story together. There are various types of threads. You can write a solo thread, which is essentially writing a short story, that does not involve other player characters, though it may involve NPC’s. Group threads are the same thing, except that you write the story together with others. A thread does not need a leader, though generally the person who started the thread controls the general direction the thread goes, however, it does not need to be that way. A thread can have an intended goal in mind, or it you can simply see where it goes. Some threads, often called Quest threads, or Modded Threads, will have a storyteller or moderator who does not usually play a character of their own, but rather controls all the non-player characters and monsters, and controls the overall direction the thread will go in. Some people may refer to threads in various ways, Social Threads, Quest Threads, Solo Threads, ect. If a thread is labeled a solo thread, or a closed thread, it is generally best to ask before joining such a thread.

Each thread receives a title of its own, from which one can learn a lot of information. In general thread titles are formatted as follows:

[Location Tag] "Thread Name" (Open, Closed, Solo, ect)

The location tag is used to indicate either a particular town, village or location in the wilderness the thread takes place. If you are in a City then you would use this tag to indicate what part of the city, or a specific shop or park you are threading in. The Thread Name can be anything a player wants it to be, so long as it follows all site rules. Finally the parenthesis at the end is used to indicate the type of thread it is. Open threads mean anyone can jump in at any point in the thread, closed means the thread needs permission to join, solos are threads players do with just themselves and NPC's, and finally if a thread indicates particular player names then the thread is closed to all but those who have been invited. For this threads you may also ask permission to join similar to closed threads.

Timestamp

Timestamps should be included in all of your threads. These tell when, chronologically, a thread takes place. Threads can take place at any time during a season. For instance, if in real life it was the first day of Spring, but you wanted to write a thread for mid spring, you can do that. Just be aware that if you then write another thread that is dated earlier in the season, it may have an impact on your first thread which, chronologically, happens later in the season even though you wrote it first.

Flashback

Flashbacks are threads that are Timestamped to a date before your character was created. These threads can be used to write backstory for your character and to highlight events in the past. You still earn thread points even though these threads, chronologically, already happened.

Injury, Death, and the Space-Time Continuum

Sometimes things happen to your character that may affect threads timestamped for a date after the thread the event occurred. If you suffer a wound in a one thread that would not have been healed by the timestamp of another thread that is already ongoing, you should include that wound in any future posts made in the other thread. If that wound would have made something impossible in the other thread, or otherwise changed it dramatically, you may want to go back and edit your posts to reflect that, or even start the thread over. If your character dies, any thread your character is in that is time stamped after the date your character died should either be deleted entirely, or your posts should be deleted and the other players posts should be edited to reflect the fact that you are not there. The same goes if for any other reason you could not be in the thread (you fell into a coma, you were teleported to the middle of the ocean, whatever) the thread should be deleted or edited accordingly.

Post

Posts make up the content of a thread. They can be anything from a few words, to several paragraphs.

Posting Order

Posting order is what determines the order that players should post in. It is established simply by posting in the order that everyone made their first post. After everyone has posted, go back to the first person in the order and start over. You can change the posting order if you wish, but discuss with your fellow threadmates via private message about what the new order will be.

IC/OOC

IC stands for In Character, and refers to posts written from the point of view, or the third person view, of the character you play. OOC refers to content you write that is your own voice, not your characters, and may be used to notate certain points within a post, or to converse in your own words with others in a thread.

Thread Points (XP, Skill Points)

Thread points, also called XP or skill points, are awarded at the end of each thread by moderators and those appointed to award such points, and are used to purchase new skills or levels in existing skills, as well as languages and other things.

PC

This stands for Player Character, and is controlled by yourself or other members of the site.

NPC

This stands for Non-Player Character, and is usually controlled by a storyteller, or might be shared by all players in a thread. You can also have your own NPC’s, purchasable with thread points, that can supplement your threads. Minor NPCs, such as the local merchant at a random shop, need not be purchased, but NPCs who will actually be of use to you and that you intend to use more than once should be purchased with thread points. They can level up just like your PC can, but you must use your own thread points to do so. More information can be found in the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) lore.

God Modding

Also known as Power Playing, means playing in God Mode and is a type of infraction of the rules. This infraction involves the ignoring your fellow player’s agency in a thread. This can be things like taking control of your fellow player’s character without permission, or making your character unfairly advantaged.

E.g. “Sara blocked every thrown dagger with ease and delivered a powerful punch to Ron that threw him across the courtyard.”

God modding can be a grey area, however, and is largely informed by a player’s character sheets, their skill levels and their equipment. The example above can be less of an issue if the character Sara had A rank or above in certain skills and custom skills. However, not letting the character Ron react (again without permission) is definitely god modding.

Meta Gaming

Is a type of infraction of the rules. This infraction is taking information that the Player knows and that their character doesn’t know and using it in a thread. This can be real world knowledge, like using properties of calculus and advanced mathematics for a peasant girl with no real education. The player might be knowledgeable about the subject, but their character would certainly be not. This can also be in-game knowledge that the character would not necessarily know about.