Rules and Guidelines

[dither]

Central Conceit of the Campaign:
- Classic hexcrawl.
- No predefined story.
- I am going to try and kill your characters.
- You don't have to write a background. It's better if you don't.
- Everyone knows everybody so you don't have to waste time with "introductions." Just start playing already.
- You don't get XP from combat or encounters, you spend GP to "purchase" XP.

XP Restrictions & Limitations
- You can only buy one level at a time. What this means, generally speaking, is that you can level up only once per chapter/scene/zone/game thread. You will have to go somewhere before buying another level.
- You have to "move" the treasure before you buy a level. E.g. You can't squat on a dragon's hoard and buy levels -- you must leave its lair and make camp, or at the very least drag the treasure to the mouth of the cave before you spend it.

Quick Q&A
- Yes, you can give money to other characters at-will.
- No, I am not going to enforce equality or sharing wealth.
- Yes, you can spend money to level-up hirelings.
- Yes, you can spend money to level-up each other (Vow of Poverty!).
- Ignore the "XP cost" of item creation. GP are effectively XP in this case.
- Spells with an XP component instead have a GP component.

Q: Does the game break when the Wish Economy sets in?
A: I guess we'll find out.

---

Character Creation:
- New characters always begin at 1st level.
- 25 point-buy.
- New characters may use material in the "basic 3e library," which includes but is not limited to the following books:

(click to show/hide)

Core books -- PHB, DMG, MM
Expanded core -- DMG2, Fiend Folio, MM2, MM3, MM4, MM5, PHB2
Complete series -- Adventurer, Arcane, Mage, Psionic, Scoundrel, Warrior
Environment series -- Cityscape, Dungeonscape, Frostburn, Sandstorm, Stormwrack,
Magic series -- Dragon Magic, Expanded Psionics, Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Weapons of Legacy
Spell Compendium, Vile Darkness
Monster books -- Draconomicon, Drow of the Underdark, Hordes of the Abyss, Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, Tyrants of the Nine Hells
"Races Of" series -- Destiny, the Dragon, Stone, the Wild

Misc. supplements -- Elder Evils, Exalted Deeds, Exemplars of Evil, Heroes of Battle, Heroes of Horror, Magic Item Compendium, Miniatures Handbook, Planar Handbook
and various others -- Deities & Demigods, Savage Species, Unearthed Arcana, and more

The above material generally doesn't need approval, with exceptions for "campaign-changing material" found in UA, and miscellaneous sub-systems found throughout (corruption points, faith points, flaws, obeisance, sanity, taint, traits, vow of poverty, etc.) -- which require a degree of integration that requires my attention.

- Homebrew, setting-specific (Eberron, Fortgotten Realms, Ghostwalk, Oriental Adventures, Ravenloft, etc.), and third party (including magazines, Paizo material, and other non-WotC) sources are all subject to approval before they can be played. Note that I'm pretty liberal about approving these things, I need to know where I can reference them if I have questions. Items must generally be approved on a case-by-case basis.

---

Notable things:
- Yes, multi-classing penalties apply.
- Yes, favored classes apply.

Some stuff you don't see often:
- Hirelings! Especially mercenaries (who aren't just trying to rip you off)!

You can hire NPCs per the PHB rules (equipment section), with the following restriction -- a full week's pay upfront, non-refundable. For mercenaries, this means 2.1 gp per week. Staggering, I know. Hirelings are PHB races (there are exactly seven, found in the PHB) and NPC classes four, found in the DMG -- adept, commoner, expert, warrior).

[dither]

Flow of Time:

It is always "now" -- what I mean by this is that if/when the PCs split up, it will always be "now" for everyone -- that no matter how much time may seem to pass in a separate thread, that when the PCs reunite, it will always be "now."

If a wizard leaves the party to scribe some scrolls, then he scribes those scrolls in a separate thread -- taking however many days or weeks to do so -- and then catches up with the party who has been in a dungeon for a few hours.

Does this mean there's an advantage to "splitting the party?"

Yes. Well, maybe.

Depending on how many players we have, the dangers encountered by "lone PCs" will increase. If we have six players and one of them leaves the group to go scribe scrolls, then he can expect to encounter dangers on par with what the other five are facing.

Put another way, the more PCs you can get to go along with your plans, the more "appropriate" the challenge will be to your APL/tier.

A lone wizard from a party of 8-10 is probably screwed. Unless he's like, level 5 or something.

If you decide to split off from the rest of the group, the probability of you getting wiped out increases dramatically.

On the plus side, you don't have to share treasure you find with the rest of the group.
On the con side, unless you left instructions with the group -- they might never know you disappeared or died.

But you can always roll up a brand-new level-one character!

Additionally, you CAN always hire NPCs to go with you should you desire to strike out on your own -- but they're likely going to start out at 1st level, and won't provide you with much better than you'd expect from, 1st-level NPCs. Plus, they'll probably be controlled by me. The adventuring party is almost always going to be your best bet for safety (take that how you will).

---

Player Versus Player:

Player-versus-player conflict is allowed... if consensual. Can you steal from each other? If both players allow it, then yes. Can you hurt/kill/maim each other? If both players allow it, then yes. Sell each others' souls? If both players allow it.

Bear in mind that I will generally provide a greater challenge than your fellow PCs.

Everything is trying to kill you, after all.

All that aside, I think it would be amazing if this game grew such that the party split into different factions with their own strongholds and armies and arrayed different planes of existence against each other -- I'm in for it if you are -- but I just don't see that happening, realistically. Most people can't think that big, much less "play" that big.

But the option's there, if you want to make it a goal.

---

Leadership and Affiliations:

PHB2 introduced the affiliation system, which is pretty cool.

Once you pick up the Leadership feat at 6th level, you can set about creating affiliations of either a racial or social type. Racial affiliations tend to be based around a particular playable race, be it dwarves, drow, illumians, or lizardfolk. Social affiliations comprise "everyone else" and can be based around an alignment, a character class, a prestige class, or even an exotic-freaking-weapon.

Yes, you can take the leadership feat, but what you're going to get for your trouble -- at least initially -- are PHB races, and NPC classes (see hirelings, above).

In order to get "the good stuff" when it comes to cohorts and followers, you're going to either have to make contact with -- or establish -- affiliations that can provide such awesome goodness. That means if you want a warlock cohort to scribe scrolls for your archivist build, then you're going to have to find an affiliation that generates warlocks. If you want a bunch of "blue" (psionic goblin) followers, then you're going to have to establish a racial affiliation for them.

There will be some options to recruit or "adopt" NPCs that I create -- and that's cool. But there are no promises here.