Below are the latest public rules updates. (We will post an updated rulebook within a couple weeks.)
Several of the changes affect BGS (Focus, Lessons, Sage, Dream, Prophecy, Speak with Dead). You may need to update your BGS submissions for Spring 1. Staff will be understanding and lenient with this, and help you as best we can.
Focus/Lessons:
- Focus and Lessons are mutually exclusive — you can either submit (up to 3) Lessons, or you can submit Focus, but you can’t do both.
- Note: you get 3 Lessons, not 2.
- Note: If you are currently using Focus for some specific mechanic (probably involving a profession, advanced system, or magic item), you can still do that without giving up your remaining 2 Lessons (i.e. assume it takes a Lesson, not your full Focus). In the future, those mechanics will be tweaked.
- When you use Focus, you can describe productive actions you take between events.
- You can do things not covered by established BGS mechanics.
- Keep Focus to a short paragraph, and try not to do too much. Exactly what you can accomplish (and how much) is still determined by staff.
- Focus is not necessary for things like sending letters or non-consequential things like “making new costuming” or “visiting family between events.” It is necessary to get direct in-game benefit from that sort of stuff.
- Any BGS you spend that relate to your Focus can be chained in the same BGS cycle.
- E.g. you can use Sage to figure out which realm you want to travel to and Alchemy to make the appropriate gate oil (assuming you have the right choice of ingredients). Or you could use Network to figure out what type of gem some NPC is looking for, and Merchant to line up a purchase of that type. Or use two Oracles to find two bits of information that are based on each other…
- This sort of chaining doesn’t work without Focus.
- You can chain with other people, as long as they are using Focus on something vaguely related to yours. E.g. one person could use Oracles to find the time and place of a secret meeting and another could use Subterfuge to spy on it and Sage to research anything interesting they find out…
Sage: Sage questions must be submitted with a Sage amount that is a multiple of 3 (so 3, 6, 9, etc.).
- Conversion: you may choose to refund your Sage down to the nearest multiple of 3 — respending the refund will not count against the season cap — contact staff to do so, before the BGS deadline.
- Some professions or advanced systems may allow you to use Sage in other multiples, for special purposes.
- Reminder: Sage can represent many kinds of research, not just looking things up in a library. Sometimes the result may be excerpts from in-game scrolls, but they are not required to be. More points of Sage will generally result in better answers, which may not always be longer answers.
Prophecy: if you have (and submit) multiple uses of the Prophecy skill, staff may “stack” results.
- The more skill uses used, the more detailed or specific the result.
- They might be kept individual, stacked together, or split into groups.
- E.g. with 3 Prophecy, staff might write one 3x prophecy, three 1x prophecies, or one 1x and one 2x, etc.
- This will be entirely at staff discretion.
- This does not affect advanced uses of Prophecy.
Dream: if you request multiple Dreams per BGS cycle, the results will be a single dream, and the boundaries between topics will not always be clear.
- You should submit all Dream requests together, in one BGS request.
- This does not apply to sending Dreams, sending nightmares, dream defenses, or any other formulaic or advanced use of the Dream skill — this generally only applies to “information gathering” Dreams.
Speak with Dead: When using Speak with Dead as a BGS, you can speak with only up to 3 people per BGS cycle. Advanced skills can subvert this.
Fireball/Retreat: Retreat no longer allows you to resist Fireball (it still resists Slay).
- Note that this also means Retreat can’t protect you from buzzer traps (since they deliver the Fireball effect).
Silence/Weakness:
- Silence is clarified: when silenced, you also can’t use powders or magical weapon augments — you can’t do anything that uses a spell call.
- Weakness now also prevents you from using non-magical weapon augments — you can’t do anything that uses a weapon call (spellstriking still works).
- If you have a weapon augment that you can’t use (due to a Silence or Weakness), it isn’t wasted — you can still use it after the spell wears off.
Projectiles: Projectiles (arrows / crossbow bolts / thrown weapons) have to hit the body — i.e. they don’t count if they hit clothing but wouldn’t have hit upon passing through.
- Spell packets, however, do still work if they hit your loose clothing (or shield, or weapons), even if they wouldn’t have hit the body on the way through.
Volunteering: We’ve made a few changes to our volunteering policy. See Spring 2016 Cap Reset and Spring 1 Donations