Game Master
Read this before you begin GM!
Here is how the game is to be played. The object of the game is to gain wealth and control over the island. No story-lines have been developed for you so you`ll need to think of some yourself. The island map contains numerous landmarks and you might find it useful to add some locations for them (along with some maps, use google images to find some if you need). That way your players can enter them and do battle inside, find treasures or unlock some story. If you`re wondering how to add locations, try to model the way the 2 cities have been created.
Moving on the maps
The entire game is turn based. A character can move 1 square (if they`re walking, more if they`re on a horse perhaps) per turn. When some players are in town and others are in the countryside, I think its fair to say that a player can move 10x the speed in town as a person in the country. So for every 10 squares traveled in town (10 turns), a person on the outside gets 1 turn. If you create transports, it`s up to you to decide how many squares they can travel per turn.
Sample story progression
Here is a few ideas you can use. Since the point of the game is to gain wealth and conquer the island, you`ll want some stepping stones to build up to that point. Perhaps have the castle at the bottom be the final place where the most guards are and perhaps even the king of the island. Working up to that final battle could be the point of your game. Perhaps by going through some story, players will get some people to come with them (the GM would control these NPCs) who believe in their cause. You could start with the mine, make it guarded and create some "ore" objects that your characters can mine. They can take the ore they get from the mine to the city to sell. You could make it so they get more money from hauling it to the farther town Kivesk.
If they`re going to be doing a lot of mining, you might want to allow them to purchase a cart (there is a cart graphic in the "toon" section of the myrpg provided images btw, look under transports). I`m sure they`d also appreciate a pick to make mining go quicker. Once they make a bunch of money with mining, you might want to throw some guys at them. Perhaps on one of their return trips, they find the mine completely taken over which would force them to go elsewhere.
How you progress the game is entirely up to you. You`ll need to know how to create your own objects unless you just want to play the game simply as a "hack and slash".
Combat
The GM needs to handle combat specifically and I`ll tell you how it works.
- Create a battle controller in the area where the combat will take place (you can reuse the same controller over and over again btw). The battle controller can be found under "Game Controls".
- Select all participants of the battle (with their respective checkboxes) and then click on the battle controller`s "Begin Battle" action. Initiative will be rolled to decide who goes first based on a random d20 roll + each character`s bonus to dexterity. The battle controller will let you know who goes first, check out the controller`s parameters to see the "Current Unit". At any time, you can add someone to the fray with the "Add Unit" action.
- Players can perform their own actions monitor what they do. There is no protection against abuse. A player can attack or drink a healing potion but they cannot do both. If something is in their inventory, it takes 1 action to take it out and then the next round they can use it.
Some things to keep track of
- Make sure players don`t move out of turn or move too far! There is no protection yet for this.
- Whatever is on the player`s person (not in their inventory bag) is considered equipped! Make sure they don`t have like, 3 swords and 2 armors in there. Any unused equipment must stay in inventory.
- Make sure players only don`t put more than one type of armor on at a time. If they have Cloth Armor and Leather Armor directly on their person (not in their inventory) then this is a problem. There is no protection against doing this.
- Make sure players only have 2 hands! A player can hold a sword and a shield but everything else needs to go in inventory (this includes potions!). It takes 1 round to take something out of your inventory and another round to use it. If a player takes something out but doesn`t use it (like a potion), and they decide to attack instead, they must drop whatever they didn`t use. Dropped items can be picked up by anyone in the battle (which takes a turn to do).
- Make sure players don`t do too much. Players can move themselves, attack and they might do more than they`re allowed. If they attack and drink a potion for example, you may have to reverse their potion drinking manually (create the potion they had and reduce their hitpoints to where it was before they drank). There is no "undo" feature yet unfortunately so you`ll have to do it by hand.
Game Economy
It is up to the GM to manage the economy of the game. Feel free to lower or raise prices of different things depending on what is going on in your story or depending on what the players do. For example, if players always deliver ore to the same town, maybe ore prices should drop in that town. You could also drop the price of steel (for making steel weapons) which might drop the price of some weapons. On the other hand, if an army is amassing, weapon, armor and potion prices should go up! Its up to you if you want to have a dynamic economy, right now everything has to be done by hand but let me (Nik) know what I may add tools to help automatically adjust prices and such (if it`s needed).
Getting setup
The very first thing you`ll have to do as a GM is to create some guys to fight in the countryside. Make em easy at first, feel free to use the "Random NPC (Poor)" character. It automatically generates a NPC with random weapons and items, random coins and random stats. More options like this will be added in the future but you can use this as a basis and then add to it better equipment and coins as you see fit.