Roleplaying Systems

[Polyedit2000]

To clarify on the Rest thing:  For a Long Rest, usually 8 hours, it points out that one of the Rest activities is to do a night watch for no more than 2 hours.  Hence, while shaking someone awake would not break the Rest benefit immediately, activities that don't make them relaxed such as continuous poking or an assassin attack can break the Rest.

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Section 5:  Classes and Characters

Most of the time in a modern setting, players are likely to join as a Civilian.  So naturally, people in a fantasy world would be swordsman and mages, right?  As a guy who played a bear when everyone was a human inside a fetish RP, I can tell you that some people will be "creative" with their characters if they can.

When creating an RP, you want to create gateways first.  A common gateway is a template or sign-up sheet, but you can also mention what kind of characters you want.

However, you should never kick a character out once they're in an RP.  You could enforce a three-strike rule beforehand or throw in challenges and tricks if a character does misbehave, but kicking a player's character out colors you as an "my way" GM and hurts the players that put effort into their characters.  After all, a RP is not about the GM needing more people for his story but the players acting out their own in a setting provided by the GM.  Also, if a player was creative for a rejected character, they're also creative for a character with a different set of skills (so you might be swapping out a sneaky rogue for a demolition expert even for a reason like their nose.)

Another reason you don't want to kick out characters is because the players can do that if they wish to (with consequences).  After all, there are Paladins that swore an oath of good working with grabby rogues and evil warlocks in Dungeons and Dragons.

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Types of Acceptance:

-Freeform - No character limit.  This is dangerous as the GM might assume everyone will be one human and the players join in with animals or multiple characters.

-Template - Players create their characters to sign in.  If you don't tell players to wait, however, they will assume that templates only provide information.

-Pre-Generated - Players will choose an existing character, ie starting with the Sailor Scouts. 

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I was originally going to craft a list of classes, but that would take a bit long to cover even the basic settings.  Instead, here's a quick design tip for coming up with classes in an RP:

-Create a Level 0 class.  This would usually be the Commoner/Civilian that normally has no special traits. Posting this class is optional.
-Create 1 or 2 classes for each fighting stat.  People usually start with Strength/Agility/Magic stats.
-Create an "All" class.  This is not an overpowered class but rather a class that should be able to access all stat-related abilities. Posting this class is optional.

-Don't craft a "dual-stat" class unless you are crafting subclasses. Some people may decide to focus on one stat.
-Don't craft subclasses. You can suggest paths for players to build their characters, but you can't be sure that you'll get enough players to try all those paths.

Example:
-Barbarian uses Strength to deal big damage to the point that armor is optional.
-Fighter uses many Strength styles, able to use more actions to land more attacks.
-Rogue uses Agility to move quickly under cover so they can strike swiftly.
-Ranger uses Agility to strike from afar against their foes.
-Wizards uses Intelligence to cast spells, recording them so they never forget their abilities.
-Sorcerers uses Intelligence to cast spells, their birthrights allowing them to shape spells as needed.

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There is going to be one issue: How do you define the classes? This would come in two parts: How do we use these stats and how will the classes enhance these stats?

First, it'll be easy to define these damage stats by how damage is dealt. Since Strength will be focused on melee attacks, most melee weapons will work on this. However, our Agility classes would use weapons that require a steadier hand instead of brute force, so our bows and daggers will benefit from a steadier hand even if the latter are melee weapons.

However, making wands cast magic by this process means that the other classes could just use "magic" as an alternative to bows. Instead, we would have to create a "spellcasting" feature that restricts the magic to those who can use it now or later, either by itself or as a MP resource. It also seems that, if we do go with an MP route, we would have to make magic more powerful that regular weapons.

And this is where the differences in classes come from. Assuming that the beginning weapons and spells deal the same damage, we can first try to increase their damage with their related stats. However, anyone with equal stats can use all damage dealers equally, so the next step is how these classes can squeeze more damage out for that one stat, and if necessary, how classes using the same stat deals their damage differently.

For example, Barbarians and Fighters are both Strength-based classes, but Barbarian focus on accuracy and boost their main attack while Fighters will focus on damage and gain more attacks per round. Rogues gain an ability to deal extra damage when in advantage and has abilities to relocate to better positions whereas Rangers start with the knowledge of getting through difficult terrains unhindered. While no other classes can access magic, Wizards will remember all their magics but Sorcerers can bend their magic even literally around cover.