Shields, or why I need to change my whole damn system

A thought on how to do shields. I have been working on the armor problem for a few months now and it just keeps getting deeper. Basically Fate is not designed to deal with equipment, More to the point it does not deal with equipment in a directly mechanical way. It approaches equipment obliquely. This is due to part of the conceit of the game, that skill is more important than equipment. In general I agree with that sentiment, and there are a bunch of ways to get around that. the problem comes in when you are dealing with two opposing pieces of equipment, in my case weapons and armor. They have a tendency to cancel each other out. and if they do that, why bother using them. So I started to look at all the moving parts of the game. If weapons affect moving part A(say the stress done after the roll) then the Armor cannot directly affect that same moving part. Instead Armor must alter a different but related moving part(say the defense roll, or the maximum amount of stress).

I have altered my shield rules about four times in the last month, as I never felt they dealt with damage in a new or interesting way. After reading some old posts over on Spirit of the Blank and thinking about how I handle ship combat, I think I have come up with a new way of looking at the problem. I need to alter the entire framework for how equipment works.

I think the game needs to become a stress track free version of Fate. This actually will give me more option in conflict rather than less. Stress tracks will now become an option in combat rather than a standard. This will allow me to use a stress track as a piece of armor or a shield. also this will allow me to control the amount of stress a person can take. All they have is consequences, unless they have a shield.

Recovery will also have to change. I was playing mass effect the other day and it occurred to me that, healing is just not done much in Fate. their is no emergency first aid or the like. I think that I would like there to be something like battlefield healing in Shadow Legion. I would like there to be something like megigel or stim packs or whatever you call it. i don't see this healing as actually getting rid of a consequence, I see it as removing the free use an opponent has on a consequence, or maybe reducing teh severity(if the player's character has a free consequence slot open). I will work on this, but it does lead me to one of my larger ideas I had.

Equipment gives permission to do things the skill could not do on its own. I am aware that this has always sort of been the rule in Fate games. However it never really struck home  until I was thinking about my problems with shields. Both my shield solution and my battlefield recovery idea have this one thing in common. They are adding a new rule to the game, but only related to very specific cercumstances. The shield only provides a stress trackin a specific instance. Medigel allows for removal of a free use, but only if you have it. So I see equipment as a discrete rule and consequence that applies to a specific instance. I have already done a bit of that with the monofilament whip and teh slick sword. I will try this out and see how it works.

There are some problems inherent in this. The rules set becomes persnickety, and could get bogged down with exception based mechanics. Look at late 3.x edition D20 for a fine example of how that can go. Also there is the hierarchy of rules. When two pieces of equipment with similar rules interact, how does that work? Which one is the prime rule and which is being overruled? I think I can avoid this by being very careful and selective with which rules I apply. I will keep working on the idea.

Game Chef 2013: Dreams of Dice

I had an issue. An issue with dice. A dice issue, if you will. I knew what I wanted, but I was unsure on how to do it. Then I was on walkabout for a bit and was struck with a fairly simple idea. I hope it will work.

I have two kinds of dice Light dice and Dark dice(formerly white and black dice, I will probably rename them as I go along). I new that I wanted there to be a mechanical and thematic difference between teh two kinds of dice, but I was uncertain how to implement that. Here is the solution I have.

Your Light dice are for the target number. They are always additive. If you roll two Light dice you would add them together and come up with a positive number. Your Dark dice are how well you do at something. These dice are always subtractive. If you have all Light dice and no Dark dice you succeed at a cost. If you have all Dark dice you might not succeed at all, but if you do you effect will be more/bigger/greater. The goal is to have enough Light dice to succeed(positive numbers) and enough Dark dice to have the effect you want without damaging your chances at success.

So what do you think? You think it will work? i am interested in your thoughts on the matter.

Game Chef 2013: Hollow Relm

Above is the Bitter Realm,ordered,uncluttered, constant, and crystalline. Below lies the Realm of Filth, hungry, dynamic, ugly, and incomprehensible. We live in the realm between. Neither one nor the other. Both realms are at war, we are the weapons they use. Our deaths are the tally they keep. All sickness, all death, all evil, is external to man. In the beginning Man was innocent and without sin. Somehow you must bring humanity back to that state.

In this game you play paper lanterns(need a better name, but one that still evokes that same fragility), the fragile human forms that wield a power called the light. The rest of humanity is lost in the dark or actively making the world darker. It is your task to push that darkness back and show them the truth.

Mechanics Thoughts: you have two pools of dice. A white pool and a black pool. when you take dice from one it affects your action. when you take dice from both it also affects your action. the pools must mean something. you can set aside dice before hand to have a greater effect, or you can trust to luck. normally you must have a roll higher than a target number yet also save a die that has a one on it(effect). the more dice with ones the greater the effect. you can spend an Illumination point to increase your pool, increase the number you can keep, or raise the numbers that count towards effect.

The pools are a finite supply of dice. You use them up as a conflict goes on. there needs to be a way to gain more dice mid conflict. it should be relatively easy, but also have a down side(and it should be pretty big). the same goes for Illumination. of course if you run out of Illumination then it becomes easier to fall to Shadow(don't know what this means yet).

You have a list of traits, you have your hollow traits and your light traits. your hollow traits are the stuff from before you knew what the world was really like. These are things like your name and your occupation and the like. Your light traits are traits you acquired after your enlightenment. these are traits that represent your understanding of the realms and how to manipulate your dual nature, basically these give you powers. In any given conflict you can normally use two traits, one hollow and one light. you can spend Illumination to increase the number of light traits you use, and you can gain shadow to use more hollow traits. the traits you use are the number of dice you can keep after a roll.

Bad guys:
The Worm: from the Realm of Filth, it eats people from the inside then lays its larvae inside. There they grow and devour each other until only one remains. this then grows and uses the human like a suit until it is ready to tear its way out and begin the cycle all over again. This is all psychic, you understand. most people can't see them. when they leave their host it just looks like a stroke or an aneurism, or something. The Worm is about self. It starts with hunger, wanting more. It moves to wanting what others have. And it becomes a belief in the primacy of self. The Worm spreads hubris and selfishness. It tears down empathy, sympathy, and charity. The Worm seek to make this realm the new Realm of Filth.

The Snowflake: It is order. It is purity. The Snowflake becomes apart of the victims unconscious. It is unique, and yet it is the same. it places those need within its host's minds. The need to belong, and the need for superficial individualism. The victims slowly are hollowed out by these needs. becoming more infatuated with trends and fitting in within a faction, clique, or group. This causes The Storm. When these Same Individuals attack another group. The victims of The Snowflake can no longer see people outside of their group as human beings. The snowflake is the birth of war, violence, and murder.

Game Chef 2013: Ingredients and Initial Thoughts

So the ingredients for this year's Game Chef have been released. This year's theme is a picture. I am allowed to interpret it however I like. It just must influence me as I design.

Now looking at the picture I think of these things: traversal, transport, movement, ascension, bilocality(is that even a word?), Alien, falling, midgard, midland, middle. I guess I will let that simmer for a while.

I thin had to take 2-3 of the ingredients and incorporate them into my design. Again these ingredients are pictures. I chose three of them. here they are, as well as my thoughts on each one:

Apple turns, corruption, decay, madness, depression, Lovecraft, whispers of temptation, trap, poison, poison apple, white queen, fairest, endless sleep...

Paper lantern, illumination, will o' the wisp, prayer in the dark, alone, searching, enchanting, looking, hope, falsity, walking in the dark(heh), blindness, back is turned, seeking, truth








Snow on the mind, geometric shape, fractal mind, fractal universe, eternal snowflake of the minds eye, madness, crystallized, OCD, blank, hollow, falling, mindscape, astral snowstorm, wilderness of the mind.







So that is my first go at brainstorming ideas. I have a few themes that are recuring and I think I have a few ideas on the mechanics and teh type of game I will be making. I think I am looking at a game about alien gods who treat earth as their playground(the idea of the middle realm), they use their fantastic mental powers to control the minds of most humans. they are great worms that seek to control mankind, hollow them out for food. perhaps the characters play the roles of people who have been hollowed out, but did not die, instead they replaced their minds with something else. perhaps they are the lamp lighters, those who seek to take humanity back from the horrors that stole the minds of humanity oh so long ago.


In the beginning there was Man and Woman. They lived in a garden. that garden was Earth. Into that garden came the Worm. Crawling and slithering and oozing into the garden. where it passed plants withered and fruit rotted o the vine. It came to Man and Woman and seeing them grew envious. It wanted what they had. The Worm slithered into the minds of Man and Woman. Since that day, Man and Woman have been slaves. Only we few, the hollow and the empty, see the Worm. We fight as we can, as long as we can. We fight for our lives, we fight for our freedom. We fight for the future.

Shadow Legion: Legeonaires Lost

I got together with +Ron Frazier +Frank Falkenberg +Sharif Abed and +Brian Boring  to play some Fate this week. Their ship had jumped into an unknown system. The only way out of the system was locked down. There was a space battle with a Deija frigate. the heroes win the battle, but the Deija are still there. They find some clues at the gate and head toward the two suns and a strange object orbiting one of the suns. There is some discussion as to what to do about the Deija. Nothing is decided before they enter the giant station. It is a great cube the size of Earth's moon. Upon entering they discover it is hollow all the way through. Hollow and nearly empty, save for the servers, this place is a repository for exiled AI from the Marddeth civil war. And that is where we left it this week.

The space combat system went relatively smoothly. My only problem was in making everyone able to contribute. It is far easier to do than in previous games I have run(Star Wars being a prime example). I would like to work on this a bit more. I think my rules could be a lot smoother. So I will work on that.

Here is a recording of the session if you want to see:

Space Opera v1.1(now called Shadow Legion)

I have been working on a finalized version of my Space Opera setting. One of the first big changes is a name change. I am now calling the setting Shadow Legion. I do this for a couple of reasons. First it is a much better name, and a bit obvious once I thought about it for a second(OK a week or so, really). The second reason is that, apparently there is already a game called Space Opera that I am unaware of. I would like to avoid any confusion going forward.  so there you are.

I have also altered some of the equipment rules a bit. In particular the shield rules. the shield rules have been the biggest issue in my game thus far. I have gone back and forth on the issue. I am now on my third iteration of the rules. I hope these work. If I am going to have equipment in the game and use the weapon rules that I like, then I need to work out a way to have stress mitigation without weapon negation. I am going to try the new rules out and we will see how they work.

I have also added a few new planets and alien races. as well as a few new stunts. I also put together some of the things the players have said and written about the universe into the setting document. I would love to hear your thoughts on how it looks and I welcome you  to play it, if you like it.

Her is the document if you would like to peruse it

Roll/Keep Fate II: the revenge of the Vinyard

A lot of people told me that Roll/keep with Fate Dice was a poor choice, that it was broken, and that it wasn't worth pursuing. I will probably end up agreeing with them in the long run, but for now I will continue to play with this idea. On the surface, I agree with the sentiment that straight up roll keep breaks down rather quickly. In the previous post I mentioned some writing that had been done by other people. I am also rereading Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and Dogs in the Vineyard. all of these ideas have been congealing into a couple of ideas.

Idea the first, keeping dice should be about more than just gaining the highest number on a roll. I will do this with effects. Basically your roll encompasses both the number rolled and the effect of the dice roll. In a normal situation you gain effect by counting the minuses present in the kept dice. each minus adds to the effect. no minuses is equal to a tie in effect. In a more heroic situation minuses and blanks add to the effect. Finally in an epic situation all the kept dice count toward effect. I am uncertain what will cause each level of effect at this point, but I think this will mitigate some of the weirdness that would come with a straight Roll/Keep system.

Idea the second, there needs to be a way to manipulate the pool of dice on both the roll and the keep ends. I also think that one should be able to manipulate the dice before and after the roll. I think that Fate Points are where it is at here. You can invoke an aspect to gain a die in the roll phase or keep an extra die in the keep phase. You can also invoke an aspect to set one of your dice aside before the roll. this die will act as an effect, as though you had rolled the correct symbol, but it will not count toward or against your roll total. As I think this covers using Fate Points in this system I am going to say you cannot use Fate Points to re-roll the dice.

this does put a lot of moving parts into the game. This was part of my intent. To start with a relatively simple idea and make it more complicated. However, despite its complexity I think it will be fairly easy to get. you have a two pools of variable tactile elements, fate points and dice. you add to them and take away from them manually. everything is visible right in front of you. This also means that the dice pools will have to be pretty high. I am thinking a minimum of four in the least dice pool with a minimum keep of two. I would like to max out at ten dice as more than that can get unwieldy. I think that if you advance past ten dice to roll, you gain something like a mastery from Heroquest. I will definitely need to think on this in the future. I would also like to have some numerical modifier to a roll(the way skills currently work in Fate), though I am uncertain where those will come in. I have a lot of ideas churning in this old noggin, and trying to get them to lay out flat and file in line is a bit difficult. Thank you everyone who responded to my first post on this silly idea. I hope to keep tinkering with this until it starts making a bit more sense.

Roll/keep Fate...sorta

I was noodling around on the internet, as I am wont to do. I was looking for ways to do gear in Fate. To those of you who don't know, Fate is not the best system for gear. It is not bad, but it is very difficult to make it meaningful. In wandering around I went to the regular places. At Spirit of the [Blank] I found a wonderful discussion of fencing schools by +Mike Olson. I saw there a variable dice pool mechanic that interested me. Then I read this post by +Leonard Balsera on an idea for Fate Weapons and that got me thinking. This lead me to start thinking about some of my old L5R games. The roll/keep system was always really interesting as it altered odds in a way that was different than many games. That and it had no critical hits for luck, you had to set up extra damage ahead of time. At this point I had to admit I was no longer trying to do gear in Fate. I was trying to alter the fundamentals of the game, all the while keeping those fundamentals in the game. This is the first post in this series that will continue unevenly throughout the summer and maybe beyond.

Here's the core of the idea. You have attributes and skills. Attributes and skills are linked. Your attribute tells you how many Fate Dice you can roll. You skill tells you how many dice you can keep after the roll.

As this was originally a weapons and gear hack, I would like there to me more mechanical pieces to play with in any given scene. See, what makes Fate do less well with weapons is that there are really only two variables in a given conflict, when you hit and how well you hit. All the other mechanics are based around those two in one form or another. Take a look at the standard Gear Porn game, D&D for example. there are quite a few variable in its conflicts. There is the initiative(when you go in combat), there is movement(how far you can go) there is the range of your weapon(in increments of five feet), there is how well you hit(accuracy), how hard you hit(damage), then there are all the weird effects each having a different mechanic. You gear could alter any one or even all of those factors, you could get higher in one by getting lower in another, your gear could have special rules that do weird things or interact with the other rules strangely.

 So I would like there to be an initiative system(no MHRing this one folks), and a damage system. each piece will be able to be manipulated, thus(hopefully) adding to the tactical decision making. This will of course add to the complexity of the system, and that may not be for the best. I also love the One Roll Engine by +Greg Stolze, and so I would like there to be much of the information required for a conflict given by one roll.

This is a big aside for me. Normally what I do is build a setting of some sort and then tailor a rules set to fit that setting. This is the first time I am just playing with the rules as the beginning and seeing where it goes and what kinds of things can come out of this rule system. Wish me luck.

Space Opera: Silence finally finishes falling

Ran Fate Core space opera for +Ron Frazier +Frank Falkenberg +Brian Boring and +Sharif Abed. Overall I got very positive review from my players. I guess that's a good thing. I had an issue during the game however, a mechanics issue(dun Dun DUN). I ran several Contests throughout the course of the session of play. When a Contest is just one player versus an NPC or a group of NPCs the rules work marvelously as written. My problem appears when the players as a group are trying to have a contest with an NPC or group of NPCs. See there is no real guidance on how to handle this. So here is my solution(I used it but it was explained far better by +David Thomas so I will use his words here).  I allow 1 Contest roll, 1 "helper" who can add a teamwork +1, and 1 create advantage attempt per Exchange per "side." I will try this in the future and see how it works. It seemed to work in the last contest of the game.


Check out the play recording if you want:



New Races
Marddeth: Artificial Life that had a civil war and believes that software is only half the equation. They defeated those that believed in the primacy of software. They now seek to understand "life" whatever that might mean. They are the only Sentient AI members of the Charter.

Tharcaa
The ultimate martial art. Developed by the Tharcs of Barisoh. The Tharcs were the greatest warriors the universe has ever seen. They developed a martial art that allows for the fighting of life forms in nonstandard body shapes. This was called Tharcaa. The Tharcs are gone now, but the the martial art is still taught throughout the galaxy.

Stunt: The Way of Battling the Other
Effect: you gain a bonus of two when creating advantages against an being with a body type that differs significantly from your own(non humanoid, extra arms, armored skin, and the like).

I am unsure what to call this kind of problem.

Yesterday I was playing in one of the weekly games I play. I ran into a piece of dissonance within the game. I had taken out an NPC in a psuedo-confluct(it was only one roll, I rolled really well). At this point +Michael Pedersen said that I had taken him out and he was unconscious. But wait a minute, says I, that is not how taken out works. Basically the person what takes out the other fella decides how that goes down. Michael and I got in a bit of a discussion on this. He felt he should have some say in how it went down, but the rules supported view that I got the final decision on how it went.

From a GMs perspective I get where he is coming from. It is an alien feeling just letting go like that. Also it begs the question, where do you draw the line? How far does the player's control go? So I had captured the dude, does that mean that I get to dictate his actions? For how long? Or do I just get to tie him up and then we move on. There is a nebulousness to who's in charge of what in this particular situation.

Anyway here is the recording of play, should you wish to see the disagreement[starts in the 14:20ish range]:

Space Opera: Silence Continues To Fall

+Ron Frazier, +Frank Falkenberg, +Brian Boring, and I got together this week to play another Fate Core game of Space Opera. +Sharif Abed had something come up so he was unable to make it. In this session we had some research, a sneaky sneaky plan, a rescue operation, Tesh mind games, valor, spelunking, a scary mine, an artifact, and a whole lot of Sukar. For the most part it went well. No big rules debates this time, mostly just running the game stuff.

I wanted to try something new(for me) with the mine. I made it its own character. It worked OK, though I think I need to work on it more. The Fate Fractal is awesome, however I am not certain I implemented it as well as I could have.

Here is the recording of the session:



New Space Opera Material
New Planet
Davara: Breadbasket of the Terran Majority, it is the largest agricultural world in Human Space. It also has the lowest population density in all of Human  Space. The people who live there are the overseers of the giant automated farms that cover most of the planet. There are also a great many genetics labs working on new supercrops  to increase the efficiency of the farms. It is said that one out of five meals any human has comes from Davara.

Hyperspace Gates
I found that the description I had for the Hyperspace Gates was not enough for the needs of the game. So with the help of Brian I have come up with some new material on them. When approaching the Gate you must have the correct angle for the jump and you must transmit a code to the gate. When you have all the time in the world the angle is not so hard. If you are rushed...well that's when thing get a bit interesting. You can end up damn near anywhere if your angle is off. The construction of a gate is fairly uniform as there are the same requirements for any give gate. However each culture has a method for building Gates and so there are idiosyncrasies to each cultures gates.

Interesting Tesh World View
Frank came up with several interesting Tesh Jokes and spacer anecdotes, I will reproduce them here as I think they are pretty darn neat:

Tesh humour:

An old Tesh comes into a spaceport-bar. There are quite a lot of customers of all known races, it is really crowded there. He is small, lightweight and at his age a bit less agile than the average Tesh. So he gets pushed into a table where a bunch of Gura'oh are sitting, and he spills their drink. They get really upset, grab him, and give him a brutal thrashing, leaving him injured, barely alive. The barkeeper calls the medics, and as the Tesh gets carried to the spaceport's hospital he is laughing like a madman. One of the medics asks him "Why are you laughing? You've got some serious concussions!" - The Tesh, still giggling, explains: "Those Gura-oh are so predictable. They always pull the same move!"

Any Tesh audience will break out into screaming laughter at this one. This is a classic any Tesh stand-up comedian has to have up his sleeve.

Two Tesh are playing a kind of chess-like board game (actually called "The Mating Game", the winner gets the queen). One makes his move, shifts his game-piece, and asks the other: "So, what's your next move?" - The other one jumps up, grabs the game-board and hits the first one with it really hard in the face and shouts: "If you have to ask such nonsense, you're not taking the game seriously!"

This is a real classic one.

Tesh humour:

A Tesh and several human couples are relaxing at a restaurant. The conversation leads to the fact, that the human couples are married, some have children, other not yet or don't even intend to. The Tesh is deeply moved and orders one round of drinks and desserts after another. On leaving one of the humans ask the Tesh why he was so extraordinarily generous. He answers: "I understand you consider gaining a husband or a wife a real achievement. This touched my racial sense of pity for the witless, because gaining a husband or a wife in a population of nearly 50:50 of both sexes is as much an achievement as solving a two-part-puzzle."

This one is particularly popular amongst the Tesh male of so low status, that they are most certainly not eligible for breeding. Tesh who know or even live amongst humans are often taken with emotions of pity regarding dating and mating rituals of humans.

Human humour regarding Tesh:

Human: How many Tesh do you need to change an illumination bulb?
Other human: Just one. But you need thousands and thousands of Tesh in his heritage line for him to know how to turn it the right way around.

Tesh: Pretty lame and obvious move, isn't it? Typical for humans they don't know a thing at all about the brutal game of humour. - And that's exactly how we like them!

The Tesh's commentary to this human joke about Tesh is a sure bet to excite roaring laughter amongst Tesh audiences. There is even a special kind of comedy act consisting of some Tesh acting as humans telling human jokes and one Tesh commenting it. Mastering this act there is a fortune to be made in the entertainment business on Tesh worlds.

Tesh cultural strangeness:

A powerful and influential Gura-oh politician and warmaster invited the Tesh ambassador on the Gura-oh world to visit his large and extensive estate. He personally led his guest around his vast buildings, pastures, parks, hunting resorts and other luxurious facilities and proudly presented his wealth to the Tesh ambassador.

The Tesh became more and more agitated, often wiped his skull with a handkerchief, because it seemed that he "transpired" a lot on top of his head.

The Gura-oh politician planned for the ambassador to attend a gala dinner at his estate, but the Tesh excused himself and left the grounds quite hastily.

The Gura-oh was puzzled and sent one of his aides to politely (as possible for a Gura-oh) inquire, what illness might have befallen the Tesh. The aide returned and did not dare to speak to his master, who got angry at such reluctance to reveal the gathered intelligence.

So, finally, the aide told the Gura-oh warmaster: "I've managed to gain insight in the mysterious behaviour ot the Tesh ambassador yesterday. You remember the frequent wiping of his skull? That was not transpiration, but the Tesh's equivalent of tears. The ambassador was crying, and was quite emotionally shaken during his visit on your grand estate."

Then he stops, visibly not wanting to tell all of his findings. The Gura-oh politician threatens him with mutilation so that he continues: "The Tesh ambassador was crying because of his sadness regarding your estate and you personally. He actually said to his ambassadorial aide, that he had always firmly believed the Gura-oh to be an inferior people, but now as he had witnessed the proof about how incredibly inferior they truly are, he simply could not keep his countenance. He said, the Gurah-oh warmaster proudly presented how his heritage was made out of stones, plants, animals and things. That is so sad, that the tears started to flow incessantly, because even the lowliest Tesh has a vastly superior heritage leading back generations upon generations into the past. But the Gura-oh only have stones and wood and tools. They are sadly beyond pity."

The Gura-oh warmaster swiftly beheaded his aide and sent a small force of members of a subservient race known to be "heavy hitters" to burn down the Tesh embassy. This started quite a lot of diplomatic troubles for several years to come.

Rules, and what the means.

There are two kinds of rules in gaming. In my conversations with other gamers the term rules gets bandied about a lot. Sometimes a gamer means one thing, sometimes another, yet they use the same term to describe these different things. This leads to confusion. So I am going to discuss rules here for a bit, and through discussing I hope to bring understanding.

Rules As Laws
Most of the time when a gamer speaks of Rules, that gamer is speaking of Rules As Laws(RAL). I liken these too physical laws, like gravity, inertia, lift, and the like. RAL must be obeyed. The are reactive, in that they do nothing on there own. Once a player makes a decision hen the RAL come into play telling you what happens and what could happen. RAL are also predictive, in that they give the players a basic understanding of how the world will react to their actions.  Players will be able to know their chances in any given moment of succeeding at a task, as well as understanding of teh consequences for failure. By game world I am speaking only of the world created by the RAL, not the setting or social structure of the world itself.

Rules As Procedures
The other kind of Rules that gets discussed are Rules As Procedures(RAP). These are the procedures of play, and not the specific mechanics that a gamer interacts with(RAL). The best(most obvious) example of RAP that I can think of would be the MCs moves in Apocalypse World. RAP are the procedures one uses to play the game. They are bit more nebulous than RAL, but they are incredibly important to the play of the game. this can cover anything from how a GM comes up with an adventure, to the way that characters are made, to world creation, to the proper etiquette around the table. In short RAL apply to characters, RAP apply to players.

That is all I have on this at the moment. I am sure I could go on about it, but I am afraid that my mind tends to spin in circles when it gets going and I will end up repeating myself. Its a bad habit.