A roleplay is, when broken down, playing a role. Humans have this wonderful ability to simulate scenarios and situations in their imaginations, and when done together with other players, leads to an exciting game. And on a deeper, more psychological level, your brain doesn't really know it's playing a game - that is, even though you're handling words and maybe miniatures on a roll-out map, there's a part of you that willing suspends its disbelief and engages in the situation. Now you're roleplaying, now you're cooperating, now you're apart of something bigger than yourself.
As fanciful as that definition is, it doesn't really explain how to roleplay, which I will do now. Traditionally, 1-4 players and a fifth acting as the Narrator would gather at a table with dice (d20's, in this example), drinks and snacks, a map of their playingfield, and miniatures (or something adjacent) representing their characters and the monsters they're up against. The Narrator would begin the game by explaining the context, setting the scene, and by explaining, frankly, what it's all about. Then the players would assume the roles of their characters, thinking in their place according to their backstory, skills, strengths and weaknesses, would make decisions.
A player might say, "My character wants to investigate the room for traps," and the Narrator might respond with, "Okay, roll for Intelligence plus Spot (a skill)".
The player would then take a twenty-sided die and roll it across the tabletop, then adding the appropriate bonuses to come up with a final result, which the Narrator would determine the outcome from. "You find a trip-wire behind the chest in the corner," he might explain if the roll was high enough, or if it was too low the character might find nothing at all (that is, until somebody springs the trap).
During a period of ease, players are be able to exercise autonomy through their characters, asking the Narrato questions, making checks where necessary, exploring, acting and reacting. At the same time, the Narrator is responding to questions, explaining details about people, places, and things, and essentially giving players the meat and potatoes to make roleplaying easy to meaningfully engage in.
Supposing they came across a room full of monsters, combat would begin and then everyone (including the monsters) would roll to determine who went first, second, third, and so on, so that everything in a high-stakes battle was fair and everyone got a turn. After the battle, the players be rewarded with experience and loot, before resuming a freeform period of roleplaying as they continued along the adventure.
The point is, a roleplay can be anything you want it to be, but it at least must have rules that everyone understands and can abide by. Rules beyond just the mechanics of making checks and calculating damage, but narrative rules such as what the world is about, what you as an agent in that world can and can't do, what's important to you and to others, your place in it all, and what kind of story is trying to be told.
That is the heart of roleplaying.
The Nevereach Tabletop Roleplaying Game is, first and foremost, a roleplay. What this means in a practical sense is that everybody at the game table should be here to roleplay, with rolling dice and making checks coming second. Roleplaying is a game, and everything in this web document exists to help you pick a role and play it in a fleshed-out world under an engaging narrative. When everybody (even the Narrator) is playing their roles in good will, that's where the magic happens.
For Neverreach, you'll need to amass at least 5d6's (five six-sided dice) with which to make checks. While miniatures and maps are useful, I will admit that we're living in a time where all our friends just so happen to be in a different state or country, thereby making a personal meetup and so-and-so's place impossible. That considered, a digital tabletop platform (such as Roll20 and Owlbear) and a means of rolling digital dice will do the trick just fine.
The players and Narrator should understand that because Neverreach is firstly and foremost a storytelling game; it doesn't have the mechanical infastructure and elaborate sub-systems to handle scenarios such as combat or social encounter. Instead, it has a generic system that is intended to handle all of that in an intuitive and appropriate manner. For this reason, a check should resolve a sitaution, in which the challenger accomplishes their task, fails it, or some third result occurs.
Later in this document you'll find rules for checks and the Grabbag, but I want to take a moment to put the system into perspective. You ask, What does rolling dice do? I answer, rolling dice determines if what happens next is in your favor or your opponent's favor from a purely narrative perspective. While there are light mechanics associated with health and stamina, for the most part, everything is assumed under the cloud that is the points system.
Though Neverreach is its own universe, it also exists in our universe. Its first appearance was in late 2015 at a northwestern gaming convention, presented as a kind of MMORPG that you could physically enter into. Inside, players briefly started new lives as Adventurers in a world beyond their wildest fantasies. There they experienced the sights, sounds, touches, smells, and tastes of a new world. There wasn't a vertex or pixel in sight. You could eat, drink, and sleep. You never had to leave. You were really in another world.
After 45 minutes, however, the demo ended and the players was suddenly beamed back into their home world; not the real world, mind you, because they were both real.
Neverreach was made available on the commercial market later that December, just in time for Christmas. However, unlike a game that you could pick up and play at any time, Neverreach was a place you could go and demanded you treat it so. You could buy a one-way ticket to Nevereach for a certain amount or buy a two-way ticket if you wanted to visit for a short while. But it wasn't a game and taking up the mission wasn't a playful matter. Regardless, millions of people across the world ventured into Neverreach overnight, and millions more would travel there permanently in the months to come.
So, in addition to being the name of the "game", Neverreach is also the name of the company that runs it (they're called The Nevereach Company) and the universe it takes place in. The universe of Nevereach a massive disc-shaped superworld suspended in the vastness of space. The disc portion is territoried into circular areas called realms. Each realm is roughly the size of texas and is fitted together with the other realms. It's easiest to picture Neverreach as starting with a centermost realm surrounded by a 99 outer-rings of realms. Despite its shape and size, a single sun still sets over every realm and a single moon lights up the sky at night.
Each realm has its own distinct culture and history. They are distinct because, for the sum of their collective history, they've been unable to visit the other realms due to monsters that appear and kill anything that tries to pass through. And despite the best armies of kings and emperors throughout all the thousands of histories across the thousands of worlds, not once have they been able to cross over - that is, until the Adventurers started appearing.
What unites each realm is a strangely coincidental creation story vaguely similar to our own - a garden paradise in which a first man and a first woman walked together with God, a first sin that separated humanity from God and expelled them from paradise to live in a hard and desperate world.
The first sin, in addition to death and difficulty, also introduced a perversion of the natural order called monsters. Monsters are like a cruel caricature of things found in nature, and cruely still, they first purpose is to destroy anything ever blessed by God. Wherever they invade, they ravage the land and kill every living thing, leaving the land desolate and barren.
Adventures possess the strength and power to defeat monsters, and the Neverreach staff has appointed each and every one to the task. In a more abstract way, it has proven impossible for Adventurers to escape their calling, because they're the only one with the ability to deal with them, and so whenever duty calls, their conscience almost always compells them to answer.
The people at the table playing as Adventurers are considered players-slash-adventurers. Player is a technical term used by Neverreach staff members and Adventurer is a technical term used by natives and fellow players alike. To be a capital-A Adventurer is to be a hero from another world, gifted with amazing magic. To be a player is to be under Neverreach's jurisdiction.
From the very beginning your role as an Adventurer is laid out to you: to be a hero to the people of the land, to fight for justice, peace, righteousness, and all that is good. Your quests will always steer you in that direction, sending you to help others by doing what they as mere mortals cannot do.
Your understanding of the universe is that the world of Neverreach is split divided into 30,301 unique realms, where each realm is roughly the size of texas. Starting your adventure, you'll be placed according to your spoken language in one of a hundred starting realms placed along the outer-most border of Nevereach. These are starter realms, and every realm hugging the outerwall is ranked at level 1.
Approaching the center of the Nevereeach universe, at the very center of the disk, is the highest level of danger and a realm that is believed to be responsible for the state of the universe. In other worlds, defeating whatever big-bad lies within that realm will mean the end of dungeons and monsters forever. It'll mean the started of a new Golden Age.
What ends up happening, for better of for worse (and it may happen to you!) is that you may not ever reach the centermost realm to fight the big-bad. Rather, you might end up settling down in a town somewhere along your journies with a wife and start a family. Or you might resolve to stay as local hero and help out where you can, not for levels and experience but for the good you can do for those who've been good to you.
Put simply, the Narrator is responsible for telling the story. Creating the towns, dungeons, realms, monsters, quests, and treasure, is all the responsibility of the Narrator. They'll be acting for all the NPC's, including the monsters. They'll prompt players to make checks when necessary, will determine the outcome of actions and events, but their ulimate responsibility (which is a responsibility shared with the players) is to make sure the roleplay experience is as fun as possible.
Whatever is fun.
Whatever is cool.
Whatever brings people together.
That is the Narrator's mission.
Still, the Narrator carries a big responsibility which requires a degree of pre-planning and improvisation. Being able to think on your feet is a must. Your agenda for each session should be to craft an expereince - be it a drama, action, or adventure - that engages players and invites them to make meaningful choices and overcome challenges of every shape and color. In fact, I shoudl emphasize right now that finding a variety of ways to challenge your players beyond just monsters and traps is going to be the bread and butter of the campaign; you should see how they use their creativity and the Grabbag to save the day.
Each realm in Neverreach comes with its own population, culture, and history. While to us as players Neverreach might've come out last year, to them, it's thousands of years old. In a historical perspective, Adventurers like you are new, only having first appeared about one or two years ago, depending on who you ask.
Unlike players, natives aren't immortal. They can die, and when they die, they're dead forever and they can't come back - no matter what magic you might use. However, they can level-up, though most of them never leave their home-realm to go take on tougher challenges, so most natives hover around level 1-3.
The natives of Neverreach come in a variety shapes beyond just human, which even in itself can vary quite a bit. You're going to meet a demi-human eventually, of which there are quite a few. Most demi-humans are found living among their same species in town or villages, but they can be found mixed in among the crowds in more metropolitan areas.
On a practical level, demihumans are humans who look weird, which doesn't tell the whole truth but makes a point in that they are firstly people and secondly animals. While they may possess quirks from their non-human half, on the inside including biology and psychology they are human. This has allowed demihumans to blend in with normal humans throughout history with little friction in terms of adaptability.
Despite being a universe of cause and effect, sights, sounds, and experience - a place that is 100% real in every aspect - Nevereach is still managed by a company of the same name, of whom its staff members operate covertly to ensure that peace between the natives and the players is maintained. Chances are you've never met one, and if you have, it's very likely you did something terrible and are about to face world-altering punishment.
Not much is known about the exact details, but from the hear-say that circulates between players, there are three kinds of staff members.
In more practical terms, a Higher Being is kind of like a little-G god, or a mighty spirit. In technical terms, they're like computer programs. Each Higher Being is responsible for a portion of the meta-physics that makes Neverreach tick. One is for making dungeons appear. Another spawns monsters. One puts treasure in chests. And one in particular manages the Grabbag. They are present and aware of everything under their domain, and there is no way to exceed their limits within it.
Going back to the analogy of a little-G god, Higher Beings do have thoughts, feelings, and most of all, a sense of purpose. They were created by the engineers to serve a purpose, and being able to do their job makes them very happy, just how a plant might be happy when planted in fertile ground.
Instead of dollars or rupies, Neverreach uses coins made from precious metals.
| Ratio | Copper | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper | 1:1 | 1:100 | 1:10,000 | 1:1,000,000 |
| Silver | 100:1 | 1:1 | 1:100 | 1:10,000 |
| Gold | 10,000:1 | 100:1 | 1:1 | 1:100 |
| Platinum | 1,000,000:1 | 10,000:1 | 100:1 | 1:1 |
Though the minting differs from realm to realm, coincidentally (or maybe by grand design?) every realm and every kingdom use coins of copper, silver, gold, and platinum, with conversion rates roughly balanced throughout.
Looking at coinage in practical application, we can equate a silver coin to be worth a dollar of our own money (as of 2015). This means that copper is basically a penny, silver is worth a hundred dollars, and platinum is worth $10,000. To put it another way, a poor person can survive off 5 silver coins a day - that is, by eating only ramen and hotdogs for every meal. It's inglorious, but you'll survive.
While it often feels like Nevereach, for an experience sold as a "game", doesn't have a lot of gamey aspects, it does have a few surprises - the chief of most being the inventory system.
Each player possesses a sort of private pocket-dimension the size of a dufflebag that's just perfect for storing tools, equipment, gear, and clothing. To use it, all you have to do is hold it and will it into your inventory. And just like that, pop!, vanishes into your inventory.
Your inventory is limited only in volume, as it doesn't have a particular size; think of it like a bag but it cannot rip, but once it's full, you're unable to put anything else inside. Another advantage is that items suspended in your inventory do not age and they do not weigh you down. Please note, this is limited to system items, which can be quest documents, your membership card, loot from dungeons and monsters, and anything created by the Grabbag. You cannot store items created by the native inhabitants.
You inventory volume is equal to 105 units.
Here's a brief list of items and their approximate sizes.
| Size | Units | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 15 |
|
| Medium | 21 |
|
| Large | 35 |
|
| Very Large | 105 |
|
At a glance, you can store...
Making a check means rolling dice to see if you succeed in accomplishing something, be it scaling a wall, persuading a stubborn merchant to lower his prices, dodging out of the way of a falling rock, fixing a broken carriage, or landing a hit against an enemy monster. In a more general sense, if you don't clearly know what happens next, make a check.
To make a check, first choose the Core you'll be using - either Mind, Body, Will or Social - and convert the points into six-sided dice. If there are any point bonuses from your class or creations you can use, apply them. Dice that landed on a 2-5 count as a success; if it lands on a 1, it's not counted. Dice that roll on a 6 count as a success and you get to roll another six. Count all the successes and compare them to the CR (challeng rating).
Your race and Grabbag creations each offer modifiers in the means of strengths and weaknesses. If a strength or weakness is applicable, then you apply its point modifier to the check. Strengths add dice while weaknesses subtract (min 1).
Your chosen role (offense, defense, support) indicates what you're good at. If you're performing an action in line with your role, then you get the role bonus. The role bonus is meant to make you irreplacable on a team, so your dice are doubled prior to rolling. If you're a hybrid, the bonus only increases the points by 50% (one die for every two).
CR is multiplied by the level of the challenge, which is typically linked to the layer of the realm; as you venture further in towards the center, the CR will multiply accordingly.
If the total successes from your rolled dice meets or exceeds the CR, then you've succeeded in whatever it is you were trying to do. Exceeding the CR by double just so happens to double the success, and exceeding by triple counts as triple success, and so in multiples of the CR. More successes means, apart from a very good result, improved effects.
To give yourself a better chance of success, once per check you can expend a point of stamina to grant an automatic success.
So that you don't end up rolling dozens (or even hundreds) of dice, reduce the total amount rolled without losing the challenger-challegne ratio by dividing the larger number by the smaller number rounding up or down to the nearest whole number. However, we live in the future, and you're more than welcome to role hundreds or thousands of digital d6's if you're able to; we have the technology!
Like mana, Stamina regenerates with rest.
Your Grabbag is the source of your power, through which you're able to arm and empower yourself for the long journey ahead. To use your Grabbag, you can declare that you wish to make something along with its role and how much mana you're investing. You can only create something that is directly inspired by your class. If you want to make something is only partially inspired by your class, the value of your invested mana is halved - that is, you'll need to spend 2 points of mana to do the job of 1.
The role of your creation indicates how it's to be used. Similar to yourself, it can have either a role of Offense, Defense, Support, or a hybrid of up to two. If your creation's role matches your own, your role-bonus takes effect, but if it's a hybrid, the bonus is only 50%. If it has no role, there is no bonus.
Created items hold a charge like a battery. This charge is their efficacy, where for every check made using them, at least one point is withdrawn and put towards the check. You charge an item when you create it, and you cannot recharge an item unless you're out of combat. If it an item's efficacy drops to 0, it is dispelled.
Powers have an up-front cost of 3 mana, but don't have a charge. Instead, they tap directly into your mana pool. Powers can only be created outside of combat.
To create an item during combat when time is short, you must pay an additional 3 mana. To create a power, its up-front cost increases to 6.
There are several base types of items you can create - but please keep in mind, you're still limited by your class's ideal.
Of course, this list is just for examples and in no way sets the limits for what you can and cannot make. In that same regard, try to make your choice based on what is must fun for everyone and not on what makes you the biggest badass in town.
Starting out as a player in one of the starting realms, your first real task will be to join the Adventurer's Guild. The Adventurer's Guild is managed directly by the Neverreach staff (though how exactly is proprietary) and is responsible for making sure players have something meaningful and good to put their strength towards. To join is free and your membership never expires.
The system works first with native inhabitants approaching the Guild with a request for work to be done - it could be anything from raking leafs to saving the land from the return of the Dark Lord. The requestor must be responsible for providing pay for the Adventurers. From there, the proper paperwork specifying how the quest is to be completed is filled out, where once the signature is laid down it becomes a quest. The Guild then take the quest document and puts it into one of two system.
A quest's rank indicates how important it is in concern for the health and wellness of the people it effects. The more people impacted and the more severe the impact, the greater the rank it's assigned. And of course, if something is too menial even for the Guild, the staff member will politely tell you to go skip rocks.
While the client is responsible for putting up the quest, Neverreach is responsible for judging and assigning a proper rank.
Once a quest has been assigned to a party, the party must complete the quest within the defined timespan (assuming there is one) and turn in proof of their success to the appointed endpoint, which is most typically at the requestor's place of business or residence.
Once the quest is confirmed completed, the party returns to the nearest Guild branch to confirm their completion and receive their reward.
Because everyone wants to take the cool, glamorous quests, Neverreach instantiated a system of policies to ensure the best performing parties received the most favorable quests. This amounted to the rank system and every member is given one.
Ranking ranges from F all the way to A+, but upon starting you'll be given E. E means average, which is expected to quickly improve after a few missions have been completed. The only way to increase the rank is to be a good Adventurer, cooperating with your teammates, showing kindness and patience to the natives, and completing your quest within the defined parameters. The Adventurer's Guild - and in particular, The Neverreach Company want moral, competent, helpful people doing the most important work, because those three qualities are the signs of discipline that is most certain to save the way.
While you're capable of performing absymally on a quest (F), you can only rank as a high as +1 above the quest's own rank. This is to prevent overachievers from suddenly launching their way into save-the-universe-grade quests. Your rank as a player is averaged-out of your ten most recent quests (completed or not), meaning that traversing the ranks can be slow and difficult, but this is how the most deserving of players have been able to find higher work.
Aside from getting the first-pick of the quests, the Guild offers perks and benefits for members with higher ranks.
Remember, a high rank means the Guild trusts you to take on bigger quests.
Teamwork is a core concept of Neverreach and is assumed to be on every player's mind as soon as they leave the tutorial area. Parties tend to range from 3 to 5 players, leaning towards the traditional offense-defense-support balance. Once you find a friend, you two can go to the local Guild branch together and register together as a team (no matter your personal rank). Once as a team, you're given a shiny card indicating your team composition.
Getting work as a team works a little different from as an individual. Despite the ranks of your members, the team is ranked according to the average between all of you. Your team's composition affects what quests you will and won't qualify for, since the Guild has to determine which composition is best for what task. Generally speaking, having an even layering of roles qualifies you for the most quests.
I shouldn't have to spend much time talking about what travel and exploration are, but instead I'll give some brief definitions so we have something to start from.
In a pactical sense, travel is meant to be relatively easy. Adventruers are often welcome in good faith to hitchhike on the backs of wagons and if you ask, plenty will spare a coin or two to help you pay for a taxi. There even exists a branch of the Adventurer's Guild called the Traveler's Hub, which exists to help vehicle-oriented Adventurers find work.
Using the Traveler's Hub is simple. You go to a hub station, which is something like a cross between an airport and a bus station, and negotiate a fair price with a willing crew.
The below isn't the standard for all fares, but it sets the expectations for you as the player. The Neverreach Company, and by extension, The Adventurer's Guild, use a unit of measurement to measure units of travel. Since every realm has roughly the same area in square miles, units of measurement were made relative to that.
| Unit | Miles |
|---|---|
| Diameter | 600 |
| Radius | 300 |
| County | 150 |
| District | 75 |
Conveniently, for everything in between, miles are used.
| Method | Cost (Gold/District) | Rate (Miles/Day) | Medium (1-3 districts) | Far (4> districts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wagon | 1 | 40 | 2 | 4+ |
| Carriage | 1.5 | 40 | 3 | 6+ |
| Aircraft (Slow) | 5 | 480 (6.5 districts) | 10 | 20+ |
| Aircraft (Fast) | 12 | 960 (12.8 districts) | 24 | 48+ |
| Watercraft (Slow) | 2 | 240 (3.2 districts) | 4 | 8+ |
| Watercraft (Fast) | 5 | 480 (6.4 districts) | 10 | 20+ |
| Foot (Walk) | Free | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Foot (Run) | Free | 40 | 0 | 0 |
While exploring, you may find yourself reduced to trudging through thick brush and along rocky terrain. After all, you're more than likely to have been the first people to venture this far out. With that in mind, when out exploring, your foremost challenge will be navigating to your intended destination and getting back without getting lost.
There are varying degrees of pathfinding you'll have to do depending on what kind of places you'll be out exploring.
There are a handful of checks you'll need to make in order to successfully explore.
| Navigate | Find Food/Water | Track Animal | Build Shelter | Hunt Animal | Build Trap | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finding your place from point A to point B without getting lost. | Foraging for berries, roots, and nuts/Finding sources of drinkable water. | Using small clues like antler markings or dropping to track down animals. | Using available materials like leaves and branches to make shelter from the elements. | Use available weapons to find prey and kill it. | Use available materials to build clever traps to ensare or kill prey. | ||
| Environment | CR | ||||||
| Forest | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |
| Jungle | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | |
| Mountains | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 3 | |
| Tunnels | 5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Plains | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 | |
| Tundra | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
As the old saying goes, "When all you have is a hammer, everything else is a nail..." which in essence means that you interpret the world through what you've equipped yourself with. Or put more practically, because you are an Adventurer and you can level-up and you have the Grabbag and you have your role and you have your class, you are destined for a life of fighting. This isn't a bad thing at all, and some might argue with a strong case that there are things out in the world that need to be killed, at the very least, beaten within an inch of their lifes.
Sure, you might find a welcoming community and blend in with the local population, even settling down and getting married and having kids, but you'll always be acting in second nature. It won't be uncomfortable, but you'll know you're capable of so much more. Don't view this as a bad thing, because the natives absolutely do not have the power to do what you can do, and one day, if the call is loud enough, you'll already have everything you need to answer.
Now that we've gotten the romance out of the way, we need to actually talk about combat...
Combat happens because you got into a fight, which can be either because you started it or somebody else did. We can talk about sparring, but I want to talk about actual life-or-death combat as seen out in the wilderness between players and the monsters that dwell thereforth. That is the real battle you'll see most often.
Combat is ultimately about neutralizing the opposing party before they neutralize you. Neutralize in this sense could mean either knocking you unconscious, tying you up against a tree with no way to escape, or by killing you. Whatever the case may be, if there comes a point in the battle where one side isn't able to actually compete, then the battle is over and the standing side is victorious.
If you won, then your party is awarded loot and may visit Rest and Recovery before proceeding on your adventure. Otherwise, if you lost (and monsters will only ever kill you), then please see Rest and Recovery. Though you may have expected to be awarded experience, experience is only awarded for completing a quest; you can kill monsters until the cows come home, but unless you're completing quests, you're just farming for loot.
Combat offically begins once the Narrator instructs the combatants to start rolling initiative. Rolling initiative determines the turn order for each round, starting from whoever rolled highest and going to the bottom of the list. Once all combatants have taken their turns, then the round ends and a new one begins.
To roll for initiative, roll [Body]d6. You get a role bonus (2x dice) as an Offense. Additionally, if you any means to add more points to your initiative roll, such as by a strength, an item or a power, you can add that to the roll. Once everybody has rolled (including each enemy combatant), the battle begins with whoever rolled highest.
When it's your turn, you get to perform two actions, which can be:
Each role has a set of actions associated with it. Please remember that your role is a light and your class is the lense it shines through; do what you believe is possible or appropriate for your class. In the same regard, you should see these special actions as starting points for your own creations.
Unless otherwise told, assume each action required a competing check if it's against an enemy combatant; non-harmful actions don't need a check normally.
If there's a detail listing CR+X, assume it means to increase the difficulty of the CR by X points.
To inflict damage against an enemy, once it's established that you're within range, declare that you want to attack the target.
You'll make an Offense check against the target's Defense check, and if your check exceeds theirs, you land a hit.
Damage is determined by the difference in checks. If you rolled two higher than their defense roll, then two points of damage is inflicted.
If your action has secondary effects such as poison or bleeding, you would declare that they've been inflicted then.
When an enemy combatant's Health reaches 0, they're knocked out.
Status Effects are special conditions that can be afflicted to a combatant, being either helpful or hurtful. When a status effect is declared, the creator expends an amount of mana either from their creation's Efficacy pool (or from their mana pool otherwise) to put towards the status effect.
An effect lingers on the combatant for an extended period of time. According to its behavior, it'll withdraw an amount of Efficacy and prompt a static check from the enemy combatant. If the enemy combatant fails to exceed the static check, then the combatant remains under effect. This of course doesn't apply if the effect is friendly.
There are some status effects that have been built into the system and have reserved basic behavior.
Though it's been discussed already, here is a perfect place to talk about how your role affects your checks.
To put it simply, your role doubles the rolled dice for any relevant check.
Combat ends when all but one of the competing parties is entirely neutralized. Neutralized means the party is out of able combatants, such that if the other party were to take their turn, they'd have nothing to do. You did it. You won!
Once the battle is over, loot is compiled and granted to the victorious party.
Enemy combatants have a loot table that's rolled from at the end of combat to determine what they roll and how much. It could be anything from materials to use in crafts, ingredients to use in recipes, or items such as weapons, tools, or consumables.
If your health drops to below 0 during combat, then you're dead. At this point you're removed from the battle.
If you're dead by the end of combat, then your soul departs and your body turns to dust. But don't be dismayed, because this isn't the end. Within mere seconds your soul will return to the nearest church, where its new body is awaiting it. The new body rendered from the aether as soon as the old one vanished. It's the same as before but in perfect condition.
However, that's not the end of it. Neverreach had no intention of letting you get off scott-free, and so have imposed a penalty.
Rather than charge an amount of money or any other penalties, for the next 5-8 hours you are to undergo a personal punishment of supernaturally afflicted misery. This is a misery that strikes to the core, where against your will you're presented with your mortality in a very real way and cannot help but to weep and weep. To understand the effects, it is an experience worse than death, such even on a tactical level, it is preferrable to live than force-respawn yourself if just to escape a horrific situation.
While under the effects of divine guilt, you cannot leave the building (getting up to walk is hard enough at this point) and you can do nothing but lay down and feel bad. In other words, you're useless to your allies and to the adventure.
Once the time has elapsed, the effects wear off and, oddly enough, you're able to act again. Sure, you're troubled that you had to go through the effects of divine guilt, but it's not like you need to go to therapy after the fact. Your personality and character have not been permanently altered.
Supposing you survived the combat encounter, you're free to move on with your journey. However, any resources you've spent, like mana, stamina, and health, are still lost, and if you don't have any potions, then you need to go find someplace comfy and get some rest.
To get a good rest, you need to be in a safe location with supplies to enable comfort, such as mattresses and blankets. Out on the field, this can be a campsite with tents, sleeping mats, and heaters. For out in civilization, this can be the comfort of your own bed in your own home.
To give an idea of how time and comfort can impact your recovery, here's a table.
| 8 Hours | 5 Hours | 3 Hours | 1 Hour | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serene Comfort | 100% | 60% | 30% | 10% |
| Mild Comfort | 80% | 50% | 25% | 5% |
| Uncomfortable | 50% | 30% | 10% | 0% |
| In Pain | 25% | 10% | 0% | 0% |
Historicaly, monsters and dungeons are viewed as part of the Fall of Man, where only after the first man and first woman left the Garden Paradise did monsters first start appearing. This tells us that, in essence, monsters are not a God-made thing but are a perversion of nature and natural biproduct of a broken, sinful world. This is reflected in their destructive nature, in which they seek to ravage the land until not a natural thing stands. A land devastated by monsters, even after cleansed, will remain barren and uninhabitable for years to come. As such, you should have no qualms against exterminating the wherever you find them.
In nature, monsters occur in one of three situations.
Borderlands are the barren lands between realms, where monsters seemingly spring out of the ground just to hinder the efforts of travelers and merchants.
A wilderness is a distinct area within a realm that is largely populated or frequented by monsters.
A dungeon is a massive underground micro-realm where monsters are spawned.
Monsters tend to reflect the land and its history, such that they tend to come in a limited variety across the realm but tend to change shape and size based on geography. Similar to adventurers, monsters have roles. And also similar to players, regardless of their natural intelligence, each monster possesses the very minimal instincts to use their role in collaboration with their fellow monsters. But don't be mislead; their teamwork is limited only to killing what threatens their otherwise mindless destruction.
When killed, a monster will begin the process of rapid dematerialization, in which over the course of an hour or so, it'll disintegrate into light and vanish without any remains. However, adventurers can seize this opportunity to harvest what they can. A piece of monsters that has been collected and stored into their inventory will not disintegrate either in inventory or outside. From there, it can be put to practical use.
Monster loot can be used for materials for construction, ingredients for food and potions, and even parts for weapons.
Dungeons are where monsters are believed to truly come from. Ontologically, dungeons are the nightmares of a dying world, and to enter into a dungeon is to do just the same. Dungeons are supernatural, occupying a space in a way that defies convential physics by being bigger on the inside than on the outside, and seemingly taking you to another world entirely.
Sort of like mold, monsters emerge from the walls and floors of a dungeon to wander their way out into the world. From there, they begin attacking nature, the wildlife, and anything else natural in a way that they themselves are not.
Supposing three parties of adventurers were to enter the dungeon one after the other, each party would be entreated to a different experience. This is because, like a nightmare, there's more than just one thing that's occupying the dungeon's mind - if you could call it that. Your experience within a dungeon is called a Fever.
While in a Fever, your party's task is to fight monsters, solve puzzles, overcome traps, and do whatever it takes to reach the dungeon's Muse.
A Muse is kind of like the heart of the Fever. It's a source of inspiration, and it takes the crystalized form of whatever influenced the creation of the dungeon. While a Muse can look like anything, it's always big enough to carry in both arms and weighs around fourty pounds. You can destroy the Muse or you can take it with you either to sell for a hefty sum or to use for crafting.
A Muse is best used in crafting, because it posseses innate magic good for enchanting weapons and armor. Something crafted from a Muse will be an A-grade item.
Once a Muse has been destroyed or removed, the Fever will begin clearing away, lifting away and being forgotten like a dream after you've woken up. In just a few minutes the party will find themselves in a part of an abandoned cavern connected in part to the dungeon at large, through which they can safely exit.
Dungeons aren't a unlimited source of Muses, and after around twenty or so Fevers have been dismantled, the dungeon will finally die.
The death of a dungeon leaves something like an empty labyrinth of twisted hallways, littered with remnants sort of like a tomb. Exploring will give you just an empty cave which would sooner birth bats than monsters.
While you may be a person from another world, you are still held accountable to your actions, including any crimes you may commit. However, because you possess amazing powers and are effectively immortal, the Neverreach staff must help mediate to determine a proper punishment.
Generally speaking, the laws amongst the realms of Neverreach have a lot in common with our own. Do not murder, do not steal, do not destroy public property, do not kidnap, do not assault, et cetera. If you commit a crime against the natives or your fellow players, you will face punishment.
A moderator's job is to mediate between the native population and the players. When a player commits a crime, the native police will summon an moderator and the player will be taken to court. If the moderator is convinced of the player's crimes, then they'll be sentenced.
The punishment varies, but can include...
Despite their superhuman status, players are still expected to cooperate and be good to each other. With that in mind, severity of crimes tend to scew because of their nature.
Fights between players are expected to be mostly balanced in terms of leveling. If a high-level player assaults a low-level player to the degree it wouldn't be a fair fight, that counts as murder. Likewise, if a mass amount of low-level players swarm a higher-level player to the same extent, it also counts as a crime.
Because life is the way it is, there is a real chance that you and your fellow players may end up on opposing sides. Neverreach has taken this into account, and have deemed that if the weaker party does not relent or surrender, the stronger party has the right to kill them.
Return to Index