Essentially, you can attempt to perform any action, and I will determine the probability of your success based on:
- The difficulty of the task at hand.
- Your stats (more on this later).
- The manner in which you describe your action. For example, if you're trying to convince someone of something, I'll take your in-character speech into consideration, or if you're making an attack, I'll take into account how you describe your attack. This also applies to movement, positioning (especially when you do something with potential adverse effects.)
- Your background. I'm not going to have stats on EVERYTHING, so sometimes I'll use your background to determine your chance of succeeding on something. A ranger is going to be better at hunting food than a warrior, even if they have the same stats. If you really want your character to be good at something, you can specify it in your background.
Then, I'll tell you your probability of success, roll dice accordingly, and determine your degree of success.

In addition, numerous challenges may or may not involve meta-components, which is basically me making you (the player) do stuff that's tangentially related to the challenge at hand, and depending on your degree of success, adding to or subtracting from your die roll. This will usually involve solving a puzzle. However, my definition of "puzzle" is pretty liberal, and may involve text, images, your real life background knowledge, your ability to find obscure information on the internet, etymology, English and otherwise, culture, both contemporary and archaic, and sometimes, time limits .

In, for example, D&D, you're never truly "in character". You know all about the world around you, and more importantly, everything your party mates know. In order to provide a verisimilar roleplaying experience, MSU incorporates an important element of realism: ignorance. Based on your submitted character sheet, I will private message you a list of everything you know about the kingdom of Almia. Depending on your background, the information you receive will vary in its degree of completeness and accuracy. I will also send information through PM during the course of the game. Keep in mind that there's nothing stopping you from lying to the other players about the information you received. In addition, information is given out on a "would realistically know" basis, not a "need to know" basis, and what information which you receive is from the subjective perspective of your character.

I will incorporate images into the gameplay, as a means of conveying information, and if you want, you can as well. The purposes of this is to better convey information that cannot be accurately conveyed textually, such as the layout of a room. Expect these to show up a lot when it comes to the puzzles.

A "character sheet", should consist of the following:

A class: Who are you? Don't feel the need to restrict yourself to traditional fantasy classes. You could be a ranger or a rogue or a fighter, or you could be a farmer, an artisan, a merchant, or an aristocrat. You don't even need to be able to fight.
As for race, your choices are human or dwarf, and if you're a dwarf, make sure to put something in your backstory about what you're doing in human civilization.

A background: this is less of a personal history, and more about your character's history as it impacts their abilities and background knowledge. Make sure it's malleable enough that I can find a good excuse for you to hook up with the rest of your party.

Stats: There are 5 different stats:
Intelligence: determines your character's chance of succeeding at anything that requires them to be smart, from having good ideas to solving puzzles. In addition, anything involving the acquisition of information will partially be determined by your intelligence.
Charisma: Determines your ability to convince people to do stuff, and how likable you are.
Strength: Determines your ability to move stuff, break stuff, hit stuff, etc.
Dexterity: Determines your chance of succeeding in anything that requires coordination or agility, from jumping over a gap in a bridge to your chance of landing or dodging an attack, to craftsmanship. Magic spells that involve aiming also fall under this category.
Vitality: Determines your ability to not die. Injuries will drain your vitality until healed through medicine, magic, or rest. If it gets to 0, you become a corpse.

In character creation, you have 50 points to allocate between these stats, with 10 being average, 5 being the minimum required to be a functional human being, and 15 being superhuman. For your starting stats, try to keep each stat within the 5-15 range. Also, try to make these match up with your background. Don't give your farmer 15 intelligence, or your wizard 15 strength.

These stats may be improved throughout the course of the game, as your character becomes more experienced.

Magic:
If your character has magical abilities in their background, they may start the game with a basic-level spell. To get an idea of the power level, it should be something like magically creating light, summoning a mouse, or creating a small flame about the size of a cigarette lighter's. As the game progresses, you may acquire additional spells, possibly with even higher power levels.

Starting gold:
Assume that one gold coin is roughly equal to 1 US dollar. They're really small coins, ok? The amount of gold which your character has should depend on their background. A good general guideline is:
Farmer, adventurer: 1-10,000 gold
Craftsman, shopkeeper: 10,000-50,000
Merchant: 50,000-500,000
Aristocrat: 500,000-5,000,000

Starting items:
These should also be based on your background. Make sure that they're something your character could realistically afford, or has a good excuse for owning (and even then, don't give yourself anything too valuable), and any magic items which you have should be low in power level. Also, keep in mind that magic and magical objects are a rarity, and as such, you should probably have maybe one of them at most.

5: Retarded, barely able to feed him/herself and perform simple tasks under supervision
6: "Special", would have a hard time making his/her way in the world unaided due to mental deficiency
7: Stupid, simply incapable of some intellectual tasks or badly deficient though technically capable of all of them. Baseline of acting unaided
8: Slow, usually the last one in the room to 'get' a concept. Some intellectual tasks (like basic math) may be laborious
9: Dull, unready for academic pursuits barring heavy effort but able to function essentially normally in everyday life
10: Average
11: Sharp, noticeably faster on the uptake than average peers, but nothing particularly special
12: Capable, notably more intelligent/knowledgeable than average, probably regarded by peers for intellect
13: Smart, possibly genius level in some areas and deficient in others, possibly just highly mentally capable all-around
14: Genius, probably the smartest person in the vicinity at all times but not likely globally recognized unless otherwise positioned to be
15: Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, or some other once-a-generation-at-best great mind

Scheming Aristocrat
"Terjen Haraz"
I13; C12; S8; D10; V7
Magic: See through one layer of non-metallic material with thickness no greater than 1/4" (such as a single layer of clothing or an envelope or scroll case) as though it wasn't there.
Background: Born into the nobility, Terjen has a study of many arts, taking most pointedly to Tactics, Politics, Rhetoric, and Swordplay -- in the latter he favors a quick style of dodges, parries, and precise cuts since he hasn't the strength or stamina for heavy melee. While he trains and is highly skilled in that sphere, he would prefer to keep his hands clean and let others do the fighting for him, or even have the fighting occur far away at his direction. Terjen is a very cunning man and a natural leader, but extremely ambitious, perhaps even more ambitious than he is capable. As such, he's taken pains to maintain and improve his image with the public and improve his station among the noble houses, an avid player in all manner of gamesmanship. While his study has gained him a very useful magical ability (the ability to read much of a sealed letter or spot a concealed weapon with no one the wiser is nothing to sneeze at in a world where words and knives alike carry great weight), he has taken pains to maintain his ability as something of a secret -- after all, it's not that difficult to foil or avoid, and he gets the most mileage out of it when know one knows it's an option. Few people know he's studied magic, perishingly few know that he's done so successfully, and he's kept the exacts of his power a secret even from those who know he has something up his sleeve.
Starting Wealth: Aristocrat, but most of it's sunk into illiquid assets not personally available at any one time: investments, land, funds for the maintenance of staff, and so on. Personal 'possessions' would include at least one set of fine clothes for formal events, several sets of good clothes fit for less formal occasions or for light travel, a masterfully-crafted slim sword, a well-crafted but ornate dagger, luggage, a carriage, a purebred riding horse, and the services of a porter, a driver, and a personal attache/assistant.

Farmboy Hero
I8; C11; S12; D9; V10
I'm not really happy with this archetype. It works, but I'm not sure I'd have fun playing the dull-but-kindhearted character

Merc Archer
I11; C5; S10; D15; V9
Background: You see that Charisma 5? That would be why he hasn't led a normal life: he's got a nasty mouth and can't seem to help but piss people off. In fact, it's very likely that the only reason anyone tolerates him at all once he starts talking to (and probably insulting) them is that both his natural ability and trained skill with a bow are world-class. While most have the conviction that someone so damnably annoying just can't be the best archer in the world like he claims to be, there are very few capable of actually contesting his pompous claim to the title (they do exist, to be sure, but the odds of him being in the same room as one are very low, owing to their scarcity.). His skill, combined with the fact that no one wants to be in his general vicinity have led to the fact that he has spent many, many long deployments scouting or hunting in the deep wilderness. Since he's a pretty supreme misanthrope, he's perfectly comfortable with this assuming he still gets his pay: basically the one topic he cares about when it comes to other human beings that he's not supposed to shoot.
Starting Resources: Adventurer, consisting of a finely-crafted bow, a large supply of high-quality arrows, very sturdy traveling clothes (2-3 sets of clothes, one coat, one belt, one set of boots), trail rations, and some cash.

Cloistered Academic
"Vasynyt Kain"
I14; C12; S8; D8; V8
Magic: With all materials necessary to do so at hand (ink, paper or parchment, etc), copy text exactly at a rate of one page per minute. The copy is, in terms of content, identical in all respects to the original: even ink blotches and particular flourishes of handwriting are replicated. Images and illumination may be copied, but only if they are on parchment, paper, vellum, or a similar material and all required inks or other writing substances are at hand, otherwise the object will be copied only as completely as possible with the available resources. No writing/drawing instruments are necessary for this transference.
Background: Fifth son of a noble family and disinclined towards military pursuits owing his clumsiness, lack of strength, and frail nature, he was quietly swept off to the world of academia, in which he excels, and more or less forgotten by his family: he receives only a modest stipend, but for the bookish sort it's enough to keep him in ink, paper, quills (when necessary), room, board, and clothes with decent savings to spare. He's a student of history, philosophy, geopolitics (in the abstract), numbers, letters, science, and magic -- essentially anything that's able to be undertaken with reading and speaking alone. While he does not have an understanding of public speaking outside very formal argumentation/debate/rhetoric, he has a decent natural charisma and most people seem to find his occasional bumbling to be more endearing than annoying.
Starting Wealth: As merchant, consisting of several sets of scholar's robes, a whole lot of ink and paper, paid-up rent for an essentially permanent room in the city, patron/paying member access to libraries, museums, and other places of learning/tuition for those lectures that still demand it of someone able to himself give lectures, and a decent personal savings

Streetwise Trickster
"Kies Gleis"
I11; C10; S8; D11; V10
Magic: Conjure small stones. The stones may have any shape, even 'manafactured' shapes such as spheres or trapezoids (or potentially complex shapes requiring intellectual effort from the conjurer) and a surface grit between maximum natural roughness and fine polish like river rocks. The stones are permanent and of opaque, essentially valueless stone types like Schist, granite, diorite, microcline, shale, limestone, or orthoclase.
Background: Poor city-dweller. Thieving, Fast-talk, acrobatics, and creative uses of his magical talents (plenty of people make money off worthless rocks in real life by presenting them as what they aren't. Not to mention what you can do with what are basically Marbles). Wants to improve his lot in life and make something of himself other than the intermittent beggar/charlatan/thief he's had to be so far -- his dedication to learning magic was one path to self improvement, and while its success indicates he clearly isn't averse to hard work, he's looking for new ways to get a leg up.
Starting Wealth: Poor, largely consisting of a couple sets of rags or patched clothes, one set of clothes that's faded but in decent repair, a sling, a sturdy walking stick (useful for acrobatics sometimes), the ability to stay in a minimally-furnished hovel or loft essentially for free (perhaps part of an abandoned building, Hooverville, or other vagrant camp), and as many basically worthless small stones as he wants, probably including at least one bag of "marbles" (smooth, spherical stones) at a time in order to help slip pursuit

Telling you that would go against my policy of restriction and compartmentalization of information.

First off, you got it wrong. Bender is in Futurama.
Second, magic is like playing music; it's a learned skill, but you need some inborn talent to do it, and you need A LOT of practice. Not everyone can be Beethoven, even if they spend their entire lives practicing, and not even Beethoven can be Beethoven without extensive training and practice. If you have magical skills, that means that you probably spent a good deal of your life training.

And as for the incantations thing, it's not really necessary, although some wizards like to do it to make their spells seem more impressive.

Having magical power isn't immediately obvious to outside observers. However, given the time and training required to learn magic, it's unlikely that you could go through the process of learning magic without someone noticing along the way.

As for the social implications of magic, you could live a normal life if nobody had advance knowledge of your powers, and you didn't tell anyone, or use it in front of anyone. People's reactions to knowledge of your magical powers will vary widely, from awe and amazement to fear, mistrust, and hatred.

Seems about right.


Those all seem acceptable. Cool magic tricks : ).

Class: Aristocrat
I13; C12; S8; D10; V7
Magic: See through one layer of non-metallic material with thickness no greater than 1/4" (such as a single layer of clothing or an envelope or scroll case) as though it wasn't there.

Background: Terjen Haraz is the current head and only true member of House Haraz, a noble family of passable (but not superb) age, respect, and pedigree. No doubt he has cousins, uncles, and aunts, but any of those have married into other noble families and no longer make any claim not pretention to the Haraz. Terjen's parents are dead and he was the only legitimate child of his father. He is unmarried, largely for lack of a woman who both meets his standards for what is acceptable in a partner and who marrying would give him a political advantage great enough to abandon the possibility of finding a better match down the line.

From an early age, Terjen was noted for his cleverness and ambition. Whatever he had, he always wanted more, and he was exceptionally good at getting it. He took to public speaking, discourse, and all manner of courtly intrigue both accepted and covert, which he seemed determined to learn for himself if his parents would not teach him their ways. In sport, however, he was far less capable, for Terjen was always scrawny and of frail constitution: the sole exercise of the body he took to was swordplay, and in that only the light blades common to fencing, such as the saber and rapier, seeing as speed and agility were the physical spheres in which Terjen was not disadvantaged.

Terjen fostered a season or two in his youth with many prominent and influential families, taking pains to make connections at those times not only with his peers (who he largely regarded as insipid, but was not about to let be aware of that opinion in case they grew into capable rulers), but also with his elders, whom he suspected could place him in positions of some importance if they were well disposed towards him. Being a somewhat persuasive speaker and wise enough to know how to push a man or woman and on what topics, his suspicions were well-founded, and owing the large amount of time the young and well-connected Terjen spent in court and the houses of political allies, he came to be widely trusted.

Into adolescence and early adulthood, Terjen carefully produced for himself a near saintly reputation while engaging in less than savory acts behind the scenes. In public, he gave pretty speeches that told people what they wanted to hear, fed the poor (but only when it gained him their fervent devotion to do so -- he was not about to waste money.), and always upheld his oaths and bargains among the upper class while treating its members with the required respect or more. Such a reputation, after all, would see Terjen trusted with ever more important and sensitive information.

Behind the scenes, Terjen would have been an excellent spymaster were he not ultimately playing for his own interests: Not a scrap of information passed through his hands that he did not absorb, and the admiration the common people offered him proved invaluable in gaining eyes and ears that were often overlooked throughout the court (those being the servants), so that he could learn the secrets and gossip of the land. Information, after all, was power in a world where words carried greater weight than steel. He has cultured his particular magical ability in part to aid this -- reading a message without unsealing it -- and it has proved very useful in spotting potential assassins as well. This help the deals in which he is perfectly trusted as well, for he does not enter a venture without knowing everything there is to know about it, though he seldom lets on just how well informed he is.

After the deaths of his parents, Terjen has been left in an awkward state. His star has risen about as far as it can rise: he is Lord Haraz, trusted and respected by his peers and admired by those beneath him. Without making some great move or further name for himself, this is as far as he can go. Many would be content with such a lot, steadily making money from reliable investments and managing decent if small lands, but Terjen is never satisfied. Somehow, he must find a way to have everything that there is to have. For now, he is convinced that begins with making a name for himself greater, or at least more unique than "Lord Haraz"

RESOURCES
Terjen is very, very wealthy, though most of his assets are illiquid: Land, shares in trading ventures, and a number of fine ancestral things. However, that does not mean that he lacks gold coins to throw about on a daily basis.

Assets: Terjen has an estate with grounds and some degree of authority over the surrounding lands. Haraz lands are a frontier provience that is not intrinsically wealthy, nor heavily populated. Generations of the Haraz line since their ennoblement have worked hard to accumulate as much as they have, and even then they are only middling among the ranks of the nobility

Traveling Possessions: Terjen travels with clothing for a variety of occassions (the road, court, society functions, signet ring and any other light, appropiate jewelry included), the necessary luggage, a finely crafted and ornate light sword (suitable for both fighting with and simply wearing for the look), some cash, and of course means of conveyance: a carriage (when able to stick to roads), a purebred riding horse for himself and a number of simple horses for his gear and personal staff.

Staff (At Home): The Haraz manor retains a small staff, even for its size: one or two maids, a cook, a majordomo who handles day-to-day affairs while Terjen is away, and contingent of guards only suitable for its defense from thieves because the place is built like a fortress, with very few ways in or out.

Staff (Travelling): Terjen commonly retains the services of a good and sober coachman and at least one porter, though they may be left behind if his road necessitates traveling lighter than that. At all times, he retains the services of his personal Attache, his bastard younger sister Jewel, which he considers to be a necessary evil: even he cannot keep track of all briefs and intricacies of scheduling without some assistance, and letting anyone that close it had better be someone more loyal than money can buy: he trusts his sister only because she is both family who he as his father before him has taken care of, and because if he were to die Haraz holdings would never under any circumstance go to her: Any of his cousins, no matter how distant, would inherit first.