Welcome to retainers, a free-form roleplaying game that you can join any time. The gameplay is simple, and the setting revolves around medieval James Bonds.
setting
This is a low-fantasy setting with no magic, no sentient non-human races, and no gods. Technology is classical Roman level.
48 years ago, the king of Ossaros died, leaving only one heir, his 18 year old daughter. Ossaros was a weak state, with the monarch occupying a largely ceremonial position while the various noble families, who were ostensibly under the crown's rule, did however they wished. With the ascension of such a young heir to the throne, this state of affairs was expected to continue. But somehow, it didn't. Through a decade of cleverness, ruthlessness, and no small amount of luck, she was able to turn Ossaros from an oligarchy into an absolute monarchy under her rule. Over another two, she was able to forge that kingdom into an empire by conquering the many burghs, or small autonomous farming villages, that dotted the surrounding countryside, eventually conquering an area two dozen times the size of Ossaros proper.
Of course, there were problems. Conquering the burgh's was easy, but the Ossarian army simply wasn't large enough to control that much territory. While organized, open rebellions could be put down, burghs found their own ways to subvert the empire. Locals sabotaged supply lines, assassinated imperial officials, and underpaid taxes, knowing that it would take months for word to reach Ossaros, if it did at all. In Ossaros itself, it was little better, with noble houses plotting the empress' overthrow and a return of their caste to power.
In order to address the problems this civil unrest posed to a centralized government, the empress created a new royal order, the retainers. Retainers, whose status is marked by a jade coin engraved with the royal seal, are given unconditional authority to act on the empress' behalf. Not only are they above the law, they are the law, an extension of the empress' sovereign right to rule. Retainers are personally appointed by the empress herself, although her reasons for the appointments she makes are often a mystery to everyone but herself. Among the ranks of the retainers are lords and commoners, well-meaning altruists and sadistic sociopaths, master fighters and tactful diplomats. The empress appointed each one for her own reasons, and each one accepted for their own.
While retainers have du jour unconditional authority, this means very little in the outland burghs, where royal authority does not always hold sway. Many retainers choose to keep their identities secret while traveling in the outlands, partly because it allows them to overhear things not meant for royal ears, and partly because they could be killed if they didn't. Many burghs harbor resistance movements to imperial rule, and even burghs that are loyal to the capitol will often try to kill retainers because of the reputation for brutality they've attained as a result of some of their crueler members' activities.
While retainers are ostensibly above all laws, there are two big taboos in retainer society. The first is killing another retainer, the penalty for which is death. The second is acting against, or failing to act in, the interests of the empire. Even though many retainers are sociopaths who don't care about society as a whole, they realize that if the empire were to collapse, they would be stripped of their privileges, if not their lives. Thus, they consider it a collective responsibility to preserve the rights of their class as a whole. Those who break this taboo will, at best, find other retainers to be derisive and uncooperative towards them, and at worse, be outright killed. There are only a few dozen retainers, so a bad reputation can spread quickly.
play
I intend to have minimal involvement in the RP. Players are expected to create their own narratives, my only role is to dictate how the environment will react to your actions. Additionally, this is a roleplaying focused game, rather than a mechanics focused game, so the mechanics are designed very simplistically.
character creation
You start the game by creating a character. You may join at any time. If your character dies, you can make a new character. Your character can be a retainer, but it doesn't have to be. The only restriction is that you cannot be the empress, because that would give you too much power to influence other players.
First, give your character a bit of background. This isn't much, but it should explain who they are and what their personality is like. Then, describe where you are. This can be a new area, or it can be in the same area as another player.
When you create your character, you are given 20 stat points to distribute between your 4 stats: intelligence, dexterity, charisma, and strength. Strength determines how strong and how durable you are, charisma determines how likely you are to succeed in persuading NPCs, dexterity determines how good you are at doing anything requiring speed or coordination, including running, and intelligence determines how likely you are to have access to specialized knowledge (foreign languages, background information on the region, or how to perform specialized tasks). 10 is "as high as humanly possible", 5 is average, and 0 is "the minimum required to be a functioning human being."
Additionally, you choose 3 level 1 skills, 2 level 2 skills, and 1 level 3 skill. These can be anything you want, from "horseback riding" to "fighting" to "pie baking". They should be consistent with your character's background though.
actions
Most actions, like carrying on a conversation with another player or an npc, don't require any numbers. However, If you want to make any interaction with the environment that could conceivably fail (such as outrunning someone, lying without getting caught, or baking a pie without burning it), your success will be determined by making 2 checks of 1d(your relevant stat + 3*your most relevant skill, if any) against an arbitrary number of my choosing based on the difficulty of the task at hand. If you succeed on either of them (and a tie counts as a success), you will succeed. If you don't you fail.
Combat is resolved like all other rolls, with the relevant stat being the average, rounded up, of your strength and dexterity. However, combat is not intended to be the focus of the game, so if you find yourself fighting more than roleplaying, you're probably playing it wrong.
A note on difficulties: If you want to know the difficulty and relevant stats before trying an action, I'll tell it to you (unless it's something your character wouldn't be able to gauge, like how likely you are to be able to lift an object your character doesn't know the weight of). For reference, a task that a slightly above average person with no skills would succeed at 50% of the time would have a difficulty of 4.
If your interaction is in conflict with another player, such as trying to lie to them, trying to fight them, or trying to beat them in a pie-baking contest, you'll each make 2 rolls and keep your best. If there's a draw, you repeat until there isn't. However, this is a roleplaying-focused game, so if you find yourself regularly having to "beat" other players, you're probably playing it wrong.
If a player doesn't post in the thread for 2 or more days after another player attempts to interact with them, their character is assumed to have wandered off and no longer be part of the game.
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Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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