2020 Rulebook Version B
You provided some good feedback regarding our rules changes at the end of last year, and we listened to it. We proposed the resulting changes at the next possible Board meeting, which was this last weekend, and they were accepted. This video describes ALL of the changes that have been made to the Rulebook since the end of the 2019 season. We will have a Q&A thread about them soon, please save questions/comments for that thread to avoid confusion.
Video Transcript
hi folks my name is Matt, I am currently a member of our board of directors and prior to that I was the head of our 2019 rule book committee. there were some changes that the 2019 committee made to our rule book they're going to take effect in 2020 and we wanted to let you know what those were. a couple of notes before we get started . first off these changes were put out in a couple of different phases, so if you had heard something if you read previous version of the rulebook, please know that the documents that are being issued in this video cover all of the changes between 2019 and 2020. so all of its in one place. secondly we're trying to provide you as much information as possible we want you to approach us with any questions. so there's three documents that are going to be provided with this video one of them is the rule book itself with all the updates. the second one is a list that I'm grading off of right now that lists just in brief what the changes are and then the third one is going to be a spell conversion guide because we've made some changes to the spell list and we want you to know exactly which old spells equal which new spells and what the changes are to those once you've read all that information please please feel free to ask us questions and you know approach me or a member of our play master staff we're all very happy to answer any questions that you have we're going to go over these in brief right now but yeah once you've read the rule book I'm sure there's more in-depth information if you have more questions just let us know so but we thought we put a video because seemed to work out pretty well for last year's changes and we thought we'd do that this time too I have a list of 21 total changes we're going try to go through these as briefly as possible so I'm not taking up too much of your time number one we've overhauled the master spell list there's been a lot of changes to it let's see the biggest ones are probably that some of the categories have changed we'll get into that a little bit more later but a lot of the names have changed so whereas previously you had a whole bunch of different spells that did damage at different levels that had basically the same effects we tried to put those in line as much as possible so that if you have three spells that do the same thing at different levels and different levels of potency rather than being you know breadth of the dragon and breadth of the lizard and breadth of the fire-eating whatever now it might be lesser firestorm firestorm and greater firestorm this will be a little bit confusing at first we understand that we're gonna understand if people accidentally call it spell names incorrectly for the first year here there for a little while until we used to it but we think long terms can make it a lot easier for everybody to understand it and probably the there's a couple of names that have changed there's a couple levels that have changed we used to have sleep and slumber which were two different spells that did the exact same thing but they were on one was on the fire error list and one of them was on the bardic list the dispel levels got changed to the same level with that but probably the biggest change to it and again you'll want to look at that that conversion list is that we've added a lot of spells to the bardic list prior to this change bards had access to half as many spells as some of the other classes it was just a massive imbalance there the spells are in the same line there along the same theme as they were before bards have not gotten damaged spells which they didn't have before anyways but they've gotten a lot of new ones what's important to note about this is that even if you were a master bard before even if you had all of the spells at that time from the master spell list that does not mean that you have all of these new spells now if you do not already have the spell in your spell book you need to learn it there a real list of which ones those are you can learn those a couple of different ways either you can learn it by way of plot or a module that you went on and NPC to taught you spell something like that or you can use the spell research skill to to learn that from the master spell list but take a look at that conversion guy it'll give you more information about that number two we're going to require recipe books for Alchemy's and toxins this functions a lot of the same way as our current spell books do our crafts are people with craft book binding or book binders now have the ability to create recipe books it works a lot of the same way if you're an alchemist or a toxin person you are going to have a book with recipes for creating those specific toxins and Alchemy's so reading up the spell the rule book for more information about that number three clarification clarify that non damage resistances follow the same progression as damaged ones unless otherwise stated magical and then physical that means that unless something specifically states otherwise such as a spell when you take damage it first gets applied to magical armor and then physical armor ear wearing and then magical body points and then physical body points that's pretty straightforward probably isn't something any of you really but through to had heard previously or were too confused about but we just clarified that for a couple of situations number four clarify that in the case of someone physically attacking and non-combatant any safety response staff member may address the issue this does not require the direct tension of a GM if you see someone with a noncombatant sash on the field you should not be attacking them no matter what there should not even be combat that's occurring within ten feet of them this change means that if any safety response staff member so a member of our Board of Directors member or field staff several other people if they see that happen they can approach you about that directly they don't have to wait for a member of GM staff we want to emphasize there's a lot of reasons if somebody can be made a noncombatant and it's very important that combat doesn't happen around them so please pay attention to that number five this is probably one of the larger ones as well we've updated racial skills to a new model which will be calling racial resistances which provides each full-blooded race with two resistances rather than skills with costs that vary from class to class what I should mention is we have talked to the CBM well what I should say first is that that means that our full-blooded races like halflings dwarves and so forth they get two resistances like resist sleeper resist charm based on what your race is as well as you know changes to body points and whatnot rather than getting like ranged group or damage control so we've we've talked to our CBM staff about that and this is in their purview this is not under authority is play master staffer rulebook committee to change that but they're pretty sure that I can't imagine we're going to be taking a skill away from you let's say you're a halfling and you really like ranged group I can't imagine we're going to take that skill away from you you will probably have to pay for it in order to keep it but we're not going to make that change regardless your wishes our CBM staff will be forthcoming with more information about them but we didn't we didn't want you to get worried about that up front um in any case moving on number six add the option of denoting a weapon special materials using a white ribbon or cloth tied to the weapon in a visible spot which has been marked correctly we're doing this because latex weaponry is becoming a lot more prevalent out there there's a lot more people that are buying expensive latex weapons and we don't want you to have to damage that with tape or with paint so what this will allow is read the rulebook for the exact wording on how to do it but it'll allow you to put a cloth to tie a cloth around it that represents it appropriately it's not marked with the correct colors but will no longer require you to damage your weapons number seven changed the requirements for memorizing spells on field so that any spell regardless of level requires 10 minutes to fill a slot want to be clear about this because there was some confusion during this winter about it when you walk on field at 8 a.m. or whatever you do after dawn you can start play with all of your spell slots filled you don't have to wait hours to do that what you have the option of doing though is leaving one or more spell slots open and then deciding later the day oh there's been a lot of undead that have been coming through I want to fill that spell slot with an undead spell rather than you know a protection spell so this opens up more more options for people to do that but definitely you don't have to spend eight hours preparing spells it is considered good form it's not a rule book when it's considered good etiquette that if you are caster to spend some time role-playing preparing your spell's it's just good roleplay we suggest it we highly recommend it but it's not required number eight clarify the projectile weapons past their benefits on to their ammunition the arrow or bolt is only a method of interpreting whether the attack is successful or not if you have a silver bow and you attack a creature that arrow is dealing silver damage this is one of those places where practicality and simplicity are more important than realism in our game we realized that if you want to be so you know in real life if you want to be shooting silver arrows you better go make a bunch of silver arrows but for the purposes of this game if you have a bow that deal that adds one damage to every shot that's fired that's a property of the bow the weapon and the arrow is just a method to show that you hit somebody same thing with like cold steel bows they deal cold steel damage regardless of what the arrow happens to be made out of number nine note that a character may only have one boon and one protection spell of each element active on them at one time and items can only have one augment spell active on them list of whatever element it is this is part of the spellbook changes take a look at those categories have been changed but you can have one boon of each element and one protection spell of each element active on you at any point in time that is eight different spells that you could have active on you items however can only have one spell one augment spell on them whether that's a fire spell or a wire spell you only have one let's see note that you can make a copy of a spell book by physically copying everything in the book on field if you want to make a backup of your existing spell book and you have a tag for a second new spell book you can make a copy of your existing one by writing down everything from it into a new physical representation that means you are going to copy every word of every incant every description spell description word every duration every name of every spell from your old spell book into a physical representation for a new one if you do that you can copy your spell book it's gonna be tweeted quite a time-consuming process but it allows you to do it where it wasn't before number 11 make spell concentration process more visible and engaging by requiring casters to hold one arm extended away from their body with an empty hand in order to maintain a concentration spell you can no longer just cast a concentration spell walk that way and say yeah I've been keeping an eye on you know James back there he's I'm still concentrating you can't do that what you need to do is you actually need to hold your hand out in point as the person that you're maintaining that concentration on in order to do that if you drop your hand concentration ends number 12 we've changed the name of a couple of different skills that were a little bit confusing to new players previously we used to have three spoke 3d skills called read magic cleric lore and bard song these skills did not let you read anything new they were not lore skills what these skills let you do is have the ability to cast those spells either from a spell slot or from a scroll so these skills are now called fighter air ability earth water ability and Bartok ability those skills now let you cast those spells one other thing of note regarding that is that what was called Bartok ability before is now called musical training so musical training is the ability to physically non magically sing compose music and so forth number 13 reduce the area of vapor toxins from a six foot radius to a five foot radius this just makes it conform with other spell areas we've got some spell areas that are five foot radius we have no spells that are six foot this will prevent you from having to go is it the spell that's six feet or is it the toxin that's the area of the vapor it'll be clear this time number fourteen we have noted each spell with whether it can be made into a potion a scroll or an enchantment when you look at the new spell list it's going to save bindings P s and/or E on there if the spell has bindings P it can be made into a potion if it has s listed as a binding it can mean either scroll if it has et listed as an binding it can be enchanted something this clears up a lot of community a lot of miscommunications and confusion about what's bells could be put in what familiar allow enchanted items to be recharged using a spell the same name regardless of the list it came from previously if you had an item that was enchanted with darkness spell and you needed to you cast that darkness spell and he needed to recharge it a bard with a darkness spell who's prepared for the day could not recharge that for you it had to be a fire air caster that did so that's no longer the case now if somebody has a darkness spell prepared and you have an item that needs that spell cast into it it can do so that does work now we'll make things simpler especially with some of the changes regarding Bartok spells number 16 this is probably the one that I'm most excited about is allow for an unfilled crafting system we you now have the ability to go on field and roleplay creating something using your craft skill this is not potions this is not Scrolls this is not toxins or traps this is specifically regarding stuff that's like craft book binding craft chandlery craft brewing stuff like that there is now a way that you can go on field and you can create an item by role-playing that and how that's done is let's say that I have craft weapon smithing I'm going to need physical representations of tools that I am using to craft that so I would imagine for weapons smithing I'd use an anvil and a hammer one of them is going to be need to be marked with yellow tape or ribbon and that item needs to be put down on a flat surface like a table like the ground something it's not going to move once that's put down you are going to use the rest of your physics to roleplay crafting for two hours for two hours you need to stay within 10 feet of that item and it cannot be moved you'd spend that time role-playing doing that if you get attacked and chased off if you go further than 10 feet from that item the anvil in this case then you need to start all over as if you had spent no time doing so you can you can make another attempt you can makes many attempts as you want during the day but if you get interrupted either being by chased away from the item or having the item moved at all then you need to start the time over if you've successfully spent two hours doing that crafting process you have two options of what to do at that point if you have a crafting skill regardless of whether it is a master crafting level five craft skill or not um you can go to a staff member and get a tag for a non master crafted item you've spent that two hours if I was I'm a Brewer I'm excited to go brew on field I spend that two hour process role-playing brewing I can go to a staff member and get one non master crafted item that I could normally craft in four weeks or less and I can get that tag which is a great bonus I cannot make something that would take more than four weeks to craft and I do still need to pay the cost of making that item the other option is if you are the master of a craft if you have a level 5 crafting skill um you can instead of making something from scratch you can choose to upgrade a non master crafted item to a master crafted item so as a brewer if I have a non master crafted bottle of ale that I have a tag for I can spend that two hours and then go and have it upgraded to a master crafted bottle of ale again same restrictions I can it can only take me four weeks I cannot craft Aled that would normally take me eight weeks I can only craft the one item and I do have to pay for the difference between the non master crafted item and the master crafted item the the creation costs for but we can do that unfilled now should be should make for some amazing roleplay and some wonderful atmosphere next number seventeen reduced the cost of faunal or so that it's the same for all classes rather than being more expensive for clerics this is something that I don't know why it didn't happen last year I think it just fell through the cracks for some reason faunal or the study of animals ended up being more expensive for clerics this should not happen so you if you are a cleric that had faunal or congratulations you are getting 10 points back and it'll be the same cost for all classes going forward next allow a character to assess how many body points of damage a willing or unconscious character can be healed for by using first aid for 30 seconds so how first aid is going to work going forward is you can spend up to 60 seconds performing first aid on someone different things happen depending on how long you spend doing after 10 seconds you have the ability to tell whether a character is unconscious dying or dead that means can they be healed to consciousness do they need a life spell or do they have to be resurrected and what that also does after that 10 seconds is it lets you cause additional death blows to creatures who are not dead yet we'll get to that in just a minute but at 30 seconds if the character that you are performing first aid on is either unconscious or is willing for you to know you you can then learn how many body points they have and what their maximum is so you can now spend 30 seconds and figure out exactly how many points you need to heal somebody so you don't have to spend a whole regeneration spell every single time it's more information for you this is out of character information you know it you still can't express it to other people but you know and then at 60 seconds as usual if you can restore one body point to an unconscious character so if you've been standing there for a whole 60 seconds a full minute and the character is unconscious you can heal them for one body they can get conscious again so yeah that is the new first-aid next one clarify that death blows are cumulative and that you must use first-aid to cause more than five death blows to a character the cumulative part means that you if I if you're unconscious and I come over and deal to death blows to you and then Mike behind me deals three more death blows to you you've taken five you no longer have to count that you just say death blow death blow and so forth the person who is taking the deathblows needs to count those and keep track and if you don't keep track correctly that's cheating and you can get dinged for that but the other part of that is that some of our characters have an ability called damage control and there are some creatures that have a similar ability where it takes more than five death blows to kill them to actually bring them from unconscious to dying um how this is going to work going forward is if you are a character that is being death blood first of all there's no more playing possum to get out of it if you are restrained webbed whatever if you are pretending to be unconscious and someone deals you a death blow you are dropped to zero body points and that counts as your first death blow but then you know if you've taken five death blows and you know if you have taken five death blows then you can ignore the rest of them unless if a character uses first aid for ten seconds and finds out oh this person's taken five death blows but they're not dead they're just unconscious then that person can continue dealing death blows to you it's a bit complicated it's less complicated than it was before it is more straightforward but as always if you have more questions about that let us know we're happy to clarify clarify that all siege weapons biz reps are approved by play master staff only on an individual basis because these trebuchet z' catapults ballista they're so unique and there's so many different ways to create a physical representation for one on field these are going to be individually approved by the playmaster staff there's no guidelines for it put in our rulebook basically if you want to create one of those come see a play master staff we'll have a discussion and give you some tips on how to best go about that and finally there is a section that I really highly recommend that you read it's a couple of paragraphs that's in the rulebook now called the narrative honor system this is very important and it's a huge step forward for our play master staff and our rules officials on field what it says is that a rule system even a really well-crafted one can't cover every single possible situation every single circumstance and with you know a hundred or more people per event on field staff can't be monitoring every player every minute of the day you as a player are responsible for helping to create a wonderful immersive game by following rules and adhering to our guidelines we trust you with some of that stuff but sometimes if if a rule isn't covered if something strange happens like let's say you and an opponent to throw a spell packet at the same time they collide midair and go off to different directions that's a one-in-a-million chance that's not something we need a rule in place for but gosh that's what is what happens um at that point people creative it's perfectly logical in a situation like that for one character to say to the other oh no you countered my spell because the packets didn't hit each other or didn't hit here the people that's okay what we want you to do is show showcase the epic of our characters of our players player characters and the other part of that is that if something strange happens on field if you can't come to an agreement with somebody if you go on to a person and said we need to work this out this is strange this is kind of weird one-off situation and you have a disagreement or you can't find anything in the rule book that would even remotely cover it come see a play master staff member it's perfectly okay we have a couple different options for what we do at that point more than likely what a play master staff will do is issue what's called a field clarification for you it means that for the duration of that event this is how this is going to happen and it lets us then go back and discuss it as a rule book committee staff or as play master staff it lets communication about that happen after that but that that ruling we can issue it to you right then but it's only for the duration of that event at that point we can go back and talk about it and we can decide is this something that is likely to happen a lot going forward is this something that needs to be written down in the rulebook and if so we can issue a clarification for that if it's a one-in-a-million thing it doesn't necessarily need to be written down the rulebook it just needed to be that clarification for that event but as always things with rulebook can get heated people are very passionate about their characters and we're very passionate about maintaining a balance and maintaining a fair system but we really do value your feedback we got a lot of good feedback this time and that's the changes you've shaped how we've made this world look respectful discourse is wonderful when we really appreciate it so we look forward to that in continuing to of all things were hoping we've made a lot of major changes over the last couple of years we're hoping going forward that we can make less huge changes we still want to take your feedback we still want to change things as needed and and put good feedback into place into into practice but we yeah we're gonna go forward with a little bit dress less drastic changes we've gotten a lot of things done and we really appreciate your patience during all this we really look forward to playing with you this year hearing your feedback encountering any clarifications that have to happen and yeah beast is it about three weeks guys we really look forward to playing with you so every night
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