Character Generation

  This campaign, and the process of submitting characters to it, works a little differently from many other PBeMs. Some important points to remember:

• NO MUNCHKINS! (For the uninitiated, a "munchkin" is loosely defined as a character designed to abuse the role-playing system and have greatly unbalanced power) In the intial round of character submissions was a character who came with a +3 weapon, access to an artifact, and a kit-class that took over 40K and 7 mails to describe and would have enabled him to have three 25s in key ability scores by 12th level. PULLLEEZE! If I start seeing anything like that in a character, I'll just delete that mail then and there.
     If your goal is to create a mindless killing machine, try a futuristic RPG. You know, one of those "role-playing" (???) games where Japanese mega-corporations rise out of the postnuclear ashes of Universe War XXVII in the year 46,598,875,158,784 and create super-robots that spew out B-rated dialogue and do gazillions of gigapoints of damage with Galaxy-Kill-O-Rays or whatever. If you're into that sort of thing, this RPG ain't for you. I might, however, suggest a career in accounting.
• No Player's Options. I don't like turning character creation into a number-crunching ordeal, and I can't afford to hire an accountant to be my co-DM. If you are interested in trading off certain abilities for others, we'll work that out on a case-by-case basis.
• No pre-designed kits. In my campaign, every character is his or her own kit. Be original.
• Evil characters will be considered for NPC status only. Neutral or good characters can be PCs or NPCs.
• Give your character a detailed description and background. Remember, I am not concerned with stats on newly submitted characters. I select players for their creativity and writing ability. Anyone with a calculator can do the math.
• No non-humanoid characters. Any demi-human race (dwarf, elf, human, halfling, etc.) is fine. "Fringe" races like orcs, half-ogres, and so forth will be considered on a case-by-case basis (i.e., you chances are better if I view the choice of the race as a role-playing and not a roll-playing decision). Obvious attempts at munchkinism (like half-dragons, dopplegangers, vampires, or so forth) will not be considered. Remember that human characters have races, too (especially in my world), and many are not Anglo/European.
• I don't go by the race/class and multiclassing restrictions in the PH. Any race can multi-class. Any race can dual-class. There are no level limits. No limits, except for basic game balance...and your imagination.
• Remember, half of all characters in the world are female. A female's charm can sometimes get a character in places that armies cannot go...but, then again, in male-dominated societies, women may have to work harder to be taken seriously by the world around them.
• Wizards and priests use a spell-points system. No spell memorization is used. This is mainly an administrative decision.
• All wizards get three times their maximum memorizable number of spells per level. So, a first-level wizard would get 3 first-level spells in grimoire.
• Here's my ruling on the whole wizards/spell-casting/armor issue:
• Straight wizards may not wear any armor.
• Wizard/priests, wizard/rogues, and wizard/warriors may wear any armor allowed by the other class. However, they may not wear metal armor when casting spells. Leather or hide armor is fine for multi-classed wizards to wear while spellcasting. Note that donning metal armor will not cancel a spell already in effect unless the spell description specifically states this.
• Characters start out with two-thirds the party median in x.p. Right now, that's 7,000 xp.
• One last word on character creation: if you want to play a white male warrior whose sole desire is to bash in heads, rack up treasure, and score on as many females as possible, by all means write one up and send him in! Just be creative about it :) .

Frequency of Posts

  Because of many other commitments I have in Real Life, the frequency of turns in this game will vary. Sometimes, especially during vacation periods, I will be able to post many times a week. Other times, we may drop to 1-3 turns a week. At times, I may need to put the game on hiatus for a week or two.

Criteria for Character Selection
  I select characters based on:

• The originality of the character, and the quality of the background and description.
• Teh writing and speling abillity that, is showd by the charater maild in. Bye the way, this here is an instance of bad' writting that will proabbly get. A character rejected from ths game. (Seriously, I simply don't have the time to wade through and piece together disheveled prose, mangled sentences, and bad spelling. I'm not a perfectionist, but I am looking for people who can wield a keyboard without embarassing themselves.)
• The balance of the party. A successful party needs variety in races, genders, and classes alike. If I happen to have a glut of fighters at the moment, your odds of getting in as a fighter diminish.

How the Selection Process Works
  There is no numbered, sequential "waiting list" for this game. I select characters and NPCs from my archives based on my needs at a particular moment in time. Your chances of getting in depends on your creativity, your writing ability--and the random factor of whether or not I happen to have a need for what you've sent in at a given time.

Setup Process
  Those who are selected will then correspond with me to finalize characters. This process will likely take around 7-10 days.

Mail Address--Important
  Please direct all game-related correspondence to el_nino_@yahoo.com. (Note the two underscores in "el_nino_@yahoo.com"; both are required.) Because of the volume of mail I receive at my home address, I have set up the "el_nino_@yahoo.com" box exclusively for this game.