NEW GAME FEATURE: Additional Chargen Paths

Hi all,

Today we're announcing the release of the latest chargen updates to come to Castle Marrach, which will include the options to create IB and UB characters directly through the Castle Marrach game client without the use of StoryPoints or the need of Staff set up or assistance.


FOREWORD

Castle Marrach has long offered different physical regions within its gameworld as a means of providing for different themes and styles of roleplay. The Outer Bailey is most suited to new players, providing for the most general and casual form of roleplay for players who simply want to tell stories in a medieval fantasy setting. The Inner Bailey specifically provides for those interested in more courtly roleplay, those who really wish to delve into the game's themes of intrigue and politics and who wish to tell stories in a formal courtly setting, players who want to roleplay something akin to Downton Abbey or The Tudors will best find their needs met here. The Under Bailey in turn is most suited for those who yearn for a more classic D&D dungeon delving experience, who want to tell stories of battle and exploration and adventure but also those willing to take a riskier approach to their gameplay in what is essentially a free for all semi PVP environment where you consent to death at all times and where Lith will not retrieve your body for resurrection if you die.

The problem the game has always faced is that, other than the Outer Bailey, these avenues are not all immediately accessible. A player who wants to roleplay a character in the Inner Bailey and participate in the themes it offers has to first work their way into the Inner Bailey, an endeavour that typically takes at least a year if we're starting as a base commoner. The Conclave is a similarly restrictive society to join, with it having been some years now since a new member has joined who wasn't added through the Conclave storypoint package.

Generally I am supportive of long term goals existing in the game. But getting to a base starting point where you can begin engaging in the themes of roleplay you want to participate in isn't an ideal goal that should require extended periods of time to achieve. What Staff aims to provide with these new chargen paths is a means to allow players to immediately jump into the region of roleplay they wish to get involved in without needing to spend months or years of setup to get into a place where they can start engaging in the kind of roleplay they want to focus their story around. And it is important to understand that this is where the aims of this project start and end; this system is not a 'skip having to put work into my character' card, and steps have been taken to ensure that characters created through these new processes do not automatically advance beyond characters who have worked their way over time into their current positions until they themselves have put in the same advancement efforts.

To this effect, the structure that we have now is such that the path of ascension for standard OB characters is Commoner -> Honoured Guest -> Gentry and the path of ascension for IB chargen chars is Trial Courtier -> Courtier -> Gentry. In either case, Gentry is the third step along the path of intrinsic advancement, wherein the full rights and privleges of the court are unlocked. The underlying intention of this scheme is that the same amount of OOC time and effort will go into your character's elevation to the 'core' IB rank of Gentry regardless of whether you started in the IB or the OB, the only difference is the themes of roleplay you engage in as you work your way there.


HOW THIS WORKS

When creating new characters in Castle Marrach, players will go through the same browser based character creation sequence with Lith in the Necromancer's lab, selecting desired character appearance traits and a starting memory. After confirming the character's creation and logging them on for the first time, instead of immediately being sent to your guest room, your character will now appear in an instanced OOC room wherein they will be permitted to choose their starting path in Castle Marrach.

Within the OOC chamber there exists four gateways, and these gateways lead to different starting points in the game.

- OB Standard Path: The first gateway takes characters to the standard new guest room which has served as the automatic starting point for new characters to Castle Marrach for the last several years. Players will be initiated into the new guest quest as per normal.

- OB No Tutorial Path: The second gateway immediately takes characters to a guest room in the guest hall of the Outer Bailey, as was the case before the new guest quest was introduced some years ago. This is the skip the tutorial option for familiar players who don't want to redo going through the basics of the game.

- IB Chargen Path: The third gateway places the character in an Inner Bailey guest room to awaken as an unestablished courtier as part of the Queen's new edict to start waking court members from the Royal Catacombs. You are only permitted one IB Chargen character on your roster at a time. You must be presently subscribed to Castle Marrach to access this option.

- UB Chargen Path: The fourth gateway places the character in a guest room in the Conclave. How precisely you came to be there is something your character will have to discover as they learn about their new home. You must be presently subscribed to Castle Marrach to access this option.


IB Chargen Path

Characters who choose the IB chargen path will automatically be given fluency in Northern, but will be disqualified from any other stat or skill boosts that can be randomly given on character creation. They will also be given some starter Court clothing and some selections for Courtly hair styles to begin the game with on their character.

The new IB trial courtiers are essentially characters with the power of an 11th link commoner but who have been awoken in the IB instead of the OB, and who are expected to roleplay according to IB courtly themes if they want to stay. They are technically 8th link, and that extends about as far as allowing them to get court appropriate clothing, jewelry and hairstyles, but most of the remaining rights and privleges of being a court member are withheld from them and they are sealed within the bailey they have chosen to start the game in as surely as normal OB created characters are sealed in the OB.

The first intrinsic elevation of the trial courtier is to that of Established Courtier (or full courtier). This elevation is more or less the equivalent of an OB character reaching Honoured Guest and a similar level of effort and politicking should be expected to be made in order to achieve that elevation, for if they fail to obtain this established state before Royal Court, they will be sent back to the Outer Bailey. Their second elevation then is to Gentry, this is where they really receive the recognition and power that used to be associated with the former "Courtier" rank as it was known before recent revisions, and a similar amount of effort should be anticipated to make it from Established Courtier to Gentry as used to be from Honoured Guest to the old Courtier rank.


UB Chargen Path

Characters who choose the UB chargen path will awaken in the Conclave deep beneath the mountain, wherein the under dwellers have their own distinct societal structure and guilds.

This feature is not for immediate release, more details will be announced pending its release.

Hi all,

See above for details regarding the new chargen paths being introduced to Castle Marrach.

At this time it is not quite released, we are making a few polishing touches to the system. It works, it just doesn't look very neat right now and the commands are somewhat tricky to use, so we want to fine tune it before releasing it to the general playerbase. Expect it to be released in the next couple of days however.