Joining the Game

• Main game page
• Role-playing Resources
• Email the DM
• And see the “Zioth Campaign” sidebar to the left.

Welcome to the Coming of the Zioth campaign setting, based the 3.5 Edition Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game!

If you're reading this page, it's probably because you've read one or more of the game turns and are interested in joining. If you haven't read any, you should. They will give you a good idea of how the game works, so you can decide whether this campaign is right for you. Once you've read a couple turns and explored this web site a bit, you'll be ready to create a character and submit it via email. At that point, I can help you fill in missing details, or make adjustments where things don't fit into the game world.

When I accept your character, I'll start keeping an eye out for places to insert him or her. I'm not one for the old “you're walking through the forest and happen upon Mr. Player Character, who you then, despite the suspicious circumstances, readily accept into your party and henceforth trust with your life” routine, so it might take some time. The game is played over email, which can make it take even longer. Don't be surprised if you have to wait several months before you actually get to play. To make up for the long wait, I'm sometimes willing to let new players play an NPC for a while, or play out the days before joining the party in a solo adventure.

It's possible that, as a player, you just won't fit into this campaign. If it seems to me that you won't fit in, I'll try to tell you as soon as possible, but chances are, you'll know whether you're likely to fit in before I tell you – probably even before you finish reading this page.

Before you create your character, you should read up on the campaign. You should start by exploring this web site, to get some background into the game world, and reading the house rules. If you have never played D&D before, you can read up on the rules at the free Hypertext SRD, or download them from the official Wizards of the Coast site. Unfortunately, D&D 3.5 is out of print, so it's difficult to find the actual books.

That's right. This game is played over the internet. That means no twelve hour power-sessions, no pewter miniatures or battle grids, no potato chips or pizza. So how does it work?

The game, as you've seen, is structured as a series of turns. I usually send out some piece of writing to get the turn started, then players respond in a chaotic fashion, sending posts this way and that (but always sending copies to me), and producing a roughly linear time-flow. I respond with bits of description and NPC dialogue, which the players then further respond to. Eventually, there is a break in the action, or a good cliffhanger, and I decide the turn is over. I then put all the posts together, edit them and reformat them (although I almost never edit a PC's dialogue except for spelling and basic errors), assign experience point rewards, and produce a complete turn. The action never stops. Even while I'm putting one turn together, the next turn has already begun.

The main drawback of an email game is the speed. Occasionally, a player might neglect to post anything for a while, due to work or family or whatever. If that player has a character who's central to the current scene, and the current scene is important enough, the game just stops. As an entering player, you should be willing to post frequently (at least every two days is required, once or more per day is preferred), but be prepared for occasional lulls in the action. If you do not post often enough, the action may proceed without you, or, eventually, you may be asked to leave the game.

This is not something I want to stress too much, but experience has shown that only a third to a half of players who want to join this campaign are really suited for it. For that reason, I'd like to explain what kind of campaign this is.

This game involves a lot of writing. As you might have seen, game turns tend to be six or seven single-spaced pages, and at least half of that is from the players. Long, well-thought-out posts are fun to read and allow complex interactions between characters and their environment. Naturally, I don't expect all posts to be long, but a nice block of description or dialogue or introspection here and there really makes the turn worth reading. This is not a game of combat and bonuses; it's more of an interactive story, and the kinds of people who can write a story are the kinds who enjoy playing in this game.

This is a low-magic, low-power campaign. Characters rise in level slowly, money is scarce, and magic is almost non-existent. Combat occurs very rarely. Far more often, adventures involve mystery, diplomacy, puzzles and political intrigue. Your character is likely to be an ordinary human with average numerical attributes, a non-magic-using class and no magic items, and in this campaign, that does not make your character powerless. Experience rewards are given for participation, good role-playing, good writing and interesting contributions to the game.

If you're already bored to tears, you might find other PBeM (Play-By-eMail) campaigns more to your taste by doing a web search for “PBeM.” There are a ton of games out there.

Socially, the game world bears a resemblance to medieval Europe. Non-humans and magic-users are myths, and racism and sexism are the norm (though I don't usually emphasize them in the game). If you have an idea for a character who will come into conflict with these things, please send me an outline before going through the trouble of creating an entire character. This is not to say that I'll reject your character – just that you'll need a good justification. Female players do not need permission to play a female character, since I understand that some people have trouble playing the opposite gender.

I'm not very strict on these points. Role-playing is the key to this game, and I attribute a lot of importance to character creation. If your character is well-thought-out, and explained within the context of the game world, anything is possible. In the past, I've allowed a female archer, a necromancer and a scholar with a custom class. If you're willing to put some work into it, you can play almost anything you want.

Enough trying to scare you off. If you've gotten this far, you're ready to create a character, so here's a nice little list of things you should include.

• The Basics: Name, age, race (talk to me before choosing a non-human), class, gender, alignment.
• Background and History: This is the most important part, and verbosity is rewarded. A typical character history runs one to five full pages. If you don't like writing long histories, you probably won't like a writing-intensive game like this one. History is important for several reasons. It shows that you can write, and that you care about your character. It gives you some background information for role-playing, so that you know *why* your character acts the way he does. It also forms a basis for your character's personality. Finally, it allows me to work in elements of your character's history into the game.
• Personality: Anything that's not self-evident from the history should be included here (and maybe even things that are self-evident). I know this is a hard one, and I naturally expect many elements of the character's personality to come out in game-play; you don't need to send me a complete psychological profile (if you want to, there are some great character questionnaires on the Role-playing Resources page). Still, you should give it a try. Start from the history, and work your way out from there. A few basic personality traits and maybe a quirk or two would be enough. A couple paragraphs would be even better. You should also answer a few basic questions about your character's relationship with the world:
  • What is your character's opinion about his religion?
  • How about religion in general?
  • What is your character's opinion of the region of his birth?
  • What about the region where he now lives?
  • What does he think about the Zioth? Is it a myth? Is it something to be feared?
  • Is he superstitious? Does he believe in magic?
• Physical Description: Eye color; hair color, length and style; skin tone; height, weight and build; and any special features your character might have. Clothing, jewelry and adornments. Also include things like mannerisms and how the character carries himself. Basically, give people reading your description a good picture of what your character looks like. This part should be at least three or four lines long, but write more if you like.
• Religion: If your character has a religion, explain his relationship to that religion. You can pick a religion from this web site, but if you don't like those, you're welcome to create your own (if you like, you can use the religion creation document on the Role-playing Resources page as a guide). Most of the religions currently available were created by players. There are some religions that exist, but about which even I know very little. Before you submit a fresh religion, give me a brief outline so I can compare it to what's already around. If you don't care about religion, just make your character a follower of Andritha, the dominant religion in Rang. Most characters should be Andrithan.
• Basic Attributes: There are two ways of generating attributes. If you opt for the first, I'll roll you six 3d6s and send you the numbers. You can arrange the numbers any way you like, and then you may distribute four extra points among your stats. None of the extra points can be used to raise a score above 18. The second method is to make up your own attributes. If you chose this method, the combined total cannot be higher than 66 without my permission. As for hit points, I'll just roll those based on your class. For first level HP, I'll re-roll any number less than half the maximum for your class. After that, it's whatever the dice show.
• Equipment and Money: You can start with whatever equipment you think is appropriate. If you don't know what's appropriate, ask. Most characters will not start with any magic items, as they are exceedingly rare. This also means that the wealth of most characters will be be considerably lower than in most D&D games.
• Abilities: If you're a magic-user, you have spells. You can start with two and a half spells per character level, plus five cantrips. All characters have skills and feats. For those, pay close attention to the notes in the house rules. Your character also knows at least one language. It's unlikely that he knows any non-human languages, but he might have picked up the languages of other nations (there's no “Common” language spoken by everyone), or he might know Sarnam (the old tongue – language of clerics of Andritha and nobility). Can he read? Can he write? Neither of these is assumed in a medieval setting. Whatever you chose for skills, make them suit your character.

You should also send me some information about yourself:

• Your real name, age and gender.
• The city and state in which you live (country if outside USA).
• The number of years you've been playing D&D.
• The number of years you've DMed D&D (if any).
• Your level of familiarity with Medieval history, society and technology.
• How you found out about this campaign.
• What kinds of adventures you enjoy the most in D&D games, and what kinds to you enjoy the least (political, mystery, horror, dungeon-delving, magical, psychological, romantic, etc)?

If you need help creating your character, feel free to ask me. There are also a number of good character questionnaires on the web, and my own Role-playing Resources page has a few useful tidbits.

Things expected of you as a player:

• If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or criticism, don't hold back. If you don't like something I'm doing, I want to know, and I'm almost always willing to have a discussion about any aspect of the game. I am extremely difficult to offend, and I always take criticism in the best possible way.
• Play as often as expected. If you can reply to email as soon as you get it, that would be best, but I'm willing to give you up to two days under normal circumstances, and up to a week if you warn me beforehand. Be aware that however long you take to respond, that's how long you're making everyone else wait. I'd appreciate it you were extra quick on things like dialogue, because if we have to wait a week for each one-line comment, a conversation will take months.
• If you're going to lose email access for more than a day or two, let me know as early as possible, so I can work around it.
• I'm very flexible with the rules, and I may modify them on the fly to make the game more realistic. If you think I made a mistake, tell me, and I'll be happy to explain myself, but don't count on being right just because the Player's Handbook says you are. A logical argument will get you much farther than a rules citation.
• You should have some knowledge of medieval conditions. Your character is living in a world very similar to medieval Europe, so the more you know, the better you can role-play. Don't worry about this too much though.
• If you're going to drop out, let me know. It's never fun when players leave, but it's much worse to have them leave without telling me, and make everyone wait for them to reappear.

Well, if I haven't scared you off yet, I look forward to reading your character!

- The DM