New Player

[Hundane]

Greetings,

I'm am really interested in playing in your world. It seems to be the type I am looking for but am wondering about a few things.

How much magic is this world ? Is there a +1 longsword everywhere I look ? Is a +1 longsword something to treasure ?

I see a SS of guy and talk of soul strands. If you lose too many your gone for good ?

In making a character, I will need to make a bio. Is it possible for me to make a bio for a character that was born in Greyhawk lore and somehow thru whatever means got to Layonara. I'm more familiar with Greyhawk lore and having a character dissapear from my AD&D world would fit my world as well.

Do all the quests end in killing the bad guys ?

Thanks

[minerva]

Layo is a low magic world in terms of items - the best gear you'll get even in epic levels might be +3 /+4 and highter items as a unique reward for a World Leader quest completion. So yes there might be +1 Iron longswords every where you look, but +2 are scarcer and +3 are rare and +4 unheard of.
 
 A character has 10 Soul Strands. Beginning at level 4, every time you die you have a 1%chance x your level ( so level 4 = 4% and level 25 a 25%) to have one of those strands cut. All 10 cut means perm death. Death has consequences. There is a special feat that can be taken after level 21 to gain a few more strands.
 
 Layonara is not an extension of the D&D world. It has it's own unique lore and indeed cosmotology. As such a character from another world cannot "appear" here. I suggest you take a bit of time and read the handbook which is downloadable (sadly grossly out of date but a good place to start) as well as look through the deities, and the forum section on Layonara lore and come up with a unique character concept that fits this world.
 
 No, not all quests end in killing the bad guy. We have a great and creative bunch of GM's here. This is a RP server and some quest might not even have a Bad Guy (tm) but a A Regular Man with Flaws (tm) or a Misguided Idealist (tm) .......

[Skywatcher]

Layonara is not an extension of the D&D world. It has it's own unique lore and indeed cosmotology.

 
 Yeah and we have a unique cosmology too so the gods of Greyhawk won't apply.  But thanks to the uniquie comotology your character can have just about any hair cut you want.  
 
 //I know it's cosmetology but I just couldn't resist.  You're the best minerva and typos are awesome.

[minerva]

*grins*  that's what you get for typing with sleep deprivation.... I likely needed a touch of cosmotology....

[miltonyorkcastle]

Minerva's right on. One thing I do have to say about magic here. High powered items may be hard (or just plain impossible) to come by, but magic is still powerful. That is, the power level of the magic itself is high, even if access to the magic is low.

Peruse our reference library for more info: [LORE]Welcome[/LORE]

[Hundane]

The lore I know is the lore I know. I can read all about this world, its places, its history, its pantheon and its legends and even its constellations but still know nothing about the street that heads north from wherever the starting location might happen to put me. I guess one could make a detailed bio , then suddenly be struck by amnesia and have to see the world for the very 1st time again but since this is not a D&D type world then its not the type of world I'm really wanting to play.

Thanks for the information

[merlin34baseball]

Um... it is a D&D type world, but think of it as when you sit down for a pen and paper game, you enter the GMs world, built and created by him or her. All the classes, monsters, equipment etc. is just like any other D&D world, but the locations and story are unique.

If that helps you any...

[Black Cat]

And there is plenty of Dungeons and a few Dragons too...

[Falonthas]

just because we arent set in greyhawk doesnt mean we arent a dnd type world

faerun is nothing like greyhawk
or is athos

they are their own places with their own things

i understand you know greyhawk
i could say the same about knowing faerun
ive read the books i have the sourcebooks
ive played the games

but to not be willing to give greyhawk a shot just because its not faerun and i wont know which road leads to the sword of ultimate power
 doesnt mean i wont make a character with a bio give the base knowledge we all start with and let my character grow within its boundaries

layonara is like sitting at your buddies table where he made a world that  just isnt what gygax did
havent you played other places other then greyhawk
nothing against it at all
but i think you should come give us a shot, cause if you love greyhawk to that extent you will fall over yourself when you meet layonara

[minerva]

I understand what you are saying.
 
 Layo still has the feel that goes with D & D but the lore is different. There is no Waterdeep... we removed any place name reference to Forgotten Realms. Our lore diverges -  For example - We have dark elves, not Drow. Our Dark elves live in the Deep and while there is dissention in the sexes there is not the matriarchial society structure.
 
 I had similar difficulties in making the switch from being emersed in Layo lore and then playing in a Greyhawk campaign. I will say this for Layo - the lore is all in one place and well defined - I had a heck of a time finding greyhawk lore.
 
 But consider this
 
 Player characters rise from a commoner background. The vast majority of commoners ever travel more than a few dozen miles from where they were born. There is no public schooling system - so only wealthy parents could afford to educate their child much above the skills of reading and writing.
 
 Would be like me suddenly traveling to New York City. I might have heard of it.. but I wouldn't know my way around. I might know what other cities were close by, but not how to get there.. you start the game as a level 1 character.
 
 The other point being that our characters exist day to day when we don't play them. They could be 100% antisocial or they could gain knowledge by interacting with the people around them. Inns, town squares, man on the street... all are sources of knowledge.
 
 If Layo is not for you, I do wish you luck in finding somewhere that does suit you.

[Hundane]

I'm going to copy and paste alot, I'm old and not sure how to do the "quote" thing.

Minerva you mentioned
"Player characters rise from a commoner background. The vast majority of commoners ever travel more than a few dozen miles from where they were born. There is no public schooling system - so only wealthy parents could afford to educate their child much above the skills of reading and writing"

Any possible way to start out as a zero level commoner? Probally not but that would be fun

The idea I had of using the Greyhawk lore was for RP purposes only. My character who is looking for his biological father would have come across a "portal" or something similiar in his search. That portal would have closed leaving this character stuck in Layonara. Now suddenly , he finds himself in a mess. The nice familiar area he was used to is now all new to him ( just like me ). Imagine finding yourself in a land where the night sky is different, the common language is a foreign tongue, the people look different and dress different. And if he was to be a spell caster type , spells not working right and/or prayers not being answered. His one quest is now turned into 2, his father and how to get home. In searching for answers to those he probally get caught up in several others and so on and so on. It would also possibly open the door so to speak for 3 real life friends to come to Layonara as well. Thier characters looking for my character.

Anyways , I tried a few other places and it seems that most are all about building characters with stats and not the RP aspect. The one I play on the most is fun but all you do is kill the bad guys no other way to stop them. 1 person on that server stated she downloaded the module and used a toolset on it. Talk about looking over the DM screen. Then got all fussy about the possiblity of them taking away the use of Holy Avenger/Sword with UMD.  Which I need to ask , does UMD work the same in Layonara as it does with NWN. Seems like all the power builds are part rogue or bard.

Also if I may ask , If playing a character with complete amnesia, would a bio still be needed? If so , how much detail could be left out to be discovered in game? How much of it could be left a mystery to the person playing the character.

[Falonthas]

now im not an approver or a dm, but the reason the bio is needed even with amnesia, is so that your not a lost prince, or from a wealthy family, or have a title, or something that could be argued that shoudl give your character an edge over everyone else

each char starts the same lvl 1 with a base bio, to give them a basic fleshing out
now special subraces need more in depth bios to show why they are that race and why they arent in the ancestral home

you could also use the maps  to find a remote part of an island say in roldem which was devastated by the bloodwar, where your common is a heavy dialect, and you have been not in contact with anyone save your village for the past 40 some years

that would give you the strange being a world thing your are looking for, but you will still be of our world

what minerva said is right in the middle ages people didnt wander outside the 5 miles that was their home, unless they were nobility

so your char and his friend going to seek him out could have been isolated easily and are finding their way

im sure there are parts of the isles ,even if not roldem as in my example, one of the approvers or dms could assist in helping you find an isolated area, not reachable because of the war, or belief that it was totaly annihilated, which gave reason not to hunt survivors, and that could give you anywhere from 40 to 100 years of time without contact, or even without holy elders more then a pittance of knowledge about the gods and what they stand for.

the server i played before was city of arabel and i was there for three years before i stumbled onto Leanthar and his Layonara

yes it takes some adjustment, but i think someone who could be as devoted as they are to greyhawk, which doesnt have the largest following of the dnd worlds, you and your friends would not only feel at home but would wonder why you thought of playing anywhere else then Layo.

give it a chance, cause it will grow on you

[Hundane]

Oh yeah meant to add in my post about maps. I can not see the maps, All the links direct me to a blank web page. Is that just me or are the links broken ?

[minerva]

LORE: Maps of Layonara

[Dorganath]

There's unfortunately no valid reasons at the moment for having a character start off-world.  In the last campaign, there was a "call" sent out that was very powerful and even touched other worlds, and new characters could in fact come from other places.  Not a general call, as such, but a call to individuals that a very old dragon felt could help in the war against Bloodstone.  At some point in that campaign, the call became limited solely to those already on Layonara.  In the current campaign, there is no such call at the moment.

As has been mentioned, amnesia and discovering oneself can happen, however you the player needs to acknowledge and agree that your character will not simply "discover" he/she was born to some noble house and is in line to succeed the king/queen, unless we tell you that specifically.  

So in other words...your character can have amnesia and you as a player can also not know the details of the character's past, you have to at the very least agree to the fact that there will be no claims of nobility, influence, inheritance and so forth.  Such things might be possible down the road, but only under GM-led conditions.

I hope that makes sense.

[Gulnyr]

... a remote part of an island say in roldem which was...

The Kingdom of Roldem got a name change way back when everything else did.  Just like Port Hempstead is considered to have always been the name of that particular city, regardless of what we all used to call it, so too has that group of islands south of Dregar always been the Rohden Alliance.  No one really noticed it got a name change because everything was in ruins, and then the member states came forth afterward as individual nations rather than the united alliance they once were.  

Sorry to be off-topic.

[Hundane]

Thank ya Minerva,  at least the big map works for me now and I can see the world and how its laid out. Big huge help.

Dorganath says:
"As has been mentioned, amnesia and discovering oneself can happen, however you the player needs to acknowledge and agree that your character will not simply "discover" he/she was born to some noble house and is in line to succeed the king/queen, unless we tell you that specifically.

So in other words...your character can have amnesia and you as a player can also not know the details of the character's past, you have to at the very least agree to the fact that there will be no claims of nobility, influence, inheritance and so forth. Such things might be possible down the road, but only under GM-led conditions.

I hope that makes sense."

That completely makes sense to me.

"In the last campaign, there was a "call" sent out that was very powerful and even touched other worlds, and new characters could in fact come from other places"

Grrrr, just my luck that I don't find this place till after something like that happens.

I think I will go the amnesia route and will submit a bio shortly.

Thanks all and Merry Christmas !!