Olympia PBEM

Chapter 2: Important terms

Entity

Unit

Everything in the Olympian world has a unique code. Nobles, items, locations, and skills all are referenced with an entity number. The code is shown in brackets after the name. Some examples:

Rich Skrenta [501]

a player

Osswid the Destroyer [5499]

a character

Shipcraft [120]

a skill

City of the Lost [gx14]

a place

Gold [1]

an item

Scroll [yq12]

an item

Noble

Character

Used interchangeably. These are the individuals under the control of players. All player orders are given to characters. Players start with one character. Others may be hired or persuaded to join the player's faction. Characters may possess items, travel through locations, learn skills, engage in combat, cast magical spells, etc.

Faction

All of the units controlled by a player are called the player's faction. A player starts with only one character, but the faction may grow to have many units.

Player character

The player character, or PC, is the character the player starts with. The PC begins with a loyalty of oath-2. The PC may later FORM other characters. Nothing is special about the PC other than being the player's first character; if the PC is killed, play continues with the player's other characters.

Item

Possession

Characters may hold items, such as gold, scrolls, weapons, magic potions, jewels, lumber, rugs, etc.

Men

Characters may also have non-descript men in their employ. These men are represented as possessions for simplicity. They include peasants, workers, sailors, and different kinds of soldiers. These men may not learn skills, hold any items, or act independently from the noble they are with.

For example, one might see:

Seen here:
   Law Netexus [2020], with three peasants

Law Netexus is a character; the three peasants are non-descript men accompanying him.

Characters obtain peasants with the recruit order.

Skills

Characters may learn skills, which are used to perform tasks. For instance, Sailing [9502] must be known in order to sail a ship.

Skills are grouped into the following categories:

• Alchemy
• Beastmastery
• Combat
• Construction
• Forestry
• Mining
• Persuasion
• Shipcraft
• Stealth

There are also six schools of magic.

For information about learning skills, see study and research.

Noble Points

A player starts with twelve Noble Points (NP). Each player gets an additional NP every eight turns (one each game year). NPs are used to buy nobles with the form command. They are also required to learn some advanced skills, and to swear characters to oath loyalty.

Stack

A group of characters joined such that they move and fight together.

Province

A location on the map. Provinces may have sub-locations within them, such as cities, bogs, caves, etc. Provinces are either forest, swamp, mountain, desert, plains, or ocean.

Month

Each turn is a game month, or 30 game days.

Safe Haven

New players start in a randomly selected Safe Haven city. Combat is not permitted in safe havens. New players may acclimate themselves in safety before venturing out into the world.