Serious Medieval Atmosphere
Summary
This is our term for roleplaying the game as it is meant to be. That does not mean pages upon pages of text, but rather playing your character as if he were a real human being in a real world. You can be as short or elaborate as you want to in doing that, but try to be realistic.
Here are a few short guidelines, and further down you will find some points in more detail. Remember that all these are guidelines. Every now and then, there is a good reason to ignore one or two of them.
Do's
- Address everyone properly. The king is "your highness" or "your majesty" at the very least, better yet use his full title ("Your majesty king Edward of Somerealm"). Your liege-lord is "my liege", not "hey, John". Fellow nobles should at least be called "Sir (lastname)" or "Lord (lastname)" in the case of landed nobility. You would very, very seldom use the first name of anyone.
- Speak properly, you are a noble not a pig-farmer. No 1337-speak or Internet shortcuts. Write proper sentences. Saying "We will attack them at sunrise tomorrow morning" makes a huge difference compared to "move next turn".
- Behave like a real, living noble. Among other things that means valuing your honour, being at least a little afraid of pain and death (you don't have to show it), having likes, dislikes and ambitions. Also treating commoners (including adventurers) like the pig-farmers they are.
- Bring everything you know about courts, intrigue, gossip and medieval nobility into the game.
Don'ts
- No powergaming. If the only reason you do something is game-mechanics, you should probably not do it. No declarations of war if you don't actually intend to fight, for example. No "assassinate me so the bounty stays within our realm", etc.
- No nonsense. If you want to pray to the holy Doughnut, roleplay you are a vampire or include a reference to South Park into every letter, then BattleMaster might not be the game for you, and wherever we look for a serious medieval atmosphere, you are very much not welcome.
- No silly names. Not for your character, not for your unit. Just don't.
Some Points in Detail
Terminology
Playing the game sometimes requires use of terms that can be considered OOC. That's really not a big deal. Two guidelines might help in smoothing everything out:
- If you have a better, in-character, roleplaying term, by all means use it.
- In case of doubt, try to look for the game for guidance. For example, the game almost never talks about "turns". It does, however, name them precisely: "Sunrise" and "sunset". So instead of "next turn", use whatever the next turn is ("We attack at sunrise.").
Nonsense, "Fun" and Silly Names
We all play to have fun, but there is a difference between humour and slapstick. In a serious medieval atmosphere, there is still place for humour - the witty kind that nobles would use. There is no place for humour of the US College Comedy Movie kind. Likewise, we don't want to see anyone named "Darth Vader" or a unit called "=={XCW}== Da Cr8z1es". Names are important in a medieval world, and should be real. Some realms on other islands have a "funny" atmosphere to it. Vikings are fine, but they aren't just crazy lunatics, and you can properly roleplay a viking realm. Outer Tilog, well OT is unique. Don't try to copy it, especially not where we are looking for serious medieval atmosphere.
See Also
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