INTRODUCTION
Using this Rulebook
This rulebook includes all the material you will need to play a game of the Pen-and-Paper RPG based on the venerable Fire Emblem franchise, except the dice and some optional play-aids. It is a game largely built from the imaginations of its players, and needs few physical components. As you read these rules and play your first games, you will begin to appreciate how it works and what additional help you will require.
This rulebook is set into three major sections, split into individual chapters. Each section then breaks down into a number of different topics, with headers like the one at the top of this post. Using these topic headings, you ought to be able to find a specific rule or piece of information without difficulty.
Just to make it truly easy, there are also quick-reference topic listings at the end of each chapter, which will also be collected at the back of the PDF edition for quick access.
What is a Roleplaying Game?
A roleplaying game is an adventure, in which you have the leading parts to play. You can compare it to a play or a film, in which actors play the roles of characters and act through a preordained plot. In a roleplaying game, each player takes the role of a character, a fictional personality who may be very different from the player himself. However, unlike in a film or play, in the roleplaying game there is no fixed plot. Instead, the players decide exactly what they want to do in any given situation, and then must discover if they were successful.
To decide what the players can or cannot do, whether they succeed or whether they fail in any action, there is the Gamesmaster (GM). The GM controls the world in which the characters live - he is the final arbiter whose word cannot be disobeyed. To help the GM decide what is possible and what is not, there are the rules you are reading now. The GM will use these rules to present a balanced setting in which the fictional characters can adventure. He will make the adventure seem real. But the rules are only guidelines, and when the GM feels he has to change them, he will. You have to accept that what the GM says are the rules of this game.
You will have realized by now that in order to play this game, you will need several people. You will need a GM and you will need players. The minimum number of players is two and the maximum practical number of players is probably about six, although more is possible (But starting to stretch it).
The Playing Area
Unlike a conventional board game, there is no formal 'board'. All of the information needed by the players is written down by them before the game using scrap paper or the special charts given to them in this book, called a 'character sheet'. A pen, pencil or word processor will, of course, be essential, as will scrap paper. The only other things you must have are dice, and even then a Random Number Generator will suffice. Roleplaying games normally use a variety of dice, but this one only uses the humble ten-sided dice - two of them, to be precise.
Sometimes the players' characters will become involved in fighting - the various continents of Fire Emblem are violent places, and this will happen quite often! On such occasions it helps everyone to picture the scene - to know the exact positions of characters relative to each other and to scenic features, such as doors, walls, windows, etc. - if the GM draws out a map or places a scale plan on the tabletop. Positions of characters, or of other features, can then be indicated. Most players prefer to use models to represent their characters, although counters work fine.
If you are playing through a livechat, or don't have access to models/tables, the GM can just say where each character is, and roughly how far away they are from everything else. This is why the rules don't just use 'squares' or 'spaces' in the combat descriptions, but 'meters' as well. If you are going to use a map or square grid, one square is considered to cover a space of four meters cubed, although you can change it if you wish.
The Action
All the players have to do to play the game is to make decisions about what their characters are going to do and how they are going to do it. This is quite easy. The players simply pretend to be their characters, and use their imaginations to guide their actions as if they were really in the world described to them by the GM. The more the players believe in their roles and the more involved they get in characters' the more rewarding the game will be. Players should always try to forget about the 'rules of the game' and attempt to act the part of their character as realistically as possible. A a character who is a sailor should act and speak like one, complaining about "Land Lubbers" and calling their superiors "Cap'n", while Nobles use long words and are stiffly polite.
The task of controlling the players and their characters falls upon the GM. This is a fairly weighty responsibility. The GM needs to be familiar with all the rules of the game and he needs to be able to apply them in a fair and even-handed fashion. He also needs to know when not to stick to the rules, but use his own judgment. Knowing when not to stick to the letter of the rules is a sign of a good GM, and is something that only comes with experience.
One final point. Throughout these rules I tend to use the word 'he' whenever talking about a singular player or character. Needless to say, you can replace it with 'she' just as easily, and no discrimination was implied or intended.
That last paragraph was courtesy of the Girlfriend.
The World
The world of Fire Emblem has had many great settings before, and I will visit them in the future (I may even ask permission to visit a few other fan-created worlds). For this game, however, I shall be making my own continent. The continent of Candrum is a strange and mysterious place, with mankind only just striking out and carving their way into the wilderness. Much of the land is forested, mountainous or otherwise wild and dangerous, with the few villages and hovels little more than a collection of farms constantly raided by bandits. What cities there are, however, are large walled bastions of peace and tranquility, until you get involved in local politics.
Players will soon find themselves faced with wild beasts, bandits, assassins, rogue military groups, and evil cults of necromancers. In the deep woods the monsters rule, and high in the mountains Wyverns await those brave enough to try and tame them, becoming one of the worlds famed Wyvern Riders. Hills and trails are dominated by bandits, and cities are ruled by tyrannical bureaucrats out to make a quick penny, their own personal armies behind them.
For the moment, the players need know no more about the world than where the characters live. The world shall be introduced to them by the GM, and a coherent picture of its peoples, geography and history will unfold during the course of its play. Remember - a certain amount of ignorance about their own environment is to be expected of novice adventurers, many of whom will be uneducated and (as yet) innocent of the ways of the world.
See the World of Candrum section for more information about this fanmade continent.
The Scenario
The world scenario is widely used to describe a self-contained adventure. It might begin with the player's characters having a quiet drink in a local tavern, or entering a small town in search of a bed for the night. It could even be as exotic as them all awakening on a pirate ship, captured to be their oarsmen!
Any of these scenarios may lead into a quest to recover a magical sword, or to defeat an ancient monster deep in the woods. The scenario is the stage for the adventure itself, which the GM must have prepared before play can begin. To show what is expected, I have included a specially created scenario in this rulebook called The Ulrich Contract.
The Ulrich Contract is a ready-to-play adventure, in which all the necessary details have already been worked out. A GM is still required, but there are extensive notes to make the GM's job easier.
Designing scenarios and running games is discussed in greater detail in the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE section.
Winning and Losing
In a roleplaying game there are no individual winners or losers. The players act together to try and overcome problems presented by the GM. Only by co-operating will the characters survive the dangers they face.
The object of the game is not only to survive (Hard enough on occasions), but to survive IN STYLE! Characters in the game must earn money to live, and acquiring money will become quite important to them. Characters may have other aims too, reflected by improving gaming abilities, such as the acquisition of new and useful skills. The best goals, however, are personal goals the characters set forth - an example is Inigo Montoya's search for the Six-Fingered man in The Princess Bride.
The GM cannot 'win' as such. His aim should be to provide an interesting and demanding game for the players. Because of his unique position, the GM could kill off a player's character at any time, but that is not the idea of the game and should not be the aim of the GM.
Creatures and Characters
During their adventures, the players' characters will meet other characters, other actors in the drama, as it were. These extra characters may be friendly or hostile, but whatever their attitude they will be controlled by the GM. They are referred to as non-player characters, or NPC's for short.
The word Creature(s) is used in the game to refer to all other living creatures, which are normally not sentient, such as Wyverns, the monsters in the forest, and Skeletons.
Using this Rulebook
This rulebook includes all the material you will need to play a game of the Pen-and-Paper RPG based on the venerable Fire Emblem franchise, except the dice and some optional play-aids. It is a game largely built from the imaginations of its players, and needs few physical components. As you read these rules and play your first games, you will begin to appreciate how it works and what additional help you will require.
This rulebook is set into three major sections, split into individual chapters. Each section then breaks down into a number of different topics, with headers like the one at the top of this post. Using these topic headings, you ought to be able to find a specific rule or piece of information without difficulty.
Just to make it truly easy, there are also quick-reference topic listings at the end of each chapter, which will also be collected at the back of the PDF edition for quick access.
What is a Roleplaying Game?
A roleplaying game is an adventure, in which you have the leading parts to play. You can compare it to a play or a film, in which actors play the roles of characters and act through a preordained plot. In a roleplaying game, each player takes the role of a character, a fictional personality who may be very different from the player himself. However, unlike in a film or play, in the roleplaying game there is no fixed plot. Instead, the players decide exactly what they want to do in any given situation, and then must discover if they were successful.
To decide what the players can or cannot do, whether they succeed or whether they fail in any action, there is the Gamesmaster (GM). The GM controls the world in which the characters live - he is the final arbiter whose word cannot be disobeyed. To help the GM decide what is possible and what is not, there are the rules you are reading now. The GM will use these rules to present a balanced setting in which the fictional characters can adventure. He will make the adventure seem real. But the rules are only guidelines, and when the GM feels he has to change them, he will. You have to accept that what the GM says are the rules of this game.
You will have realized by now that in order to play this game, you will need several people. You will need a GM and you will need players. The minimum number of players is two and the maximum practical number of players is probably about six, although more is possible (But starting to stretch it).
The Playing Area
Unlike a conventional board game, there is no formal 'board'. All of the information needed by the players is written down by them before the game using scrap paper or the special charts given to them in this book, called a 'character sheet'. A pen, pencil or word processor will, of course, be essential, as will scrap paper. The only other things you must have are dice, and even then a Random Number Generator will suffice. Roleplaying games normally use a variety of dice, but this one only uses the humble ten-sided dice - two of them, to be precise.
Sometimes the players' characters will become involved in fighting - the various continents of Fire Emblem are violent places, and this will happen quite often! On such occasions it helps everyone to picture the scene - to know the exact positions of characters relative to each other and to scenic features, such as doors, walls, windows, etc. - if the GM draws out a map or places a scale plan on the tabletop. Positions of characters, or of other features, can then be indicated. Most players prefer to use models to represent their characters, although counters work fine.
If you are playing through a livechat, or don't have access to models/tables, the GM can just say where each character is, and roughly how far away they are from everything else. This is why the rules don't just use 'squares' or 'spaces' in the combat descriptions, but 'meters' as well. If you are going to use a map or square grid, one square is considered to cover a space of four meters cubed, although you can change it if you wish.
The Action
All the players have to do to play the game is to make decisions about what their characters are going to do and how they are going to do it. This is quite easy. The players simply pretend to be their characters, and use their imaginations to guide their actions as if they were really in the world described to them by the GM. The more the players believe in their roles and the more involved they get in characters' the more rewarding the game will be. Players should always try to forget about the 'rules of the game' and attempt to act the part of their character as realistically as possible. A a character who is a sailor should act and speak like one, complaining about "Land Lubbers" and calling their superiors "Cap'n", while Nobles use long words and are stiffly polite.
The task of controlling the players and their characters falls upon the GM. This is a fairly weighty responsibility. The GM needs to be familiar with all the rules of the game and he needs to be able to apply them in a fair and even-handed fashion. He also needs to know when not to stick to the rules, but use his own judgment. Knowing when not to stick to the letter of the rules is a sign of a good GM, and is something that only comes with experience.
One final point. Throughout these rules I tend to use the word 'he' whenever talking about a singular player or character. Needless to say, you can replace it with 'she' just as easily, and no discrimination was implied or intended.
That last paragraph was courtesy of the Girlfriend.
The World
The world of Fire Emblem has had many great settings before, and I will visit them in the future (I may even ask permission to visit a few other fan-created worlds). For this game, however, I shall be making my own continent. The continent of Candrum is a strange and mysterious place, with mankind only just striking out and carving their way into the wilderness. Much of the land is forested, mountainous or otherwise wild and dangerous, with the few villages and hovels little more than a collection of farms constantly raided by bandits. What cities there are, however, are large walled bastions of peace and tranquility, until you get involved in local politics.
Players will soon find themselves faced with wild beasts, bandits, assassins, rogue military groups, and evil cults of necromancers. In the deep woods the monsters rule, and high in the mountains Wyverns await those brave enough to try and tame them, becoming one of the worlds famed Wyvern Riders. Hills and trails are dominated by bandits, and cities are ruled by tyrannical bureaucrats out to make a quick penny, their own personal armies behind them.
For the moment, the players need know no more about the world than where the characters live. The world shall be introduced to them by the GM, and a coherent picture of its peoples, geography and history will unfold during the course of its play. Remember - a certain amount of ignorance about their own environment is to be expected of novice adventurers, many of whom will be uneducated and (as yet) innocent of the ways of the world.
See the World of Candrum section for more information about this fanmade continent.
The Scenario
The world scenario is widely used to describe a self-contained adventure. It might begin with the player's characters having a quiet drink in a local tavern, or entering a small town in search of a bed for the night. It could even be as exotic as them all awakening on a pirate ship, captured to be their oarsmen!
Any of these scenarios may lead into a quest to recover a magical sword, or to defeat an ancient monster deep in the woods. The scenario is the stage for the adventure itself, which the GM must have prepared before play can begin. To show what is expected, I have included a specially created scenario in this rulebook called The Ulrich Contract.
The Ulrich Contract is a ready-to-play adventure, in which all the necessary details have already been worked out. A GM is still required, but there are extensive notes to make the GM's job easier.
Designing scenarios and running games is discussed in greater detail in the DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE section.
Winning and Losing
In a roleplaying game there are no individual winners or losers. The players act together to try and overcome problems presented by the GM. Only by co-operating will the characters survive the dangers they face.
The object of the game is not only to survive (Hard enough on occasions), but to survive IN STYLE! Characters in the game must earn money to live, and acquiring money will become quite important to them. Characters may have other aims too, reflected by improving gaming abilities, such as the acquisition of new and useful skills. The best goals, however, are personal goals the characters set forth - an example is Inigo Montoya's search for the Six-Fingered man in The Princess Bride.
The GM cannot 'win' as such. His aim should be to provide an interesting and demanding game for the players. Because of his unique position, the GM could kill off a player's character at any time, but that is not the idea of the game and should not be the aim of the GM.
Creatures and Characters
During their adventures, the players' characters will meet other characters, other actors in the drama, as it were. These extra characters may be friendly or hostile, but whatever their attitude they will be controlled by the GM. They are referred to as non-player characters, or NPC's for short.
The word Creature(s) is used in the game to refer to all other living creatures, which are normally not sentient, such as Wyverns, the monsters in the forest, and Skeletons.