-Food, burden, and travel conditions are enforced in this game. If your wizard somehow has 6 strength, carrying just basic adventuring equipment might be enough to weigh you down. (consider investing in a Handy Haversack.) If your plan is to ride for a week, raid some ruins and then ride back to town when you're done, you should bring at least 15 days worth of food, and probably hire some guards to protect your wagon from bears or whatever while you're in the dungeon. (yes, low-level guards will be available for hire, but they will have restricted use)
-Character Journals! Sounds lame, but bear with me. After each session, the players that joined in will have an opportunity to write an in-character journal (or Sonnet for Bards, or a poem for people with Craft (Wordsmithing), or whatever). Yes, it has to be in-character. Well-done entries will be awarded with roleplaying experience between sessions, based on how close you are to the party's average level.
-Backstories are required... they don't have to be long, but they can be if you want. Again, if you want to involve your backstory in the game then we can talk about it, but we can't have the game focus on just you.
-For people who can't make it to each session, that's fine. My rule for inconsistent attendance is "Who cares." We won't even bother with the "they were there the whole time but weren't contributing or eating food", there is to be none of this "hurry up and get through the dungeon and get back to town so I can join", I don't care for it. If you miss a session, you can still come back for the next one. If you join late in the session, *pop* and you're in the game (starting at the beginning of the next round of combat). If you miss too many sessions and start to lag WAY behind in experience points, I'll probably give you some free levels to catch you up, but you'll be behind on loot. The same applies for people who join after the game starts; we just ignore your previous lack of existence, and you now exist. There will be a gp amount and new-joiners level posted below.
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LA Buyoff is available. Since the starting level is now higher than one, people can use races with Level Adjustments, so... yeah.
-Constitution is not a dump stat. Attempts to prove this wrong are extremely likely to fail, and meet with death. (Van the Monk managed to avoid death with 6 con, but his player gave up on him since his defensive build required him to roleplay very restrictively and he had very little offensive power)
-the less-commonly-used skills will be helpful to have. Since food is being enforced and navigation is relevant, the Survival skill will be useful (on days when the clerics aren't present to magic some free food up, anyway
). Gather Information can point you in the direction of stuff to do, and Appraise can save you a lot of money on Identify spells (which cost a hundred coins a pop, ouch, that'll add up).
-again, you can hire people to guard your wagon while you're in a dungeon doing stuff. However, they can't be brought into actual combat; they won't participate in Random Encounters, they won't enter dungeons, and they can't help you navigate or find food. You'll have to pay for their rations, too, or use your social skills to convince them that you can provide for them on the way. This is relevant primarily because waterskins, travel rations, and camp-making supplies can be quite cumbersome for low-strength characters, plus if you use a method of transportation you can't carry into a dungeon, you'll want someone to guard it.
-You guys can build/buy yourselves a base once you've worked up enough money. I'm pretty sure one or more of my books has rules and tables for that, if not then I'll make them up and it's no biggy.
-Sessions are typically held at 11:00 PM GMT, on Saturdays... however, scheduling
anything recreational is hard when one works during the university semester, so some sessions may have a different time.