[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

About Exploration

In recent years, there's been a sudden boom in the amount of resources New Sumatra has access to because of how much easier it is to explore Twilight Jungle. This has increased the ability to explore both the jungle and the wasteland outside of the city more thoroughly. Before, all those resources had to go to maintaining the city and its population, but now some of that can go towards finding even more resources and perhaps finding a greater understanding of the world. Because of the increased ability to fund expeditions, and the encouragement to explore the jungle further even if they're not explicitly funded, the amount of resources gained just keeps growing.

Just when people thought there couldn't be more to discover, someone found some mysterious ruins in the very center of Twilight Jungle. The entrance is with in the roots of the tallest tree in the jungle; the tree that's nearly as tall as New Sumatra itself is in diameter. Its roots are a gnarled mass with several vines, flowers and other plants that seem to regrow so fast that there's only a few moments after they're cut down for people to be able to get through. The ruins themselves are underground, covered in the roots of the numerous trees of the jungle. They're made of stone, but it's not a stone found anywhere near New Sumatra. Given its age, odd construction, and the use of materials not found in the area, it's theorized that it was constructed before the wasteland formed. Not only are there numerous resources from what's growing inside of the ruins, but it might also be a clue to the lost history of the world. The discovery of the ruins has reinvigorated archaeology and historians as they try to piece together what's found in the ruins.

Twilight Jungle isn't the only area being explored. With the increase in resources, expeditions into the wasteland covering most of the world are also being funded. Explorers are often giving small vehicles so that they can move more quickly and carry more food and water to make exploring easier. However, the wasteland is not flat. There are numerous mountains and canyons, and even large sand dunes. The vehicles have some trouble in that kind of terrain, so parts of it are only explorable on foot. The hope in these expeditions is to find new resources the city might be able to make use of, and to see if there's anything else out there. There's still hope that perhaps New Sumatra is not the only place capable of supporting life.

However, those are just the reasons pushed by the people that write the news to make everything seem extra important. Each explorer has their own reasons for wanting to explore. Some might want to explore for the stated reasons, others might have a thirst for exploration, and others might want to beat up monsters, and others might think that this is really cool. One phenomenon that has been documented though, is that many of those that can use magic find themselves inexplicably drawn to the jungle, as though they just belong there and that's where they should be.

Character Creation

To model exploration, Beyond uses a very simple stat system. Rather than directly modeling all combat abilities and fighting monsters round by round, it focuses on exploration and handling hazards. It only tells you whether you succeed or fail and handling that particular hazard, and the exact details of what happened are left up to the roleplayer. Be creative when describing what actually happens while exploring! How the system itself works will be described below. The parts for character creation are here for easy reference.

There are only three attributes, and they are as follows (the caps are important):

PASSION: PASSION is a measure of a character's energy and ability to keep going when things get tough. Characters with high PASSION might be good at making sure their allies never give up and can restore faith and energy in distressed allies. Characters with low PASSION might get depressed easily and lack drive. PASSION determines the expedition team's starting energy and is used to handle exhaustion hazards.

BRAVERY: BRAVERY is a measure of a character's ability to take challenges head on and fearlessly handle situations. Characters with high BRAVERY might be difficult to faze and can deal with obstacles before they become a threat to them or their allies. Characters with low BRAVERY might be skittish, hesitate, and are perfectly happy to let their friends go into the scary new room first. BRAVERY is used to avoid injury and handles danger hazards.

FRIENDSHIP: FRIENDSHIP is a measure of a character's ability to work with others and think of other's needs as well as their own. Characters with high FRIENDSHIP might be good at using other peoples' positive attributes and keeping the team together through arguments and difficult situations. Characters with low FRIENDSHIP might be difficult to work with, run off on their own a lot, be selfish, or just be bad at understanding people. FRIENDSHIP determines how much loot is gotten from each room and handles splitting hazards.

Starting characters get 35 points if they use magic to distribute between the three attributes. Each attribute must be at least 1, but there is no cap on how many points you can put into a single attribute. It's recommended that 10-15 points go into each one, but this is not required if you want a more specialized build. Making a stat too low can end up hurting your team more than helping it however.

If your character does not use magic they get 25 points instead. The upside is that they have an easier time exploring the wasteland, as described in the Energy, Injury, and Failure section.

Starting characters also get 2 skills with whatever mods are desired. How to build skills is described in the Shop thread. Skills are a character's active abilities, or a representation of what they actually do in the dungeon. They include things like avoiding hazards, scouting ahead, searching for loot, or healing injury. Take a look through the list in the shop for the full details.

Starting an Expedition

In order to start an expedition, first you need people! It is possible to explore alone, but given the dangerous nature of the exploreable areas someone working on their own won't get very far. You can use the Dungeon Groups board to help your search, or any other method of communication you prefer. You can also just make an open thread in the explorable areas if you want to keep it open to everyone. The recommended party size is 3-5 people. The only restriction on who can join is that each character can only be in 1 expedition at a time, and a single player cannot have more than one of their characters in one expedition.

Next you need a thread. Put in one of the sub-boards called "Exploration." If you're having trouble finding them, just CTRL+F "Exploration" on the main page. No further tagging is needed to get the staff's attention, just putting the thread in the exploration board indicates that it's an exploration thread and that the staff should pay attention to it. The only tags the thread needs is an [OPEN] tag if anyone can join and a [CLOSED] tag if it's reserved for specific people. Post a list of tags inside the thread itself to indicate who can post in it. Once an expedition has started no more people can join it. If not all the invited people in a closed expedition have posted after 48 hours, the expedition will begin without them.

Once the thread is posted, the participants will have 48 hours to make a post and submit an action before the staff resolve the round. To submit an action, just post normally and then put a bolded command at the bottom of the post. If you're tight on time, just posting a command is sufficient to get your action resolved. How to structure an action will be discussed in the next section.

It's possible to have social threads in explorable areas without using the exploration rules. Just don't post the thread in an Exploration board and it will be a regular thread. Of course, these threads don't give out the rewards that an expedition would and are treated like any other thread.

Exploring

Exploring the dungeon is all about moving through it and preparing for hazards. The hazards are described in the next section, this section talks about movement and the flow of the adventure.

Exploration is divided into rounds. Each round is 48 hours long. During that time, everyone may post freely in the exploration thread and there is no post order because of the time limit. That said, be respectful to your fellow RPers and try not to leave anyone behind because they post more slowly. Each round, staff will say whether there's a path going forward, left, or right. To move, just decide which of the possible directions listed you and your team want to go. The party will move together, so only one person needs to specify which way the party is moving. If multiple people submit a movement command, then the last one posted will be used. In addition to movement, each explorer can also use one of their skills. Unlike movement, each explorer must specify their own skill use. If someone submit two skill commands, the last one that individual posted will be used for their action.

If movement AND a skill is used, then the skill will be used in the room that is being moved into. It's possible to use skills without moving (for example, if the team decided they wanted to scout ahead before moving). It's also possible to move without using skills. It's even possible to stay still and not use skills, but this does absolutely nothing. Regardless of which of those option the team takes, it still uses up the same amount of energy (energy will be described in the energy, injury, and failure section). In order for your action to be resolved, the only thing that needs to be posted is the command. If you don't think you'll have enough time to write a post, don't be afraid to just submit a command, so that your character still does something that round.

Structuring a Command
Commands should be bolded and put at the bottom of the post so it's easy to find. If it's posted elsewhere, it will be ignored. To move, post Move: Direction. The caps aren't important, but it should be formatted like that. To use a skill post Skill: Skill Name. Again, the caps aren't important, but do make sure you get the skill name right. For example, if someone wanted to move to the right and then use their "Ward" skill the command would look like this:

Move: Right
Skill: Ward

After 48 hours, everyone's actions will be resolved and the staff will describe what's in the next room and how the party handled whatever hazards were in it (hazards are described in the next section). Because the system only focuses on success or failure, the players are free to decide the exact details of what happened and are encouraged to be creative. If the team is able to overcome the hazards in the area, or at least has some energy and uninjured explorers after failing against them, then they are able to explore the room and collect whatever valuable things are in it. Everyone will be awarded with some resources based on the FRIENDSHIP of the explorer with the lowest FRIENDSHIP and the difficulty of the room.

Energy, Injury, and Failure
Exploring is difficult and dangerous, and everything can't always go the way of the explorers. If it was that easy to explore then the wasteland would be fully mapped and everyone would know what the ruins were for after all. This section talks about how each expedition ends. As a note, an expedition can be ended whenever the players desire, this section only talks about when the expedition is definitely over.

Once an expedition starts, the team has a certain amount of energy determined by the explorer with the lowest PASSION attribute multiplied by 10. For example, if there was a team of three people, one had a PASSION attribute of 15, one had a PASSION attribute of 10 and one had a PASSION attribute of 20, then the team's starting energy would be 100. Each turn, regardless of the action taken, each explorer in a team uses up 5 energy. So in the above example with that team of 3, each turn the team would use 15 energy and after the first round they'd be down to 85 energy. Therefore, small teams will use less energy, but they won't be able to use as many skills each turn, and large teams will use a lot of energy but will be able to use a lot of skills each turn.

Exploring the wasteland works similarly, but there is one key difference. People that can't use magic still only use up 5 energy, but people who can use magic use 10 energy instead. Exploring the wasteland is difficult for people that use magic, so their trips to the wasteland tend to be much shorter.

While exploring, harm may befall the explorers. Some of the monsters may be difficult to fight, some of the traps may spring too fast, and sometimes they might slip on something. Beyond models this in two ways. First, each room has a difficulty level to determine how dangerous the hazards in the room are. This number is hidden, so the players will never see it, but if that number is greater than the explorers BRAVERY + 5, then they will be injured after their action is taken. For example, if the hidden difficulty level of a room is 20, and the team's BRAVERY is 15, 10, and 20, then only the second explorer will be injured because of the room's difficulty. Explorers can also be injured because of hazards in a room. That will be described in the next section.

Injured characters cannot normally use skills, though there are some skills that can be used while injured (see the Shop for a full list of skills), and they will remain injured for the remainder of the expedition unless someone uses a skill to get rid of their injury. Even though it's called injury, in character it can mean anything that makes the character perform worse than they otherwise would. Maybe a monster bit their arm, or maybe one taunted them and hurt their pride and is making them act irrationally. Be creative if your character becomes injured!

Once all explorers are injured, or their energy reaches 0, then the expedition is done and they need to retreat back to the city.

Hazards

The dungeon is full of danger and has many ways to hurt the intrepid explorer. All of these dangers are represented by three groups of hazards: Danger, Exhaustion, and Splitting. This section details what they represent and which skills counter them. See the Shop for the full list of skills and their descriptions.

Danger: These hazards hurt explorers. They might be monsters that try to bite, a canyon with rocks that are easy to slip and fall on, or a trap that tries to drop a boulder on the group. If not countered, they will injure a single uninjured explorer based on who has highest BRAVERY. If there's a tie, the character that posted first will be injured. Danger hazards are countered by Ward skills.

Exhaustion: These hazards use the characters resources or are otherwise difficult to fight. They might be high sand dunes that are difficult to climb, a maze of thorns that hurt to walk through if no one takes the time to cut through them, or monsters with hard shells that are hard to crack. If not countered, they will decrease the team's energy by 20. Exhaustion hazards are countered by Strike skills.

Splitting: These hazards make explorers lose their way and separate groups. It might be a trap that drops a wall in the middle of a group, a monster that glows to distracts part of the group and gets them to chase it, or the floor collapsing out from under the part of the group's feet in a cave. If not countered, the team will be split in half moving them to another area (minimum one person), effectively creating a second expedition. Staff will create a new thread for the split team and both teams will continue with half the participants. Splitting hazards are countered by Guide skills.

After Exploration

Once the expedition is over, the explorers will have new knowledge of the area, and more importantly, lots of loot. Characters have a few options for what they can do with the riches and knowledge they brought back with them.

First, it can be directly converted to the character's personal currency, known as GLORY (the caps are still important). GLORY can be used to buy new skills and new skill mods for the character, and can also be used to create new boards and buy custom titles and similar things.

It can also be donated to one of three big groups in order to better the city and increase everyone's strength. There are specific milestones to hit, and once one of them is hit everyone will gain a new benefit. The current amounts each group has, and the amount needed to reach the next milestone, is located in the top table in the announcements section. The groups are as follows:

Industry: Donating to industry increases the quality of life for everyone in the city, and makes it easier and more comfortable to live. It makes it easier to build more things, and sometimes new things, so explorers will have access to more to make exploring easier. When the milestone is reached, everyone will get a permanent attribute increase (players choice of PASSION, BRAVERY, or FRIENDSHIP).

Surveying Association: The Surveying Association is a group that focuses on exploration and making sure explorers get all the resources they need to be as effective as they can. Donating to the Surveying Association let's them spread strategies on how to fight monsters or brave the wasteland, or give them more resources for food and weapons and weapon training. When the milestone is reached, skills get stronger. This also applies retroactively to any skills that have been purchased.

Science: Donating to science gives scientists the ability to do more research and learn more about the world. When a milestone is reached, something about the world will be revealed. What exactly that is will depend on what people are talking about. If you would like to request something specific, include it with your donation. If you'd like a specific event to happen, like an organization to have some success or failure (IE, you want Flourish to get stronger etc), you can also request for that to happen, and whichever event has the most money going towards it at the end of the month will see something happen.

At the end of an expedition, just post where you'd like your loot to go much like you'd post a command. Use GLORY if you want it to go to yourself, and the group name if you'd like to donate it to one of the groups. You can split your earnings towards multiple groups if desired. If you'd like to keep your spending secret for whatever reason, you can PM a staff member instead.

Advanced Exploration

The above described the basics of exploration, and only had explorers go through one room at a time. If explorers think they know the way, then they can try to go through more than one room in a single round in order to conserve energy. Even if they go through 100 rooms in one round, it will still only cost the team 5 energy per explorer, so the team can get much further using this option if they're willing to take the risk.

To go through multiple rooms, first the direction the team wants to go needs to be decided on. Like with regular exploration, the last person to specify a movement action will be the one used. Multiple moves can be specified even if the explorers don't know the way ahead. If the team that tries to move in an impossible direction (IE, they try to go forward at a left/right intersection) then that command will be ignored, and movement commands will be continued to be ignored until the next legal command.

Only one skill can be used per round, and only skills that have the proper mods can be used in more than one room (IE, Double..., Triple..., Omni..., see the Shop thread for a full list of skills and mods). To specify when it should be used, put a number, or numbers if it can be used multiple times, to represent the move it should be used on with the first movement being 1. So, if you wanted to use it in the first room the team goes into, put 1. If you wanted to use it in the third room the team goes into, put 3. If you wanted it to be used in the second and the fifth, then put 2, 5. If you wanted them to be used in all of them, put All.

If a character is injured, whether because of a Danger hazard or because their BRAVERY was too low for the room's difficulty, they are considered injured for the rest of the turn.

If a hazard takes the team's energy down to 0, then the turn ends immediately without resolving the rest of the commands.

If a hazard splits the team, then the members that were split off will not make the rest of their actions for the turn, though the ones that weren't split will. The split members will start their new expedition from the room they were split off into.

Structuring a Command
The commands are structured similarly to regular commands. For movement, instead of typing out the whole word only use the first letter. IE, F for Forward, L for Left, R for Right, and B for Back. For skills, specify the skill then the rooms you want them to be used in as described above.

For example, if someone wanted to go through 5 rooms, wanted to go forward, forward, left, right, right, and wanted to use Double Strike in rooms 1 and 4 the command would look like this:

Move: FFLRR
Skill: Double Strike 1, 4