FAQ

Submit new questions here (anonymous commenting is permitted).

(Be warned that some of the information on the DW post is out of date. If you see any conflicting information, this page is correct and the DW page is incorrect.)

=How the game is run=

Who is in charge here?
The Guindo, Yoiko, and Mini. See the mod contact post for details on how to get in touch with them. (Your best bet is Guindo, as he has the most free time to dedicate to running the game.)

What is Hand of Mod?
Occasionally, the mods will e-mail you with something that is going to happen to one of your characters. Just as there are things you can't control in real life, there are things your characters can't control in their own lives. This is called a Hand of Mod.

You have the right to refuse things that make you uncomfortable, of course, because this is meant to add an element of unpredictability that makes the game fun, not stressful.

The following will always be off-limits for HoM: pregnancy, mutilation, rape, and death.

Examples of the things we might do are, "Everyone who had the tuna at the college cafeteria yesterday gets food poisoning," or "Your character's car broke down this morning." Think lamps turning into pine cones, not horrible life-altering terrible.

It also serves as a way for us to ensure ICA=ICC. You might get Hand of Mod coming down to serve your consequences, but we'll never go out of our way to destroy your character mentally or physically, or to "trigger" anything in your character.

What is the game's timeline?
Two weeks IRL = one week IC. We will post updates every two weeks to summarize the events of the past IC week and outline any events that occur in the following week.

There's also the timeline post, which is a list of all game interactions in chronological order. Please tag all your posts with the IC date on which they happen! It makes maintaining the timeline much easier on us.

Can I run my own plots?
Certainly! We love player plots! They're what keeps a game going.

If they'll affect other characters, we'd appreciate being contacted about it first, but that's only to make sure mods are on the same page as you. If it's just personal-interactions drama, don't worry about it. If it's something like a city-wide power outage, ask us first!

What do I do if I have a problem or concern with the game?
Please, talk to the mods if you have any issues! The mods are very open to suggestions and are willing to work with players if they have problems. Very few of our decisions are set in stone and a compelling argument could cause us to change our minds on an issue.

Our main concern is ensuring that all players are having fun in the environment we've built, so if a decision is made that would impede your fun, please talk to us about it. We will work with you within reason to achieve a solution that works best for everyone involved.

However, if your problem is with a specific player, we request that you speak with that player directly before bringing the issue to the mods. 9 times out of 10 the answer you get in this situation will be "talk to them," so it saves time for everyone involved to skip straight to that step before escalating it to the mods.

=Rules and Regulations=

What is the character limit?
Two PCs with five alts between them, for a total of seven characters.

PCs-as-alts (characters apped as already being in Zenderael from Earth, or Earthers who have no affiliation to the game) count toward the alt limit. Self-aware alts (Zen-natives who never had a PC or whose PC is not a character in the RP) also count toward the alt limit.

If you hit the point of having one PC and five alts and would like to app a sixth alt, talk to the mods about it.

We reserve the right to deny new characters to people who have not proven they can maintain activity with the ones they already have.

Are there any age limits on characters?
PCs are strictly 14 through 45, nobody older, nobody younger.

Alts have no strict age limit, though mods reserve the right to judge extremes on a case-by-case basis.

What are the activity standards?
There is a post explaining this game's activity check over here.

What are PBs/What are the rules for PBs?
PBs (played-bys) are the person you choose to visually represent your character, like casting an actor in that role. We do not allow a single PB to be used for multiple characters, though you may talk to the mods about reclaiming PBs used by characters who have been dropped. PB use is first come, first served--there are no PB reserves.

As a general rule, Earth = live action PB, Zen = animated PB (2D drawn or CGI). However, upon switching worlds, characters are allowed to change their PBs from one to the other. If you do this, both PB options will be reserved for that character. (For example, Marlene has a claim on both Lily Allen and Yukari from Paradise Kiss as her PBs.)

How do I drop a character/declare a hiatus?
E-mail the mods with a drop or hiatus notice. For hiatuses, include a start and end date. (If the end date is unknown, send a second e-mail when you return from hiatus.)

You may also post about a drop or hiatus on the OOC community, but doing it through the mod e-mail is the safest way to ensure the mods get the message and have it on hand for record keeping.

Can I hiatus just one character at a time?
If you're having trouble with one or two characters specifically and need time to figure out what to do with them without feeling pressured to meet activity for them, you can NPC those characters temporarily. This does not allow you to get around the character limit--NPCed characters still count against your total number of characters.

Unlike a regular hiatus, you may keep a character NPCed as long as you like, but after three months, we might ask if you'd rather just drop the character.

NPCed characters may still be played while NPCed, but if they begin to show high activity, we will approach you about whether you want the character to remain NPCed.

If we feel this is being abused, we will step in.

Are there any regulations on the type of content we can include in logs?
Nope. Just be sure to put the appropriate warnings on your post so that anybody who doesn't want to read that kind of content can avoid it. You can also lock posts to members only if it contains material you think would not be suited for the game's public image.

We do request that any sexual content beyond a fade-to-black be put behind a members-only lock.

How do the IC forums work?
Characters have accounts on the forums and can post to them using these accounts. They are able to create additional accounts to post with anonymously if they so desire (note it in the body of the post). Forum accounts are not tied to game accounts.

Filters (an IC way to filter a post to only a certain group of people) do not exist on the forums. PMs and e-mails must be used instead. (Or dragonmail.)

Example of a PM.

Example of an e-mail post.

PMs and dragonmail can only be sent to one person at a time. E-mail can be sent to as many people as you like, and is the best method for duplicating the "filter" effect that other RPs use.

How do tags work?
For the IC comms, please tag every post your character participates in with their first name. We do AC by tags, so if you forget to tag your posts, you may get screwed out of activity check and fail when you should've passed. It is your responsibility to ensure that your character's tag is added to a post.

Every post is also tagged with the IC date it occurs on. The format for this is ~week #XX YYYY/MM/DD (ww), where ww are the first two letters of the day of the week. For example, ~week #01 2050/01/09 (su) is January 9th, Sunday, week 1 of the game. If you aren't comfortable adding the date tag yourself, you may ask that a mod do it for you.

There is also a *requires date tag for posts that are not decided yet. Mods will go through this tag during timeline updates and ask the person who made the post to pick a date.

NPCs are tagged with !NPC: name, such as !NPC: Vahishta. Dropped characters will have ~! affixed before their name, to drop them to the bottom of the tag list (but above the date tags).

What sort of behaviour would result in getting kicked/banned from the game?
Being a raging douchebag who makes the game unfun for everyone else. Being an asshole to the mods when they make reasonable requests of you.

Basically, anything that makes the gaming environment hostile, or which saps enjoyment from the people around you, is not okay. Think of this game as a big party where the mods are the hosts and they are responsible for stocking the food and drinks and for bringing out the party games to keep everyone entertained. Don't be the asshole who yells at the host for not having a copy of Halo 3 and then dumps all the chips and punch on the floor and then refuses to help clean it up. You will be asked to leave.

=The MMO= With the MMO currently being down, a lot of this information is defunct, but is included here for reference.

What do I need to know about the MMO?
Legacy of Zenderael is an MMORPG run by a corporation called X-DAV. (X-DAV has since been shut down, its execs taken into custody, and then mysteriously murdered. The MMO is no longer running, though the world it connected to still exists.)

It was released in 2043, 7 years before the start of this RP. This RP takes place on the Everea server. PCs may play characters on other servers, but those characters are unimportant and will not be played in this game. Characters could be transferred between servers for a fee.

Every two weeks, the game did a sweep for activity. If an alt hadn't been logged onto in two weeks, their armour rusted and would need to be repaired. If two more weeks passed without a login, their armour would break and need to be replaced. If two more weeks passed without a login, for a total of 6 weeks of non-use, the character would be locked. A player would need to contact the GMs directly to request their character be unlocked (though their armour would not be restored).

Beginning in January, 2050, this rule strangely seemed to change from logging into a character to requiring you to play a character within that timeframe. Either RP or dungeon running or something that had the character being a part of the setting in some way. X-DAV never offered an explanation for this change.

The game has gone through 5 expansions, with Berserkers being the 10th and final class to be added. That expansion was released in summer 2049, 6 months before the start of the RP. (The order for the other expansions and which classes were available at the start has not been decided; don't worry about accuracy here.)

Is Zen free-to-play?
Yes. The game is 100% free to play with no content restrictions. There is no aspect of gameplay that requires you to spend money to access it.

It does run a cash shop that sells fun things like costumes and pets in exchange for real money, but the cash shop does not sell anything that will impact your gameplay experience. It is purely cosmetic. (ie, it isn't a "pay to win" item shop.)

What is Zen's gameplay like?
Think of it as a cross between WoW and any other MMO you've ever played. It's a traditional hack and slash type game, in a generic fantasy setting. More about the gameplay can be found on the Gameplay page. See also the Leagues page, which describes the large groups players can form to facilitate their gameplay.

What is level progression like?
Hitting max level is definitely possible without having to chain yourself to your computer, but there's a definite curve to it where it starts to get harder and harder. Somebody very dedicated might be able to do it in 2 months.

The 70~90 range is where it starts getting harder to level. This is the level range where a lot of casual players will start to stagnate, because ascending past it requires you to know your class well and play with some measure of skill. Enemies get harder and dungeons/raids become the best way to level.

There is a lot of endgame content for people who do make max, but there's also plenty of content on the way there.

Can in-game mail be sent to your own characters?
Yes. Items and money can also be sent through in-game mail, meaning that it is possible to use a higher-level character to gear up a lower-level character.

The GMs do consider this cheating, but everyone does it anyway. If you get caught, there will be consequences, but you'll only get caught if you go around bragging about it on the forums.

Are there party share limits?
There are no party share limits. However, if the level difference between characters is larger than 10 levels, the exp will even out so that power-leveling is basically impossible. The larger the level difference, the worse the exp-gain for both characters.

Are dungeons accessible by all regardless of level?
Any level character can walk into any dungeon, but if they're not the right level for it, they will die horribly.

Can we teach pets to do tricks?
Pets come with a selection of pre-set tricks they can perform on command. Allowing players to teach them their own tricks would be a bit difficult to program.

Are there crafting skills?
Yes, but only certain classes can learn certain crafting skills. You're free to play with this but keep it within reason. (For example, a cleric is probably not going to learn blacksmithing and a berserker cannot learn enchanting.)

How does item storage work?
There's bank space for storing items, but it's limited. You can also store items in your player housing; some houses have more space than others.

What is the IC explanation for gameplay death?
When a character's HP hits zero, it's a KO, not a death. Support classes get an awakening spell that cures KO and restores HP.

There is a specific status effect called death that mimics KO but can only be healed by clerics. It only shows up in max-level raids.

=The Actual Zenderael=

Why is the setting so undetailed?
So there's space for players to fill it in! One of the major aspects of this game is allowing player-created headcanon to be codified as actual game canon. You are free to make up whatever isn't specifically mentioned in the info posts. Monsters, class abilities, cities, dungeons, etc--this is all left open-ended for players to decide themselves.

The nature of RP is collaboration, and this game is built on the idea of players and mods collaborating to build a comprehensive world together.

What are the limitations on creating headcanon?
You may create new monsters, towns/cities, dungeons, shops, minor NPCs, enchantments, equipment, class/guild skills, etc without any need for mod approval. This sort of headcanon is vital in building a picture of the setting. All class skills should make sense within the spirit of the class.

You may not create any headcanon that would affect other players without first asking those players, and you may not create any headcanon that would affect all members of a class. For example: creating a spellsword ability to form a shield out of ice = OK; saying that all spellswords must have learned this ability = not OK.

If you're ever uncertain about whether your headcanon is okay or not, ask a mod.

NOTE: Having the freedom to create headcanon is a PRIVILEGE that can be revoked. The price of this privilege: you must document all headcanon you create by adding it to the appropriate wiki page. If you are uncertain which page it belongs on, ask a mod. If you continue to create headcanon without documenting any of it, you will not be allowed to create any new headcanon.

What travel methods exist in the world of Zenderael?
There are city-to-city warps, and mage NPCs in most major cities who will warp you to different places for a fee. The fee is fairly low, but variable with level. (The higher level you are, the more it costs, but it's still fairly low since you should be making more money at higher levels anyway.)

Otherwise your only option is walking, riding your ground mount, or riding your flying mount. (There are also water mounts for swimming, but those are difficult to come by.)

There are islands and there are coastal cities that will ferry you to them. You can also take boats between coastal cities. The ferries/boats are free, you just need to catch them because they move in real-time.

Since real people don't have levels, what are the warp costs for them?
Portal mages can see through the veil. They charge accordingly.

Warp fees are a flat rate for real people. They are cheaper to capital cities, costing about as much as a stay at a decent inn, and get more expensive for in-between towns. The more out of the way and obscure the place, the more expensive.

Does the lore support a character being able to switch Guilds?
Yes. Joining a new guild automatically dissolves ties to a previous guild. Also, characters who have been kicked out of a guild can go on to join another guild.

How do characters join guilds? Are there any restrictions on joining a guild? Can you get kicked out of a guild?
Characters find a guild leader and petition to join. OOCly, discuss it with the player of the guild leader. We prefer if you send an e-mail about it and include the mods and the guild leader's player in the recipients.

Due to guild politics, guild leaders have limited authority to refuse a petition. Some guilds have certain requirements (such as spellswords requiring all members to serve two years in the Amber Gaze upon joining the guild) while others take all comers and let them in on a sink-or-swim basis (like berserkers). This varies by guild, and if it is not defined on the guild's page, then the actual requirement is open for discussion.

Each guild has a different restriction on how to revoke guild ties. Likewise, if it's not defined on the guild's page, it's open for discussion. This is usually decided between the players of a guild leader and the mods, so it may be left intentionally vague for guilds that do not yet have PC guild leaders.

This rule exists to make things work on an OOC level. For example, if a guild leader hates a character ICly, they can't revoke that character's guild status just because they don't want them in the guild.

Are there Earth holiday equivalents in Zen?
Yes. They have different names from Earth holidays and have a lore reason behind them, but the timing of them tends to mirror Earth holidays.

Is there a pattern or base for naming in-game areas?
The in-game world's naming scheme has a Persian/Farsi bent to it, but don't feel confined to that. You're free to make up whatever names you like.

How does money work?
100 copper = 1 gold

Copper comes in denominations of 1c, 5c, 25c, and 50c.

Gold comes in denominations of 1g and 10g.

A beer at a pub or a loaf of bread will cost you ~5c. A room at an inn is 20c~50c depending on the location and quality of the inn. 50c is decent, 20c is full of cockroaches. Better than that and you're looking at much higher.

Potions: the lowest rank is 50c and they get exponentially powerful and exponentially expensive as they go. Mana potions tend to be more expensive than health potions.

Weapons: A basic starter weapon is 1g. Solid make but not special or powerful.

Magical items always cost more than daily living items. Armour and weapons and enchantments all get incredibly expensive as you go up the chain.

Max level adventurers tend to hover around 400~600 gold to their names. The ones that never spend their money and habitually save up or grind like pros will top around 1000g.

Inter-city warps scale in price to level. They're pricey but not unaffordable. Adventurers should have little trouble affording warps unless they just blew all their money on gear and potions.

How does resurrection work ICly?
See the Misc Headcanon post for an in-depth explanation of this.

=Alts who become real= These alts exist on their own, acting and moving around in ways that are IC given their established personality. If they don't have an established personality, they will develop one. If their personality is inconsistent or ridiculous, they may either stay that way, or realize what's going on and develop out of that into a more fully realized person. It's up to how you want to handle it.

They can be PMed in-game, but they have no way of seeing, responding to, or even knowing about PMs. (Unless they're mages, cuz mages get all kinda neat insights to the nature of reality. Not spellswords though, sorry spellswords.) They will also respond to dragonmail letters in handwriting instead of a font.

All alts are currently real.

How do real characters perceive non-real characters being logged out?
There's a sort of veil here to keep things from seeming crazy from the real side. When your character logs out beside a real character, the real one will remember that they suddenly left and gave a very compelling reason for having to go right then. If pressed, they won't be able to remember the reason, but damn it was a good one!

Unless they're a mage. Mages can see through that too. Damn that whole understanding the underlying nature of reality thing!

Where are non-real characters when logged out?
They simply don't exist. As soon as you log out, that person has vanished and will not reappear until you log back in. Signs of their presence will remain, in terms of anything that usually persists when you're logged out. Housing, decorations in said housing, and things of that nature. Otherwise, vanished without a trace.

So there's this thing in my character's backstory that's not entirely canon...
First and foremost, things that are not established as canonically possible will not carry over. We've canonized a few things (see: molavvas), and if there is something you really desperately must keep, make a case for it and we'll consider it.

However, we will not canonize any headcanon to do with demons, deities, or the Dark/afterlife experience in general.

If you're not sure what you can keep and what you can't, or just don't know how to lose a major part of your character's history like that, ask us! We will help you figure something out.

How do I incorporate X thing into the real character?
Generally, it's up to you. As a guideline, they don't tend to remember OOC interactions very well, and logs where they acted wildly OOC may be remembered as a foggy haze, or simply forgotten completely. It's sort of a "whatever works best" situation, there's no hard and fast rule about it.

What happens to real characters if your PC is still trying to play them?
Any time your PC logs onto an alt that is real, the alt will experience this as sudden lost time. They will have absolutely no memory of anything they did while the PC was controlling them, but any changes made will be persistent. (Giving them new armour, earning/spending money, etc.) Any changes to their characterization or backstory at this point absolutely will not take.

What happens if I delete my character?
If the character is already real, you lose the ability to control them. If the character isn't real yet but has been played enough to be established in the game-world, they will be forced to exist as a real person. If the character hasn't been played much and isn't established, they will be gone.

This is kind of a tricky case-by-case thing, so if you're going to delete a character, talk to a mod about it first. (Dropping is something altogether different and doesn't fall under these guidelines.)

What happens to the NPCs in my character's backstory?
If they were shown onscreen at any point, they will also become real along with the character.

If their existence was only implied, they will not exist. The character will still have memories of them, but the NPC will be absent.

Example: Ravi's cat, Mittens, is frequently onscreen and has a personality written in through RP. When he became real, she also became real, with a personality as written.

Ravi's father is never shown onscreen, but had a profound effect on his life. When he became real, his father did not, but the memories of growing up with him and the effect it had on him remained. If Ravi tried to find his father or the home where he grew up, there would be nothing there.

How does level translate?
It's meaningless in terms of power. What matters is how competent the character was roleplayed as being and the level of experience they'd reasonably have through backstory. A level 1 mage and a level 100 mage with the same backstory and RP competence would cast spells of the same strength.

What it does determine is what skills and abilities the character would know. They are still able to learn new abilities, but it's no longer as simple as spending a skill point.

Would characters with no established back story start off start as a blank slate when they become real, or could they find themselves with a back history developed right then and there?
Honestly it's up to you. They can be a complete blank slate, they can have a personality based on the actions they took or the unsaid half-personality their player had in mind when they played them (like you know how characters you don't RP on you might still jokingly insert personality into?), or they can have a personality of your own choosing that just makes sense to you.

If they have no established backstory, they won't gain one. It'll be like they never existed until the point where they turn real. Whether you treat this like "OH NO AMNESIA" or just a complete nonissue on the character's part is up to you.

After a character becomes real, can their backstory be altered?
Anything that is typically fudged on the parts of players OOCly will not translate to the real character's understanding.

So if, say, somebody brought in a new spellsword that was supposed to know Marlene and Malachai, Mal would work him into the backstory, but Marlene would be like "who's this scrub" and not know any of the supposed "shared history" they're said to have.

How would league chat translate IG to real characters?
Party chat and league chat would work within earshot, but otherwise it would be like whispers, real characters can't see/hear it unless they're mages (and mages can't respond to it). Real characters' responses would come across in league/party chat as a gameplay mechanic, but other real characters would be able to hear them speaking if in earshot.

How do real people join a 'party'?
Joining a party, you can send invites to real characters but they can't see them. However, if the joining is played out and a real character agrees to help you, they will accept any sent invite automatically. If they agree to help and no invite is sent, you'll see an "X joined your party" message anyway.

Mages can see invites and can accept/decline. They cannot send their own.

What happened to characters on other servers when the MMO went down?
Everea was the only server that served as a direct window into Zenderael. All other servers held a fake copy of the game world and thus none of the characters on other servers ever turned real. They simply ceased to exist, along with all the data surrounding them, when the servers got pulled.

=People from Earth in Zen= People in Zen will react to people from Earth pretty similarly to how people on Earth reacted to people from Zen. You are wildly misplaced and they can tell you're not from around here.

Cell phones work within Zen, can connect to Earth's internet, but cannot call phones on Earth. Electronics can be recharged using the power grid built by alchemists.

How do I get my character a class?
See 'How do characters join guilds'.

How do we determine where they show up when first transferred?
You can have them land wherever you want. It is up to you. If you can't decide, you can ask the mods to give you something.

How do others perceive them?
Real characters inside the game will perceive them as real people. Same way any PCs would perceive alts on Earth.

For people who are logged in to Zen interacting through an alt, there will be no written text to convey what the character is doing (unlike with real-alts where that veil remains up), and all dialogue will come through over the speakers, voiced. There's no mouseover information, either. They can be targeted, but there's no name display or anything. This might make them seem like NPCs at a glance.

The veil on characters logging out and PMs remains.

What about PMs and dragonmail?
People can PM a PC in Zen, but unless the PC has joined the mages, they will be unable to see the PMs. It is, however, a good way to tell if someone is in the game or not.

PCs in Zen cannot send dragonmail to characters who aren't self-aware unless it's in response to a letter they've already been sent. They can send mail to self-aware/real people without limitation.

So how do things like economy, travel, etc work?
The economy you see when playing Zen is centered around adventurers, so it is grossly inflated. Beneath that, there is a mundane economy where spending 1g on something is a large purchase, and your daily take-home pay is in coppers.

The world is also much larger than it seemed when you were playing. Walking between towns doesn't take a few minutes, it takes a few hours. There are also small in-between towns that the game never showed, and lots of spaces in cities that seem like they've always been there but you just never noticed them before. When dealing with shopkeepers, even shopkeepers that you knew as NPCs in the game, they will act and react like real people. In fact, the world seems full of perfectly average, self-aware people who are not adventurers.

There's definitely a feeling that you only saw one side of the world through your character.

What about monster killing?
Monsters are just as dangerous in Zen as they've been on Earth. There's a reason people send adventurers to kill them instead of doing it themselves.