Post by Ryo on Sept 5, 2014 3:03:40 GMT
It's like we're based on a video game about dungeon crawling or something. Weird. Moving on...
Exploration
The most mechanically intensive part of the site, exploring the strange labyrinth that's popped up! It's the only way out of the school and possibly back to the Near Side, but it's riddled with dangers of all sorts. Enemy programs, traps, puzzles, possibly even all of them at once! Since the progression of the plot is directly linked to the amount of the labyrinth explored, obviously there's gotta be a catch so you can't just go "HA! I MADE IT TO THE END OF THE DUNGEON BECAUSE I SAID I DID". And this is very much true here, but how exactly do you go about it? We're getting to that part.
Right
About.
Now.
So, key facts to know:
1.Stamina. This is a reflection of how much energy you have to explore the labyrinth with. This is strictly limited to the Masters and other human characters, due to the labyrinth being physically and mentally taxing. Servants are not affected by this, due to their non-human nature, but a Servant does need to make sure their Master is safe and can escape.
When you first enter the Labyrinth, you have 30 Stamina. There is no way to increase this beyond a particular piece of Formal Wear, though with the use of consumable items you can replenish it. Another way to replenish your stamina is to return to campus. Once you are on campus you can rest and fully replenish your stamina, but who knows what may have transpired in the labyrinth while you are gone.
Every post in the Labyrinth costs 1 point of stamina. If during this post you are exerting yourself intensively, specifically fleeing from an enemy or chasing one, you must use 2 points of Stamina.
If you join those already in the Labyrinth mid-way, you start off next to them but must spend an amount of Stamina equal to the number of posts they have made advancing. IE: If they are 5 post-cycles in, you must spend 5 Stamina to start next to them.
Retreating, unless you have a Return Crystal (don't know what it is? Well you should, you're going to need them), is a bit tricky. You cannot simply say "I retreat" and get away with 1 post to leave the entire labyrinth if you just spent 10 posts exploring it. The further in you go, unless a specific shortcut is opened up, the harder it is to get out. A successful retreat on your own costs an amount of Stamina equal to the number of posts spent advancing. If you are 10 posts into the labyrinth, it will require 10 Stamina to retreat on your own.
Upon declaring a retreat, if you are not chased, you simply exit and that's that. If you are chased, this cost is not spent and instead you and your pursuer both begin spending 2 Stamina per post as they chase you. [If they use Stamina.] Every post spent retreating like this reduces the cost of a successful retreat by 1. This continues until the cost of a successful retreat is equal to 0 [Aka you spend as many turns retreating as you did to get in] or the pursuer stops chasing. Or kills the person being pursued.
Should a Master run out of stamina before fully retreating, their Servant can aid them in escaping, but the Master will faint and the Servant will no longer receive support from them. [This is usually enough to carry them out regardless but fighting will prove difficult.] Alternatively, if you have an ally on the outside who is actively aiding in the effort who can warp you out without a Return Crystal that can aid in the process. However, note the latter method can be blocked and the other player must not only be involved and willing to help, but also must be a Master of Grade B or higher.
2.There can only be one Exploration thread at a time. This is due to the fact that progress in the labyrinth is a global effect. If someone clears a puzzle, it is cleared for everyone on the site. Think of it as a permanent site-wide in-character event. Exploration threads are to be labeled as such using [Exploration] in the title. We will be keeping an active log of exploration threads and what progress was made for continuity's sake. Thus, if you see a thread on the current floor of the labyrinth with that tag in the name, you cannot make another one until that one is closed and done.
That doesn't mean you can't join though. Because of this restriction, Exploration threads are always open for people to join. This also means if you join, you have to keep up a regular posting rate. Any who do not post after 2 days will be skipped, and that can be really bad during a boss fight. So if you intend to join in, make sure you can keep up. We don't want people joining just to slow things down (unless in-character you're trying to hinder exploration progress, in which case make sure to post so that you actually do slow things down in-character and don't get ignored). Note that if something comes up that physically keeps you from posting you can ask for a 1 day extension, but don't use it if you don't have to and are just feeling lazy. Also, there is a 1 week time limit on absolutely nobody posting. If zero players post for a week, the exploration thread is shut down. It is assumed that those who were in it retreated to the campus or, if in the middle of a boss fight, died fighting the boss.
This does not mean you cannot roleplay normally in the Labyrinth. Regular threads can exist there for strictly roleplaying purposes (or if you really wanna fight another player), but these threads cannot make progress on clearing the labyrinth and can only be in explored territory.
3.Staff are involved in these threads. However, staff do not run everything. Staff do not run random encounters. Obviously they exist, but random enemies are something that can be hand-waved since we do not have a combat system and you can describe them on your own time in your own posts. This is not an excuse to ignore them though. We may give out random drops and money to those that do a good job with random encounters. This is not guaranteed nor is it ever truly planned in advance; it is simply something we do to reward good roleplaying.
What Staff do handle are planned encounters (such as bosses) and challenges (such as traps or obstacles). We will be handling these and how they react to the actions of players. Any other time, we will simply watch and wait (and trust us we will be watching).
4.Combat is mostly logic-based. This means that there is no strict "YOU HAVE X HP AND Y THINGS YOU CAN DO" for when a Servant fights another Servant or an enemy. That being said, Masters are limited in what they can do during a fight. A Master can do one action a turn, when it comes to actions that impact the combat. This includes things like activating a Code Cast, using an item, or changing out formal wear (yes you can change formal wear during a fight but it eats up your action for the turn).