Judging

Welcome! This is a guide to becoming a player judge, running scenes, and the commands you'll need. First we will discuss becoming a player judge and the commands used once you are one. Then we'll discuss the running of scenes.

Player Judges

What Are They?

A player judge is a character that has requested of the staff that they be made someone who can run official, logged scenes, which will be uploaded to the Wiki(this one over at Category:RPLogs). These scenes are considered canon within the gameworld.

Great! Make me one!

That's easy enough to do! All you have to do is file a request! To do so you would do +request/new and follow the commands that come up. You'd place it under judge, give it a subject, and expand on your request. I would advise doing more than just saying in the description 'Make me a judge!' Give reasons why you'd make a good judge, or some ideas you'd have for judged scenes. The staff will then review these requests, and grant or deny them as circumstances dictate.

As a note: What staff giveth, staff taketh away. If you prove to not be doing your job as a judge, or are abusing your powers as a judge, the staff can strip you of your judge status.

Okay! I'm a Judge! Now What?

Now you can do all sorts of fancy judge things! There are a few things you should read in game. Help Directors and Help Player Judged Scenes. Help Directors is fairly self explanatory and goes over what we just discussed, and will discuss in a bit. Help Player Judged Scenes, however, is a set of guidelines for player judges and to avoid any confusion we'll talk about them now.

Help: Player Judged Scenes

• In this, bulleted items like this one are ones that the writer of this guide has added.

A player judge is given certain powers that allow them to reward players, and it comes with responsibilities. A judge is expected to be a spokesperson for the MUD, and the world of Rusted Promises, and their content should encourage interaction with the story of the world, and story in general. Due to this, it is expected that a judge adhere as closely as they can to the following guidelines when running a player judged event.

1. The scene to be valid for rewarding should have a purpose, it needs to not conflict with official canon, and it must be considered to have happened. A throwaway scene is not a valid scene for rewarding and should be treated by characters as actually having happened.

• This means that the scene is canon and needs to have accomplished something in order for the judge to disperse rewards for it to be given. Your scene can be about helping to farm in fields to establish better relations between farmers and Gifted, or it can be about stopping bandit raids on the road. Both valid, good ideas. A scene without purpose is one like a casual chat in the inn. Sure, it can be decent character development, but what does it accomplish? Just chatting about the weather isn't good enough. HOWEVER! If the characters are gathered around an inn table, making plans on how to assassinate Chancellor Littlepot(not a real person, I made that up), and are having to do so without being overheard and blowing their cover? That could work for a rewarded scene.

2. Rewards should not be handed out like candy. The proper guideline on an active, well run scene, should be a player judge award for every 1.5-2 hours of RP time, no more frequent than this barring exceptional circumstances. That means for your 6 hour scene, 3-4 awards would be the maximum.

• Fairly self explanatory. If your scene runs 3 hours, don't give more than 2 rewards. Exceptional circumstances for giving more rewards should be discussed with staff prior to giving the additional reward.

3. A judge should be responsible in the way they pose. Generally, you do not pose what a player is feeling, if its within their control. Pose what they can see, or hear, or what an NPC says, not what the PCs think about said NPC. It is acceptable to overpose players if it is part of your job and you disagree with the players assumption of what happened, or if lets say a player is mind controlled, it's acceptable to pose what they are thinking, but these are exceptions to a rule.

• Again, fairly easy to understand. Don't force a player's actions through your poses, unless you have cause(mind control or the like). Let the players react as they will. Your job is to facilitate their actions, not dictate them. You provide NPCs for them to talk to, puzzles for them to solve. This is an interactive medium. Let them interact. If you want your story to play out in a certain way, and won't let the players take it in another direction, write a book. Don't run a scene.

4. When running public scenes, please post any questionable content that may exist in the scene ahead of time. Do not surprise players and then get upset if they don't react in character the way you expect.

• Fairly self explanatory. Just remember. Their characters are theirs. They will react how they decide to. Not you.

5. Set limits on how many people you can handle and stick to them. Even the most experienced judge won't be able to control a large audience. Smaller scenes run faster, are easier on you, and more fun for everyone.

• Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. It can be worrying to say to someone "I'm sorry, but we have four people already, and I don't run scenes for more than that." It sucks to have to turn people away. But it's necessary. If you take more people than you're comfortable with you won't do a good job judging. You'll get frazzled, and in the cases of some people(like me) you could even get snippy. Don't let that happen. If you feel like you're leaving people out, run more scenes! Get those poor left out souls in the mix!

6. You have the final say when it comes to what is happening in the scene. Do not let players bully you into getting their way, hog scenes, or force you to run a scene in a way you don't like. It is up to players to follow a judge, and they have the authority to determine what actually does happen. If players are unhappy they simply do not have to attend your events in the future.

• You decide what happens. Not the players. The players can say "I shoot an arrow at X" but if you decide that X is being watched over by an allied air mage who blows the arrow away, stick with that. Don't let the players try to bully you into that not happening, because they will. That said; don't railroad a scene either. Yes, you're the judge. Yes, you decide what happens in a scene. Yes, it's YOUR scene. But if you run a scene where players can't do anything due to their actions always being negated, because you want the scene to go in Y direction... You won't have players attending your scenes for very long.

Mechanics of Judging

Here we're going to discuss the mechanics of judging a scene. We'll talk about +rolls, +dice, the +pj commands, how to do fights, and so on. We will start with Judge levels.

Judge Levels

Every judge starts at Judge Level 1, and are made a judge account wide. Used to being a judge was something specific to a character, but now it is tied to the player's account, so all characters on that account share the judge level so long as they are toggled to be a judge. More on that in a bit. This level can be increased when, after you run a scene, players give you a vote, using +pjvote (judge). The more often you run a scene, the faster you get judge levels! However, a player can only vote for a specific judge once a day. An increase in judge levels gives the judge more powers. Such as the ability to change the environment of the room, or create different monsters. It also ties into the strength of their rewards.

+PJ

The +pj command is the bread and butter of a judge. It's how you hand out rewards! And a few other nifty things! Let's take a look at it!

• +pj #xp - reward players in the room with XP.
• +pj #loot - reward players in the room with a smaller amount of XP, and a chance to salvage loot.
• +pj #influence - Rewards players with social influence
• +pj #token - Rewards players with tokens.
• +pj #buff - rewards players in the room with a buff that scales with your judge level.

These are your reward commands. All rewards are variable, based on the level of the player receiving them(or crafting skills in the case of the #loot command) and the player judge level of the judge. Further, a judge who has a blessing from the staff gives stronger rewards.

• +pj #ooc - Enable/disable OOC chat in your room.

This command does what it says. Useful if OOC chatter is getting overwhelming, or argumentative.

• +pj #env <nanite|water|heat|cold>=<number> - Set the environment on the temporary room you are in (judge level 6+).

This changes the environment of the room. Different environments have different effects. An example; water environments have a -20 energybreak(I think), to represent the fact that actions are more difficult in that watery environment. Players with certain aspects may have ways to get around the environmental effects.

• +pj #research - Advances global research due to player activity.

This is similar to a reward, but does not count as one for purposes of how many can be awarded. If your scene advances one of the research topics you can use this to show that. So if you are running a scene where characters discover some nifty fact about what the Creators ate you could use it to advance the Creator Meals research topic. When you use this command it will ask which topic you wish to advance. Using the RESEARCH command in game will show you topics.

• +pj #bless (name) - Staff only, causes a judge to give out 25% larger rewards and get 25% more from votes.

Staff only. Does what it says. If one of the staff have used this on you, you should run a scene!

• +pj #boot (name) - Allows judges of level 3+ to send a player to their home location.

Again, does as it says. You can use this to boot a player out of the scene. If you're handing out rewards, and they went idle after the first two hours, you can use this to give a reward, then boot them, and continue handing out rewards. Also it can be used to send troublesome players out of the scene. Use it sparingly.

• +pj #flaw (person)=(flaw) - Give a person credit for playing up a particular flaw.

Does as it says. A test showed no noticeable mechanical effect for me, just a way of giving them credit for it. That said, may be an effect I missed.

• +pj #off - Will make the system no longer count this character as a judge.
• +pj #on - Will make the system once more count this character as a judge (if your account is set to be one).

A linked set of commands. This toggle a character to being a judge or not being a judge if your account is flagged as a judge. If your character has being a judge enabled, they can judge scenes, hand out rewards, and do all the fancy things judges do. If they don't, they can't! Simple, huh?

• You are X% of the way to gaining judge level Y.

How close you are to the next judge level.

And that's everything the +pj command shows!

Rolls and Dice

+Roll

This are the ways that you will often use to determine if a character succeeds at doing something. If one of the players is trying to use fire magic to set someone on fire you would just ask them to roll fire magic. This is done using the +roll command, or just roll. So you can +roll (proficiency). You can use the +roll command with many things. Proficiencies are the most common. So sneaking would require a roll of stealth, singing a roll of entertain, and so on. Further you can combine items to be rolled. So a roll of stealth+misdirection would roll the combined total of the stealth AND misdirection proficiencies. You can also roll combat skills, powers, and so on. However, in the case of powers, rarely will they be above 1, so it would be the same as just doing roll 1. You can also roll effects. So if you see when checking EFFECTS that you have a defense of 12, you can +roll defense, and it will roll 12 dice.

You may be asking what I mean by rolling 12 dice. Well, the +roll system in Rusted Promises uses a dice pool. Each point of a thing you are rolling counts as one ten sided die. So 12 points would be 12 ten sided dice. If you roll a ten, you get 10, for each 10 beyond the first you add 1 point to that total. So if you roll 5 10 sided dice and get 5, 6, 10, 10, 10, you would have 12. If you rolled 5, 3, 6, 2, 10, you would just get have 10. If you roll no tens, you just get the highest number you did roll. Further, Without any modifications, the highest any roll can be is 20. If you have 35 points in dark magic, and do +roll dark magic, you will only be rolling 20 dice. You may ask why bother raising a proficiency above 20 then? That is because every point in a proficiency adds 1% to the chance to roll a 10 with that proficiency. So 35 points in dark magic means that each of those 20 dice have a 35% greater chance of coming up ten. Adding two proficiencies does not give you more than 20 dice. So if you have athletic and stealth both at 20 and do +roll stealth+athletics you'll still only be rolling 20 dice. But with a 40% chance now(20% from athletics and 20% from stealth). This means that unmodified the most you can roll is 29(The initial 10+19 other 10s). Such a roll is near impossible, however, due to the probability of rolling twenty tens. There are, however, ways to increase the dice pool beyond this cap of 20 dice. You can do a +roll (proficiency or whatever)+hero(+hero+hero+hero(+hero extra one for hot blooded perk)) Each +hero added on is 5 more dice in the pool. So using all 4 hero points gives 20 more dice.

In game, HELP ROLLING covers this, as well as the scale for rolls, and modifiers for them. These are the parts on scale and modifiers.

Scale of Result:

• For a basic action that could be failed, but usually isn't(jumping a two foot divide, climbing knotted rope): 5
• A basic challenge(Standing 5 ft jump, repairing a dented sword, catching a thrown potion at high speed): 7
• Difficult Task(Slicing a coin in half mid air, avoiding a basic arrow trap): 10
• Exemplary Task(Spotting a shadow in the dark, Rolling with a golem's punch to avoid harm, leaping off a three story building unharmed): 13
• Divine Challenges(Dodge between the pellets of a fired blunderbuss, bribe Good King's guard to take night off, Convince Creator Tech that you are not only a Creator, but its original builder): 17
• Impossible Challenges(Convince a charging shadow to give peace a chance, Flying unassisted for an hour, Creating a city clearing tsunami): 22

Modifiers: Not every action is taken under average conditions. Trying to pick locks in dim light, acrobatics on slick surfaces, or landing a hit while seriously injured becomes more difficult. The judge at hand is the ultimate arbiter of what modifier applies, but here are some suggestions.

• Mild obstruction(dim light while working delicately): -3, or +1 target.
• Moderate obstruction(Trying to scale a wall that is wet, but not greased): -10 or +3 target.
• Harsh obstruction(Performing an action while seriously injured): -15 or +5 target.
• Heroic obstruction(Trying to convince an attacker with a generational vendetta to sit down and enjoy some tea): -20 or +8 target.

You may find that that it is rare for one of the players to roll less than 10, if they're rolling something they've put points into. However, do keep in mind that all the players are Gifted, and as such are more skilled than your average being. Further, do consider modifiers as well. They may roll a 17 on climbing that greased rope in the rain. But the rope being greased and it being raining are going to make the target number for it jump up.

+dice

You may be wondering... What if you don't want to use +roll for something? Maybe you just want a random way of seeing which of your four vict... Ah... Players, the creature hits? That's where +dice comes in. +dice is used for rolling all sorts of dice. The standard is 3d6. That's what you'll roll if you just type +dice. You can roll other types, however. The syntax is +dice (x)d(y)+(z) Where x is the number of dice, y is the sides on each die, and z is any additional number(just numbers, not additional dice. One type of dice at a time). So to roll a single six sided die it would be +dice 1d6. For a 20 sided die with a modifier of five it would be +dice 1d20+5. Simple enough!

+Beast

This command is how you make the various beasties for fights.

The correct usage for this command is as follows:

+beast list templates - Lists what templates you can use.

+beast list monsters - Lists what monsters you can use.

+beast <monster name>=<monster rank>=<monster level>=<monster template>=<resulting critter's name> - To summon a creature of the type you want.

   <monster name>             - Obtained from the list of what you can summon.
   <monster rank>             - Can be any of the following:
     Underling  - Decoy! Hits like a minion, 1/10th PC HP
     Mook       - Extremely easy, hits like a minion, 1/5th PC HP
     Minion     - 1/3rd the hp of a PC, hits lightly.
     Mid Boss   - Hits normally, 60% HP
     Boss       - Hits normally, 100% HP
     Hard Boss  - Hits a bit harder than normal, 200% HP
     Final Boss - Story ender, 500% HP, hits a bit harder
   <monster level>            - A positive number, the level of the monster you want.
   <monster template>         - From the list of templates you can apply. You can leave this blank.
   <resulting critter's name> - The name of your monster. If left blank will just use the critter's original name.
Note: You can summon a MUCH wider list of critters when you are judge rank 5+

That is the text block that comes up when you type +beast. Brows the templates and monsters. Then get started!

Monster name is the name of the monster you are using, not what you want it called. So bone dragon, or black cackle. Not Killer Tomato.

Rank is underling, mook, minion, mid boss, boss, hard boss, or final boss. The results of the ranks are outlined above.

Level... There are no limits on this. You can have them fight a level 100 monster. They may hate you for it, but you can.

Template is choosing from a list of templates available. Some strengthen the monster, some weaken it. To the best of my knowledge(as in I poked and poked at the command but couldn't figure this out) you can only have a single template applied to a beast.

Critter name. This is where you name them. Be it calling them a Killer Tomato, or Butler Buttersworth! Something to note with names, however! If you choose to apply a template the template name will be ADDED to your name. So Butler Buttersworth with the old one touched template will be called Twisted Butler Buttersworth.

Once you create the beast, you use +monster ready to start the fight! All the players involved need to be in a party for this. Further you should go to judge mode(gojdg).

To have multiple monsters you have to create each one. Each is saved as a separate entity. Once you've created them all, then you do +monster ready.

Adding Wounds

If you need players to add wounds to themselves, for example, bumping their heads on something sharp, you'll need to get them to use the "addwounds (number)" command on themselves. However, this scales with level.