KIAEB Notes (The D&D Game)

Okay. This game is set in the kingdom of Carolis, which is large and isolated and 99.9% human. (I was tempted to include halflings, but they're useless so I didn't.) The campaign is going to be called KIAEB (Ask Keith to explain it if you want to know :)). The actual format and nature of it isn't known, yet. This will depend on who is playing what, and what they want to do with their pcs. I.e. What KIND of game do the players want?

Political Intrigue?
Hunting down Monsters?
General Quest?
Work for Merchants named Blok?
Mercenaries in the pay of anyone at all?

Depeding on what players have in mind for their characters I'll come up with a specific idea (by late nexk week; at which time anyone who wants to play should have a PC done. Character creation guidelines WILL be done tomorrow and put up) and the campaign itself will begin the week after (Wednesay, the 28th, with possible one-shots beforehand).

Keep in mind that, one way or another, your PC will be joining a group of other adventurers. Loner-types are strongly discouraged, as are the kind of personality that makes others want you dead very quickly. Giving a detailed background means I have more to work with for your PC, and that's always a good thing.

Some stuff I have yet to write up for the game but you should keep in mind:

• Females are second class citizens. In the nobility, this is because only males inherit power and titles. This mentality has filtered down to the cities themselves. In the countryside, it's more a simple division of labour. Few men in the country really think of women as second-class (and never say it unless they want to never marry), it's more than everyone knows fighting is the man's job and giving birth and looking after the home is the woman's.
  Basically, there are no women fighters. None. No one is going to train one, because it would be stupid.
  
• The only exceptions for females to be classed are sorceresrs (who have no damn choice) and rogues, who are equal-opportunity thieves and females are more likely to get off with lighter sentences.
  
• Wizards all come from the nobility and are trained in the Academy. They serve their family, and the king, and the nobility in general. They do not go out and adventure normally, if ever.
  
• Druids are rare, and tend to be solitary wanderers healing animals and the like. Their belief system follows the rule of 3 for witchcraft and is very pagan and archaic. Most people think them a little daft.
  
• Barbarians are rare, since most people who can be taught to fight are picked up by the Baron and become real Warriors (some, rarely, make knights). And there is no part of the kingdom not under a barony (With one or two unique exceptions run by mad spellcasters).
  
• Sorcerers are feared, pitied, despised and hated universally. They're born with magic and it manifests itself no matter what they want. They don't understand it, no one can teach them it, and they're generally screwed. (There are no noble sorcerers. They have means of weeding said children out of the gene pool and killing them.)
  
• Bards are common, bards casting spells almost unheard of. No bard knows they can do this, and can only learn it from another bard who has done it and, for some unknown reason, is actually willing to teach it. It's not likely.
  
• No clerics. Ditto with Paladins. (While the occassional cleric does exist, there have never been paladins in this world. Yet.)

And that is basically that. Trade is almost universally barter, since the gold and silver mines of the kingdom are pretty much exhausted.

A few other things:
There is no battle between Good and Evil happening. There won't be one. (The characters are, of course, free to decide they are on the side of Good in a battle, but it is more a case of Us vs Them than Good vs Evil.) The PCs are adventurers. Not heroes. They're just people.
There are some Monsters in underground areas, but they're rare and largely myth. Characters may have heard of some, but you don't know any facts about them, just legends.
The setting is not the middle ages. The cities are more renaissance than anything else, and the nobility are searved by lite-rail trains that fly over the ecity and are build and designed by a reclusive oder of techo-mages that few know about. (And no, a PC can't be one.) This being said, outside of the cities the technology level is basically the middle ages since that is what works. Farming is farming, as far as the farmer is concerned, and no fancy machines will do it better than a man and his ox.

Finally, few people travel. They don't have reason to. So the cities are largely built up to almost mythical status by those living outside them.
(Ideally, no PC will be from one of the cities, to make them more foreign.)
And that's all for now :)