So here's the first of the 3 major systems I want to have at least done on a barebones level for 0.1: The adventuring system.
I'm going to let Zarathustra explain the class system itself since that's his area for the most part (and it's still WIP, like the adventuring system) but suffice it to say that yes, we'll have most of the D&D classes (fighter, paladin, wizard, sorc, cleric, thief, etc) and they will have 5 different tiers or levels, from trained (lowest) to legendary (highest). If you have one of these classes, you can go adventuring:
The adventuring system will be location based, so if you choose to stay in your home region (I'm in the process of dividing the map into "adventuring regions") that's just where you'll stay. However, players get access to a special 2-man Lord's Bodyguard retinue, allowing them to ride out and explore other regions. In this case, Lord Nasher of Neverwinter decides to ride out, and you'll get a flavour message each time you enter a new region:
What I intend here goes beyond the mere flavour regions, however: If say, you take sail and go to Evermeet, you'll almost certainly find yourself surrounded by a large armed force and dragged to the nearest dungeon if you are not an elf. If you go to Myth Drannor, be prepared for a serious fight (but also serious rewards!). If you go into an entire province owned by orcs (and are adventuring, and not at the head of an army) also prepare to be surrounded and - at BEST - imprisoned. It also ties in to my monster system; I'll explain this at a later date, but the gist of it is that we have provinces with "monster" culture and then there are province modifiers telling you what monsters infest that province, for example, gnolls, dragons, giants, fey, etc. If you go into a monster province with dragons, make sure that you're high enough level. We can even have legendary dungeons, such as for example take your Lord to Waterdeep and investigate Undermountain which will then trigger an Undermountain-specific adventuring event chain.
For now, all I have is a proof-of-concept system however and I've written the events for the baseline random encounters. You'll get this message after roaming around a bit (every 6 months or so):
It can be expanded upon, but right now when you click investigate, there are 5 random locations that can be encountered (ie, a ruin, a camp of monsters, caves, a fortress or "something mysterious". Each of these 5 locations can trigger up to 12 random encounters (not all of them need to resolve in a fight; sometimes you'll meet a group of elves, dwarves, fellow adventurers, etc. and you can choose whether to just say hello or kill them and take their stuff.) And speaking of stuff, there are also 3 random tiers of loot you get from each fight. Now it's not perfect, of course, but the randomisation is an improvement on the adventuring system I built for Birthright; instead of maybe 10 random fixed encounters, there will now be potentially 5x12 with 3 variations of loot which is significantly more dynamic and can be built upon further, of course.
In this case it's a camp of orcs, but it may as well have been a fortress held by slavers or whatever. It will result in a duel, and our duel engine will of course be integrated with a character class and item system, so if you're from an adventuring family, odds are that after a few generations the items you'll accumulated will give your heirs a real head-start on surviving all those initial duels. There will also be passive xp gain or other ways to gain xp and increase you level, of course, but my intention is that going adventuring should be the fast-track - but also by far the riskiest!
