How to Play Roleplay: Mercenaries

In Mercenaries, you play as a person who hires and trains Mercs (Merc = Shortened version of the word Mercenary). Your backstory is up to you as well as the backstory of any Merc you hire while playing. Your entire game world solely depends on how you play with other members and how you want your story to play out.

Mercenaries was designed to be a very simple Roleplaying Game so as to allow players of all sorts to take part, not just seasoned RP Veterans.


Getting Started

If you can scroll up to the menu bar real quick, you will see a button on the right hand side that is labeled "Profile". Clicking this button will take you to a page that allows you to edit near every aspect of your own personal member profile. Once you have clicked the button and have entered your profile, you will notice a new menu bar (the left-most button is labeled "Information", while the right-most button should be labeled "Mercenary Info"). Once you spot it, click the button labeled "Mercenary Info". This will bring up the option to generate your Merc Info Sheet. This info sheet is the basis of your entire roleplaying persona.

Once your sheet has been generated, you will notice a few different things that you can do here. Start off by naming your new Merc, as you have gotten a free one to start you off.

(Note: You can come back to this page at any time you wish and rename your Merc. There is NO limit to how many times you can change his/her name)

From here, you can now look down to find a section labeled "Background Story". If you have some spare time and are eager to write, why don't you take a few minutes to tell the world where your Merc came from and who he is. Make your Merc as unique as you want.

When you are done there, you will notice a few more sections, each being very important. Mainly, you will want to get to know the Equipment and Inventory sections. The Equipment section is where you can give your Merc special items that will make him/her stronger or more resistant to attacks. However, there are rules to follow here...

Rule: You can only equip ONE piece of equipment to each slot.

Rule: You can only equip a piece of equipment to a slot of said piece is present in your inventory.

To give your Merc equipment, all you have to do is type the name of the equipment and the Die Bonus it gives in to the corresponding text box, and then hit save at the bottom of the page (small box, right underneath the Inventory section).

You may now be looking at the Inventory section and wondering how that works. Well, our inventory with this game works a bit differently than in other RPGs. In Mercenaries, it works as a drop box for items that you either win or order. When you purchase something from a shop or win stuff from special battles, it is up to either an Admin or a Moderator to place said item in your inventory for you. As our game is text and forum based, these kinds of things are done manually so that the game can not be cheated. Because of this, when you purchase an item, you must be patient. The down side is that items can not be used until they are in your inventory.

Once you have edited everything in your Mercenary Info Sheet that you wished to edit, make sure you click on the save button that is just below the Inventory section. If you wish to return to your Mercenary Info Sheet at any time, you can either access it the same way that you did the first time, or you can click on the Mercenary Info link that appears in your mini-profile next to all of your posts. Also, if you click on the mini-profile link that appears on other people's mini-profiles, you can access and view their Mercenary Info sheet (mind you can not edit it though).


Battling

Once you have your Merc set up, head on out to the forums again. Now that you have your Merc named and everything, it is time to get them ready for battle. If you look to the side of one of your posts, you will now notice a section of your mini-profile dedicated to your Merc. You may also notice that this section has three colored bars. These bars represent your Merc's stats. Stats can be used to show off to your friends, but they are mainly used to battle.

ATK - Attack
DEF - Defense
HP - Health Points

How each stat is used will be discussed further on.

Now, to start a battle with another member, you must head on over to the battlegrounds forum and start a new thread. Each battle that you have will require it's own thread so that battle's can easily be tracked. When you start a battle thread, the first thing you must do is name it. All battle threads must be named in the following format...

Member 1 Vs. Member 2

Where it says Member 1, that is where you will put your username. Member 2 is where you will put your opponents username. You can also hold multi-battles with 3 or 4 people total, in which you will just add another "Vs. Member" after your names (in which the member part will be replaced with the other username). From here, you must now format your first post. In the first post, you can write out things that you want to include. Good things to include in this post would be who will be partaking in the battle, any stakes that are at risk in the battle, the equipment that you are using in the battle (mind you, you must have the equipment already equipped when the battle starts to use it), and so on. If you post what equipment you will be using, you must label it like so...

Eduipment Name - Affected Stat - Die Bonus

This is so your equipment bonuses are clearly labeled and accessible to your opponent to reference, as well as any spectators. Once your first post is ready, and you are ready to begin your battle, submit your post and then go back in to your thread. From here, scroll down the thread til you see a button labeled "Post Reply". Click that and it will bring up a full reply window. You are now ready to attack your opponent. You can now post whatever you want (such as adding on to your story, what your character does, so on), but you must write something for the post to be valid. Now, to deal damage, scroll down the post screen to see a small section labeled "Dices Roll". It is set up as so...

Dices Roll #1 [------] Dice Rolls [-1-] [+]

The first box is a drop down box that contains all of the dice on the website. Dice are available to be used in all aspect of roleplaying. If you wanted to use a certain die when hosting a roleplay, there are multiple different kinds of dice available to you, each with a different number of sides. The next box in this section is a text box to select the number of times you want to roll that particular die. The final box is a small plus symbol. Clicking this symbol will add a second Dice Roll option, which allows you to roll more than one kind of die at a time.

Once you choose what die (or dice) you want to roll, you can then send the post. Once you send the post and go back to the thread, you will notice that our wonderful "Merc. Master" has posted a small post after you. Merc. Master has been magically bound to be the keeper of the dice. He is forced to roll dice for you any time you call on him, whether he wants to or not. He will forever call me evil for doing this to him, but somebody needed to be the Dice Keeper and it sure wasn't going to be me.

Now that you have done your attack, it is now time for you to wait for your opponent to make their move. When you are attacked, after you calculate your remaining health, it is time for you to make the next move. You will go through the motions as you did before (post reply, insert text, roll die), but this time you will need to defend yourself from incoming attacks as well as make an attack. To do this, you will need to roll 2 different dice, one for attacking and one for defending. You must use a 6 sided die to attack and a 4 sided die to defend, or to make things simple you can just use the ATK and DEF dice located in the dice menu.


Battling Info

So how to attack and the basic of battling has been explained, but you are now wondering how to calculate if you are still alive or not after your opponent attacks. Who attacks first? How do you win? Well, lets now go over the more detailed aspects of the battles. Lets begin by explaining what each stat point means.

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ATK


Each stat point for attack means that you roll the corresponding number of dice whenever you attack. So if you have 1 ATK point, you will roll 1 die when you attack. If you have 4 ATK points, you will roll 4 die when you attack.

DEF


Each stat point for defense means that you roll the corresponding number of dice whenever you defend. So if you have 1 DEF point, you will roll 1 die when you attack. If you have 4 DEF points, you will roll 4 die when you attack.

HP


Each stat point for your HP stands for 10 Health Points. So if you have 1 HP Point, then you have 10HP. If you have 4 HP points, you have 40HP.

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Who Attacks First in a Battle Thread?

The person who posts the thread itself has the right away. So whomever posts the battle thread gets the choice to decide who goes first.

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How does equipment affect a battle?

At the beginning of the battle (in the original post), the thread starter must state whether or not equipment will be used in the battle. Equipment is an option to every single battle. While it does make your Merc stronger, it is sometimes fun to get rid of all that protective armor and weapons and fight man to man. But, you should know how equipment works in case you wuss out and want to protect yourself from getting punched.

Sample Equipment

Pistol - ATK +1
Protective Vest - DEF +2

What these do are essentially just add bonuses to your Dice Roll. If you look, the pistol has the label "ATK +1". When the pistol is equipped, you add and extra point to your ATK dice rolls. So if you roll a 3, your attack will do 4 damage due to the "ATK +1". The same goes for DEF. Notice the Vest is labeled "DEF +2". This means that when you do a defensive Dice Roll, you will add 2 to the result. So if you roll a 2, your will defend 4 damage.

Remember though that only 3 pieces of equipment can be worn at any time. 1 for ATK, 1 for DEF, and 1 accessory. You can NOT have 2 pieces in the same slot, so no 2 ATKs and 1 DEF, or 3 DEFs, etc.

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Team Battles

Team battles are large scale roleplay battles that are somewhat like wars. This is where two teams come together with multiple Mercs on each side to battle to the death. These will play out like any normal battle, except for a few minor adjustments.

The thread name will change from "member Vs. member" to "team name Vs. team name".

The original post must contain two lists:
Participating members from Team #1
Participating members from Team #2

Each team must have a declared leader, of whom MUST be stated in the post.

All equipment is void in Team Battles, except for Super Weapons.

Only a team leader can use a Super Weapon, and they can only use one that they currently have equipped. If the leader is destroyed, the Super Weapon goes in active and can not be used anymore for the remainder of the battle.

Super Weapons can only be used 3 times in a battle, unless declared otherwise when the weapon is purchased. (Only the seller of the weapon can declare a change in number of uses per battle)

Team Battles are Team Deathmatch styled... the winning team is the team that has destroyed every Merc from the other team.

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