Emerald Flame

Emerald Flame is a PBEM Cypher System campaign set in my "house" setting of Etravar. I run my campaigns pretty free-form, with setting details filled in by everyone as we go, so there's no premeditated plot to start with, other than exploring a high fantasy game and seeing where it takes us.

I'll fill this page in as the game progresses, but for now, here's some starting and organizing information.

Etravar

|> |: The starting area in Emerald Flame, the Mystvil region of Trezuria. {: .right }

I have successfully run games in established settings, such as the Forgotten Realms, but I tend not to hew too close to the setting canon, so for this campaign, I'm going to use the setting that I have just started putting some bones together for, and as we play, we'll provide more detail based on our wants and needs. The link above includes said bones and whatever else we've defined to this point --- at its briefest, Etravar is a high fantasy campaign setting, with some in-world justification for embracing weird stuff to encounter and explore.

We'll start in a small town in Trezuria, which we can figure out the details of as we start creating characters with backgrounds. Assume there's a new weird anomaly in the area that you're interested in for whatever reason.

Play By Email

I have started an Emerald Flame mailing list for people to subscribe to. Both players and readers/lurkers are encouraged to subscribe, and can do so via the web form (known/interested players should further send an email to the list and/or ping me off the list, so I can set up the moderation settings appropriately). The list will be moderated to allow only the current players to post to the game, but anyone is welcome to read, and there will also be a public archive if people would prefer to read that way. The archive is here if you need to go back to refer to an old post in order to read and/or reply to it (which you can do from inside the web interface, if you are logged in).

A draft of thoughts on how to conduct our game over email is available here. These are some things I've learned from similar ventures in the past, and also some ideas that I think should be good --- but they are just guidelines, and of course malleable to our group's needs.

Reminders and Pings

I've also started an IRC channel, #emerald-flame, on Randomus, my IRC network. Players are encouraged to join for reminders and other out-of-game conversations (web IRC link, or ask me for access to persistent web connections, or see the Randomus site for client setup info), but it is expected to be very low traffic, and optional.

Cypher System

I love the Cypher System. It's a flexible system with a lot of room for homebrew and game-specific rules, with rich character customization options, and yet the core game mechanic is pretty simple and well-suited for asynchronous play. There's a great rendering of the Cypher System Reference Document that I suggest reading if you are not familiar with the game, and I also have some ever-expanding set of homebrew and house rules that will probably be relevant to the game.

Character Creation

Firstly, I encourage talking through any ideas and questions you have on the mailing list (I'll start a thread after some signups), so folks can see them and build ideas around the group. But, if you're still interested or on the fence, feel free to just ping me with any questions.

Old Gus' Unofficial Cypher System Player's Guide is a really good starting point for getting into the system and character creation in a guided way, if you want to just take a crack at it on your own or get a feel for it. I have some homebrew character options and house rules, as linked above, that I'm working on integrating into my own copy of the CSRD, but for the moment you can just refer to that above as you're building a character.

Things to be sure to look at:

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