More About Multiverser
Life was business as usual, day in and day out, the normal twentieth-century earth stuff. It was ultimately not much different than the life of anyone else. But then something happened, and everything changed: earth of the twentieth century was gone, perhaps forever. Suddenly you found yourself in a strange and alien world--perhaps on orange grass under an octagonal moon, or deep in a haunted swamp, or beside a medieval castle, or on the grainy gravel soil of a domed space colony.
And that's only the first time.
This is the concept of the multiverse. The Creator of all things could not express his infinite variety in a single universe, so He created many universes, separate but interconnected, the multiverse. The Multiverser® character has somehow slipped out of the reality experienced by most of humanity and become a citizen of the larger multiverse; this "multiverser" (or "verser" for short) from time to time crosses the barrier, leaving one universe ("verse" or "world") and entering another. By the Multiverser® concept, every world that we ever have or even could imagine exists somewhere, and more, and we will never see them all.
Multiverser® is a Role Playing Game, or RPG. If you have never played an RPG before, you are embarking on a new experience. RPG's are the opportunity to create your own vicarious adventure. Like a good book or movie, you are involved, in the middle of the action; but beyond the book, beyond the movie, you make the choices upon which life and death hang. Like a good game, you plan the strategy to succeed, to win; but beyond the game, winning is more than saying you won: it is defeating fantastic opponents, overcoming incredible odds, and reaping fabulous riches. Like a good video game, your quick decisions and actions can make or break you; yet the flexibility to decide between almost infinite choices makes the RPG more real than any video game, even than virtual reality could be, since it is the player's imagination which controls the limits of the possibilities, and not the decisions of a programmer recorded in a computer chip. The RPG creates an imaginary alternate reality, and you are free to act in any way within it. To more fully understand RPG's, see Appendix 1: What is an RPG?
It should be said that this particular RPG was designed to challenge the most experienced players, people who have seen all the game worlds, all the strategies, all the tricks, and need something new to challenge them. This is a harder game for players, because more than anything else this system is about rules that change. It provides instruction for how the rules change and when they change, but the player is challenged to discover the new rules. By contrast, most RPG's have the same rules throughout, adventuring in variations of the same world with the same kinds of skills. Multiverser® changes all of that. Now the rules themselves change, and the player must adapt.
But if you have never played an RPG, don't let that scare you. The beauty of a good RPG (as we hope this is) is that the player does not need to know the rules. The player merely figures out who he is and what makes sense. He announces what his character will do next, and waits for the referee to instruct him as to the result. Whether he wishes to fire a weapon, or climb a wall, or fly an airplane, it is his part only to announce the action. The referee determines the result. Therefore, the player needs no knowledge or experience of RPG's to be able to play this game. He needs only his imagination, the ability to read and write, and a pencil and paper.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the referee (game master, GM, or ref). This game relies heavily on the wisdom and experience of its ref's. We recommend that at minimum the referee previously have run at least one other game system, and have played at least two or three other game systems. This broad-based experience will give the referee the resources to jump from one world to another, and so to run a varied Multiverser® campaign. Of course, if you bought this system and have no such experience, we'll do our best to support you in every way we can.
As with most things in the twentieth century, RPG's have their own jargon, and plenty of it. We have provided a glossary at the rear of the book to assist in unraveling most of it. However, some words and phrases will be used with such frequency as to require explanation in advance. These phrases and words when used in this game system should be understood as here defined:
The Player is the real person who sits at the table and plays the game. His involvement is at all times intellectual: he does not actually do anything, but describes what his character does.
The Character is in a sense the player's alter ego, his expression of himself in the game. The character is an idea and an ideal, a person who exists only in the minds of real people-players and referee--and in the imagined worlds of the game. The Player-Character specifically is one representing and controlled by a player at the table. Non-player Characters are run by the referee, some as antagonists, some as plot devices, some as player resources, some as mere window dressing. In most games, player characters can pick up non-player characters who become connected to the player character in various ways. Games sometimes distinguish in great detail between henchmen, hirelings, followers, retainers, servants, employees, slaves, and other relationships possible between the characters. In Multiverser®, all such characters are referred to as associates. Each relationship is expected to be individual, based on its own history and personal chemistry. Other titles may be used for these relationships at the pleasure of the players and the discretion of the referee.
The Referee is the one individual who is viewed as both inside and outside the game. He creates and/or reveals the game world, masters its rules, and adjudicates the results of character actions.
Attributes, in this game system, are the more or less innate aspects of a character, what makes him who he is. There are fourteen in this system, covering everything from strength to education. In some game systems, these might be called abilities or characteristics.
Skills in this system are things that a character can do. They are mostly learned, and range from the ability to crawl on your belly to the ability by any means imaginable to travel through time. These are discussed in great detail over several chapters. Anything a character can do is a skill. In some game systems these would be called abilities or talents.
We use the word Check to refer to a roll of oneor more dice to compare against a number derived from skills or attributes to determine the success or failure of an action or the result of an event. In various contexts such rolls have also been called saves, saving throws, hit rolls, and success rolls. The general effects roll is similar to a check, except that it is rolled against a fixed table. These die rolls are very much the heart of the mechanics of role playing games.
Polyhedral dice--polyhedral, of course, means many faced--are used to generate the various probabilities used in the game. At minimum, the referee must be able to generate 1 to 10,1 to 20, 1 to 30, and (usually based on two rolls of 1 to 10) 1 to 100. Dice traditionally are designated by the lower-case letter "d" between the number of dice and the number of faces on each die. Thus, "d10" means roll one ten-sided die; "2d20" means roll two twenty-sided dice and add them together; "d30+10" means roll one thirty-sided die and add ten to the result. "d100" is also commonly used in the game. Although 100-sided dice are produced, they are not easy to find, and it is normal to roll two ten-sided dice (recognizably different), and treat one as tens and the other as ones. Note that ten-sided dice are normally numbered zero through nine. The zeroes are usually treated as tens when rolled as d10's, but as zeroes when used in decimal multiples such as d100. Thus 0+1=1, 1+0=10. In d100's, 0+0 is treated as a roll of 100, while 0+ all other numbers are the single digits one through nine. Polyhedral dice are commonly found in 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, 20-, and 30-sided, and it is possible to find 3-, 5-, 7-, and 100-sided dice. Referees will find all of these sizes useful. Alternatively, electronic random number generators are available, although most players feel luckier with dice. It is our recommendation that the referee provide the dice for the game to assure that the dice are honest.
This game uses the word Martial to describe combat which is hand-to-hand, man-to-man, weapon-to-weapon. Other games may call this type of combat "melee" or "close". Ranged is used to describe any combat at distance, using thrown or fired weapons. Some games call this "missile" combat. Martial and ranged combat may occur simultaneously. The distinction concerns the type of weapons in use and the way they are used, not the distance between the characters.
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