I received this questions and I am responding to it below in the hopes that others will find it useful and for the DMs and veteren players to add their knowledge.
So at the beginning of each turn, we get a DO letting us know the "State of the Realm", yes?
At the
end of each turn you will get the
Domain Orders but the last turn, desciribing the success/failure of your actions in that turn and a
Domain Secrets document which will tell you the status of your treasury (GB & RP) and any random events, intrigues, or special conditions affecting your realm at the
beginning of the new turn.
We then have a number of actions we can take in a given turn, base three, plus one for lieutenant, and some Court actions (typically five, it seems), so about nine action slots overall plus various free actions.
You will generally have the following number of actions:
3 Regent Actions1 Bonus Regent Action (Leiutenant)
1 Free Regent Action (dependent on Regent Class and has not base GB cost)
1 Court Action per GB Count Expenditure (mostly mid-sized realms will have courts of 5)
Many Free Actions (Normally you will get very many of these but I personally have gotten Bjorn to tell me that I have done too many dispatches and that I need to expend a court action—so there are some limitations).
Then there is
Able Assistance, which requires more explaination.
Able Assistance (Henchmen, Advisors, LTs, etc) get ONE CHARACTER action to use on behalf of the regent.
They are allowed additional character actions usable for SPECIFIC actions if they hold an office granted to them via a GRANT action. But they may never take more than 3 actions per turn.
For instance: Chamberlain Goren Brenlie is a
henchmen, with the title
Chamberlain. He also
advises his liege on matters of family heritages & genealogy.
Goren could provide his liege with the following actions:
1 Character Action (any but probably an adventure action in support of a particular action)
1 Character Action – Ply Trade (Administration) – As Chamberlain can possibly reduce the cost of domain maintenance
1 Character Action – Research (Knowledege: Nobility)
How then does that work with posting on the boards? For example, If I post a message to you saying, "hey Osoerde, wanna go ring the Gorgon's doorbell, then run away" or "That was awesome how you severely taxed your peasants" (I'm not sure why i sound like Bill & Ted in the previous examples), does that count as any sort of action, or is that considered not part of the turn structure?
The boards are normally reserved for actions in which numerous players will be participating or for events which are reasonably public, though there will always be things going on which are not public. For instance, the Sword & Crown will have numerous public threads – regent arriving, the tournaments, etc, but there will be diplomatic missions between various regents which will be largely private.
Most interactive actions are played out long before the DO’s are actually handed in. For instance, WO wants to enter into a new diplomatic relationship with Roesone, they will start sending emails back and forth in an attempt to hammer out the details, and this will help influence how difficult the action will ultimately be.
Dispatches are free actions. They constitute a very large portion of the game and can have some very dramatic effects. Dispatches to PCs are generally resolved as emails, while to NPC can be resolved as part of the Domain Order.
Are you expected to use all of your actions at the beginning of the turn, or is it more of an "act and react" set-up? Is there any strategic advantage then in saving some of your actions until the end, to better have the last laugh?
Bjorn?
Given the actions and the DO between the player and DMs, how does the role-playing aspect of RoE manifest itself?
RPing is a difficult issue in RoE. Remember that you are actually playing a domain, and less so a character. Players generally focus the efforts on the regent, RPing them while forgetting that the important ‘player’ is the actual domain as a whole and its intricacies. With that being said, RPing will most likely show in your dispatches, diplomacy and other interactive actions.
Would we be expected to post in character responding to events of the day as described so sophomorically above, or does the role-playing come into play mostly through the actions you take?
There are reasons and circumstances to do either. In an interactive action, RPing is generally required, while maybe not so much in other actions. For instance, if a province is rebelling perhaps I respond to by a massive IC speech, or perhaps I simply surround the province with my armored knights and march inward corralling the peasants to the city center, while blooding any who dare oppose me. It depends on what I want to do and what is useful in the particular situation
