Core Concepts

Let's get to the heart of what makes a Lion's Blaze campaign.

## The Overarching Story and the Levels of Meta Thereof

The Lion's Blaze RPG is set in a co-op fantasy RPG universe appropriately titled *The Lion's Blaze.* Therefore, players are not actually roleplaying a character, they're roleplaying themselves roleplaying a character.

In a normal RPG, there are two distinct entities: player and character. The Lion's Blaze adds a third layer to this dynamic, henceforth referred to as the "user." The player is not playing a character; instead, they are playing a user, who is playing a character. To put it briefly:

* The **player** is the real-life human being playing a tabletop game called The Lion's Blaze RPG.
* The **user** is a semi-fictional version of the player, playing an RPG called The Lion's Blaze. They are controlled by the player.
* The **character** is a fantastical, fictional being who exists only inside the universe of an RPG called The Lion's Blaze. They are controlled by the user.

Anytime the player speaks in the character's voice, they are inherently speaking in the user's voice simultaneously. For example, the user is aware of game mechanics. They freely use terms like "inventory" and "ability score." The character is technically unaware of such mechanics, as they perceive their world as real. However, they may sometimes speak in these mechanics. Have you ever played a game where a virtual character, who spoke otherwise completely normally, told you to press 'A' to jump? Surely, for the sake of immersion, the player understands that the character did not *really* say such things; it was merely a gaming abstraction folded into the dialogue seamlessly. Characters in The Lion's Blaze may behave the same way. (Meanwhile, only the player is aware of tabletop-specific mechanics such as dice rolls—the user and character are only involved in an online game—but the user may speak in such terms for the same reasons.)

Additionally, the user does not have to be a perfect mirror of the player. They can have their own name and personality, should the player desire. Player users and non-player users can be referred to as PUs and NPUs, much like the common shorthands PC and NPC.

But none of that actually matters a great deal. It is not only easy, but encouraged, to blur the lines between player, user, and character. It may seem confusing at first, and that's why you should give up now. All you have to do is simultaneously believe and disbelieve everything that happens—awaken your inner child and play pretend. The Lion's Blaze is a game within a game, steeped in a constant primordial soup of metagaming. It doesn't have to make sense.

### Three Tiers of Story

The characters are a group of ragtag adventurers (a legitimate profession) whose main priority is the destruction of the terrifying Skeleton King, which can only be accomplished through two ancient sets of relics: the Artifacts of the Lion's Blaze, and the Battle Bear Armor. The Skeleton King has besieged the homelands of all the world's peoples, so almost everyone has a reason to hate him. A rare unity rings through the world against a common enemy.

The users, meanwhile, are a group of new players just joining The Lion's Blaze at the onset of a brand new expansion: Return of the Skeleton King. They're starting at level one, but they have big dreams: reach max level and be the World First to beat the Skeleton King raid as soon as it comes out later in the expansion.

The players have perhaps the easiest job. Their goal is to have a good time and tell an interesting story.

## Setting the Mood and General Guidelines

* Watch the videos on the main page as many times as you feel comfortable. They are your sacred text. Absorb them and improve your life.
* The most important rule of The Lion's Blaze RPG is to make sure everyone is **having fun.** Anything else on this entire wiki can be reworked and shifted along preferential lines, but never lose sight of this central tenet.
* The Lion's Blaze RPG is not a traditional, self-serious roleplay—subversion is the key to its flaming heart. Instead of gritty realism, we can opt to be campy and bombastic and just shout about how awesome we are. We can spend more time talking about how we're going to brutally kill someone than actually doing it, because we can be funny even in the face of grisly horrors. And when our awesomeness has worn out, we can subvert it by showing a side of woeful inadequacy and silliness backlit by unshaken confidence. And every so often, we can subvert ourselves yet again by allowing a glimmer of touching sincerity to shine through.
* Just as fortune favors the bold, GMs should reward PCs for going out of bounds and doing things that many would consider stupid, but that history will surely remember as courageous. Of course, that doesn't mean PCs will automatically gain everything they want, and it doesn't make them immune to suffering or danger, but as a general policy, PCs should be favored.

## Important Details and Stricter Minutiae

* When a character dies, they respawn in the nearest safe location to their corpse (or if there's no body, the place where the corpse was destroyed) after a short period. Respawns cannot occur while other nearby party members are still in combat. If every party member dies in a single fight, the fight resets. The players, after respawning together nearby, may try again or come back later.
	+ Characters are respawned with 40% of their maximum health.
	+ Since death is little more than a nuisance, you may think that this subtracts from the tension of the adventure. In a way, it's quite the opposite, since this allows the GM to crank up the danger levels without concern for the PCs' safety. Furthermore, landing oneself in a near-death or actual-death situation may still be accompanied by rightfully harrowing consequences.
	+ In addition, the eternal life of your characters is contingent upon their continued heroics. Heroes never stay dead, but the same cannot be said for villains. Any user caught participating in evil behavior such as verbal abuse, griefing, or wanton slaughter and destruction shall have their account suspended or even permabanned by in-game moderators, essentially "killing" the character.
	+ The only way for a PC to actually die in the game world is if they choose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. A player hoping to create a new character should collaborate with the GM to provide story reasoning for their character's death. (The PU then purchases a level boost on a new character to catch up with the party.)
	+ In short, the only way a user may lose access to their character is when their death was either *heroic* or *just.*
* Characters are never required to eat, drink, sleep, or use the restroom, though they may if they choose to.
* When any player is absent from a game session for some reason, it is assumed that their user has logged out for the time being. Their character fades out of existence. Nobody finds this strange and everyone accepts this as normal. When the absent user returns, assume that they caught up with the group's progress on their own time. Though it is not necessary for the player to roleplay that catch-up, they may choose to if the GM agrees.
	+ If an absent player wishes to join mid-session when the story is already in progress, assume the PU played ahead of the group beforehand. Their character materializes from thin air (once again, totally inconspicuously).
* Excluding patch updates, the game world is mostly static. If a village was recently burned down, for example, it stays a smoldering pile of wreckage until content updates have progressed the world's flow of time. This usually happens all at once, so the village would go from totally destroyed to completely rebuilt overnight.