The Experience System
Your character in Treasure Trap is likely to be able to do things which you cannot - for example casting spells or miracles, creating powerful and instantly effective potions, or speaking the languages of the elemental elves. To simulate this fairly, all characters spend experience points (xp) on their abilities, which are earned by their time in play so that characters gradually grow in power or breadth of achievement.
Skills and Character Sheets
Skills grant a character abilities such as spellcasting, innate attributes like more hits or DAC, or increase their skill at something they can already do. Each skill has an XP cost, and must be bought with the experience that character has earnt. Skills that can be bought more than once have a level associated with them, equal to the number of times that skill has been bought. Some skills have prerequisites, e.g. Targeteer 3 requires either Wilderness 3 or Warrior 3.
You may not both study magic and become Spiritually Awakened to a god as the same character, likewise you may not Awaken to more than one god at once - the IC reason being that "a man can only have one master" and gods are jealous types. It is perfectly fine for a mage to be a lay-follower of a religion or religions, however, and believe in the teachings of the faith without having any special powers or spiritual connection. Apart from this, you may buy skills from as many categories of skill as you like - for convenience they are grouped into "trees" sharing the same prerequisite skills, the main trees are Warrior, Subterfuge, Wilderness, Spirit, Magic and Alchemy skills.
Generating a Character
This is the list of rules for generating a character and spending xp. The full lists of skills you can buy with your xp is found in the System section of the website, under "XP Skills".
All new characters start out with 150xp to spend at character creation.
Basic Abilities
Without having bought any skills at all, a character is:
- Human
- Able to sustain 3 hits to any individual location
- Able to wear up to four points of physical armour
- Able to inflict Halves with a single weapon (and also throwing weapons, but not bows)
- Able to speak, read and write Common
- Able to execute an unresisting character with ten seconds of appropriate roleplay
- Receives 16 Silver shillings income per interactive (available at the start of the interactive)
Experience
Experience is gained via attending interactives and linears/adventures. You only get one set of xp per event, and can allocate it as you wish between any characters of yours whom you played for at least half an hour at the event. You can only play one character during a linear, as a linear is usually the story of a specific quest or similar.
Characters who survive linears are awarded 10XP each, while the amount of XP awarded for the Pre-Banquet Bash and any other special events is at the discretion of the refs.
Experience is awarded for monstering linears at the rate of 3XP per linear monstered. You may only spend this XP on a character who was played for at least half an hour during any one of the previous two interactives or linears.
Interactive xp is awarded for attending an interactive based on the amount of XP your character has already gained. If your character has less than 240XP (end of Level 4), then you gain 6XP for that character after each interactive. If you have at least 240XP and less than 360XP (end of Level 6), then you gain 5XP for that character. If you have at least 360XP, then you gain 4XP. The total is based on the amount of XP the character has gained, not the amount spent - it is fine to be saving up for an expensive skill or merely forget to update and spend your xp for a while, but not to use this to try and qualify for the faster rate of further xp gain after level 4 or 6. If you monster an interactive for at least 30 minutes but are unable to play any of your characters you receive 3XP as if you had monstered a linear.
If you play multiple characters with XP levels such that they are in different groups, then you gain XP for the character that currently has the lowest amount of XP and you may not assign more XP to the highest-level character than they would gain if they were the only character played. For example, if someone plays Bob the fire mage on 160xp and Ben the Johnite on 250xp, he will gain 6XP for the interactive, but can spend a maximum of 5XP on Ben.
Levels and Double Buying
Treasure Trap is a level-based system, each level consisting of 60 experience points. The first level (1-60xp spent) is level 1. Thus a 90XP character is level 2. The maximum XP a character can ever gain is 480XP, one short of beginning 9th level. You can only exceed this score if the character is one which you intend on taking on a 3YGB (Third Year Goodbye) Adventure, but this is a special case, and the Refs will explain what you need to do, should it become an issue.
The only obvious visible effect of the level-based system is that of Double Buying. If you buy a skill with the same name more than once within the same level, and with skill level higher than character level, then the nth time you buy that skill the cost will be n times the original XP cost of the skill. So to buy Health I, II and III in level 1 costs 6 + 12 + 18 =36XP, but to buy Health I, II and III in level 2 costs 6 + 6 + 12 = 24xp.
If you buy a skill and the purchase puts you into the next level, then that skill counts as the higher level; e.g. with 115XP spent, a purchase of Health for 6XP is written in level 3 not 2. If multiple buying of a skill places it into the higher level then it does not count as a purchase in that level for further buying of that skill. For example, whilst on 110XP double buying Health for 12XP puts it into level 3, but the next purchase of Health in level 3 will cost 6XP.
It should be noted that in the following pages many skills are referred to as "leveled skills" with levels going from 1 to 8. Ending them at 8 is for clarity, and in many cases they continue to progress and levels greater than 8 can be bought through double buying, so long as you meet the pre-requitises. Whether they have any effect above level 8 depends on the skill: skills with an automatic progression do, skills where the abilities at each level are explicitly defined do not. Skills where the maximum noted level is less than 8 cannot be extended any higher. So for example a character could buy health 9, 10, 11, and 12 as they have no prerequisite, and the extra 4 levels would confirm an extra round of hits. Similarly a warrior could by warrior 9 and fortitude 9 (as fortitude requires warrior of equal level), but buying melee 9 would confer no benefit as the effects of the melee skill are explicitly defined each level and there is no definition for level 9. If you are in any doubt please contact the refs.
Rules for Playing Multiple Characters
You may create and play as many characters as you wish within the Treasure Trap system, subject to these rules: Characters are created at whatever XP level you are entitled to create characters at. You may play any of your characters during an interactive, even swapping between several roles over the course of the night.
You only gain one set of XP. This XP may be distributed however you wish amongst your characters, but each character must have been played for at least half an hour in an interactive to be eligible for the XP. No character can be given more XP for an interactive than they are entitled to recieve; playing both a 150XP and a 300XP character you will get a total of 6XP, at most 5 of which may be given to the 300XP character. You get income for each character you play for more than half an hour, and you will be trusted to keep the money that each character earns separate.
Except in very special circumstances, you cannot play two characters on an adventure. The lives of your various characters should be kept separate; there should be no IC contact between them, as it can be very easily abused.
To clarify the last item, here are a list of things which are seen by the refs as definitely not allowed. This list is not exhaustive, if you have any queries please ask a ref to clarify.
- Potions or salves made by one character being bought (even through an intermediary) by the second
- Two characters heavily involved in the internal politics of any organisation ...
We understand that any of the above may happen by accident, and we will do our best to warn you if it looks likely that there will be problems. The ref team are more than happy to help if you cannot think of a reason for one of your character to stop their activities.
High-level Characters
If a character gains XP to take them to over 360 XP (unspent XP must be explicitly defined as being assigned to the character if it would take them over 360 or explicitly not assigned to that character), they may only be played at a years worth of interactives (21 interactives) after this point before retiring. These interactives may be spread over multiple years of real time. At the end of the 21 interactives the character shall retire as early as possible.