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This wiki documents a system for converting Teriock FanWar LARP to a tabletop or online system. The basic philosophy is to not simulate live action FanWar at all. Rather, it's to design a system for tabletop from the ground up, redefining every relevant keyword and ability in the process. Some things in Teriock Online work very similarly to live action FanWar, others are completely different. For more information, see the Design Goals below.

What to Read

During play testing, I've assumed anyone looking at this site is familiar with live action FanWar and has access to me to ask questions. With that in mind, I recommend reading the rules in roughly the following order.

How to Use this Wiki

This website is built using MediaWiki (same engine as Wikipedia). This allows for detailed templates, "transclusion" (repeating text on different pages), previews, page tags/categories, etc. It means I can have a detailed system that constantly refers back to other parts but that is easy to maintain. It should mean it's easy to pull up abilities, mechanics, and interactions and also that changes should propagate through everything smoothly. For example, if I change how being frozen works, then it will update everywhere it's referenced. Basically what I'm saying is this site works like Archives of Nethys.

If you are ever lost on where to find something, every rule in Teriock Online can be found in this master index.

Namespaces

In case you ever get confused, know that this wiki is divided into several "namespaces". These are akin to chapters in a book and allows for several pages to have the same name without getting confused with each other. For instance, this lets us distinguish the ability Duel from the condition of being in a duel. Some locations might at first seem counter intuitive. An example would be that there's no page called "Fire Damage" but there is one called "Damage:Fire" which defines the "Fire" damage type in the "Damage" namespace. The front end namespaces and what they contain are as follows.

Ability: All abilities in the game. This includes every type of action a creature can do (from Snare, to Opportunity Attack, to Catch Item, to Drop Prone).
Class: The game's base 15 classes.
Condition: Static conditions that affect creatures.
Core: Any core rules that relate to Teriock Online itself and aren't just keyword from live action FanWar that's been redefined.
Creature: The statistics for all the creature types in the game. This namespace is currently a work in progress.
Damage: Any damage type. Think of this as types of harm that reduce HP and related effects.
Drain: Any drain type. Think of this as types of harm that reduce MP and related effects. This means we can have mana drain and memory drain listed separately. It is also where things like wither are located.
Equipment: Any type of standard equipment in the game.
Keyword: Any miscellaneous keywords from live action FanWar that have been redefined for Teriock Online.
Property: Static properties than an item could have.
Spec: All the prestige specializations in the game. This namespace is currently empty.
Tradecraft: All the tradecrafts in the game.

Design Goals

These were the main principles that influenced the design of the system.

Be built first and foremost for online and tabletop gameplay.
Keep consistent keywords with live action FanWar so as to make system conversion smooth.
It should, in principle, also be possible to convert from this system back to live action FanWar for when Teriock officially returns to Chris.
Be built for small parties with long adventuring days (D&D or Pathfinder style, not live action MMO style).
Mechanics (especially combat mechanics) should be "crisp" and well defined (much better defined than in live action FanWar).
There should be a robust (if simple) system for non-combat mechanics as well.
Resource management, including HP and MP should matter.
Combat should be dynamic, interesting, and not entirely predictable.
For now, I've retained the "junior league" rank system and added some items at intermediate levels. This is for conversion and playtest purposes. However, leveling up will not operate on a "set" or "three hour" basis. It will be more milestone style (up to GM discretion). I've added additional level up bonuses between ranks to accommodate for this.
It'd be nice if the classes are balanced.

And these were things that were not goals of the design process.

No regard was given to simulating live action FanWar.
No regard was given to replicating the precise balance of live action FanWar. This means some of the live action design goals were not important here. For instance, FanWar LARP requires that baddies be quick to setup and play and must operate more-or-less consistently no matter who is playing them. This means they operate very similarly to player characters (some simple base stats, slap a standard class on there, give them a magic item, and go). That's not required for an online system. So, while I have some rules describing how to convert existing baddies, this system is asymmetrically designed around player characters.
The game engine doesn't need to operate in real time. In live action combat, you can't have dice rolling or arithmetic beyond adding/subtracting ones and fives. This makes a lot of abilities essentially turn into "no effect" mechanics. But online systems can have more nuance. So I've changed how resistances work, removed "20 count" timers, etc.

Random Patch Notes

These reflect a few of the major changes from live action FanWar. They're presented in no particular order.

Most 20 count timers have been turned into "exploding" d4s.
There's no concept of "called" abilities, since that's something that descends from having to physically call out the names of abilities that you use.
I've just completely axed the keyword "prevention" from the game. It's redundant. Everything's been rewritten without it and it wsa easy.
Reaction/resistance meta will likely be substantially less powerful due to limited reaction economy and resistances not being absolute.
I've removed all references to levels/ranks in something (ranks in Flame Mage, levels in Historian, and so on). Things scale off absolute factors like your total level, your proficiency, etc. This will make some things much better defined. ("How many ranks in nature mage do I have for polymorph if I got the ability as a blessing from my deity? Does it use ranks in paladin instead???") And in other cases, it will keep the "scope" of things clearer (What does 1025 levels in Blacksmith even mean? Am I 51.3 × better at blacksmithing than a level 20 adventurer that put all their levels in Blacksmith? What?)
There's lots of "hidden" rituals/abilities that exist in FanWar that are referenced, but for which it's not clear how they work. How does one study an area for teleporting? Does the oracle happen during the ritual or after? Is it a ritual to get a familiar? What about for a divine gift? A pact?
Although "encounters" will still happen in gameplay, there's no reference to encounters in the rules themselves. Everything is "10 minutes" or "during a short rest" or "1 minute without combat" and whatnot. This gets rid of all the "are we in a new encounter yet?" ambiguity that we have in live action FanWar.
Currently knockout doesn't exist. It might just add it back in as non-lethal damage.

Playtest Priorities

I'm very interested in seeing how warriors/semis feel compared to mages, how the core blocking mechanic feels, and how all of the various numbers stack up against each other. Some things that I thought were giga strong/weak when designing will certainly be the opposite. The good news is that it's very easy to refine numbers, tweak things, and change rules. Much easier than in live action FanWar. I'm open to lots of changes.

That being said, please don't give feedback on the Elder Sorcery creation system. (Scaling with rotators, number of "slots", and whatnot is fair game. It's the mechanics of making a spell that I don't want to hear about.) I 've received so many suggestions for people's pet spell creation procedures and that's an entirely different kettle of worms that's fundamentally outside of the actual rules of the game. What I have written here at the moment isn't something that I'm definitive about or confident in. It's literally just random words on a page to put something out there so that I could get the core game done. It's not anything more than that. Basically just treat ES creation as more-or-less unwritten.