#breakspiration

BREAK!! Tacit Holistic Recruitment Understanding is an agreement that GMs can run open or semi-open games under. The idea is to allow people to play as much as they want in pickup games and different campaigns using the BREAK!! rules, since everyone's so excited with this cool new toy. You can start at 1st Rank in one game, be in a totally different group later that night, and a third group tomorrow before joining your initial group again next week. Your current Hearts, Gear, Coins, Inventory Slots, and other fluctuating values will stay consistent from session to session just as if there's a contiguous campaign and single GM. When looking for Players, GMs can SIGNAL whether their games accept BREAK!!-THRU characters. Players may look for a BREAK!!-THRU game by searching for that tag specifically.

There's three levels of BREAK!!-THRU accordance that you can SIGNAL.

RED means you want to specifically tout that your game is NOT accepting of BREAK!!-THRU characters. No passers-by, just looking for dedicated regular players.

GOLD means that you are open for BREAK!!-THRU characters but you have some stipulations, such as limiting a number of magic items you can bring from another game, or restricting certain species or callings. This is a "Yes, but..." announcement about what you are flexible about and inflexible about, and should always have a tad more detail than the other Signals.

BLUE means that anything goes. Anyone can come from anywhere and bring anything and play anyhow, with the understanding that a given GM is not bound by the rulings or interpretations of a previous GM and may even ignore certain other rules at their discretion. A powerful magic item would be allowed but may work slightly differently, as might a spell, or a complex battle maneuver.

There are three overriding principles to the BREAK!!-THRU.

1. Promote the game and its creators and GMs through active play

2. Promote active play through community/cooperation

3. Promote community/cooperation through safety and acceptance

BREAK!! represents an opportunity to introduce some new people to rpgs or playing rpgs online, though, and I can see some vets’ experience actually hindering them from visualizing the abstractions BREAK!! foes with its battlefields.

This is a Google Slides file I shared with the BREAK!! Discord after another user on there gave me the idea. All the copy/paste assets are on slide 9, blank is on slide 10. The other slides so far are common, easy to customize battlefield setups. I love the old art of Grey’s that I used for the background.

Please remember before using this to Make A Copy first, so the original is ready and clean for the next person.

The Bronzed Continent follows the calendar of the Cogstone Warwork in the same way as does much of the Outer World but, in practical cultural terms, the continent marks time through in inexact passage of the three seasons.

The Still Season brings nothing but oppressive heat and increased ferocity from the creatures of the region. Spirits grow restless in these times, too: both those semi-divine and the vestiges of the departed. Because instances of the dead walking are most common during this season (while still rare), and because many creatures and remote homesteads wither and die from lack of food and water in these months, the Still Season is sometimes referred to as "Carrion Days." This is the most popular season for the pilgrims walking the Nocturne Crusade, especially after the losses of the Floods. It is typically the longest season.

The Wailing Season comes with howling winds which scour the land as much as they cool it. As the cooler air from the Twilight Meridian slips in to the realms of eternal light the heavy, cooler air from the Wistful Dark flows in to the Sunrise Lands. This front acts as a wall, leaving nowhere for the swirling airmass to go. The constant buffeting crosswinds give rise to sudden lightning strikes and makes many modes of travel more difficult. The Paw Post in particular seems to have the roughest time during these months and are sometimes forced to suspend certain services, with many people jokingly referring to them as the "Pause Post." The impact of this season is different across different regions, and is welcomed like family in the Sol Alliance.

The Floods come next, the shortest and most dangerous of the three seasons. Scorched lands betray the life they once harbored and those places where the mountains pile up the clouds drink deeply, resulting in lush jungle and rolling green hills. The cost of this is a constant threat of rain and storm at minimum, and the likelihood of sudden unexpected slides and floods nearly tips over into a certainty in many regions. This is considered a season outside of time, when debts and sins are forgiven. Community and mercy take on an added importance, but any truces or alliances during this period are washed away in the currents. This is also the naturally-darkest period on the Bronzed Continent, when people take advantage of cloud cover, softer ground, and the force of mighty torrents to effect great change. It is paradoxically a time when many shelter at home as much as possible as well as a popular time for certain festivals.