1st of Junius, 2103, Republic of Plentitude.

Published to the surging social media site Clicker.

Sword, Board and Song™ is happy to announce a new server-world for our massively successful multiplayer game, Heroes by Decree!  Unlike previous server-worlds, this server is of preplanned limited duration.  On the 1st of Pompluy 2104, the server will be closed.  However, unlike other servers, all accounts created will be absolutely free!

As with all of our server-worlds, the forces of Law and Chaos clash over the fate of Prosperium!  Unlike the other server-worlds, Prosperium’s days are tightly numbered.  One month before the end of the server’s open nature to the public, the armies of a mysterious [Dark Lord] will cross the lands of the world and attempt to permanently corrupt the world.  Should he be successful, all is lost and there will be effects in other server-worlds!  However, should the forces of Law prevail, all player characters that survive will ascend into the upper server-worlds and be allowed to retain their levels and titles, while incurring no cost to the players!

We ask you to join us in this experimental new world and fight for the fate of Prosperium! 

Breakdown of the Classes in “Universe of Heroes by Decree,” published on a obscure blog.

“Heroes by Decree” is a broad universe. There are seventeen ‘server-worlds,’ not counting the recently announced Prosperium and each of these worlds changes a few things to the usual formula. Before we go over the exceptions, it would be a good idea to establish the rules. 

The universe is fundamentally magical. Magic generally serves as a secondary layer of math or physics, I don’t know exactly.  Some of it appears to be elemental and some appears science by other means.  Again, I don’t know why. The biggest thing is that all of the worlds are linked by some means. It costs something to travel between worlds and most players don’t do it, unless there is going to a big fight with Chaos or some other big event. 

There are four basic classes, chosen after a random stat allocation, but you can generally flavor them up a bunch with different choices.  These are as follows;

1. Fighter.

2. Camper.

3. Singer.

4. Patter. 

Fighters are the most straightforward. Get a weapon and hit things with it. Or if you have good enough scores, shoot something with that. Fighters tend to play rather easy with the standard 9 button controller.  Those with better coordination can excel above their stated level by tight blocks and parries, but that is pretty hard to manage. They earn experience from treasure successfully brought back to town, Chaos Monsters destroyed, ‘Lawful Deeds,’ (which vary wildly between some planets) and duels won. The best Fighter-character on a server world tends to be given the crown and this is worth real money.  Most players play as Fighters, with at least one of their accounts.

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Campers are sort of non-combatants. They can use weapons, but only with a 50% accuracy penalty and that tends to take a lot of the fun out of it. They cannot fight if they are disarmed.  They also get reduced experience from treasure, killing monsters and none at all from duels or player-character kills.  What do they get it from?  Campers get experience from completing various build orders that different in-game characters offer them, such as repairing things, catching monsters or creatures in traps, mining resources and various military camp jobs. 

Singers are kind of the magic class. Their songs can cause magical effects, from brief buffs to permanent changes to the environment or forming the very environment from song. Most new players find them immensely hard to play as it requires significant dexterity to manage their singing through the standard 9 button controller and it is impossible on most nonstandard controllers. Even harder still, ambient in game noise weakens any effects done by the song sung, so battle casting is basically impossible for most new players. (There is an exception to this on the Choir World, where an in-universe divine decree made the clashing of weapons and armor in battle silent and nonmagical voices are silenced by the mere attempt to sing.). Singers primarily get experience by successful songs, but they can also get experience from every other source in the game, if at a somewhat reduced rate.

Finally, there are the Patters. Patters have a bunch of different sub-types, but basically, they have to get up close to something and then lay their hand on it. If they want, they can heal the target of the pat, or they can release poisons and melt them, or a thousand other variations. They gain experience through the successful laying on of hands. on another in-game entity (though some planets have healers who can self heal), bring treasures back to town, make a Chaotic game entity neutral or fully embrace Law, or dematerialize creatures of pure Chaos.

Multi-classing is impossible (except on Tyrannic Magma), while subclasses tend to be only gained for a sacrifice of methods of gaining experience.  For example, the [Musketeers] of Poitiers, exchange the Fighters ability to gain experience from finding treasure to have more responsive controls and greater piercing damage. Similarly the [Silent Choral Band] of Ice World trade the usual mechanics of singing and the ability to speak at all for immense resistance to cold and outside magics. Come back next week for a study of the stats.