Wyrmstone the Organized Role-Playing Game Campaign (ORC) is a communal creation, forged by the choices of thousands of players, directors, mission creators, and game designers across the globe. Although Spycraft the RPG is a product of Crafty Games, the Wyrmstone campaign is driven by Volunteers. This section is intended to help explain basic questions about Wyrmstone.

What Is a Role-Playing Game (RPG)?

In a role-playing game, players can undertake great challenges, explore new horizons, and overcome fearsome villains. Your imagination is the limit. Every player creates a "character" tracked on a piece of paper. This imaginary person is how you, the player, interacts with an imaginary world. It is the "role" that you play during the game. Like an actor or actress who plays a role on stage, when you sit down to play, you are pretending to be your character. One of the players assumes the role of "Game Control" or GC--also known as the Game Judge. Think of the GC as the narrator to a story or the director of a play. You and your fellow players are the main characters, while the GC takes the role of the villains and the supporting cast. Also, the GC sets the scene and creates obstacles for you to overcome. It's a tough job and requires an incredible imagination, but a GC weaves great games the way good authors write good books.

How do you win? Well, role-playing is a team game. There is no one winner all the players win together. When does the game stop? Well, when the story is finished. That can be as short or as long as you and the other players want it to be.

What Is an Organized Role-Playing Game Campaign (ORC) and SAGE?

The purpose of an Organized RPG Campaign (ORC) is to provide a framework where players can participate in a single campaign that is orchestrated globally, allowing for player movement from table to table across the globe, sharing time and experiences with old and new players alike. ORC games are not restricted to large events, they can be the same group of old buddies you have played with for the last 20 years, or they can be played by different players at monthly gamedays where you get to meet new players every game! The design of an ORC is meant to include both formats of play.

SAGE™ is the Society for Adventure Gaming Enthusiasts. At this point in time it is more of an idealized concept than an organization--a means to coordinate Organized Play type games across multiple companies and campaigns. SAGE is beginning by designing a set of rules that can be used for any Role Playing Game (RPG) in an Organized Play or Living Campaign format, regardless of rules system.

Wyrmstone is an official SAGE-ORC Campaign and membership to play Wyrmstone is free.

So is it Fantasy? Historical Fiction? What?

Wyrmstone is a fantasy gaming setting. It has plenty of room for the dungeon-delving, world-saving, evil-fighting adventures we all treasure in our fantasy gaming. It mixes in a slightly higher level of technology than the usual medival fantasy, adding flintlock pistols and Age of Sail-era ships of the line. As much as the campaign contains a number of analogues to our own history, the game is focused on adventuring and heroism.

What's with the flying ships?

The Aether lies between all worlds; it ebbs and flows and can even have storms. Ships are built to harness the Aether through the use of Wyrmstones, collected from the remains of Dragons on Eone. The Wyrmstones harness magical energy to charge the sails of a ship, allowing them to "touch" the Aether and highsail while the ship floats, ignoring gravity. Highsailing is like normal sailing in nearly every respect--aspects like speed and maneuver don't change, they just happen in three dimensions instead of two. Because ships are being actively sailed, they still need crew, and may require a marginally larger crew than an ordinary seagoing vessel to man the additional masts, steering vanes and spars required of a ship sailing in three dimensions.

The Aether as a medium on which to sail also provides the nautical theme of Man vs. Nature, as it can suddenly disappear or turn violent as a storm.

The Wyrmstones are charged by invoking spells into them. The Power Rank of a given stone determines how much power it requires in order to function. Smaller, slower ships (with correspondingly smaller Wyrmstones) require less power than larger ships. More than one caster can funnel energy into a Wyrmstone.

Of course, the distances between worlds are far too enormous to travel conventionally, even under the power of the largest Wyrmstones. Wyrmstone-absorbed energy is used to generate gates large enough to sail the ship through, allowing for travel between the distant worlds surrounding the sun, known colloquially as the Hearth.

In the vein fantasy and to help avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief anachronistically by adding a bunch of sci-fi space suits, there is also air between all worlds. It is thin, but present. Beyond that is the void, unexplored and unknown. If a person is cast adrift but not near a world, he can survive for a small period of time, similar to breathing thin air on the top of a high mountain peak. Because of this there are some creatures which can fly very high, such as Dragons (who, being the source of Wyrmstone, can travel between worlds on their own).

There are a few nominal technical devices, such as matchlock guns and cannons (allowing for advancement in technologies as the campaign moves forward). Certain civilizations will use cannon both on their ships and in their fortifications.

Isn't this just like Treasure Planet or Spelljammer or something?

There are many sources of inspiration for Wyrmstone, including former RPG campaigns like 7th Sea, Ars Magica, Spelljammer, and Warhammer, as well as movies like Treasure Planet. We've also nodded toward the John Carter, Warlord of Mars stories, the worlds of Gor, Tarzan, and Conan, and even good old Flash Gordon. We recognize that elements may seem similar at first glance to a number of sources, but we have taken some effort to build a compelling background to Wyrmstone which is logical and not disjointed. The only real similarity to the Spelljammer setting, for instance, is the idea of floating ships. There are no gun-toting hippos on hamster-driven galleons in space, we guarantee it.

So does anybody actually sail, or does everyone just fly around?

Wyrmstones are rare, and Highsailing is still comparatively so. Worlds with oceans still have seafaring societies, as ships are much more common, easier to build and maintain, and a touch safer (crashing a ship means you swim--crashing a highsailing ship means you fall). The Ra'nian Guild-States still conduct the vast majority of their commerce on the sea-lanes, and even Liunonda, with the highest number of Highsailing vessels among all the worlds, uses oceangoing ships to perform coastal trade journeys and explore the seas.

Cool! How can I help?

Glad you asked! Wyrmstone is a volunteer organization and always needs help. Full information may be found in the How to Help section.