Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the sixth edition of the realmsofgildor.com newsletter.
There is an archive of the previous newsletters in the Townhall and the columns are added to the Town Square, so you can always read it again. A lot of work has been done on the site this month, although not all may be visible. I've finally finished correcting every single page. The errors that Internet Explorer gave with the wooden bars and fire theme pictures are history. All pages also have a new stylesheet that turns the scrollbars brown with a golden edge (only for IE 5.5 or better, I think) and it's shorter than the original sheets.
Enjoy reading...

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Close-Up
4. Column: Men with a Mission

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WHAT'S NEW:

24/04/2001 - optimized site statistics system

21/04/2001 - implemented new stylesheets on entire site

20/04/2001 - new character in the School: Flucx, corrected IE picture errors for Temple (problem completely solved now)

19/04/2001 - new poem in the Temple: "False Dawns"

18/04/2001 - corrected IE picture errors for School, new character in the School: Agarka

04/04/2001 - corrected IE picture errors for Town Square

01/04/2001 - corrected IE picture errors for Townhall

Visit http://updates.realmsofgildor.com for the latest updates.

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COMING UP:

The Cemen map is still not up and it will probably take a while befor it is. I did upload a map of Alcarin, the home world of the Elfstone Campaign Setting. It's not in the What's New of this month's letter, because I just uploaded it. That's for next month's letter.
I'm working on a new monster and a new item for the Archives in the School and I plan to have them finished in the coming month. Some other projects are still running to, like a new RPG mission for the Barracks, more info on the Elfstone Pantheon for the School and an article on demons/demon summoning for the Town Square. I hope to get more visitor input for the Barracks, School, Wyvern Inn and the Town Square to, but we'll just have to wait and see if that happens. I could also use more posts on the webnovel (Goimen and the Blackened Blades) board. The Dunékàr Online RPG runs incredibly well and I hope to take it to another level by starting a small adventure there. I don't know if it will work in a free-form RPG, but I'm eager to find out.

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CLOSE-UP:

"What is an RPG?" - An introduction to role-playing games. (Town Square: Articles)

Preview:
"The term RPG stands for Role-Playing Game. From this, one can derive the base-characteristics of an RPG.
First of all, the word "Game". An RPG is just like Monopoly, Axis and Allies and other games like it, a game that is played with a group of people, friends, family, etc. It's all about being creative and having fun with friends. Here, we are talking about the "pen-and-paper" RPG and not about a game that is played on a computer. The RPG genre that is played on the computer (a CRPG) is just derived from the original form of the game (that is, "pen-and-paper").
Second, the word "Role-Playing". This clearly shows what a large part of the game is all about. It is a game in which you play a role, a sort of play with a lot of improvisation. Every player makes up an own personality and character. The player then plays the game with that character."

The starting paragraph of an article that gives an introduction of role-playing games. It is written by one of my friends, Ben van Laar. It was originaly meant as part of a project for school and written about a year ago. It was written in Dutch and for a rather selective group of people (read: person; the teacher) so I had to translate and edit it first. Now, it is a introduction for anyone that has heard of role-playing games but doesn't know anything about it yet.
When talking about role-playing, we found many people that just didn't understand a thing about what we were talking about. We also found it very hard to really explain what role-playing meant, what it was. People tend to find it strange. A game and it isn't played on a computer and it deals with Elves, Dragons, magic and other weird things... That's why we found it necessary to put some time into writing a clear and simple article about it that could explain it a bit. I hope and think we succeeded in that, but that's not for me to judge, I guess. Still, I think the best way to understand it, is to actually join a group and try it for yourself.

Read the full article in the Town Square:
http://townsquare.realmsofgildor.com

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COLUMN: MEN WITH A MISSION
A column by Wouter vd Zandschulp; wouter@realmsofgildor.com

"The mysterious powers of a party"

I will tell you a story which demonstrates how great a party of adventurers can solve problems and help people (for money, experience points and magical items, of course).
This story reveals automatically when you read along (cool, isn't it?):
Once upon a time there was a party of adventurers. A party not as in a celebration, a group of people. And everyone within the party who compared the name with the name of a celebration in order to be humorous was already slain.
It was a happy party, because we all know happiness doesn't come with money and all their money was being stole by the thief Halfling. Their was a paladin, a Gnome, a Dwarf, an Elf, a Halfling and an Orc. It was a party of six.
When the party was walking (what else could they do?), a boy came running towards them.
All out of breath he brought out: "My cat has climbed up a tree".
"Let's all go up a tree also, so we could feel the poor cat's pain" the paladin suggested.
"Okay, the Gnome can go first" the Orc suggested and he threw the poor Gnome up against a tree.
"Hey! Beware of the tree!" the nature-loving Elf shouted.
"That's kind of stupid, he isn't IN the tree" the Dwarf complained.
"You are right, I must hit him so hard he will get inside of the tree" the Orc mumbled.
"I know you are trying to help, my dear Orc, but I meant..." the paladin started.
The Orc reacted by hitting the paladin quite hard. Luckily, no-one cared.
But the Gnome still was quite mad about his treatment. He walked towards the three times his size Orc and said: "You don't want to mess with me."
The Orc thought about it and said: "Yes I do."
He hit the Gnome, which flew through the air, still shouting at the Orc. He accidentally hit the Elf, which started to cast at the Orc, but accidentally hit the Dwarf, which he didn't see.
"I'm sorry, I didn't saw you, you're so small" the Elf said.
"I am not small!" the Dwarf shouted.
In the meanwhile, the Halfling stole all their money, of which they began blaming each other later on.
The boy still was watching the group.
"Say, can you guys help me, or..." he started.
They stopped fighting, peace was restored for a minute.
"Let's help him" the paladin suggested. "It never hurts to help".
"But what if we get tired?" the Elf asked.
"It must be a trick from an enemy of ours" the Halfling said. "Let's slay him to be sure, he can be a disguised monster ordering us to go to a tree which actually is a porthole to a dimension full of monsters and big insects."
"I can beat them all!" the Gnome replied out of a tree, in which he has gotten stuck with his head.
"All right, I'll slay him" the Orc said.
"Will you help him?" the boy asked with hope in his voice.
The Orc came running at the boy, but suddenly he got attacked by a ferocious cat, out of nowhere.
"Get that cat off of me!" he shouted, but no-one dared to touch the ferocious animal.
"Don't hurt him!" the Elf shouted.
"I can beat him!" the Gnome shouted, but he wasn't able to get his head out of the tree.
The boy was very happy.
"Thank you guys! Your attack on me caused my cat to get out of the tree and save me!"
The boy picked his cat of the Orc's head, which caused him considerable damage. The boy walked away happily.
And so the party had solved another big problem thanks to their mysterious ways of working together and do great things.

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Well, that's it for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it. Reactions to the newsletter can be sent to: mailinglist@realmsofgildor.com

Lord Gildor
"May the stars guide you on your journeys"
http://www.realmsofgildor.com

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