A character must choose a lifestyle to make up any time between adventures. This lifestyle represents in general how character is maintaining himself. All characters need shelter, food, water, clothing, etc. What lifestyle you choose will decide some pretty important things. First, it determines how much of your hard won gold and silver you must spend to provide for yourself at that level. Secondly it determines how much free time you have to devote to other things. The more money your spending on services, the less of the days time you have to spend doing things yourself. Third, It will determine the kind of people you meet. Those living an impoverished street life are far more likely to meet street thugs, petty criminals, prostitutes, and other impoverished sorts. Only those living a truly grand lifestyle will be fortunate enough to mingle with lords, ladies, mages high clergy and other rather elite sorts.

Living as a Wretch- A wretch gets by on what he can, living on the streets more like an animal than a person. Wretches beg, borrow, steal and con to get by. They live in dirty squalor, tucked in alleyways and abandoned buildings. Needless to say, this type of lifestyle affords little free time in that every necessity of life is hard gotten. Dirty conditions, poor diet and no medical care are the cause of an alarmingly high likelihood of contracting foul illnesses. Because of the disrespectful lot character has fallen into, legal problems often follow as well. Few people will associate with wretches, and as such, the only contacts a character in this sorry state is likely to meet are other wretches and lowly social sorts. Though living a Wretch lifestyle is absolutely free, It affords a character only five hours of free time a week.

Peasant's Lifestyle- A peasant is typified by an agricultural worker whom lives in a more rural area. Most peasants own little and "rent" or share land to grow crops and tend animals. A peasant lifestyle includes a fair diet, limited sanitation and limited medical attention. This makes for a sorry medical state, with frequent illnesses and such, but much better then living in the streets. Living a peasants lifestyle does not afford much free time in that all manner of simple daily tasks are difficult and require time to perform. Everything form washing clothing to cooking food can take great amounts of time. Peasants living a more rural lifestyle where food is produced do tend to have fairly good diets thanks to fresh, abundant produce. Those living a peasant lifestyle generally only have opportunity to associate with those of peasant status ( most wretches live in the cities). A peasant's lifestyle costs 5 silver per week. It does provide 45 hours of free time a week, though the average peasant works 40 of those to afford the lifestyle.

Vassal's Lifestyle- A vassal's lifestyle is a bit of a step up from that of a peasant. Typically a vassal lives a less rustic life, being more likely to live in a town or city. Vassals though still socially lowly tend to own property. Though seldom do they own land, they often own there own tools, furniture and such. Vassals have an adequate diet, often a bit less desirable because they need to get there food form market after the more affluent have gotten there first choice. Even peasants tend to eat a bit better getting fresh food from the farms and having fists choice of the harvest. Vassals do however have much better access to medical care, services and market goods due to there more urban residence. However with this comes a higher instance of being victimized by crime and exposure to communicable diseases. Vassals have a bit more exposure to peoples of different social classes. Generally they will interact with other vassals like tradesmen and merchants, however contact with the occasional wretch or noble in not uncommon. A Vassal lifestyle costs 2 gold per week, and affords 50 hours of weekly free time. Most Vassals spend 40 hours of this working to afford there lifestyle however.

Masterwork Weapons

Masterwork weapons are finely crafted weapons of perfect balance and extraordinary blades. They are not magical though often have special properties as a result of there remarkable craftsmanship. Masterwork weapons must be well cared for. Once damaged in any way, they seldom can ever be repaired just right. Any masterwork weapon that becomes "damaged" or "mangled" can be repaired, but will never again be anything more than a normal weapon of that type. It will never again be masterwork or receive the bonuses it once did. When a character wishes to buy a master work weapon, there are a few things he must do. First and foremost, he must inform the GM. The character must be between games in a situation like a city where such an item would be available. Next the GM will respond by taking the appropriate sum of money from characters bank account and informing the player that the character was able to obtain the weapon. Once this is done, the player must find or make a LARP safe weapon suitable for the masterwork weapon and someplace on that weapon write "masterwork" along with the bonuses that weapon confers. This must then be initialed by the GM.

Masterwork Ammunition

All the normal rules for masterwork weapons apply for masterwork ammunition as do for masterwork weapons. There is an additional limitation for ammunition however. Masterwork ammunition is quite fragile and will only retain its masterwork status and bonuses for the duration of one adventure.

Characters who make use of Thamatergy rely on spells they have formulas for in their spell books to cast. Most large cities have wizards and mages who are willing to sell their lesser spell formula to needy young mages. The cost is equal to the total number of ranks required to cast it squared, times 5 in gold coins. Hence a spell that requires only rank 1 in Thamatergy would cost (1 squared which equals 1 X 5) for a total cost of 5 GP. A spell like Stone Bolt which requires Thamatergy rank 2 and Earth Magic rank 1 is a total of 3 ranks ( 2 Thamatergy & 1 Earth Magic). 3 squared (3 X 3) is 9, X 5 gp is 45 Gold coins. Lets make this simple Spell which require a total of 1 rank cost 5 GP. Spells which require a total of 2 ranks cost 20 GP. Spells which require a total of 3 ranks cost 45 GP. Spells requiring 4 or more total ranks are not generally available for sale.

Some characters will find themselves wanting to make money more than anything else. For them, the option of taking a mundane job is there. A character may take as many hours he likes which are available from his lifestyle and spend them working. This time working pays based on the job done and the characters skill appropriate to the profession of choice.

* these careers can make a lot of money in short time... but the more time you spend doing them the more likely legal problems are to find you.

A character may spend as much of his free time available from lifestyle socializing as he wants. Socializing is free. It's part of the characters lifestyle cost. Characters therefore socialize for free at a social level about equivalent to the lifestyle they maintain. Socializing above the lifestyle you maintain is not allowed because you simply will not be accepted as a social equal by others. Socializing below your level brings lots of suspicion and invites little more than opportunists who will seek to take advantage of you. The greatest advantage of a character socializing is that they get to meet new people. For every 50 hours a character spends socializing, he will gain a new "acquaintance" randomly generated by the Game Master.

Acquaintances- Acquaintances are people you get to know a bit and have somewhat predictable contact with as a result of socializing. Generally when you get an acquaintance, you will learn the person name, gender, occupation and "social rating". What are acquaintances good for? Not a whole lot to start with. An acquaintance is generally willing to answer some questions if there about a topic they know something about, or may be willing to buy things form you if there the kinds of things that acquaintance deals in. The most useful thing about acquaintances is that you have the opportunity to groom them into full fledged "contacts".

Social Rating- An NPCs social rating is quick refrence information about establishing that person as a contact. It is represented by 2 numbers separated by a slash, such as "3/10". The first number represents how much copper per hour a player must spend socializing with the NPC when grooming then as a contact. Most NPCs will have low ratings such as 1 which represents food and drinks which character must purchase when engaged in grooming socialization. More wealthy and influential contacts tend to have more expensive tastes and past-times and as such are more expensive to socialize with. The second number represents how many hours a week they are willing to spend with you. Just because a character has 50 free hours a week to spend having fun and networking doesn't mean that potential contacts do as well. They need to keep there lives going as also, and this number represents how much time they have available for the character in their schedules. Of course, this number is often modified by how the NPC sees the character. A powerful clergyman may make himself available for a modest amount of time for a character whom doesn't seem very important to him. Where as a farmer will go way out of his way to make himself available for the chance to befriend a wizard.

Contacts and Reciprocity- When you establish an NPC as a contact, it is assumed ( by the NPC at least) to be a relationship of mutual benefit. Just as contacts will generally be willing to do things for the character that are reasonably within their ability, so too are the characters expected to assist NPC contacts in ways appropriate to their professions. Of course a character or NPC has the right to refuse a favor asked by the other, but when characters refuse a reasonable request from an NPC contacts, the relationship will be strained and characters should expect less help later or even loss of that contact relationship all together. Generally speaking however NPC contacts will only ask characters for things about equal to what characters should expect to ask of them based on contact rank.