Editing User:Bill/Magocracy of Dholavira (section)

==Characters==
The way I've written the background, anything would work. What sort of characters and group structure, if any, the players want will have to be discussed. My personal preference would be for the group to create low level (ECL1-4) characters and play this game as a sandbox. Each player would then be free to explore the portion of the setting that interests he or she most while his or her character develops. That would provide me with time to get to know the group as well. All characters will be generated using the elite array of ability scores regardless of what else the group agrees to. I do not care for random ability scores in general and won't use them under normal circumstances. 

Sandbox style games can present problems in terms of group cohesion, but I have some experience overcoming these issues. The key, in my opinion, is almost always creating characters that have some form of common background tying them together. In D&D, the easiest way to do that is make all of the characters blood relatives. This immediately eliminates racial conflicts and dramatically reduces incidents of in-group betrayal. It's just out of character for most folks to murder their siblings, especially heroes. Other options that have worked for me to varying degrees in the past include creating a shared narrative, basically describing one or more adventures that the characters have previously accompanied each other on, and creating a shared antagonist, capitalizing on the enemy of my enemy effect. How ever the group wants to handle it is fine with me except of course, "we met in a tavern." That is completely unacceptable in my opinion.
===Additional Notes===
As I indicate above, I am attempting to de-emphasize combat encounters. To put it another way, this game will frequently be biased towards social conflict rather than physical. Keep that in mind when deciding how your character should be built and what races will be best. Just a hint, anything huge and brutish is going to have a hard time dealing with people that can't be threatened with violence. You may also benefit from taking a couple sub-optimal feats that grant your character social advantages.

While any race would be acceptable, with few exceptions only humans are native to Dholavira. Any native of Dholavira may take the Magical Training feat at first level.

===NPCs===
Sandbox games like this require significant numbers of NPCs to work well. I'll be cataloging them here. Players participating in the game are encouraged to take some control of the game and detail one or more of the NPCs themselves. Any character that I have not written something for is fair game. Similarly any player may add NPCs that are important to his or her character's background.

[[/NPCs|NPCs]]