Insight Frequently Asked Questions about The Outer Sanctum

[The Narrator]

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the Outer Sanctum? ⤵

The Outer Sanctum is a living, breathing environment for Roleplay. Unlike the rest of the Inner Sanctum, where your stories exist independent of each other, all stories occurring in the Outer Sanctum exist within the same world. You will be able to interact with other players' characters, tell stories with dozens of other writers, and participate in Sanctioned Stories with recurring characters. Your character's history will continue to grow the more they do and the more they experience. They can team up with others to undertake quests, go into business, try to take over organizations, or whole cities. You can be a hero that collects allies, or a villain that makes enemies.

But the Outer Sanctum is a living world—you may meet with push-back in your plans.

The Outer Sanctum is a managed setting, meaning that there are limitations on the power that characters can have when starting in the world. These limits are designed to ensure a degree of fairness (and at times unfairness) in the setting for all. Player characters cannot be gods, nor bend reality to their whim. As your character (or characters) start in the world, they need to build their powers and stories through RP.

Power earned is worth more than power claimed.

How do I Roleplay in the Outer Sanctum? ⤵

The Outer Sanctum is a fantasy world and nearly anything that you can imagine in that setting can be brought into this world. While futuristic elements are not to be found here (sorry, no laser swords and tactical nukes), you could perhaps find "fantasy equivalents" (constructs instead of robots, mana cannons instead of bazookas, etc.). Our goal with Outer Sanctum is to give you the freedom to tell whatever stories you want however you want, with these few limitations for the sake of the setting and other players.

Presently there are two primary cities and one region in which players can Roleplay. These areas are designed to give your stories some background and flavour to help you set a tone.

Khare - A vast and ornate mercantile city. In hot days and cold nights, this oasis in the desert may trap one into the jaws of mystery and intrigue. Teeming thousands swarm within running businesses, labouring for coin and living their lives. In this grand city people seek out their dreams. But rarely do they find them.

Tethis - Home to the ancient city of the gods, this massive city within the Tethian Mountains is brimming with ancient tradition and ancient power. The gods act together, or not, through their churches, the saints and leaders of the old world. The history and knowledge of the world pouring from the very stones, this Eternal City is the undisputed centre of power and wisdom.

The Infinite Wilds - Spreading out east and North from Tethis, one enters a land of swamps, mountains, plains, coasts, towns, cities, and more. If you do not want to tell your story in Khare or Tethis, there are many places lost in the Infinite Wilds to uncover.

All characters in the setting need to be approved before they can set out on their journey.

Why do I need an approved character sheet? ⤵

This is to ensure that all characters fit within the setting and do not break either the lore or the game itself. Players need to provide some basic information about their characters, and provided there are no issues they are free to start roleplaying in the setting the moment that the sheet is approved. Please keep in mind that your character sheets can also be used to help other players understand your character. Beyond the basics, you are free to make your character sheet as simple or as in-depth as you like.

Here you can find a template that Selcouth designed for the setting, as well as information for how to use the template's code. If you don't want to use this template that's completely fine so long as the required information is provided.

As with many other milestones, getting your character approved and making your first post in the world will net you your first badge!

Wait, there are badges? ⤵

Like any game, there are prizes and rewards. Some of these prizes will be obvious. Your first badge, will be rewarded for getting your character approved and starting story in the world. But what about the others? Some of these will be known—completing one roleplay in each city with the same character will net you the Tale of Two Cities badge. But some will be discovered as your character interacts with the world. Even more exciting, there will be unique badges that only a few people may get. But we will not be telling how how to get those just yet.

In addition, completing Sanctioned Stories can yield badges or other tangible rewards that your characters can use (ranging from money, to political favours, or even powerful weapons). You won't know what you get until the story wraps up.

What are these Sanctioned Stories you've mentioned? ⤵

Sanctioned Stories are stories involving groups of characters and are far more challenging than standard stories. These have some amount of randomness to them to ensure unpredictability (there are rolls which will dictate outcomes) and there are actual risks to life and limb. Sanctioned Stories can be very dangerous but also immensely profitable—if you dare to take the risk. The difficulty of a given Sanctioned Story will be rated out of 3, with 1 being the easiest and 3 being the most challenging.

How do Inner Sanctum and Outer Sanctum rules interact? ⤵

Inner Sanctum rules are always in effect. Characters cannot be under the age of 18+ and must be fully mentally mature.

There are a few minor deviations. Outer Sanctum content can be bloody, and violent, it can deal with complicated and adult themes, but all sexual content within the confines of the Outer Sanctum is explicitly fade to black. Sexually explicit content involving your Outer Sanctum characters may be taken elsewhere on the forum. Any RP that occurs outside of the Outer Sanctum boards is considered to be "non-canon" so any events that occur in those threads, sexually explicit or not, will not count as having occurred within the setting.

Because there is no sexually explicit content allowed in Outer Sanctum, there is slightly more flexibility in terms of characters. For example, requirements that characters be humanoid are relaxed as there would be no sexual content with that character though they must still posses human intelligence (at least some of the time). Rules against pregnancy are considerably stricter, it may not occur "on-screen" Please note that any forbearance for Outer Sanctum characters does not permit violation of Inner Sanctum rules under any circumstances on the rest of the site.

Thank you from your Sanctum Staff.​