SERVER MECHANICS

HollowWorld is a medieval fantasy freeform-roleplay minecraft server (phew!) with only a couple of agreed-upon mechanics to give the world some spice. Most of what you will experience on HollowWorld will be free to envision as you please, but there are four things that require an explanation to make full use of what the server has to offer. They are listed below.

Reading these will tell you everything you need to know to start your RolePlaying adventure on HollowWorld!

UNITS OF WEALTH

Your character has more than enough money to make it through their day to day, with even enough for the occasional large expense, unless you prefer your character to be broke. For anything more than that, there is a mechanic in place that uses ‘units of wealth.’ These are described as life-changingly large amounts of money. One unit of wealth is enough money to fill a chest full of silver coins. Ten units of wealth could represent the wealth of an entire large kingdom.

A unit of wealth is too much money to be carried around easily and must have a place to be stored outside of transactions - such as a safehouse within a community. The only way units of wealth appear in our world is through events where unit(s) of wealth are part of the loot. Once the wealth has materialized, it will start to change hands through purchases, theft, or even murder!

GOODWILL POINTS

Goodwill is a rather large concept which is explained in its entirety in [this thread]. In short, GW is a tool that allows DMs to see who is doing the most good in the community, and allocate our limited time fairly and with as little bias as possible. The GW system is there to make life fun for everyone on the server. 

On this server, we put great value into three things specifically: the first is trust and community, the second is amazing narratives, the third is giving the means to create these stories with freeform RP together with friends. 

Through certain actions, you can collect GW points. These points can be spent to give you special perks that are not obtainable without GW. You’ve put in the work to make someone else’s roleplay extra fun, so you should be rewarded with the tools to make your own narrative the best it could be. That’s where GW comes in. GW can be spent to get access to magic, commune with the divines, or even start your own town. These are just a couple of examples to give you some idea of its usefulness!

TIME

Time passes locally, so there is no server-wide timeline that everyone will be held to. It may well be summer in one part of the world, and winter in another. Ten years might pass in one place, and in that same span of time only a few weeks in another. 

This explains why some characters age faster than others and how different towns develop at different rates. When a settlement decides it is appropriate for time to pass, then time passes. Players who do not want that much time to pass for their character that lives there may assume their character was out of town at the time.

All characters are tied to time through four discrete brackets: Child > Young > Mature > Old > Venerable. The amount of each of these brackets are race specific, which are displayed at the bottom of the race’s thread. These are called ‘ages’. One bracket represents one age.

You will never be forced to age your character. You can, however, advance your character in any skill in which time plays a key role. Instead of spending Goodwill to do so, you may instead allow a lot of time to pass, aging your character, and enhancing your skill that way. For example, you may spend ‘1 age’ to advance from journeyman to adept in the arcane system! If you’ve spent more ages achieving a goal than someone else, you’re more likely to win in cases in which your training is relevant.

COMMUNITIES

If you want to build anything other than a campfire and a few tents, you need to start what we call ‘a community’. Community is the overarching term for your spot on the map and consists of the Buildings, the Player Characters, and the Non-Player Characters. They’re places that are almost entirely free for you to imagine in whatever way you’d like to create it.

[This Thread] explains everything you need to know about communities, including how to start your own town, how to make use of NPCs, and how to benefit from the buildings that make up your town.

ROLEPLAY GUIDELINES

Consider the following rules the only hard restrictions on your roleplay:

• You cannot kill or incapacitate someone in one emote. They must be given clear, actionable opportunities with which to interrupt a killing blow before it lands.
• You cannot contradict existing canon.
• If your character is exceptional in some way, you must be able to justify why and how.
• When two characters are in a contest and it isn't clear who should win, the character who sacrificed more should be the one to succeed.
• Meet other people where they're at.

For examples to illustrate the points above, refer to [This Thread]

THAT’S IT!

There is no more you need to know! These are the five things that have some mechanics to make the roleplay around them a bit more meaningful. All other fields are free for your own interpretation. You may even agree on certain mechanics privately to use optionally with the people you roleplay with. However, keep in mind that only the mechanics described above are enforced.

Check out the linked threads in the paragraphs above for more in-depth knowledge on our server mechanics.