Playing a Noble and creating a Noble House - new player

General The Rules
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Hello! Myself and 5 other friends are looking to get down next year to our first event. We are all looking at Dawn, and even after reading about Noble houses, Earls and Enchantresses I had a few questions that hopefully can be helped!

  • We wanted to join together an play a noble house, what does this look like and how is it formed?

  • Knowing that the noble houses must have a lead, when you are in character creation can you pick the nobility option for your character? Everyone has decided I should take lead as either the Earl or Enchantress and I didn’t know if this is something you can be right of the bat.

Any tips would be massively appreciated about this :slight_smile:

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Welcome along Hojii, to the game the Forums :slight_smile:

When you are building a character in Character Creation (online on the PD website) you have the options of:

Create Empire Character
Create Empire Group

Click the second one. Then (for you) click on Dawn (it’s her with the shield and the red cloak).

Then you want to pick BANNER. This means it’s a vaguely militant as opposed to magical or religeous focussed group.

You’ll need an oath at the bottom. A mission statement, a battlecry, a motto, something. It’s not that important, but if you’ve thought of something to use as a unit motto, this is where it goes.

Then on the next tab you fill in name, Noble House, and a few other background details.

Click Save Group (under the piccie) and you have a group on the system, welcome to Dawn!

Yes, you can definitely start as noble, you can definitely start as Earl. A House doesn’t NEED to have an Earl in play (“We are here at Anvil representing our Lords interests…”), but it gives you all sorts of fun options and opens up more areas of game.

You options are:
Start as a yeofolk and stay there.
Start as a yeofolk and try to get a Test of Mettle
Start as a Knight Errant on your Test
Start as a Noble having completed it in backstory.

Anyone can pick (yeah I’m already a Noble) at character creation, in which case the system will ask about your Test. Time to write a (very) short story on it, as it is a subject on conversation. Make it impressive… :smiley:

Now that answers your questions…

There are a lot of previous threads on this subject (a few linked below), a dedicated Facebook page for Dawn, and as a Dawn player myself I will happily answer any and all questions on this subject. I have a few thoughts and suggestions, if you’d like, but I think I’ve given you enough to consider for now :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thank you so much for the support and help! Honestly any more suggestions would be perfect, thank you for the threads it is going to help us all consider our role now hah!

Really great to know there is a lot of support for newbies - just gained a whole new level of excitement being able to write in depth like that for the House!!!

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As a general character building thing:

Going light touch on why they are is probably one of the best things to do for character story development

Field in text versus field in active field are two different beasties and I’ve known/personally experienced the “I’m going in with all these set plans and…field happened and I actually don’t think that’s my character”

(This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The setting excels at feeling lived in and some of that is massive character shifts and evolution as you play.

Goodness knows that my current character isn’t the person I thought he’d be when I put him onto the system)

If you come in knowing your character name, their lineage, if they’ve got in-field associates (and their relationship to them) and one major thing in their past, you’ll be cooking with gas

Also, the phrase “I’m new to Anvil” exists to be a helpful short hand of “help, I’m new here and don’t understand/need clarification/want some help with this thing”

Most of us love to talk and there’s a lot of little bits of game that aren’t on the Wiki…and people want to talk to folks about theories/chaos

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Oh you’ve done it now… :stuck_out_tongue:

Note that the below are all very much OPTIONAL flavour. Things to help you flesh out your characters etc before you hit the field. I do advise having a think on them though, even if your thought is (not right now, thanks).

A few things to consider re a new Dawnish House:

  1. The look. Colour scheme, heraldry, any motifs. Examples:
    House Tallstag, a silver stag on green.
    House Mortere, a golden hourglass on black and red.
    House de Rondell, silver gryphon on blue, with three silver crescents
    …and so on, dozens of them. I’ve been playing for years and can’t keep track of them all…

Houses Fawnwood, Gladewarden, Rylas, Vexille, Carsenere, de Acier, Drommond, Rylas, Medwood, Wolfbourne, Veridane, Aurelias… and so on…

A good colour scheme and symbol is great for identifying and tying you together as a group. Late Medieval heraldy is a good source of ideas, I am happy to make suggestions and comparisms.

  1. In-game location; You’ve got a choice of 4 Dawnish province to be from (We captured the Barrens a couple of years back. It took a LOT. There were whole songbooks written about it, including by me); Astolat, Wierwater, Semmerholm and the Barrens. Where you pick will likely affect you in-game priorities, attitudes and some mechanical effects.

eg:
House Aigh is in Astolat, the ancient heart of Dawn. Their concerns are pushing the prestige of Dawn amongst the nations, doing huge magical things, and collecting mana from the Harps of Astolat (a great work which buffs mana in that province).

House Beah is from the Barrens. They are a new House made of knights settling the border, many retired from the long campaign. They are focussed on fortifying the Barrens, and killing the Druj orcs. They don’t give a damn about politics.

House Siegh is based in northern Semmerholm. They are trying to build a society of wandering knights to patrol the unearthly inland sea of the Semmerlak, to guard against things coming from the depths. They do a lot of trading, have several ships, keep an eye on international politics and staying on good terms with their Varushkan nieghbours.

  1. As noted above, in game objectives. What do you, as players, want to do? What do you, as a new House, want to get done at Anvil? Go on quests and battles? Trade and network and make friends? Build a power base? I reccomend having some sort of group goal, even if nebulous and long-term. Past examples have included:
    (a) Be the biggest naval power in Dawn.
    (b) Get our group an artefact magic item.
    (c) Make a vast amount of cash
    (d) Have really good parties.
    (e) Get someone an Imperial “hat” (official position, including Archmage, Ambassador, General, Emperor…)
    (f) Muster further support and wieght for our war against [insert enemy here]

  2. IC and OOC organisation.
    In-character: You’re going to be Earl? Grand. Do you have a Seneschal (doing the trading, holding the cash)? It’s a useful role to fill.
    Out-of-character: Who’s bringing the group tent (if any)? Who’s planning meeting up, travel, etc? Have you considered a private group to chat about this sort of thing on (eg) Facebook? Any thoughts on buying group kit, making new shinies (a banner, decorations). While you may not need to write up an actual social contract (although I have seen that done), a simple agreement of “our character all start off as friends/family and loyal, okay?” may be worth ticking off.

  3. This is something I like doing for my Houses (currently on third). Backstory.
    How old is the House, and what were they doing at that point, or this? Did they get involved in that issue, or site it out?
    What do their lands look like, do you feel like drawing up a map? (this is all entirely cosmetic fluff, but can be fun to establish things)

I am a fluffsmith, and will cheerfully write your House a backstory tied into the setting if given age, location and attitude…

This is a layer of detail that is WAAAY more than necessary, and beyond many groups currently in play. But, as noted, can be fun :slight_smile:

I am happy to answer further questions… luckily you have plenty of time before your debut next year… oh, and you’ll be joining us at the new site! Have you heard about that?

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This has been on my mind for my own character! It’s good to hear it’s best to play it all out, as there seems like there’s a bunch of things to get stuck into.

Also extremely helpful about explaining how you are new and the supportive nature of it. All of that really helps to think about writing about my character a lot!

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:open_mouth: Coming from wanting the itch of wanting to be a Warcraft guild leader in the vanilla days, this is music to my ears haha!

I feel like the wiki has only done the rules justice, I absolutely love how the lived experiences of the houses can truly be that focused in on something and doing their own thing.

Love the idea of OOC organisation! As someone who likes to keep things on track and managed, this is a brilliant idea, even as you said if it’s informal contract of sorts.

I completely understanding with being a fluffsmith hah. I’m already seeing myself getting lost in writing about our house, especially incorporating all of my friends views on how its formed too!

I didn’t know about the new site, but just looked it up! We are all from the North-East, so if it moves even a few inches up t North we’re happy!

Honestly thanks so much for the support on this - I’m going to be taking this skeleton structure of house building to everyone come Sunday (our meeting about our house and Empire as a whole). I feel like I will have loads more questions to come, but at the moment I think I need to give some consideration on just who I want to be within Dawn knowing all this new information!!!

It’s just great to know the community is supportive, I definitely want to throw myself into the community aspect of it all, hopefully getting to a point like yourself with tips and direction :smiley:

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