The Player’s Lordock
“The following is a sample format for the different elements of a Player’s Lordock. After you make a copy of the Google Doc, make any adjustment, addition, you feel you need to add to your Lordock. The more the better for you and your Story Guide.”
The Lordock
The Player’s Lordock is their character sheet. It should include all vital information, effect trees, items and equipment, domiciles, frequent locations, supporting characters, and of course, notes.
Tab One: Biography
Our Page One elements should include the top level information about our characters. Their name, their species, their Origin Core, their level and total experience, and possibly a picture of them.
The second part of our Biography should be our Vital Statistics including the adjustments from Species, Origin Core, and Effect Trees.
The third part of the Biography should be the Bio and Life Statement for our character. For good advice on how to write up a Life Statement for your character, visit Star of the Backstory.
Beyond the life statement will list our supporting characters, this list should continue growing throughout our character’s lifetime. This will be where we add parents, siblings, and maybe the best friend or a hero they admire. Also, possibly, a rival or a villain they already know. We should keep notes about interactions with these supporting characters. Keeping an up to date biography for yourself and your Story Guide will keep the journey forward for the character a little cleaner of plot holes.
Tab Two: Routine Reference
In our second tab we can keep all of the Routines our character may perform as part of their daily four hours of Routine time. At the top we can make a quick reference to the Routines we will pretty much always use for the character, and when your Story Guide calls for a new day after a rest and who is doing what with their routines you can opt to prepare for a normal day or let the Story Guide know you made some changes. As your character unlocks new Routines this tab becomes more important as Actions and Effects we get from our daily Routines tend to be among the most powerful.
Tab Three: Action Reference
We should keep track of all of our combat engagement and social encounter actions and the base mechanical modifiers we will use throughout the game as we roleplay.
At the top of this Tab we keep the languages we know, then our Combat Actions, followed by Skillsets.
After these main categories it is good practice to put individual weapons and items we frequently use with links or full descriptions of the actions they grant and create easy access to durability tracking for those items. This will save time later on.
Tab Four: Effect Trees & Potential
Tracking our Effect Trees and spent potential is absolute paramount. Gaining new effect trees is how our characters gain new Actions, Effects, and increase their Vital Statistics. On this tab we will have our total potential and how much potential we have spent and the list of all of our unlocked Effect Trees.
Tab Five: Equipment Tracking
Our equipment tracking should be thorough. Our equipped items should be in the first section, and in the second section should be the rest of the character’s every day carry. We should be as detailed as possible and track the weight. For excess items we want to keep and be able to swap out, be sure to work on your character’s Domicile(s).
Tab Five, Section 3: Shopping List/Item Wishlist
Our last item relevant section is the Shopping List. These are items the character wants to have and can include anything you might want to put a price tag on. Keeping an active shopping list where your Story Guide can find it can help them massively in their preparations for shopping episodes as well as crafting and item quests for the acquisition of such things. If you’ve ever worked in inventory these lists should be relatively familiar to you. You can keep pars for consumables here as well. Things you need often and how many you might need for the future is essential for maintaining optimal object interaction potential.
Tab Six: Status Panel
Tracking Status Effects and Damage takes up a lot of space when we pay attention to the kinds of wounds our characters are suffering, and have the potential to have dozens of buffs and enfeeblements placed on us at any given time. When we make space for these things, it becomes easy to track and easy to reference. After we figure out our base vital statistics, we add a copy of them to our Status Panel so we can keep up with our temporary changes without messing up our Biography page. Avoid tracking your Vitality on the Status Panel.
Tab Seven: Injury Panel
The Injury Panel lets us track our armor durability and what kinds of injuries we have. As the slowest part of engagements, the injury panel’s value is in being able to report with a level of accuracy how your character is damaged. It also allows for a much larger field of healing actions and effects.
We track Vitality and Hard Damage at the top of the Injury Panel, along with any counters applied to our character, and our equipped armor mitigation and durability. We also track our Elemental Resistance on the Injury Panel.
We track Damage Accumulation by applying the appropriate Injury Card type. When we take damage the potency (total damage from the damaging effect) is first reduced by any active mitigation effect, then our armor’s Mitigation value. Damage reduced by our armor’s Mitigation value is reduced from the armor’s current durability. All remaining damage is added to the Damage Accumulation list.
Tab Eight: Domicile Tracking
Our character may own a home or sleep on their best friends couch. They might have a secret cave where they store their treasures and four different apartments they frequent. A safe house by the docks for when things hit the fan with a few extra sets of equipment just in case. Every Domicile should have at least some level of tracking. If we have domiciles where we store things, entries should be made for them with space for lists of the things our characters have.
Notes: Item Tracking
Where we keep our items is important. We will keep all of the items we want to have or collect in this section except for what we put in our active equipment and every day carry in the Action Reference pages or items listed in a particular domicile. Items tracking can include a ton of things as our characters amass wealth. Having a dedicated section for item tracking is unnecessary as they should be included in the every day carry and domicile listings.
Tab Nine: Frequent Locations & Points of Contact
As a player driven plot device, domiciles and frequent locations & points of contact are a massive campaign driver. Each time you visit a location keeping a few notes and detailing lore drops and quest information is a strong way to help reinforce the storylines your character are going through.
When tracking frequent locations and points of contact, this list is basically the same as Domiciles, but are either the other player’s in the campaign domiciles or setting locations provided by the Story Guide.
Note: UnlikeDomiciles & Supporting Characters, our character usually does not have resources or items stored at these locations or any level of ownership of these locations.
Tab Ten: The Status Quo
The Status Quo is made of all the blank pages beyond the basic framework but still includes everything from page one forward. This Tab is used to take important notes. beyond what we track in Domiciles, Frequent Locations, or under Supporting Characters. As with other elements, we suggest putting in the latest entry at the top to keep track of what is most current.
Tracking your Elements
The short hand for the Status Quo a player is responsible for begins with keeping up with their items and character status. How much Vitality they currently have, the conditions they are affected by, the durability of their equipment, and of course their inventories including ammunition and food stock.
More importantly is keeping track of the story information relative to their characters. Current pursuits and past achievements are good titles to track as well as important relationships to supporting characters and even information between the player’s character and other player characters.
Keeping a good write down of the Status Quo helps us keep up with all sorts of things. Not just the main story, but all the small asides which make our characters significantly more diversified in their lives. Many campaigns will hold only a few side quests and the main story, but when a player takes the time to maintain their status quo, you’ll find hundreds of new avenues to explore in the campaign.
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Story Guide’s Notes: Living References
When I am working on prep, it is important for me to be able to glance at what my players are finding important to keep track of. With all of the players sharing their Lordock with me, I can easily find what is important to them. This has been, as a tool, a totally profound way of working together with them to make shared stories rewarding from both sides of the table.
