Explorer's Entrance Test

Introduction

What follows is the Society of Explorers entrance exam in order to become a member of the Society of Explorers. Members of the Explorers often travel on dangerous expeditions, and sometimes find themselves in strange or unusual circumstances. They never know what dangers they might face. The goal of the exam is to prove to the other members of the Society that you have the skills necessary to become a member, without potentially endangering others during an expedition you might be invited to attend. That's not to say bad things won't still happen, they likely may, but being skilled helps limit just how bad things might get.

If you pass the test, you are invited to join the Explorers as a member. If you fail the test, don't fret! This does not mean that you will never get to be a member. It simply means we'll ask you to consider learning a bit more, and then retake the test again. Once you've improved your skills, and passed the test, you'll be invited to join if that is your desire.

It is important to note any Explorer of rank Member or above may issue the test, as we have no wish to bottleneck anyone's ability to join the Explorers. If you are not sure who that might entail, feel free to take a glance at our roster: http://play.arxgame.org/topics/org/147/

The Test

The tests are a bit freeform, but there will be three main tests. Anyone who is recruiting someone for the Society can give them these tests. The goal is that you need to achieve 4 successful encounters, at any level of positive success, and each test is made up of two rolls at difficulty normal, for six total rolls.

Hopefully we can make it fun, and come up with scenarios people can use!

Here is a quick breakdown of the three tests, and examples of how Aislin might test Lord Examplis Sampler, our hypothetical applicant. ('Joe Q Public' doesn't quite work for Arx, after all.) This test was conducted using Aislin's dice for actual rolls here, so the numbers are not just pulled out of thin air. All values are given as successes over the target number.

Survival

The 'survival' test will be the applicant proving they know how to survive in the wilds. Tracking, hunting, general perception, and so on. This can be hunting (a combat roll), the usual perception + survival roll for tracking or general wilderness survival, or someone can get creative if they can really justify the roll.

Aislin might have Examplis track her through the woods (perception + survival at normal). Let's say he rolls successful, and thus was able to successfully track her quite effectively; he follows her footprints, and discovers that Aislin has ensconced herself up a tree (because Ashford).

Next, Aislin has Examplis build a shelter. He decides to get creative, and rolls dexterity + woodworking at normal, trying to construct a sort of crude hut. He marginally fails and is still able to build the hut, but his hut is kind of sad and leaky. (Still, points for effort.) This is one failure marked against him.

Intellect

The second test will test one's knowledge of the world. A good explorer needs to know what they're running into... is this thing an angelic Seraph or a Bringer of Silence wanting to eat their face? Are these markings Nox'alfar, Sylv'alfar, or abyssal script? Should you be worried about that green fire over there?

Aislin tests Examplis first on his knowledge of horrifying occult lore, and he rolls successful. He correctly reels off facts about obscure myths and legends, and Aislin is mollified. (Plus, you know, she'd never heard that one about the giant flying fish made of jade before. That was kind of cool!)

Now, Examplis claims to be a skilled scholar of languages, and she tests him on it by throwing a code at him to see whether he can break it. He rolls at normal, thus deciphering that it's the Ballad of the Lianhan translated into an obscure dialect of Oathlands shav'arvani and then rendered in a crude runic cipher. Aislin's pleased, and that brings him to three successful rolls.

Combat

Lastly, combat is to prove you can stay alive when things go bad. It isn't necessarily through attacking, though; the applicant can pass a test by dodging, fleeing, setting traps, and so on. Encourage creativity! Problem-solving skills are really useful on PRPs and such.

Aislin pretends to be an angry shav'arvani who wants to eviscerate Examplis in order to honor her dark god. Rawr. Examplis, being more -- in his words -- 'a lover than a fighter', decides to Get The Heck Out Of Dodge. So he attempts two things: first, to dodge and run (dexterity + dodge at normal), which gives him a marginal failure. He gets away, but he sustains a wound that hampers him doing so. Once he gets away, he decides to hide in the forest and construct a crude snare-trap to catch the shav'arvani. He rolls intellect + survival at normal, and gets a spectacular success! Aislin finds herself hanging upside-down from a tree, and considers this to be proof enough that even as someone who only vaguely knows 'the pointy end goes towards the other person' when it comes to swords, he can probably still take care of himself in the wilds.

With a grand total of 4 successful rolls and 2 unsuccessful rolls, Examplis is admitted to the Society.

Summary

The idea is to make sure that we don't just blindly let people in, but that you probably need to be decent in at least two of the three categories in order to pass the tests. We're not setting very specific tests within those categories because we want to leave room for creativity and tailoring the tests to the individual. Hopefully this will make recruiting a little more fun, and people who fail their tests the first time will be able to try again as they raise skills.

Introduction created by Lou's player. Main text of the Explorer's test created Aislin's player, with slight modifications and updating for the new @check system by Lou.