DM - FAQ From: johnjohn@cco.caltech.edu (John White) Date: Wed, 06 Jan 1993 08:41:12 +0000 DUELMASTERS -- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Note from the compiling-thing: This FAQ post was started because of the number of people who asked what Duelmasters is all about. Not only does it explain that, but it should answer many of the questions that beginning managers have about the game. Personally, I feel that Duelmasters is a game of exploration and experimentation. The game isn't documented well - on purpose. RSI feels that every person should learn about the game by playing it. It adds to the "exploratory" aspect -- it's easy to learn, but very difficult to master. Unfortunately, RSI doesn't really tell you enough about the game to survive, so most new managers learn the ropes by having someone explain some of the basics to them. It is in this spirit that I started to compile these FAQ's; hopefully, reading them will help you understand the basic tenets of the game and understand the basic information that you need to succeed. You should find that most managers will be willing to share information when conversing over the NET, but I do hesitate to boldly write down information that people have spent years finding out. I have tried to include all "common knowledge" items, so you'll have to figure out, or ask for anything more. May your sword shine, and your enemies scream! Thanatos aka John White: johnjohn@cco.caltech.edu WHAT IS DUELMASTERS? HOW MUCH ROOM IS THERE FOR ROLE-PLAYING? HOW DO I START MY TEAM? HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ROLLUPS ARE GOOD AND WHICH AREN'T? WHAT IS THE DARK ARENA (DA) ? WHAT ARE THE FIGHTING STYLES? WHICH STYLE IS THE BEST? WHICH WEAPON IS THE BEST? WHAT KIND OF ARMOR IS THE BEST? WHAT IS MEANT BY "RUNNING" A WARRIOR? WHAT EFFECT DOES EACH OF THE TACTICS HAVE? WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO RUN... WHAT IS TRAINING? WHAT IS AN EXPERT RATING AND WHAT DOES IT DO? HOW MANY SKILLS DOES IT TAKE TO GET AN EXPERT RATING? HOW ARE WARRIORS RANKED? WHAT IS AD OR ADM? WHAT DOES [insert term/abbreviation] MEAN? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REGULAR DM AND AD? HOW DO I WIN? HOW DO I FIND OUT MORE? ARE THERE SPECIAL EVENTS? WHAT IS DUELMASTERS? Duelmasters is a play by snail-mail game which simulates gladiatorial combat in an arena setting. Each players is the manager of a stable of 5 warriors and is responsible for evaluating potential, deciding fighting strategy, deciding challenges, and a host of other things. HOW MUCH ROOM IS THERE FOR ROLE-PLAYING? Most active players take on a managerial persona to interact with other players. Players have an entire section of the arena newsletter to write personal ads to each other, as well as writing team spotlights and a separate column for the arena Duelmaster. Here is are some example ads culled from the pages of DM-18's personals on turn 159: Half Pint -- Change your name! how about Half-man? Half-Worth? Half-Life? -- Mega Spritz!, the Wizardguard destroyer! Andruil -- These challenges aren't personal, are they? Hey I don't mind the wins, but I'll take 4 skills over a win any day! -- Thanatos You get the idea. Of course, you could get people mad at you by writing personals like this! HOW DO I START MY TEAM? The address of the company which runs Duelmasters is: Reality Simulations Inc. P.O. Box 22400 Tempe, AZ 85285-2400 (602) 967-7979 - Customer Service 1. Write to them (or call) and request a team set up. 2. In 1-6 weeks, you will get an envelope with the roll-up rules and five brand-new warriors. They will each have 70 points randomly assigned to them in the areas of Strength, Constitution, Size, Wit, Will, Speed, and Deftness. You will have 14 points with which you can customize your warrior (You can add a maximum of 6 points to any one stat. Size is unalterable. No stat may be higher than 21). Example: Str 12 +1 13 Con 5 5 Siz 10 10 Wit 11 +6 17 Wil 12 +5 17 Spd 9 9 Dft 11 +2 13 3. After you design your warriors, you decide whether you want to be in a 2 week turnaround game or a 4 week game. You can ask to be in a specific arena, or have RSI randomly assign you to one. 4. After fill in out the form completely, you send it back to RSI. The next time the arena is run (the next turn), they will send you your warrior overviews, which will tell you basic information about your warriors. 5. Then you can fill out strategy sheet for reach of the warriors and send that back. Ah, something important: Each turn costs $3.25 +$1.50/warrior fought (i.e. the maximum cost is $10.75 for 5 warriors). No money, no play. 6. On the next turn, you'll get sent a blow-by-blow printout of your warriors' fights. Evaluate your fights, and repeat steps 5&6 indefinitely. One of the first things your should do is request "The Red Book of Alastari." It gives a pretty good general game overview with weapons, armor, fighting style, and tactic descriptions. HOW DO I KNOW WHICH ROLLUPS ARE GOOD AND WHICH AREN'T? That really depends on what you think good is. Some managers delight in running warriors for 10 fights, winning and killing as much as they can, and then Dark Arena'ing the warrior. Others run warriors over the long haul, aiming for success in AD, the advanced game. Generally, long term warriors stress the stats that bring a warrior skills (wit, will, deftness, and to a certain degree, speed). Short term warriors (dixies, power warriors, 10-and-outs) usually stress the stats which bring speed, power and damage (will, strength, speed, and size). They also usually have a serious deficit in wit or will. A GOOD way to find out what to do with your rollups is to post them on the net and ask "what should I do?" You'll get answers. If you don't want to be so public, then email someone. It is important to note that warrior design theory is EXTREMELY dynamic. It really isn't something that can be nailed down. If you keep your self from experimenting with warrior design, you're really missing out on the fun of the game. WHAT IS THE DARK ARENA (DA) ? The Dark Arena is where managers send the warriors which they don't want any more. There, they fight RSI generated warriors of tremendous power. Fights are always to the death. It is possible to win in the DA, but not very likely. Note: Whenever one of your warriors dies, in the DA or in normal combat, you get a new rollup, free of charge. There are warriors who can win consistently in the DA, but they are EXTREMELY rare. WHAT ARE THE FIGHTING STYLES? When you fill out the rollup sheet (both team and individual, you must choose a "life-long" fighting style for each of your warriors. The 10 styles are Lunging, Striking, Bashing, Slashing, Aimed Blow, Wall of Steel, Parry-Strike, Parry-Riposte, Parry-Lunge, and Total Parry. A description of each style is available in the "Red Book of Alastari" which you can get from RSI for free, if you're a player. It is the interaction between the styles that makes a large part of strategy in Duelmasters. WHICH STYLE IS THE BEST? Good question. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, most offensive styles have very strong offense, and are weaker on defense. Some styles have very good endurance, while some don't. Some styles do well short-term, while some excell over the long term. It's all a matter of taste. Most people recommend that new managers start off running Bashers and Lungers, as they are easy to design and run. I don't know about the first part of that statement, but I find that they are pretty easy to run. Also, if I found the design of the ultimate winning machine after several years of game play and hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, it would be kind of silly for me to tell a beginning manager, wouldn't it? WHICH WEAPON IS THE BEST? Different weapons suit different styles. Following this post is a chart which tells which weapons are suited to which styles, and one to tell what stats are needed to use them. Also, each warrior has his own "favorite" weapon, with which he performs even better. Experiment with different weapons until you find his favorite! WHAT KIND OF ARMOR IS THE BEST? That too depends on several things. Heavy armor protects the best, but weighs down your warrior, taxing endurance, and even penalizing decise and init. That hurts styles that are based on drawing out endurance as long as possible while still being extremely offensive, like lungers and strikers. Defensive styles, like the Total Parry or "tank" parry-strike, which try to wear down their opponent by going pure defensive, usually do well with heavy armor. On the warrior's overview, there is a line on encumbrance: Here are the means by which to deceipher the words: PHRASE WEIGHT Very Little Carry 9 Cannot Carry A Lot 18 Normal (no comment) 27 Good Carry 36 Tremendous Carry 45 Seemingly Unlimited 54 The numbers are a recommendation on the MAXIMUM amount of armor and weapons you should carry. The number can be exceeded, but there are penalties in init, decise, and endurance. WHAT IS MEANT BY "RUNNING" A WARRIOR? This can mean the particular selection of armor and weapons but usually centers around the most variable aspect of the game: The strategy input area of the strategy sheet. This part has five variables for each minute 1 to 6+ of the fight and a desperation strategy as well. The five variables are Offensive Effort, Activity Level, Kill Desire, Offensive Tactic, and Defensive Tactic. The first three are mandatory for each minute, and vary from 1 to 10, 10 being highest. The last two are optional and have letter codes for the the tactics (Bash, Slash, Lunge, Decise or Parry, Dodge, Riposte, reSponsive). So to say that I run my Lungers 10-10-10-L in minute one means that I use a 10 offensive effort, activity level, and kill desire with a Lunge tactic for the first minute of his fight. WHAT EFFECT DOES EACH OF THE TACTICS HAVE? This is described in the Red Book, but here's a rough description. Note: the Red Book lists which styles can use which strategies, so request it!!! BASH: The bash tactic modifies the warrior to a more stable stance, focusing on landing blows with increased power. The tactic increases the chance of smashing **through** a parry, and _slows_ down the warrior (penalizes decise and init). SLASH: Has much the same effect of the bash tactic, slowing down the warrior, but increasing damage and the ability to twist around to parry. LUNGE: Increases the power of the lunge, and ability to slip attacks past blows. I'm uncertain whether it slows down the warrior. It may actually increase init. DECISE: This tactice increases the warrior's ability to get the jump on the opponent and get in the first blow, at the cost of attack and defense penalties. As for the defensive tactics: PARRY: Increases warrior's ability to block blows aimed at him. Penalizes attack, init, and decise. Probably defense and riposte too. DODGE: Warrior focuses on trying to avoid and step around blows, at the cost of offensive skill areas. RIPOSTE: The warrior focuses on catching the opponent in that crucial instant when the attack has failed, and the opponent hasn't recovered enough to defend yet. Actually helps attack, but penalizes parry and defense skills. RESPONSIVENESS: The least used tactic, is very much like Decise in a defensive manner. The warrior fucuses on moving instantly to foil the opponents attack and attempt to riposte. WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO RUN... Good question again. This is actually harder than you might think. Different managers run different styles different ways. Also, warriors are individuals, and have a favorite fighting rhythm at which the perform better. Find this rhythm!! By the way, this is one of the main discussions on the net, so feel free to join in on the question asking!! By the way, a future addition to this post will hopefully include a section to suggest basic strategies with which you can experiment with. WHAT IS TRAINING? On each fight, you have the option to train either a stat or try to learn skills for each of your warriors. Stat training is based on will. You have roughly a 5% chance of rasing a stat for each point of will divided by the number of times you've raised that stat before + 1 (will*5/[# of previous raises +1]). Learning skills is based on how high your wit is. Dennis Cleary claims that a 17 wit warrior averages 2 skills a fight, and a 13 wit warrior averages 1 skill a fight. Your warriors will learn skills in six different areas: attack, initiative, and decisiveness are the offensive skills while Parry, Defense (dodging), and Riposte (the counter-attack) are the defensive ones. The more skills a warrior learns, the better he becomes as a fighter. WHAT IS AN EXPERT RATING AND WHAT DOES IT DO? When your warrior has learned enough skills in an area, he will be rated expert in that area. This gives your warrior a definite boost in terms of ability in that area. For example, the closer you get to an expert rating in attack, the greater you chance of hitting, doing extra damage, and of making a critical attack (those really flashy moves). There are currently six levels of expertise: Expert, Advanced Expert, Master, Advanced Master, Grand Master, and Arch Master. HOW MANY SKILLS DOES IT TAKE TO GET AN EXPERT RATING? That number is individual for every warrior. it generally depends on your warrior's stats and a random "luck factor" that is thrown in. It is possible to get Expert or even Advanced Expert in one (or more) areas on the initial overview, but that is haphazard although desirable. HOW ARE WARRIORS RANKED? The arena ranking system is based on the idea of "recognition points." Warriors generally gain these points from winning a fight. they lose points for losing a fight. It is possible to lose to a higher ranked warrior and gain points for a good showing (if your warrior was sufficiently lower ranked). The points system serves mainly to divide the warriors into three main classes: Initiates, Adepts, and Champions (with the Duelmaster at the very top). This system serves by keeping warriors of different classes from being matched up with each other (i.e. Initiates can only be matched up with each other). For the purposes of challenging warriors, the top performers of each class (the challenger class) can challenge up into the next class. So Challenger Initiaties can challenge the warriors of the Adept class (but not vice versa) as well as other Challenger Initiates and Initiates. WHAT IS AD OR ADM? When a warrior has been determined to be skilled enough and experienced enough, he is invited to the game of Advanced Duelmasters, which is also discussed in this newsgroup (to the despair of the diplomacy fiends). In AD, warriors are immortal, and continue to train to become the ultimate warriors. There is the original AD arena, three regionals, Home Guard (for the guys who won't do well in AD even though they did qualify), and Primus (the best of the best of the best). Ultra Primus is coming soon apparently. WHAT DOES [insert term/abbreviation] MEAN? (submitted by Demon) Duelmasters is a term rife with terms and abbreviations that can confuse outsiders. In order to help you understand the discussions on the net better, the following is a glossary of common terms and abbreviations in no particular order. DM - Duelmaster, the top warrior in an arena. - The game Duelmasters. ADM - The Advanced Duelmasters game. This is not a seperate product of RSI's, but rather a higher level of DM that warriors go to after meeting certain criteria. AD - Advanced Duelmasters. Primus - An Advanced Duelmasters arena that ADM warriors go to after meeting certain criteria within ADM. manager - a person who runs a DM team manager (nick) name - most players do not use their real name in the game, and instead take on a pseudonym. For example, mine is Demon, and John's is Thanatos. AB - Aimed blow style warrior BA - Bashing attack style warrior LU - Lunging attack style warrior SL - Slashing attack style warrior ST - Striking attack style warrior PL - Parry- lunge style warrior PR - Parry-riposte style warrior PS - Parry-strike style warrior TP - Total parry style warrior WS - Wall of Steel style warrior scum - a warrior who parries attacks or absorbs punishment (or both) in order to tire his opponent out, usually trying to win by having his opponent drop from exhaustion. - all TPs (erroneous use) waste - Wall of Steel style warrior Att - Attack skill area Dec - Decisiveness skill area Init - Initiative skill area Def - Defense (dodge) skill area Rip - Riposte (counter-strike) skill area DM# - Duelmasters game number # arena # - Duelmaster game number # tourney - one of the periodic tournaments RSI runs, often denoted by the month or season they occur in (eg. April tourney). FtF - Face-to-Face tournament, a duelmasters convention that coincides with one of the tournaments. In order to particpate in the tournament you either have to be present, or have someone who is present run your warriors for you. Quite a fun event. NOTE: normally there is only one FtF a year, held in Tempe, Arizona in January or February, but in 1991 there was also a summer FtF held in Baltimore, Maryland the weekend before the Origins convention. It is not known at this time whether this will become a regular (or even semi-regular) event. Home Guard - An Advanced Duelmasters arena that is open to warriors that have achieved a certain level of mediocrity and experience. Not a pleasant fate for a warrior, but it is better than losing all of the time. Regional AD - The three Advanced Duelmasters arenas only open to warriors from arenas with a specific nationality. See Alistari, Andorian Federation, Delarquan Federation, Free Blades Alistari - The fictional continent that the Duelmasters games take place in. Is made up of three political factions consisting of a number of city states and smaller empires. Andorian Federation - One of Alistari's political factions, often portrayed as being the "good guys." Is represented in Advanced Duelmasters by the Andorak arena. Delarquan Federation - One of Alistari's political factions, often portrayed as being the "bad guys." Is represented in Advanced Duelmasters by the Darkholm arena. Free Blades - One of Alistari's political factions. Is represented in Advanced Duelmasters by the Free Blades arena. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REGULAR DM AND AD? Immortality. Flashier descriptions. Contact with the best managers in Alastari (if they deign to listen). Fighting against the guy who just won the last tourney, killing three people on the way. AD "politics." I don't want to spoil it for you. HOW DO I WIN? I've always contended that you're winning if you're having fun. I know one guy who wants to have the top Primus warrior some day (Me too! So do a _lot_ of people). I know another who wants to have the first team to get 100 kills. It all depends on what you have a taste for... HOW DO I FIND OUT MORE? There is a program to help new managers get the have of the game, the DM Sponsor program, where a very experienced manager explains things to inexperienced (or bad) managers. A sponsor who has read this newsgroup pointed out that often times, new mangers will write asking very broad questions (how do I make a parry-lunger who will destroy every other warrior ever made?), which they tend not to answer. They don't want to spread out that precious information, any more than you would if you spent the years and thousands to get it. The best way to get a response is to have a very specific question which won't take _too_ long to answer (include a self addressed stamped envelope!). You can get a list of the DM Sponsors from RSI. For immediate gratification, or a close approximation thereof, POST YOUR DAMN QUESTIONS ON THE NET!! I, at least, really enjoy interacting with other people who play Duelmasters for the purpose on discussion. So do most of the others, and our collective knowledge of the game and experience with it is pretty high. We enjoy it. That's why we bother to read and post. ARE THERE SPECIAL EVENTS? Yes, there are four tournaments a year. Two are mail in, and two are face-to-face at hotels; one in Baltimore (though that may move) and one in Tempe, AZ. The tournaments usually have a great prize, but horrible odds (200-400 warriors in each division). There is another event called the Bloodgames, run annually. In the Bloodgames, you run a team in a 10 turn Bloodbath with the top three warriors advancing straight to Advanced Duelmasters. Hook: You get to design one warrior on your team from scratch... Well that's the end. Again, if you have any questions about the post, email me or post. If you want to see another FAQ added to the post, contact me and we'll iron out the wording. As I said before, RSI doesn't document the game thoroughly, so the information in this post has been gained through experimentation by someone, or is just theory. It is possible that some of the information is mistaken so if you find some, contact me and I'll revise it! Again, if you want to discuss, contact me or post! As a last word of advise, don't worry about becoming a spectacular manager until you have the basics down. C-ya! Once again, Thanatos mgr. Deathknights in Arena 18 John White johnjohn@cco.caltech.edu Up