the Unity System, Part II

What is the Unity system?
It encompasses many things. The most integral part is the meter. This is a HUD which you wear. It allows you to choose your sex, your race, class and rank within a guild or the community.
Well, you choose your sex and approved race. Your class and rank within the River Lands Medieval Roleplay Community is determined by guild affiliation within a class.
   The Meter offers many class options, many of which are not used within our community. Some will be integrated as time moves forward, others simply do not fit our genre. But, some of the classes you can choose from are such things as Farmer, Gypsy, Merchant and Sailor. Your rank begins at the lowest and progresses depending on time and roleplay experience in the community. As your character grows, your rank rises. It's simple. It's fair. Just like in real life, you begin at the bottom rung and work your way up.
   The Meter monitors stats - Health, Stamina, Food and Air. Depending on your chosen race, your stats vary. The default stats on the meter are H 100, S 120, F 100 and Air 100. Okay, you are wondering what is the point, eh?

The Unity Meter

It is all about immersion.

   The Unity system offers weapons. At the moment the system's creator, Warwick Falconer, is working on weapon availability. Swords seem to have an issue on our grid, but there is a working bow.
 Now let's say you and John Doe get in a squabble and take it to the next level, an actual fight. You use your weapons to duke it out, solve your differences (of course, all fighting must be agreed upon by both parties in IMs. You will not simply be attacked or attack). Each arrow you shoot that hits John Doe will substract points from his Health. And, if you lowered his health substantially, he would fall unconscious. His avatar would not be able to move until a healer used a potion to raise his health. And because John Doe was injured so grievously, he would probably end up in our infirmary for a couple of days being very bored. But, hey, it's all about living the life and that would be realistic!
A lesser injury (say his health went down ten or twenty points) might just get some bandaging and he would be sent on his way.

Now let's talk briefly about "F" Food. It automatically decreases as you go through your day. You have to eat because you can starve and fall unconscious when the F stat hits 0. There is free scripted food in the inns in Cheshire and in the infirmary. No doubt as we move forward with the new Food Scripts Warwick Falconer has brought to GCG, there will be more options. Or you can attend our weekly Market Day and buy plates of scripted food from the merchants. No, MCs are not involved. We use realm coin which at the moment we do not have (that involves waiting for the Pouch system). So we roleplay having the coins and passing them to the merchants. However, because we have the Food Scripts, the player actually gets the plate of food which he or she can rez and eat to raise the Food stat. How cool is that eh? Pretty damn cool if I say so!
Again, it is all about immersion and realism.

Unity Meter Vendor and examples of Unity Food

When you click on the available free food you get a message such as this:
[10:06] You have improved your health level by 1
[10:06] You have improved your food level by 1
Depending on the nature of the food, it may increase Health and Food. Or drinking a cup of ale will decrease your Stamina and not improve your health. The food scripts allow us to affect any of the stats, positively or negatively. So, yes, the healers can use them to make Health potions to heal the sick (raise stats on meters after or even during a fight).

The Unity Pouch system (which is not available yet in GCG) allows you to gather items and later use them for trading or creating other items, like potions or recipes for food. You simply go to the farm or wander the lands in search of herbs, ores and such. You click on them and that item goes into your pouch. Then there is a downtime, usually a few minutes depending on the rarity of the item, and it reappears for gathering again. Now, once this system is in place, you will be able to take the food items and create your own scripted food which will go directly into your pouch. Then when your food level lowers, you simply click on your pouch, choose the option to eat and consume the food you choose.

Pouches... the system itself, is great for roleplay. When you click on the pouch you will get a blue box with options. Inventory shows you the contents of your pouch. GIVE allows you to give an item to another player who is wearing a Unity pouch. USE will allow you to mix raw ingredients you have harvested to make food, potions, etc.

I will not go into greater detail about potions.  But know that like in days of old, we want you to go out, find the ingredients and experiment with the making of potions in the cauldron. You will not just be given the recipes. Though along the way, as you struggle and roleplay the task, you may happen upon a kind soul here and there that will give you a bit of aid. Ingredients, by the way, will be scattered throughout the lands. Collect any you come across for later use. Or if they are not useful to you, you can barter for food at the Market or with other players.

Warwick Falconer is the creator of the Unity System. I used it in SL, I taught weekly classes on it and often times had as many as 25 folks in attendance. When I moved to InWorldz and could afford my own roleplay community, Unity was not available and we used the only available system, Lewt. It served its purpose. But when Unity arrived in IW, I quickly switched over. Unity is tested and proven. It is, in my opinion, the best roleplay system available.

Then I moved to GCG. I was willing to start over, recreate the River Lands in this new frontier which I quickly came to love. There were no fancy frills, there were no weapons or pouches for roleplay. We did it the old fashioned way - we just roleplayed everything. We pretended we had swords and rolled dice to see if the strike hit. We pretended we had meters and food.

And, now, we all sit back and say "Wow". We have Unity meters, we have scripted Unity Food.

Unity Meter available at our Welcome Area

No, we don't have pouches yet, we can't make our own food from recipes and cook them in scripted ovens. But, a kind and good fellow appeared here recently, bringing his Unity Meter, then the bows, then the Unity Food Scripts. Because of Warwick Falconer, the creator of Unity, our roleplay community is more immersive, more viable.

I certainly have not covered every aspect of the Unity system, I certainly have not been in depth. What I wanted to do was give you a inkling of what Unity is about and let you know what it can do for you and your community. You don't have to be roleplayers to enjoy making food, Heck, you might just want to create that perfect dish for that perfect someone. Unity is in GCG and will be an asset to our community. So Huzzah, Warwick, and thank you.

In a future article, I will be sitting down with the creator of Unity, Warwick Falconer, for a one on one interview