Commoner
Commoners are characters that have not joined a guild. All characters in DragonRealms begin their adventuring careers as Commoners. It is largely assumed that Commoners intend to join a guild, typically very soon after they are created.
Commoners train all skillsets as if they were secondary. For this reason in the past, some players would remain Commoners to train future tertiary skills in the guild of their choice, but this is no longer necessary or particularly efficient due to changes in the experience system for skills under 100 ranks. Unlike guilded characters, Commoners do not gain skillset perks associated with skill-secondaries (e.g., Commoners do not get to FORAGE CAREFUL and are limited to small-sized arm-worn shields).
History
A rash of trained Commoners sprung up around 2002 and 2003, after it was announced that the Necromancer's Guild was nearing release. Players have been told that the joining mechanics for the Necromancer's Guild would not be startlingly different from that of other guilds, and they would therefore be able to keep their skills. As a result, many players trained Commoners in the hopes that they would have a head start among the eventual crush of new Necromancer characters. Though the delay has caused the initial surge of Commoner characters to diminish, many still keep well-trained Commoners, and recent developments with the guild have caused another surge of Commoner characters. These Commoners are sometimes called "necroCommoners."
Although Commoners clearly lack the powers of guilded characters and are not mechanically balanced to be their equals, a rare few players have Commoner characters that remain so for the sake of role-play.