Beginner's guide

Welcome to DragonRealms, one of the most in-depth and expansive games. This article is an attempt to aquaint you with an incredibly complex world that has not always had the new player in mind.

Name

Your name is actually one of the most important things about your character. It is the thing that everyone will see first, it is how people will talk about you, and it's how people will interact with you.

You initially will only be able to pick your first name, though later on you will have the option of adding a family name.

The rules are fairly straightforward. Your first name must be unique, not contain any real life references (Microwave is not going to work), drug references, profanities, numbers, titles (Lordnose, Kingbrave, etc. won't make it) or references to major literary characters (leave your Drizzt clone at home, or at least give him/her a creative name). If you violate these rules, it may get past the automatic filters, but a GameMaster will probably visit you later and make you change it.

Rule of thumb is that if you'd be ashamed to have it on your birth certificate, consider picking something else.

Now, already you may have seen people with names that violate one or more of these rules. What it comes down to is that DR has been around 15+ years and the rules have not always been stringently enforced, or even terribly well defined. If you see one of these names, understand that they've probably been playing for years and pity has been taken on them so that they wouldn't need to rebuild all their old friends/enemies if their name suddenly changed.

Race

The second major choice you will face is your race. Your race primarily determines how much it will cost you to improve your stats. Each race has several areas in which they are excellent at, and several which they are lacking.

It should be noted that there is no coherent system of racial bonuses beyond the stat training. For example, while a specific shopkeeper might treat all dwarves better or insult elves, the one across the street may have wildly different reactions, or none at all.

While you may pick a race with an eye towards a specific style or guild, it is highly advised that races be picked on the basis of which culture the player enjoys. Some of the most interesting characters can come from mismatched choices (gnome barbarian anyone?).

• Dwarf: Slow, tough, and disciplined. The hairy rock-kissers of fantasy you know and love, even the women can grow beards.
• Elf: Fast and charismatic, elves are slightly weaker and frailer than humans. Tall, long-lived, and tending toward naturistic, elves come in a variety of subtypes that can drastically affect their views of the world.
• Elothean: Incredibly intelligent but weak and frail. A people that value knowledge over almost everything else, and have a strange inability to grow hair on most of their heads, Elotheans push the boundaries of nearly every intellectual pursuit.
• Gnome: Agile and intelligent, but weak and frail. These are short folks with keen minds and an affinity for mechanical devices and magic.
• Gor'Tog: Strong, tough, but not terribly bright. They are huge, hairless, green giants that tend towards physical labor.
• Halfling: Agile, tough, but weak and undisciplined. The short folks with the hairy feet and a love of food, drink, food, sleeping, and food. Don't discount them, or you might find they've run off with your money while you were calling them names.
• Human: Humans lack any particular strengths, but also any weaknesses. As widely varied as any real life group, humans can be found doing nearly anything almost anywhere.
• Kaldar: Strong and charismatic, but slightly lacking in intelligence. Looking much like large, bulky humans, Kaldar are a refugee splinter group from the warlike Gorbesh.
• Prydaen: Fast and charismatic, but poorly disciplined and prone to lacking common sense. Prydaen appear to be a strange mix between a human and any of the various predatory felines. Call them a cat at your own risk. They came to this land fleeing the near extinction at the hands of a powerful Necromancer.
• Rakash: Fast but uncordinated, slow mentally but tough. While mostly indistinguishable from any random human, when the black moon Katamba is full, they take on the form of a wolf-human hybrid. Like the Prydaen, they fled a powerful Necromancer and attempt to rebuild their packs in the eastern lands.
• S'Kra Mur: Strong and fast, but a bit slow upstairs. Humanoids with lizardlike features, the S'Kra Mur have a strange culture that has strange concepts of honor and kinship.