Now that we've got all the characters sorted out, and set a date for the first game, you should start to become familiar with the setting and some of the more interesting rules of the game.

First, you should all go and read my Potted History of the Guild. This will give you a very general background of the setting's history - it covers all of the major wars and empires in as little detail as possible. If you want to know more, download the game rulebooks from Mental Winds and read the GM Manual pages 9-14, which contains more information.

Amanda, I'd like you to read the bit in the GM Manual about the Zin-shee, so you know more about your race. It's found on pages 27-30 (I can send you a smaller PDF which contains the appropriate information if you don't want to download the whole thing). Everyone else should read the section on the Anthropos on pages 14-15, since it will give you a bit of info about how Anthropos differ from humans, but that's not actually all that critical. You can think of Anthropos as human.

Oh, one more thing about the GM Manual. Please DON'T read the "Super History" section found on pages 66-71. Doing so would severely spoil the mystery of the game.

The last thing for this post is to talk about Luck. You have a Luck attribute and Luck boxes - don't mix up the two. If you're playing cards or something in game, I'll get you to roll your Luck, which is done just like any other attribute. Luck boxes are far more interesting.

You can spend a Luck Box to "Luck" a roll. Yes, I'm using the word "Luck" as a verb. Lucking a roll means that you re-roll the dice, and choose the better of the two rolls. All dice are rerolled - main die, doubling die and buffs. And yes, you can choose to ignore the re-roll if it's worse than your original roll. You still have to spend the luck box though. You can Luck any roll you make during gameplay - combat rolls, Nish rolls, attribute rolls, anything. Each character gets eight Luck boxes per session, so don't forget to use them!

There is another situation when you can Luck a roll without spending a Luck box, and that's during character advancement. It costs 1AP to Luck either an R+C roll or an Advancement roll. This is how you improve your attributes and skills - don't worry too much about the details for now. Just remember that it works the same way as Lucking a roll in-game. You reroll the dice, and choose the better of the two results. Yes, this means that sometimes you will attempt to improve an attribute or ability and fail to do so. It still costs 1AP for the try. On average, about one-third of attempts to improve will succeed.