If you are familiar with roleplaying, these concepts should already be familiar to you, but if not, the gist of it is this: you play as the characters you control would, speaking the words they would say, doing the actions they would do. GMs must be familiar with this concept in order to run a game of MazeWorld, but they can ease people who are new or unskilled at roleplaying with simple interactions, like a discussion or a short scene between an NPC (controlled by the GM) and a newbie player's PC, to gauge these players' abilities and teach them how to play.
The role of the game's rules and mechanics is to help with conflict resolution and problem-solving, to introduce elements of chance, randomness, and uncertainty, and to determine the outcome of the story, action by action. Will your character aim her [[MP5A3]] at the chest of the bad guy, knowing he has body armor, or will she risk a shot to the head in an attempt to bring him down faster, knowing she might miss? Will this [[Crafting items#Ingredient items|rag ]] work on your wound or will it fail, leaving you need to scrape by for a real bandage? Do you have enough supplies to last you until the next town, or is death around the corner?
= The GM and you =
As is customary for a tabletop RPG, the Game Master is the person who leads a game of MazeWorld. They are the ones person who set sets up and advance advances the story. The GM oversees the actions of every player character and is in control of every NPC (non-player character) of the game. But most importantly, they are in control of the dice and the rules of the game; not the other way around.
A GM may, and has full rights, to exercise '''GM fiat''' and determine the outcome of any action, and may override any check, any roll of the dice, whether openly or secretly in doing so, if they believe it would be more fun or fairer to do so. Therefore, when you roll to swing a knife at the bear that's attacking you, ; even if the dice say you missed, but if the GM says you hit, then you hit, and the bear is going to take damage.
Roleplaying is co-operative, not competitive. In order for a game to be good and for everyone to have fun, GM and players should work togetherand keep any rivalries in-character. In most games, the story should be about the player characters, and if it's not necessarily about them, players must at least feel part of an important story, as people who are responsible for advancing, shaping, changing, or even derailing the story. Fun should be the number one priority.
Specifics on how to be a Game Master and how to run a game of MazeWorld can be found in all of the pages listed in [[Main Page#For Game Masters|the ''For Game Masters'' section]].
= Your character =
'''Player Characters (PCs)''' are thinking, living, feeling people just like you.
In MazeWorld, a session generally follows the day-to-day adventures of one, or a small group of PCs as they are involved in the plot and circumstances surrounding it. It is even possible to play without a specific plot in mind, by simply relying on the pre-existing jobs and activities world as it exists and on the randomly-generated dangers of the Uncivilized Area and having the GM simply follow where the PCs go.
In most cases, however, a GM should prepare a story and some sort of basic plot, and although the game can be adapted for virtually any kind of story within the realm of the Mazes, it is best suited for adventures spanning across multiple towns and localities, with multiple ways to tackle a specific problem. GMs should never railroad their players into a pre-planned, desired outcome, or at the very least, they must never feel as though they are being funneled, at the risk of players feeling as though they really had no control over the outcome.
Outside of the considerations of story and plot, which should be up to the imagination of the GM, most actions are resolved through '''checks''' or '''rolls of the dice'''. Most of the time, they will involve '''d6'''s, '''d8'''s and '''d100'''s, but since this game was conceived with dice bots in mind, you must fully expect to roll any and all kinds of dice, sometimes in quantities larger than would be feasible with real, physical dice.
In particular, the '''2d6''' is important in MazeWorld, as it is the most commonly used dice for resolving attacks. For example, in a gunfight, ''every each shot'' is tied to a 2d6, the result of each is checked against various circumstances in order to determine which bullets hit, and which miss. (Modifiers include things such as the shooter's personal accuracy level, skill level, point of aim, and other modifiers - all of which will be explained later, so don't feel intimidatedworry!)
Every time the dice are rolled, the results are checked against thresholds in order to determine success or failure. In MazeWorld, unless the conditions for success or failure of a specific action are clearly detailed otherwise, '''rolling higher is better''', and you must roll '''higher''' than a certain '''threshold''' in order to succeed. For example, the '''Failure Threshold (FT)''' is a statistic governing combat accuracy; it is a number that must be beaten by a dice roll in order for an attack to be successful and turn into a hit landing onto a target. The lower your FT is, the more chances you have to hit the target.
* Example: John's Failure Threshold is 7, meaning that all without any other factors being equalmodifiers, he must roll 8 or higher in order for his punch to land into the stomach of his opponent.
Plenty of things can modify these thresholds (and in turn, one's chances of success), but they are generally grouped into three categories: '''Permanent effects''', which fully and completely lower a particular character's thresholds for certain actions, '''Secondary effects''', which are usually limited in time or tied to a specific condition but is otherwise not permanent, and '''Situational effects''', which are dependent on specific actions.