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What Is Pelicar?

If you're familiar with the concept of what a role-playing game is, you can just skip to our explanation of Pelicar's Basic Game Mechanics.


Excerpt from the Official Game Book, page ii....


The world of Pelicar™ is unlike any encountered before. It is a realm where dragons exist, heroes reign and magic fills the air. The Pelicar™ gaming system allows one to interact with this exhilarating place.

The Pelicar™ system is a fantasy role-playing game. It consists of any number of players and one Arbiter. There is no game board, although some players may wish to use props or figurines to help them illustrate their ideas while playing. Rather, the game is played verbally. Descriptions and scenarios are given by the Arbiter, while the players direct the actions that their characters will take.

Playing a session of Pelicar™ is much like acting out a scene of a book or movie. With Pelicar™, the difference is that there is no pre-defined script. The campaign continues in a somewhat impromptu manner. Other creatures in the world will interact with your character. These other beings may be characters played by the other players in the game. Many times they will be personalities governed by the Arbiter, called personas.

The theme of the storyline is determined by the Arbiter, who creates the setting and conditions in which the players find themselves. If the Arbiter and players wish to center the campaign around pure adventuring, there are plenty of monsters roaming the wilds. However, within civilization, there is enough political intrigue and wealth to support a fascinating motif. Adventurers may wish to enter politics directly and govern a city. They may wish to run a training guild, or excavate ancient cities in search of treasure. The game system and world encourage even more diverse options. The limits of the game are bounded only by one's imagination. Players and Arbiters who are looking for something different can find it on Pelicar™.

Another appealing feature of the Pelicar™ gaming system is the concept of winning and losing. There is none. Role-playing is a life-simulation. Thus, the object of the game can be very personal rather than a single, pre-defined goal. There may also be more than one goal. However, this is determined exclusively by the players of the game.

There are common goals among all players. As in life, characters of the Pelicar™ world desire to gain power and prestige. In the game, this is done in numerous ways; however, the most popular measure is a character's level. A character begins at 1st level. As a character works through different scenarios, completing adventures and pleasing the gods who watch over him, he will increase in levels. Characters of higher levels have more skills, abilities and spells. They usually have more wealth and better equipment as well.

However, the road to wealth and power is only one aspect of the game. Much of the fun is experiencing the journey itself.


Basic Game Mechanics

The excerpt above explains in general what role-playing is, but more importantly it explains it Pelicar™ style. With that in mind, I'd like to give a general overview of the game mechanics...

  1. As mentioned above, this is a level and skills based system. Characters gain power through increases in levels based on the amount of Devotion Points (experience) they have been awarded. Characters also gain power as they learn new weapon and trade skills and/or improve on their existing ones.

  2. There are seven playable races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Minotaur, Mon-qui (properly pronounced [MONG-kee]), Tigara, and the Equirda. Any race can pursue any Profession.

  3. There are eight professions: Conqueror, Mage, Battle Priest, Power Priest, Mercy Priest, Warden, Warlock, and Theurgist. The Conqueror is the only non-spell casting profession; although, through the use of a special skill called the aperçu, a Conqueror can cast limited spells. All professions use the same level advancement chart (devotion points).

  4. Each being on Pelicar is characterized by the following attributes: Strength, Stamina, Reflexes, Mentality, Piety, Sanity, Senses, and Beauty. All of them are fairly self-explanatory as to what they represent, except for perhaps Piety and Sanity. Piety is the measure of how the gods look upon a character. A high Piety score can cause bonuses to the devotion point award given after a scenario (combat, completion of a quest, or what the arbiter deems worthy of an award). Sanity is a measure of how stable the character is. A low Sanity score can give the arbiter an excuse to mis-inform the player of what is actually happening because the character is not able to properly interpret his surroundings. Typically, adventurer's with low Sanity scores do not make for long-lived adventurer's ("After a month of exploring some underground caverns, George just kinda snapped and ran off babbling to himself"); however, it can certainly be used an excuse for creative role-playing depending on how your arbiter handles it.

    These 8 attribute scores for player characters are generated by rolling 8 sets of 3d10, with the lowest die roll becoming an automatic 10. This allows for a range of 12 - 30. The scores can then be arranged amongst the attributes as the player sees fit, with any racial modifiers added or subtracted accordingly. The actual range of attribute scores is from 0 to 42; however, this covers everything from insects to the deities themselves.

  5. The combat or melee series lasts 10 seconds. A d10 initiative dice is used to determine when actions take place. Depending on weapon skills, a character may have multiple attacks in a series. A successful attack is made when a percentile dice roll (d100) plus modifiers is equal to or greater than the opponent's defense. A critical hit is made when scoring twice the opponent's defense. A fumble is made when scoring half or below the opponent's defense.

  6. Our magic system uses spell points for both Axioms, or earthly magic, and Incantations, or divine magic. Depending on a character's level and profession, they have so many spell points to use. 1st Rank spells cost 1 spell point, 2nd Rank spells cost 2 points, and so on. Axiom casters such as the Mage and Warlock, do not have to assign spell points ahead of time. They can cast any spell in their repertoire as long as they have the spell points for it. Incantation casters such as the Battle Priest and Warden, must choose which spells they will cast at the beginning of the day, allotting spell points accordingly.




Pelicar, the World

Map Comparison

Not only is Pelicar a game system per se, but it is also the planet that all this takes place on. The map to the right gives you an idea of the size of Pelicar. Notice North and South America within the box.

Check our Geography section of the Adventurer's Guild for more maps on the world of Pelicar.



An example Character Sheet for Pelicar

Another way to get an idea of what a game system is like is to look at its character sheet and what's on it. So, following the suggestion of a previous visitor to our website, we have included a sample character sheet for a 4th level Battle Priest in an Adobe Acrobat Portable Document File which requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit PDF Reader.:

Example Character Sheet



Ordering the Pelicar™ Official Game Book

OGB Cover

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