Thank you, Kris, for the new header. It’s uwunderful and should hold over until we figure out what the Exarch Office logo/symbol becomes. Anyway, here is my second report as Exarch, where we will cover new things that have gone live, what’s being worked on for the future, and announce some exciting advancements from the Exarch Team.

Table of Contents

• News
• Development
• The Envoy Corps
• Active RPs
• Featured RP
• Helpful Resources
• Closing

News

New Shadow Academy Exam for Roleplaying!

As the HM announced previously, Activities 104: Roleplaying is now live in the Shadow Academy. This course was designed to show both new and returning members how to quickly and easily join a roleplaying (RP) activity, set up an RP activity, as well as what to do when participating in a session. It even covers how to run one yourself if interested!

Big props to the Exarch Staff for their work on helping me create this exam. Also great work by Arch and co to get it coded into the site in such a timely manner, especially considering how many graphics I threw into the exam.

Members that have taken the exam: 31

Would love to see more people take a crack at it. It's all multiple selection and you should come away feeling comfortable enough to use the RP tools on discord to either run or participate! In the future, we’re in discussions to make a Map Making focused exam, as well as a possible attempt at a “How to DM Good and do other things good, too” flavored exam. Looking forward to continued collaborations with the HM team.

Development

This section will feature all the new developments and give updates on projects the Exarch team is working on.

Roleplaying Handbook

Wizards of the Coast did a really envious job of organizing the “open” nature of the game that they built with Dungeons and Dragons. While there are hundreds of other systems and worlds out there, I’m going to usually gauge my thinking around how WotC operates because they’re just one of the most well known and successful at it. A big way that they’ve done this is by creating the “Core” of their platform, which is known as the “Players Hand Book [PHB]”. It serves as the basis for anyone that wants to “start” playing DnD. While it’s not perfect, it’s consistent and a good baseline.

Then, they were able to author additional “versions” that expanded and added to the PHB such as Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. This is a good parallel to how I think we are going to be approaching RP in the Brotherhood.

Our “core” is the Character Sheet and Possessions systems. This is maintained by the Voice and Regent, respectively. Our “world” is the Star Wars universe, and more specifically “Brotherhood Canon”, which gives us our own unique sandbox that we can operate in. Beyond sticking to the “core” of Character Sheets, Possessions, and the Star Wars/Brotherhood Canon sandbox, the possibilities of what you can do in a Roleplaying session are endless.

To organize these efforts, I've created the Roleplaying Handbook which can be found here on the Wiki.

Rules and Systems

So, since we’ll never have a one-system-fits-all solution, I decided to instead start collecting and organizing systems that members of the Brotherhood create and use and that then want to share/make them available for other members to try out.

You can find these here on the Roleplaying Handbook page, and the table will look like this:

This list will be added to as more systems and rulesets are spun up. If you have a system you’ve worked on and want to share it with the club, reach out to the Exarc Staff at: [Log in to view e-mail addresses]. And yes, you can work with others and have multiple authors.

A New "Society"

This is probably the part of this report that most people will skip to, or care about. To start,

Envoy Corps

A diplomacy-focused society responsible for handling the Brotherhood's efforts to build a positive image on the greater stage of the Galaxy. While it might look like a public-relations gambit by the Brotherhood, the Council has put their full weight and support behind the Envoy Corps altruistic and philanthropic endeavors.

Guided by the Exarch, the Envoy Corps accepts and assigns out contracts in the form of operations, bounties and missions that benefit communities, cultures, and systems that are in need of resources and support. This outreach initiative operates for the betterment of the Brotherhood's reputation among rival organizations and to cement their position of power beyond the Unknown Regions. of bridging relationships between the Council and the Clans.

When we were designing this, Bubba tasked us with finding a “niche” that wasn’t filled by the INQ (Spies and Assassins), Shroud (Underground and Black Market), or ACS (space nerds). We also wanted to avoid going too far Dark or Light in theme. We landed on this as our happy-medium: a mixture of a Bounty Guild operating under a more altruistic mission statement.

As the blurb above states, the idea is that the Brotherhood takes on tasks and missions from the local and wider galaxy and offers to help out. This could be a conventional bounty, like “find this criminal who’s been smuggling medical supplies meant for children hospitals,” or to break out a smuggler that has been "unlawfully" detained from a detention facility.

This should also help with the fictional “reasoning” for a lot of RP initiatives we have coming up. It should help characters of all backgrounds and alignments find a way to get involved within the Brotherhood’s sandbox.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below or on Discord.

We’re Going to Need a Flag...

And by flag, I of course mean a logo. And what better way to accomplish this than to get someone else to do it!

You can find the competition details here.

The last time I did this was for the ACC Logo. The pain of that logo being changed later on isn’t lost on me, but, second time’s a charm?

What is a Society?

Society is a term that’s going to be seeing some changes in terms of what it’s used to reference in the Brotherhood. It might be a bit confusing at first, but the long and short of what you need to know is that the RP Society (Envoy Corps) is going to function differently than the INQ, GMRG, ACS, and Shroud.

The RP Society will be structured around unlocking unique perks, awards, and items based on organizing and participation in RP activities.

This is what the staff will be focusing on next. We will be trying to work with data sets and some complicated math/logistics that go way over Wally’s head. Outside of that, we will be coming up with cool Possession Items, CS Feats, extra credits and other incentives we’ll need to clear with their respective Councilor offices (Voice/Regent mostly).

What I can confirm, right now, is that the number of RPs you organize and do will retroactively be applied to whatever metric is used when we roll this system out.

So, everyone keep doing what you’ve been doing. Keep joining and starting up RP sessions. The more you do, the more you will get credit for, and pretty soon that will be more than just some extra Clusters of Ice.

Active RPs

The following RPs are currently running and open to either join or spectate for all members of the Brotherhood. You can also see a round up of these in #rp-loby every Friday.

Fort Malgrim Casual RP

Fort Malgrim, better described as the "Crowning Jewel of Elysia," sits on a hill overlooking the city of Aidos, the Caelus System's second largest city. Within it are the remains of a Jedi Temple, once buried deep within the ice.

Fort Malgrim is the dwelling of Elysia Governor, Koda Kendis, who has offered up his dwelling as the perfect location to see in 41 ABY. With members of the Brotherhood invited by Taldryan's SupremeChancellor, from the lowest ranks to the Dark Council, the question remains as to what could possibly go wrong?

Click here to check it out on Discord.

Featured RP

While the Exarch Staff is hard at work running sessions and testing out new things, any member has the ability to run an RP that’s open to the entire Brotherhood. This past month, Korvis stepped up big by offering to run the Sundari Station Hangout.

And well, here is a good summary from our friendly neighborhood Appius.

Many gathered in good spirits at Sundari Station. And good spirits are exactly what was devoured! Representatives of the Council and various Clan's gathered to socialize, engage in conversation, and listen to Rajhin pronounce the next PROUD WARRIOR.

However, all pleasantries came to a stop with the arrival of Darrio Klars, who under a bet constructed by the Regent decided to go for a joy-ride in the GM's private yacht. He dragged along Arconan Kaled, because why not? And the two were eventually captured.

You can read the HTML log of the RP here if you’re interested!

Also a friendly reminder that these exports retain your markdown and formatting. They are auto-generated whenever you close an RP, and are a great way to save and share your RPs outside of discord.

RP Tip of the Month

Add a snapshot to RP activities

Did you know you can now attach snapshots directly from Discord to the RP you’re getting involved with?!

Eventually, dbb0t will be able to round up attached Snapshots done in this function, but they’re easily pinnable and don’t require you to leave discord or to generate one from the website!

Praise be James, as usual.

Helpful Resources

You can find everything you need in Roleplaying Handbook Wiki. This page hosts links to Exarch resources such as maps, rulesets, system types, and information about Role Playing activities the Brotherhood. But some useful references:

• Exarch Resources Google Drive Folder
• Envoy Corps Wiki
• Character Sheet Reference Tool

Closing

Presented without context from #rp-lobby

Which lead to:

Which is how we arrived at Alethia-with-cat-ears.

Which is oddly making me question a few things about myself now. Anyway, you will now know why Marick's expression is the way it is in the signature below. Until next time,

-W