While campaigns define all the locations, quests, lore, characters, areas and encounters that the player and her adventuring party will interact with, parties define the small groups of heroes that do the interacting, always led by the player hero herself. Within the BrowserQuests.™ role-playing game, players first create their own hero, then recruit up to five fellow heroes (and up to two temporary henchmen) to explore the world, assume individual quests and work their way toward fame and fortune.
Three base forms are used to manage these groups of adventuring teams within the BrowserQuests™ platform. Again, only those already assigned to the Authors role can see and interact with these forms.
Parties Form
Parties consist of individual heroes, former characters that have been invited into the party by the player hero. The Parties form tracks and manages party-level parameters such as world location, time, temperature and weather, the party's overall reputation within the Sisalus fantasy world and a variety of system-level parameters. For authors, the Parties form can also be used to manipulate and manage all parties engaging with a particular campaign, and can even mark specific parties as "test" parties that the author can use to play through her recently-authored quests without exposing those quests to the general public. Specific party subforms include Areas (recording those encounter areas the party has visited), Exits (tracking the status of the various area exits that manage movement between areas), Objects (those fixed elements within an area that can't be taken but can be searched and even manipulated in some way), Possessions (those items that CAN be acquired by an adventuring party within an area) and Quests (recording the details of a party's progress through the campaign's various quests).
Heroes Form
When the player begins the game, she first creates her own player hero who represents the leader of her own adventuring party. Then, over time as the player meets a wide variety of characters throughout her adventures, a few of these characters will elect to join the party and become fellow heroes, separate entities within the party but (generally) under control of the player. All party heroes utilize a diversity of parameters to track and manage various elements, grouped into the following subforms: Abilities (such as strength, dexterity and wisdom), Behaviors (such as curiosity, diplomacy and reason), Effects (various spells, afflictions and other conditions that can temporarily affect a hero), Possessions (items that can be carried and utilized by a hero), Spells (the particular magic-based skills that a particular hero can possess) and Status (a collection of variables that track key elements of the hero, such as hit points, armor class and such).
Combatants Form
Like all RPGs, a time comes when an adventuring party must face and defeat encountered foes in combat, whether just monsters or, occasionally, a particular non-playing character (NPC) with or without a collection of monsters. Authors can test and manage such encounters utilizing the Combatants Form, a collection of statistics (such as hit points, initiative, effects and so forth) that can be changed and manipulated as the author deems fit. Additionally, authors can review and update any Effects that involve a particular combatant as well as manage any Spells associated with the combatant.