Book:Introduction
You hold in your hands the guide to participating in a game of friends, where players can create heroes or villains — or something in between — which embark on legendary quests or take part in humorous misadventure.
This is Elysium
The Elysium game strives to blend classic fantasy with new ideas and genres such as mystery, science fiction, horror, humor, and history. To achieve this end, Elysium gives players the tools to forge characters, places, and events, otherwise impossible in other games. Fully customizable characters, extensive options, and vivid source material allow players to break through the molds of fighter, cleric, thief, and wizard.
What is this Role-playing Stuff?
Think of role-playing like a play or stage production. There is a story that is being told. The curtain comes up, the actors deliver their lines and interact with one another, the crew backstage moves the set and changes the scenes. Now put that scene in someone's living room, or around a table somewhere. The actors are called "players" and the backstage crew is known as the "Game Master." The players have characters they create themselves which take part in an adventurous story that the GM sets up. The GM plays the part of all the extras, builds the set, sets the scene, conducts the pit orchestra, and guides the story for the players, who are center stage, driving the events that happen.
When it's all over and the curtain comes down, a vivid, memorable story has been created and the players delight in retelling their part in it. Role-playing is a game like any other, played this time with pen, paper, dice and camaraderie.
Why People Role-play
Role-playing has been used by countless people for many years as a healthy and efficient way to relax, improve mental health, and escape the mounting pressures of the real world, if just for a few hours on the weekends.
Role-playing involves creating an alter ego for yourself to portray in a game with your friends. You create a character, assign them their stats, and round out their personality. Voilà! You now have someone totally different you can explore. We all wonder what things might be like if we were different or if we lived in a different time and place. This is a safe way to explore that curiosity.
Role-playing, therefore, is not to be confused with the real world. The world you live and breathe in now is the real one (sorry to disappoint). The one in which your character exists is imaginary (even though it's really cool). Some people wear capes and carry swords in the real world, but they are usually magicians and circus performers. So please keep your dangerous cutlery and silly clothes at home, or else someone might think you are a magician and pester you for tricks.
What You Need to Play Elysium
A pencil.
A few ten-sided dice. All rolls made in Elysium are made using the d10. The dice should be different in color from one another.
A character sheet. One may be photocopied or scanned from the back of this rulebook or downloaded from our website.
This book.
Imagination.
These are all that you'll need. More addicted gamers might use things such as computers, calculators, extended character sheets, miniatures, maps, caffeine, and pocket protectors.
Read this Book
Learn it, know it, love it. This book holds the key to a happy second childhood and a healthy adulthood. Imagination is what drives the environmentally friendly machine of human progress. Laziness and impatience degrade the human soul. So don’t skip parts out of impatience or laziness. Then you won't know how to play the game and your GM will resent you. Besides, playing games and using imagination are therapeutic. This book isn't that long.
However, if you are a player, do not read the sections intended only for the GM. These will be marked clearly do not read unless you are a GM. Or a loser. You can read them if you want to be a loser, too.
Why Did We Call It Elysium?
Elysium was the name the ancient Greeks gave to the final resting place of valorous and virtuous souls. Actually, they called it "Elysion"; it was the Romans who gave us the word "Elysium". Over the many years since then, it has come to be regarded in varying ways: to some it was a place of safety and rest, to others a place of adventure after death, and to still others it was a subtle and sinister realm. We think of Elysium as a haven for intrepid minds. We call our game Elysium because we believe imagination opens a door to worlds unlike our own, worlds which have been dreamed of for thousands of years, worlds like Elysium.
