Your character's main objective throughout the Prides of Port Town RP is to grow and learn, and to become a productive member of their pride. Since everyone starts as just a Kit, this process takes a little bit of time and investment. In the beginning most of your RP adventures will relate this these leveling activities, giving you a structured space in which to develop your character's unique personality without also having to worry about coming up with lots of original RP ideas right off the bat.
No matter what pride you are in, your character can move through a minimum of three different levels. All players will start as a Kit, move up to a yearling, or 6 month old cat, and then graduate into an adult cat with an assigned task. Leveling is achieved by completing task RPs. For each completed task, your character gains a skill level for the trait the RP was intended to grow: Knowledge, Hunting, Strength, Healing, Trickery, Stealth, Diplomacy, and Teamwork. Leveling tasks come in three basic types: reading tasks, message tasks, and RP tasks. Reading tasks require you to review information related to the trait you are trying to grow and to reply or otherwise interact with the information. Message tasks involve simple PM messaging with other members of your pride, which require only one or two message and response interactions. RP tasks require short RP interactions between you and at least one other character in the pride.
Because the main goal of leveling to adulthood is to prepare your character to take on a task within the pride, it will be up to you to focus the traits you build on the task you plan for your character to take. Your character will need to level some traits higher than others, so take some time to figure out which traits are required for which task and work from there. You can get an idea of this by first reviewing the task descriptions in the pride overview thread, and then studying the detailed task descriptions that you will receive during the leveling RPs.
Depending on your pride's needs, and if the positions are available, you character can move up into a higher rank within the pride. Master of a task, Pride Second, and Pride Leader can all be reached by pride members if the position is available, and the player has completed the appropriate set of leveling tasks for their chosen position. Cats in any regular task position (hunter, patrol, and guard) may rank up to the available master position in their task. Medicine cats can rank up to head medicine cat and/or star cat, depending on which tasks are available. These cats may then rank up to Second, if available. If the pride leader position is available, the Second may level up into it (if the second in command does not want to move up, a cat with a mastery rank may complete second and pride leader tasks back-to-back and move into the rank).
There are four different types of tasks that can be completed during these leveling progressions. They include the reading, messaging, and RP tasks from the previous leveling experiences, along with art/story tasks. These tasks involve the player depicting their character completing a task that does not require interaction with another player. These RPs can be completed with either an art submission that contains the character and a full background, along with a minimum 500 word description of the events in the scene, or a short story depicting the events of the task, minimum 1000 words.
1. No godmodding. See the main rules thread for a more in-depth discussion of this rule.
2. Keep the rules and rituals of your pride in mind while RPing. A character is allowed to act against these expectations, but the consequences of these actions should be seen through IC RPing.
3. These RPs may be submitted for Paw Points, as long as they meet at least one of the following criteria:
-RPs should be at least 1000 words total
-Art must contain a completed character image and background
-Stories should be a minimum of 750 words
4. Skills can only be gained by completing a task in the predefined method. While you may create art or stories for an RP task, the task requires a completed role play to earn skill points.
5. Once earned, a skill point cannot be lost or transferred. If you decide during your RPing that you wish to begin leveling different skill you do have the option to complete extra RP tasks.
6. You should keep a log of all task RP activities on your character sheet in the "Character" topic, to serve as a quick reference for when you want to gain levels. Each log entry should contain, at minimum, a link to the task RP, the skill point (s) you gained, and any paw points you gained.
7. When you have the required skills to level your character, send a private message to your pride moderator showing that you have the required paw points, and telling them what level you are currently, and what level you wish to move to.
