Living Arcanis

Arcanis was originally a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons game, created by Henry Lopez and supported by Paradigm Concepts. It is also the name of the fictional world where the setting takes place. The setting was launched in 2001 and is known for its odd twists on the fantasy genre, as well as its wide member approval and community-based design and construction. Unlike many other fantasy roleplaying games, which focus primarily on tactical combat, the Arcanis campaigns focus on moral ambiguity and politics.

While originally launched as a d20srd title, Arcanis was relaunched in 2010 with a unique rules set as detailed in Paradigm Concepts. This system uses a similar initiative system to Feng Shui; a progressive clock system of initiative, with each action taking a specific number of 'ticks' of a clock rather than simply having everyone go in a predetermined order.

Arcanis is set on the continent of Onara, where a crumbling Coryani Empire (reminiscent of the Western Roman Empire) struggles with newly created nations such as Milandir (reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire) or Canceri (reminiscent of Russia during the Middle Ages and the Balkans).

The playable Races in Arcanis differ from the traditional races in other Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. There are seven primary races: Dark-kin (infernally tainted), Dwarves (cursed Giants), Elorii (basically Elves, but with some significant differences), Gnomes (offspring of a human and a dwarf), Humans (including the elementally attuned Kio and Undir), Ss'ressen (Lizard-folk), and Val (touched by the gods with different bloodlines depending on which God was their progenitor). While in the days of the d20srd rules other playable races were allowed—such as Half-Orcs—the most recent Arcanis RPG rules have streamlined the system somewhat to remove these hold-overs from Dungeons & Dragons.

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Wikipedia