¶ Scribing & Forgery 
"In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, scribing is more than a mere act of writing. It's the sacred dance of thought and ink, a testament to the enduring power of words. Whether penning a cryptic letter or chronicling legends in a book, each stroke is a whisper of wisdom, a charm of knowledge. Remember, the mightiest spell is not one cast, but one carefully inscribed for posterity."
Players in Haze can use the Scribe System to create player-made letters and books. These allow you to leave a lasting impression in-game and share information with other characters. This is also a requirement of the bulletin board system, enabling you to tack notes to the in-game bulletin board.
There are two ways to use the scribing system: through the NUI Interface, which allows you to target a Quill to a blank paper, opening a window for scribing, or through command-line commands. Due to an engine limitation, this window does not auto-wrap text, but you can line-break as needed. Even if ignored, line breaks will be parsed correctly.
¶ Adding Pages to Books
When you've made a book, you can add additional pages to a book by scribing no individual pages, and then "using" those pages on the book, this will create a paged book, which you can then "activate" to page through.
¶ Handwriting Style and Forgery
Every character in Haze has a unique 6-character handwriting style (e.g., GBBXYZ). This style is displayed in the bottom left of the scribing window and can be modified when creating a letter or book.
- Modifying the Style:
- For every character you change in your handwriting style, the DC for successful forgery increases by 5.
- If you fail the DC, only a portion of the style will be changed, starting from the leftmost character. The number of characters successfully changed depends on a Perform check.
¶ Reading and Determining Forgery
When another character reads a scribed letter (either in their inventory or on a bulletin board), they roll a Knowledge: History check against a DC 30 to decipher the handwriting style.
- If they fail, they only see a portion of the style, determined by their roll divided by 5 (e.g., a roll of 20 reveals 4 characters).
- This roll can only be attempted once per handwriting style per reset.
¶ Forgery Rules
The system encourages a strategic interplay between forgers and investigators:
- A skilled forger needs high Knowledge: History to discern another's handwriting style fully, and high Perform to replicate it successfully.
- When attempting to forge:
- The forger modifies their own handwriting style to match the intended target.
- They must succeed on the DC for each of the 6 characters they changed to fully replicate the style. So if they change 3 of the 6 characters, they must pass a DC 15 check, if they only get a 10, only 2 of the 3 will be changed, starting from left to right.
Failure Consequences:
- Failing the Perform check results in an incomplete forgery. To determine if your forgery was good you will need to examine your own forgery and pass a Knowledge: History check
Multiple Attempts:
- Forgers can make multiple attempts to improve their work, consuming ink and paper each time.
¶ Tacking it to the Bulletin Board
Once you've completed your scribed letter, use the "Unique Power" on the scribed letter to attach it to the bulletin board of your choice.