note: Familiarities were originally called Locations in my first revision. So until I have a chance to better edit this.. deal with it.
[105.4] Locations
experience multiple: 50
Characters will learn about various places they travel through, and this knowledge is represented by skills for each location. These will be either specific Cities or Regions. Higher ranks will mean a greater familiarity with the people, customs, regulations, layout, and other special features of that particular place. This familiarity will be beneficial when trying to use abilities in that area. For instance, a Ranger who is familiar with Sherwood Forest would be much better off there than a Ranger who is not. A Thief would be better able to select targets and then fence the items if he has a greater knowledge of the city wherein he operates. Typically, a character will get rank 0 after staying in a particular location for a week, provided they spend some times exploring.
from later newsletter:
Familiarities.
Familiarities provide a means for determining what a character knows about certain things. This is useful for figuring out if a character should know something which the Player may not be aware of or for limiting what the Player can do if they know too much. Often a familiarity will work in conjunction with skills the character has. Such skills will also point out what sorts of topics under the familiarity the character would be most interested in. For instance, a courtesan would be tend to pick up on the etiquette and social aspects, a thief would be interested in who to rob and who is a good fence, and a steward would focus more on the bureaucracies and which palms can be greased. Hence, someone with Ranger and Thief skills and familiar with a particular region would know who to rob and where good hideouts are, but they may not know of a good smith in any nearby villages or which girls are the most.. umm.. sociable. So what would be some valid familiarities?
Cities (not villages): knowledge of the layout of the city, culture, political structure, social setup, who to contact for whatever reason.
Regions: knowledge of the terrain, sites of interest, villages, cultures, flora and fauna of that region.
Secretive organizations: contacts, leaders, secret passwords and callsigns, methods, purpose.
Demons, Undead, or Fantastical Creatures: These are rare and there are lots of myths and rumors about them, so few people will actually have useful knowledge about them. The familiarity will give general knowledge about types of various creatures within that classification, including powers, weaknesses, and favorite haunts. The familiarity will also be helpful in that the character will be less likely to panic when faced with some horrific beast he has some knowledge of.
A starting character should get their home city or region at rank 2, and their religion at rank 2. For a character starting with 20,000 EXP, they should get one more familiarity at rank 2 (or increase one of the others to rank 4) for free. Adepts of Necromancy automatically have a familiarity of Undead at rank 8.
A character who has traveling companions with a particular familiarity can learn that familiarity at rank 0 just from conversations with them (with appropriate expenditure of experience points). Any higher ranks require "hands-on" experience.