8 Steps To A New Character

(This page requires updates to fit new rules. Speak to your GM if you're here and unsure of what to do.) 


To create a character, follow these six steps. Each step is summarized here and then fully explained later in the chapter.

Step 1: Determine Background

Each character starts as an idea. Do you want to play a noble knight working to save the poor and oppressed, a secret agent skilled at infiltration, or a clever computer hacker? What kind of character you make depends on the type of game and the setting (you’re not likely to make a medieval knight in a modern day setting, after all!) So, before starting the game, you should take a few minutes to think about the character you want to build and what you want that character’s background to be. Where did your character come from, and what inspired them to leave their former life and pursue a life of adventure?

Step 2: Select a Character Archetype or Species

The nature of this step depends a lot on the setting chosen. In a typical fantasy setting, for example, you may choose whether your character is a human, a dwarf, an elf, or an orc. In a space opera setting, you may choose to make your character one of any number of fantastical alien species. However, in the base rule set, you choose between four different archetypes of human: the laborer, the aristocrat, the intellectual, and the average human.

Whether you’re choosing an archetype of humanity or an entirely different species, this choice establishes your character’s initial ratings in the characteristics of Brawn, Agility, Intellect, Cunning, Willpower, and Presence. This choice also determines secondary characteristics, including wound and strain thresholds. Finally, the choice you make here may also give your character a unique intrinsic ability that would be impossible to get elsewhere.

Needless to say, once you’ve chosen an archetype, species, or race for your character, that choice is permanent. Your character cannot suddenly change from a human into an elf in the middle of a game.

Step 3: Choose a Career

Your character’s career is both their narrative role within the setting and their mechanical role within the party. You choose one career for your character, and you cannot switch careers later on in the game.

Careers don’t rigidly define what your character does, however. They simply make it easier to advance into some skills and harder to advance into others. They also help define characters when they start out, making starting characters more interesting to play.

Step 4: Invest Experience Points

The species (or archetype, or race) you select for your character establishes an initial pool of experience points (XP). You can spend these experience points to improve certain aspects of the character: to increase characteristics, purchase additional ranks in skills, or acquire talents. You may spend your character’s experience points in any combination of these areas, meaning that any two characters can end up very different from one another.

During gameplay, your character earns additional experience points based on their achievements and successes. Those points can also be spent to purchase new skill ranks and talents.

Step 5: Determine Derived Attributes

You should only perform this step after you’ve completed the previous steps, since several attributes can only be determined after you’ve fully established your character’s starting characteristics and talents. The derived attributes include wound threshold, strain threshold, defense, and soak value.

Step 6: Determine Motivation

Your character’s Motivation reflects their primary call to take action and experience adventures. It represents the driving force or forces in their life. In some instances, a character’s primary Motivation depicts an overarching philosophical belief. Other characters focus on more concrete objectives, often associated with the desire to aid family or close allies. A few choose a specific goal that they hope to achieve within their lifetime, possibly moving on to another one should they ever do so.

Four facets define Motivation: Desire, Fear, Strength, and Flaw. Each of these Motivations has a list of specific manifestations. Of course, you can always make up a unique Motivation for your character; the list we provided is meant more as a starting point than an exhaustive set of options.

'Motivation is important to your character’s progression. Playing to their Motivation can earn you additional XP at the end of a session. Motivations are also very important to social encounters.

Step 7: Choose Gear, Appearance, and Personality

Once you’ve defined your character’s species or archetype, background, Motivation, and any other important attributes, you begin determining their descriptive details. Height, weight, eye color, hair color and style (or tentacle or horn color), skin color, build, distinguishing features such as scars and tattoos, and choice of clothing are all descriptive details that can be determined narratively. This information can and often should be linked to previous choices you made while building your PC; a character with a high Brawn may be more muscular, for instance, while a character raised in a desert may have skin that’s been weathered and deepened by the punishing sun.

Each PC also starts the game with personal gear and weaponry worth 500 currency. At this stage, the PC may select this gear. NOTE: Confirm this starting budget with the GM beforehand, as depending on the setting or type of game these rules may not apply.