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Chapter 2: Making Characters
[ | Making Characters | Your Character Sheet | Behaviour | Experience & Costs (Player) | Experience Rules (GM) | Character Templates | ]
Making Characters
Alright, now that you have some idea of how to play, it's now a matter of what you should play. You need to design a character, your
voice in the world of the GM. But how do you go about it?
There are really only two ways to make a character: either you have one already in your head, or you're doing it from scratch. Strangely
enough, it's the first example that takes much more time. Tailoring a character to match what is both in your head and possible by the
world book can be a serious pain in the butt. Since this section is intended for beginners to the Source, the latter example will be
focused upon. If this is your first time, it would be best to do it completely from scratch.
Step 1: The first thing you need to do is flip through the Source and the appropriate world book to get a feeling for the system
and the world. Unfortunately, if this really is your first time ever or you don't have time, then you better skip this step. You'll be
flying blind, but at least reading this section should help you a great deal. At least figure out your starting experience and read through
the character templates to save yourself some time. Now go grab a character sheet and get started!
Step 2: Primary Statistics. There are ten of them and they give your character a solid background which will help you determine
what sort of skills and tasks he would excel at. Having a high Strength and Stamina could mean your character is tough, but slow. A
high Beauty and Charisma would make your character a well-loved celebrity. A high Speed and Agility could mean a gun-toting assassin that
can handle both ranged and melee, able to read situations quickly. All the stats measure certain aspects of each character; by combining
high numbers in just a few of them, you can come up with a basic idea of how your character performs in any given situation.
Determine how much each stat means to your character or just a select a few at random. Use a character template to make it go by quickly;
manually spending experience is too much work if you don't have the time.
Step 3: Learn the World Specifics. Many world books will present the system with new ways to handle things or restructure what
is already there. For example, Behaviour is something that is different in each world book. Find out what is world-specific (ask the GM)
and then make sure you pick what is right for you.
Step 4: Choosing Skills. This can be a little tougher than stats. Fortunately, the character templates can help you out a lot
here as well. Just as you did with stats, figure out which sections matter to you the most. Then, simply spend as much experience as
you feel comfortable with. It's a good idea to spend about a third of your experience on this section, since skills really do come in
handy. Once you have the skills and the stats, you now probably have a good idea of what kind of character you're making.
Step 5: Spending All Experience. It's time to look at Martial Arts if you think it fits your character concept, or some of the
world-specific powers. Of course, if you'd like to avoid having a supernatural character, Virtues are a great way to round out your
character. Taking Virtues will soak up your remaining experience and give you some excellent natural abilities. If you need more
experience for your skills and stats, consider taking Burdens to add even more flavour to your character's personality. This step will
easily take the longest and you will need the world book to help you out.
Step 6: Resolving Bonuses. Most abilities, some skills, and stats all give you bonuses. All together, they will determine the numbers
for your Resists, Vital, and Combat stats. Make sure you don't forget this step as it is the most important!
Step 7: Making a Character. Sure, you've spent all the experience and have now placed a lot of fancy numbers all over the sheet, but
that's all it really is. Now it's time to really make the character! First, determine your character's appearance. Simply answer all of
the questions posed by the template and feel free to elaborate and improvise other important details. Then do the same with your character's
Disposition. These two alone will give other players and a GM a sense of who your character is and what he stands for. If you want to
add extra information such as a childhood, his allies and friends, etc. then simply add it to the bottom of your character sheet. Last, but
not least, don't forget to take equipment that would be appropriate for your character. The GM will determine what your character would have,
depending on the time period and the resources your character would have available (he'll probably just eyeball it).
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