The Start­ing of the Game

From the top of this hill, it feels like you can see for­ever as your eyes cast their gaze against the green woods and golden fields, all the way to the hori­zon and the sky of deep­est blue. The sun beats down strongly, char­ac­ter­is­tic of this region which they call the Sun­shine Plains in the local lan­guage, and glit­ters play­fully from the rip­pling river that flows from where you stand and threads its way through a mul­ti­tude of vil­lages.
The near­est of these is a place they call Arca­dia. By local stan­dards it’s a big place, for it sup­ports nearly thirty cit­i­zens and even boasts its own weekly mar­ket — which, it seems, would explain today’s colour­ful flags and pen­nants that dec­o­rate the vil­lage. Peo­ple from all around the coun­try­side are already flock­ing there, and in the dis­tance the first of the mer­chants’ wag­ons are mak­ing their way to Arca­dia too.
From the youngest to the eldest, vil­lager and for­eigner, every­one is in espe­cially high spir­its today. Today is no ordi­nary mar­ket day — it’s the day everyone’s looked for­ward to for a year. A day when every­one is happy and rejoic­ing, a day when every­one feels blessed to be alive. Today is the Fes­ti­val of the Sun, the begin­ning of Sum­mer. Down in the vil­lage, the prepa­ra­tions are just get­ting started. It’ll be a day to remem­ber, for sure!

Who Can the Char­ac­ters Be?

The game itself starts in the mostly-sleepy farm­ing vil­lage of Arca­dia, on one of the few days in each year when sleepi­ness just isn’t an option. Today Arca­dia hosts one of its four yearly fes­ti­vals, and many peo­ple from all over the coun­try­side and beyond have arrived to take part.

Arca­di­ans

Arca­dia is a small and almost self-sufficient vil­lage. Most of the vil­lagers are employed in some form of farm­ing — tra­di­tional crops are the most com­mon, but there are also veg­etable gar­dens, fields for graz­ing live­stock and an orchard. The vil­lage also has a miller, a baker, a black­smith, an elder and a few peo­ple who main­tain the inn. Of course, pretty much every­one has a fam­ily too. Feel free to put your char­ac­ter any­where in among this lot, includ­ing tak­ing the place of NPCs.

Other Vil­lagers

On mar­ket days and espe­cially on fes­ti­val days, the vil­lage is crowded with peo­ple from the nearby coun­try­side and vil­lages fur­ther afield. It’s not uncom­mon to see peo­ple from vil­lages 20 or 30 miles away who come to stay in Arca­dia for a few days in order to enjoy the party and trade their wares. Although Arca­dia is the only place in the area that has a weekly mar­ket, the vil­lages thrive on trade with each other. Bar­ter­ing is the com­mon form of trade between peo­ple of dif­fer­ent vil­lages, as money is mostly regarded as imprac­ti­cal. Your char­ac­ter can be any­one who might con­ceiv­ably travel to Arca­dia on such a day.

Mer­chants

Although it’s a spe­cial fes­ti­val day, it is still a mar­ket day like any other. As a vil­lage on one of the main trade routes between Dephinia in the south and Lac­erta in the forests to the east, mer­chant wag­ons fre­quently pass through Arca­dia and trade with the vil­lagers there — mainly buy­ing food, metal wares and hos­pi­tal­ity in exchange for more exotic items. As a mer­chant, you could be from just about any­where, head­ing to just about any­where, sell­ing or buy­ing any­thing. You could equally be part of a merchant’s ret­inue — a fam­ily mem­ber, or maybe a retainer or bodyguard.

Wan­der­ers

By local stan­dards the road through Arca­dia is a busy one, and all sorts of peo­ple wan­der along it from time to time. Wan­der­ing priests, the home­less, mer­ce­nar­ies and those who have set out aim­lessly to seek their for­tune are all pos­si­bil­i­ties, although they are not espe­cially com­mon. It should be noted that, as the vil­lages are mostly self-sufficient and insu­lar com­mu­ni­ties where every­one works for every­one else’s good, out­siders may be wel­comed for a while but would not be invited to stay.

Char­ac­ter Generation

Giv­ing Life to your Character

The first stage, before wor­ry­ing about any­thing like attrib­utes or skills, is to form the char­ac­ter fully in your mind. What is the character’s name, age, sex? What do they look like? What clothes do they wear? Where are they from? What’s their job? What is their per­son­al­ity like? How do they see the world around them? Is there any­thing spe­cial about them? It is impor­tant to answer these kind of ques­tions before think­ing about num­bers that rep­re­sent the character.

Res­o­nance

Next, think up a brief list of “Res­o­nances”. These are broad ideas that appeal to the char­ac­ter, and are gen­er­ally not mun­dane (i.e. they are in some way super­nat­ural). The pur­pose of this is to come up with a list of things that the char­ac­ter believes are real or wants to believe are real, but yet are not part of their every­day expe­ri­ence. What does the char­ac­ter dream about? What kind of sto­ries does she like? What kind of magic does he believe in? Per­haps the char­ac­ter dreams of fly­ing a lot, or maybe likes sto­ries of flam­boy­ant swash­buck­ling. What­ever you choose, a character’s Res­o­nances are things that really strike a chord with them.

Shiny

Time, I guess, to get on with the num­bers. First of all, every char­ac­ter has a stat called “Shiny”. This is the most impor­tant sta­tis­tic in the game, and every­thing and every­one has a Shiny rat­ing. It rep­re­sents belief, fame, power, and many other con­cepts. It is how pow­er­ful you are. It is to what extent that when you speak, the world lis­tens. Not just the peo­ple of the world — the higher something’s Shiny value, the more that real­ity warps to its will. To start with, you have a Shiny rat­ing of 0. You are, for the moment, mundane.

Attrib­utes

Next up are the attrib­utes. There are eight of these — four phys­i­cal (Strength, Tough­ness, Agility and Dex­ter­ity) and four men­tal (Ego, Faith, Intel­li­gence and Per­cep­tion). Each one starts off rated some­where between 1 and 9, depend­ing on to what extent your char­ac­ter pos­sesses that attribute. 5 is a sen­si­ble human aver­age, and rat­ings can go beyond 9 in spe­cial cir­cum­stances. There’s no real set num­ber of points to spread around these attrib­utes, although stick­ing to the 40–50 region should keep all the char­ac­ters at roughly the same power level.

* Strength — a character’s phys­i­cal strength, their abil­ity to lift heavy weights, arm-wrestle, smack some­one with a flail, draw back a bow­string, knock a door from its hinges.
o 1: Your lack of strength is crip­pling, your legs find it hard even to sup­port your weight.
o 3: You are weak. Strength really isn’t your strong point, although you can get by.
o 5: Noth­ing spec­tac­u­lar, you can do your job with no prob­lems.
o 7: You’re pretty strong — farm­ing isn’t exhaust­ing for you, and your strength is recog­nised.
o 9: You’re eas­ily the strongest per­son around, you’ve yet to find one who can beat you an an arm-wrestle!

* Tough­ness — a character’s pain endurance, sta­mina, resis­tance to dam­age, resilience in the face of extreme con­di­tions.
o 1: You’re very vul­ner­a­ble. Maybe motion makes you feel unwell, you are aller­gic to some­thing com­mon, suf­fer badly in sun­light, etc.
o 3: You’re not tough, and are often looked after by oth­ers. You prob­a­bly stay at home rather than work­ing the fields.
o 5: You are hardy enough for most jobs, farm­ing included.
o 7: Pretty tough, you can ignore pain like a sol­dier or the weather like a farmer.
o 9: Famously tough, you’re undaunted by armed com­bat, dri­ving rain or a marathon race.

* Agility — a character’s swift­ness of move­ment, bal­ance, foot­work, sup­ple­ness and reflexes.
o 1: Per­haps due to ill­ness or weak­ness, you can­not move with­out the aid of a walk­ing stick or another per­son.
o 3: You may be lazy, over­weight, or maybe half-asleep. Either way, you don’t move quickly.
o 5: Aver­agely agile, you can run, jump, dodge and dance with­out a prob­lem.
o 7: You could be a fast run­ner, a trained fighter or a gym­nast; your agility is pretty good.
o 9: If you don’t reg­u­larly impress peo­ple with your abil­ity to dodge arrows, you should prob­a­bly try it.

* Dex­ter­ity — a character’s accu­racy, aim, fin­ger­work, and co-ordination.
o 1: For what­ever rea­son, your dex­ter­ity is ter­ri­ble — you find it tricky even to hold things in your hand.
o 3: “Whoops! But­terfin­gers!” you cry as you drop the pan of hot water. Again. One day you’re going to get your­self into trou­ble if you keep doing that.
o 5: You should have no prob­lem with any­thing that requires dex­ter­ity, such as writ­ing or needle­work.
o 7: Your hand­writ­ing is beau­ti­ful, your archery renowned.
o 9: Pah, William Tell’s noth­ing! You could do that! From behind your back! Whilst wear­ing mittens!

* Ego — a character’s belief in her­self, con­vic­tion, willpower, per­sonal drive.
o 1: Maybe some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pened in your past, but now you’re self-loathing.
o 3: Although you joke a lot about how incom­petant you are, there’s a part of you that really believes it.
o 5: Whilst not exactly self-centred, you have con­fi­dence in your own abil­i­ties.
o 7: Extremely con­fi­dent in your­self, there are ways in which you believe your­self bet­ter than those around you.
o 9: Your will is almost unshak­able, your belief in your­self is absolute.

* Faith — a character’s belief and trust in friends, fam­ily, soci­ety, or even the spir­its or gods.
o 1: You revel in your self-sufficiency, you have no need for oth­ers. You rarely make friends.
o 3: While there isn’t any­one who you’d trust with your life, you have a few friends and fam­ily who you can rely on.
o 5: You prob­a­bly have quite a few friends, or may have a reli­gious belief.
o 7: You are some­times accused of being overly trust­ing, and you tend to treat strangers as if they were friends.
o 9: Believ­ing absolutely in those around you or in some higher power, you trust that every­thing will be just fine with­out you hav­ing to interfere.

* Intel­li­gence — a character’s raw men­tal pow­ers, how quickly they learn and how log­i­cal their thought is.
o 1: Maybe you always were the big dumb ox, but regard­less of your past your men­tal capac­ity today is dis­tinctly lack­ing.
o 3: Lack­ing any real school­ing, you find com­mon things under­stand­able but lan­guage, maths and sci­ence still a lit­tle tricky.
o 5: Aver­agely edu­cated, you tackle most sub­jects well.
o 7: You’re intel­li­gent, and prob­a­bly know a lot about a large num­ber of things. You are a good crit­i­cal thinker.
o 9: Almost a genius, your tal­ents are known and respected. You have advanced knowl­edge of many fields.

* Per­cep­tion — a character’s sen­sory and spa­tial aware­ness.
o 1: You may be blind, deaf or in some other way lack­ing an impor­tant sense.
o 3: You’ve made good friends with many lamp-posts and doors over the years. You just don’t notice things like that when you’re walk­ing along.
o 5: Your senses are about aver­age, you can see fairly well with­out glasses and you pay atten­tion to sub­tle sounds.
o 7: Remark­ably per­cep­tive, you may have eagle eyes, acute hear­ing or a real taste for good food.
o 9: Even the most stealthy of assas­sins wouldn’t slip by unnoticed.

Health

A char­ac­ter has both phys­i­cal and men­tal health, both of which can go up and down through var­i­ous means. Although keep­ing your­self alive (by not los­ing too much Phys­i­cal Health) is essen­tial, it’s also impor­tant to keep your mind work­ing prop­erly and not going gooey and drib­bling out of your ears. So, it’s impor­tant to watch your Men­tal Health too.
Each of these stats has a max­i­mum value, which rep­re­sents “fully healthy” for a char­ac­ter. A character’s max­i­mum Phys­i­cal Health is equal to their Tough­ness, while their max­i­mum Men­tal Health is ten times whichever of their men­tal stats is great­est. While Phys­i­cal Health is a rough esti­mate of how many wounds a char­ac­ter could take before being crip­pled, Men­tal Health is a much more grad­ual scale. You will see why when you play!

Life Skills

Next, it’s time to decide on what skills the char­ac­ter has. As you prob­a­bly already have a back­ground for your char­ac­ter (if not, now would be a really good time to write one!), you should have some idea of what kind of things the char­ac­ter knows how to do. There’s no set list of skills, nor a set num­ber of points you’re allowed to spend on them. Just make up the list for your­self, and beside each one give an indi­ca­tion of how good your char­ac­ter is at that thing. Appro­pri­ate num­bers range from 1 (basic under­stand­ing) through 3 (expe­ri­enced) to 5 (mas­tered). In some cases neg­a­tive num­bers may be appro­pri­ate, to indi­cate that a char­ac­ter actively has a dis­ad­van­tage doing a cer­tain thing.
A few exam­ple skills and their impli­ca­tion follows.

* Sur­vival 1 — You know a few things about sur­viv­ing out­doors, like how to start a fire and which berries you can eat.
* Dual Weapons 5 — You teach at a mar­tial school which spe­cialises in fight­ing with two weapons at once, and you are vir­tu­ally unbeaten in com­pe­ti­tions.
* Art 4 — You are an accom­plished artist, and your work is greatly admired, although you still yearn to be as good as your tutor.
* Astrol­ogy 2 — With a knowl­edge of the posi­tions of the plan­ets, you can give peo­ple rough but con­vinc­ing advice on what they fortell.
* His­tory 4 — You are a well-known his­to­rian who has spent many years research­ing the his­tory of a place. You can quote names and dates eas­ily, and dis­cuss the impor­tance of many his­tor­i­cal events.

Item Skills

These fol­low exactly the same method as Life Skills, but these are for how well a char­ac­ter uses cer­tain things. Again, some exam­ples follow.

* Shield 3 — A vet­eran of a few bat­tles, you’ve used a shield to great effect — after all, it’s kept you alive until now!
* Kitchen Uten­sil 4 — From flip­ping pan­cakes to flam­béing, when you get to cook you use the cut­lery and crock­ery extremely well.
* Sword 1 — “So, I hold the blunt end, and…” swish, swish “Hey, I’m get­ting the hang of this!”

Items

Finally, it’s time to note down the stuff that the char­ac­ter car­ries around. There’s no need to worry about triv­ial things like can­dles, bits of rope, trail rations and so on, but it’s going to help to have a list of things like clothes, armour, weapons, tools, things like that.
Each item has three attrib­utes. Firstly, it has Shiny (remem­ber ear­lier I said that things had Shiny, not just peo­ple?). For mun­dane items (that’s most of the kit you start with — see the next para­graph) this is 0. Items also have a power (for exam­ple how sharp a weapon is, how tough a suit of armour is) and a weight. Don’t worry about these for now — it’ll be up to the per­son run­ning the game to fill these in, so every­one has the same idea of what scale Power and Weight cor­re­spond to.
Now, to the Shiny. Although char­ac­ters them­selves aren’t Shiny at the start of the game, one item they carry is allowed to have 1 Shiny. This isn’t com­pul­sory, and it needs to be jus­ti­fied — how did you get such impres­sive clothes? Who forged that huge sword for you? Where did you get that mag­i­cal tal­is­man from?
Pos­ses­sion of a shiny item is likely to give you quite an advan­tage over using a sim­i­lar but mun­dane item.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, that’s it! Your char­ac­ter is com­plete and ready to play!