Character Creation

Play

Ref: So in this game you’re both Knights, but you’ll have different strengths and weaknesses. Start by rolling your Virtues. They’re Vigour, Clarity, and Spirit. For each you’ll roll a d12 and a d6 and add them together. High is better, 10 is average.

Ref hands a character sheet to each player. They start rolling their Virtues.

Tal: Okay, so Vigour 11, Clarity 14, Spirit 7.

Moss: I got Vigour 6! Urgh. At least my Clarity and Spirit are higher, 10 and 12.

Ref: Yeah that’s pretty bad! Don’t worry though, just means you’ll need to be clever. The scores might get better later as your character ages. There’s this rule where… Actually, scrap that for now. Roll d6 for your Guard. This is how good you are at avoiding getting hit or taking lasting Damage.

Tal: Okay, 3, I guess that’s okay.

Moss: I got 6! Guess I’m a survivor.

Ref: Okay now you each get to be one of these Knights.

Ref fans through the book, showing some of the entries for Knights.

Ref: The book says you can choose from here or roll. What do you think?

Moss: Obviously we should roll.

Tal: Oh I dunno, I don’t want to be stuck with a character I don’t like.

Ref: Okay how about we roll, but if you hate what you get then you can choose instead.

Tal: Yeah, thanks.

They both roll Knights, getting the Moss and Talon Knights.

Tal: I get a bird? I’ll stick with this one!

Ref: Great, so this gives you some gear and a special thing you can do. Let’s get it onto your character sheets and we can get started.

Thoughts

When getting the players started with the game I like to get them rolling their character as soon as possible, before I even start telling them about the world. The things they discover in making their character will get them immersed in the world right away.

It’s good that Ref gives a bit of context for Virtues. If you’ve played a lot of RPGs it’s easy to assume that everybody will work out the average of d6+d12, but just telling the players that 10 is average gives them a point of reference for their character.

Getting bad rolls here can be disheartening, so it’s good to see Ref reassuring Moss that their low Vigour score isn’t going to make his character useless.

We can see that Ref almost goes into explaining the rules for characters ageing, and how their Virtues can increase, but decides not to overload the players right now. At this point it’s enough for the players to know that their scores can change later, they don’t need to know the details while they’re focused on their brand new character.

On our very first example, Ref is already breaking the rules. The character creation process says nothing about letting the characters roll a Knight and then decide whether to keep them or roll a different entry instead, but Ref sees that Tal is feeling anxious about getting a character she doesn’t like, and decides to give the players the best of both worlds.

Ref could have stood firm, insisting that Tal either rolls a character or chooses one, but instead Ref took the chance that Tal would probably be happy with her character, but would appreciate the backup option if she didn’t like the Knight she rolled.

This can go the other way, with some players finding it too much choice to be handed a list of 72 Knights, so would rather let the dice decide. A huge part of the Referee’s role is sensing the best option for their group. If in doubt, just ask the players and trust them to be reasonable.