Quick creation steps

For your convenience, here is a quick summary of the character creation process. Experienced players can work down this list to generate a hero; anyone new to the game should use it as a map and read the linked page for each step. ⟨Enter instructions on where to find a character sheet, and what dice you will need.⟩

Reading the brackets

⟨Angle brackets mark something that hasn’t been decided yet.⟩ They are gaps in the design, not gaps in the writing — nothing has been guessed at to fill them. Everything outside the brackets reflects a decision that has been made, though the game is in development and decisions still move.

1. Select a Background. This describes the conditions your character was born into. Apply the positive and negative modifiers you receive to your Attribute scores, add the free skills you choose to your Skills List, and note down any narrative details you decide.

2. Select a Job. This describes the skillset your character pursued. Apply the positive and negative modifiers you receive to your Attribute scores and Favor Resource score, add the Favor modifiers you choose to your Purchasing Power List, and note down any narrative details you decide.

3. Select an Archetype. This describes your character’s outlook on the world. Apply the positive and negative modifiers you receive to your Attribute scores, add the Experience Tree modifiers you choose to your Focuses List, and note down any narrative details you decide.

4. Roll 4d10 for each of your ten Attribute scores: Aura, Melee, Ranged, Dexterity, Strength, Vitality, Charisma, Intelligence, Perception, and Will. Roll in order, or assign as you see fit.

5. Work out your Luck. Your Attributes are final now, so total all ten of them. Luck is 70, minus every point that total runs over 220 — and it never starts below 5. Every point your three packages declined to spend on Attributes comes back to you here, which is why a character circumstance barely touched is the fortunate one.

6. Work out your Health. ⟨Undecided in full. What Health is derived from, how much of it a starting character has, and what happens as it runs down are all open. What is settled is the shape: armor and Vitality reduce a hit, Health records what gets through, and running out is a state you can act from rather than the end of your participation.⟩

7. Spend your starting XP in trees. Everything you buy with XP is a node in a trait tree, and there are three kinds. Skills modify rolls. Traits grant abilities. Marks are negative, cost nothing, and gate the nodes beyond them — you cannot reach a tree’s depths without accepting one, and they pay XP back when they bite. Earlier nodes gate later ones; you can reach into a tree you haven’t invested in by paying a surcharge, but you take that route’s marks along with it. ⟨How much XP a character starts with is undecided, as are the trees themselves, which your Epoch supplies.⟩

8. Take your starting equipment. Equipment is reached through Favor rather than bought with coin: everything has a rating on the same 0–100 scale, and what you can get depends on the gap between your Favor and the thing’s rating. ⟨What a character begins with, and whether starting gear is granted outright or acquired through the normal Favor procedure, is undecided.⟩

9. Choose armor and weapons, and work out your combat numbers. You have three ways to attack — Melee, Ranged, and Aura — and none is derived from another, so every character has one they are best at and is free to leave the others alone. Dexterity is how you dodge, Strength drives the damage of Melee and Ranged attacks, and Vitality soaks alongside your armor. Your initiative is 1d10 + Perception tens + Dexterity tens. ⟨The weapons and armor themselves are supplied by your Epoch and have not been written, so none of the numbers those tables set — damage, protection, or the trade-offs between them — can be given here.⟩

10. Give your hero a name, a goal, and a description. The goal is the part the system needs: attributes rise from what you actually do under pressure, so a character with no direction does nothing in particular and becomes nothing in particular. Pick something they would leave home for, and expect it to change.

Building your own Background, Job, or Archetype

You can build any of the three yourself instead of taking one from a list. All three spend points the same way, so a package you built is worth exactly what a listed one is.

1 point = a +5. Taking a −5 refunds a point rather than costing one. At least two points must be negative. At most five Attributes may increase and at most three may decrease. One Attribute may take two points — a +10 or a −10 — and no other Attribute may take more than one.

Package	Points
Background	4
Job	3
Archetype	3

Negatives are what pay for breadth. A package that moves six or seven Attributes has to take something away to afford them, which is why a hard upbringing gives you a body and costs you a room.

Anything you don’t spend on Attributes comes back as Luck, and you don’t track it — a lower Attribute total simply means a higher Luck at step 5. A character who spends nothing anywhere finishes on ten average Attributes and a Luck of 70: unremarkable and very fortunate, which is a real way to play rather than a mistake.

No score can be reduced below 11 by creation.

What this page can’t do yet

Three questions about the system are still open, and a character can’t be built from this page until they close: Health entirely, how much XP a character starts with, and whether starting equipment is granted outright or acquired through the normal Favor procedure.

The remaining gaps are all the same gap: Zsenai has no lists yet. Archetypes, jobs, trait trees, weapons, and armor are all supplied by the Epoch rather than by the core rules, and none of them have been written.