Character Creation

Recommended Materials:

• Pencil, Pen, and a highlighter, along with other artistic utensils you'd like to decorate your PC sheet with.

• Notebook or Binder (PC sheets are essentially the enterprising story of your character and can potentially extend several notebooks for longer campaigns.)

Games of Chance and Fate begin with the creation of a character built for the campaign setting. Typically, your Game Master will provide you with a setting outline, often presented with their own nine aspects concerning the world and theme. Once you have a general idea of your character, you’ll begin by writing out their nine core aspects. You’ll want to categorize each aspect from most important to less integral (Balance between Core themes and General information) of your character. These aspects will be relayed to your Game Master and used to create your character's powers, abilities, skills, class, and so on. After each aspect is created, the GM will offer you deals on skills and powers related to the campaign setting, you'll need to choose which deals you want to take and which ones you'd like to negotiate. Each aspect has a different level of bargaining power.

The Ultimate Aspect

• If you could boil your character concept down to just a few words, what would they be and why? The Ultimate aspect should encompass the heart and soul of your character and holds the greatest leveraging power when trying to broker the over all direction and playstyle of your character.

The Three Penultimate Aspects

• For each penultimate aspect, you'll want to try focusing on your character's defining features, such as their unique abilities or skills, their greatest obstacle or quest, and any other highly defining and important character traits.

• Do your best to rank each of these aspects, putting the most important at the top. This is done to convey what you want most in your character's design.

The Five General Aspects

• The General Aspects should focus on more informational aspects of your character; for example, what race are they? Why are you here in this campaign? Do they have impactful friends or connections? Do they have secondary skills or abilities? Are they well-versed in esoteric lore or scholarly pursuits?

• Again, do your best to rank each of these aspects, putting the most important at the top. This is done to convey what you want most in your character's design.

Once you've completed your nine aspects, the GM will work on converting those aspects into skills, powers, virtues, experiences, and persona. Each of these categories is a character path, and as each aspect is dedicated to one of these paths, the path is given more weight. Where your character is weighted determines the quality, quantity, and drawbacks of deals you make in that path.

Path of Power

• Deals with your character's overall power level. In Gremlocke, this is tied to your arcane connections (magic).

Path of Skill

• Deals with your characters combat niche, whether or not they are in the vangaurd (frontline), a Raider (Mid-Range) or Support (backline).

Path of Experience

• Deals with your character's overall wisdom, knowledge, and practical ability to exercise their knowledge.

Path of Virtue

• Deals with your character's core principles and grants them in-game advantages and disadvantages based on their virtues.

Path of Persona

• Deals with your character's social niche and how well they can question, infer information, persuade, and lie.

As C&F is a system largely designed for the world of Gremlocke, this section will provide a very broad outline of that world and the various magics, kinships, nations, and factions.

Kinships

• Elarrian: A people often defined by their ingenuity, determination, and endurance. Elarrian aren't often blessed with inherent magic, especially if their bloodline remains absent of arcanely infused kin; some are born as Coursers, and others often aspire to Astral Alignment. Elarrian present very similarly to humans and are usually tall, lean, with skin tones that range from Ebony to chestnut to terracotta to pearl, and everything in between.

• Kindred: A diverse people often defined by their innate connection to various aspects of nature. Kindred have the ability to sway the elements around them, especially those they grew up around and became accustomed to. Kindred often present humanoid, but can range widly in skin tones and extraneous features.

• Impish: A people often defined by their brilliant intuition, awareness, and resistance to the elements. Most Impish are kindred, but not necessarily vice versa. In lieu of being kindred, or born with the ability to course, the only inherent abilities afforded to Impish are inexplicable intuition. Their intuition affords them the uncanny ability to sense danger, detect lies, and get gut feelings on important choices (don't gamble with an Impish). The Impish often present with horns, tail, and orange or red skin; however, their skin tone can range wildly in any hue- and animalistic features (especially hooved feet) can be common for impish native to certain areas.

• Sylvian: A people disguised for their wings, connection to the winds, and free hearts. Sylvians are blessed with the ability to guilt the winds, similar to Kindred, but often with greater clarity. Sylphs often present as light-framed humans with horns, wings, and sometimes more apparent bird-like features (some can also present with other animalistic features).

• Nixie: An aquatic people, found in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Nixies can command the tides, the creatures of the abyss, and breathe underwater. Most nixies have access to potions and spells within their culture, which allow them to transform and come ashore, just as most shore-faring land dwellers have similar magics. Nixie's usually present with aquatic features like fins and scales around the face; some can look extremely fish-like, while others can present more human.

• Arcen: A sturdy people with indestructible bones and four limbs. A skeleton of an Arcen is comprised of the strongest known material, Arcainium, which is virtually immutable (however highly conductive, which is why all Arcen beware the dangers of lightning). Arcen are absent of any inherent magics, including coursing and will, in fact, nullify any bloodline connections to the arcane; they can, however, become aligned to the astral magics.

• Faerin: A crafty people known for ingenious inventions, imagination, and artistic ability. Faerin are blessed with the ability to Fold, a magic which alters the inherent properties of matter, allowing them to manipulate material into impossible shapes and practicalities.

• Shifter: A fast-paced people (literally) well known for their unbridled speed and dexterity. Shifters are blessed with the ability to shift, allowing them to increase their movement and perception to unprecedented speeds (especially talented shifters can catch arrows mid-flight). Shifters present in diverse manner similar to Kindred.

• Proxy: A people widely notorious for their ability to guise themselves and appear, think, move, and speak undisguised from others. A proxy's guise ability increases the more familiar someone is to them. While proxies can present as anything they desire, their common base form is that of an extremely pale human with ribbed features around the face and a long, thin tail.

• Gaian: A deeply spiritually connected people, Gaian are not even made of flesh. Gaians possess similar, if not heightened, abilities to Kindred. Gaian's present as people made of wood, stone, or in rare cases, crystal or metal.

• Ilken: Are a wildly diverse beast-like people, each presenting with aspects akin to animals. Ilken come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties as varied as the animal kingdom itself. Many Ilken are Kindred, and each presents with varying levels of animalistic features. Depending on what features a kindred has can vastly affect their abilities.

Magic

• Coursing: The ability to control elements, derived from the spirits inhabiting a courser's soul. There are six types of spirits that grant these powers: spirits of Fire, Lightning, Earth, Water, Air, and Void. Spirits of void grant no powers, but each of the six harmonizes with another, and air harmonizes with void- grant highly increased ability to control air. Fire and Lightning harmonize along with Earth and Water. If you have two elements that don't inherently harmonize, a harmony can still be formed between them with practice and training.

• Guilting: The ability to communicate and sway the elements of nature. The limits of Guilting are vast, but here is a small list of some spells which guilting comprises: Transmutation, Polymorphing, Summoning, Duplicating, Regenerating, Movement, telepathy, and many more.

• Thaumaturgy: Thaumaturgy contains an even vaster array of spell abilities and is incredibly dependent on what it is derived from. Thaumaturgy can only be performed by those who have attracted a muse, or other higher entity capable of performing miracles. Some muses are well studied and powerful enough to fuel entire nations of practitioners- this type of thaumaturgy is often referred to as pure-thaumaturgy and overlaps greatly with the Astral Alignments. When a particularly talented artist performs their art in a rhythmic manner, they can attract a lesser muse, granting them slighter abilities at first, but the more they practice their art, the more they feed their muse (which can be dangerous)- this thaumaturgy is known as Bardic thaumaturgy.

• Fate Casting: One of the Astral alignments, to become a fate caster, one must undertake training of rituals from an established fate caster. Fate casters can alter the cosmic scales of balance and change the outcomes of chance according to their whim; however, each casting of fate means they owe a debt to the balance of the cosmos.

• Kindling: One of the Astral alignments, to become a kindler, one must figure out how to unleash their heart's fire and let it flow through their aura. Kindlers have great resistance to corruptive magics, the power to heal dire wounds, and forge weapons to counter corruption.

• Evoking: One of the Astral alignments, a power used by phantoms, or people who walk between life and death. To become a phantom, one must have had a traumatic near-death experience. Evoking permits a phantom to sever the veil between the world and the afterlife, drawing out spirits and influencing their powers.

• Glimpsing: One of the Astral alignments, glimpsers see the current of fate and are shown likely futures. To become a glimpser, one must obscure the false lights to see the truth. Glimpsers can also scry through space and time or peer into people's souls and witness their deepest desires.

• Channeling: One of the Astral alignments, channelers harness the energy of their souls and channel through the world to exert great strength, durability, and precision. To become a channeler, one must take up sacred vows bound to a source of channeling.

• Internal Power:  A bizarre and eldritch power, Binders have the uncanny ability to bind information in their mind to the world. This Internal Power permits a Binder to read and alter people's thoughts, to invisibly bind their bodies, and to transmute matter. Internal Power also draws upon a unique source unrelated to almost all other magics and, therefore, is not susceptible to the same weaknesses as other magics are.

• Nations (WIP)

  • Syrma

  • Castolia

  • Ceebel

  • Marrika

  • Prell

  • Viel

  • Brigland (Tailom)

  • Verdanya

• Factions

  • Sovereign Society

  • Sentinels

  • Avestas Order

  • Incursers

  • Indigo Syndicate

  • Legion of Lacet

  • Sigmoth Trading Company

  • Plaos Expeditioners