Character Creation

So first things first, you don't actually need to read any of the character stuff yet if you really don't want to. This game is designed so that all of that can be done first session as a group. So while I personally love to come up with eight hundred ideas beforehand and read all of the playbooks, you don't have to. And in fact, while coming up with a pretty good idea of your character is great, we won't actually know how your group came together until that first session, as there's a specific bit we go through as a group to decide. So don't get too rigid in your plans! Here's how character creation works in basic, for more detail wait for the first session or hit me up for the book.

Playbook

Similar to a class in D&D but where classes define how you deal with problems, playbooks are more about determining what your problems are. For example, a barbarian and The Bull are both big tough people who are great at physically fighting. But where a barbarian's abilities and features let you figure out specific ways they can be big and tough and good at fighting, The Bull's abilities and features are about how they have a hard time letting people in, why that's an issue, why it's sometimes an advantage, and which people do get through to them and why. Focus-wise, it's a system more grounded in character and story than combat, and the playbooks reflect this. Xon has a great breakdown of the canonical playbooks here, and I have a few homebrew options I've gathered which you can peruse here. For the full playbooks, hit me up.

Names and Look

Pretty standard stuff, you choose a name and an appearance and you fill 'em in. The look parts tend to be lists of options, feel free to circle one in each row or just write your own in.

Abilities

What you can do and how you fight. Usually your superpowers, although sometimes it'll just be something like 'Swords'. There will generally be a few options with the option to pick one or a couple, though some have a different format. If you have an idea for something that's not there let me know, and so long as it still works with and plays into the core themes of the playbook you chose I will probably be down to clown. A lot of abilities are very vague and left mostly up to interpretation, this is absolutely intentional and feel free to interpret away.

Labels

Labels! One of my favourite parts of this system! Okay so, labels are essentially stats. However, rather than representing some abstract fact about you, labels represent your self-image. And because you are confused teens figuring out who you are, labels are constantly going up and down in play. You can do things which shift your labels, and other people can also try and shift your labels for you. Anytime someone shifts something down though, something else is shifted up so don't worry about getting weaker in general. You just might get worse at specific things. All labels go from -2 to +3, your playbook will have a default layout and at the start you can add one point wherever. The labels are:

• Danger You see yourself as able to take down powerful threats, and/or as a threat to those around you.
• Freak You see yourself as able to do strange and incredible things, and/or an outsider who doesn't belong.
• Savior You see yourself as able to protect those around you, and/or willing to throw yourself away in the attempt.
• Superior You see yourself as able to figure out and control anything around you, and/or anyone.
• Mundane You see yourself as able to understand and focus on emotions, and/or boring and normal.

Conditions

Not super important during character creation, but these are what happen if a label would go down to -3 or +4, and they give you a penalty until they're dealt with. Seeing yourself entirely as a single extreme is bad for you it turns out! There's other ways to get them too, but none at character creation so let's move on.

Backstory Questions

Every playbook has a series of questions about themselves, as a way to start out your backstory and give me something to work with if you don't want to write out a whole backstory thing. A lot of these questions will ask you to decide something about the world - feel free to do so! If it contradicts anything I have I'll let you know or adjust on my end and we'll work out the coolest solution.

Picking Moves

As well several default moves everyone has access to, each playbook has several moves you can choose from as well as possibly a special thing. There should be pretty clear instructions on the playbook for what to do and how many to pick.

Moment of Truth

You can't do anything with it right now, but you should familiarize yourself with it because it's pretty important to your character's whole thing. The Moment of Truth is unlocked through leveling up, and once it's used you can't use it again. It is, essentially, your characters "oh shit" moment. For one scene you ignore the rulebook and just straight up narrate what happens. You can't narrate what other people do, and you should stay true to the established rules, but other than that you get to go ham. It's the moment you do something above and beyond. Your playbook will have specific instructions for what your moment of truth is like. After you use it, one of your labels is permanently locked in place, as you get a firmer grasp of who you really are. It's cool as shit, basically.

Team Moves

Similar to the Moment of Truth, you don't have any decisions to make here but it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with them. When you share a triumph celebration or a moment of vulnerability with someone, you trigger a team move. What this does specifically depends on your playbook, and it's a good idea to make sure the things you think your character cares about and the way they interact with people reflect in the team moves of the playbook you've chosen.

When The Team First Came Together...

So in my head everyone will be filling in sheets like, during session one since there's not a lot of time consuming stuff you need to do like in a crunchier system and it'll let everyone be able to talk through ideas and make sure it all meshes as we go. But with these next few it's literally impossible to do without everyone all together regardless of whether that idea pans out. On every playbook is a question for how the team first came together. In an order based on your playbooks, everyone will go and answer their question. If someone's open to it others can make pitches but the answer is up to that person to have final say on. Each answer should build upon the last for the story of how our team came together.

Relationships

Each playbook has two relationships on it, sentences with blanks in them. Fill them in with two other characters names, with their permission. With a few playbooks as exceptions these have no mechanical effect, they're just a good way to establish dynamics quickly, so while I'd like everyone to have two relationships you can change what the specifics of the sentence are. For example a lot of them have romantic ones, if you want to play someone uninterested in romance you can change like "I want to kiss them" to "I want to hug them" or even something entirely unrelated to the original like "I know my father sucked but I still hate them for killing him".

Influence

Influence is a resource that you can use to make others do what you want, or that others can try and use on you to do the same. By default all adults have influence over you. Influence is less about whether you like them and more about whether their words have an affect on you. Remember that the move to make someone do something is provoke, that doesn't exactly have always good connotations. You should give out at least what your playbook says, but you can always give out more if you want to. If your character cares about somebody's words and they don't have influence over you, you should change that. Influence is binary, so you have it or you don't.