Characters must suit the setting and tone of the game.
- Be mindful that playing a joke character when the everyone is trying to have serious tone, or vice versa, can ruin the mood and spoil others fun.
- Bring a fantasy character to a fantasy, bring an adventurer to an adventurer, etc.
- Your character is from the setting, and so your character would have values and beliefs of a typical person in the setting, not modern-day earth.
Characters must be able to work as a team.
- The intent is to foster collaborative playstyles rather than adversarial playstyles. Consider creating a character who is either a friend or family of another player character, or an ally with common loyalties, goals, and/or values.
- No anti-heroes, loner characters, or overly greedy or selfish characters.
- The character's morality or alignment must not be incompatible with the party.
- Don't commit to your character's quirks to the party's detriment.
You are an ordinary person from the setting.
- An ordinary person means a regular dude, not a caricature or parody
- You do not start out great or heroic but have the opportunity to earn greatness.
- The first few play sessions will be your backstory where an opportunity or conflict has come along, and now you're an adventurer.
- All participants begin the story with the same information and understanding, which can help manage expectations. They learn about the world together and figure it out together.
- Character's change over time can be better appreciated because each of them will be a point of comparison to the others.
- This is also about simplicity; the GM does not have to weave multiple backstories together.
Characters must be ambitious.
- Each character needs a long-term goal, and they need to pursue their goal through play. Work with your GM to create a goal for your character that you think is fun and that suits the game.
- Simple goals are great. Finding treasure or solving a mystery are excellent goals.
- The intent of PC goals is to make sure that the GM is preparing content that the players find interesting.
- When a goal is achieved, the player must find a new goal for their character with input from the GM.
If your character dies, create a new one using the same rules.
- At the start of the game, create a backup character who has the similar origins and etc. as the party for cohesion, and keep them on the metaphorical bench until they need to be swapped in.
- An established NPC ally of similar experience to the players can make a great replacement PC.
