The Basic Path

Before you get deep into creating, or even ideating, a Hero, you should do a handful of things:

1. Read this page thoroughly and ask me questions if you have any.

2. Present 3 Archetypes to me for consideration. Discuss and revise as appropriate.

3. Present the Archetypes to the rest of the players for consideration. Discuss, revise, and select one.

4. Complete your hero's Simplified Backstory (see below).

5. Once you have done those things, build out the mechanics according to the game system rules and House Rules.

You Start As Heroes

Some truths that must exist about your Heroes:

• Your Heroes maybe newly minted or already Sentinels, but not a mix.

• We'll start at level 1. I don't think we need the slow start rules.

• Your Heroes must already know each other but might not be a formally established team.

• Your heroes must have personalities that will mesh and work well together in dangerous situations. Team cohesiveness and implicit trust during these situations is required.

• There may be minor disagreements and even some secrets within the team, so long as they do not affect dangerous situations.

Director’s Advice

• A party of specialists with distinct, non-overlapping abilities will fare much better than one with redundant skills. I recommend having at least one tank, one healer, and diverse damage-dealers covering melee, ranged, physical, and magical attacks..

• Here are my recommendations for building your team's capabilities:

  • This setting is highly magical. You will encounter all manner of creatures as enemies or allies.

  • Extraplanar (extradimensional?) travel will probably be a thing. It might not work exactly the way RAW does. For example, a spell that transports you to another plane will not be viable or functional or even an option. There will be other ways to do this.

  • I made the setting-specific House Rules for a reason. Options they provide will be beneficial to have in the party, but probably don't need to be replicated on every hero.

• When it comes to Familiars, quality trumps quantity. Fewer Familiars in the party means each one can be more unique and powerful.

• I welcome creative interpretations of these guidelines and extensions to game rules, particularly regarding Culture, Complications, Career, Perks, Skills, and Titles.

Character Archetypes

An Archetype is the highest-level description of a Hero. It should be just enough to give you and the rest of us playing the game a general description of the Hero, understand the Hero’s role in the party, and know a single fact that is the motivation behind the Hero’s choices. Here are a few examples of an Archetype statement:

• My Hero is a Dwarf Conduit who serves the god Hero. He protects the innocent from the darkness no matter the cost or risk.

• My Hero is a Human Elementalist who suffers from wanderlust. Contrary to the advice of his mentors, he believes that the best way to re-discover the knowledge of the past is to find it in the world, not research it in a musty library.

• My hero is an Elf Shadow who has learned the wisdom of a cautious approach. She makes sure she knows all she can about a situation before taking irreversible actions.

Backstory, Simplified

We should leave plenty of room for our Heroes' backstories to grow. After all, when we're creating Heroes for this brave, new world, we know almost nothing about the world. How are we supposed to make a lengthy, detailed back-story that fits?

Your Hero's initial back-story should consist of two things:

1. Their primary motivation, which you'll record as part of your Archetype.

2. A single, short sentence that is a fact about your character.

Given those two points, we can fill in your backstory over time. Once we get it filled to the point I can make it come back at you in interesting ways, it probably will.

For advice about how to approach this, consider reading The Angry GM's article on the Two-Note Player Character.

Questions for Heroes

When creating your heroes, consider the following questions. It's not completely necessary that you answer any but the Greenstone one.

1. How did they become adventurers (i.e. acquire heroic skills)? This is usually prohibitively expensive.

2. Did they get any formal adventurer training? Academies exist in the largest cities, but they're extremely expensive. Very few adventuring-focused aristocratic families have their own training programs.

3. Why are they in Greenstone?

The answers to the wealth questions above can't be "debt" - it's not really a thing in this world. Any character build-time choice that adds +1 Wealth is an easy answer.