Character Creation

Career
One of the things you’ll need to decide during character creation is what ‘career’ you have been training to do. As noted above, there is a limited range of training in the village. Available careers include Alchemist (i.e. herbalist), Beast Handler (i.e. animal breeder), Crafter (e.g. basket weaver, blacksmith, brewer etc.), Farmer, Herder, Hunter, and Physician.

For the purposes of this game, all characters get the Literacy skill as a cultural and professional skill, even if their career would not otherwise offer it. All children in the village are taught basic reading and writing. Languages, other than the ‘common’ tongue, are unavailable however.

Note that ‘career’ is only one of the things that define your character. You also get discretionary points to spread around other skills based on your culture (Civilised) and the "Standard Skills". That means if you want to be a sneaky character, you can put points into those skills, it’s just not what you were being trained to do by your parents.

Combat Styles Combat Styles dictate what weapons you know how to use. Different weapons and combinations of weapons require different training. Other than hunters, there is little weapon training in Fristad, however characters can crate a weapon style by choosing two of the following weapons and a special ability:

Weapons:

 Bolas, Club, Knife, Long Bow, Quarterstaff, Sling, 2H Spear

 Special Abilities:

 Defensive Minded, Ranged Marksman,  Trained Beast

The further a weapon, or combination of weapons, is from a style you are trained in, the more difficulty you will have using it/them. For example, if you were trained in broadsword and picked up a scimitar, you would be able to use the scimitar without penalty as, while different weapons, they are similar enough that they can be used in a similar manner. If you were to pick up a flail however, you would be likely to suffer penalties..

Should you wish to be trained in weapons other than those above, you will need to justify why you know a particular weapon/combat style and pick it as a "hobby skill" in the last phase of character generation. I am currently thinking of allowing two hobby skills, rather then the one typically given out at character generation.

Weapons that are likely to be used in an agrarian farming society (e.g. quarterstaffs, slings etc. for herders) are more easily justified than weapons of war (battle axes, swords, maces, shields etc).

After character creation, weapons can be learned individually (1H Spear) or in particular combinations (e.g. 1H Sword + Shield) simply by spending advances on increasing the base skill. You can also learn additional special abilities (such as those above) by spending 3 advances.

Character Sheets and Stuff Copies of character sheets and stuff can be found at the following link; http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/downloads.php. Note that while there is a firearms download, they don't exist in the Kingdom.