Character Creation

Creating a character in Triumvene is a mix of both setting stats for the game later, and storytelling for the purposes of getting to know the person you're going to inhabit. It requires the player to think about what they want their character to be like, but also allows the world and the luck of a dice to play a role too.

Triumvene does this through its magic system, called Manipulations. When you create a character, in the background the system creates a random assignment of stats and options for every potential magical power you could pick. As such, even two players with exactly the same Manipulations, won't have exactly the same utility or detail to them.

It's also worth pointing out here that there's no ability to progress any of your stats once they're assigned - everything you set at the beginning is fixed for your campaign. Now, let's take a look at the narrative side of creating a character.

The Backstory

Details

In the first part of character creation, you'll need to think about who your character is. What's their name? Do they have any nicknames? How old are they, and how old do they appear? What do they look like? What are their motivations and goals?

These will give you a steer on how to play your character, and make them more than a list of stats. You can get started on this with our list of 18-ish character backstory questions.

A Treasured Item

The next element to creating a character is to give them something to carry, which means something to them. It might be something weighty and deep-seated, like that the weapon they travel with is their mother's sword, gifted with her dying breath along with a list of names to be avenged, or it could be something light and cheery, like a locket they bought at a stall, which reminds them of their days at university and their oldest friends.

This creates some flavour and a chance to build an element of narrative to your character, building out the details into a story about at least one moment from their life.

A Secret Held

The third and final narrative part of creating your character is deciding on something they don't want revealed. Every character has things they'd rather other people in the world didn't know. Knowing what your character's secrets are gives them motivation beyond just why they want to achieve their goals.

Through these stages, your character will slowly emerge from being a bundle of stats and interesting magic, and become a fleshed-out, rounded person, whom you'll inhabit when you play.

Now that we've had the fluffy side of the character creation process, let's take a look at the detail...

The Details

People

The species you belong to. This can modify the base Talents stats detailed below. See the Peoples & Nations sections for further details.

Name

The name your character is known as. This can be pretty much anything you want, depending on the system, but examples of types of names for the Triumvene peoples is given in the Peoples & Nations section later.

Stats

You will have seven values to assign: Diplomacy, Fitness and Knowledge, and the four Combat Skills. You have seven values to assign across those seven areas: one 3, three 2s, and three 1s. You can place them wherever you choose, so you could for example have:

Picard Amos Boromir Merlin
Diplomacy 3 1 1 2
Fitness 2 2 2 1
Knowledge 2 2 1 3
Unarmed 2 3 2 1
Armed 1 1 3 1
Ranged 1 1 1 2
Defence 1 2 2 2

...or anything else which takes your fancy.

Talents tell of your character's abilities and experience in specific areas of life, and come in three forms - Diplomacy, Fitness and Knowledge. Combat has four types, which outline your abilities with regards to Unarmed combat, Armed combat, using Ranged weapons and Defence against being hit.

Diplomacy

Many different peoples inhabit the worlds you play in. Your diplomatic abilities will allow you to get your way in life. Be charismatic to charm others, intimidate to scare others into bending to your will, or perform poetry or music to act, lie and cheat your way through the world.

Fitness

A great person of the world needs more than just their mind to survive. Your strength allows you to overcome foes, stamina to out-last them in the fight or in fleeing, and dexterity will let you react rapidly as your enemies try and attack you.

Knowledge

A sound mind and knowledge of the world will give you the tools to survive when brawn alone would fail. Understanding the calls of the wilderness allows you to track your prey and control animals, whilst knowledge of healing will let you tend wounds that would be fatal otherwise, and a perceptive mind will let you see things where the eyes of others would glance past unknowingly.

Manipulations

The worlds of The Imperial System are rent and fractured. The physical rules that normally apply are more guidelines than laws. With enough emotional force, a person become capable of bending and breaking them. Doing so uses Cohesion (see earlier).

For details on how these work, and what manipulations are available, see Physical Manipulations.

Weapons

Swords, knives, shields, pole axes, war hammers, bows, pistols, rifles, shotguns, flamethrowers, grenades... Any and every kind of weapon exists within the world.