This is a complete rewrite of my character musings posts from October 2022 found on my ko-fi. Hopefully, this will be a bit easier to digest.
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In NovArchaic game design, I want to put characters first. That isn't just player characters, but nonplayer characters as well. NovArchaic is very much a "crunchy" story-focused TTRPG, where the parts of the story matter to the mechanics. But how do I do that in a tabletop RPG?

Definition of a Character

First, we got to define characters, and what builds them. In a story, especially in TTRPGs, there are three big questions for the character. Where the character started, What have they learned/what can they do, and what guides them? With those questions in mind, let's break down the different parts of a character in NovArchaic.

Attributes

In NovArchaic attributes are numerical descriptors of things about the character in a broad sense. There are two main types, primary attributes, and secondary attributes, that a character has. Primary attributes are the primary ones, as all characters should have them, while secondary attributes might be ones a character may not have a full amount of them.

Primary attributes are split further into three main groups that are somewhat common in TTRPG design, Physical, Mental, and Social attributes. Each group has one attribute one is the power, and the other is the prowess of the grouping. Secondary attributes are not split into groups in the same way, as they are a lot more varied.

Unlike other systems that have attributes, or in certain games "Ability Scores", attributes don't auto-add themselves to skill rolls. Instead, they do special things within certain actions (like adding themselves to damage or increasing your speed).

List of Primary Attributes

  • Strength | Physical Power
  • Dexterity | Physical Prowess
  • Intellect | Mental Power
  • Wisdom | Mental Prowess
  • Presence | Social Power
  • Charisma | Social Prowess

Examples of Secondary Attributes

  • Language, which used to measure language proficiency
  • Affiliation is a social secondary attribute to measure connection to an organization or other type of group
  • Relationships are a social secondary attribute to measure connection to a person
  • Devotion is a social secondary attribute to measure connection to a deity or other spiritually connected creature.
  • Fame is a social secondary attribute to measure how popular a character's name.

Skills

Skills are the training and capability a character has to perform actions. For the most part, every skill is chosen to be allowed to be a bit broad, but actions are designed with very certain skills although some substitutions are allowed.

Current Skill List

  • Art
  • Athletics
  • Command
  • Computer Science
  • Craft
  • Daunt
  • Deduction
  • Discipline
  • Drive
  • Endurance
  • Grapple
  • Insight
  • Incantation
  • Law
  • Magical Theory
  • Melee
  • Tactics
  • Navigation
  • Negotiation
  • Nurture
  • Perception
  • Performance
  • Program
  • Ranged
  • Religious Studies
  • Scholastic
  • Science
  • Seduction
  • Social Trends
  • Stealth
  • Subterfuge
  • Thrown
  • Unarmed

Traits

Character traits are modifications to the normal character rules for a character, think of like feats in other tabletop RPGs. There are currently three broad types of traits, Background, Action, and Skill. Action traits give a character a new action that they can perform, and skill traits modify the use of a skill or action in unique ways.

 

In terms of answering the question about where a character came from, and their past, the background traits are the way to answer some of this. There are a few different types, listed below, but most of them will add in secondary attributes and maybe skills.

Types of Background Traits

  • Education
  • Family
  • Heritage
  • Personal
  • Mentor
  • Occupational

Shard of Origin

A Character's Shard of Origin is what fracture of reality that character is from. Currently, a shard of origin has no mechanical benefit but guides the character on what options they have when designing them (some species are rare in some shards than others). In the current write-up of NovArchaic, there are only three shards of origin options: The Core Shard, Elfheim, and The Scrapyard.

Culture

A character's culture is a broad-stroke grouping of character benefits from where they come from. The list that a character can have is based on what shard of origin the character is from. A character's culture can give things like language, skills, and more secondary attributes. 

Species

I have talked about different species options, though I did recently realize I missed one. A character species might modify some actions or adds others, but it would never change a character's skills. 

Specializations

Recently I did talk about specializations, but to quickly say: specializations are close to classes from other tabletop RPGs, but are not assumed as a part of a character on a level basis. It is something else you can have a character learn. Characters are major changes to a character and will change how the character approaches different things.

Wealth & Wealth Kits

Wealth is really only used in character creation to get different starting items and purchase the new wealth kits. Wealth kits are still something I am working on, but they fit in a material version of the cultural concept for a character. It would be a "load out" that would have things like a state ID or driver's license.

Goals

All characters have goals. In NovArchaic, goals are used to figure out what a character needs to do to gain more improvement points which are used to gain improvements on a character, like increasing skills or gaining traits. 

Goals are supposed to be something that a character needs to take a good bit of time to accomplish and should be something that has a definitive end.

Good Goal

I want to defeat the Fae that tricked me into a binding contract.

Bad Goal

I want to get stronger.

What Separates Types of Characters

Overall, lower-importance characters need to worry less about some of these parts. You may not need to decide where the bandit lives or all the connections they have, but it might be useful to know why they are a bandit (is it attached to a goal of theirs) or maybe where they grew up, to know how well they know certain things or what languages they speak.

 

-Technomancer Kyle