One of the most important aspects of any RPG system is character creation, and it's a hard one to get right. For many players, their very first experience with a system will be opening straight up to building a character without reading any other rules first. This provides a challenge from a design perspective. The rules need to be robust enough to provide enough opportunity for customization, but without being too overwhelming for someone that's just winging it. Character generation has to be accessible to newcomers without being patronizing for veterans. It's a fine line to walk.
To help resolve this conflict, Realm of Runes breaks up the steps of character creation into a series of manageable chunks, and presents them in an order that's both intuitive, and designed to make sure a character comes out fun and functional, even if a player only picks options because they have cool-sounding names. Each step of character creation focuses on a specific aspect of a character, such as its physical being, what it's been doing up until now, what it's good at, etc. While these steps are presented in a specific order to help newcomers slide right in, the actual order is not a critical component of the process. A veteran, or someone with a clear vision, can skip around and do these steps in whatever order is most convenient. Flexibility is key.
ANCESTRY
Ancestry is a fundamental aspect of any character. Your physical self and the culture in which you were raised both help to shape values and capabilities. Realm of Runes makes use of many of the fantasy staples as character options, such as Elves, Dwarves and Orcs, and also throws in some more unusual options, such as the partial-vampire Dhampir and the plane-touched Elemental-Kin. While many of the ancestry options presented in Realm of Runes may have familiar names to RPG veterans, the way they are implemented is flexible and modular so that even characters of the same ancestry can be and feel very different from each other.
Each basic ancestry has a small set of things intrinsic to it. Things like movement speed, vision types, size and durability. Beyond this small list of commonalities, each character chooses a set of ancestry abilities that are specific to itself. These can be cultural, such as advanced training with certain types of iconic weapons, or biological, such as the ability to use an unusual sense as clearly as vision. It's through these choices that a character fleshes out its ancestry and makes it a personal reflection of who they are at the most fundamental level - but there is still room for customization.
Several of the ancestry options included, such as the Dhampir mentioned above, are actually hybrid ancestries - essentially a template that can be grafted onto any other ancestry. These hybrid ancestries are opted into during character creation by using your pool of ancestry feats to add them, rather than being selected as basic ancestries. Each one adds a suite of special abilities that make that hybrid ancestry unique, and also opens up a whole new pool of character customization options exclusive to that template. A Dhampir-Elf and a Dhampir-Gnome may both share the taint of vampirism, but can be wildly different in abilities and outlook.
Characters can also be adopted by another ancestry, allowing access to that ancestry's cultural aspects while keeping its biological abilities restricted. The ability to branch out from the basic ancestries through adoption and hybridization means that there is a staggering number of different ways to build a character's ancestry without presenting an overwhelming number of discrete packages to evaluate and choose from.
BACKGROUND
Characters do not (usually) just spring into existence at the start of an adventure. Each one has a history that pushed it into its career and honed its abilities, whether it liked it or not. This step presents several optional boons that can set your character apart from others that might follow a similar path. Did you research an unusual spell in your training? Did you inherit a special item important to your family? Do you know someone influential in the setting? These options are designed to give your character a bit of a personal twist, but also to hook it into the world it's a part of.
Writing an extensive backstory is not always something that new players want to do. It can be daunting when you're just learning the ropes. Providing a few mechanical options that are incentives for giving your past some thought helps make characters feel real and grounded, and is one of the many ways that Realm of Runes avoids falling into the trap of cookie-cutters.
CLASS
Ancestry is who you are, and Background is where you've been, but class is critical for determining where you are going. Like ancestry, classes have a short list of fundamental things that are common across all members of that class. After that, they use the same modular approach to build a version of that class which is unique to your vision. Realm of Runes presents many staples of fantasy RPGs, such as wizards, clerics, barbarians and alchemists, but each one has a universe of possibilities that allows for diversity and specialization within that framework. Two characters of the same class can have such dramatically different abilities from each other that a party made up of one class, such as a troupe of bards, might not have any overlap or redundancy. Class makes up such a vitally important aspect of a character in Realm of Runes that they each will get a moment in the spotlight in future blog entries.
DETAILS
This step helps to finish out a well-rounded character. It is the last step the influences a character's Ability Modifiers, but also provides some additional points of customization through a boost to skills and general abilities. These details are yet another knob that can be turned to make your character stand out from the sea of potential characters. These aspects will be explored further in future blog entries.
EQUIPMENT
Once your character is well defined, it's time to gear them up. Each character in Realm of Runes has a fixed amount of starting cash to spend on things like weapons, armor, adventuring gear, and chemical or magic items. If you're following the steps in order, your choices so far will give a good idea of the sorts of gear your character wants to carry. Conversely, a veteran player might start with equipment and then build a character that uses that equipment excellently. Items in Realm of Runes provide further points of divergence for customization going forward, as areas such as weapon and armor categories unlock additional, exclusive abilities that reward increasing levels of specialization during character advancement.
CHARACTER ADVANCEMENT
Once you've made a character and start adventuring with it, your ability to customize that character is not finished. As you level up, you'll be able to further specialize many important aspects of your character, and you're always making new choices. At each level, a character either gains a class feat, to further specialize in a class, or a general feat, to pick up important abilities useful to characters of any class, such as a combat style. At every level, a character is able to improve its diverse array of skills. Most levels also unlock entirely new swathes of abilities to choose from, which are added to the pool that were already available.
Now that we've covered the highest-level overview of Realm of Runes, it's time to start taking some deeper dives into specifics. These more in-depth explorations will alternate between option explorations, such as examining the various classes and ancestries, and more esoteric concepts, such as proficiency, skills and magic. There's a lot to cover, so we're going to start posting these blogs more frequently, too. We'll start the esoteric explorations on Friday with an examination of Ability Modifiers and Proficiency in Realm of Runes, so stay tuned!
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