Character Generator

Thie guide will help you get started creating your very own unique character within Avaria. It will cover the various steps in the process and help to further explain some of the concepts and choices involved.

Getting Started

You should have already created an account for yourself as outlined in the QuickStart Guide. Although you will most likely be using the web-based character generator, you may want to stay logged into the game at the same time so that you can ask any questions you may have over the GameHelp channel. The syntax to ask questions on that channel is simply GAMEHELP <message>. If there are any staff members online, or even more experienced players, someone will be happy to answer your queries. You can also post questions on the forums using your new account name.

Although it's a work in progress, this wiki can also help you to familiarize yourself with some of the basic lore and gameplay concepts. Some pages you might find especially useful in first imagining your character's identity and story include:

• Heritage: The many different playable peoples of Avaria.
• Sirdabi Caliphate: The general origin of all starting characters. Includes geographical and cultural information.
• The City of Omrazir: The primary RP hub in Avaria, where most of the game's storylines will eventually be centered. In alpha phase, all characters will start out on a ship that is leaving Omrazir, but this may or may not be their actual home.

As you proceed through the character generation process, you will be assigning most of the information about your character as outlined on the Character Information page.

Step 1: Origin

The first step in creating a character is to choose your origin. This is generally either the place where your character was born and raised, or where they have lived for some time -- essentially, it's wherever they consider home. Starting out, your origin will default to the Sirdabi Caliphate, where most of the roleplay in the game is centered. However, once you spend some time playing and earn Presence points through your RP, you will be able to choose to invest those points into your account to open up more origin options.

Step 2: Sub-Origin

Directly related to this step is the next one, choosing your sub-origin. Sub-origins are various smaller localities that fall under the wider umbrella of the origin you selected. These sub-origins might be smaller political units like a province, such as the province of Raziya where the game's main RP hub Omrazir is located. Or they might be a geographic locality such as the Gilded Plain in the southern continent of Idiri, or the High Hinterlands in Ruvera. Again, you will start out being able to choose from among the numerous sub-origins within the Sirdabi Caliphate, and later may access additional options.

Step 3: Name, Age, & Sex

These are important for defining the absolute basics of your character's identity.

Name

Next you get to choose your name. The chargen will supply you with a sample of names suitable for your origin and sub-origin. You can either choose one of these, or simply use the options provided for inspiration. Please note that your character's name should be relatively original in the sense that it shouldn't be a name taken from a famous character of fantasy or literature, unless the name is a very common one. For example, you wouldn't want to give your character a name like Aladdin, but giving them the much more common name of Jafar would be perfectly fine (as long as no one else has taken it already).

Age

When choosing your age, it can be anything between 16 and 80. Since time in Avaria passes at a 1:1 game time:real time ratio, you can make an older character without worrying that they're going to rapidly age themselves into senescence and death. Although age is largely an RP choice, it does influence the number of skill points you will have to spend later in chargen, with older characters receiving a few additional points to account for their longer life experience.

Sex & Gender

SoA offers you three options to define your sex: female, male, and intersex. This simply sets your biological sex, and how you roleplay your character's gender identity is up to you. After this, you'll be asked to rate how well your character's appearance conforms to typical gender norms. This is on a scale of 1 to 10, where a larger number means a stronger conformation to gender norms -- a 10 would be an extremely feminine looking female or a very masculine looking male, whereas a 1 would be a quite androgynous individual. The pronouns that you see for your character in the game will in turn be based off of this, plus other factors such as how your character is dressed. This can make for a very fluid gender appearance, or one that is emphatically male or female -- but in either case, how your character sees their own gender identity and presents it to other people is very much your choice.

Step 4: Heritage

Now it's time to choose your heritage! Heritage represents a character's ethnicity and to some extent their cultural background (in concert with their origin). This is an important choice, as the heritage you select will likely be very important to your character's identity and will definitely influence how they are seen by others. It will be identified in your character description, and some NPCs might interact with the character differently depending on whether the NPCs in question have positive or negative opinions about that heritage. Some PCs could have their own prejudices! The heritage you choose will also heavily influence what appearance traits are available in the drop-down menus as you set your appearance further on.

If you would like your character to have a mixed heritage, you can choose a secondary heritage to complement the first. Your character might well have a more diverse ancestry than that, but whatever heritage(s) you select will represent those with the greatest influence on the character's appearance (and possibly on their values, beliefs, and customs as well).

Like origins, not all of the heritages that exist in Avaria are available in chargen starting out. For your first character you will be able to choose from among those heritages that are most common within the Sirdabi Caliphate. If you invest Presence points into your account, this will eventually give you access to a larger selection of heritages too.

You can read a short description of the available heritages on the wiki, but if you would like more information please feel free to ask questions on GAMEHELP or to post them on the forums!

Step 5: Archetype

Your archetype is representative of your character's interests, skills, and career path. There are seven different archetypes you can choose from: Warrior, Knowledge Seeker, Rogue, Crafter, Healer, Socialite, and Spiritualist. Selecting one of these archetypes from the drop-down menu will give you a short description of that archetype. Based on whatever archetype you assign, you will then have a further choice of specialization, such as Public Servant for the Socialite archetype, or Tailor for the Crafter archetype.

You don't need to worry that picking a particular archetype will limit your RP opportunities or set your character's professional identity in stone forever. Mostly it serves to help you conceptualize your character, and decides the stats and skills that will be automatically generated for you on the following screens. You can then make any changes to those skills and stats that you want to.

Step 6: Stats

Assigning your character's statistics is next. These are fundamental attributes that reflect the core of your character's personality and ability. There are four classes of attributes: physical, mental, social, and ineffable. Each of these statistics has a chance to affect the outcome of various things your character might decide to attempt, from picking a lock, to landing a fish, to convicing an NPC to share information with you.

You will have a total of 75 stat points to assign to your character, and they can be set to any value from 1 to 10. For brief reference, a value of 1 in any given stat is considered abnormally weak, 3 is average, and 10 is almost incredible. This reflects the idea that PCs are a little out-of-the-ordinary in some way compared to the general populace -- even if it's just that they're extraordinarily lucky or incredibly composed, and are hopeless screwups beyond that.

Unlike skill points, you can never earn more stat points: the number you start with is the number you will always have. There will be occasional opportunities as you play to make small adjustments to your stats, but by and large you should consider your point assignments here to be permanent and choose accordingly.

Important Note: You should also be sure to keep in mind that stats are in-character in the sense that they should represent that character's actual strengths and weaknesses as an individual. That means that your roleplay should consistently reflect a character's stats, and vice-versa.

Step 7: Skills

This is where you get to decide on skills -- all the things that your character is good at, or simply has some trained ability in.

Innate Skills

First off, you get to pick three innate skills. These represent things that a character has an especially strong affinity or natural talent for. As a result, you can train them indefinitely past the normal 10-point cap, and they will cost 10% less experience to train than your ordinary skills. Setting innate skills is a one-time choice; you won't be able to change your mind later.

Assigning Skill Points

Now you'll distribute your points among the many options available to you. The archetype you chose will have determined the distribution you see now, giving you points in things which a typical person of that archetype might be skilled at. However, you can change this up however you want to -- the important thing is how you see your character, and what you think they should be good at.

For any skill on the list, you can invest up to 10 points. Again, 10 is the highest you can ever train any skill, except for those you have selected as innates (and even innates can only be set to 10 in chargen). The skill points themselves might represent formal training, under a master or in an academic setting, or simply the accumulation of experience in a skill by performing it over and over again and learning as one goes. A character with 10 points in a skill would be considered an exceptional master of that skill, while someone with one or two points would know just enough to make themselves useful but have much more to learn. There are three different types of skills available to you: Action skills, Weapons skills, and Crafting skills.

Action skills are a versatile set involved with performing various actions out in the world, from sailing to playing instruments.

Weapons skills give you some skill in various combat abilities, from the use of particular weapons to maneuvering in armor or general footwork.

Crafting skills will allow you access to certain abilities or recipes associated with a profession, whether its's lumberjacking or cooking.

The Skills page on the wiki will give you a brief run-down of each skill, as well as the stats that are often use with them in making a roll to see whether a given action succeeds or fails.

Important Note: One thing you may want to invest at least one point in is Education! This will ensure that your character knows how to read, and will be able to read any items written using their native language. If you want to play an illiterate character, though, you can leave it at 0. Generally speaking, playing an illiterate character won't handicap you too much, though it may be a bigger deal in a highly literate society like the Sirdabi Caliphate as opposed to a place like the Kingdom of Ensor, where many people get along just fine without being able to read and literacy isn't necessarily expected of ordinary people.

Step 8: Background Details

The background you furnish for your character is what really makes them interesting and unique. This is where you get the chance to explore your character's past experiences, their hopes and dreams for the future, their fears and flaws, and a host of other details that collectively define who your character is at the time you start playing. Please note that we understand if you don't have all of these things worked out in great detail at the time you first create your character! You will have some limited chances to revise your personality and background even after character creation, so you can add details and make minor changes as you play your character and in doing so learn more about them.

Personality

Your character's personality should be a brief explanation of their key personality traits, the general demeanor they display, and how their inner character manifests in their daily life. It should paint a broad picture of what a character is like, what moves and motivates them, how they come across to others, and any other details that you think are fundamental to describe who they really are. It doesn't need to delve into extreme detail on their every motivation or quirk, but should give a good idea of how the character tends to act and react. A character's personality profile is only visible to staff.

Private Background

Your private background, or private past, should furnish a basic biography of your character, and would typically include such details as the character's birthplace and parentage, influential people and events in their life, and some of the interests, goals, and fears that presently drive them. While the private background should be more detailed than the public one, it doesn't need to be comprehensive. We also don't expect that you'll know every single important thing about your character when you're only just creating them -- most players tend to keep developing their character's story as they play, and when you're brand new to a game it's natural to want to leave some parts of your character's history open-ended until you've immersed yourself more fully in the world.

The private background is just meant to help you flesh out your character, and to assist staff in understanding who they are, where they've come from in life, and what "makes them tick." If your character is the deceptive or secretive type, and their public background is consequently either somewhat fabricated or rather sparse, the private background is the place to tell their real story. It is only visible to staff, and cannot ever be viewed by other players. Staff may also use elements from your private background to tailor events to your character or otherwise interact with their personal story, so the private background is a great place to highlight points about your character that you're particularly interested in exploring through your roleplay.

Public Background

Finally you will write a brief public background that will sum up some of the more readily available information that might be discovered about your character. The information contained in the public background can in fact be learned by other PCs if they ask around about your character using the in-game rumor system. So with that in mind, you'll want to limit your public background to information that would be considered common knowledge, the sort of personal details which it would be relatively easy for anyone to discover or figure out even without knowing the character well personally.

Your public background is also tied into your origin -- in the case of a first-time starting character, the Sirdabi Caliphate. So these are things that other people around the caliphate might hear about your character, but if they traveled off to a completely different zone (such as somewhere in southern Idiri, or across the sea to Ruvera), people there would not have access to your Sirdabi Caliphate background.

Appearance

To be continued soon!