Personal story

Playing out the twists and turns of your character's personal story is the principal pursuit in Song of Avaria. The world's wider events may touch your character's life in ways both large and small, but it is the experience of their own trials and tribulations, dreams and goals, joys and sorrows that lie at the center of the game. This playing out of the story of your character's life is reflected in Avaria's Story system. Not only is it a concrete way to chart meaningful events and aspirations in a character's life, but it is one of the chief means of gaining experience!

So how do you pursue a story?

Identifying a story

The first thing to do is think about something relevant to your character that you'd like to develop and play out in the world. This could be a dream or ambition, a personality trait, a hardship to overcome (or not!), or practically anything else. It can be as big or as small as you want; the only thing that matters is that it's meaningful to the character in some way. Just to give a few examples of the almost limitless possibilities, as your character you might:

• want to improve your derelict neighborhood.
• want to learn to read and write.
• have a phobia of deep water and never want to get on a ship for fear of drowning.
• be lonely and want to make more friends.
• scheme to smuggle forbidden texts into the city.
• have once been mugged in a dark alley and now want to improve the lighting of city streets.
• have a chronic health problem that you wish could be healed.
• be desperately in love with someone and want to win their affections.
• have grown up apart from your people and want to reconnect with your heritage.
• feel uneasy about a current political situation but not know what to do about it.
• want to find the ingredients to brew the perfect cup of tea from your homeland.
• dream of one day visiting the hidden kingdom of the dwarves.
• want to devise the perfect prank to get back at a rival.
• want to join a local organization.
• be convinced that evil jinn are everywhere disguised as ordinary people and animals.
• be terrified of scorpions and want to do something about it.
• want to make someone happy by finding or creating the ideal gift for them.
• struggle against deep feelings of melancholy.
• have inherited a strange object and want to learn more about it.

Your character could also be responding to in-game events they've witnessed or been a part of -- for example, maybe they had an odd dream they'd like to understand, or they might have been present at a rally encouraging violent protest again local authorities, or maybe the town's bank was robbed and they want to get the money back. Again, the possibilities are nearly endless!

Creating a story

Whatever your motivation, you will start simply by recording it. That is the beginning of a story 'arc'.

Pursuing a story

A story arc can have many 'developments' over time, and you can record those as well. You might meet people along the way who impact this particular story Arc, and you can attach relationship 'impressions' to developments. You can also attach logs, and other events that may be relevant.