Step One: A Sneak Peek

I went to the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side of Chicago today. During the visit, I found myself inspired by the Theodor Seuss Geisel (many of you will know him as Dr. Seuss) exhibit. While there were a number of prints that he kept specifically to be only shown to the public after he died (fascinating man, actually, beyond the art), the thing that really inspired me besides the whimsy of his art and his social conscience, was the reason he used a pen name rather than his own.

According to the exhibit, he had wanted to save it for the "greatest novel" he had intended to one day write. But life and success in his other endeavors resulted in the novel never coming to realization. After reading this, I started thinking about HiBRiD and realized that the very same thing could happen to me. Well, maybe not the success from the authoring standpoint, but from the standpoint of not ever completing that which I intended.

As a result, I decided to start putting the primary text for the character creation rules here for you, my readers, as I progress through the writing process.

So, without further adieu, here are excerpts of Step One of character creation using both the Quick and Custom Methods for the HiBRiD Basic Ara Knochen game...

Step One: Determine Traits

Traits represent your character's appearance. While some traits are required for purposes of game play such as your character's height and weight, all of the other traits of your character are up to you, such as his complexion, eye color, and hair color and style.

The character creation process starts when you sit down at a table with a pencil and a blank character sheet and decide upon your character's age, height in centimeters to the nearest centimeter, and weight in kilograms to the nearest kilogram. After you determine these traits by the method of your choosing, you may complete your character's appearance any way you wish.

Section One: The Quick Method

This method is designed solely to get you a character ready for play in the least amount of time as possible.

Step One: Traits

Your character, as well as any others created using this method may be of any age, but will always weigh seventy kilograms and stand 172 centimeters tall. All of the other miniscule details of your character's appearance that make your character unique but have no effects on game mechanics or rules of play are up to you. What color are your character's eyes, hair, and skin? Does he have any scars? Record all of these details in the appropriate spaces on your character sheet.

Have fun with this step. Once you have dotted your i's and crossed your t's,...get ready to dive in!!!!

Section Two: The Personalized Method

Step One: Traits

Before you begin, it helps to think of how big or little you want your character to be in general descriptive terms (e. g. as big as a football player, as short as a jockey, as little as an Olympic gymnast, et cetera) rather than a number.

Once you have decided on whether your character will be a male or female and have a firm picture in your mind of your character's size, choose one of the Body Archetypes provided in the “A Little Bit More” box*** that is the closest to what you imagined, and copy down the traits listed for that Body Archetype onto your character sheet.

Now, determine your character's age, then complete the details of all your character's other traits in the appropriate spaces on your character sheet.


***The "A Little Bit More boxes appear in the left margin for each step and provide extra information to help the guide the players in making their decision when creating their character, such as relating metric and English units, describing character attributes, explaining the different types of skills or aspects, et cetera.