Well, I finished flowing the text to Section One of Chapter One tongiht. I am putting all of the footnote boxes in next, with the hope of finishing the section by the end of the year. And for your enjoyment, sans extras, here it is: The text from Chapter One, Section One, Character Creation Summary:
The character creation process starts when you sit down at a table with a pencil and an Ära Knochen™ character sheet. You can either photocopy the Ära Knochen™ character sheet at the end of each section, purchase a book of pre-made character sheets most likely available wherever you purchased this game, or just use a piece of ruled notebook paper.
Step One: Determine Traits
The first step to making your character requires you to determine your character's age, sex, height in centimeters to the nearest centimeter, and weight in kilograms to the nearest kilogram. These are referred to in the game as your character's required traits, as the values you select are required elsewhere in later steps to complete your character
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Once you determine your character’s required traits, you are free to designate any other traits of your character as you wish, including his eye color, hair color, complexion, hair style, and any distinguishing marks or scars.
Step Two: Determine Stats
The next step is to determine the numbers used to represent your character's natural abilities. These numbers, referred to as stats, reflect such things as his speed on foot, his range of perception, and his natural ability to perform tasks.
The first stats you need to determine are your character's attributes. Attributes are the basis for all of your character's natural abilities. For heroic humans, each attribute possesses a value from -10 to +10, with the default value of 0 being the average for a heroic human. Each attribute has a “partner” stat called a defense rating, which represents your character's natural ability to avoid taking damage from certain types of attacks.
The second set of stats you need to determine are your character's action limits, which reflect his capacity to interact with his physical environment.
• Your character's action load determines how much your character can lift and how lifting heavy things will affect his ability to perform other actions at the same time.
• Your character’s action move determines how fast he can walk or run and how running will affect his ability to perform other actions at the same time.
• Your character's range of sense reflects the distances at which he can perceive his environment without difficulty and the maximum range he is able to perceive.
The next two stats, your character's armor values (or ArmVs), reflect how well your character is able to resist physical damage. Your character has two armor values:
• Your character's ballistic armor value (ArmVB) stat determines his ability to absorb or otherwise resist damage from ballistic attacks, such as those caused by bullets, telekinetic attacks, or explosives.
• Your character’s non-ballistic armor value (ArmVNB) stat determines his ability to absorb or otherwise resist damage from falls and melee attacks.
Your character's remaining stats are referred to as damage capacities, and determine his ability to sustain damage and continue to function after his defense ratings fail to protect him from an attack or insult. Your character possesses two damage capacities:
•Your character's Stun Capacity (STUN) stat, determines how close he is to going unconscious. As long as your character possesses one or more points of STUN, he may continue to act unhindered
•Your character's Physical Capacity (PHYS) stat, determines how close he is to death. As long possesses one or more points of PHYS, he is alive.
Step Three: Determine Skills
After determining the values that reflect your character’s natural abilities, you need to determine the values that reflect his learned abilities. Each learned ability is referred to as a skill. Your character’s level of ability is represented by a number of skill levels he possesses in that skill.
Language Skills
Before determining your character's skills and skill levels, you must designate your character's native spoken language (the one he speaks most fluently). Your character begins play with the ability to speak this language at a skill level of 0. While your character begins play with the ability to speak his native language, he does not automatically gain the ability to read and write his native language. You must select reading and writing the language as a separate skill if you want him to be able to do so.
Once you select your character’s native language, you may to select the rest of his skills. Both the number and variety of skills available to your character will depend on the method you use for creating your character.
Step Four: Determine Aspects
Most heroes have something unique about them that separates them from “normal people”. These unique abilities, whether magical, spiritual, supernatural, cinematic, or superhuman in nature are reflected in the game by Aspects.
Section Five: Possessions
Your character's possessions are broken down into two types.
Possessions on person are anything your character is carrying on him. This includes his clothes and even his underwear. If you don't put something on your character sheet, your character does not have it, so don't forget anything, from his socks and underwear to the coins jingling in his pocket.
Holdings are the things your character owns that he does not carry on him. This includes his home, vehicles, pets, or anything else either too big to carry on his person.
Step Six: Director Debriefing
Now you are almost ready to play. As has been said before, Ara Knochen is a world of high heroics, where characters walk away from swordfights and gunfights with nary a scratch. It is a world where aging has little to do with a character's abilities. It's a world where mystic powers are plentiful but not uber-powerful.
But sometimes, different gaming groups or directors will want to alter the mood of the campaign, whether to make it more or less deadly, ramp powers up or down, or alter the level of realism. In these cases, once you have completed your character, she may have all penalties or bonuses she may add to your character after it has been created.
If she has any such modifications to make, this is the step where she will either verify changes were properly made during the creation process, or apply other effects (such as those of aging) to your character.
And with that said, after applying any modifications and obtaining the director's approval, you are ready to rock!
