Beginners in role-playing games are often overwhelmed by the character sheet. It seems to involve a lot of numbers and statistics (called stats) that don’t make much sense at all.
The World of Darkness character sheet is really the easiest one to figure out, though. All you’re dealing with is a rating system.
How witty is your character on a scale of one to five? How strong is he on a scale of one to three? There’s no number crunching involved, no percentages to figure out, and no endless stream of tables and charts to deal with.
The character sheet is broken down into several sections that help you determine your character’s abilities and skills. There are Attributes (like strength, resolve or intelligence), Skills (such as in computer, the occult or brawling), and other traits like merits (little things your character is naturally good at), flaws (quirks your character might have) and vices and virtues to add some extra spice.
Attributes
Click on the screen shot for a view of a basic character sheet. You’ll see a section titled Attributes.
Attributes are divided into 3 categories: Physical, Mental and Social. Each category contains attributes that your character already possesses naturally – everyone has a certain amount of physical strength, intelligence, or composure. Everyone has some kind of presence, dexterity and stamina. Each character, therefore, starts with one dot in each attribute.
You need to decide which will be your character’s primary attribute. Is he a construction worker or athlete? If the answer is yes, then his primary attribute would be Physical (Strength, Dexterity and Stamina). Is your character a bookworm? Opt for Mental (Intelligence, Wits and Resolve). How about an actor or politician? Then Social (Presence, Manipulation and Composure) would be the best choice.
Now you must start adding more dots beyond the free dot in each attribute. You’re given 5 dots for your primary attributes, 4 for your secondary, and 3 for tertiary. Keep in mind that one dot in any given attribute counts as “poor”. (Skills are a different story, because not everyone is a born computer genius, so one dot wouldn’t count as poor but rather a novice level.)
When filling out the attributes, be honest. It would be nice to have a large dice pool in strength or intelligence, but is that attribute true to your character? If she gets winded walking up a flight of stairs with a bag of groceries, chances are she won’t have five dots in stamina.
This initial introduction may show why we like for players to get to know their characters before building a stat sheet. Many of the decisions you need to make about dots, skills, stats and attributes aren’t clear until you’ve played the character for a while to understand exactly what he or she is all about.
Skills
Take a look at the sample character sheet again. Along the left-hand side, there is a column titled Skills.
Skills are how the character expresses his or her attributes to the world. Many skills take time to learn. A character isn’t born with the knowledge of how to use a computer, drive a car, or shoot a gun. If they fight well, it’s because they learned how to do it over time, whether it was brawling on the street or in formal training.
Every character will have a different focus on the types of skills they do best. When filling out this section, you need to determine a primary (11 dots), secondary (7 dots) and tertiary focus (4 dots).
Skills are also broken down into Physical, Mental and Social categories.
When filling out this section, pay attention to your character’s history. You may think a character with kick-ass martial arts is cool, but if his history and background doesn’t explain where he might have learned these skills, giving dots to your character in martial arts won’t make any sense at all.
Where did he learn this skill? Who was his teacher? Did your character excel in training through his teen years or was it a half-hearted attempt at a hobby that was abandoned the moment something more interesting came along?
Unlike Attributes, your character doesn’t start off with any free points in Skills, nor does one dot mean that the character doesn’t know anything about that skill either. One dot merely indicates a novice. The character could have a general knowledge of the skill, could probably hold an intelligent conversation about it, but he or she is far from expert. Expert rank is reserved for those with four or more dots.
Some Skills are tricky, like Academics. Having no dots in Academics doesn’t necessarily mean your character has no education.
The core World of Darkness system explains it as such:
Dots in this Skill do not directly correlate to a given level of education. Your character could have entered a doctorate program but spent more time partying than studying, resulting in low dots. Conversely, a self-taught individual who read voraciously and studied intensively could have high dots without ever earning a diploma.
It’s a judgment call, and one you may want to ask your Storyteller about before investing dots.
As your character evolves and gains more experience, Storytellers may indicate you can add a new skill to your character sheet. Just like as in life, your character constantly learns and your character sheet evolves along with that learning.
You may also decide that you want your character to learn a new skill. When this happens, discuss options with your Storyteller. No one magically gains a skill, after all.
In tabletop games, skills are earned through experience points awarded at the end of each chronicle. In an online role-playing game like Escaping Reality, there is no experience points system.
Instead, the player declares that he or she wishes to learn a certain skill and that learning process is played out in game. The character has to find a suitable teacher, school, or resource to learn, and the player has to make sure the character has the means (whether financial or other) to do so.
Then the quest for knowledge is played out as a story of its own. Whether the character succeeds or fails all depends on the choices made during game play. A character doesn’t always get it right the first time.
If there is no mentor involved and the character is opting for a self-taught route, then the player has to make sure to play out the character’s attempts to learn and indicate exactly what the character is doing to achieve his or her goal.
Extras
Some extras on the stat sheet are there to add flavor and more of a challenge to your character’s profile. Items like Health and Willpower are mandatory and often come into play during conflicts. Health is more for tabletop games, but Willpower figures in when your character has to resist a temptation or resist a supernatural attack.
Merits and Flaws: Not every game requires players to choose merits and flaws. We happen to like them, since they add more flavor to the character’s personality. Our house rules are that you should try to have a good balance of each.
Merits are capabilities that your character has a knack for. These range from extra-sharp memory to a flair for learning languages. Merits can also have a bit of a supernatural bent (with the Storyteller’s approval), like clairvoyance or the ability to sense danger.
Flaws are just as important. None of us is perfect, and neither is your character. A flaw could be something as simple as a bad habit or as serious as a mental derangement or physical disfigurement. Simple flaws, like being aloof or socially inept, don’t need Storyteller approval. Others, like amnesia or a mental disorder, do.
Don’t take flaws lightly. Putting something down just because it sounds cool or different doesn’t always work well. You have to be sure that you can play this aspect of your character’s personality properly, and that it fits with your character’s personality from the start.
Some merits and flaws evolve over time too, so don’t be surprised if a Storyteller asks you to add one or two to your stat sheet.
Vices and Virtues: These are meant to add internal or emotional conflict to your character. They’re not easy to choose, either. For each vice or virtue, there are many shades of gray and where the balance tips is up to you.
For example, you could have a character with the virtue of Charity, but maybe he’s only being generous to fulfill his own ego, and thus his vice would be Pride. Maybe he’s always wanted to stand tall in the face of adversity (Fortitude) but can’t because he’s convinced himself the situation is hopeless (Sloth).
The potential combinations are extremely varied, once you start digging deep into your character’s background to learn what really motivates the individual. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.
You Try It
Now that you have the basics, go ahead and fill out a character sheet. See what you can do. If you have questions, post them here and we’ll walk through it together.
