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Stoic Currently
High Concept: Student of Mythology
Trouble: Can't Accept Anything Less Than the Truth

Where we are in the Character Creation process: Background

Now, you should name your character if you haven't already, because now you need to come up with their background. Some of the info within the background may need to be altered slightly later, it is a possibility. We don't know where this is going to take place.

But what is your characters Background? As RPers, this is for the most part at least, a known issue, and one we're well versed in. But I'll go through exactly what your Background means within the rpg.

This phase covers the character’s youth; if your character is older than 20 to 30 at the time the game starts, this phase expands to cover much of his young adulthood. In an abstract sense, this first phase deals with the core concept for your character as a “normal person” and is an ideal launching pad for your character’s high concept if your having trouble coming up with it or if you picked one, but you don’t quite feel it’s the right fit for your character. Keep in mind this is your character's early history. Before they really came into their own, before they could in gaming terms "go on an adventure" we'll get there in the next steps.

Youth is when we’re most shaped by our family and our environment, take this chance to explore your and talk about your character’s family and your upbringing.

Some questions you might want to ask yourself:
What nation is your character from?
What region? What culture?
What were his family’s circumstances
like? (Rich? Poor? Scholarly? Isolated?
Pious? Political?) How big is the family?
(Small? Average? Large? Very large?)
What’s your character’s relationship with
his family? (Loving and close? Volatile?
Non-existent?)
How was your character educated?
What were your character’s friends like?
Did your character get into much trouble
in his youth?
If your character is supernatural, how
early in his history did he learn this? Did
this cause problems?

After you've written your summary for this time in your character's life you need to come up with an Aspect for it. Consider one that’s tied either to the most important or significant events of the phase or to the character’s national, cultural, or familial upbringing.

I'll briefly use my first character as an example:
My character is from South Dakota, loving family, good home, and every summer we'd go on a vacation. Mostly sightseeing within the United States. One year we take a trip down to New Orleans before Katrina hit. We took a trip of the Undercity, we separated from our tour group, we were lost, it was dark, we got attacked by a supernatural beastie. My character listened to his parents basically being brutally killed and eaten alive. When it was my turn on the chopping block I screamed and had my first experience of using magic. I knocked myself out of its grasp though I still would have died against that thing. Enter my to-be mentor. He kapows the thing(s) and saves the day. He recognizes my talent and takes me on as his apprentice. From all of this I imagine my character took a great deal of horrible memories from this event, but it would fortify into a strong motivator for me. If I could help it I wasn't going to let this happen to anyone ever again even if it meant going into horrible places I would rather stay away from, because I'm a wizard, I have power, and I'm going to use it. Thus, my aspect became Into the Darkness.

Hope this makes a good starting place, as always, any questions let me know.

For his background, Growing up my character lived in the more difficult part of town and believed in serving the public good by volunteering as a neighborhood watch and to report any incidents to the proper authorities. Aspect: Eyes of the Law
Once he was old enough he joined the local police force and trained to be an example that their duty was to serve and protect all who would be victims of crime. During a particular investigation, he and his team were searching a variety of buildings when they received an anonymous call. Upon entering he was welcomed by the most horrifying sight he and his team had ever encountered. The scene looked to be the remnats of a cult gathering, but in the center of it all were the lifeless victims who lay strewn on the grounds with wounds and marks he had never encountered before. This shook him to the core as to why anyone would do such a thing. The case was put under wraps and hidden away while he and his team were sworn to never reveal the incident causing him to question his standing. This further pushed him to investigate deeper into the strange practices of the occult opening a vastly new world he did not know of. Aspect: Reality is a shade of grey

For the story I guess I will be a part of an investigation in which my character joins a group of paranormal investigators and perhaps some of the other players in process. I might go with aspect: An Offer He Cant Refuse.

One thing Stoic I will say is with your story is, I think Codex Peril should be the title of the story rather than the aspect, but I really like it, definatively in the Dresden spirit---I say this for anyone who doesn't know, but the Dresden Files tend to be named with two words with an equal number of letters each; definitely not a requirement though heheh---try and make your story more concrete too, after all it is yours. Why is your character after the tome? What portion of mythology is it on? Why are people trying to keep you from the information, or are they just after it for themselves? Are they willing to kill? If so, have they killed someone already? Someone close? Who is it that is trying to stop you--not necessarily their name, but what are they or what do they represent? I could go on, but you get the idea, find out what your story is about and set the grounds for you to work to sort it all out and with the help of others, but don't necessarily worry about when they come in, that'll be dependent on the person, they add that extra bit to the story.

so is the story still on?

Okay, I've decided to make a character, since then we could actually probably get started after we get character creation done. So I'm going to post what I'm doing and I want your guy's opinions to make sure I don't go overboard or to see if what I'm doing sparks any ideas for you that I might use to tweak my character.

So for my high concept I was originally thinking Rent-A-Warden, kinda like rent-a-cop, but my idea has grown from that. I'm still thinking he is actually a warden, but rather he is focused on a rather no combative magic, healing. This being useful to the Wardens themselves and I was also thinking the title was partly to his families bloodline. He isn't necessarily well to do, but his family's abilities over the years have been highly respected by the wizard community and perhaps even the Fae. So this led me down a long line of thought which brought me to the historical figure Grigori Rasputin. I played around with it in my mind for a while and my thinking came to this, that the Rasputin family dresdenverse-historically speaking would be wizards, though Grigori was occupationally a monk which is related to religion. There I'm thinking he was the black sheep of the family in that respect. One also tends to think of how Grigori Rasputin died whether fable or not. So I'm thinking that in this bloodline they have some Fae heritage or some bloodline pact with one of the courts, probably summer. That give them a supernatural resistance to injury, disease, etc.. All in all, at the end of this I'm thinking more along the lines of
High Concept: Curatiomancer: Subpar Warden

I'm also thinking he's a bit older, probably looks like he's in his 40s to 50s. Probably a little over weight, kinda oldmanish in how he dresses. Someone who if you slapped a gray cloak on and called him a warden you'd think it absolutely absurd. Thusly
Trouble: You think I'm a joke.

I'm still trying to piece the background together, by debating history and and when he would have been born since wizards themselves normally live extended lifetimes many of them live several hundreds of years.

As far as character forms go I think I'll take part of stoic's usually for rp and throw in some things mostly for a quick reference for me. As follows:


If you guys think there is something that should be added or taken off of here let me know. Treat Background under aspects with the actual information too, Rising Conflict is the same.

Yep, thats what I figured heheh.

It may be that like you said people are afraid of the mechanics. There's a lot of planning involved and most people who join usually want to make a shorter profile. These are more for tabletop where you can spend hours together talking and discussing in real time. If you look how long it took us just to make our characters, there was a great delay between posts since we have to read and respond one at a time. Although I like the concept, it might be a little too hard to start. If I could I would really like to try this with my buddies over a weekend at the local shop. P{erhaps we can just modify it more so that less detail is needed and only key important points are needed.