Character Creation

Burning Earth Manifesto is a role playing game. That means that you will take the voice of a character and dictate their actions in a world that is very much unlike our own. Your character is one of many in a story, and the choices you make (if you have a good GM) will impact the world around you in ways that you might not initially expect. Violence may be required of your character, as the setting is a brutal one, but this is not always the case. Try to be prepared for any kind of event or encounter and immerse yourself into the world. The Burning Earth Manifesto game system was intended to provide a simple, intuitive set-up so that game play can begin in the first session, while at the same time retaining the flexibility and customization found in a more detail intensive system.

Step One: Envision your character.

Take a moment to consider the land where they come from, their history, their motivations, and the people that they know. Give them some kind of quirk, flaw, or defining feature. Try to understand the character beyond the selection of Abilities and Talents that you choose, as the characters of a movie or a book are never simply the sum total of a bunch of arbitrary statistics, and neither should yours. Your character is, first and foremost, a living member of a society, and the decisions you make during their creation are mostly explanations as to how they've made it this far and what they want to do with what they've done. Name them, decide their age, their gender, their physical appearance. Do they speak in rambling psychobabble or Clint Eastwood grunts? Are they nobility? Has anyone heard their name beyond the little village they grew up in --- and while we're on that, how is that little village doing now? The world is yours, so make any character you want, but try to be interesting.

Step Two: Allocate your Abilities

The abilities each characters have are:

Vigor represents is the physical prowess of your character. This deals with health and melee fighting primarily.

Agility represents the speed and maneouverability of your character. Agility impacts your Speed, Reflex, Defense, Initiative, and your attack rolls with Ranged weapons and Agile Melee weapons.

Perception represents your character's ability to examine your environment with precision. This ability effects your damage with Ranged weapons, how far you see in the dark or inclement weather, and your Reflex, Defense and Initiative.

Composure represents your character's ability to maintain sanity and control of his fears and emotions. This ability effects initiative, morale, resisting Agony, fear, manipulation, and many other things.

Reason represents your character's general intelligence, rationality, and creativity. This is a very flexible ability that may effect many other aspects of play and many skills.

Charisma represents your character's general likeability or attractiveness. This effects most social rolls.

All characters begin with a 5 in every ability and an extra three points to spend, but they may lower their ability values (to a minimum of 3) to grant them bonus points to allocate. No ability value may exceed 8.

Ability Modifier: Every point less than or exceeding 5 takes the form of a modifier, so for example 7 would be +2 and 4 would be -1, while 5 is 0. Generally, your ability modifier will be used more often than the value itself, so make sure to have that written down..

If its simpler, 33 ability points will be allocated in total, and no ability may be less that 3 or more than 8.

Step Three: Choose a Class Pack

Look around this page and select something that seems to fit your character. Don't worry if the class you choose seems like it doesn't exactly fit your character, as most of them are fairly flexible and you'll be able to customize your character further as you advance.

As it stands, you can find the class packs here.

BE WARNED: Class Packs are up to serious revision, so keep in touch for details.

Step Four: Select your skills

You have ten points and three specialties to spend (not including any gained from your class). Specialties are specific aspects of the skill that your character specializes in, and confer a bonus equal to the number of ranks you have in that skill in addition to the skill ranks themselves. An example of a skill with specialty ranks would be Stealth 1 (Hiding 2) or Athletics 3 (Throwing 1).

Rolling for skills usually requires a D20 + an ability modifer + skill value + skill specialties. In the event that your GM calls for a Vigor + Athletics (Throwing) for example, they mean to roll a D20 and add the modifier of your Vigor ability and your ranks in Athletics and any ranks you have in the specialty, if any.

There are some cases where your character used a skill in a way that would not at once be apparent. For example, Breaking Bad's Walter White is a ready example of someone who could make a Speechcraft (Intimidation) check using Reason rather than Charisma, even though Charisma is the generalized social ability. This is entirely okay, just ask your GM and role play specifically how you would go about this.

Below are the skills, and in the parenthesis are a few examples of specialties.

Academics (Anatomy, Chemistry, History)

Animalism (Bears, Crocodiles, Wolves)

Appraise (Ancient Artifacts, Paintings, Rifles)

Athletics (Lifting, Running, Throwing)

Craft (Blacksmithing, Fletching, Lithography)

Empathy (Discern Lie, Psychoanalyze, Sense Motive)

Larceny (Burglary, Pickpocket, Security Systems)

Medicine (Burns, Bullet Wounds, Lacerations)

Mysticism (Detect Aura, Open Rift, Chaos, Death, Elemental, Life, etcetera)

Perform (Dance, Guitar, Speech, Ritual)

Politics (Banners, Nation Histories, Noble Lineages)

Stealth (Hide, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand)

Speechcraft (Barter, Cajole, Intimidation, Seduction, Wit)

Survival (Foraging, Navigation, Tundra, Rainforest, Desert, Coast, etcetera)

Tech (Engines, Imbued Objects, Firearms)

Step Five: Select Talents

Depending on your GM, your setting, and the starting experience of your character or party, you may have any number of talents, but starting characters usually have only one, in addition to their class.

You can find the talents here.

Step Six: Equipment

The technology of the Burning Earth Manifesto world runs from bastard swords and long bows, to muskets, to carbines in the most advanced areas. All weapons and armor are still specially crafted by hand and often bear the insignia of their creator in the case of more well crafted items. Firearms and other more rare items descend through the generations along familial lines but are still, for the most part, fairly rare. Most campaigns will begin with all players starting with Common weapons, but this is entirely up to the GM and the setting. For the case of a feudal noble such as the Navighast family, characters can begin with up to Rare melee weapons and up to Uncommon ranged weapons.

You can find the equipment here.