After having two players query me about joining the campaigns, as well as finding out that one of my regular players had not asked about the process (thus requiring a rewrite session and advising on statistics and requirements), I’ve realized that I should have put this up a long time ago. Hindsight is embarrassing to experience, sometimes.
With that, if you are interested in writing up a character for the campaigns, be they for their own Side-Arc or to appear as a guest occasionally, here are my House Rules for character creation and the process you should follow:
Important Note: Before you step into the creation process, be sure to remember that I, the GameMaster, am available to help you through the steps. If you have an idea and I tell you ‘no’, understand that there will always be a good reason for the refusal, not just as an arbitrary decision.
1: Timeframe: When coming up with your character concept, please keep in mind the timeframe in which the campaign takes place. We all may have our favorite Eras of the Expanded Universe, but we’ll be moving (mostly) linearly through time, starting from 2BBY, placing us in the Rebellion Era. As of August 2022, we’re at 0ABY, but as the Main Group (and Side-Arc Players/Solo Players) progress through the Main Arcs, I’ll be keeping the events of my sessions current. This does mean that some species, classes, and concepts will be restricted (such as Ewoks until 4ABY, or the Yuuzhan Vong until 25ABY), so plan accordingly.
2: Concept: As you look through the Revised Core Rulebook and consider how you’d like to write up your character, I suggest thinking on the concept you’d like to base them on. Always keep this part simple, as time will give your character the level of detail that you’d want for them to have. For example, you could start off with ‘smuggler’, ‘pilot’, or ‘Rebel’. From there, we can plan out your character’s goals and progression.
3: Loyalties: It’s a very important question that I want players to ask, but it rarely happens. “Whose side are we on?” Are you wanting to play an Imperial, a Bounty Hunter, or a Smuggler? While your idea for a character will be interesting, and I’ll give it my full attention, you have to remember that the Main Group is loyal to the Rebel Alliance. This is not a simple morality clause, but a strict staying with the timeline of the Expanded Universe. The Rebel Alliance will be the victorious side of the First Galactic Civil War (yes, there was more than one, it gets complicated) and have the most active side from a writers’ perspective. That said, if you want to play a member of the Galactic Empire, I will write up an appropriate Side-Arc for you; just remember you’ll be at cross-purposes with the rest of the party.
4: Species/Class: At this point of the creation process, we can encounter headaches. The Revised Core Rulebook is our primary sourcebook for characters, but this is a BIG Galaxy with a myriad of peoples, cultures, and social norms. Those stories are just as deserving of our attention. But we might come across restrictions like we did with #1. With this being the Rebellion Era, Jedi are a restricted class, and some species are either not available for not being known yet, or are not exactly playable (for example: Charons, a terrifying people that are plot-relevant but not a playable race for a number of reasons). That said, however, we can work around these restrictions if possible. One player wanted to play a Jedi, for example, but with the Era in play, that would have been unavailable. So instead of trying to go about multi-classing, he wrote up a background as a Survivor from the Jedi Purge and accepted that he was on the run.
5: Rolling Stats: It’s here where I try to be clear with my players that I have my own approach to the process. Instead of rolling the standard 4d6 and dropping the lowest roll six times, we do this for ‘3 columns.’
For example: let’s say we’re at this point of character creation, and you make the standard rolls. You take 4d6 and roll them, dropping the lowest number, and repeat this process for six numbers, forming a column.
While this could be a good character (yes, I think single-digit stats are good), these characters are supposed to be Heroes. With that, we do the same process two more times, for a total of three columns.
So, we have three columns now. At this point, we have to choose which set this character will have. While I myself don’t require it, some players like to roll ‘naturalist-style’ and assign the scores as they’re written. But remember that this is not required and you can put your numbers where you’d believe them to be most useful. For me, I’d go with the third column.
After choosing your column, we can begin all of the math that comes with this nerdy process. But with this done, you have the basics of your character.
Swift's Corner 