Character Generation

Building a Nutcase

Character Creation

The following are the steps to create your character in the Unknown Armies universe:

Pick an obsession
Pick your passions
Allocate attributes
Allocate skills
Decide whether you want any initial madness
Describe your trigger event
Stereotype your character
Provide background

Once you are done, email me with a copy of your character. I may make some suggestions. If things look good, feel free to email the group (including me) with a brief description of your character. Only include things that the other characters would know. (Do not include skill or stat levels, although you can mention if there are any notable strengths or weaknesses that your character's friends would notice.)

What is your obsession:

This should probably be your starting point as your obsession basically forms the core around which most of the rest of your character is built. Your obsession is something your character is abnormally interested in. Most people in the world are "normal" and don't have obsessions. You are different. It isn't a nurosis in the sense that it controls you - it is just something that you put more energy into than normal people would consider reasonable. A normal mountain climber is not obsessed with mountain climbing. Those people you read about who have scaled every mountain in Colorado that is higher than 14 thousand feet and done so alone - they are obsessed. It is more than a hobby. It is more than a job. It is something that you move your life around to satisfy. It can be as active as competitive sports or as passive as watching TV. It can be as benficial as keeping yourself in shape or as self destructive as drug abuse. It can be as selfless as healing others, or as selfish as trying to hoard as much money as you can. It can be based on collecting, a love of a place or subject, a particular activity, or simply some quirk in your behavior. It can be anything. What is important is that you are not a casual participant. If your obsession is gambling, you are not the type of person who sets aside $100 and when it is gone you are done for the night. On the other hand, there is no need to go overboard. As a gambler, you wouldn't need to put your house up for the roll of the dice, or feel the need to bet on every race. However, the purpose of your job would be to provide money with which to gamble and you don't go to the casinos for the social intaraction or the cheap food (although you could certainly enjoy either of them while you were feeding your habit). As I said, your obsession isn't a neurosis. It is just something you like to do more than normal people, even normal people who enjoyed the activity, would be able to understand. Choose your obsession carefully - it will be central to your character and ignoring it for too long may incur penalties (such as Self checks).

What are your passions:

Your passions are similar to your obsession. They do not need to be related to your obsession, although they should not be contradictory. Your passions are stimuli that bring out the best or worst in you. You have three passions: Fear, Rage, and Noble. Note that the use of your passions is limited to responding to a situation. You cannot use your passion to perform some long, detailed plan. These go beyond feelings and philosophies - these are what live in your bones and nerves.

Your Fear passion is something that frightens you. When confronted by your fear passion, you may flip-flop or re-roll on any roll you make to extricate yourself from the situation. It isn't a phobia - you don't need to run off screaming. If your fear passion is dogs and you are at a high society party where one of the guests arrives with a seeing eye dog, you might choose to escape by politely extricating yourself from your current social group and finding an excuse to leave. This passion can be used to break through barriers, navigate treacherous terrain, or just to run really, really fast. You should also indicate which madness meter is most closely related to this passion since, if you cannot get away and your Fear bites you (figuratively or literally) you may need to make a stress check.
Your Rage passion is something that makes you furious. It might be violence, hypocricy, anything that pisses you off. You may flip-flop or re-roll on any roll you make to attack the object of your rage. Attack is used in a general sense here. It does not need to be physical violence but it won't be subtle either - that would be too controlled.
Your Noble passion is something that brings out the "best" in you. It is something for which you would be willing to take extreme risks. It could be a desire to protect children or animals, a willingness to stand up to (or for) authority, a particular belief system, or anything else for which you feel the need to take a stand, even at personal cost. You may flip-flop or re-roll while carrying out this display of principles. (Note - your Noble passion need not be something good. Nazi soldiers might have chosen Fascism as their "Noble" passion. It simply indicates something for which you are willing to take a stand, be it good or bad.)

Be careful selecting your passions. The ability to swap dice is powerful, but you gain it at the expense of some freedom. If your rage passion is littering, you will be confronting hundreds of people every day just walking down the street and it still won't help you talk your way into the private library you are trying to visit. Choose something that is, first and foremost, interesting and appropriate for your character. After that, make sure it isn't going to stifle your character by forcing him to be reactive all the time. In extreme cases, ignoring something that would have triggered a passion can lead to Self checks.

Allocate points for attributes:

Everyone has four attributes (or stats). These are:

Body - your health, strength, and general fitness. You start with a number of wound points (hit points) equal to your body score.
Speed - your quickness, reaction time, and general dexterity. Your initiative is related to your speed stat.
Mind - how fast you think, how quickly you learn, how attentive you are, and how mentally tough you are. You use your mind attribute for madness checks.
Soul - social interaction, salesmanship, and strength of will. This is also the stat that governs magic use, should that become an issue.

Human average is 50 in all categories. Most people fall between 30 and 70, as should your character. For your references, the following descriptions are provided from the book.

Body:
- 30s - You're sickly and weak. You breathe heavily after climbing a flight of stairs. Your muscle tone is best described as "suety."
- 50s - You can wear a swimsuit without too much embarrassment and helping a friend move is no big effort.
- 70s - As far as you're concerned, every bottle has a twist-off top. You can do one-handed chin-ups.
Speed:
- 30s - You're a klutz: you routinely spill drinks (even when you're sober), walk into door frames, and trip over your own feet.
- 50s - You can hit the bull's eye at darts (sometimes), you can run a city block in a reasonable amount of time, and you can box-shuffle a deck of cards without playing 52-pickup.
- 70s - Your childhood nickname was "Flash", even if you kept your clothes on. You learned to juggle in about two minutes, just by watching someone do it. You can run a five-minute mile.
Mind:
- 30s - You've got an IQ around 60. You can read (slowly) and write (poorly), but long division is pushing it.
- 50s - You can balance a checkbook and you're fairly well-informed on subjects that interest or employ you.
- 70s - If you wanted to, you could get into Mensa. Whenever you took standardized intelligence tests, you scored in the top 5%. Even if you have little formal education, you retain information well and remember easily.
Soul:
- 30s - You're an uncouth slob with all the sensitivity of a toilet seat.
- 50s - You at least know enough to be uncomfortable in a delicate situation.
- 70s - At this level, those who turn their perceptions to their fellow humans always seem to say and do the right thing.

Remember, these are guidelines. Just because you have a soul of 30 doesn't mean you need to go around insulting people - you could just be sullen and silent, or gregarious but hollow. There are lots of ways to play any end of the spectrum. On that note, you should come up with a word or short phrase that describes your stat. For example, a Body of 60 could be "toned" or "sturdy" or "like a rock" while a speed of 60 could be "nimble" or "sprinter" or even "squirrelly". This doesn't have any game effect - it just helps to give some feel for your character's stats beyond just having a number. You have 220 points to divide among your attributes.

Choose and allocate skills:

There is no skill list in UA. Instead, simply describe something you can do. Each skill is linked to an attribute. (Some skills could fall under different attributes. For example, sex appeal could be based on a toned body (Body) or charm (Soul). Decide which is more appropriate for you.)

For each attribute, you get that attribute's level in points to spend on skills that fall under that attribute. In addition, you get 15 more points which you can spend anywhere. (This is all in addition to the free skills listed below.) No skill may start higer than 55%. No skill may be greater than its associated attribute ever. (If you want to raise a skill above the attribute's current level, you will need to raise the attribute first.) Remember - average for a skill is 20. This is the level of someone who has some experience but hasn't made a point of training. A 30 indicates training while a 40 indicates training and aptitude. Anything above that is the level of someone who makes their living (or is often told that they should) through the use of the skill. Examples of some skills and their values is provided below:

Driving:
- 10s - You are a bad driver. You either go too fast when it isn't safe or your crawl along at ten miles below the speed limit.
- 30s - This is a good level for a professional driver, like a cabbie or a trucker.
- 50s - Your car could pop up on the two driver's side wheels and you'd have a good chance of bringing it back down safely.
General education:
- 10s - If you graduated high school, you did so with an unimpressive C average.
- 30s - You graduated from college with honors.
- 50s - You either have a terminal degree (PhD, MD, MFA) or multiple master's degrees.
Struggle:
- 10s - Your combat skills are pretty much limited to slapping, shin kicks, and hair pulling.
- 30s - You're a skilled fighter. Nothing really impressive, but you're the equal of the average unarmed mugger.
- 40s - Black belt
- 50s - If you don't pound people for a living, you could. Your punches can break ribs and pop jawbones.

As with the stats, these are guidelines. You should come up with your own name for the various skills that best describes your abilities. For example, a Driving skill of 10 might be "Drives like grandma" while a 30 might be "speed demon."

Skills have what are called penumbras. This means, that a single skill would cover a range of related topics. For example, the driving skill would also include knowledge of minor maintenance, driving laws, and the ability to recognize some vehicles. The higher your skill, the more expansive your penumbra. Someone with a driving skill of 15 might know that the car behind them is a Chevy, but someone with a skill of 85 would know that it was a 4 cylinder model and was known for having a poor turning radius.

Everyone starts with the following skills at a default of 15%. (You may raise them using your points if you wish.) Feel free to rename/fine tune the skill to make it more appropriate to your character. For example, Struggle could become Street Fighting or Jujitsu. It won't change the effectiveness, but it will give a better impression of what your character is doing in a fight.

Body Skills: General Athletics, Struggle
Speed Skils: Dodge, Driving, Initiative
Mind Skills: General Education, Notice, Conceal
Soul Skills: Charm, Lying

Notice that not all "skills" fit the traditional concept. You can also use skills to gain natural abilities. For example, holding your breath for an abnormally long period of time would be a body skill, appearing as an authority figure would be a mind skill, and being well connected would be a soul skill. If you have some special ability that you would like, figure out what stat it would fall under and assign it some points. The more points you assign, the more powerful that ability.

There are two extra special types of skills you may choose:

Obsession skill: You may choose a skill that relates to your obsession in some way. A person obsessed with theater might choose to know all about plays that have been written, or might choose to know the theater scene of a town, or might be a skilled actor. Someone who chose drinking as their obsession might be an expert on beverages, know every bar in the city, have an innate talent to hold their liquor, or just be great at being the life of the party. If your obsession is yourself, you could choose intimidation, being sharply dressed, or dodge, all depending on how your obsession played out. Whatever you choose, it needs to have some sort of direct relationship to your obsession. The person interested in theater could not take "driving" as their obsession skill simply because they needed to drive to the theater to see shows. The skill needs to be something that applies directly to the obsession. What does it mean for something to be your "obsession skill"? When you roll for the skill, you get to flip-flop the dice on the roll. You don't not need to take an obsession skill, but once taken it cannot be changed without extreme measures. You may only have one obsession skill.
Paradigm skill: This skill represents a deeply held philosophy. It is always a mental skill. It could be a religious faith, military training, a hardened cynicsm, or anything else that you can use to look at the world through a certain shade of glasses. In addition to giving you knowledge about whatever philosophy you chose, it has a more practical purpose. Specifically, choose two madness meters. These represent types of madness that you are protected from and vulnerable to. (Note, they can, in fact, be the same meter if you wish. This would indicate an expanded ability to deal with a certain type of stress, but if your ability to compensate for this stress is exceeded, you have a much worse reaction to it.) In game terms, the paradigm skill gives you a failed notch in the madness meter that represents the stress you are vulnerable to. This failed notch can NEVER be removed. On the plus side, however, whenever you fail a madness check on the meter for which your paradigm skill protects you, you may attempt to roll under your paradigm skill. If you succeed, your world view protects you and you gain neither a hardened nor a failed notch. (If you fail your paradigm roll, you gain a failed notch as normal.) You may have only one paradigm skill.

Initial Madness:

You may put up to three failed notches divided among your madness meters. For every failed notch you take, you may also take a hardened notch somewhere. You can place these notches anywhere in your meters that you want. These notches can be removed through therapy as normal. You should have a good background story for how you got so screwed up.

This step is completely optional. If you want, you can earn all your mental scars during the game.

Describe your trigger event:

Most people go through their lives without ever a casual thought that there might be something under the surface of this thing they call reality. You aren't like them. You have SEEN something that should not have been. It need not be something horrible. You might have stepped off the subway at the wrong stop and found a bright, massive garden with unrecognizable plants and an empty wood hut standing in the middle - you have never been able to find it again. You might have been in an airplane at night and glanced outside the window just as lightning flashed to reveal a woman flying by outside the plane. You might have been accosted by gang members only to have them all freeze in place as an old woman came by and led you back out to the street, only to then disappear back down a side alley. The point is that, regardless of what others say about the experience, you KNOW you saw something and that there is more to the world than what is commonly accepted. The event doesn't need to be related to your obsession skill, or anything at all, for that matter. It simple represents your first step into unknown lands. (It can, however, be a useful plot hook, so give it some thought.)

Stereotype your character:

If someone met your character at a party and spoke with them for a minute or two, what sort of impression would they get. Are you a loner? Are you protective? Are you someone who likes to debate? Someone who holds one view and doesn't change it? Are you a bumbler? How would someone who only saw the surface of your character describe them. This doesn't have to have anything more than a superficial relationship to how your character really is nor should you feel obliged to constrain your character to following this stereotype. Zodiac symbols, pop culture references, and role models are good ways to do this.

Provide Background:

Not too much additional to say on this one. You should provide enough background to give a decent impression of your character's personality. It might also be a good idea to figure out what a normal day in the life of your character is like. Family and contacts should be included here, the latter requireing some background explaining how you met up. Beyond that, any information you provide will be an extra bonus. The better I understand your character, the more I can weave them into the story. Put some thought into it, since the more real your character is, the better the horror will be.