Creating your character for Avoss is a simple two
step system that we’ve broken down into seven steps to show how the system
works in greater detail and to make sure nothing gets missed.
Step 1. Concept
Your character concept acts as your blueprint and inspiration as you go through the rest of this process. What/who/how do you want to play Avoss? The answer could be a single sentence or a couple of pages. It is here that you should consider who your character is, what they do, how you want to play them and how they fit into the world.
The Avoss team has a few pieces of advice in writing your concept;
- Play a person, not a hero. Avoss is not a story of great people and their deeds. It’s a story about a place. A person with flaws, fears and favours will fit better than a hero.
- Short backstories are generally better. Your time at the game should be your character’s story, rather than it’s epilogue. A good rule of thumb is to set up the events of the game to likely be the most interesting time of your characters life.
- Jump ahead and have a look at the rules associated with what your character will be hoping to do. It might suck to get to game and realise you don’t like them.
Mark is
interested in playing a medical character focused on surgery. His concept is a
beleaguered but dedicated surgeon just trying to save every last person. He
decides that his character came from another settlement that succumbed to an
epidemic since then he’s dedicated himself to trying to keep his new home
alive.
Fiona wants to rock some guns. She likes action in her LARPs and wants to gun
for that at Avos. She also likes the way Roaming works and decides that between
guns and travelling she should have enough fun.
Guns and travelling sounds reminds her of western films so she bases her
concept around a travelling post apocalyptic gunslinger.
Step 2. Accent
A part so important it gets its own entry.
All residents of Avoss have an accent of European origin, preferably of Eastern European origin.
Why? Accents, even bad ones, are very good at helping people to be able to quickly tell who is in character, to easily slip back into being in character and to help bring others back in character as well. Keep this in mind when you are planning your character going forward.
Step 3. Skills
Your choice of skills will form the core of your character in game terms. Skills define what your character can do and what they have done. When choosing your skills you pick:
-1 Specialist skill
-3 General skills
A Specialist Skill represents a lifetime of work, study and exposure and will be the most overt display of your characters skills, allowing them to save lives, explore the wasteland or build the new world. Specialist skills are few and only available at character creations.
A General Skill represents a knack for a certain subject, a strong personality trait, a useful experience or a social role that your character uses to their advantage. Certain general skills are only available at character creation and you will gain an additional general skill every two games of Avoss your character survives.
Some skills can be taken as either Specialist skill or as General skill, with the general skill being a lesser version of the full Specialist option.
In addition skills will provide your character with either Hitpoints or Cool (sometimes both). Hitpoints reflect your character’s physical endurance and determines how much damage you can take before beginning to die. Cool reflects your character’s mental endurance and determines how much hardship and intense mental effort than can experiencing before breaking.
Characters begin character creation with 1 Cool and 1 Hitpoint.
If there is a skill that you would like to have but is not listed you can write it up and see if the team like it.
Mark’s character is based around medicine and surgery. As such he takes Surgery as his specialist skill. Next he takes Status (Tankers) as he wants to spend a majority of his time playing as a doctor within a faction that supports him, rather than working his way through initiation. Next he takes Spiritual, he figures that his hard bitten surgeon found god in the depths of his loss and it’s what keeps him going, it also lets him regain cool on his own which will let him keep helping others. His last skill he takes is Gone Hungry, to reflect his time spent wandering the wastes. These skills would leave him on 4 Cool and 3 Hitpoints, not ideal for a surgeon but he can regain cool easily and won’t lose any due to food.
Fiona picks Unkillable as her specialist skill, wanting to play an utterly tough as nails gunarm. Next she picks up Weary Traveller to help her travel around the play space righting wrongs and capping idiots.
Step 4. Gear.
Characters in Avoss begin play with 15 points
worth of gear chosen from the gear list at the end of this book in the Quick
Reference section. Most gear won’t have
an in-game mechanical effect but may still have a cost. Some skills, such as Status, provide you with
additional equipment with no cost.
Step 5. Submit.
Take your concept, skill and gear choices and email it to STAVOSS@gmail.com email address. With that, your character is submitted, the Avoss team will get back to you and confirm that all is in order (hopefully). In terms of rules you’re done and ready to play. But there’s still two more important steps.
Step 6. Ticket.
To get your character completely confirmed and to
ensure their place at Avoss you need to purchase your ticket. These will be
available through the Website when it is created and are limited, so get in
fast.
Step 7. Costume.
Finally you can get together your costume! Your costume should fit in the post-apocalyptic style and there are plenty of sources for advice in getting your costume together. However from a game perspective there are two things to remember;
-If your character starts play within a faction (through the Status skill) their costume should represent this. Check with your faction to ensure you are identifiable. -All of your gear needs to be represented on your person. If you bought it you represent it, if you don’t represent it, you don’t have it.