Creating Characters

Draft note: the structure here is settled; specific grant sizes and lists are placeholders pending the skill list and calibration.

The Five-Minute Character

1. Pick a template (Detective, Soldier, Scholar, Thief…). It has your attributes and core skills.
2. Pick three to five background factors. Each is a piece of your life story and a block of abilities. Take one childhood factor first.
3. Pick up to three quirks (free, optional). Take a talent if your setting and background allow one.
4. Name your character, decide who they are and what they want, note your age and wealth.

That's a complete, competent, ready-to-play character. Everything else in this chapter is detail and customization.

Willing and Able

A character is not solely described by things for which there are rules. These rules deal with abilities — what a character can do — while leaving personality — what a character wants to do — to players and GMs. Laying out a character's abilities is far less than half the work. The hard part, and the fun part, is deciding who the character is, why they do what they do, and what they believe in. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is able but not willing to destroy an archaeological treasure with a rocket launcher. Willing is always at least as important as able; otherwise you're not role-playing.

The GM has the absolute right to require a player to rethink a character: because the abilities don't match the concept, because the character makes another character redundant, because the character is useless, or because the character doesn't fit the setting or the kind of story the GM has announced. (No, there won't be any casinos, car chases, or beautiful foils to seduce in the realistic espionage campaign.)

Attributes

Characters have seven attributes. Each represents both a general ability (how strong is this character?) and an aptitude (how good can they get at things where strength is the overriding factor?).

A character has one score per attribute. Normal human attributes range from 5 to 16, with 9 typical of the general population. There is no separate "inherent" and "trained" value: an attribute is what it is, and improving one is possible but expensive — markedly more so beyond 12. Genetics is not fair.

Designer's Note: readers of earlier editions will notice DX and AG have merged into Coordination, and EM has folded into PC. Remarkable agility, sleight of hand, or unusual empathy are talents and quirks — deviations from the default, not separate attributes (we don't want eyesight or left-hand coordination becoming attributes either). AP remains, because looks are not correlated with anything else and pretending they don't matter is a falsehood of exactly the kind this game was designed to avoid: a good-looking person can do things an ugly person can't, just as surely as an agile or smart person can.

Derived from ST are unarmed combat damage and carrying capacity; templates record these for you.

Step 1: Pick a Template

ForeSight includes fourteen character templates, ready to play in a few minutes, representing the abilities of typical characters from adventure stories:

Detective, Journalist, Soldier, Athlete, Explorer, Spy, Scholar, Thief, Assassin, Driver, Tech, Doctor, Con-Artist, Martial Artist.

A template provides attributes, core skills, and a few fields of knowledge. Use it as provided, or customize it once you know the rules (see Tweaking, below). Templates deliberately leave out the most important part of the character — the personality — for you to define.

Every character also receives a free package of skills and knowledge that everyone in the setting can be assumed to have (your native language, literacy where it's universal, and the skills everyone has: Search and Initiative). (Pain resistance and stamina aren't skills — you roll EN or WP for the former, EN for the latter.)

Step 2: Background Factors

A background factor (BF) represents part of your character's back-story — upbringing, education, training, experience — and grants a block of abilities to match. Background factors are, mechanically, character modifications: the same machinery that makes a sword "fine" or a vehicle "sporty" makes a character "ex-military."

How many? The GM decides, usually three to five. Three makes a rookie; four or five a competent professional; more than five is formidable.

Designer's Note: more is not better for starting players. A new player with seven background factors has a character sheet they don't understand. Start at three or four and grow into it — ForeSight is designed to put you straight into the sweet spot and keep you there, so there's no grind to escape.

Pick one childhood factor first (two at most), then fill out the rest from the general list. Unusual factors — the transforming events — should be used sparingly. Take a factor more than once if it makes sense (a factor generally represents one to five years of your life); factors marked * may be taken only once.

Rename anything. "Field Experience" is mechanics; Weaseling in the Beyond is a character.

Childhood Factors (pick one or two)

• Comfortable Childhood — nice, boring, middle class. A broad smattering: +1 to three skills of your choice from your template, two Basic fields.
• Underprivileged Childhood — +2 Streetwise, +1 Stealth, +1 to one template skill, one Basic field. Reduce wealth one level.
• Privileged Childhood — +1 AP (max 12), two Standard fields (etiquette, law, finance, the classics…), increase wealth one level.
• Mobile Childhood — army brat, circus kid, diplomatic corps. +1 to one language or culture field per move that mattered (two Basic fields), +1 to two environment or travel-flavored skills.
• Traumatic Childhood — +1 WP (max 12), +2 to two survival-flavored skills, one Basic field. You will have scars; pick at least one quirk to match.
• Trained from Childhood* — +2 attribute points (no attribute above 12), +2 to one skill central to the training. You are most likely something of a monomaniac.

General Factors

• Full-Time Education — college and what goes with it. Two Standard fields, one Basic field, +1 to two skills (one of them social or sporting — there's a certain amount of extracurricular activity).
• Academic Experience — researcher, analyst. +2 Theory, one Standard field, one Basic field.
• Academic Recluse — mad professor, fanatic buff. Two Standard fields, one at Expert; –1 to one social skill. Purists can spend their evenings on Theory.
• Field/Specialist Training — special forces, the academy, the Temple. +2 to three skills from your profession, one Basic field, one long-term familiarity (a tool of the trade).
• Field Experience — tour of duty, years on the beat, earlier adventures. +2 to two professional skills, +1 to two more, +1 Initiative. Repeatable; the classic way to get formidable.
• School of Hard Knocks — prison, galley slave, gladiator. +1 EN, +2 to two hard-living skills, +1 WP (max 12). Psychological scars: pick a quirk to match.
• Office Experience — administrator, tax collector, librarian. +2 to two desk skills, one Standard field, one Basic field.
• Teaching Experience — +2 to one skill or field you teach (this is the overlap rule's best friend), +1 Charm, +1 Confidence.
• Horrible Institution — English boarding school, military academy. +1 WP, +1 Confidence, one Standard field, +1 to two skills the institution valued.
• Wide Travels — +2 to two travel skills, language and culture fields at half effort (two Basic fields, or one Standard if focused).

Unusual Factors (use sparingly)

• Mysterious Mentor* — +1 attribute point, access to an ability normally unobtainable in your setting, or unique insight in a skill (+1 to its BEF).
• Personal Tragedy — +1 WP or +2 to one skill forged in the fire; pick a quirk or past to match.
• Magical Apprenticeship — the entry point for the Magic rules; restrictions apply.
• Religious Transformation — the entry point for the Religion rules: become a follower, or deepen an existing commitment.
• 15 Minutes of Fame — +1 AP (max 12), one skill that made you famous +1, and people remember you, for good and ill.

Intrinsic Factors (birthright; each once only, GM permitting)

• Superior Specimen* — +3 attribute points (no attribute above the usual range).
• Magical / Mystic / Psionic / Ch'i Talent* — you have the talent. Required for the corresponding powers; see those chapters.

When Factors Overlap

If two sources grant the same skill or field, take the better grant, +1. Overlap is corroboration, not waste — a Detective with Field Experience twice has seen things — but it is deliberately not the fastest way to build a specialist. (Calibration pending.)

Custom Background Factors

A background factor is a background factor: if a player wants one that isn't listed, build it by analogy — a block of about the same weight, matching how the years were actually spent. If it doesn't make sense and make the character more interesting, the GM should disallow it. There are no rules to stop players choosing nonsensical factors; there is a GM.

Step 3: Quirks (and Talents)

Quirks are free. They have an upside and a downside that roughly cancel out, and they make characters out of stat blocks. Take up to three — more and your character becomes a basket case.

• Nervous Disposition — +1 PC, –1 EN for stress-related purposes.
• Minor Phobia — –2 dealing with the feared thing, +2 to notice it (with false positives). In combat, WP check or hesitate.
• Ugly — –2 on first impressions with the appropriate audience; but you've learned to suck it up (+1 WP-flavored tasks), turned it into a joke (+1 Charm), or gained insight (+1 reading people) — pick one.
• Nondescript — +2 blending into crowds, +1 reading people; –1 making memorable impressions. Incompatible with high AP.
• Reads People — +2 PC for reading people and detecting lies; –1 PC for noticing physical detail while you're doing it. (This is where the old EM attribute went.)
• Oblivious — –2 PC for reading people; +1 sustained concentration, immune to most social pressure.
• Weakness for the Ladies/Gentlemen — you can't help yourself; you will do foolish things for whoever currently has your attention. +2 where romance helps.
• Corrected Vision — fine with your glasses; lose them and it's –2 on anything at distance.

Talents (remarkable agility, sleight of hand, perfect pitch, eidetic memory…) are the positive-only cousins of quirks: they're not free — they come from templates, background factors (Trained from Childhood, Mysterious Mentor), or intrinsic factors. Talents and quirks are deviations from an attribute's default — which is exactly why agility and empathy don't need to be attributes.

Step 4: Finishing Touches

Decide your character's name, sex, age (within reason, given the backgrounds — each adult factor is one to five years), personality, and life story. ForeSight includes a set of character sketches — potted personalities from adventure stories — to draw on, alter, or ignore. There are no rules here aside from common sense and your understanding of human nature.

Note your wealth (the GM sets the campaign base; backgrounds may have moved yours up or down) and buy starting equipment.

Personality is the point. What a character wants to do and is willing to do matter far more than what they can do. Players who consult each other at this stage get better campaigns: two rival archaeologists who were once best friends are worth more than any background factor.

Amy Kwan, in Five Minutes

The GM announces a near-future campaign: the characters are an IAMCE weapons-inspection team, no two from the same country, four background factors each.

Amy Kwan is from the Australasian Defence Alliance, a former detective who joined IAMCE because the work sounded important and she wanted to travel. Template: Detective. Backgrounds: Comfortable Childhood, Full-Time Education, Field/Specialist Training (the academy), Field Experience (years working cases). Quirk: Reads People. That makes her 25–30; call it 27. Wealth: campaign base. Personality: methodical, curious, allergic to bullies; wants to see the world and can't leave a question alone. Done — and most of that time was spent on who she is, which is as it should be.

Tweaking (Once You Know the Rules)

Templates plus backgrounds are the fast path, not a straitjacket. Experienced players may rebuild templates, reallocate grants, design custom backgrounds, sell off free-package skills their character plausibly lacks, or build from scratch point-by-point using the full rules in Characters & Development — and the GM may reject the result. The fast path and the full rules produce characters of the same weight; the difference is the time you spend and the control you get.