Character Creation: Eden

Told ya I was gonna make a character today.

The Game: Eden
The Publisher: Less Than Three Games 
Degree of Familiarity: None, but it ain't complex
Books Required: Just the one.

Eden is one of those games that I thought wouldn't even be on this list. It's very story-game-ish, and it's very collaborative. I love those games, but they don't tend to approach chargen in a way that works for this project (which is why excellent games like Perseverant and Fiasco aren't on it). Eden seems to have enough individual focus that I can make it work, though, so here we go.

So in Eden, you're playing the first people at the dawn of time, and dealing with the lessons they learn from the animals in the garden. God isn't present; it's not a religious game, despite the title. If I were in a group, we'd choose our favorite animals and draw a map of Eden, but since it's just me I'll skip right to creating humans.

Step One: Name the characters. Normally I'd name my character and a secondary character, but since it's just me there's not a lot of point in doing the latter (since it's literally just a name) I'll just name my garden-dweller. His name Eliv.

Step Two: Describe Skill. This is something Eliv learned from my favorite animal, which I would have contributed during the earlier phase. I love pigs, I find them inherently funny, so I'll say that the pigs taught Eliv that anything is food if you're strong enough to keep it down.

Step Three: Describe Appearance. Eliv is a young man (all Eden characters are assumed to be young adults). He's got short, irregularly growing black hair and grey eyes. His fingers are stained brown from digging for roots, and his mouth is often colored with the juice of whatever he's tried to eat lately.

Step Four: Learn lessons. So, at this point, I would ask the player on my left how I learned the skill of having a strong stomach from the pigs, but since it's just me, I'll my own little just-so story.

Eliv followed the herd across the plains as they snuffled and dug and rooted, and he realized he was hungry. The pigs rubbed against trees to make fruit fall, but Eliv had heard other people say not to eat this strange red fruit, as it made one's insides upset and one's lips burn. Eliv asked the pigs if there was anything else to eat, and the pigs didn't understand the question. "Everything," they said, and went back to joyously digging for roots and grubs and eating the leaves and shoots and berries and carrion on the forest floor. 

Eliv held his nose and ate like the pigs did, taking in whatever would give him sustenance. And he became sick, but then he felt better, and he ate with the pigs again, and he felt fine. And from this he learned that only by trying something could he discover something.

The last step involves other players; I'd tell them what the pigs told me about their characters. Since I have no other players, however, that about does it for Eliv!

I like this game. May have to give it a go sometime.