Character Creation: Arium

A blank canvas, just waiting for the splatter.

The Game: Arium
The Publisher: Adept Icarus
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one (that'd be Arium: Discover), I believe

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Arium is yet another setting agnostic, build-your-own world kind of thing, a la Fate, but also Mettle,  Solipstry, and Osiris. Oh, and also Dreamchaser, ScreenPlay, and Spark. You get the idea. 

With that said, I do appreciate that Arium is a slim 70 pages for the Discover book (which has chargen and the rules) and 50 pages for Create (which has the "make your setting" rules. It also has an example of doing so, which I appreciate, but:

Way to sell your game, here

I'm being grouchy, but the game actually looks fine, and if I were going to play one of these "make your own setting hung on a perfectly serviceable but not terribly interesting game engine" kinds of games, it might well be this one. The writing is clear and friendly, if a little chatty for my taste, and the system looks easy enough (d6s, look for 5s and 6s). One thing I think is kind of cool is that if you roll two or more 6s, you get "Control" - you can add a detail to the situation. If you roll two or more 1s, you get a "Complication." But it's possible to get both if you have enough dice, and it's possible to succeed or fail in the underling action and have either or both Control or Complication. 

Anyway, I need a setting, and I don't think I have any of those. The closest we get is:

Not gonna lie, those look like pretty cool settings. I'm gonna make a character for the third one, because it could nice include inspirations such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and the music stylings of the Insane Clown Posse. 

Character creation proceeds thusly: 

So my "step zero" is a concept. Assuming that the tone veers a little goofier, let's say that my guy is a Killjoy. You get too silly at the borders, and the borders start to wibble as the amusement park starts to intrude on Cavendish. That means that the Killjoys are there to stop people from having fun and being silly at the border. It's fine to do that sort of thing inside the province, far away from where the clowns or whatever could hear you, but admittedly some Killjoys do take things a little too far. 

My character is name Parran Killjoy (all Killjoys take "Killjoy" as their surname). He lived near the border growing up and his parents just got a little too jolly one day, the border shifted, before Parran knew what happened, his parents were clowns, stuck forever in the Park. Parran grew up somber, but in his heart of hearts, he longs for color and levity. Just...not here. 

OK, that's a pretty good start. What's next? Determine Character Points! These are determined by what kind of game we've got, in terms of lethality. This setting sounds Heroic or maybe Normal, though what if it was Hardcore and we really do take inspiration from the darkest parts of the sources I mentioned? Yeah, that'll be in interesting. That gives me 11 Character Points.

Purchase Primary Attributes. There are four of them: Mind, Body, Spirit, Heart. I get 11 points. I think that Spirit should probably be Parran's highest stat, so let's put 4 there, 1 into Mind, 2 into Body, and 2 into Heart, and that leaves me 2 that I can spend on other stuff.

Derived Traits! Grrr. I think I'll wait, because if I want to go back and raise something here I'd have to rejigger them.

Likewise, I'll wait on Health and Resistance. Is it really not intuitive to put derived traits, which rely on the other traits being firmly set, at the end of chargen? Lots of games do this and I don't get it.

Extra Qualities/Goodies! A Goody is an object, something that a character could lose. In Parran's case, I think it's his Killjoy Mask. All Killjoys have them; they're half masks covering the bottom half of the face (so no one can see you smile).  I get one Feature and one Flaw for the Mask by default, and then I can buy more if I want. Basically, just beneficial or negative qualities of the object (or me, since the character gets some, too). 

Well, for my Mask, I'll say it Conceals My Feelings. It's very hard to read intent or motive when I'm wearing the mask. For its Flaw, I'll say it Scares the Children. The mask is meant to be frightening and off-putting, but that means that being gentle or convincing is hard.

I think get two Banes and one Boon (since we're in Hardcore mode). Let's say that Parran is Easy to Fool - Killjoys aren't really here to detect lies, which is good because Parran sucks at it. Also, he's got a Terrible Memory. That's pretty self-explanatory. For his Boon, we'll say Parran is Steadfast as a Wall. He's not likely to betray anyone, ever. 

Each of these things gets a mechanical effect, but chosen from a set of three (really four, but the other ones are more expensive). We'll say Conceals My Feelings adds 2 dice to appropriate pools, Scares the Children and Easy to Fool adds an effective 1 to rolls, Terrible Memory applies a -2D, and Steadfast as a Wall adds a 6 to rolls. Neat.

Now, I could add more of these thingies if I wanted, but I think actually that I'm going to put the other two points I had left over back into Attributes. Let's add them to Heart and Body, which leaves me at Mind 1, Body 3, Spirit 4, Heart 3. 

And now I can do derived traits! They're all averages of traits, and they're helpfully on the sheet between the traits they use. The sheet is actually pretty well-designed. And we round up, that's nice. Health is double Stamina (so 6), and Resistance...isn't on the sheet, so it can't be that important.

And that's it! Parran is in his 30s, baldy slightly, wears the grey coat and ceramic mask of a Killjoy. He's looking forward to the end of his tour so he can go have some fun for once.