Building a Character

You need three things before the first scene: an archetype, your five attributes, and a secret the rest of the crew does not know. Everything else grows from those.

Choose an archetype

Your archetype is what you are at the table — soldier, scientist, occultist, drunk, fixer. It is not a class and it does not grant abilities. It tells you and everyone else who you are when everything goes wrong, and it should be honest about both halves. A soldier who freezes. A scientist who lied to get here.

Set your attributes

Pick a number 0–6 for each of Brawn, Reflex, Wits, Nerve, Presence. Rating 2 is a capable adult. Rating 4 is exceptional. Rating 6 is the best alive. Zero costs as much as it should — there is nothing wrong with being 0 in something, only with pretending you are not. These are grim times; build someone who can carry the weight of that.

Pick your proficiencies

Your skill ratings come from your attributes — but proficiency in a handful of skills adds +2 to each. This is where the sheet stops being a list of numbers and becomes a person. Your Wits does not make you a medic; proficiency in Medicine does. Choose proficiencies that match your archetype and your background, and leave the rest to your attribute.

The secret

Every character carries a GM-facing secret — what they are hiding from the crew. It should be true, portable, and capable of exploding at the worst moment. This is not flavour; it is the thing a downtime action called Confess can spend, and it is how the crew's trust becomes a resource rather than an assumption.

Relationships and standing

Finally, sketch your relationships with the other members of the crew — the bond that ties you (old squad, blood, debt, rivalry) and a standing from −5 (loathing) to +5 (devoted). Standing is the number that makes social rolls behave, and it moves only through downtime, betrayals, and deaths. The GM updates it, not you.

What is already decided

Your wound threshold is set by your rule set's base plus your Brawn: you do not run out of hit points so much as run out of room. Your composure and your perk slots are computed from your Nerve, your exposure, and the rule set. You do not track them by hand — the sheet does. You track the choices that feed them.

A name, a voice

The last thing is a name you would answer to on a bad night, and a voice — how you talk, your cadence, the tics that show when the mask slips. Play the comedy, then let it stop working. That is the whole character in miniature.