Post by Magic Rob on Aug 20, 2014 12:56:11 GMT -8
AST Schetzle wrote an excellent 'how to' for building your character sheets and what-not here.
So now you have a concept, and now you've built a sheet. What's the next step? Character Approval and play!
This isn't as cut and dry as it looks. See, to avoid writing buckets and buckets of house rules and complicated math, a certain degree of the character approval process is fluid. You write a concept, and Staff reads it. We have a general reaction ranging from strong approval to strong disapproval. That reaction colors how we then read the sheet. Obviously, if we respond poorly to your initial concept, the sheet will suffer a higher degree of scrutiny. It's the nature of things.
Once you have submitted a concept and your sheet, and your stuff is reviewed, it is very likely that you will have to make some sort of revisions to your sheet. The degree of rarity you have, the amount of capped items, and the general 'oddity' of your concept are all invitations to greater scrutiny. Things like 'reality' don't hold too much weight in the world of vampires, but we still need to have characters that resemble someone that could have survived to the embrace. Sounds arbitrary? It mostly is. If we're like "Hey... so how did your Strength 1, Dexterity 1, Stamina 4 guy get around life and stand out as a candidate for the embrace from a Gangrel...?" don't take it personal. You should probably juggle some dots or tell us an exceptionally good story for why your voodoo math is crucial to your concept.
Other things that are under direct scrutiny are the magic clans. By their nature, they tend to be more controlling clans. They can also be very damaging to game balance. So, if you submit a character with 100xp tied up in being awesome at magic, and suck at everything else, expect to re-write that. If you submit something that wouldn't be approved over the course of play, expect to re-write that.
Sometimes it makes more sense to start with a lot of out of clan disciplines purchased so that you don't need to pay mentors or PCs down the road. Starting with a glut of out of clan stuff, that'll probably need to be re-written. Starting with stuff you think will be hard or impossible to find in game, means that it was probably hard or impossible to find BEFORE game.
Merits and Flaws are a special item of concern. Staff has mixed feelings about this. About half of staff wants to have a fairly exhaustive list of merits and flaws and a very specific number for each item. I feel differently and have put limits in place for a few merits and elected not to put limits on flaws. This may have the effect of characters stocking up on often rarely RPed or 'come up' flaws. Nickle and dime reality for all its worth, don't ya think? There are a few of these that specifically raise flags in staff's view. 'Infertile Vitae' just leaps to mind. Staff won't be putting caps on this (at this time), we'll just make your flaws flaws. And they will surely be flaws.
Wouldn't it just be awesome if a negative title started circulating around. Maybe something called 'Thin Blood'. Man, what are the hallmarks of being a thin blood? Weird blood pools. Inability to embrace. Having other imperfections. Isn't there a whole titled dude whose entire job it is to kill those things? Wouldn't it just be a shame if some of these cheese-monkey flaws found their way onto a list?
Food for thought.
Anyway. The nature of this post isn't to brow-beat, as I love all of my players equally. This is to inform the process. All characters are subject to character approval. All of them. The rules for this are simple: write a character that staff approves. Simple. Some concepts have more vetting to do than others. Some have more scrutiny to suffer. Some have more justification to write. And some will never be able to justify the dots they want.
Keep sending us sheets! We love em!
-Rob.
So now you have a concept, and now you've built a sheet. What's the next step? Character Approval and play!
This isn't as cut and dry as it looks. See, to avoid writing buckets and buckets of house rules and complicated math, a certain degree of the character approval process is fluid. You write a concept, and Staff reads it. We have a general reaction ranging from strong approval to strong disapproval. That reaction colors how we then read the sheet. Obviously, if we respond poorly to your initial concept, the sheet will suffer a higher degree of scrutiny. It's the nature of things.
Once you have submitted a concept and your sheet, and your stuff is reviewed, it is very likely that you will have to make some sort of revisions to your sheet. The degree of rarity you have, the amount of capped items, and the general 'oddity' of your concept are all invitations to greater scrutiny. Things like 'reality' don't hold too much weight in the world of vampires, but we still need to have characters that resemble someone that could have survived to the embrace. Sounds arbitrary? It mostly is. If we're like "Hey... so how did your Strength 1, Dexterity 1, Stamina 4 guy get around life and stand out as a candidate for the embrace from a Gangrel...?" don't take it personal. You should probably juggle some dots or tell us an exceptionally good story for why your voodoo math is crucial to your concept.
Other things that are under direct scrutiny are the magic clans. By their nature, they tend to be more controlling clans. They can also be very damaging to game balance. So, if you submit a character with 100xp tied up in being awesome at magic, and suck at everything else, expect to re-write that. If you submit something that wouldn't be approved over the course of play, expect to re-write that.
Sometimes it makes more sense to start with a lot of out of clan disciplines purchased so that you don't need to pay mentors or PCs down the road. Starting with a glut of out of clan stuff, that'll probably need to be re-written. Starting with stuff you think will be hard or impossible to find in game, means that it was probably hard or impossible to find BEFORE game.
Merits and Flaws are a special item of concern. Staff has mixed feelings about this. About half of staff wants to have a fairly exhaustive list of merits and flaws and a very specific number for each item. I feel differently and have put limits in place for a few merits and elected not to put limits on flaws. This may have the effect of characters stocking up on often rarely RPed or 'come up' flaws. Nickle and dime reality for all its worth, don't ya think? There are a few of these that specifically raise flags in staff's view. 'Infertile Vitae' just leaps to mind. Staff won't be putting caps on this (at this time), we'll just make your flaws flaws. And they will surely be flaws.
Wouldn't it just be awesome if a negative title started circulating around. Maybe something called 'Thin Blood'. Man, what are the hallmarks of being a thin blood? Weird blood pools. Inability to embrace. Having other imperfections. Isn't there a whole titled dude whose entire job it is to kill those things? Wouldn't it just be a shame if some of these cheese-monkey flaws found their way onto a list?
Food for thought.
Anyway. The nature of this post isn't to brow-beat, as I love all of my players equally. This is to inform the process. All characters are subject to character approval. All of them. The rules for this are simple: write a character that staff approves. Simple. Some concepts have more vetting to do than others. Some have more scrutiny to suffer. Some have more justification to write. And some will never be able to justify the dots they want.
Keep sending us sheets! We love em!
-Rob.