‍The dark city streets close in as you pass hurriedly between one streetlight's pool of light to the next. Your heart pounds, rushing sounds of blood in your ears like hearing the ocean in a seashell.

Only... there’s nothing behind you. You thought you saw something, something slinking and long and wet. But when you look again, it’s gone.

Or is it?

There’s two kinds of people in this world. Those who just go home, and the people who go looking. And you? You’re the second type.

Dying to explore a world of supernatural horror that stalks the same streets you yourself live in day to day? There are few tabletop roleplaying games more popular than Chronicles of Darkness for exploring the urban fantasy, or urban nightmare, of our own world.

Of course there’s no better place to look for a game of Chronicles of Darkness than on StartPlaying, where you can choose times, game pitches, and GMs—”Storytellers”—to walk you into the darkness.

But in the meantime, why not learn all the basics of character creation?

Character Concept

Arguably, your basic character concept is the hardest part of character creation. Your character concept is a short-form description or at least idea of who your character is and what they’re all about.

• English Teacher-Turned Occult Library Enthusiast
• Out of Work Trucker Looking for Revenge
• Vampire Wannabe

A concept can be based on what they want and what they dream. You’re doing your GM a favor when you can tell them who they are and what they want. Doubly so when it comes to what your character fears, and what haunts their nightmares. Sometimes the concept comes easy. Sometimes it can be what stops you in your tracks. But don’t worry. With the tips here, you’ll put it together no problem. 

1. Talk to your GM, sometimes called a Storyteller in a Chronicles game, about what style of story they’re telling. They may have ideas for you if you don’t have your own. 
2. Talk to other players. What is everyone else playing? If you’re not using a session zero for everyone to make characters together, you can at least get an idea from others directly or through your GM to help limit your options. (Limiting options sounds scary, but can help you avoid choice paralysis when deciding on your concept.) 
3. Base it off something familiar. You got a character in your favorite horror novel that you wish had gotten a better shake? Have a teacher in high school that you think would be AWESOME in a zombie survival scenario? Wanna see how you’d handle a world of nightmares personally? Take something existing, add some unique flavor, file the serial numbers off, and you may have a character concept.
4. Do this step later! It’s okay to fiddle with a character sheet before being totally sure who you’re going to play. Maybe a trait or skill will inspire the sort of person you want to build!

Virtue and Vice

When deciding on your character concept, you’ll want to look over the Virtues and Vices in the Chronicles of Darkness core book. 

In short, a virtue is your character at their best. At your character’s worst, they’re giving into their vice. Virtues are harder to do, it’s an imperfect world that’s kinda out to kill you, after all. Vices are easy, but less fulfilling. 

Attributes

Next, you’ll decide on some core attributes for your character. With dots, you’ll outline their capabilities and inherent gifts. 

You have a good character sheet right? Well, here’s a fillable one by Mr. Gone, the prestige source for all kinds of character sheets!

Anyway, attributes are divided into three categories: Mental, Physical, and Social. Then each category has three attributes that relate to power, finesse, and resistance within those categories. Which is to say, Intelligence in the Mental category is your mental “power” stat. How raw your intellect is! Whereas Strength in the physical category is just raw physical power! 

Pick which category you want to prioritize from most important to least. The most important category gets five dots to distribute. The second category gets four. The least important category to your character gets three dots. 

Divide those dots in each category. You get one free in each attribute too! So don’t forget that they don’t count toward your five, four, or three! 

Just for reference, two dots in an attribute is average. One reflects having difficulty in that category, and a five is the height of human ability!—Oh, and check with your Storyteller/GM about high attributes. Some put additional limitations on 4s and 5s on abilities. 

Skills

Now that you have your character’s raw capabilities down, time to reflect what they’ve learned and practised in life: skills!

As with attributes, skills are in the three basic categories of Mental, Physical, and Social. As with attributes, you’re going to divide points among these groups based on priority. Think most of your character background is academic? Put your top priority in Mental skills. In that case, top priority categories get 11 dots. The second category gets 7, and the category you think is least important for your character gets 4 points. When filling in the dots on skills, you don’t start with a basic dot, so keep that in mind! They go fast! 

Zero dots in a skill reflect no training or knowledge. One is a basic beginner. Five is the peak of that skill in the human experience! 

Skill Specialties

Because skills are a broad category, you get to focus on some aspect of your talents with a Skill Speciality. The book will have some suggestions, but you can always pitch additional specialities to your GM.  

Have a strong Animal Ken score, but really think your character shines with dog training? Put “dogs” down on the little speciality line on that skill! 

You’ll get four specialities to round out your character. 

Traits

Traits add some human touches to your character. They include merits, which are things like allies and contacts, income, access to weapons, or places you know you can hide out when the going gets rough. You’ll want to consult both your GM and your Chronicles of Darkness book to pick your seven dots to spend on merits. Note: by the book, a fifth dot in a merit actually costs two dots, not a single dot. So leave yourself some room to grow in game! 

Next, a little tiny bit of math will round out your character and have them basically ready to play.

Put down your size, which is almost always 5. You’re not a werewolf, after all. 

You’ll want to take your total number of dots in Stamina, add it to five, and that’s how much Health you have. (Health is how much of a beating you can take before you, yanno, fight your final monster.) 

Take your dots in Resolve, add your dots in Composure, and that’s how many dots of Willpower you have! Willpower is an important currency in Chronicle of Darkness used both to boost rolls that really matter and resist the supernatural. Oh! And it gets replenished by your Virtue and Vice, so that’s how those come up mechanically!

Your natural Defense score is the lowest of your Dexterity or Wits. Your initiative modifier, how fast you go in the turn order in combat, is Dexterity plus Composure. And your running speed is Strength plus Dexterity.

Oh. And you start with a morality score of seven. What does that mean? You’ll have to talk to your GM about that! And remember, you can find the GM of your dreams (or nightmares) on StartPlaying! Find a game today! 

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Filamena Young is a game designer making, playing, and running games.