Player’s Guide

The Discerning Player's Guide to Character Development

In the beginning, we find identity

To discover what we have been we must ask ourselves a series of questions. The better we know our own answers and how we change over time, the better we can know, and love ourselves.

Creating a character out of thin air is a difficult trial. Since you’re here, we’ll start from the beginning. We will assume that we know nothing, have no inkling of what we want to be. A fresh slate to chisel into a work of art.

No matter how experienced you are in crafting a character for a story, or what guidelines you’re accustomed to, refining the basics or trying out new tools can bring you closer to new levels of mastery.

As an author sits down from some traditional teaching they will take the tools they were offered and restructure them over time. They’ll get in the practice of short hand techniques. The more educated will form from tropes, and generic concepts to spin a new thread. We want to skip all of this. We want to use the timeless questions to bring about the persona.

Timeless Questions - In order

  • What’s my name, my species?

  • Where was I born, and when?

  • What have I done to survive?

  • How do I entertain myself?

  • How do I maintain myself?

  • Why am I here?

  • What is my purpose?

Timeless Answers

The result of answering these questions, and any more you want to add, is defining the Who. A player who’s answered these as character has a grasp of difference, and how the Setting has mold them into who they are.

From here we can easily take our own personality and lay it over this different life we did not live ourselves. In practice, this is enough to begin with. You’ll find yourself in your character’s shoes.

In Textbook Fashion - Game Master’s Notes, Character Creation Table Rules

After we have written our little background bio. Yes, just those seven questions. We get to work on the actual statistical values of the character. We’ll find those in the other pages in the Player’s Guide section. Keep an eye out as you browse the web of links throughout our pages for hidden gems.

In the Through the Trees System, The Game Mechanics behind Midnight in Vaia, we don’t have a true assigned class, job, or role system. Our characters do level up, as noted in character creation. They have their base statistics and descriptive entries which are used with the variables at hand to interact with the world.

There examples for you to find as you browse, as we continue to release content, where we will cover the basic Archetypes. These defined characters archetypes level up in normal progression, fully fleshed from level One to One Hundred. You Game Master may restrict you to picking an Archetype to prevent power gaming. There are absolutely game breaking combinations.

Outside the Archetypes this game isn’t balanced, and we want you to mix it all up into your own unique creature with the experience buy, event, and title optional subsystems. Especially since the majority of what characters can do won’t be tied into the Archetypal pages. Hopefully your Game Master winds your journey to amassing power with trials and intrigue. And though we say it isn’t balanced, what you might face in the metropolis may require meta-gaming just to survive.

Game Master’s Thoughts (-Oak)

I don’t expect them [the players] to arrive with more than a few ideas. Many times in the weeks before the first session I have had the opportunity to read dozens of paragraphs of a life lived before it came to my table. A strong background feeds possibilities for me to latch on to and write the setting that makes sense for them to be in, in their continued journey.

Encouraging the players to write an in depth background is commonly difficult. New players will take what is handed to them, and all too often they have world to birth them in a way. Experienced players know how to drop into the game with mostly any of the generic backgrounds, many have their favorites.

What we want here, though, is for you to be the master of your character’s past, so that like in life, we can push forward with our motivations, our reasons, our purpose.

This campaign setting is a breeding ground for endless possibility. There are major districts that reflect many cultures and times.

Make what you want to be for a while. Something close to you, or some totally new experience.