The first thing you’ll want to do is talk with your friends and decide what the game will be about. You don’t need to get into details--your Adventure Guide will handle the details--but you’ll need to all be on the same page. For example, you might decide that this game will be about the quest for knowledge, or small-town heroes make good, black sheep redeem themselves, or military squabbling among nations.
Your game can be about a plot, such as “city resists invasion” or about a style, such as “old-style dungeon crawl”.
It should take five to fifteen minutes to talk about this. Once you’ve got the basic idea for the game down, there are three things you’ll want to talk about as a group, and choose as a group: your goals, your moral codes, and your archetypes.
Take a sheet of paper. On the back, write “goals”. Take five to ten minutes to choose your character’s goals.
Goals help to ensure that all players are on the same page, and they guide you as you create your character. You should choose one to three simple goals for your character. If this is a short game, a “one-shot”, you’ll choose one goal. If it’s a longer game, you’ll choose two or three.
Goals can be an abstract idea or a specific object. These are the things that your character strives to own, possess, or somehow have. Your character’s goal might, for example, be one or more of knowledge, power, heroism, wealth, contentment, family, revenge, war, glory, peace, fulfillment, love, solace, redemption, or adventure.
At least one goal should be a goal that drives the character to adventure with the other characters. That goal might be as simple as “adventure” but it might also be more specific, such as “knowledge” or “glory”, that reflects the kinds of adventures the group wants.
All of the character’s goals should in some way drive the character to action. Combined, they make up the character’s “story”, the theme for this character if this were a novel.
Often, the group (or the Adventure Guide) will set one goal that every character should have. If so, you’ll write that goal down for your character and then choose one or two other goals as well. For a moderately more interesting game, the group might decide that all characters should either have a specific goal (such as knowledge) or a goal that ties them to a character who does have that goal, such as loyalty or friendship.
Abstract goals should almost always be one word. You’ll expand upon that word in your character’s backstory.
One of your goals might also be a specific, named thing, such as a lost heirloom, a kidnapped friend, or a place. In this case, write down that thing’s name, even if it takes more than one word. Or it might be a desire tied to a person, such as a desire to impress them, earn their love, overcome them, or outdo them.
You may find it easiest to arrange your character’s goals in order from most important to least important. If your group specifies a goal that each character has, that goal should be first or second.
Your character’s goals can change as you play the game. For example, some goals are achievable and once achieved are no longer goals. If your character finds the lost family heirloom, that might no longer be an important goal for your character.
Depending how important the goal is, how it was achieved, and what other goals the character has, the character may become temporarily “lost” when that goal is acquired. What this means and how it affects your character is up to you: goals have no affect on the game’s rules. They’re there to help you and your Adventure Guide understand your character.
If the group decides on a group goal that all characters should have, that goal shouldn’t change unless the entire group decides it should change. Or unless you want that character to ride off into the sunset and be replaced with a new character that shares the group’s goal.
If you haven’t yet done so, you’ll need to choose one member of the group to be the Adventure Guide. The Adventure Guide will not create a hero of their own. The Guide will create the adventures that challenge the heroes. The Guide will act the part of most of the non-player characters, and the fortunes and fates that the characters meet. They will represent the world in which the heroes find adventure. The player chosen as the Guide should read the Adventure Guide’s Handbook for more information about being an Adventure Guide.
The Guide may also wish to read the adventures that can be downloaded for Gods & Monsters. The other players should not read these adventures, as it spoils the surprises and contests that the adventure contains.
There is a lot more about moral code later in the book; it has its own section, and you’ll want to read it. A character’s moral code is their morality in the Gods & Monsters fantasy world. Good characters are honest, Evil characters are selfish, Chaotic characters value personal freedom, and Ordered characters value community well-being.
Player characters should almost always be Good if they have a moral code. They can be only good, or they can be Chaotic Good or Ordered Good. As a group, you may wish to decide whether you want Chaotic or Ordered characters, or a mix. This will depend on the goals of the game and what the game is about.
It’s always a good idea to talk about the archetypes you’re going to want in your group, so that you know who wants to play which archetype and you know which of the mental archetypes (Sorceror, Prophet, and Monk) are available.
If there are four players, one will be the Adventure Guide, one will play a Warrior, one will play a Thief, and one will play one of the available mental archetypes. If there are only three players, one of the player characters must be a physical archetype, and one must be a mental archetype. If there are five players, the extra player can play a warrior, a thief, or one of the remaining mental archetypes (but not the same one already being played). If there are six players, the extra player can choose any archetype that isn’t already being played by two players.
Some archetypes won’t be available in your game’s world. The physical archetypes, warrior and thief, will always be available to play. But of the mental archetypes, often only one or two will be available for play. You’ll want to discuss this as a group: what kind of magic do you want to encounter?
In some fantasy worlds, only one of the “magical archetypes” will be available. In others, two or three will be available, but some will be extremely rare. It’s up to you as a group what kind of world your characters live in.
Sometimes the world will dictate the kind of magic available. If you’re adventuring in a Burroughsian world, you’ll probably need Monks available so as to have psychic powers in the game. If you’re adventuring in a world similar to ancient Greece, you’ll want prophets, and perhaps sorcerors.