Character creation

The Family members

You take on the roles of members of the Rookwood family, an ancient aristocratic line that suffers a terrible curse. Each player will create their own family member, but the players should work together as they do so.

The relationships between family members are important and are not one-sided. If you want to play a young gadabout who steals from the family to pay his gambling debts and you stole Uncle Charles’ gold pocket watch, then the player of Uncle Charles needs to know his watch is missing.

There can be more living family members than players, so we can decide which other family members will be present. The Chronicler (GM) will portray the non-player family members.

Start by thinking about the following about your character?
- who the players’ family members are
- how old they are
- what role they play in the family, and
- what other (non-player) family members are around.

Each family member should be described initially with an adjective and a family role. Keep in mind that the Rookwoods are a cursed dysfunctional family, so the adjectives should not be entirely positive.

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Once you have established your general roles in the family and you know the era and setting details and your family history, you can determine the details for your family members in the current generation. Each family member is defined by their Traits, Curse, Desire, Skeletons, and Assets.

1. Character Traits

You have three traits that describe your physical, mental, and magical capabilities:

* Brawn (Red dice) is your physical prowess: strength, agility, and toughness.
* Guile (Blue dice) is your mental prowess: reason, wits, and willpower.
* Weird (Green dice) is your magical prowess: spiritual power, intuition, and ability to control and resist magic.

You have 5 six-sided dice to distribute among these three abilities and you can assign any number to each Trait. If you want to play a big, brawny Rookwood who is as strong as an ox, but also as smart as an ox, you can put all 5 dice into Brawn and 0 dice into Guile and Weird. You can still do non-physical things, but you will be unlikely to perform above average in those Traits without dice.

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You roll these dice when you perform any difficult or stressful actions. The dice also represent your resilience and reserves of energy. They can be temporarily spent to absorb damage, exert extraordinary effort, or activate special abilities.

2. Character Curse

Unbeknown to you, if you have Rookwood blood, you share of the family’s supernatural heritage. This is both a powerful gift and a loathsome curse handed down by the progenitor who struck a dark bargain.

- If you are a blood relative descended from the Progenitor, you begin with a Curse and a corresponding Dark Gift.
- If you are a Rookwood by adoption or marriage, you do not carry the Progenitor’s blood and do not have a Curse or Gift.

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Your Curse is defined by three parts:

3. Character Desire

Your Desire is something you really want but its indulgence is detrimental to the family. It can be a personal weakness or temptation that you pursue at the cost of achieving family goals: addictions such as gambling or morphine are good homewreckers (or "wine, women, and song" or "sex, drugs, and rock & roll" depending on the era).

Obsession with a personal long-term goal incompatible with family goals also works: running your own business, winning the hand of a duke’s daughter, discovering the secrets of manned flight, or some other distracting fool’s errand.

Every time you pursue your desire and cause trouble for another family member, you are reinvigorated and restore one spent Trait die.

4. Character Skeletons

Every family has skeletons in its closet, but stately Rookwood Manor has extensive storage space. These "skeletons in the closet" are a core source of tension in the family. Each generation, your family will have to overcome the problems that threaten its relationships in order to ensure the success of the generations that follow. Strong relationships help build a successful family. Dysfunctional relationships weaken the family and threaten to break the bonds that hold it together. Unfortunately, the curse on your bloodline twists the hearts and minds of each new generation. If one generation fails to resolve its toxic issues, the next generation will suffer the fallout. However, even if one generation resolves all their issues, the next generation will still suffer issues of their own.

You start with one Skeleton in your closet. Failing to resolve it will harm the family as the tension tears them apart; however, resolving a skeleton means overcoming shared animosity. It strengthens familial bonds and gives the family a bonus for following generations.

A Skeleton consists of:

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5. Character Assets

Assets describe your unique mix of training, talent, and personal resources. Your Assets work like Family Resources but can only be used by you. If it is relevant to an action, you can choose to spend an Asset after a dice roll to reroll any number of the dice, or before the roll to add one success to the results of the roll.

You define your own Assets, but try not to make them overly broad or narrow. A good Asset should be useful in more than one type of scene, but not in every scene: being a cavalry officer is useful in a horse chase, a saber duel, or looking dashing in a crisp uniform at a formal affair, but it does not help in a foot chase, business negotiation, or ascertaining the provenance of a mysterious artifact. Assets can be applied to any Trait depending on the situation.

Assets generally fall into one of three categories:

• A personal quality or talent: superb athlete, commanding presence, sensitive artist.
• Possessions, whether unique (eldritch sword, custom hot rod) or generic (personal wealth, silent partner in local businesses).
• Social connections, whether general ("well known in high society") or specific ("Athenaeum club member").

Because you don't have a Curse, you begin with 4 Assets of your choice. If you decide not to carry the cursed Rookwood blood in your veins, you can choose 6 Assets.

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Based on the setting suggestions I highlighted from the book you can also pick one Asset to reflect how you endure the misery of the "Puritanical Protectorate", whether as a Puritan ("cruel necessity", "endure life, don’t enjoy it") or not ("whiskey in a hollow bible", "secretly wearing scarlet knickers").

Also, keep in mind the Gothic Duality aspect of the genre and think of at least one asset as a virtue and one a vice.

Blood Will Out

While you are playing, remember that the Rookwoods are a cursed, dysfunctional family.

You shouldn’t operate with the brutal efficiency of a sociopathic genius. The rules of the game reward you for making irrational and emotional choices.

If you keep your skeletons carefully hidden and never allow them to cause trouble, your life will be dull and uneventful. That’s good for safety and security, but boring for a Gothic tale of family drama. This is why your Skeletons and Desires allow you to refresh your spent dice. If you play it safe, you won’t be able to make exceptional or supernatural efforts: you will only accomplish things in small steps and you won’t be able to use your supernatural powers.

Follow your desires: give in to temptation, lose your temper, say yes to the charming stranger with dark, alluring eyes. Don’t hide your skeletons completely: act shifty, make Freudian slips in conversation, and confess to your crimes in a diary that you keep under your pillow instead of in an encrypted ledger locked in a safe deposit box. Watch as your family members do the same, keep track of their issues, and try to push their buttons. Keep picking at the family scabs until things come to a head. You’ll be rewarded when the mess is cleaned up, but you’ll be punished for letting things quietly fester.