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Birth, Family, & Persona

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To create a new character, select the menu Character/Birth, Family, & Persona or type CMD-B (Birth).

The Character Generation Steps (that correspond to the steps listed in the HMK rulebook) are listed on the left side of the window (steps 1 through 10.6 are done in this window, later steps are done elsewhere). You proceed step by step, selecting from the drop-down menus or entering values in the available fields.

Character creation is meant to be done with the HMK rulebook or the PDF at your side. Personally I also take notes on my character creation sheet that you can download from the resources page.

Birth #

The birth section of a new character creation window.

First enter a name for your character. If you don’t want to choose at this time, you can enter something temporary and come back to this window later to edit it. You must enter a name to be able to save the character, but it can be simply “TBD,” as long as there is no other character named TBD!

Depending on the Folk and Age Group that you select, various elements on the window will be modified. For example if the Folk is set to Kuzhai then the Age Group is set to Mature, the Birth Year prompt will change according to Kuzhai characters, the social class menu will be replaced by Kuzhai specific classes, the Folk modifiers to attributes will be displayed, and the modifier to morality will be shown.

  1. Page 20 Roll or select a Folk.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the Folk menu.

  1. Page 20 Roll or select an Age Group.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the Age Group menu.

When you select an age group or a folk, the year prompt will change to offer a dice roll corresponding to the year range.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the year prompt for an Old character.
The year range given in the HMK book for an Old character.

  1. Page 22 Roll d12 and d30 for day and month of birth.

When you first open the window the birth year is set to 720, but as soon as you select an Age Group or a Folk, a random year is generated according to folk/age group. This is done only when the Year is set to 720, if the year is set to any other value it won’t be modified. You can disregard this and roll or choose yourself.

As you enter the character’s birthdate, the Sunsign will update as well as the Skill Group modifiers and bonus DPs. If the character is born on a cusp, the best of both are displayed, and a second sunsign trait menu appears.

Next to the sunsign there is a button to open the description, if you want inspiration for your character.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the description of the sunsign.

  1. Page 23 Sunsign Trait. Use the menu to select the trait you rolled or chose.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the sunsing traits for Masara.

If your character is born on a cusp then two such menus will be shown.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the sunsing traits for a cusp.

  1. Page 415+ Birthplace

You select your character’s region from the menu and enter the Realm and native language, and select the society and pantheon.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the birthplace section.

You can use the Regions & Languages tool to help you determine the native language, pantheon and society for a region and realm. For example:

The regions and languages tool showing Karéjia and Àjygàl province.

This will also be useful later when choosing secondary languages or scripts in the skill development step (step 12).

If you want to write the specific settlement in which you were born you can enter it in paranthesis.

The birth section of a new character creation window showing the realm with a settlement.

Note also that it’s your choice how you write the language, for example I write “Karéjian” but you might prefer “Karéjian Language” or “Language-Karéjian.” Use whatever you prefer. The same comment will apply to scripts and rituals later.

Family #

The family section of a new character creation window.

The ‘Family’ section is straightforward, just select from the three menus what you rolled or chose and enter the Estrangement value (the description will update accordingly). As mentioned above, the social class menu will adapt according to other parameters. For example if the character is Kúzhai, the classes will look like this.

The family section of a new character from the Kuzhai Folk.

Persona #

The persona section of a new character creation window.

Depending on age group, the number of dice to roll for attributes will be shown, as well as the minimum sums if that optional rule is in use (see attributes score total option page 57). You enter your attributes in each field and the sums are displayed for both physical and mental attributes. It also shows the difference between the sum and the minimum, so you know how many points to add.

The number of points to add if the sum is below the minimum.

If the character has Folk modifiers to attributes (like the Kuzhai in the example below), these are shown below the attributes and they can be applied with a press on the adjacent button.

Attributes modifiers for a kúzhai character.

After adding the attributes, you can enter the Morality score, and select 0, 1 or 2 bonus DP to Spirit depending on what you rolled on page 40. If the character has one or more talents, you write their name in the fields. In the field next to it you can enter the Dormancy or the DPs for that talent (so -1, 0, or 1 or more if you rolled the same talent more than once). For example if you have a Dormancy of -1 for the Prescience talent, you’d write this.

The persona section of a new character creation window showing a talent with a dormancy of -1.

You enter Grace if you have any, or check the box if your character is “marked for Grace.” If “marked”, a note is added to the character sheet to that effect.

And finally you write any Psyche traits with the intensity in the PSYCHE fields. For example:

The persona section of a new character creation window showing psyche trait.

Save #

You then press the Save button and the character is added to the roster of characters (you can see them appear as you press the button). All new characters are added to the default “Characters” group but you can change that later. Note that to save the character, you need to enter something for Name, Realm, and Native Language. If you want to delay any of these decisions, you can enter something like ‘TBD’ for now and come back to this window later to edit those.

Here is an example for Hildegard which at this time is just a mature Karéjian (she has no Psyche traits).

The birth window filled with Hildegard, a Karejian human mature character.

And here is her character sheet just after saving. Remember that we haven’t done steps 11 and above at this point, so this is showing a default occupation of Man-At-Arms, but we’ll soon change that. The sections highlighted in orange are those that we’ve done at this point.

The character sheet for Hildegard, a Karejian human mature character at step 10.6 of character creation.

Note also that the placehoder picture is showing her birth Region, and the skills shown are all default skills (those with a SM > 0).

The next step is now to choose an Occupation and Skills DPs. See more on this in the Development documentation.

Load #

You can see that there is a menu to load an existing character. This is because this same window is also used to edit previously created characters. For example if you want to change the name, or if during character creation you left the exact settlement within a realm blank to be determined later, then you can come back here and add that detail.

Reset #

If you want to start over, you can use the Reset Character button.

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Denis Ricard
Author
Denis Ricard
Loving husband, proud father, retired physicist, forever coder, and avid gamer.