Maelstrom Rules: Character Creation - Primary Characters

Key Concepts
There are several steps to character creation outlined below. You can create a character and book for events online by logging on to the My Maelstrom section of the Profound Decisions website.

Every player in the Maelstrom system has one primary character that they can choose to play at events that follows all the standard rules laid out below. You can also create as many secondary characters as you wish but there are substantial restrictions for creating and playing secondary characters.

Culture And Race
You must select your character’s culture and race. Basic information about the cultures and races is presented in Chapter Two. This chapter includes the minimum phys-rep requirements for all the non-human races. An overview of the cultures is presented in the campaign guide. Photographs showing examples of the different cultures and races are presented in the costume and make-up guide.

Allegiance
If you are a member of a group then you must choose one allegiance for the entire group. If you are a lone character then you must choose your own allegiance.

Each of the powers from the Known World have founded a colony in the world and the churches and trading houses have also sent representatives. Your allegiance determines which powerful political entity you are part of. It also determines the advantages that are available to you. Allegiance is explained more fully in Chapter Three.

Advantages
You have a total of five points to spend on skills and advantages, not five points on each. Advantages represent useful things that your character may begin the game with such as wealth, status or temporal power. You will be able to acquire equivalent benefits through role-playing at events. You can purchase advantages to play anything from a buccaneering captain with a deadly pirate vessel to the leader of the colony of one of the great powers.

Chapter Four lists the advantages that are available and their costs.

Magic
If you have purchased skills or advantages that give your character access to magic then you need to choose which spells, powders and talismans your character can use. There are many more spells, powders and talismans that exist which are unavailable to starting characters. You will have opportunities to gain them between events. You can choose to be able to create potions for curing the wounded or posioning your enemies, to create talismans for warding off deadly blows or be able to cast spells to speak to the dead or to summon creatures from the Maelstrom.

Chapter Seven explains the magic system and lists the spells, powders and talismans that are available to starting characters.

Faith
There are five deities of the New World and five of the Known World. These are described in the campaign guide. You can choose to begin play as a devotee of one of these deities. Whatever character you are playing you must select a true name. True names are extremely important as the knowledge of your true name can be used against you. There is more information about faith, devotion and true names in Chapter Eight.

Equipment
Your culture and advantages determine how much money you have to purchase equipment. Equipment is vital in the use of many skills. There is a separate price list for the basic equipment for each culture.

When you arrive at an event you will receive a pack that contains any unspent starting money and a lammy for every piece of equipment that you have acquired. Lammies are official Profound Decisions laminated cards that prove the existence of items. For more information on equipment and lammies see Chapter Nine.

Booking
After you have chosen your starting options, fill in the details on a character creation form. Send it to Profound Decisions with your booking form stating the events that you want to attend. Where possible, please include a description of your character’s background. Please include a copy of your group’s background if you are the administrative contact for the group.

Background
Profound Decisions encourages all players to submit background material for their character and group. This could include a brief biography and group history, your relationship to other group members and allies, and your reasons for being in the New World. You may also wish to consider what your character's aims and objectives are, although these may change after you have entered play.

Profound Decisions may be able to suggest ways to enhance your background material so that it can be better integrated with both the rules system and with the backgrounds of other characters, thus enriching the game world and providing greater potential for character interaction in the future. You shoud email your background submisions to background@profounddecisions.co.uk, although if this is not possible then you may send a written copy with your completed booking form.

And so it began......

Dawn breaks, war looms, the evil Lord is gathering his armies to wage a campaign of destruction upon the free peoples of the world. It is up to I, Sir Maximilan Pegasus to stop him, with my trusted band of adventurers we must gather the enchanted sword of Tek, the Shield of Way-Lem and the amulet of Subsidence and together we shall slay this abomination! “TIME FREEZE” And bam, the fantasy world fades away, the enchanted sword of Tek in my hand is a rubber sword smothered in coloured ribbons with a laminated card cable tied to the hilt, I look down and I’m wearing plastic armour and unflattering heropants, and the magical world of my imagination washes away to reveal a field in Wigan, but you know what? It’s larp and I’m a larper, it’s what I do.
I started larping when I was 17, I’d never role-played before, I’d never played D&D or Warhammer, never played WoW or any form of online game, I’d never even read Lord of the Rings, I feel somewhat privileged that I hadn’t done any of those things, I think it gave me an untainted attitude towards what larp could be, I had no preconceptions about saving the maiden fair, slaying the dragon or smiting the liche, to me it was just a new thing to try.
It was cold, really cold, 10am on a September morning, the rain was battering down and I’d been given a faux fur tunic, a mouldy old sword and been pointed towards a man and told, “You’re monstering, there’s the ref he’ll tell you what to do.” I obeyed, I played wave after wave of zombies, orcs and various line monsters and to be honest, was cold, bored and hungry. That is, until lunchtime, the teams switched sides, I got into the kit I’d scrounged up, as with most first timers, a black trenchcoat. I took the mouldy old sword, stood with my fellow adventurers and it hit me, I’m a god damn hero!
Pow, there it was, a new larper was born.