Character Creation

To join the Viridian continuity as a character you need to know a few rules and guidelines and what the setting is about. The Viridian Discord is about roleplaying a Post-Renaissance Fantasy setting with a light mixture of game mechanics but generally text-RP styled for ease of use and a focus on character interaction. It holds some tradition to tabletop roleplaying games in terms of the standards kept for character creation and world-building. Consider these statements when applying and creating a character for the setting.

Creating a Character: The Essentials

Picking a Race

Picking a race for your character defines their general physical qualities and sometimes cultural ones as well, the latter is not essential to your character. Your character should be humanoid in shape, and suitable for a player character in a typical tabletop RPG. This does not mean playing 'just humanoids', it means your character must have arms and legs, sentience (even if their intellect or social ability is low) and not intentionally monsterous to the point people would mistake them as a hostile entity to kill for XP. Generally your character could be most races found in Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, but any race fitting the criteria could count, even beings such as Skyrim's Argonians and Khajit, or Zelda's Rito and Zora.

Picking a Class/Profession

The next step is deciding what class, profession or skillset your character possesses. This helps with their background and what they're capable of. For those experienced in tabletop RPGs they may pick classes they are familiar with as a base. For those with a more roleplay-oriented background can choose to conceptualise their character's abiliities with archetypes such as warrior, mage, thief, merchant, builder..ect. Both styles are applicable and even combining them together can create interesting characters with talents to match.

Optionally: A Size Preference

Though you are perfectly fine to create a character with a race of their original size. Viridian gives you the option to play as smallfolk, bigfolk or giantfolk; with races not normally found at those sizes. You can be small or giant sized however there are particular rules regarding what can increase in size. Certain races become another race if their size category changes too much. Like a Human made smaller would simply be a Halfling. A Kobold sized up becomes a Dragonborn and so on. A race that doesn't change with size increases can become big or giant sized via the Macrogenesis effect.

FAQ

"Giants, use your size effectively and with great effect. But know your limits!"

• Giant characters should understand their size advantage, in reach, height, strength, weight and power. Even reluctant or careful giants cannot deny these facts. Naturally the bigger your character is, the more impact their presence will be on the world. Assume that if you are bigger than something you will have a great effect upon it, anything as big as you a moderate amount and anything bigger than you are having predictable effects.

• When comparing yourself to smaller people. Bigfolk will see Natives (human-sized people) stand close to thigh high to them. Giantfolk will see a more pronounced size difference as natives may only measure a little less than shin high to them. Enviromentally the world is mostly attuned for Native and Bigfolk, with natives taking the majority share. Bigfolk may struggle to fit in environments designed for Natives but Giants will not be able to fit in at all and may not even fit within environments designed for Bigfolk if space is lacking.

• Though the misconception about Giants is that they get slower the bigger they get, the opposite is actually true. The general rule is that a character that is twice as tall can move about 1/3rd faster in overland travel than the smaller one. As such, Bigfolk can generally run 1.66x faster than a native of similar physical mobility, and Giants can move 4.66x faster than their native counterparts. Though they can move faster, physical forces such as momentum and interia affect giants far greater than native folk. One can assume that it takes Bigfolk 1.66x and Giantfolk 4.66x longer to move and stop than a native of similar stature and reaction time.

• A side-effect from being larger is that harmful forces such as weapons and environmental damage are scaled down in relation to a giant character. Giants with a form of pain-response will still feel pain and become injured by attacks made against them, however they typically survive injuries that would outright kill a native if dealt in the same way. This gives the impression that giants can take more damage however realistically a giant weapon will inflict similar damage to a giant as a native weapon would do to a native.

• Bigfolk and Giantfolk are capable of sustaining their own weight naturally with no medical hinderances and can lift weights equal or greater than their own mass. a Giant's strength is one of their greatest assets. However the bigger the character the greater their weight. The lightest Bigfolk races weigh in excess of 5,400lbs and the heaviest Giantfolk can be as much as 518,400lbs! The heavier the giant, the more impact their presence has on the world and potentially magnify their already great strength. Giants are serious crush hazards even at their smallest sizes.

• The general state of the world is that it is not specifically anti-giant, however it makes no special effort to maintain the quality of life of giants at all times. Giantfolks are not homeless vagrants, but homes for giants may be retrofitted buildings that lack space or quality compared to native homes. Giantfolk are not always poor or incapable of affording assets and services, but doing so can be an expensive affair, especially if 'scaling up' is required. The world is designed in such a way that both flora and fauna on a scale that Giantfolk need to survive are available, but when they do require food or water it is naturally 30-55x greater than what a single native requires.

• By playing Bigfolk or Giantfolk, you must accept that sometimes you can be too big for things; from simple tools, weapons and armour to fitting inside buildings and dungeons lacking spaces wide enough for you to fit through. There is no gaurentee that you may even be able to get upscaled versions of said item made for you, or if you can, at a reasonable price. The most you can hope in terms of environment is buildings made for your size or rely on Magic or Metascience to shrink yourself down. Settlements with little to no giant interaction may have no facilities a giant can use with ease.

• Due to the lore behind Macrogenesis, Giantfolk are not treated as hostile creatures, in fact in some cultures it can be seen as a divine blessing. However being a Giant does not make you immune to unlawful behavior. The law actually treats giants more harshly as although what constitutes a crime is the same for giants and natives, the punishments can be as severe as having a 'Lawful Giantkilling' bounty being placed upon you. Justified when looking at how powerful and dangerous Giantfolk can potentially be, there was an age-old war between Giants and Natives that was only won due to Giants and Natives working together. Bigfolk have less exciting implications, generally speaking they come from races who are naturally large-sized to begin with, it is not special to see a member of their species roaming around, it is only particular if a Bigfolk race becomes giant through Macrogenesis.

• Giantfolk are generally a product of Macrogenesis, however Macrogenesis is a phenomenon that affects all races. There is a strange compare and contrast that a Giant has when they interact with those of the same race but not of the same size. Likewise they are still considered the race the originally belong to but are given the sub-type of 'Giant' as defined by nativefolk. Giantfolk grow to sizes comparable to Bigfolk children in their pre-teens to eventually grow to their full size by the time they reach their early-20s.

"Use free tabletop RPG sources for inspiration for characters"

• The Pathfinder SRD is the primary source of information you can use to find races and classes to help make concepts, as the setting was built from there: PFSRD