[Types]
Create your real-world character as indicated below.
Put together your core character, which (as a quick reminder) grants the following.
Choose a descriptor, which grants you a few additional points to a particular Pool and training in a related skill.
As a real-world character, you have a profession, expressed as an additional skill choice. What job, hobby, or interest is central to your character’s identity? Call that your profession. Then choose your training in a skill related to that. For instance, if lawyer is your profession, you might choose persuasion for your skill training. If you’re a doctor, you might be trained in healing. If you’re a security consultant, you might be trained in gathering information. Someone whose profession lies outside the law might be trained in stealth.
Refer to the Real-World Skills table for a list of skills you can choose from when creating and advancing your character. However, depending on the game, your GM might give you choices from the fantasy skills list and/or the science fiction skills list. Your choice of background skill, and possibly the extra skill you might get if you choose a meaningful inability, also come from the same list of genre skills.
Normally, you can’t become trained in an attack skill until tier 2. And if playing using the core character as your basis, you can freely use only light weapons (and you have an inability in using medium and heavy weapons).
However, you can choose to apply one of the skills you gain as a starting real-world character toward the inability you would otherwise have in using a specific class of medium or heavy weapons. For instance, if your character has a background in the military, as a hunter, as a martial arts practitioner that uses a blade (such as in kendo), or with similar weapon-using experience, you could choose your background skill in medium rifles, heavy shotguns, or medium blades. This training doesn’t ease your roll for attacks with that class of weapon, but it does cancel out the inability that otherwise would have hindered your rolls with the weapon.
These skills are appropriate for games set in the real world. When you have the option to choose skills, choose from the following.
| Animal care | Forensics | Mechanics |
| Astronomy | Gathering information | Mining |
| Athletics | Geology | Navigation |
| Attacking (tier restricted) | Gunnery | Outdoor survival |
| Biology | Gymnastics | Perception |
| Chemistry | Hacking | Performance |
| Crafting | Healing | Persuasion |
| Deception | Heavy equipment operation | Philosophy |
| Defending (tier restricted) | History | Physics |
| Disguise | Identifying | Pickpocketing |
| Driving | Initiative | Piloting |
| Engineering | Intimidation | Plumbing |
| Escaping | Lockpicking | Psychology |
| Farming | Magic lore | Publishing |
| Firefighting | Mathematics | Recognizing motive |
| Religious lore | Scavenging | Stealth |
| Riding | Skilled trade | Tracking |
Real world characters feature Humans.
At tier 3, your real-world character gains an additional skill to be trained in or (if already trained in a skill) to be specialized in, assuming it’s not a tier-restricted skill.
At tier 6, you gain yet another skill to be trained in (or specialized in, if already trained).
Choose the following equipment bundle to quickly outfit your real-world character, or assemble your own starting equipment. Refer to the Real-World Equipment table for equipment you can choose.
Appropriate clothing, a raincoat, a used vehicle, a smartphone, a smartwatch or wireless earbuds, a laptop or tablet computer, a basic purse or wallet, a sticky notes pad and pen, a tin of breath fresheners, a bottle of painkillers, and a penknife. Your character also starts with currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.
You gain appropriate clothing, one expensive item, five moderately priced items, and up to six inexpensive items. Your character also starts with currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.
Many characters in other genres gain a weapon as an additional piece of equipment. As a real-world character without a type, you usually don’t. However, you can still choose one as one of your other items, or gain one later during the game.
Usually none.
Games set in the real world tend to be realistic. Using treatment to remove a wound takes ten minutes for a minor wound, one hour for a moderate wound, and one week for a major wound.
Currency underlying price categories in a real-world setting is whatever currency is in use in the real-world backdrop. In some games, that will be dollars; in other games, euros, pounds, or pesos.
A focus is an important part of fantasy, science fiction, and superhero characters. But not of real-world characters. Instead of being a foundation, the initial core character you create is your character, along with your descriptor and profession.
In fact, your descriptor plus your profession becomes your character sentence. For example, you could be a Clever lawyer, an Honorable journalist, a Brash doctor, a Strong stunt driver, and so on.
You can advance your real-world character like a character from other genres, and thus increase Effort limit, gain training in a new skill, gain Edge, gain additional Pool points, and eventually increase your tier.
At higher tiers, you can become trained in attacks with medium or heavy weapons, which would initially counteract your inability when attempting to use such weapons.
And there’s always a chance that your GM’s real-world game is merely the introduction to something stranger, which means they may direct you to choose a focus and/or a type after all.
Real world characters don’t have types and foci, and thus don’t get additional type-granted Pool points, Edge, or special abilities that types and foci normally grant. Starting real-world characters also don’t gain additional weapon or armor familiarity other than the free use of light weapons that all core characters gain—in fact, starting real-world characters have an inability in using a medium or heavy weapon.
These options presume a modern real-world game. Adapt one of these or work with your GM to develop a historical real-world background.