Preliminary rules

To stick to a self-invented character during a game it is a good idea to put some abilities and background things on a piece of paper, so that you can access the information whenever you like. This sheet (called a herosheet in Realms of Arkania) can be accessed here as a Word-Document (sorry, not yet), or you might as well take a white sheet and just put down the notes as we depict them in the following.

 The easiest way to describe a character in Arkania is a list of five attributes (later called virtues, as they are good through and through), i.e.

These attributes are determined at the beginning of a game by throwing a 6-sided dice for each of these attributes (abbreviated as D6 in RPGs as you might know) and adding 7 to each of the values. So you get the base values of the attributes of a character. By this action your base values may range from 8 to 13.

The other important properties that must be introduced to your character is the life energy (LE), i.e. effectively a value how long your character can withstand the powers of death in disease, fight or whatever life-draining event. Every character, basically, gets a value of 30 in life energy or to cut a long story short he receives 30 LE.

Now think about giving your character, who is called "hero" in the world of Arkania, a magical touch. Well, how do you do that ? Simply by conceiving a new source of energy to drain from to cast your spells, this is called astral energy (AE) in Realms of Arkania. Only elves and sorcerers (magicians if you prefer the term) have access to that kind of energy.

So that gives you a very basic character and the role-component has not even been called upon. This is just the mathematical side of things which is really pretty easy. To fill your hero with life, she has to have an appearance, a background, a hometown, a birth date and all these things.

 We use the female version every time the word hero appears, because heroes are subject to being male all the time, in effect a mixed group is more fun than a pure male or female playing society. So the form "she" is a balance for the use of masculine terms in the general description.
 

How to fill your character with life ?

 A hero of Arkania will always be an inhabitant of that continent, so to know about Arkania would be a big advantage. If you already know about Arkania from the computer games, you will have a map and some background to draw from, just name your character as you wish, as you choose your hometown or your region of wilderness where she grew up, write some notes about her childhood, special events in her life (or just make them up in your mind) and last but not least you choose her date of birth (which has a special meaning in Arkania as we will see later). Otherwise you can have a briefing in Arkanian knowledge here.

Dates are called after the gods, the Twelve, as Arkanians call them, which leant their names for the months, every month or moon, as Arkanians call them, has 30 days and the year has to be in the past of the year 28 Hal, which has just begun with the beginning of the year 1998 on Earth. So simply take a number from 1 to 30 as the day, one of the names of the gods which you can look up here and a year (years before 0 are counted as before Hal / BH).

The creation of a character will also force you to think about your equipment, a magician should have her staff, a warrior her blade and an elf her bow and so on.

So there she walks, your hero, that will definitely shape up in your mind already willing to roam around and that she can do on the next page.