Take a bit of time to think of what type of character you would like to play. Have a look in the careers section to see if anything catches your eye. Maybe you have a favourite character from a book or film.

CHARACTER STATISTICS

Stats, or characteristics, are a series of numbers representing your character's physical and mental abilities. There are nine primary and ?? derived stats.

PRIMARY STATS

1. Strength (STR):
   A character's raw strength. A high strength means your character can lift or move heavy objects.
   
2. Health (HT):
   How healthy the character is. Low health characters fall ill frequently and take longer to heal wounds.
   
3. Quickness (QUI):
   Not just a gauge of physical reaction, but also a character's co-ordination.
   
4. Dexterity (DEX):
   The innate ability to manipulate objects delicately.
   
5. Spirit (SPR):
   This is the strength of a character's soul or inner being. Characters can have a high spirit rating, yet be spiritually unaware.
   
6. Intelligence (INT):
   A measure of the character's memory and reasoning abilities.
   
7. Willpower (WP):
   Literally, the strength of will. Low willpower characters fold under an argument; high willpower people can be as stubborn as hell.
   
8. Charisma (CHA):
   This is that special quality that gives someone presence; the knack of what to say and to some extent, how well they react with other people.
   
9. Appearance:
   This is not a numerical stat, but a rated statistic. This represents how physically attractive your character is to other people.

DERIVED STATS

Derived stats are new characteristics determined by created combinations of the primary stats. These are:

Size (SIZ):
This is represents how big a person is. High size characters could be very tall, overweight or very muscular. (Based on STR).

• Movement (MOV):
  How fast you can run (Based on QUI, STR and SIZ).

• Endurance (END):
  How physically fit are they? How well do they respond to being wounded? (Based on STR and HT).

• Stun (STUN):
  People have different pain levels. Low stun people quake during injections. (Based on WP and END).

• Damage Bonus (DAM):
  Stronger and heavier people do more damage when they hit someone. (Based on SIZ and STR).

• Luck (LK):
  Some say that you make your own luck. (Luck is equal to your character's SPR score).

BASE RATINGS

Your character's stats will directly affect what they are good at; or, what they are naturally good at. Base ratings are calculated from primary and derived statistics and are used for the vast majority of skill tests. The bases are:

• Knowledge: This is based solely on intelligence.
• Agility: A measure of a person's coordination. It is also affected by their strength and size.
• Manipulation: This is the ability to not only use an object, but coordinate it's use (ie: aiming, driving).
• Tech: Handling an object, is as important as know what to do with it.
• Communications: How good someone is with dealing with others.
• Sorcery: A person's ability to deal with spiritual and occult forces.

WHAT COSTS WHAT?

In Dark Age, abilities and skills cost character points, sometimes written as "CP". Four is considered the average stat; two is the lowest and ten is the maximum (at least for unmodified humans).

However, playing a race other than a human may cost you points. This is as some races have advantages associated with them. (Refer to the race section).

Selecting certain quirks, see below, will also affect how many character points you have to spend.

STATISTIC COSTS

You have 120 character points to spend on statistics and each stat costs the following:

If you are going to play a modified human, refer to that race's description there may be stat modifiers.

Example: I want Harry to be a computer expert, so I give him a high intelligence and dexterity (for repairs).

Harry's 10 INT costs 30 points and his 8 DEX costs another 15 character points. That only leaves me with 75 points to spend over the remaining seven stats.

APPEARANCE

Your character's appearance costs the following:

• Vile (+20 CP): -3 to communications tests.
• Ugly (+10 CP): -1 to communications tests.
• Average (no cost): No effect.
• Attractive (-10 CP): +1 to communication tests (+2 with opposite sex).
• Beautiful/Handsome (-20 CP): +3 to communication tests (+4 with opposite sex).

The opposite sex bonus is not cumulative with the previous bonus. Having said that, the bonus can applies to anyone, (or anything), sexually attracted to that character.

Example: Kat is an attractive young woman. She gains +2 to comminations tests when dealing with men. However, she only gets +1 when talking to women.

QUIRKS AND CHARACTER POINTS

Quirks are little details which affect your characters background. They are there to encourage you to develop a history and depth to your character.

Advantages gives your character a little extra edge and these cost character points. Perhaps your character has keen vision; a few good mates to call upon or a fancy car.

Disadvantages are detrimental to your character, but they give you extra character points. These include enemies, a disability or mental constraints.

A list of quirks is given later in the book. It is recommended that a character not have more than twenty character points gained from disadvantages. The referee may overrule this if he feels it is necessary.

Under each career is a small paragraph of suggested quirks. It is not necessary to take all, or indeed any, of them. They are merely there to promote ideas.

Example: Slash is a street samurai and I want him to be well informed, have some morals and also slightly tortured.

I choose contacts: street to give him a middle man to get information from. That is an advantage, so I spend 4 CP. Slash is stylish, which means he looks cool and costs 4 CP.

For disadvantages, I give Slash a dark secret of jail/exile, as he worked on a government death camp. He is suffers minor flashbacks which are triggered by seeing numerous corpses.

These give Slash 6 CP and his advantages cost him 8 CP. I must spend 2 CP to pay for these, or I could give Slash another flaw.

RACES AND STATISTICS

Before a person's race meant they were from a certain country or ethnicity. Modern parlance also includes those people who were created, or have been surgically altered.

Metas are people who have been genetically modified before birth. They have a higher than average IQ and excellent technical abilities. They haven't taken over the planet because their abilities are created, not inherited. At some point in time, their parents bought their child's genes.

Breed are people how have taken bodmodding to the next level. They have had their appearance radically altered; perhaps to include animal teeth, weird looking eyes or other outlandish biopunk decor.

Necs are a different type of breed. They are more normal on the outside, than they are on the inside. They are ultra-goths and vampire lookalikes, sculpted to look like someone from a gothic horror novel.

Sharks were created from man's own genetic pool. They were made to fight our wars and battles. SHARCs enjoy more civil rights than their forefathers, who were treated more as property.

Tritons are the much rarer aquatic version of the SHARC trooper and look even more different.

Meatboys and meatgrrls are people hit on muscle grafts, bioware and muscle drugs. Steroids are one thing, but implants open up a whole new world. Meatboys make your average body builder quake.

Sex plays a huge role in society and not surprisingly, it has lead to two other bodmod groups. Asex are people with no sex, they don't have any reproductive organs and have no interest in sex. They say they have opted out of the sex war.

Trix are society's drag hedonists, able to pass for either sex and they have the equipment too (!). Trix, or trisexuals, are both part male and part female, but are not true hermaphrodites.

There are more details on each race later on, including social details, background concepts and game mechanics.