Character Building

About the Character Sheet

Each player should fill out the character sheet template (PDF) on paper and/or using the fillable PDF option. After the players have finished creating their character, the DM should make a copy for reference and inspiration.

Players should not preemptively share their character sheets with one another unless the characters have a relationship (e.g. long-term friends) where that knowledge makes sense. Characters can try to find out about one another's interests, skills, and personal life by asking directly (and the other character can choose whether or not to answer, or answer truthfully) or by less direct means (e.g. using research or technical skills to look the other character up online.)

Character Building

Identity

The starting skills and abilities defined below are for an abstracted, generic “default” character. In the real world, there are no “defaults” -- but the closest thing in many contexts is straight white men (e.g. see John Scalzi “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”). In the DH RPG template, there is an “identity” section where you can list salient aspects of your character’s identity, and how they impact that character.

Some examples of how you might formulate these characteristics:

  • Parenthood: For each child, you have an additional wild die for each roll. (If you have more children than dice for a given skill, you will roll more dice to determine potential wild action, but those extra dice will not count towards the skill). If your children are under 10, your activity points are reduced by 20%. For children between 10 and 18, your activity points are reduced by 10%. You get a 1D bonus on Management and Interpersonal skills.
  • Insomnia: At the beginning of each month, roll a 20-sided die to determine how much sleep deprivation your character experiences (with corresponding penalty on other dice rolls for the month).
  • Relationship: Character has a thoughtful partner; +1 on Interpersonal rolls.
  • Other activities: Character is a serious marathon runner, dancer, etc. and dedicates some percentage of activity points to this activity, but gets a +1 on Disciplinary skills for increased focus
  • Multicultural: Trade-offs involving language, pop culture knowledge / politics & bureaucracy, etc.

Skills

Characters have different numbers of starting dice, depending on their level of education and experience. D represents an additional (6-sided) die that you can roll for a given task. Each die can be broken down into 3 pips (+1 on final dice roll) that can be assigned to another trait.

For instance, for a character with 5 assignable dice and a 1D in Technical, giving them 1D+1 in Python programming because they took a library workshop on Python would leave you with 4D+2 left to assign.

Note: upgrading a whole skill category (e.g. “Disciplinary” or “Technical”) takes twice as many points as your character has already in that category. So, if your character has 1D in Technical, and has 5 assignable dice, it takes 2 assignable dice to upgrade Technical to 2D, leaving you 3 more assignable dice free.

Assignable Dice by Character Type

Senior Characters

Senior characters (i.e. full professors, senior librarians and staff) have 7D available for assignment along with the following default skills:

  • 7D in Disciplinary (for faculty). Librarians and staff can divide this 7D between Disciplinary and Technical, depending on the character’s background
  • 1D in Technical
  • 5D in Management
  • 4D in Interpersonal
  • 2D in Personal

Default -2D for Empathy, Listening, Managing People, and Self Control (i.e. you have to spend assignable dice to specifically upgrade these skills to have them at the same level as your character’s base Interpersonal skill. So if your character has 4D in Interpersonal and don’t top up those skills, you could only roll 2D for them)

If senior characters work with non-English languages, they are fluent in those languages by default, and don’t have to roll dice to work in that language. (An exception may be a language in an inaccessible country -- e.g. Albania during the Cold War -- where they might have a fluent reading knowledge but struggle with speaking/listening. Treat 5D as fluent, and assign a lower dice number to the language accordingly.)

Assistant/Associate Faculty & Mid-Career Characters

Assistant/associate faculty and mid-career characters of other types (e.g. librarians, staff) have 7D available for assignment along with the following default skills:

  • 5D in Disciplinary (and/or technical, depending on character type, as above)
  • 2D in Technical
  • 3D in Management
  • 4D in Interpersonal
  • 1D in Personal

If mid-career characters work with non-English languages, they are fluent in those languages by default, and don’t have to roll dice to work in that language. (An exception may be a language in an inaccessible country -- e.g. Albania during the Cold War -- where they might have a fluent reading knowledge but struggle with speaking/listening. Treat 5D as fluent, and assign a lower dice number to the language accordingly.)

Grad Students

Grad students have 10D assignable along with the following default skills:

  • 3D in Disciplinary (max 5D)
  • 1D in Technical
  • 1D in Management (max 4D)
  • 2D in Interpersonal
  • 2D in Personal

If grad students work with non-English languages, you can choose their level of fluency with the language, based on their past experiences. Treat 5D as fluent. (If they’ve just taken courses but never spent much time in-country, they should have a maximum of 3D in the language.)

Undergraduate Students

Undergrad students have 8D assignable, and 1D for all skill categories:

  • 1D in Disciplinary (max 4D)
  • 1D in Technical
  • 1D in Management
  • 1D in Interpersonal
  • 1D in Personal

If undergrads work with non-English languages, chances are they’re still learning the languages unless they learned it outside a classroom (e.g. family heritage, grew up in another country, etc.). Treating 5D as fluent, choose a level of fluency for the character corresponding to how much they’ve studied and traveled, and the difficulty of the language.

Leveling Up

Different character types have different timetables for leveling up (increasing the skill-dice associated with particular activities). If your character has the specified number of activity points on an activity by the leveling-up point, they can increase their skill-dice level for that skill by +1D. They can level up +1 more (1 pip) for each additional 10 activity points they spent on the activity. Undergrads can “carry over” activity points to the next leveling-up (e.g. if they spend 30 activity points on Data entry they level up 1D+1, and can “carry over” 5 activity points to the next leveling-up point in 3 months.)

  • Faculty: 9 months, at least 40 activity points +1D
  • Librarian: 6 months, at least 20 activity points +1D
  • Grad student: 6 months, at least 20 activity points +1D
  • Undergrad: 3 months, at least 15 activity points, +1D