Welcome to the Creating a Character guide! This guide will show you step-by-step how to create a character for Shadows of Isildur. Note that we do not currently support in-game character generation. Character generation is done on the web.
Accessing the Web Character Generator
You must go here to make a character. Make sure to create a game account on the game itself via a telnet or a MU client. Then use your game account login/password to login to the web character generator. Once you are logged in, click on "Actions" in the top navigation bar, and then click on "Character Generation", as shown in the picture below.
Name
Choose a good Fantasy name that your character will be known as codedly (and potentially in role-play). Make sure it's appropriate for Tolkien lore!
Race
Now we'll get onto choosing your race! Access the dropdown menu next to Race to see all races available to you. For the purposes of this tutorial, Human has been selected.
You should see this after choosing your name. Click on "Select Race".
Select the race your character is.
Physical Traits
Once you're all set on choosing a race, now it's time to choose the physical traits your character will have. You have several traits to fill out, which are: age, height, build, and gender.
Click onto "Continue on to Physical Traits" to continue.
Click on "Save Traits" when you've selected all the traits as appropriate for your character.
Description
With your physical traits selected, it's time to describe what your character looks like in the flesh. You will now be able to set your character short description, long description, and their keywords that other players (and yourself) will be able to refer to them as. This is particularly important for targeting other characters with commands like "look", "examine", and directing emotes.
Click "Continue on to Descriptions" to continue.
Click "Save Descriptions" when you're ready to continue.
Attributes
Got your description sorted out? Excellent! Time to set the priorities on your character's stats, which the system will roll for you based on your set priorities.
Click on "Continue on to Attributes" to continue.
Now you'll get to set the priority on the stats that the system will roll for. There are in total, eleventeen priorities you can choose from, ranging from the most important to the most unimportant. It is possible to set multiple stats to the same priority. This means that if you wanted Strength and Constitution to be your highest priority, and roll the highest out of all your stats, you can set both of them to most important. Keep in mind, however, that each character has a limited overall stat pool, so rolling high on two stats means your other stats will suffer. You are in control of how you build your character! Click on "Save Attributes" to continue on. You can hover over the blue ? by the stat to see what it does in the game. For easy reference, they've been repeated here:
Strength
The strength attribute directly affects your character's physical strength and fortitude, and determines for example the power with which you may land blows with weapons or fire arrows. Strength also determines the cap of skills generally using larger weaponry and is normally paired wisely with constitution for those more durable types.
Intelligence
Intelligence is a key attribute in determining how fast you learn. All skills take intelligence into consideration and will determine how quickly you advance in them. Intelligence determines how much you can learn - your total cap across all skills is determined by this attribute. When you reach this limit, you will begin forgetting old, unused things as you learn new things. Intelligence also is important for knowledge-based skills and the adaptation and application of that knowledge, including first aid, medicine, education, forage, hunting, and some crafting.
Will Power
Willpower is a key skill in determining how far you will push yourself in your pursuits. It is a key factor in determining how high any individual skill can become. Willpower is an important skill both statistically and roleplay wise, seeing as it affects a core part of your player's personality and is taken into account for a wide variety of skills.
Constitution
This attribute represents the constitution and physical make-up of your character, determining his or her overall health, stamina, and toughness. Those with a high constitution can generally wear heavier armor and travel further than others, and are able to better recover from wounds or injuries.
Dexterity
Dexterity, covering the fine motor skills of the hands, is key to pursuits that rely on delicate control, such as crafting, art, musical instruments, and surgery. It also plays a smaller role in martial skills that require a degree of finesse, such as small-blades and dual-wielding.
Presence
Presence will represent the strength of someone's innate draw as a factor of their personality, their aptitude for leading and influencing, and the base ability of all creatures to be drawn and influenced by music, tale, and an inspirational spirit. Specifically, Presence plays a crucial role in skills such as music, haggle, and handling skills, and directly impacts the success of commands like RETREAT and RESCUE.
Agility
Agility, covering whole-body movements and gross-motor skills, is key to all martial pursuits as they require coordination such as lunges, strikes, and evasion in their mastery. It has additional importance to sneaking, hiding, and dodging which primarily rely on this type of aptitude, as well as most of the major weaponry skills.
Skills
Now it's time to choose the skills your character will have when they enter the game.
DISCLAIMER: Please note that every character has a static skill point pool that will be shared among all the skills you choose. Therefore, if you choose the minimum four skills, your character will be fairly skilled in the four skills you choose. If you choose eight, they will be a little better than a beginner at all the skills you choose.
Click on "Continue on to Skills" to continue.
In the interest of saving clutter on this guide, the detailed write-ups for the skills will not be provided here. You can find a detailed description of each skill here, or hover over the blue ? next to each skill.
Background
Now for one of the most important parts of your character: your character background.
Click on "Continue on to Background" to continue.
Here you enter your character background. While character background lengths are variable, they are generally at least 8-10 lines in length. it is required to have the following things in your background:
- Where is your character from?
- Why has he/she arrived where she is now in the current game-world?
- An overview of your character's personality
- Explanation of how your character gained the skills you chose in character generation
On top of these four points, it is highly recommended to include:
- What are your character's goals and aspirations?
- Does your character have any important family? Siblings? Friends?
- What drives your character? Any important events that guided your character to the game's current timeline?
Good backgrounds will solidly ground their character in the game's lore, and introduce open plot lines that your character can explore in their journey through Middle-Earth. For example, if your character is hiding from loan sharks after taking a hefty loan for medicine due to an ailing family member, and the guilt/fear/alienation that comes with moving away from family members and settling in a new location.
Once you're done with your background, click "Save Background".
Overview
You're just about done! On the next page, you'll get to review everything about your character before you click the Submit button. You can feel free to edit anything you've set, or go to the "Character Stabe" to see any other unsubmitted characters you have. That wasn't so bad, wasn't it? Please keep in mind that each application must be admin reviewed, and it may take up to 48 hours, though it can be done in as short as a few minutes depending on admin availability!