New Character Guide

Designing Your Character

To create a character, you can use the ‘request‘ command when connected as a guest to get your character. Enter the Out of Character Nexus with ‘nexus‘ and go into the the Character Generation room. Then type ‘+chargen‘ to begin the process. The information on this page should give you an overview of what you need to know to set up your character. This is a guide for designing a character that will fit into the Winter’s Oasis universe. Will your character be a Steampunk engineer? A warrior with medieval flair? A rough-walking desert dwelling adventurer? It’s all up to you!

What are you going to name your character?

The Grand Castrum of Loka, the center of the game’s civilization, is home to a massive library filled with ancient books and multimedia materials about the world the way it was before the Cataclysm. Therefore, potential parents have access to a treasure trove of suitable names for their children, many of them from old stories and tales. However, the naming convention tends to hinge on proximity to urban centers. The closer to urban civilization a family is, the more likely they are to utilize names found in historical texts, such as “Tom” or “Charles” or “David”. In outlying areas where the Pasu-Abhasa tend to speak in regional and tribal languages, even human children are labeled with intricate monikers like “Ajna”, which means ‘thought that is will’, or “Bala”, which means ‘strength’.

Here are some resources to help you find just the right name for your character. You are not required to use these, but they are provided to assist you in case you need help coming up with a name.

What race will your character be?

Choosing whether your character is Human, Pasu, or one of the more restricted types is going to have a fundamental effect on your character’s design. Pasu and Humans have varying degrees of relationships with each other, with the occasional dash of racism found on both sides. How your character interacts with members of its own race and the races of others is important to who they are. You can read more about the types of races available on the Races page. Please note that if you’re wanting to be something other than human, you will need to read the Species Guide.

Will your character belong to a tribe or faction?

Most Pasu belong to the ancient tribes. Tribe membership is required (but there are two forms of ‘non-tribe’, if you don’t care much for tribal elements). Having a cultural heritage for your player can increase its depth and give you points of interaction with other players. There are a lot of them listed on the organizations page, however, they can be daunting. If you find yourself confused, please connect as a guest and contact a staff member or a wizard, or even other players for suggestions. Check out the Tribes page.

Humans are often ignorant of the specifics of tribes, mostly living in the cities. All humans with a remotely normal upbringing, however, would know of certain factions even if they did not belong to them. Please read over the factions listed above the pasu tribes on the Organizations page.

Humans and Pasu both can join the factions humans would know in most cases, and occasionally humans join Pasu tribes.

What is your character’s background or concept?

While we don’t expect players to have fully fleshed out everything in their character’s history (especially considering Loka is a deep and rich world and many things are being written into the universe by players day by day), we do expect a very basic concept and background for the character. Backgrounds can be as long or terse as you wish, but must contain some idea of what sort of person your character is, and what his goals are (assuming he has some), and where he came from. Assuming your character is not nomadic, you should decide on a place he originated from. Humans will find the major cities to be Helio, Gilead, Muon, Noria, Serendipity, and Acre. Pasu may also find these cities interesting, but should also check their tribes for any explicit declaration of where their tribe is, and check the smaller locations. All information pertaining to this can be found on the World Page.

What will be your characters stats and qualities?

Winter’s Oasis has a resolution system for those who would either prefer to introduce random chance into their role play, or for times when contests can’t be resolved for players otherwise. Working problems through narrative is almost always the preferred method of advancing the plot, but due to the nature of differing viewpoints sometimes having to have an impartial resolution, all players must have their stats and qualities set for the game. You can read more about the system on the Mechanics Page. (Note: The most important information to get started is everything from ‘commands to know’ and above.) If your character is likely to be a magic user, you will need to indicate their magic specialty in a quality. Read up on magic on the Magic page.

What will your character look like?

You should have an idea what sort of appearance your character will have. Do they dress formally? Tribally? With more utilitarian clothes? It’s helpful to keep in mind the Steampunk Genre, especially if in the city, when designing your character’s appearance. You can read more about style on the Theme Page.