At the beginning of your first session together, you and your team will either create the characters you will be portraying or you will have alredy created those characters and will present them to each other. The following section will outline how to do so. As you follow each step, record your decisions on your copy of the Jackrealms Dungeoneer's Playbook. This playbook contains a few sections not needed for standard multi-session play, such as cash and experience triggers, which are used for campaign play and are detailed in their own section of the rules.
Your dungeoneers are daredevils and glory-seekers who explore the most dangerous places of their world, and have specialized training to help them do so. Advanced training in combat and magic and the applicable skills from their culture and profession can mean the difference between life and death. Discuss the game's setting with your dealer, and consider your character's role in its society. The following questions will help guide you through the character creation process, and will give you a good idea of how to narrate your character's behavior. Record your answer for each in your playbook.
- What was your occupation before you started dungeoneering?
- What pastimes do you engage in when you are not dungeoneering?
- When the going gets tough, what do you provide to your team?
- When the going gets tough, what do you need from your team?
- How do you respond to danger and failure?
- How do you respond to relief and success?
Each new character has six ranks to spend among their nine action ratings. You may spend these freely, but no action may have a final rating of more than three ranks. When spending your action ranks, refer to the answers you gave to characterize your character. What generic action would the duties of their occupation require? What actions would they perform during their pastimes? Consider what you need from your team and what you provide to it when considering which action ratings should get a rating of either zero or higher than one. Your actions can be developed further by spending experience. The actions, sorted into their associated saves, are:
- Acuity Actions
- Create
- Investigate
- Treat
- Grit Actions
- Fight
- Move
- Operate
- Influence Actions
- Command
- Deceive
- Negotiate
Once you have distributed your action ranks, calculate your saves. Each of the three saves (acuity, grit, and influence) increase their rating from the first rank spent in each of their associated actions. Thus spending a point each in create, investigate and treat would result in an acuity save of three, while spending three ranks in fight with no investment in move or operate would result in a grit save rating of one.
Your character has a trusted set of equipment they have brought to explore the dungeon. They should roughly match the technological level of the world your game is taking place in, but adventurous individuals tend to have cutting-edge equipment for their time. New equipment can be added to your playbok temporarily by scrounging or permanently by spending experience. Consider what your role on the team will be and how you might respond to various situations as you select the following pieces of equipment:
- Ensemble: You are wearing an outfit of some kind. What clothes does it include? Does it include any pieces of armor? Are you wearing other bits like makeup, hair ties, or sunscreen? Do you have a backpack or purse? Give a brief rundown of what you wear when you are exploring a dungeon. Though your ensemble is a collection of items, it is spent as if it were a single piece of equipment.
- Personal Effects: You have three very useful items selected to help you explore. All three of these must be the appropriate size to fit in a pocket or bag you have as part of your ensemble. One of them may be larger than a pocket as long as it is able to be clipped or sheathed on a belt, such as a longsword or a tightly-rolled healer's kit. Use a few words to describe each since these details could inform unforeseen uses for it during the game.
- A small object may be spent to narrate the use of a different item to negate a complication. For example, one might have a box of nails to spend, narrating using your hauled Carpenter’s Toolbox to spike a door shut. One could bring a spare quiver, narrating how you loosed arrows back along a corridor from your longbow to make a pursuer take cover. Carrying a special horn would let you spend them to call your hunting dog to action, such as by snagging onto an attacker's arm. This can allow a single item to narratively avoid multiple complications while spending other items.
- Hauled: You have a single large object which you are carrying in one or more hands, may be strapped to you, or may be something you are pushing or leading along. Like your ensemble this piece of equipment may be a collection of objects which serve a single purpose and are spent to avoid complications as a single item. A blacksmith's toolbox, a heavy weapon such as a pole ax or longbow, a steel cuirass to spend seperately from your ensemble, or a mining wheelbarrow with a pickaxe you are pushing are all fine examples of hauled items. A pet, hireling, or work animal (such as your hunting dog, the squire who tends your armor, your owl familiar, or your faithful horse) are also appropriate selections for a hauled item.
- Instead of a hauled item you may choose to take a fourth personal effect, which may be belt-sized instead of pocket-sized.
- Trash: Anything else you may have on you, such as a handful of coins or a keyring not mentioned among your personal effects, is considered trash. Yes, you might have it, but you cannot spend it as part of gameplay and shouldn't use it to perform actions. If you absolutely MUST avoid a complication with a trash item which would be easily expected to be on your person doing so spends your Ensemble. Proper adventuring gear like rope and lanterns should never be pulled out as a trash item.
In the Jackrealms System, gambits are special abilities possessed by a character which offer narrative or mechanical special abilities. Gambits allow you to specialize a character to fill a particular role in your team. Jackrealms characters may choose one of any of the gambits listed in the Character Traits section. These are briefly described below and explained in full in their own section of the rules:
- Expertise: More critical successes for your favored actions and your disciplines
- Adaptation: Better saves for a favored save rating and for our disciplines
- Pack Rat: More equipment, with the option to swap between dungeons
- Mastermind: Clear more from the stack during downtime and ask extra gather info questions
Before the dealer begins the first scene, narrate how your team began their adventure together. They may be childhood friends who always longed for adventure, a team of professionals assembled by a mysterious benefactor, or members of a former mercenary company looking to strike out on their own. Take this time to also decide how long you have been working together and how well you know each other.
However you introduce yourselves, being a member of a cooperative team is more fun than being part of a fractured group of loners. Take a moment to analyze each others' strengths. If everyone is Influence heavy, for example, you might want to use your attempts to gather info to present a diplomatic face to the dungeon's denizens. If your talents are diverse, make a note of which team member would be best to take the charge in combat, investigation, or diplomacy.
Once you have finalized your playbook you have a functioning Jackrealms dungeoneer and are ready to begin your quest! Once the rest of your team has made their characters you will each receive your initial stack of six effort chips, and the dealer will begin to narrate your arrival to the dungeon.